The Massachusett people

Pre-Colonialism

Before English colonialism took hold in the early 1600s, the Massachusett Tribe lived in what is now the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. According to the Massachusett Tribe website, their homelands stretch from modern Salem to Plymouth, along the coast and inland as far as Worcester. The Massachusett Tribe was divided into smaller bands, including the Neponset band, later renamed to the Ponkapoag.

To understand the implications of our newspaper’s use of the word “Sagamore,” it is important to first understand the identity and story of the Massachusett people, the original occupants of the land that is now Brookline.

According to the Massachusett Tribe website, women of the tribe gathered grains, greens and firewood, built shelters, wove baskets and influenced tribal decision-making. Men hunted, fished, whaled, mined and protected the tribe’s people and territory.

According to Gray, historically there have been three types of leaders within the Massachusett Tribe.

“We have a Sac’hem [primary leader]. We have a Powwow or Powwusk, which is a medicine man and medicine woman. And then we would have our Sagamore. And the Sagamore in our traditional times was the war chief,” Gray said.

According to Gray, the Sac’hem and Sagamore could sometimes be the same person, especially when the Sac’hem was a warrior. Gray said a tribe would only have all three types of leaders if necessary. Today, several Indigenous groups in the area have a Sac’hem and a Powwow or Powwusk, but Sagamores are less common.

Gray said that historically, leadership has been passed down through bloodlines, but an emphasis is placed on having strong leadership abilities.

“If you were not leadership material, the people wouldn’t follow you,” Gray said. “You were pretty much taught how to be a leader, you were cultivated into that role, even as a child. But that’s not set in stone. Sometimes the people wouldn’t follow a specific leader and they would choose a new leader. The people always held all the power.”

Early Colonialism

The arrival of English settlers led to the near destruction of the Massachusett Tribe and their ways of life. At the time of their arrival, Chickataubut was the tribe’s Sac’hem.

In 1623, English military officer Myles Standish led an attack at Wessagusset, now Weymouth. Standish and his troops massacred Chickataubut’s strongest warriors. This led to the union of local Indigenous tribes in defense against the English.

According to Gray, Standish was also sent to meet with the Sagamore at the time.

“Plymouth [Colony] sent Myles Standish to meet with our Sagamore in the 1600s, and he killed our Sagamore, cut off our Sagamore’s head and took that head back to Plymouth, where it hung on a stake for 20 years,” Gray said. “That’s a pretty good reason for the dominant culture to not use ‘Sagamore.’”

In 1638, an allocation of land known as the “great allotments” began in which English settlers distributed plots of Indigenous-inhabited land among themselves.

In “History of Brookline,” published in 1933, author John Gould Curtis said settlers would “parcel out the land to persons who were deserving, and whose employment of their grants would redound to the benefit of the group as a whole. The selectmen had virtually a free hand, at least so far as the selection of the lands was concerned.”

By the late 1640s, the English outnumbered the Neponset band of the Massachusett Tribe and forced them to relocate to Ponkapoag, modern-day Canton, and the surrounding area.

According to Massachusett Tribe Treasurer Elizabeth Solomon, with this relocation, the Neponsets were renamed the Ponkapoags, as the English gave Indigenous bands of the Massachusett Tribe their names based on where they resided.

After the relocation to Ponkapoag, English Reverend and Christian missionary John Eliot established Ponkapoag as a praying town, according to the Massachusett Tribe website. The English created “praying towns” to convert Indigenous people to Christianity and pressure them to adopt English customs. Praying towns were established in New England from the mid-1640s to the mid-1670s.

In 1869, Massachusetts passed an Act of Enfranchisement that made all Indigenous people citizens, effectively removing their right to separate tribal lands.

Gray said he wants people who may be resistant to the newspaper name change to remember the colonization of the Massachusett people.

“Indigenous people here were murdered, we were assimilated, we were stripped of everything that we were,” Gray said. “We were held into prison camps. We were cut off from our resources, separated from our families. All the nastiest things in humanity were done to us.”

The Massachusett Tribe Today

The Massachusett Tribe has maintained many aspects of their culture including the tradition of oral storytelling, ritual dance and forms of medicine dating back thousands of years, according to their website.

Many tribe members still live in Southeastern Massachusetts. The tribe is governed by a tribal council and board of directors.

“We’re tied to the land,” Solomon said.

Today, Sagamore Gray focuses on protecting natural land from development and educating non-Indigenous communities on harmful practices. The latter has largely taken the form of working with schools and organizations in the state to change Indigenous mascots. For example, Gray was part of the effort to change the Braintree mascot.

“Braintree is the Wamps and that’s after Wampatuck, one of our leaders. They changed the imagery, but they wanted to keep the name ‘Wamps,’ which is still unacceptable to us, so we have more work to do there,” Gray said. “I think a lot of people will stand by the name longer than they’ll stand by the imagery.”

Gray said other cultures are not appropriated for names and mascots as frequently as Indigenous communities.

“There is no other race where that is acceptable, in this country, except for the Indigenous community,” Gray said.