The Converging Cultures of the Neponset River Estuary by Richard Heath
No. 99 Detail from 1831 map showing mouth of Neponset River
Introduction
The Neponset River Estuary is the convergence of not only two ecosystems but two cultures. The Estuary is where the freshwater river meets the salt water, where the tidal river meets freshwater. After rushing through gorges and hardwood uplands, the river joins the placid salt marshes and the open expanse of ocean. The Estuary was also the meeting place of the Massachusett Indians and the Europeans, particularly the English. This meeting of native Americans and self-proclaimed saints at the mouth of the Neponset River had a profound affect on the Massachusett. Only the name survives today as both the colony and then the state took the appellation of the confederation. Note: a map showing the place of the Massachusett among other groups appears at the very bottom of this page.
The relationship between the Massachusett–as they preferred to be called, they disliked the term Indian–and the English was never reconciled and would be tense and complex throughout the 17th century. The English were basically racist in their view of the Algonkian tribes in the Bay Colony, the Wampanoags of Plymouth, the Nipmuck in the Grafton – Worcester area or the Pennacooks of Leominster – Fitchburg area overlapping into New Hampshire.
The only group who took the Massachusett seriously as people, learned their language and customs, and regularly visited with them over five decades were the Puritan missionaries, Richard Mayhew, Thomas Shepard, John Wilson and most notably of all, Reverend John Eliot of Roxbury. It is mainly from their writing, and those of their contemporaries Daniel Gookins, William Wood and Roger Williams, that a history of the vanished Massachusett has been passed down to Americans today. Indeed, when John Eliot died at the age of 86 in 1690, the Massachusett lost not only their lone defender, but their historical voice and their place in the colony named for them.
The human history of the Neponset River begins with the Massachusett, or Massachusauk as it was pronounced. One suggestion for the origin of the term Massachusett is that it means “place of the hills” referring to the Blue Hills below where the Neponset flows. “Achu” means” hill”; “Sett” is the word for place, and suggests that the confederation–which preceded contact with the English by centuries–originated in the Blue Hill range.
Massachusetts takes its name from the Massachusetts tribe of Native Americans, who lived in the Great Blue Hill region, south of Boston. The Indian term supposedly means “at or about the Great Hill.”
There are, however, a number of interpretations of the exact meaning of the word. The Jesuit missionary Father Rasles thought that it came from the word Messatossec, Great-Hills-mouth; mess (mass) meaning great; atsco (as chu or wad chu) meaning hill; and sec (sac or saco) meaning mouth. The Reverend John Cotton used another variation: mos and wetuset, meaning Indian arrowhead, descriptive of the Native Americans’ hill home. Another explanation is that the word comes from massa meaning great and wachusett, Mountain-place.
The Massachusett were members of the Algonkian family and was a confederation of fourteen tribes that stretched from Boston Harbor to Springfield. These were, the Agawam (Springfield ), Nahant, Nashoba, Nashua, Neponsett, Norwattuck, Pocumtuk, Ponkapoag, Quabaug, Saugus, Shawmut, Wachusett, Wesaguesett and Winnisemit. Their neighbors were the Pennacook to the north, the Nipmuck to the west, and the other coastal confederation, the Wampanoag to the south.
The confederation boundary lands, as well as tribal lines, were marked by topographical features such as a swamp, stream or river, hill, ridge or some other physical landscape limit.
Their concept of land ownership differed sharply from the European. The Massachusett did not own the land, but what was on it or what it produced. The Neponsett owned the shellfish beds, beaver, and trout from the marsh and river; the planting fields from the hillsides and the deer from the forests. Names attached to a territory often meant their use or the landscape feature. The very name of the tribe was the river from which it derived its health and well being. Another Massachusett meeting a Neponset sanop knew exactly where he lived and what he owned. A Pequot meeting a Massachusett recognized that he lived in the place of the hills.
Burning the forest floor and clearing the hillsides for planting fields were improvements to their land, which very few English understood as rights to ownership.
Local custom was strong and tribes never trespassed. Some hunting grounds which overlapped tribes were shared, as well as fishing areas. However aggression from the south and west was common and the Massachusett often allied themselves with the Wampanoag to fight off the powerful Narragansett from present day Rhode Island and with the Nipmuck to stop the fearsome Mohawks, one of the Five Nations of the Iroquois. (The Massachusett called them the “maneaters “.) The Mohawk lands lay along the Hudson River valley into the Berkshires.
Lacking a written language, their political, civil and religious customs were based on oral tradition in which the elderly – with the most experience and memory – were held in the highest esteem. Among the English chroniclers, respect shown to parents was held in awe. Women too were consulted on important matters because they were the food producers and recognized as having good judgment and experience. The leaders of each tribe were called sachems, the chief priests and physicians were powwas, and men and women of the tribe were sanops and squaws, although these two terms were used by the English and may be and may have been derogatory to native American themselves.
The sachems were sensitive to public opinion and issues were debated loud and long, but once he made a decision, the sachem’s word was law and was obeyed.
In 1634, the careful observer William Wood offered the best description of a Massachusett sanop: five to six feet tall, strong, straight, swarthy (less than the Spaniard he noted, however ), with black hair and dark eyes, high forehead and long nose. Sometimes the hair was worn in a ponytail, other times worn long on one side and cut off on the other. Their skin had a sheen from bear or goose grease which was used as protection against the cold, the wind and insects.
Their lifestyle was communal. They had neither a strong desire to be rich – although they were fond of gambling – nor a fear of being poor. They avoided shame and were respectful to others. Generally they were a hospitable people who cared for their old and spoiled their children.
The Massachusett were a settled, intelligent agricultural people. The domain of the Neponset tribe included village, planting fields, fishing areas, distant hunting grounds, a sacred burial place and a fort for defense.
The Neponset Estuary was the perfect location for the eponymous tribe. It was within easy reach of both fresh drinking water and salt water for fishing, and the soil was a well drained alluvial river plain which could be worked easily with clamshell and stone implements. The salt marshes provided food and reeds for mats. The steep hillsides of Quincy and Milton were perfect planting fields: they were free from unexpected frosts with full sunlight and good drainage.
The Neponset was also their highway, the principle means of transportation through their territory and to inland hunting and trapping grounds.
Source for the meaning of the word Massachusetts: Massachusetts Facts. A Review of the History, Government and Symbols of the Commonwealth. Citizen Information Service, Secretary of the Commonwealth, c1977.
no. 6867
Scan of postcard of building a replica of Native American home at Plimouth Plantation
They lived in wigwams, a word meaning “at home” or “my home.” This was a circular structure 14 feet high and ten to 15 feet wide made from strong frames of sapling trees covered with strips of elm, birch or oak bark sewn together with evergreen roots. There were two doors and a hole in the roof for the release of smoke. Snug and warm, it was a deliberate attempt to imitate the beaver lodge. According to legend, the beaver was one of their tribal forbears. Massachusett women decorated the interior walls with finely woven mats made of reeds, sedge or corn stalks. Around the central circular hearth of stones were arrayed horizontal benches covered with deerskin, sealskin or woven mats of grass which served as benches and beds. In winter the family kept warm with coverings of bear, deer, otter, raccoon and beaver skins. As befitted their status, the sachem and powwa lived in substantial wigwams of quality workmanship and decoration.
no. 6868
Photograph by Richard Heath, Sept. 2000, of replica of Native American home at Plimouth Plantation.
Territorial disputes often escalated into warfare. It seems that all Massachusett towns were protected by a palisaded fort 40 to 50 feet square of 10 to 12 foot sharpened logs tied together. A deep moat surrounded the walls and the excavated earth served as protective beams from which the sachem and sanops shot their arrows.
no. 6869 Photograph by Richard Heath, Sept. 2000, of replica of Native American home at Plimouth Plantation.
The Neponsets took 65 to 85 percent of their daily food from agriculture. Between May and September they planted and cultivated their fields.
When the English settled in Charlestown and then removed to Boston, the sachem of the Massachusett was Chickataubut whose village was in present day Squantum. The publicly owned Mosswetusset Hummock preserves his homestead, today. The hill to the east of the town was the Massachusett fields which were planted with corn, beans and squash – called the three sisters of Massachusett agriculture. Tobacco, watermelon, pumpkin, and Jerusalem artichoke were other crops. Blackberries, strawberries and raspberries were taken from the wild and carefully cultivated into larger fruits than were found growing naturally. The harbor islands were included in the territory of the Massachusett – shared by the Neponsett and Shawmut tribes- and were thickly planted with corn. Each homestead had a family garden too, which is where the berry plants were cultivated.
The Massachusett cleared their planting fields by setting fire to wood piled around standing trees which destroyed the bark and killed the tree. The trees were felled by further burning. The fallen slash was used as firewood. Massachusett fields were centuries old by the time of European contact about 1604. The rows of corn and other foodstuffs were thoroughly weeded all season, but after harvest were left to hold the soil from erosion. In spring, the weeds were burned off and the soil turned over for planting. The Massachusett practiced multiple crop growing: for example corn stalks would be used as bean poles. Without exception, Massachusett villages stood beside a river, harbor, lake or stream. The Neponsett had both fresh water for drinking and bathing and salt water where fish and clams were within an easy reach of their town. Cod, oysters, bass and mackerel were staples in their diet. In the freshwater reaches of the Neponset River, the Indians caught trout, pickerel and eel. The Massachusett rarely traded with their neighboring Algonkians because each had what it needed in its own territory. But the coastal tribes would often trade shellfish for deer meat with inland tribes.
no. 6871 Phogograph by Richard Heath,September 2000, replica cornfield at Plimouth Plantation.
e salt marshes which formed the heart of the home of the Neponsett was a source of food and raw material for mats and roof coverings. The soft cattail fluff was used to prevent chafing of infants and as dressings for burns and cuts.
The great invention of the Northeast Woodland Indian, of which the Algonkian was a part, is the canoe. The Massachusett lived in a country with many rivers and streams. The Neponset River was the heart of Chickataubut’s clan; it was the highway into their country. Sanops took their canoes deep into the interior to the foothills of the Blue Hills.
The Massachusett practiced sound forestry management. Around the villages, they would set fire to woodlands twice a year, burning up thirty miles or more of undergrowth. This made land travel better over an open forest floor. The effect was also widely spaced trees which grew very tall. It provided light to the forest floor for berries which was excellent browsing for birds and deer which made hunting easier. Fires also kept down pests and diseases of trees which retained the old growth forest which so impressed the English settlers. The open woods reminded them of royal deer parks.
Hunting was also part of the life of the Neponsett. It was important for food and clothing. It was important for agriculture too: deer, bear, raccoon, rabbit and woodchuck were not welcome in the planting fields.