The Documentary Archaeology of Magunkaquog

The sub-discipline of documentary archaeology is explored in Chapter 4. Layers of information about the Magunkaquog site and its inhabitants—and the story of Isaac Nehemiah, in particular—are revealed through analysis and interpretation of centuries-old primary documents connected to this site. This chapter unfolds around details surrounding the loss of Magunkaquog land through a controversial sale in 1715, granting it to Harvard College. Diverging interpretations of how this sale was perceived by the Native and Euroamerican peoples involved are explored. The documents reveal satisfaction among the Euroamerican men responsible for the sale and a clear sense of loss among the Native inhabitants (culminating in the death of a central figure at this settlement). The praying town period and effects of King Philip’s War are also discussed. Documents can reveal many details about the past, but must also be “read” in a deeper way to be better understood, and to help tell the more complex history of interactions between Native and European peoples of the past.

The Archaeology of Magunkaquog

Chapter 3 details the history of the Magunkaquog site from the features and material culture recovered through archaeological investigations in the late 1990s, combined with information from documentary records. With this site, the location of a seventeenth-century praying town meeting house, collaboration began between the archaeologists and the Nipmuc Nation. Certain practices revealed through archaeology conducted at this site provide clear evidence of a continuum between the post-contact inhabitants at Magunkaquog and their pre-contact cultural practices. Connections to other Native sites in southern New England also exist. Analyses of soils, ceramics, metals, glass, pipes, lithics, buttons and other artifacts provide a glimpse into the everyday lives of the site’s inhabitants 350 years ago as they encountered intense cultural changes with the arrival of John Eliot and other European settlers coupled with the adoption of European products into their lives.

Threads of Continuity

This chapter explores the long presence of Nipmuc people such as the Wabbaquasset tribe in southern New England for millenia. It reaches back into the pre-contact period and acknowledges the culture change of Native people in this region over time and up to the present. A central topic is the memorialization of places connected to historic figures such as John Eliot, combined with the erasure of Native people who have had connections to this landscape deep into the past, long before European colonization. The history of the praying town period and Christianization of Nipmuc Indians through the efforts of John Eliot in the 17th century and of the seminal King Philip’s War (or Metacom’s Rebellion), and its aftermath on Nipmuc people, are summarized.

Uncovering Indigenous Worlds and Histories on a Bend of a New England River before the 1650s: Problematizing Nomenclature and Settler Colonial History, Deep History, and Early Colonization Narratives

The essay explores the often-ignored histories of the indigenous people who resided on the confluence of the Merrimack and the Concord rivers up to the 1650s. This place is characterized by a significant bend in the Merrimack River as it changes its southerly flow into an easterly direction. Today, the area includes the modern city of Lowell, Massachusetts, and its surroundings. While the 1650s saw the creation of a Native American “praying town” and the incorporation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s towns of Chelmsford and Billerica, it is the diverse and complex indigenous past before this decade which North American and global historians tend to neglect. The pre-colonial and early colonial eras, and how observers have described these periods, have shaped the way we understand history today. This essay problematizes terminology, looks at how amateur historians of the 19th and early 20th centuries have shaped popular perceptions of Native Americans, and explores how researchers have told the history before the 1650s. The materials available to reconstruct the history of the region’s Native Americans are often hard to find, a common issue for researchers who attempt to study the history of indigenous peoples before 1500. Thus, the essay pays special attention to how incomplete primary sources as well as archeological and ethnohistorical evidence have shaped interpretations of this history and how these intellectual processes have aided in the construction of this past.