New research conducted over the last fifteen years has dramatically changed and broadened the understanding of the history of the Sakonnet Wampanoag People. Staff of the Little Compton Historical Society have been learning from Wampanoag advisors and studying historic documents, the archaeological record, and the Sakonnet landscape to learn more about their history. Click here for a 83-minute video of the August 14, 2025 Annual Meeting held at the Little Compton United Congregational Church in which Executive Director Marjorie O’Toole summarized her findings starting at minute 11:45. Click on each of the slides below for a larger version.

LCHS Executive Director Marjorie O’Toole (above left) shared some of what she and her staff have learned about seventeenth-century Sakonnet sachems like Awashonks, Takamona, and Mamanuah, along with lesser-known individuals from more recent times including Sue Codimonk, Moses Suckanush, and Thomas Cooper.

Her talk explored the tactics Plymouth Colony employed to purchase Sakonnet against Awashonks’ will and how the Sakonnets and their Acoaxet neighbors responded to the arrival of English newcomers and then continued to live on their homelands and within neighboring Native communities.

In Part I and Part 2 of her Sakonnet Sales & Purchases Timeline, O’Toole detailed the history of land transfers up until the time of King Philip’s War which resulted in the eventual dispersal of the Sakonnet Wampanoag People from the area throughout New England.