Notes

1. When referring to the indigenous peoples of North America, “Native Americans,” “American Indians,” “Amerindians,” “Indians,” “First Nations” (in Canada), and “indigenous peoples” are acceptable.  When possible, it is best to refer to certain nations by their specific name (Massachusett, Wampanoag, Pequot, etc.) and/or ask people their preference.  Abenaki is a sub-language of Algonquian.   

2. While most historians and anthropologists no longer use the term “tribe” to describe a group of peoples, the terminology remains regarding American Indian groupings, although federally-recognized tribes are sovereign nations.  Most Native American peoples use “tribe” and “nation” interchangeably.

3. Peter S. Leavenworth, “‘The Best Title That Indians Can Claime’: Native Agency and Consent in the Transferal of Penacook-Pawtucket Land in the Seventeenth Century,” The New England Quarterly 72, 2 (Jun 1999): 275-300.

4. Christoph Strobel, “Uncovering Indigenous Worlds and Histories on a Bend of a New England River before the 1650s: Problematizing Nomenclature and Settler Colonial, Deep History, and Early Colonization Narratives,” American Studies Journal 69 (2020).

5. A recent NHPBS documentary, Surviving New England’s Great Dying (2021), investigates the 1610s epidemic. 

6. For a detailed genealogy of the four children and their descendants of the Nanepashement-Squa Sachem union (the Rumneymarsh-Wiser family) that goes into the mid-nineteenth century, see Ron Wiser, “Wiser Family Research” (2000). 

7.  While the term squaw began as an English translation of the local term for “woman” in the Algonquian languages spoken in New England, it soon became a derogatory slur for Indian women across the continent and has ceased proper usage in the recent decades.  A female leader in the local Algonquian languages was called a sunq-squaw or sunksquaw.  Unfortunately the name of the Squa Sachem (Squaw Sachem of Mistick) has not survived.  One source, which I could not verify elsewhere, claims that per custom the Massachusett referred to their leaders by title and not name.  Christoph Strobel, Native Americans of New England (Santa Barbara, CA: Praegar, 2020), 51; “Squaw Sachem,” History of American Women blog, n.d. 

8. Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 74.

9. For more on the Squa Sachem, her relations, and the Pawtuckets, see Ellen Knight, “The Beginning of Winchester on Massachusetts Land,” (2019) and David Stewart-Smith, “The Pennacook Land and Relations: Family Homelands,” in Thaddeus Piotrowksi, ed., The Indian Heritage of New Hampshire and Northern New England (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2002), 119-36.

10. Paraphrase of Brian Chenevert, member of the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk-Abenaki Nation, in Surviving the Great Dying. 

11. Praying towns or villages, created by Puritan missionary John Eliot and others in the 1640s, sought to convert Indians in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to Christianity and European-style lifestyles in Indian-populated villages.  At their height fourteen praying towns existed, including Natick, Newton (Nonantum), Lowell (Wamesit), and Canton (Punkapoag).  With King Philip’s War, the Colony ended this practice.  Massachusetts’s two Indian-related towns - Mashpee and Aquinnah (Gay Head) - both began as praying towns for the Wampanoag.  

12. On King Philip’s War, see Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019); Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Knopf, 1998); and Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (New York: Viking, 2006).  On Indian resistance to European settlement east of the Appalachians, see Scott Weidensaul, The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). 

13. See Wiser, “Wiser Family Research.” 

14. For a recent summary of the “Indian Wars,” see Peter Cozzens, The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West (New York: Vintage Books, 2016).

15. Richard Henry Pratt, 1892, quoted in David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present (New York: Riverhead Books, 2019), 133.  While all Native American children should receive an “American” education at federally-run boarding schools, ways did exist for parents to avoid sending their children, but at the cost that the federal authorities could punish the entire reservation.

16. From the 1930s on, the coercive nature of attendance lessened, as did the schools’ full assimilation mandate. However, the federal government continued to promote until the 1960s-70s the boarding schools as the best chance for success for Indian children rather than having them raised on their own reservations with their own families, culture, religion, and language.

17. On the Indian boarding schools, see Treuer, Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, pp. 132-43; David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1995); and Clifford E. Trafzer, Jean A. Keller, and Lorene Sisquoc, eds., Boarding School Blues: Revisiting American Indian Educational Experiences (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006).  For recollections from the final generations of students, see Rukmini Callimachi, “Lost Lives, Lost Culture: The Forgotten History of Indigenous Boarding Schools,” The New York Times (Jul 19, 2021). 

18. A recent PBS/Independent Lens documentary, Home From School: The Children of Carlisle (2021), examines current-day Northern Arapaho who seek to reintern on tribal lands members who died at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School decades earlier.

19. Sally Jenkins, “The Team That Invented Football,” Sports Illustrated 106:17 (Apr 23, 2007): 60-73.

20. From its origins in 1871 to 1911, the team had been called the Red Stockings, Red Caps, Beaneaters, Doves, and Rustlers.  New owner James Gaffney, a New York City real estate mogul and member of Tammany Hall, changed the team name to the Braves after the mascot of Tammany Hall, the New York City political machine.  Tammany had long used Indian symbols.  Additionally, the recent victories of the Carlisle School against Harvard and many others may have also influenced Gaffney.  On Tammany Hall and Indians, see Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 46-47.

21.  Ellen J. Staurowsky, “An Act of Honor or Exploitation? The Cleveland Indians’ Use of the Louis Francis Sockalexis Story,” Sociology of Sport Journal 15 (1998): 299-316.  The team changed its name to the Cleveland Guardians for the 2022 season.

22. The team originally played at Braves Field and thereby took the “Braves” as their initial name.  In 1933 the team moved to Fenway Park.  In order to not have to supply new uniforms, which had Indian symbols on them, team owner George Preston Marshall changed the name to the “Redskins.”  Kevin Paul Dupont, “Redskins Name Debate Traces to Boston,” Boston Globe (Dec 29, 2013).

23. Bruce Winchester Stone, History of Winchester Massachusetts, Vol. 2 (Winchester, MA: Town of Winchester, 1975), 52, 72.  Per the WHS yearbooks, in the 1940s WHS’s sports teams were consistently called “the Red and Black.”  One has to wonder if the colors red and black were chosen as they form the two most stereotypical Indian war paint colors.

24. As Winchester High School’s yearbooks have been titled The Aberjona since the 1920s, they periodically contained Native American representations until the 1950s, and then consistently to the 2010s.  The Aberjona is the Native American term for the tributary of the Mystic River that flows through Winchester.

25. Information for this paragraph taken from The Aberjona, The Winchester Star, and Ellen Knight, “Teams Known as ‘Sachems’” (2020). 

26. Knight suggests that the shift towards use of an Indian or Sachem mascot occurred in the aftermath of the town’s 1950 centennial as nostalgia for the region’s origins.  Knight, “Teams…”

27.  Part of the issue is that no images exist of New England Native Americans from the seventeenth century.  Early twentieth-century Native Americans in New England dressed as Plains Indians at public events to demonstrate to the local populations that “real” Indians lived in the region.  Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 149-50.

28. Abby Spegman, “Sachem Debate May Return in the Fall,” The Winchester Star (Jul 4, 2014). 

29. Gov. Charlie Baker signed into law in January 2021 an act that would create a commission to change the Massachusetts state flag and seal, both of which depict a sword above a Native American.  The commission should report its findings in October 2021.  Sen. Lewis also sponsored this legislation.  As of March 2022, the commission has yet to issue a report for the legislature.  Changethemassflag.com, “Governor Baker Signs the Bill Establishing a Special Commission to Change the Mass Flag and Seal” (Jan 12, 2021).

30. The other federally-recognized Indian tribes in New England are the Pequot and Mohegan (Connecticut); Micmac, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot (Maine); and Narragansett (Rhode Island) nations.

Images courtesy of The Aberjona, The Boston Globe, Boston Public Library, Library of Congress, The New York Times, Winchester Public Library, Winchester Public Schools, and public domain, unless otherwise noted.

Related Publications

Scott C. Spencer, "The Rise, Fall, and Aftermath of Indians as Mascots," Saturday Evening Post, August 7, 2024

Scott C. Spencer, "Conversing with Sachems: School Mascots and Changing Native American Legacies in Eastern Massachusetts," August 2024 [full-length version]