Current Issue March 2014 magazine cover  Save 81% off the
newsstand price!  Native Intelligence    Nor did Tisquantum
think of himself as an “Indian,” any more than the inhabitants
of the same area today would call themselves “Western
Hemisphereans.” As Tisquantum’s later history would make clear,
he regarded himself first and foremost as a citizen of Patuxet,
one of the dozen or so shoreline settlements in what is now
eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island that made up the
Wampanoag confederation. The Wampanoag, in turn, were part of an
alliance with the Nauset, which comprised some 30 groups on Cape
Cod, and the Massachusett, several dozen villages clustered
around Massachusetts Bay. All of these people spoke variants of
Massachusett, a member of the Algonquian language family, the
biggest in eastern North America at the time. In Massachusett,
the name for the New England shore was the Dawnland, the place
where the sun rose. The inhabitants of the Dawnland were the
People of the First Light.  Ten thousand y