Isabella Carapella/HuffPost The U.S. government is in the process of terminating the reservation of the Wampanoag, the tribe that welcomed the Pilgrims.

About 400 years ago, a man named Tisquantum was kidnapped by an English explorer and taken to Spain as a slave. Miraculously, Tisquantum escaped and returned to the “New World” and to the coastal village where he once lived. In the years he was gone, his entire family died of disease.

A short time later, struggling, desperate English settlers arrived on the shores where his tribe, the Wampanoag, still lived. Tisquantum was key to their survival. Because of his time in Europe, he could speak English. He helped the settlers plant corn and survive winter, and he brokered a peace agreement, without which their colony ― and, by extension, the United States ― would have never existed. The first treaty and the first land grant to the white settlers in North America were translated by this man.

Few people who celebrate Thanksgiving know Squanto’s full name or the name of his tribe. But without Tisquantum or the Wampanoag, the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock surely would have died.

And on this Thanksgiving, the United States government is in the process of terminating the reservation of the tribe that welcomed the Pilgrims.

On Sept. 7, Cedric Cromwell, the chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe received a letter from Tara Sweeney, the assistant secretary of Indian affairs at the Department of the Interior, informing him that his tribe no longer fit the legal definition of “Indian” and would be losing its reservation status. This is the first time that land held under special status for tribes has been taken out of trust since Harry Truman’s presidency.

“The same country that we helped form is now turned against us,” Cromwell told HuffPost this week. “It’s quite frightening that our own country is attacking us during the holiday that we helped establish.”

The legal battle over the Mashpee reservation started in 2016, when casino developer Neil Bluhm wanted to open a casino in a part of Massachusetts set aside for tribal gaming only. He financially backed a small group of residents from the city of Taunton, where the tribe planned to open a casino, to sue the Department of Interior, demanding the agency revoke the reservation’s trust status. In July 2016, the Taunton residents won.

But the wording of the court’s ruling kicked the decision back to the DOI, which could have legally affirmed the Mashpee’s trust status and saved its reservation. In September the administration declined to do that.

“Because the Tribe was not ‘under federal jurisdiction’ in 1934, the Tribe does not qualify under the [Indian Reorganization Act’s] first definition of ‘Indian,’” Sweeney wrote in her letter.

The sprawling 1934 Indian Reorganization Act gave the DOI the ability to take land into trust for tribes. Before 1934, tribes lost 90 million acres to allotment. Since then, tribes have been buying back stolen land within their treaty territories. But tribal ownership of a piece of land does not make it Indian Country. For the tribe to be able to exercise jurisdiction, practice self-governance or operate a casino there, the DOI has to put that land into trust.

For decades, the DOI put land into trust without hesitation and restored 9 million acres of lost tribal land. With the advent of Indian gaming in the 1990s, this long-established practice suddenly became controversial. Powerful gaming interests started fighting new trust lands to shut out tribes and corner the casino market.

In 1993, Trump, then a New York real estate mogul deeply invested in Atlantic City casinos, testified before Congress that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was unfair and hurting his business. “They don’t look like Indians to me,” he said.