page_title: Massachusett
section_title: Language
hierarchical_section_title: Massachusett / Language
caption_attribution_description: English: Algonquian 1663 Indian Bible first pages
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 Massachusett language is a member of the Algic language family in its extensive Algonquian division which includes all the Algic languages except two very distantly related languages of northern California.  Within Algonquian, Massachusett is in the Southern New England Algonquian (SNEA) sub-branch of the Eastern Algonquian branch of Algonquian languages.  The SNEA languages are so closely related, they can be considered dialects of one another and differ mainly in treatment of Proto-Algonquian retroflexes of *θ which yielded /n/ in Massachusett, /l/ in Nipmuc, /j/ in Narragansett and /r/ in Quiripi, leaving Massachusett classified as an SNEA n-dialect in this scheme.  The closest relatives of the Massachusett language are the other SNEA languages, and more distantly with other Algonquian languages.
  The language was shared between several peoples.  This included the Massachusett, whose traditional territory includes what is now Boston and immediate environs and the South Shore, hugging Massachusetts Bay extending west to the fall line; the Pawtucket of southernmost Maine, coastal New Hampshire, the North Shore and the lower Merrimack River watershed; the Wampanoag, covering all of southeastern Massachusetts, especially Cape Cod and the Islands and northeastern southeastern Rhode Island; the Nauset, possibly a Wampanoag group, of Cape Cod from points east of the Bass River and the Coweset of northern Rhode Island.  Narragansett is sometimes considered a dialect, but as it was a y-dialect, it is generally treated distinctly by linguists.
  The language was most notably used by John Eliot in the first Bible printed in the Americas.  Eliot had learned the language through a series of Indian interpreters and translators, mostly at Natick, and devised an orthography based on English conventions of the time.  Eliot would later teach Indians to read and write using hand-written catechisms that were copied.  Funding was granted for the Indian mission, allowing Eliot to publish several translations, ultimately leading up to the Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God, which literally translates as 'The Whole Holy His-Bible God,' which was completed in 1663.  Beginning in 1651 and lasting until 1747, almost thirty translations and other teaching aids were produced in the Massachusett language and distributed to the Indians of the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies.  A school was established in Natick, where Indian men were trained in reading and writing and Christian theology and would later serve as clerks, ministers, deacons, administrators, interpreters and constables of the newly created 'Praying towns' established by Eliot.  As the Indians became literate, they taught others to read and write, thus spreading its use.  Just before the outbreak of Metacomet's Rebellion, one-third of Indians were literate in only twenty years after Eliot taught the first Indians.  The specific use of the speech of Natick led to dialect leveling, and by the beginning of the eighteenth century, most of the Massachusett-speaking peoples, as well as some communities of Nipmuc and Pennacook, began to speak the Massachusett dialect of Natick, with many of the learned men in their communities students of Natick or from Natick itself.  The names of the Massachusett literate are named in colonial sources, such as William Ahaton and Aaron Pomham, who served as preachers in Ponkapoag; John Neesnummin of Natick, who helped both Eliot and the Mayhew family in translating works for the Indian audience; John Simons of Titicut and James Speen, a Natick Indian who later became preacher to the Nipmuc Indians of Pakachoag (now Auburn, Massachusetts).
  The use of the language began to fade in the Massachusett communities in the 1750s, with the last speaker likely dying sometime after 1798.  The Wampanoag dialect continued to be spoken as the primary language of the Wampanoag until the 1770s, but the last speakers died sometime in the late nineteenth century on Martha's Vineyard, but rememberers of the language persisted into the 1920s.  Under the leadership of
caption: The index and first page of Genesis from Eliot's translation of the Bible into the Natick speech of Massachusett in 1663, the Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God.
exif: {}