Massachusett

The Massachusett Indians, who probably had a precontact population of about 22,000, were among the first North American Native peoples to have sustained contact with English settlers.

The Massachusett and their neighbors, including the Pequot, Mohegan, Wampanoag, Pokanoket, and Nipmuck, spoke related eastern Algonquian languages. Precontact boundaries between Native peoples in the region are difficult to determine, but before contact the Massachusett apparently lived on the south side of Massachusetts Bay, between the Pawtucket to the north and the Pokanoket to the south.

Like other Indian groups in present-day southern New England, the Massachusett relied on a combination of farming, hunting, and gathering to obtain their food. Women planted and tended fields of CORN, beans, pumpkins, squash, TOBACCO, and sunflowers. They also gathered a wide variety of edible wild plants, including roots, strawberries, blackberries, grapes, walnuts, acorns, and chestnuts. Men used bows and arrows to hunt animals, particularly deer, but also bear, turkey, and other wildlife. Communities also relied on fish, shellfish, seals, and stranded whales.

The Massachusett moved seasonally within a restricted area in order to take advantage of resources available at different times of the year. In the spring they planted their fields, then moved to the banks of rivers or to the ocean to catch fish. They returned to harvest their fields in the autumn, and the harvest was followed by winter hunts. They did not move together as one large “tribe.” Rather, groups of extended families moved together, coming together at some times of the year and splitting up at others.

The Massachusett lived in homes called wigwams. These were semicircular lodges formed by tying a circle of bent poles at the top and covering the resulting framework with woven mats or sheets of bark. The average wigwam was about 14 to 16 feet in diameter and could house two families. The Massachusett also sometimes built larger houses, which might be 100 feet long and 30 feet wide. These bark-covered longhouses could hold 40 to 50 people.

Political authority among the Massachusett was held by men (and sometimes women) known as sachems. A sachem was a village leader who held office through a combination of hereditary status and desirable personal qualities, including charisma, courage, and political skill. Sachems generally held office for life unless they lost the community’s confidence. They led primarily through persuasion, and their coercive powers were limited. Although a few sachems were women, in general, Massachusett life was male-dominated. Men held greater authority both in politics and within the family, and residence patterns were commonly patrilocal.

Religious leaders, known as powwows, were important to the Massachusett. The Massachusett believed in two major deities, Kiehtan (or Chepian) and Hobbamock (or Abamacho), as well as other spiritual beings. Communities relied on powwows to interpret dreams, predict the future, and cure disease. They also believed that powwows could change their shape or take the form of an animal. The Massachusett respected the powwows for their ability to influence the spiritual world but also feared them, for the same power that allowed powwows to cure allowed them to cause disease. A powwow who failed to protect the people from a disaster, such as an epidemic, might be accused of witchcraft.

The Massachusett probably first encountered Europeans in the early 16th century. European explorers who saw the Massachusett or nearby Indian groups include Giovanni da Verrazano (1524), Bartholomew Gosnold (1602), Martin Pring (1603), and John Smith (1614). Between 1600 and 1620 the Massachusett and other New England Indian nations probably lost at least half their population to European disease, which made them less able to resist Puritan incursions into their lands.

Further reading: James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill & Wang, 1983); Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000); Howard S. Russell, Indian New England Before the Mayflower (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England, 1980); Bert Salwen, “Indians of Southern New England and Long Island: Early Period,” in Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, gen. ed., vol. 15, Northeast, ed. Bruce G. Trigger (Washington, D. C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 160-176.

—Martha K. Robinson