A myth that has played-out
Between 1978 and 1980, I worked under an HEW grant for the Needham Historical Society. In those two years, I wrote a small history booklet for fourth and fifth grade pupils in Needham and Dedham and a formal chronology of land settlement during the 17th Century in the Newton-Needham-Natick-Wellesley area.
Regarding the man who gave Natick Redmen their name (Dec. 28): There were several dialects of the language spoken by the Wampanoag Indian Nation. Within that nation was the tribe known as the Massachusetts. When the English asked the Indians who they were, they said, verbatim, "Massachusetts." A word from their own dialect, it means, "People from the hill country," as these Indians originally camped in the Blue Hills region of Eastern Mass. Massasoit was the sachem of this tribe.
As for Natick, the word is also purely Massachusett-Wampanoag, and means "Home" or "Our home." By the mid-1640s, the Indians of John Elliot's Praying Village in Nonantum were being corrupted constantly by Englishmen bartering for land with whiskey and rum. To his Indian sachem right-hand man, William Awhawtan, Elliot said in effect, "Let's get out of here, Bill. These guys are like giant ants at a picnic that is too important to all of us."
Elliot, Awhawtan, and about 50 Indians left Nonantum on that first day. It was the people of Awhawtan's wigwam who came upon the Falls in today's South Natick. Liking what they saw, they took a vote: Stay or Don't Stay. It was the former, unanimously. And Elliot said, "What do you want to call our new home?"
In his native language, one of the young boys said, "That is a good name, Home." The last word in the sentence was "Natick," And that's how Natick got its name.
There is a well-known historical reference called the Natick Dictionary, which was based on Elliot's monumental effort of translating the Bible into the language of the Massachusetts.
Personally, I doubt very much that William Awhawtan would be offended if anyone referred to him as a red man, or if the called his people Redmen.
STEPHEN BOUDREAU
Natick