Shortly after Nonantum was established in what is today Newton Corner, Eliot began planning to move Waban and his followers away to a more remote area. He believed that Native converts could better adopt English customs and follow English laws if they were isolated from their homelands, traditions, lifeways, and kinship networks. More distance from the English would also help prevent the conflicts that arose when English livestock trampled Indigenous people’s crops.
Waban and his followers did not welcome Eliot’s vision at first, but the Bay Colony supported his plan. Removing Native people from their homelands served the Colony’s desire to expand inland. Eliot and the Bay Colony quickly made plans to establish a new settlement ten miles to the west of Nonantum. The new settlement would be called Natick.
“I propounded unto them, that they should look out some fit place to begin a Towne, unto which they might resort, and there dwell together, enjoy Government, and be made ready and prepared to be a People among whom the Lord might delight to dwell and Rule.”
—John Eliot, A Late and Further Manifestation, 1655
Establishing Natick
For generations, Nipmuc people had lived along the Quinobequin (now the Charles River) to the west of present-day Newton. In 1650, the Nipmuc leader Qualalanset, known to the English as John Speen, held the rights to land along the Quinobequin in present-day South Natick. Sometime before 1651, Speen signed over his land rights to Eliot in a public ceremony. Speen received an unknown sum and a guaranteed interest in the Quinobequin fish weirs.
In that same year, the Massachusetts General Court granted an overlapping 2,000 acres for the establishment of Natick. How could the English “grant” land they acknowledged had belonged to someone else? Some colonists wrestled with this paradox. Colonial magistrate Daniel Gookin and others defended the practice by explaining that the King of England gave them rights to the land because it was not yet settled and farmed in the English fashion.
The View from Nonantum
Many of Waban’s followers were not happy to learn that a “praying town” had been established for them at Natick. Eliot had led them to believe they could stay at Nonantum. Monequessun and Nishohkou, two men who later held leadership positions in Natick, both testified that their choice to convert to Christianity had been linked to a desire to stay on their land. Eliot remembered that “their minds were quite alienated from the place at Natick.”
The English recognized that the plan was unwelcome and may even have taken steps to prevent resistance. Nishohkou recalled a traumatic encounter when English soldiers arrived at Nonantum, on a sabbath day before the move, to collect their weapons.
“Then the Souldiers came upon us on the Sabbath-day, while we were at meeting, and took away our Guns . . . [T]hat night my heart was broken off, my heart said, God is not, the Sabbath is not, it is not the Lords Day, for were it so, the Souldiers would not have then come; then my heart cast off praying.”
—Nishohkou, quoted by John Eliot in A Further Account of the Progress of the Gospel, 1660
But some at Nonantum went willingly to Natick. According to Eliot, a Massachusett elder named Wampas gave a moving speech from his deathbed, encouraging Waban’s followers to go to Natick.
“I now shall die but Jesus Christ calleth you that live move to Naticke that there the lord might rule over you that you might make a church and have the ordinance of God among you. Believe in his word and do as he commandeth you.”
—Wampas, quoted by John Eliot in Strength Out of Weaknesse, 1652
Waban’s feelings about the move were never recorded by the English.
Header Image: Quinobequin (Charles River), Spring 2020. Image courtesy of the Natick Historical Society.