page_title: Massachusett
section_title: End of the reservations
hierarchical_section_title: Massachusett / History / American Independence (1776) to present / End of the reservations
caption_attribution_description: English: View in an open area from the boardwalk through Ponkapaog Bog in the southern portion of the Blue Hills reservation near Boston, MA.
context_page_description: The Massachusett are a Native American people and ethnic group in the United States Commonwealth of Massachusetts, mostly inhabiting their traditional homeland which covers much of present-day Greater Boston. The people take their name from the Algonquian, which is a tribal term meaning “At the Great Hill” - referring to the Blue Hills overlooking Boston Harbor from the south - which was a ceremonial and sacred area for the people of the region.
  As some of the first people to make contact with the European explorers and English colonists, the Massachusett and other coastal peoples were severely decimated from an outbreak of leptospirosis circa 1619, which had mortality rates as high as 90% in these areas. This was followed by devastating impacts of virgin soil epidemics such as smallpox, influenza, scarlet fever and others to which the indigenous people lacked natural immunity. Their territories, on the more fertile and flat coastlines, with access to coastal resources, was mostly taken over by English colonists, as the Massachusett were too few in number to put up any effective resistance.
context_section_description: The last communal lands of Ponkapoag were sold in 1827.  A small plot was not sold until 1840, but the Ponkapoag had already been restricted from its use.  The last lands of Natick were sold in 1828 in part to raise funds for the care of the oldest and ill members of the tribe.  The loss of land did not remove the restrictions of the guardians.  Still under guardianship, the Massachusett could not vote or participate in local elections and still required the guardians to address the courts.
  The end of the reservations put a final death knell on physical communities where Indians could return after their seasonal and contract jobs were over and could seek land.  Many Indians dispersed, settling in the African-American neighborhoods of Boston and other cities or joining other remnant Indian communities.  A small handful of Ponkapoag Indians had become proprietors, forming a small hamlet of Indian families on Indian Lane that would last until the early twentieth century.  Instead of community, Indian identity and structure was rooted in family relations.  For instance, Rebecca Davis, who had lived in Boston her entire adult life, continued to return to Indian Lane to visit family members and friends to stock up on jams, corn and other foodstuffs every autumn until she reached her seventies.  Others tried their luck at the few remaining Indian lands, such as the outflow of the Natick Pegan family to Chaubunagungamaug.
caption: A bog on lands once part of the Praying town of Ponkapoag.  Loss of land prevented the Indians from supplementing their diet with foraged foods, such as wild cranberries, cowberries and black huckleberries from bogs, that were part of the traditional cuisine.  The Ponkapoag Reservation was whittled away until the Indians were evicted and the lands sold by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1827.
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D5100", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.4.1", "Image DateTime": "2011:09:24 11:23:11", "Image Artist": "Mark Fickett", "Image ExifOffset": "246", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 3, 0, 0]", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "N", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[42, 29229/2500, 0]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "W", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[71, 60811/10000, 0]", "GPS GPSAltitudeRef": "0", "GPS GPSAltitude": "51329/1024", "GPS GPSMapDatum": "WGS-84", "Image GPSInfo": "932", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1192", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "15389", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/250", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:09:04 18:44:21", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2011:09:04 18:44:21", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "995723/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "1/3", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "531/100", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "17", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "20", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "20", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "25", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "3013589", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[17, 50, 14/5, 14/5]", "EXIF LensModel": "17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8"}