Nanepashemet
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Nanepashemet | |
|---|---|
| Pawtucket, Naumkeag leader | |
| Succeeded by | Squaw Sachem of Mistick, Passaconaway |
| Personal details | |
| Died | 1619 |
| Spouse | Squaw Sachem of Mistick |
| Children | Wenepoykin, Montowampate, Wonohaquaham |
Nanepashemet (died 1619) was a sachem and bashabe or great leader of the Pawtucket Confederation of Abenaki peoples in present-day New England before the landing of the Pilgrims. He was a leader of Native peoples over a large part of what is now coastal Northeastern Massachusetts.
After his death in 1619, his wife, recorded by the English only as Squaw Sachem of Mistick, and three sons governed the confederation's territories, during the period of the Great Migration to New England by English Puritans from about 1620 to 1640. By 1633, only the youngest son of the three, Wenepoykin, known to the colonists as "Sagamore George," had survived a major smallpox epidemic that year that decimated the tribes. He took over his brothers' territories as sachem, except for areas that had been ceded to colonists.
By c. 1607, Nanepashemet was the leader of a confederacy of tribes from the Charles River of present-day Boston, north to the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth and west to the Concord River. His influence stretched north to the Pennacook tribe, which inhabited the White Mountains region of present-day New Hampshire. As a tribal area, the Pawtucket controlled several territories: Winnisemet (around present-day Chelsea, Massachusetts), Saugus or Swampscott (Lynn), Naumkeag (Salem) (see Naumkeag people), Agawam (Ipswich), Pentucket (Haverhill), from the coast going up the Merrimack. Daniel Gookin includes Piscataqua (Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Eliot, Maine) and Accominta (York, Maine) in the Pawtucket alliance.[1] Other sources name Mishawum (Charlestown, Massachusetts), Mistic (Medford, Massachusetts), Musketaquid (Concord, Massachusetts) and Pannukog (Concord, New Hampshire) as Pawtucket territory.
Nanepashemet was respected by his people as a warrior and a leader. His name was translated as "the Moone God" by Puritan Roger Williams in his A Key Into the Language of America. (1643/reprint 1827).[2] Most historical accounts translate the chief's name as meaning "New Moon" (e.g., see B. B. Thatcher, 1839).[3] Nanepashemet's tribe caught fish in the rivers and sea, dug and harvested shellfish, and raised corn on the Marblehead peninsula.
In 1617, he sent a party of warriors to aid the Penobscot tribe in their conflict with the Tarrantine of northern Maine. The Tarrantine were a warlike band, who did not practice agriculture and who supplemented their food supplies obtained by hunting with raids on the stores of more sedentary bands who cultivated crops and resided along the New England coast and its tidal rivers. They sent war parties to avenge the support of Nanepashemet for their Penobscot enemies. Sensing danger, Nanepashemet built a log fort near the Mystic River in present-day Medford. He directed his wife and children to move inland to reside with friendly Indian bands until the crisis passed.
In 1618, an epidemic of smallpox decimated his band, but Nanepashemet was spared because of his isolation in the fort. By 1619, the Tarrantines discovered his whereabouts, laid siege to the fort and ultimately killed Nanepashemet. Two years later, a party from the Plymouth Colony including Edward Winslow came across his fort and his grave.[4]