~ 375th Anniversary of Malden’s Incorporation as a Town ~ Brothers Sprague – Founders of Charlestown, Malden & Hingham, Part 6

By Inna Babitskaya

After the Spragues’ landing in Salem, John Endicott sent brothers Ralph, Richard and William Sprague, with a few companions, to explore the area “along the Salem path” near Mishawaum and to create a settlement. The Sprague brothers passed “through the country on the easterly bank of the Mystic River,” where they “found it ‘an uncouth wilderness’ and ‘full of stately timber.’”

They came to a neck of land “lying on the north side of the Charles River, full of…Aberginians.” Their old Sachem being dead, his eldest son Wonohaquaham, by the English called John Sagamore, was their chief and “a man naturally of a gentle and good disposition; by whose free consent, they settled about the hill of the same place, by the said natives called Mishawum.”

Wonohaquahamm, a chief of the Pawtucket, was described by Thomas Dudley as “a handsome young man, conversant with us, affecting English apparel and houses, and speaking well of our God.” According to the Puritan treatise “New England’s First Fruits” (1643), “Sagamore John, prince of Massaquesers, was from our very first landing more courteous, ingenious, and to the English more loving than others of them; he desired to learn and speak our language, and loved to imitate us in our behavior and apparel, and began to hearken after our God and his ways, and would much commend English men and their God, saying much good men, much good God, and being convinced that our condition and ways were better fair than theirs, did resolve and promise to leave the Indians, and come live with us.”

Sagamore John’s tribe population was reduced due to the epidemic of plague and wars with the Tarratines. The Tarratines were a band of the Mi’kmaq tribe of Native Americans, who inhabited northern New England, did not practice agriculture and made raids on the food supplies of more sedentary bands who cultivated crops. In 1619, the Tarrantines killed Sagamore John’s father, Sachem Nanapashemet (“the Moone God or New Moon), a great leader of the Pawtucket Confederation of Abenaki peoples in present-day New England, before the landing of the Pilgrims. The Pawtucket controlled Mishawum (Charlestown), Mistic (Medford), Musketaquid (Concord), Winnisemet (around modern Chelsea), Swampscott (Lynn), Naumkeag (Salem), Agawam (Ipswich) and Pentucket (Haverhill), as well as Piscataqua (Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Eliot, Maine), Pannukog (Concord, New Hampshire) and Accominta (York, Maine). Nanapashemet’s tribe caught fish in the rivers and sea, dug and harvested shellfish, and raised corn on the Marblehead peninsula. After Nanapashemet’s death, his people inhabited the area around the Mystic River and Rumney Marsh.

The chief’s widow, the Squaw Sachem (c. 1590–1650), and his sons, Wonohaquaham (1608–1633) and Montowampate (Sagamore James of Saugus, 1609–1633), ruled the tribe. Sagamore John allowed the colonists to settle on the tribe’s lands. In 1631, Wonohaquaham and Montowampate were wounded by the Tarratines at Ipswich, where they visited their relatives and friends. Montowampate’s wife, Wenuchus, was kidnapped, and only two months later, with the help of Abraham Shurd, a colonist from Pemaquid, she could return home. In 1631, after two of the Wonohaquaham wigwams had been burned, he received compensation after complaining to the court.

The same year, both brothers complained to the governor about the stealing of 20 beaver skins by some colonists. “The governor entertained them kindly,” giving a recommendation letter to a London lawyer. Famous Lynn historian Alonzo Lewis wrote that “Montowampate went to England, where he was treated with much respect as an Indian king, but, disliking the English delicacies, he hastened back to Saugus.”

In 1632–33, smallpox swept away the Indian villages, including their chiefs. After the death of the Sagamores, their brother Wenepoykin (1616–1684), a 17-year-old young man, became the chief of those who survived. His English name was George Rumney Marsh, after the place where he lived – near Powder Horn Hill on the southern borders of Malden. He had a son, Manatahqua, and three daughters, who were named by colonists Cicily or Su-George, Sarah and Susannah, and by their own people as Wanapanaquin, or the Plumed Ones. George Rumney Marsh had a rather friendly relationship with the colonists.

However, in 1651 he showed “his interest and just Title to the Lands of his late brother deceased on Mystic Side” and “the Ground about powder home hill,” which were “wrongfully detained from him.” He petitioned that “now, at last, out of your Great clemency and compassion towards your poor Indian and Petitioner you will be pleased to vouchsafe him some small parte parcel or proportion of his inheritance for himself and company to plant in.” But the General Court advised him to prosecute his claim in some inferior court. He was “twice defeated in attempting to recover his own. The matter was finally set at rest by an order of the court to “lay out twenty acres of good planting land in some convenient place for Sagamore George to make use [of].”

The expedition, which was sent in order to find the land for settlement, discovered that “it was a neck of land generally full of stately timber, as was the main, and the land lying on the east side of the river, called Mystick River, from the farm Mr. Cradock’s servants had planted called Mystick, which this river led up unto; and indeed generally all the country round about, was an uncouth wilderness full of timber.”

When the Spragues arrived at Mishawum, they also saw an “English house, thatched and palisaded,” where lived the pioneer settler Thomas Walford.

To be continued…

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  (Inna Babitskaya is a Malden historian; member of the Malden Historical Commission and

author of historical books “From Maldon to Malden,” “Time of Converse” and “Fellsmere Park – Emerald of Malden.”)