In the years immediately before English Puritans settled on the Shawmut Peninsula, a series of epidemics nearly wiped out the indigenous population of New England. The worst of these plagues was centered on Boston Harbor, and swept from Narragansett Bay in the south to the Penobscot River in the North. It was the greatest tragedy to befall Native peoples of the region, who sometimes referred to it as “the Great Dying,” while English settlers called it a “wonderful plague” or a “prodigious pestilence.” They believed the disease had been sent by God to purge the native inhabitants of the continent and make way for his chosen people.
Tag: Native Americans
Episode 64: Harvard Indian College, Promises Broken… and Kept
There’s an oft forgotten clause written into Harvard’s 1650 charter promising to educate the Native American youth of Massachusetts. This week’s episode looks at the early, mostly unsuccessful efforts to create an Indian College on the Harvard campus, the abandonment of that plan after King Philip’s War soured the English settlers on their earlier plans for Christianizing local Native American tribes, and how modern scholarship is helping to rediscover this legacy and rededicate Harvard to embracing Native Americans.
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