The People of Musketaquid:
Concord’s First Residents
46
Discover CONCORD
| Fall 2020
1,600 years ago they adopted the bow and arrow, and about 1,000 years ago they began to practice agriculture in the areas of Punkatasset, North Bridge, South Bridge, and Nashawtuc (“hill between the rivers” in the Algonquian language). A Nipmuc folktale tells of a crow who gave the people seeds and taught them how to grow corn, beans, and squash. In exchange, the story says, the crows return every year at harvest time to claim their share of the corn.3 In reality, it’s likely that new practices like bow hunting and farming were learned from other tribes with whom the Musketaquid people traded. These trade networks extended hundreds of miles; Tahattawan—the sagamore, or local chief, of Musketaquid—is said to have had an axe made of stone found in upstate New York.4 Visitors often ask about the tribal heritage of the Musketaquid people. It’s impossible to say conclusively, because tribal territories had porous boundaries, unlike the hard lines drawn by the English settlers. Musketaquid adjoined Nipmuc territory to the west, Penacook territory to the north, Pawtucket to the northeast, and the Massachusetts tribe to the southeast. Archeologist and anthropologist Shirley Blancke thinks it likely that the people living here in the early 1600s were of Pawtucket lineage.5 When English settlers arrived in Massachusetts in 1620, they built their
first towns on the coast. To maintain their balance of trade with the mother country, they needed a local commodity that was in demand in England, and “the fur trade was the life blood of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.”6 An English fur trader, Simon Willard, ventured inland to Musketaquid to buy beaver pelts, and became so familiar with the place, the people, and the Algonquian language, that in 1635 he and Puritan minister Peter Bulkeley led the first party of English men and women to settle in the place they called Concord. The native population had been drastically reduced by a smallpox epidemic in 1633, so perhaps it seemed like there was room for everybody, but in 1637 the English decided to formalize their ownership of the land. A sign near Monument Square marks the site where, TH30a Micmac/Mi’kmaq Quill box, mid 1800s. Concord Museum Collection; Gift of Cummings E. Davis (1886)
© Concord Museum
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You see the names all over town: Musketaquid, Nashawtuc, Nashoba, Squaw Sachem. These words invite us to learn the stories of the people who lived in this place for thousands of years before English settlers arrived. The English named this place Concord in 1635, but it had long been known by the region’s first peoples as Musketaquid. In the Algonquian language, the name means “grassy river” or “grassy island,” and the Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord Rivers have always been the lifeblood of the land. As Lemuel Shattuck recounts in his 1835 History of Concord, the local people lived “[by] planting, hunting, or fishing . . . and few places produced a supply more easily than Musketaquid.” 1 Archaeological evidence shows that humans lived here as long as 12,000 years ago, migrating into the region from the west after the last Ice Age. At first, people lived here only part of the year, following the fish and game. Freshwater mussels were a favorite food, as we know from the vast number of shells discovered near the present site of Emerson Hospital. Their diet also included deer, turkey, muskrat, alewife, salmon, and eel, as well as a variety of nuts, fruits, and berries.2 Around 8,000 years ago, local activity expanded to new areas including Fairhaven Bay, Walden Pond, and present-day Lexington Road and Bedford Street. A popular misconception about the Indigenous peoples of North America is that their way of life scarcely changed from the Stone Age until first contact with Europeans. In fact, the Musketaquid people made game-changing innovations. Around
BY VICTOR CURRAN
