In New England, American Indian people have left their ancient footprints in many of the current names for mountains, rivers, lakes, animals, fish, cities, towns, and byways. The first English settlers, who put most of the American Indian words on the map, borrowed names from local tribes. In the process, they often misheard, mispronounced, or misreported what they heard - that is how the place Wequapaugset was given as Boxet or how Musquompskut became Swampscott. In many cases the Indian terms have changed so much over time that linguists are unable to recognize the original spelling and meaning. Others have tried their hand at translations, and have come up with fanciful interpretations that are incorrect, but that have stood the test of time. On the East Coast, the Native cultures and their Algonquian tongues had long faded before most scholarly studies began, so a great many translations of place names often represent a scholar's best guess. In this landmark volume, Dr. Frank Waabu O'Brien of the Aquidneck Indian Council, provides the first indigenous method and process for interpreting regional American Indian place names. Included is a dictionary of the most common misspellings, along with numerous examples of the Indian place names for Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Based on years of research, Understanding Indian Place Names is a landmark publication.

This invaluable resource provides a detailed guide to the Indian place names of New England, alongside their meanings and significance. Edited by Charles Huden and published by the Museum of the American Indian, this book sheds light on the cultural heritage of the region's indigenous peoples. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This volume combines historical research and linguistic fieldwork with native speakers from across the United States to present the first comprehensive, up-to-date, scholarly dictionary of American placenames derived from native languages." "Linguist William Bright assembled a team of twelve editorial consultants - experts in Native American languages - and many other native contributors to prepare this lexicon of eleven thousand placenames along with their etymologies. New data from leading scholars make this volume an invaluable reference for students of American Indian culture, folklore, and local histories. Bright's introduction explains his methodology and the contents of each entry. This comprehensive, alphabetical lexicon preserves native language as it details the history and culture found in American indian placenames.

Across nineteenth-century New England, antiquarians and community leaders wrote hundreds of local histories about the founding and growth of their cities and towns. Ranging from pamphlets to multivolume treatments, these narratives shared a preoccupation with establishing the region as the cradle of an Anglo-Saxon nation and the center of a modern American culture. They also insisted, often in mournful tones, that New England’s original inhabitants, the Indians, had become extinct, even though many Indians still lived in the very towns being chronicled. InFirsting and Lasting, Jean M. O’Brien argues that local histories became a primary means by which European Americans asserted their own modernity while denying it to Indian peoples. Erasing and then memorializing Indian peoples also served a more pragmatic colonial goal: refuting Indian claims to land and rights. Drawing on more than six hundred local histories from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island written between 1820 and 1880, as well as censuses, monuments, and accounts of historical pageants and commemorations, O’Brien explores how these narratives inculcated the myth of Indian extinction, a myth that has stubbornly remained in the American consciousness. In order to convince themselves that the Indians had vanished despite their continued presence, O’Brien finds that local historians and their readers embraced notions of racial purity rooted in the century’s scientific racism and saw living Indians as “mixed” and therefore no longer truly Indian. Adaptation to modern life on the part of Indian peoples was used as further evidence of their demise. Indians did not—and have not—accepted this effacement, and O’Brien details how Indians have resisted their erasure through narratives of their own. These debates and the rich and surprising history uncovered in O’Brien’s work continue to have a profound influence on discourses about race and indigenous rights.

The North American Indian group known as the Nipmucks was situated in south-central New England and, during the early years of Puritan colonization, remained on the fringes of the expanding white settlements. It was not until their involvement in King Philip's War (1675-1676) that the Nipmucks were forced to flee their homes, their lands to be redistributed among the settlers. This group, which actually includes four tribes or bands--the Nipmucks, Nashaways, Quabaugs, and Wabaquassets--has been enmeshed in myth and mystery for hundreds of years. This is the first comprehensive history of their way of life and its transformation with the advent of white settlement in New England. Spanning the years between the Nipmucks' first encounters with whites until the final disposal of their lands, this history focuses on Indian-white relations, the position or status of the Nipmucks relative to the other major New England tribes, and their social and political alliances. Settlement patterns, population densities, tribal limits, and land transactions are also analyzed as part of the tribe's historical geography. A bibliography allows for further research on this mysterious and often misunderstood people group.