THE FIRST PEOPLE OF CAPE ANN: Native Americans on the North Coast of Massachusetts Bay
By Elizabeth Waugh. Local histories and librarians have long assured us that the Indians went extinct before the English settled here—that they had killed each other off in internecine warfare or had all died of disease in a mysterious virgin soil epidemic. Cape Ann’s “Indians”, if they are mentioned at all, are described erroneously as Massachuset, Nipmuc, Wampanoag, and/or Iroquois, when they actually belonged to none of these groups. I learned from authoritative sources that they were Pawtucket, a branch of the Pennacook from New Hampshire, an Abenaki-speaking people of northern New England.
By Elizabeth Waugh. Local histories and librarians have long assured us that the Indians went extinct before the English settled here—that they had killed each other off in internecine warfare or had all died of disease in a mysterious virgin soil epidemic. Cape Ann’s “Indians”, if they are mentioned at all, are described erroneously as Massachuset, Nipmuc, Wampanoag, and/or Iroquois, when they actually belonged to none of these groups. I learned from authoritative sources that they were Pawtucket, a branch of the Pennacook from New Hampshire, an Abenaki-speaking people of northern New England.
By Elizabeth Waugh. Local histories and librarians have long assured us that the Indians went extinct before the English settled here—that they had killed each other off in internecine warfare or had all died of disease in a mysterious virgin soil epidemic. Cape Ann’s “Indians”, if they are mentioned at all, are described erroneously as Massachuset, Nipmuc, Wampanoag, and/or Iroquois, when they actually belonged to none of these groups. I learned from authoritative sources that they were Pawtucket, a branch of the Pennacook from New Hampshire, an Abenaki-speaking people of northern New England.