If you live in Newton today, you probably know that one of Newton’s thirteen villages is called Nonantum and another is called Waban. You may have driven on Quinobequin Road, or passed by Eliot Church or the John Eliot Memorial, both near Newton Corner.
If you live in Natick, you surely know Speen Street and Eliot Street. And you have probably seen the image of an English preacher and a group of Native people, depicted both on Newton’s city seal and on Natick’s town seal.
These names and images are traces of events that took place on this land almost 400 years ago. This project tells about the experiences of some Native people who chose to convert to Christianity and live in colonial English settlements between 1646 and 1660. The locations of those settlements are now parts of Newton and Natick.
The history of the land we live on extends back much farther than the 1600s — and it continues up to the present. We are all making that history every day.
This project is informed by the writings (1646-1660) of John Eliot and other English missionaries, testimonies of Massachusett and Nipmuc people who lived during this time, the work of contemporary historians, and the published words of Indigenous people today who have ancestral ties to this history.
I. Life on this Land before 1646
IV. The Move to Natick in 1651
Left: Pegan Hill Reservation, Summer 2020. Image courtesy of the Natick Historical Society.
Newton and Natick are settled on the land of this country’s Native people. Two of the descendant tribes are the Massachusett and the Nipmuc.
Header Image: Quinobequin (Charles River), Spring 2020. Image courtesy of the Natick Historical Society.