John Eliot was a Puritan missionary to the American Indians who some called "the apostle to the Indians" and the founder of Roxbury Latin School in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1645. In 1660 he completed the enormous task of translating the Eliot Indian Bible into the Massachusett Indian language, producing more than two thousand completed copies.
The Wampanoag, also rendered Wôpanâak, are a Native American people of the Northeastern Woodlands currently based in southeastern Massachusetts and formerly parts of eastern Rhode Island. Their historical territory includes the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
The Pokanoket are a group of Wampanoag people and the village governed by Massasoit, chief sachem of the Wampanoag people.
The Massachusett language is an Algonquian language of the Algic language family that was formerly spoken by several peoples of eastern coastal and southeastern Massachusetts. In its revived form, it is spoken in four Wampanoag communities. The language is also known as Natick or Wôpanâak (Wampanoag), and historically as Pokanoket, Indian or Nonantum.
The Massachusett were a Native American tribe from the region in and around present-day Greater Boston in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name comes from the Massachusett language term for "At the Great Hill," referring to the Blue Hills overlooking Boston Harbor from the south.
Praying Indian is a 17th-century term referring to Native Americans of New England, New York, Ontario, and Quebec who converted to Christianity either voluntarily or involuntarily. Many groups are referred to by the term, but it is more commonly used for tribes that were organized into villages. The villages were known as praying towns and were established by missionaries such as the Puritan leader John Eliot and Jesuit missionaries who established the St. Regis and Kahnawake and the missions among the Huron in western Ontario.
Natick is a town in Massachusetts, established on the site of the Natick Praying Town founded in 1651.
The Nipmuc or Nipmuck people are an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who historically spoke an Eastern Algonquian language, probably the Loup language. Their historic territory Nippenet, meaning 'the freshwater pond place', is in central Massachusetts and nearby parts of Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Praying towns were settlements established by English colonial governments in New England from 1646 to 1675 in an effort to convert local Native Americans to Christianity.
Naumkeag is a historical tribe of Eastern Algonquian-speaking Native American people who lived in northeastern Massachusetts. They controlled most of the territory from the Charles River to the Merrimack River at the time of the Puritan migration to New England (1620–1640).
Moswetuset Hummock is a Native American site and the original name of the tribe (Mosetuset) in the region named Massachusetts after them. The wooded hummock in Squantum, Massachusetts, is formally recognized as historic by descendants of the Ponkapoag people.
Native American tribes in Massachusetts are the Native American tribes and their reservations that existed historically and those that still exist today in what is now the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A Narragansett term for this region is Ninnimissinuok.
Ayer is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. Originally part of Groton, it was incorporated February 14, 1871, and became a major commercial railroad junction. The town was home to Camp Stevens, a training camp for Massachusetts volunteers during the American Civil War. Later, Fort Devens was established by the federal government to train New England soldiers for World War I. Fort Devens is a major influence on the area, although it is considerably smaller than when it was first closed in the mid-1990s. The town's population was 8,479 at the 2020 census.
Ponkapoag, also Punkapaug, Punkapoag, Ponkhapoag or Punkapog, is the name of a Native American "praying town" settled in the late 17th century western Blue Hills area of eastern Massachusetts by persons who had accepted Christianity. It was established in 1657, during the colonization of the Atlantic seaboard of the United States by settlers from Britain. This was the name given to the winter residence of the group of Massachusett who lived at the mouth of the Neponset River near Dorchester in the summer, in what colonists called Neponset Mill.
The Massachusett dialects, as well as all the Southern New England Algonquian (SNEA) languages, could be dialects of a common SNEA language just as Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible languages that essentially exist in a dialect continuum and three national standards. With the exception of Massachusett, which was adopted as the lingua franca of Christian Indian proselytes and survives in hundreds of manuscripts written by native speakers as well as several extensive missionary works and translations, most of the other SNEA languages are only known from fragmentary evidence, such as place names. Quinnipiac (Quiripey) is only attested in a rough translation of the Lord's Prayer and a bilingual catechism by the English missionary Abraham Pierson in 1658. Coweset is only attested in a handful of lexical items that bear clear dialectal variation after thorough linguistic review of Roger Williams' A Key into the Language of America and place names, but most of the languages are only known from local place names and passing mention of the Native peoples in local historical documents.
Cutshamekin was a Native American leader, who was a sachem of the Massachusett tribe based along the Neponset River and Great Blue Hill in what is now Dorchester, Massachusetts and Milton, Massachusetts before becoming one of the first leaders of the praying Indian town of Natick, Massachusetts. He is the possible namesake of Jamaica Plain.
Quashaamit was a bilingual Praying Indian sachem or sub-sachem, and teaching minister. His tribal affiliation may have Nipmuc, Massachusett, and/or Wampanoag.
Daniel Takawambait was likely the first ordained Native American Christian pastor in North America, and served the church in the praying town of Natick, Massachusetts from 1683 to 1716. Takawambait also advocated for indigenous land rights in colonial Massachusetts, and authored at least one publication.
The Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag is a cultural heritage group that claims descendancy from the Massachusett people, an Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands.
The Praying Indians of Natick were a community of Indigenous Christian converts, known as Praying Indians, in the town of Natick, Massachusetts, one of many Praying Towns. They were also known as Natick Indians.
