The Journey of an Ancient People

A Chronicle of the Nipmuc: 1631-2014

Michelle H. Johnstone

Worcester State University

Spring 2014

This report, dealing with the historical challenges faced by the Nipmuc Indians of present day central Massachusetts aims to serve two purposes. The first purpose of this report is to present a concise analytical history of the Nipmuc Indians from the time of first European contact in 1631 until the beginning of the nineteenth century. This analysis will serve as a necessary context base from which to build a foundation from which to understand this native people. The second purpose is to examine a piece of Nipmuc material culture; a ceremonial style pre-colonial bowl made out of cherry. This will serve as my primary piece of evidence in an effort to reconstruct the narrative of the Nipmuc people in the post-King Philip’s war period until modern times.

The Journey of an Ancient People

A Chronicle of the Nipmuc: 1631-2014

The peoples who populated the North American continent before European settlement are

one of the most ignored ethnic groups of modern times. Unfortunately, the challenges of battle,

disease, and politics that percolated on the continent in the early seventeenth century have given

way to an environment that makes this ignorance in some senses inevitable. The native

population of the Americas has decreased dramatically in size, and the ancestral culture of those

that remain has been stripped slowly through the generations.

In certain geographic areas across North America, predominately on the east coast where

native presence is far less predominate than in the western part of the country, scholars are left

with little more than artifacts to piece together the essence of a people. Artifacts, of course,

cannot tell the whole story. Only when combined with oral tradition and existing primary

sources can a comprehensive history be formed. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the

historic cultural practices of the Nipmuc people. This study will focus on the Nipmuc people of

lower New England, a presently non-federally recognized group of tribes that did not have a

written language. This presents a challenge when trying to produce a narrative of the evolution

of the tribes, given that all that remains of pre-contact information is orally based.

Particular attention will be paid to material evidence as historical narrative. A Nipmuc

bowl believed to be created before European contact on the North American continent that was

given to John Milton Earle, a former Massachusetts Indian Commissioner is the primary piece of

material culture from which to examine the cultural past of the Nipmuc.1 Earle can be credited

with enlightening the continued existence of the Nipmuc through the nineteenth century by

1 Christopher J. Thee The New England Quarterly Vol. 79, No. 4 (Dec., 2006), pp. 636

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revealing a fundamental flaw in the Massachusetts census system that artificially eliminated their

presence.

In order to produce a clear illustration of the Nipmuc people, and to depict the break in

time where European and white American attitudes regarding them changed, this paper has been

broken into two sections. Part I of this seeks to provide a concise history of the Nipmuc people

from the time of first European encounter in 1631 through the beginning of the nineteenth

century. This will provide readers with a foundation of Nipmuc history from which to interpret

the arguments enlisted throughout the remainder of the paper. Part II aims to reconstruct the

narrative of the Nipmuc people from the end of King Phillip’s War to present day, using the

bowl as the primary piece of evidence to argue against the concept of the extinction of Nipmuc

culture. In doing this, Part II will reexamine the methodology and validity of Earle’s work. The

ultimate goal of this research is to suggest a cohesive account of the cultural presence of the

Nipmuc that has existed fluently from the time of European encounter until modern times.

Part I: A Concise History of the Nipmuc

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The Nipmuc People

The Nipmuc people have inhabited central and southern New England since ancient

times, first encountering Europeans around 1631.2 The native people who occupy Nipmuc

country today were only recognized as a nation by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1979.

They are still not a recognized nation by the federal government.

The word “Nipmuc,” has gone through a number of phonetic alterations over the

centuries, with alternate versions including “Nipmuck,” “Nipnet,” “Nipmug,” and “Nopmat.”3

The word translates to the native phrase for “fresh water people.”4 The term Nipmuc, when used

to describe a group of people, can be misleading. The word is actually used as a descriptor for a

geographical location in which separate bands of native people lived. In other words, the word

Nipmuc describes several tribes that populated the Nipmuc country. The estimates of pre-

colonial Nipmuc population range from 3,000-10,000 tribal members situated in as many as forty

villages.5 There were four major tribes of the Nipmuc: the Nashaways, the Quabaugs, the

Wabaquassets, and the Nipmucs.6 The latter of the bands was the largest, and is also thought to

be the first tribe that inhabited Nipmuc country.

2 Connole, Dennis A. "Introduction." In The Indians of the Nipmuck Country in Southern New England, 1630-1750: an historical geography, 9. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & CO., 2001.

3 Crane, John C. The Nipmucks and Their Country. Worcester, Mass.: s.n., 1898.

4 Donna Keith Baron, J. Edward Hood and Holly V. Izard. The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 53, No. 3, Indians and Others in Early America (Jul., 1996), pp. 562

5 Masiello, Carol . "Noble Traditions, Strong in Spirit." Blackstone Valley. http://www.blackstonedaily.com/Journeys/cm-nipmuc.htm

6 Connole, 7.

4

Because there was no existence of property lines or fortified land boundaries in pre-

contact New England, it is pretentious and irrelevant to assign a certain area of land to one tribe

of Nipmuc people, another area of land to another tribe, and so on. Generally speaking, the

tribes that comprised the Nipmuc resided in present-day Worcester County, stretching to the

border of southern New Hampshire in the north and into northern Connecticut and Rhode Island

in the south. In relation to neighboring tribes, Nipmuc country was situated northwest of

Narragansett country; north of Pequot country; east of Mohawk country; and south of the lands

of the Pigwackets and Coos.7 Because the Nipmuc were smaller in size than surrounding

Indian groups such as the Narragansett people, they would often pay tribute to them to keep

hostility at bay.8

The Nipmuc situated their settlements on bodies of water between the Connecticut River

Valley and present day Framingham and Natick, Massachusetts. The water that supplied these

lakes and ponds came from four river systems: the Blackstone, the Chicopee, the Nashua, and the

Quinebaug.9

The Nipmuc people were a semi-nomadic people. Because of the weather patterns and

conditions of what is present day New England, Nipmuc bands were forced to migrate between

fixed points to cultivate food dependent upon the season. However, Nipmuc tribes did have a

central location where most tribal activity took place, similar to a town. This is where the

sachem [male chief] or squaw sachem [female chief] lived and also was the focal point of all

social and political activity. Clusters of wigwams provided living quarters for the constituency

7 Crane, John C. The Nipmucks and Their Country. Worcester, Mass.: s.n., 1898.

8 Connole, 63.

9 Connole, "Introduction."

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of the tribe.10 However, Nipmuc society was quite different than other American Indian

societies in that villages were small and decentralized. In other words, a number of different

villages made up of clans constituted a tribe rather than an entire tribe occupying a single village.

Nipmuc Indians acquired food through a culmination of hunting, fishing, and agriculture; with

maize being the predominate crop by the time of European contact. Fishing was especially

important during the summer months, and it was not uncommon for bands of Nipmuc people to

travel to the seashore to take advantage of the easily accessible and plentiful seafood.11 Other

important plant-based foods that were cultivated by the Nipmuc included the Jerusalem

artichoke, which was a root with a chard-or artichoke-like flavor, and grain.12

According to political economist M.K. Bennett, maize was essentially the lifeblood of the

tribes of southern New England. He estimates that corn consumption accounted for roughly 65%

of the food intake of the Indians of southern New England, as compared with a 1955 national

average consumption of corn, wheat, rye, barley, oats, rice and buckwheat of about 23%.13

Although maize made up a bulk of the Nipmuc peoples’ daily calorie intake, it is interesting to

note that maize was not indigenous to the New England region. Before the domestication of

maize in the northeast around 1250 AD14, the Nipmuc and other native tribal groups relied

heavily on indigenous organic matter such as acorns and native squash.15 10 Connole, 15-16.

11 Connole, 18.

12 M. K. Bennett . The Food Economy of the New England Indians, 1605-75. Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 63, No. 5 (Oct., 1955), pp. 369-397. The University of Chicago Press.

13 Bennett, M.K .

14 Little, Elizabeth A.. "Kautantouwit's Legacy: Calibrated Dates on Prehistoric Maize in New England." American Antiquity 67, no. 1 (2002): 115.

15 Fagan, Brian M. The First North Americans: An Archaeological Journey. pp. 127-131. New York, N.Y.: Thames & Hudson, 2011.

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Although Nipmuc people practiced agriculture to acquire the bulk of their diet, fishing

and hunting played an integral role in their food economy. Southern New England is the

southernmost limit of Atlantic salmon migration; and is also the northernmost limit of maize

production.16 For this reason, the Nipmuc were able to practice a dual food economy that

included agricultural cultivation along with fishing in the inland waters of south central New

England. The Nipmuc navigated streams, rivers and lakes in a narrow, hollowed out log canoe

known as a mishoon. In 2001, three mishoonash (plural form of mishoon) were located by a

scuba diver at the bottom Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, MA. Since then, there has been an

ongoing effort to excavate and preserve these artifacts by a coalition of Nipmuc people called

Project Mishoon.17 One of the mishoonash located at Lake Quinsigamond is pictured in Figure 1

on the following page.

16 Fagan, 236

17 Project Mishoon. "Welcome to Project Mishoon." Welcome to Project Mishoon. http://projectmishoon.homestead.com

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Figure 1: An underwater photograph of a mishoon discovered in Lake Quinsigamond by a scuba diver in 2001.

The Nipmuc people spoke Nipmuc, a native language of the Algonquian family of

languages.19 There were three dialects of the Nipmuc language, one heavily influenced by the

Massachusett tribe of southern New England, one influenced by the Abenaki language of

northern New England, and a third unique dialect. The latter dialect is characterized by modern

literature on Nipmuc dialect as the “real Nipmuc.”20 The three dialects are referred to as “Loup

1,” “Loup 3,” and “Loup 2,” respectively.

Early Challenges: The Threat of Disease, Purification, and War

The Nipmuc people went undetected by European settlers of the Massachusetts Bay

Colony for a number of years. Due to overpopulation on the Massachusetts coast, the population

18 http://projectmishoon.homestead.com/

19 Mann, Joel F. "Background on the Languages." In An International Glossary of Place Name Elements, xvi. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2005.

20 Hele, Karl S., and David H. Pentland. "Nominal Inflections in Nipmuck." In Papers of the forty-first Algonquian conference = Actes du congres des Algonquinistes, 264. Albany: SUNY Press, 2013.

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of the colony began to swell westward by the early 1630s. The first recorded European contact

with the Nipmuc occurred in early 1631.21 Technically, there had been European contact prior to

this date, but it was made on the extreme eastern edge of Nipmuc country in what is present day

Framingham, MA. The earliest European encounter happened in the first decade or two of the

17th century, when explorers infected the native peoples of eastern Nipmuc country with

smallpox or possibly bubonic plague which greatly reduced them in numbers.22 This first

encounter forced the tribes of the eastern country to move westward, prolonging the time it

would take for further contact.

The Nipmuc people experienced another threat of disease after a large scale settlement

took place in inland Nipmuc country in the years 1633-1635. During this period of time, there

was an outbreak of smallpox among the European settlers, again fatal to the Nipmuc who had no

prior exposure and consequential immunity to the disease. Those Indians that became casualties

of the disease suffered long, painful deaths. According to William Bradford, the governor of

Plymouth colony between 1621 and 1657, “This spring, those Indians that lived about their

[Oldam’s] trading house…fell sick of the small pox, and died most miserably. They die like

rotten sheep.”23 This epidemic severely threatened the native people of Nipmuc country, leading

to a decrease in population and a shock to the stability of the tribes.

As a result of increased European presence in Nipmuc country, there was a push to

convert the already bruised remaining Nipmuc people to Christianity. This was to be done

21 Hurd, D. Hamilton. "Grafton.." In History of Worcester County, Massachusetts with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, 935. Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis, 1889.

22 Parr, James, and Kevin A. Swope. "The Nipmuc." In Framingham legends & lore, 12. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2009.

23 Merchant, Carolyn. "The Colonial Ecological Revolution." In Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England, 90. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

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through what can be called the first American experiment in the reservation system known as

“praying towns.” These towns, founded by Reverend John Eliot and overseen by Indian

ministers, sought not only to spread the Christian faith, but also to convert the Indians to a white

way of life. The mission that Eliot embarked on to purify and Christianize the native people of

the Massachusetts Bay Colony began as early as 1643 when he began to learn the Algonquian

language dialects of the colony.24 After learning the language he was able to more easily sway

the native peoples of the colony toward conversion to Christianity, beginning ministry in the

native language in the fall of 1646. In 1651, Eliot organized his first praying town in Natick,

Massachusetts, located just beyond the eastern edge of Nipmuc Country. By the 1670s there

were fourteen organized praying towns in the state. These praying towns were to be outfitted

with English style buildings and those residing inside the town were to follow the customs and

traditions of their white neighbors.

Of the praying towns, eight were located in Nipmuc country. The first praying town to

be established in Nipmuc Country was the Hassanamisco town in Grafton, which was founded in

1654. In the years leading up to King Philip’s War, seven other praying towns were officially

incorporated in Nipmuc Country. They were Manchage at Manchaug Pond in Sutton, MA,

Chabanakongkomun in Webster, MA, Maanexit in Thompson, CT, Quantisset on Thompson Hill

in Thompson, CT, Wabaquasset in Woodstock, CT, Pakachog in Worcester, MA, and Waeuntug

in the area of Mendon/Uxbridge, MA. There were also two towns in progress that never became

fully settled; Weshakim in Sterling, MA and Quabaug in Brookfield, MA. See figure 2 on page

24 Morrison, Kenneth M.. ""That Art of Coyning Christians: John Eliot and the Praying Indians of Massachusetts." Ethnohistory, Duke University Press 21, no. 1 (1974): 78.

10

11 for a map illustrating the locations of praying towns and other built and natural features of the

late seventeenth century Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island landscapes.

Figure 2: Map of Massachusetts25

The incorporation of praying towns presented a challenge in the wake of King Philip’s

War, beginning on June 20, 1675: civil unrest among the Nipmuc tribes themselves. According

to historian Dennis Connole, “Opposing viewpoints often pitted friends and neighbors, even

close relatives against one another.”26 When King Philip’s War broke out, this led to a further

25 "NIAC Publications ~ Nipmuc Place Names - Table of Contents." NIAC Publications ~ Nipmuc Place Names - Table of Contents. http://www.nativetech.org/Nipmuc/placenames/ (accessed May 1, 2014).

26 Connole, 24.

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decentralization of an already weak Nipmuc government structure and caused a break in close

Nipmuc relations.

At the outbreak of war, there was strong anti-Indian sentiment brewing throughout New

England. The praying Indians were perceived differently than those Indians who rejected

conversion. For this reason, the women, children and elders of the Nipmuc praying towns were

afforded shelter at the Okommakamesit praying town in Marblehead, MA. Tragically, however,

around 400 Indians from Nipmuc Country were sent to historic Long Island (today known as

Deer Island) in Boston Harbor with little food, fresh water, and shelter.27 Many of them died and

were buried on the island. Those Nipmuc who rejected Christianization and a conversion to

European customs were left to fight in the war alongside hostile tribes in the region.28 At the end

of the war, many of the Nipmuc survivors fled to Canada or westward to Mahican country in

New York. King Philip’s War was the first major war that pit the English settlers of North

America against the native peoples and also claimed the highest number of casualties in

American history per capita.29 The already greatly reduced population of the Nipmuc people

dropped even lower, and after the war’s completion the Nipmuc seemed all but extinct to the

English settlers to the region. By the 19th century, an antiquated story of the last of the Nipmucs

was commonplace among historians.

27 "NIAC Publications ~ The "PRAYING TOWNS"." NIAC Publications ~ The "PRAYING TOWNS". http://www.nativetech.org/Nipmuc/praytown.html (accessed April 1, 2014).

28 Ricky, Donald. "Nimpuc." In Encyclopedia of Ohio Indians, 178. St. Clair Shores, Mich.: Somerset Publishers, 1998.

29 Tougias, Michael. "King Philip's War in New England (America's First Major Indian War) ." King Philip's War in New England. http://www2.fiu.edu/~harveyb/King%20Philip%27s%20War%20in%20New%20England.htm (accessed March 29, 2014).

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Part II: Reconstruction of the Nipmuc Narrative

The grim post-contact history of the Nipmuc people as presented in Part I of this report

suggests that European settlers believed that the Nipmuc were a completely extinct native

cultural subset by the turn of the nineteenth century. In 1859, a man named John Milton Earle

was commissioned to quantify the condition of native peoples of the Commonwealth of

Massachusetts. In doing so, he revitalized white Americans’ notions of native culture in

Massachusetts, consequentially receiving a gift of thanks from the Hassanamisco band of

Nipmucs.

This gift was a small wooden ceremonial-type bowl made of cherry, measuring six inches

in diameter, and four and one half inches across. The bowl has not been precisely dated, but

according to Holly Izard, curator of collections at the Worcester Historical Museum, it was most

certainly created before European contact occurred30. On the front of the bowl is an ornamental

handle, from which a string tied to a toggle is attached. It can be speculated that the toggle

performed the function of fastening the bowl to articles of clothing. On the side of the bowl,

there is a small crack that penetrates the wood at the rim and continues in for about a half inch.

The detail of the bowl is incredibly intricate. The wood used by the Nipmuc in crafting this

artifact was completely smoothed over, and the bowl is symmetrical from all angles. The images

below depict the bowl in question as well as other New England Indian bowls.

30 Izard, Holly. Interviewed by author. Personal interview. Worcester Historical Museum, April 8, 2014.

13

Figure 3: A ceremonial style Nipmuc bowl at the Worcester Historical Museum

Figure 4: A depiction of various New England Algonquian vessels from Charles Willoughby’s Wooden Bowls of the

Algonquian Indians. Figure H depicts bowl shown in Figure 331.

31 Willoughby, Charles Clark. Wooden bowls of the Algonquian Indians. Lancaster, Pa.: New Era Print. Co.,1908.

14

According to Jeanie Lea Southwick, granddaughter of John Milton Earle, the bowl was

given to Earle in about 1840 from an unnamed Grafton Indian or group of Indians from the

Hassanamisco Reservation in Grafton, Massachusetts, as a tribute to the work done by Earle to

revitalize European recognition of the continued existence of the Nipmuc.32 The date of 1840 that

was supplied by Southwick is not supported by evidentiary documentation because Earle was not

even named Commissioner to the Indians of Massachusetts until 1859. The Worcester Historical

Museum acquired the artifact in 1928 after Southwick donated it to the museum’s collections.

The Work of John Milton Earle

The narrative of the Nipmuc people was in a state of transition by the turn of the

nineteenth century. The elements of war and disease which began the plight of the Nipmuc were

never fully recovered from, and the flight of Nipmuc men from Nipmuc country to Canada or

New York left a gender imbalance among the remaining Nipmuc people. Intermarriage,

particularly with people of African descent, was common among the Nipmuc population to

compensate for that gender imbalance.33

Because tribal life among the Nipmuc was so unstable, many people believed the Nipmuc

people had literally gone extinct, finally crumbling to nothing after over one hundred years of

war, disease and European encroachment on native lands. This common misinterpretation of

Nipmuc existence was researched by John Milton Earle.

32 Izard, Holly. Interviewed by author. Personal interview. Worcester Historical Museum, April 8, 2014.

33 Mandell, Daniel. “Freedom and Conflicts Over Class, Gender, and Identity: The Evolving Relationship Between Indians and Blacks in Southern New England, 1750-1870.” Truman State University (2014): 2.

15

John Milton Earle, born in Leicester, MA in 1794, was a successful politician and

newspaper editor and proprietor of the Worcester Spy in Worcester, MA in the early and mid 19th

century.34 In 1844, Earle was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, a position

which he filled until 1852. Six years later, Earle was elected to the Massachusetts Senate.

Finally on April 6, 1859, Earle was appointed to the position of Commissioner to the Indians of

Massachusetts by Governor John A. Andrew.

According to the Act of April 6, 1859, Earle was charged with bringing light to the

following:

1. The number of all such persons, their place of abode, their distribution, whether by tribes or otherwise, classifying them by age and sex, and distinguishing between the married and single; and also the number of persons reputed Indians, who are of mixed or other race.

2. The social and political condition of all such persons, including their municipal, religious, and educational organization, and their relation, individual and municipal, to the counties, towns, or districts in which they dwell.

3. The economic state of all such persons, including the specification of all property of theirs in lands, and whether the same is held in severalty or in common, and whether now in their own possession, or unlawfully possessed and occupied by others, and, in the latter case, by what color of alleged title; and also what proportion of such persons are paupers, dependent upon on the towns in which they dwell, or on the State.

4. All such facts in the personal or social condition of the Indians of the Commonwealth, as may enable the general court to judge whether they can, compatibly with their own good and that of the other inhabitants of the State, be placed immediately and completely, or only gradually and partially, on the same legal footing as the other inhabitants of the Commonwealth. 35

The results of his research were quantified in a report to the governor in 1861 and altered

white perception of native peoples. Essentially, Earle needed to create a report that would advise

34 Wall, Caleb A.. Reminiscences of Worcester from the earliest period, historical and genealogical: with notices of early settlers and prominent citizens, and descriptions of old landmarks and ancient dwellings, accompanied by a map and numerous illustrations. Worcester, Mass.: Printed by Tyler & Seagrave, 1877.

35 Earle, John Milton. In Report to the Governor and Council, Concerning the Indians of the Commonwealth, Under the Act of April 6, 1859, 6. Boston: W. White, printer to the State, 1861.

16

the state government of the Commonwealth whether or not to grant indigenous people

citizenship. The idea was, as is pointed out in the fourth point enumerated above, that if

detribalization had taken effect; that any remaining native peoples should gain the same legal

status as other inhabitants of the state. This meant that they would not be granted the privileges

that “native” status would afford them, such as the right to self-governance or a right to tracts of

native lands. What Earle found in his research reshaped the way New Englanders of the 19th

century viewed their native neighbors. After sending out surveys and requesting information

from ministers and other people of political clout in Massachusetts communities, he found that

the native people of Massachusetts—even the Nipmuc—were still very much existent.

According to page eight of Earle’s report, the allegedly extinct native population of

Massachusetts numbered near 1,600. However, they failed to meet white American criteria for

what was to be considered an Indian36.

Earle also reveals a flaw in the state’s recognition of individuals and families of native

descent. Official census records at the time of Earle’s report did not even have an option to

identify a person as Indian or native, so those Indians that did exist in Nipmuc country and

throughout the state were often classified as “colored.” Earle’s report goes on to say that a large

native people of Massachusetts, including the Nipmuc, have all but lost their cultural identity and

sense of tribal association:

When such difficulties attend the investigation concerning those who belong to tribes having distinct organizations, it may well be inferred how greatly they are multiplied, in relation to the very large number scattered in various parts of the State, who have no organization, no central point, no records, and no common bond of union, whose decent itself is unknown, even to themselves, except by the tradition that they are Indians, confirmed by their physical characteristics, and

36 Indians no longer adhered to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the 1850’s; they no longer wore tribal dress, and in some cases they didn’t even “look Indian” as a result of intermarriage with freed blacks, and in some less common cases whites.

17

frequently where these characteristics have been so effaced by admixture with other races, that they are not recognized by people among whom they dwell.37

The findings of Earle’s report ultimately suggested that Indians in the Commonwealth

still existed albeit their near total loss of tribal identity. For this reason, the Nipmuc and all other

tribal groups in Massachusetts were granted state citizenship in lieu of continued tribal affiliation

and land claim.

Cultural Awareness of the Nipmuc People

When Earle was contracted to survey the circumstances surrounding Indians in the

Commonwealth of Massachusetts, he found that the Indian population of Nipmuc country was in

fact still in existence. His work explains, correctly, that the Nipmuc people were essentially

being pushed into an artificial extinction as a result of census records incorrectly listing them as

“colored.” Further, he states that intermarriage has led to a decentralization of tribal activity and

ultimately the detribalization of Central Massachusetts. The rhetoric of Earle’s report suggests

that while families identify as being Indian, or being of Indian descent, they have lost their

traditional Indian identity. The first flaw of Earle’s report is witnessed in this assumption. The

approach that he used in explaining that the Nipmuc had lost their tribal and cultural identity was

constructed around ideals that white Americans believed were necessary to possess an

established culture. The findings of Earle’s research were based entirely off of white American

renderings of native people in the area, and no native individuals or groups were surveyed to

determine a consensus of self-identity among the natives themselves.

37 Earle, 8.

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The gift of a pre-historic ceremonial style Nipmuc bowl to John Milton Earle has a

profound relevance to a modern interpretation of the Nipmuc sense of identity. If the Nipmuc

had essentially lost all sense of native identity by the time of Earle’s report, it can be argued that

there would be no reason that a Nipmuc Indian in the mid-nineteenth century would still be in

possession of a pre-historic artifact that was created by his or her ancestors. Despite a change in

appearance, geography and ability for the Nipmuc to adapt to the customs of white settlers, I

argue that the Nipmuc did not lose their sense of cultural identity. Additionally, Earle’s logic

that the Indians of Massachusetts, namely the Nipmuc, had lost their cultural identity was

flawed. While it’s true that the native people of Nipmuc country may have taken on a different

outward appearance and social identity by the late 1850s when Earle conducted his research, I

disagree that they had lost their sense of identity on a personal or even familial level. What Earle

failed to realize is that the only factor that he was using as a determinant for the extinction of

Nipmuc culture was the same determinant he used to prove the continued physical existence of

the Nipmuc: white American sentiment. Because the Nipmuc did not possess the characteristics

that white Americans deemed necessary for the continuity of culture38, Earle presumptuously

assumed that the culture no longer existed. The quandary of this assumption is that Earle based

his findings on assigned, imposed identification of culture rather than intrinsic identification of

culture within the native groups themselves.

The bowl that was given to Earle as a gift for revitalizing European perspectives

regarding the Nipmuc people is evidence in and of itself that the personal identity of what it

meant to be Nipmuc was still alive and well. The Hassanamisco Reservation in Grafton, where

the cherry bowl was crafted, has never been owned by a non-native person. Further, the

38 Use of traditional clothing, continued use of Algonquian dialects, stability of government structures.

19

homestead on the property, built in 1801 for Lucy Gimbee, housed several generations of

Nipmucs, including the Cisco Nipmuc clan.39 Further documentation found inside the homestead

at Hassanamisco further confirms the continued inhabitance of the reservation. The same is true

of other reservations located in historic Nipmuc country. In Webster, at the

Chaubunagungamaug reservation, there has been continued Nipmuc presence through the family

and extended family of the Morse clan since 1890, and to a group of other clans of the

Chaubunagungamaug band of Nipmucs from the 1680s-1890, during the time which Earle

conducted his research on the native peoples of Massachusetts.

Both reservations represent a tradition of a longstanding allegiance to the concept of what

it means to “be Nipmuc.” The Hassanamisco reservation has housed relics and heirlooms of the

Nipmuc since before its founding as a praying town. The very concept that the Nipmuc would

hold on to artifacts of the past-artifacts that define the historic culture and intrinsic sense of being

a Nipmuc-is proof that they as a people never truly lost their personal affiliation with their past.

They still tied value to artifacts held by the tribe, and still practiced tributary gift giving as they

gave the cherry bowl to John Milton Earle; just as they paid tribute to neighboring tribes as a

peace offering over 200 years earlier.

39 "National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior." Hassanamisco Reservation. http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/feature/indian/2011/Hassanamisco_Reservation.htm (accessed April 1, 2014).

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Conclusion

Nipmuc communities have remained steadfast and resilient in their culture through four

centuries of recurring periods of challenge. Before European contact with the tribes that

constituted Nipmuc Nation, they were a people that lived off of the land, practiced centuries old

traditions, and stayed true to their past through oral histories that spanned generations. After

decades of war, disease, and efforts of purification, Nipmuc populations dwindled in numbers.

By the turn of the nineteenth century, they were believed by white Americans living in

Massachusetts to be an extinct cultural subset of the native inhabitants of the Commonwealth.

Research done by John Milton Earle, Commissioner to the Indians of Massachusetts, eradicated

this false notion. In doing this, however, Earle created a new fallacy that discounted the self-

awareness and sense of self identity held by Nipmuc populations.

Today, the Nipmuc community in Central Massachusetts and northern Connecticut are

thriving. The Nipmuc people of the area are still practicing native customs such as powwows,

native crafts, Nipmuc language lessons and other elements of their heritage on the same lands

their ancestors roamed before European settlement in Nipmuck country almost 400 years ago.

The historical records explored in the preceding report confirm that this is not a revitalization

project of the 20th or 21st century. The cultural customs of the Nipmuc people were not lost

through disease; through war; through exile; through intermarriage. The Nipmuc have retained

their traditions through the almost four centuries that they have coexisted with white settlers.

They were never, in fact, the confused half-breeds that Earle purported them to be. Instead, they

were agents of a white world that never lost touch with who they were.

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