Massachuset - An early tribe of Algonquian Indians who occupied the site of the present city of Boston.  They are mentioned by Captain John Smith in 1614 as having eleven villages on the coast.  They caused the early colonists little trouble.  When disease had almost wiped them out, the remaining few joined the "Praying Indians," or Christian converts, at Natick, Nonantum, and Ponkapog where they were no longer known by their tribal name.

Crispus Attucks, of mixed negro - Massachuset ancestry, who was killed in the Boston Massacre, is believed to have been the first victim of the Revolutionary War.  The name of the tribe has been preserved in that of the state of Massachusetts and of Massachusetts Bay.
 

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[ Eliot Bible ][ Praying Indians ]