The Island That Once Spoke Without Sound

Martha’s Vineyard sits just south of Cape Cod, a 96-square-mile island that swells from 20,530 year-round residents to more than 200,000 people each summer. But beneath the familiar story of a wealthy vacation colony, the island holds a stranger and more remarkable history: for three centuries, an unusually high rate of hereditary deafness meant that hearing and deaf residents alike routinely used a shared sign language, creating what researchers later called a "deaf utopia."

The Origins of an Insular World

The Wampanoag people originally called the island Noepe, or "land amid the streams." When English settlers arrived in 1642, the Wampanoag population stood at about 3,000. By 1764, disease and displacement had reduced that number to 313. The first European settlement was established at Great Harbor—later Edgartown—by Thomas Mayhew, who cultivated unusually friendly relations with the Wampanoag by honoring their land rights. That relationship proved durable: during King Philip's War in the late 17th century, the Martha's Vineyard band refused to join their tribal relatives in the uprising and remained armed, a direct result of the trust the Mayhews had built.