For the past half-century, I have lived in Concord. A retired pastor, I now work with the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts in its restorative justice measures with the Indigenous Peoples who were dispossessed of their land, often shrewdly and/or illegally, by the Puritan immigrants of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
In Concord, the two tribes whose ancestors lived here at the time of English arrival are the Nipmuck and the Massachusett. Many of them were evangelized by Puritan missionaries and gathered into Praying Towns, one of which was called Nashobah Plantation, now Littleton and parts of adjacent towns.
The Nashobah Massachusett natives did not participate in the violence of the indigenous uprising called King Philip’s War and were given six months of safe shelter from the conflict in 1675 in the place we now call The Orchard House. Tragically, they were illegally seized by fearful local vigilantes, marched to Boston, then shipped to the concentration camp for native tribes on Deer Island in Boston Harbor. Many died of starvation and exposure in the following winter months; others were kidnapped by pirates and sold as slave labor to Caribbean plantations.
The descendants of the survivors live quietly among us today, but without the land that is integral to their cultural identity. In diocesan conversations, members of the tribe have been explicit about the primary importance of recovery of some of their land. The restorative justice “Land Back movement” is gaining momentum in various forms in this country.
I suggest a thoughtful pause in “the race to development” of the MCI-Concord land, and serious consideration be given to how part or all of the 62 acres might be given, shared, or sold as restitution to the Massachusett Praying Indians of Nashobah. Such an arrangement would be both generous and just.
Rev. Barbara Smith-Moran
Anson Road