Before European colonization, the area we know as Eastham and the surrounding villages, including Chatham and Truro, were called Nauset, one of 69 villages of the historic Wampanoag Nation. The events that took place on this land, leading up to and during the First Encounter and the years to follow, proved pivotal in the founding of the United States.

First Encounter

Soon after the Mayflower arrived in Provincetown Harbor, the Pilgrims began to explore nearby places with a sometimes callous lack of courtesy and respect for the people who lived there. According to Bradford, a crew of 16 men armed themselves “under the conduct of Captain Myles Standish”. In their travels, they encountered a half dozen Natives with a dog, who retreated into the woods at the sight of the English militia. Continuing on, they discovered a Native village site where they found “heaps of sand newly paddled with their hands, which, they digging up, found in them divers fair Indian baskets filled with corn, and some in ears, fair and good, of divers colors, which seemed to them a very goodly sight.”

From Nauset to Eastham

Eastham was purchased by Plymouth Colony from the Nauset people by a grant of the colonial court in 1640, which was and renewed in 1644 with the deed established as follows:

“The Court doth grant unto the church of New Plymouth, or those that go to dwell at Nauset, all that tract of land lying between sea and sea, from the purchasers’ bounds at Namskeket to the herring brook at Billingsgate, with the said herring brook, and all the meadows on both sides of said brook, with great bass pond there and all the meadows and islands with the said tract. Nathaniel Morton, Secretary of the Court.”

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Eastham 400