[2] This was followed by devastating impacts of virgin soil epidemics such as smallpox, influenza, scarlet fever and others to which the indigenous people lacked natural immunity.

Their territories, on the more fertile and flat coastlines, with access to coastal resources, were mostly taken over by English colonists, as the Massachusett were too few in number to put up any effective resistance.

[4] The Pennacook and Pawtucket lived north of the Massachusett tribe, the Nipmuc to the west, Narragansett and Pequot to the southwest in Rhode Island and Connecticut, and Pokanoket, now known as Wampanoag to the south.

The appointment of guardians to administer the assets of the Praying Indians and represent them before the colony in 1743 ended the authority of local chiefs and the last vestiges of traditional tribal organization.

Factors that led to the decline of the spoken language include the rapid rates of intermarriage with non-Indian spouses outside the speech community in the mid-18th century, the need for English for employment and participation in general society, the lack of prestige regarding the Indian language, and the dissolution of Indian communities and outmigration of people leading to greater isolation of speakers.

[17] Other regional plant foods included grapes, strawberries, blackberries, currants, cherries, plums, raspberries, acorns, hickory nuts, chestnuts, butternuts, and leafy greens and pseudocereals such as chenopods.

With minimal livestock, Indigenous peoples of the Americas lacked immunity to many zoonotic diseases carried by Europeans and the animals they brought.

Up to an estimated 90 percent of the Native population of the Massachusetts Bay Colony may have been killed by infectious diseases, known as the "Great Dying," in the early 17th century.

[28] English settlers established their first permanent foothold in New England with the founding of the Plymouth Colony by Pilgrims in 1620 near the site of the former Wampanoag village of Patuxet,[29] just a short distance south of the historic boundary with the Massachusett.

[citation needed] Chickatawbut's fears were confirmed when the Plymouth Colony expanded to Wessagusset, in Massachusett territory, with the arrival of a new ship of colonists.

To prevent an attack, Standish ordered a preemptive strike in 1624, which led to the deaths of Pecksuot, Wituwamat, and other Massachusett warriors who were lured under the pretense of peace and negotiation to meet with the colonists.

[31] Standish further angered the Massachusett when he led his men deep into their territory to suppress the nascent colony of Merrymount, which had been established by Thomas Morton and which had friendly relations with neighboring Indian tribes.

The sachems began selling land at a price, often with stipulations allowing the Indians to collect, gather, fish or forage, but these arrangements were seldom honored by the Pilgrims.

As a result of the rapid loss of land, the Massachusett and other local tribes sent their leaders to Boston for the 1644 Acts of Submission, bringing the Indians under the control of the colonial government and subject to both its laws and conversion attempts from Christian missionaries.

The Pilgrims feared the Native presence, as they were a numerical majority when all the different groups of New England were taken together and were dependent on them for survival and trade and the colonists were unable to expand.

The Native populations continued to fall, with diseases such as scarlet fever, typhus, measles, mumps, influenza, tuberculosis, whooping cough taking large tolls.

[35] As stated in the royal charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony of 1628, "according to the Courſe of other Corporations in this our Realme of England ... whereby our ſaid People, Inhabitants thee ... maie wynn and incite the Natives of Country, to the Knowledg and Obedience of the onlie true God and Savior of Mankinde, and the Chriſtian Fayth, which ... is the principall Ende of this Plantation.

Eliot began to learn the language, employing the help of two Indian indentured servants fluent in English, including Cockenoe, a Montaukett originally from Long Island that also spoke Massachusett, and John Sassamon from a Neponset family.

[38] The reaction to Christianity was mixed, with many Native leaders continuing to be wary of the Pilgrims and urging their people to remain traditionalists whereas many wholeheartedly embraced it.

Those that did embrace the new religion often did so because the traditional medicines and rituals conducted by healers known as powwow (pawâwak) /pawaːwak/ failed to protect them from settler encroachment of their lands or the novel pathogens to which they lacked resistance.

[39] Eliot urged Waban and the other newly converted Massachusett to settle along a bend of the Quinobequin River but were immediately sued as squatters by the residents of Dorchester.

The inhabitants were forced to observe the eight tenements of the "Leaf of Rules" distributed in the Bibles which forbid Indian cultural norms such as consenting pre-marital sex, cracking lice between teeth, avoidance of agriculture by men and re-enforced adoption of Puritan-style modesty and hairstyles.

The Massachusett leaders were also closer to the colonial authorities and thus often chosen to spread official messages, restoring the old power dynamic vis-à-vis other tribes.

Natick had an independent congregation with a Christian-style church, but the services were conducted in Massachusett with Indian preachers and the parishioners were called by Native drumming.

The Praying Indians of Natick were brought to court several times by colonists living in settlement of Dedham who claimed some of the surrounding land, but with Eliot's assistance, most of these attempts failed.

By the early 1670s, Waban and Cutshamekin had begun to address Daniel Gookin and warn of the increasing discontent of the interior Indians such as the Nipmuc people.

In defiance, Metacomet murdered his interpreter to the colonial government, the Massachusett John Sassamon, before fleeing and seeking the support of the disgruntled tribes, culminating in the raid of Swansea in June 1675.

Metacomet was able to bring the Narragansett, Nipmuc, Pocomtuc, Podunk, Tunxi peoples into his forces, organizing attacks on numerous outposts such as Sudbury, Lancaster, Turner's Falls and other colonial settlements, leading many settlers to flee their lands for fortified towns.

As the war progressed, the settlers decided to recruit some of the Praying Indians as scouts, guides and to fill the ranks of the colonial militia, with a regiment of Praying Indians, including many Massachusett, recruited by Daniel Gookin sent to face Metacomet's warriors at Swansea, but it is known that other Massachusett aided the colonial militias in Lancaster, Brookfield and Mount Hope battles of the war.

The guardians, however, no longer had to maintain the rigorous lists of people associated with the land, which long had been used to segregate the Indians from the non-Indians especially as rates of intermarriage had increased.