(Editor’s note: the Wikipedia links in this article were added by the editor for explanatory purposes and were not provided by the author or the Lincoln Historical Society.)
By Sara Mattes
About 1,000 years ago, the inhabitants of what would become Lincoln were the Algonkin people. The paths created for trade between tribes, in some instances, became the routes of roads in use today. But contact with Europeans in the 17th century brought diseases that killed a significant portion these original inhabitants.
Algonkin tribal territories in 17th-century New England.
A settlement that survived in the Concord area, led by Squaw Sachem and sagamore Tahattawan, was known as Musketaquid, their name for the Concord-Sudbury River. (Sachems and sagamores were paramount chiefs among the Algonkins and other Native American tribes of the northeast.) In 1635, the Great and General Court granted a six-mile square tract at Musketaquid to English settlers, to be called Concord. The following year, Squaw Sachem, Tahattawan, and others consented to the sale of this land to the English settlers.
Some of the original Massachusetts tribe remained on the land, but by the end of King Philip’s War in 1678, the few remaining original habitants had been driven from their homes or had died from disease brought by the Europeans. By the time Lincoln was formed in 1754, all of its portion of Musketaquid was owned and settled by Europeans.
None of this tells of the conditions of the relationships between the First Peoples and the Europeans in Lincoln, and especially under what terms the sale of land was made. That is a topic for another day.
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This article is indebted to A Rich Harvest by Lincoln’s town historian, Jack MacLean. A Rich Harvest is available at the Lincoln Public Library and for purchase from the Lincoln Historical Society. For a more in-depth study, see The First People of the Northeast by Lincoln authors Esther K. Braun and David P. Braun, also available at the Lincoln Public Library.
“Lincoln’s History” is an occasional column by members of the Lincoln Historical Society.