From Paradise to Prison

Quonehassit, now known as Boston Harbor, is part of the ancestral lands of the Massachusett, one of many Algonkian peoples in eastern North America. For generations, thousands of Massachusett lived on the harbor islands in warmer months, fishing, foraging, and farming. When English captain John Smith visited the harbor in 1614, he called it "the Paradise of all those parts." After founding Boston in 1630, English colonists continued to expand into Native lands. In 1675, indigenous resistance culminated in war between an Algonkian tribal alliance and the English and their Native allies. During the conflict, later called King Philip's War, colonists rounded up Native people living peacefully among them and forced them into concentration camps on the harbor islands. Without adequate food or shelter, more than half of those imprisoned on the islands died that winter. Colonists held war captives—men, women, and children—in the fort on Castle Island before selling them into slavery as far away as North Africa. Hundreds of enslaved Algonkians passed through Castle Island in the 1670s, never to return to their homeland. Yet the Massachusett endured, and present-day tribal traditions continue to pass ancestral knowledge to succeeding generations.

Boston, Massachusetts · United States