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   Nipmuc

   Nipmuc Location is Central plateau of Massachusetts extending south into northern Rhode Island and northeast Connecticut.

   Estimates of the pre-contact population of the Nipmuc are at best confusing, because there is no agreement as to which groups belonged to the Nipmuc. The numbers vary between 3,000 and 10,000 with as many as 40 villages. Some Nipmuc tribes were subject to the Pequot and sometimes have been included as part of the Pequot Confederacy. Freed in 1637 after the destruction of the Pequot by the English, they were classified in later years as Nipmuc. The first really accurate count of the Nipmuc occurred in 1680 following the King Philip's War. A little less than 1,000 Nipmuc survived, and these were confined to praying villages along with the remnants from other tribes. How many Nipmuc escaped to the Abenaki and Mahican and how many were killed during the war is anyone's guess. Within a few years it became impossible to assign tribal membership within the mixed populations at the praying villages. Only two identifiable groups of Nipmuc have survived to the present day. Both are recognized by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and have nearly 1,400 members, 250 of whom live in Connecticut (which has not recognized the Nipmuc). The Hassanamisco have the small (two acre) Hassanamesit Reservation at Grafton, Massachusetts. The Chaubunagungamaug (Webster, Massachusetts) have a privately owned ten acre reservation in northeast Connecticut. Although goth groups have applied, neither is federally recognized.

Photograph of the Algonquin Indian Council (of New England) taken at Providence in the early 1920s.

   Names of Nipmuc spelled also as: Nipnet, Neepmuck, Neepnet, Neetmock, Neipnett, Nipmug, and Nipmuck. The name originated from the Algonquin word "nipnet" meaning literally "small pond place" and is sometimes translated as "fresh water people."

   The Nipmuc generally lived along rivers or on the shores of small lakes and seem to have occupied the area for as far back as can be told. Like other New England Algonquin, the Nipmuc were agricultural. They changed locations according to the seasons, but always remained within the bounds of their own territory. Part of their diet came from hunting, fishing, and gathering of wild food, but as a rule they did not live as well as the coastal tribes who had the luxury of seafood. Each group was ruled by its own sachem, but there was very little political organization beyond the village or band level. This lack of a sophisticated system of government may seem to imply the Nipmuc were not as sophisticated as neighboring tribes, but this was not really the case. Few villages were fortified, so what little warfare there was had to have been low-level. The Nipmuc obviously lived in peace with each other and just didn't have problems that required a lot of complicated government.

   Before the English came, several Nipmuc tribes owed at least a partial allegiance to the Pequot, Narragansett, and Pennacook. Since the Nipmuc homeland starts only thirty miles west of Boston harbor. Contacts with English colonists began almost immediately after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620 and increased dramatically after the settlement of Massachusetts Bay by the Puritans in 1630. Boston traders reached the Connecticut River in 1633, and settlement and Puritan missionaries were close behind them. As English settlement spread west, the power of the confederacies over the Nipmuc was broken, most notably when the English colonists destroyed the Pequot during a war in 1637. The Quinebaug and Massomuck were suddenly free of the Pequot only to face greater demands from a new and more powerful overlord.

The group of men, women and children dressed in Indian garb. "Some of the descendants of John Elliot's Praying Band of Indians Celebrating the 290 Anniversary"

   Although the English during the early years were careful to acquire native lands by formal purchase, there is some question what would have happened if the Nipmuc had refused to sell. The Lancaster Purchase (1643); the Tantiusque Deed (1644); and the Eliot and Brookfield Purchases (1655) steadily eroded the Nipmuc's land base, but unregulated settlement (squatters) took even more. The worst part was that whites took the best farm lands in the river valleys leaving the Nipmuc - who depended heavily on agriculture - with serious problems feeding themselves. In exchange, the Nipmuc after 1640 got Christianity from John Eliot and other Puritan missionaries. By 1674 there were seven praying villages of Christian converts among Nipmuc. These were so grateful to the English for their new-found salvation that almost all of them joined King Philip's uprising against the colonists in 1675.

   Arguments over genocide usually revolve around the question of intent. Undoubtedly, European disease was responsible for almost all of the destruction of New England's native population. Given the level of medical knowledge available at the time, it seems impossible that the New England colonists were capable of deliberate infection. Rumors abound, but no hard evidence exists this was even attempted before 1763. Nevertheless, it is obvious that, during the King Philip's War, many New England colonists went well-beyond the bounds of normal warfare and attempted to exterminate the Native Americans in New England. Of the 15,000 natives in 1675, only 7,000 can be accounted for (2,000 killed; 1,000 prisoners sold into exile and slavery; and 4,000 survivors). Of the other 8,000, probably 2,000 (at the most) reached safety outside New England. A larger number of refugees would have been noticed by the French, or the English colonial government in New York. The fate of the remaining 6,000 was either massacre or starvation. The only question is how many of each, but there are very few records.

   Confined to mixed communities of praying villages and small reservations after 1680, almost all tribal identities and traditions of the New England Algonquin evaporated within a few years. Even their small land base quickly passed into white ownership. The Chaubunagungamaug currently have ten acres in Connecticut, while the Hassanamisco in Massachusetts have only two. The Hassanamesit Reservation contained 8,000 acres in 1728 when the Commonwealth of Massachusetts purchased the land. The money from the sale was to be held for the Nipmuc in an account at a Boston bank, but they never saw a penny of it. During the 1800s, a state official secretly borrowed (embezzled) the money for his private use. It was never repaid, and the thief was never prosecuted. Almost 250 years after the Pilgrims had landed at Plymouth, the Massachusetts legislature in 1869 finally passed a law granting citizenship to the Nipmuc.

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