The Avant House is an historic house and site of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Museum. It is located on Massachusetts Route 130 at Mill Pond in Mashpee, Massachusetts. The house was built circa 1793 by the great-grandson of Richard Bourne, a missionary who was one of Mashpee's first colonial settlers. For many years the house belonged to Mabel Avant, a respected Wampanoag elder and tribal historian. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, concerned about rapid development on Cape Cod, the tribe began restoring the building, and opened it as a museum in 1973, with great pride and excitement. Its first director and driving force was Amelia Peters Bingham. However, the museum was soon shut down by the town of Mashpee amid conflict over Mashpee Tribe v. New Seabury Corp., in which the tribe atte