Aquinnah, Massachusetts
A Short History of Aquinnah
From a Wampanoag homeland at the western tip of Martha’s Vineyard, to a town called Gay Head for more than a century, to the 1997 vote that took back the name Aquinnah and the 2015 rescue of the lighthouse on its cliffs.
Wampanoag Ground
People have lived on this land for thousands of years, and testing near the cliffs points to human occupation reaching back 7,500 to 10,000 years. Aquinnah is the home of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), which won federal recognition in 1987 and today counts for roughly a third of the town’s registered voters. That is not a fact left in the past. It shapes who sits on town boards, how the town speaks with the tribe as a sovereign government, and how Aquinnah decides questions about its land and its shore.
Gay Head, and the Town of 1870
The English name Gay Head came from the brightly colored clay of the cliffs. The Wampanoag community here was governed under state oversight through much of the 1800s, and in 1870 it was incorporated as the town of Gay Head, then as now a town of only a few hundred residents. For more than a century that was the name on every map and every town report, and the town ran its own Town Meeting the same way it does now.
Taking Back the Name
In 1997, at Town Meeting, the voters decided by three votes, 79 to 76, to retire the name Gay Head and adopt the Wampanoag name Aquinnah, which means land under the hill. It was one of the closest and most consequential votes the town has ever taken, and it happened in the open meeting where any registered voter could stand and be counted. The change made Aquinnah one of very few Massachusetts towns to carry an Indigenous name officially adopted by its own residents.
The Cliffs and the Light
The Aquinnah Cliffs, long known as the Gay Head Cliffs, were named a National Natural Landmark in 1965. Above them stands the Gay Head Light, first lit in 1844. By the 2010s the ocean had eaten so far into the cliff that the lighthouse was in danger of falling, so the town and the wider island raised roughly 3.5 million dollars and, in 2015, moved the brick tower 129 feet inland to safe ground. The town owns the light, and a town advisory board helps look after it, which is why a decision about a lighthouse can land on the same Town Meeting warrant as the town budget.
Sources: Wikipedia, Aquinnah, Massachusetts (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquinnah,_Massachusetts); Town of Aquinnah, aquinnah-ma.gov.