The Native Americans of Byfield , Massachusetts

"Byfield was a favorite haunt of the Indian. When the white man came, all the territory from the Merrimack south as far as the North River of Salem and inland as far as Andover was subject to Masconomo, who Winthrop terms "the Sagamore of Agawam," that is, Ipswich, where his home was... When Governor Winthrop in the "Arbella" cast anchor off Cape Ann over the Lord's Day in June, 1630, on the voyage that ended with the settlement of Boston, Masconomo went aboard with one of his men and stayed nearly all day. One wonders what impression the english Puritan way of hallowing the Sabbath would make on his untutored heart. Did what he saw on that day draw him quietly to the religion of his new neighbors until, fourteen years later, he petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to be instructed in the Christian religion? Sixty years later still, that is, in 1704, we find his grandsons testifying that it was with their grandfather's "Knowledge, Lycence, and good Liking" that the Englishmen settled in his territory. He was the unchanging friend of the colonists until his death in 1658. He was buried at his home on Sagamore Hill in Hamilton, which was then a part of Ipswich."

"The River Parker was a favorite resort of the Indian, and especially its falls, where the Byfield Woolen Mill now stands. Along the stream he caught the sturgeon, and at the falls vast quantities of alewives and salmon in their season. On these he feasted when they were fresh, and he dried great quantities of them for use at other times. Pause for a moment, if you please, to picture in imagination those ancient days in Byfield when primeval forests of lofty trees covered the places where now pleasant houses and well-tilled fields smile, when the streams were fuller and the springs more abundant, and the Indian chased the deer and the moose with his bow and arrow, tall and lithe, swift of foot, keen of eye and scent and hearing, for-

Twice just before the settlement of Byfield, the pestilence had far more than decimated the original people, so that there where very few living within the limits of the parish to meet the white comers. An Indian known as "Old Will" figures in the early records; he or his family claimed a tract of land near the Falls. Finally in 1681 Henry Sewall bought whatever title his heirs had to that property, which was called "the Indian field" and contained about one hundred and sixty acres."