MASSACHUSETTS INDIANS. The Ply-mouth colonists, on their settlement in Massachusetts bay, found that part of the country populated by tribes of the Algonquin family, one of the three great aboriginal races of red-men that mhabited the basin of the St. Lawrence, and a tract of country as far south as that portion settled by the Pilgrims. These tribes were five in number, the Massachusetts and Nausets, on Massachusetts bay and cape Cod; the Nipmucks, or Nipnets, who dwelt in the central part of the colony which is now the state of Massachusetts; the Pennacooks, who extended north into Near Hampshire: and the Pokanokets, or Wampanoags, who occupied the south-eastern part, and whose chief was the celebrated Massasoit. The new settlers speedily entered into. friendly relations with these tribes, and as early as 1644 the Mayhews of Martha's Vine yard (q.v.), and in 1646 John Eliot had underta-ken missionary labors among them. See ELIOT, Joinst. These efforts bore fruit, and in 1674 there were 600 converted Indians in. Plymouth colony, 1500 in Martha's Vineyard, and 1100 in the Massachusetts bay colony. But 'though thus successful in conversion, the settlers had not been equally so in their general relations with the Indians, and in 1675 an irritated condition which had hcen gradually growing among the latter, culminated in the outbreak which has become known as king Philip's war This trouble originated with Philip Metacomet, son and successor of Massasoit, under whom the Pokanokets or Wainpanoags rose, and were joined by. the
Nipmucks, Narragansetts, and Pennacooks, until a general Indian war had ravaged all the settlements. In this situation not even the new religious faith which had been instilled into the natives acted as a preventive, and the converted Indians joined with the , rest in a general onslaught upon the whites. The struggle lasted a year, and only ended -with the death of Philip, Aug. 12, 1676. The Pennacooks retired northward, and the other tribes submitted; but it is on record that numbers of those who were captured were exported to the West Indies as slaves. From this time the Massachusetts Indians fol lowed the general course of their race, dying' out, or retiring before the white man, or assimilating with the latter or with the negrocs In 1861 a census showed the Indian and half-breed population of the state to be 1610, of whom 306 were on Martha's Vineyard, at Christiantown and Gayhead; 438 at Masiipee and elsewhere on cape Cod; and the remainder scattered. The United States census of 1870 made return of only 150 Indians in the state of Massachusetts, so had the process cf reduction, or of assimilation, progressed in nine years.