Who was John Sassamon?

If you live in or pass through Natick, you may know Sassamon Road and the Sassamon Trace Golf Course. The Natick High School newspaper was formerly called Sassamon, and from 1925 to 2005, the high school yearbook was called The Sassamon. Yet, while the name “Sassamon” is remembered in Natick today, too often the story of the man behind the name is overlooked.

Wassausmon (Wussausmon) was known to 17th-century Puritan colonists as John Sassamon, a Massachusett man and talented linguist who was deeply involved with the creation and administration of “Praying Towns” in eastern Massachusetts. He also translated the Christian Bible into the Algonquian language for use by “Praying Indians.” He was highly regarded among Native and English people for his work as an English-Massachusett interpreter, scribe, and counselor. Sassamon’s death—he may have been murdered—in January 1675 was a pivotal event preceding the outbreak of King Philip’s War.

A Closer Look at the Life of Wassausmon/John Sassamon

Sassamon was born c.1620 in the Blue Hills area of Canton, MA. Not too much is known about his early life. We know very little about how he looked. He may have attended an “Indian Charity School” in Cambridge as a boy. He lived with his parents in Dorchester (now Milton, MA) for many years. Increase Mather (1639-1723), a notable Puritan clergyman, recorded that Sassamon’s mother and father “died [as] Christians,” perhaps in a 1633 smallpox epidemic. In his youth, Sassamon was sheltered in the family of an Englishman, Richard Callicott (1604-1686) of Dorchester, who probably helped him learn to speak and write English. In 1637 “Sosoman, the Indian” served with Callicott (on the commissary staff with the rank of sergeant) as a soldier and interpreter for the colonial troops fighting in the Pequot War (1636-1638). During the war, according to Captain John Underhill (1597-1672), “an Indian with us that was an interpreter [most likely Sassamon]” killed a Pequot warrior who noticed that he was “in English clothes” and shouted, “What are you, an Indian or an Englishman?” After the war, Sassamon may have married a captive Pequot woman.

With Waban of Nonantum, Sassamon was among the Native leaders of the first group of Algonquian-speaking Natives who moved to Natick in 1651 to establish the first “Praying Indian Town.” They had the support of Rev. John Eliot. a well-connected Puritan minister who led the colonial missionary efforts and was called “Apostle to the Indians” by many of his contemporaries. Sassamon helped to build the town’s first meetinghouse and worked in Natick as a schoolmaster and translator. As one of Eliot’s favorite and most talented students, he studied for a semester in 1653 at Harvard College with Eliot’s son, John Jr., and two other young Englishmen. (Two years later, Harvard opened a new college building to educate young Native men.) Sassamon converted to Christianity and, in Natick in 1660, he was likely among the first 15 “Praying Indians” who were recognized by Puritan ministers as well-informed and genuinely committed “visible saints” who were ready to form the first Puritan church for Algonquian people.

In the 1660s, Sassamon was among the leaders in Natick who joined Eliot on an expanded evangelization project throughout the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Sassamon worked among the Wampanoags and the Narragansetts in the southern region of the colony.

With the help of Sassamon and other Native linguists, Eliot became the first Englishman to make a serious effort to learn the Algonquin languages spoken by eastern New England Natives in the 17th century. Knowledge of the language and the ability to write it phonetically was the basis for his major work: translating the Christian Bible into the Algonquian languages. [The Natick Historical Society has a second edition of the Algonquian (Eliot) Bible, printed in 1685.] Sassamon was one of Eliot’s primary assistants in translation, and he may have created the method that Eliot and his English teachers used in teaching Native students to read English.

As a Massachusett man who could speak and write English and one of the few bilingual people in the colony, Sassamon played a unique and vital role in the evolving relations between Algonquian and English people. For many Puritans, Sassamon exemplified the success of their efforts to convert and assimilate indigenous people into English colonial society. For many Algonquians, Sassamon provided a crucial link to the Massachusetts Bay colonists. Sassamon was, paradoxically, a highly valued insider in both cultures and also a somewhat enigmatic outsider when conflicts made adversaries of the Algonquians and the English. As prize-winning historian Jill Lepore wrote, Sassamon was “…caught between two worlds but fully accepted by neither.”

Late in his life, Sassamon maintained close relationships with several Algonquian leaders, including Massasoit (c1581-1661), sachem of the Wampanoags. After Massasoit’s death, Sassamon acted as an interpreter and scribe for Massasoit’s sons: first, for Wamsutta (c1634-1662), whom the colonists called Alexander, and later, from 1664 to 1666, for Metacom (1638-1676), known as Philip, or King Philip. In 1664, with Eliot’s support, Sassamon and others from Natick went to Metacom to teach him to read (and possibly to provide Eliot with reports on Metacom’s activities). In about 1671, Sassamon became Metacom’s aide and teacher.

Subsequently, with Eliot’s guidance, Sassamon began “a serious missionary effort” among the Wampanoag and Narragansett people, and he established a home near Taunton with his second wife, a daughter of Tuspaquin (known as the Black Sachem of the Assawompsetts). Sassamon and his wife had at least one daughter. The historical record does not indicate whether Sassamon’s missionary efforts were successful. Indeed, Metacom/King Philip strongly resisted missionary efforts and would go on to lead the opposition among many Native nations to the increasing dominance of the English colonists.

In January 1675, Sassamon was serving as a minister to a “Praying Indian” group in Namasket (now Middleborough) when he learned that Metacom/King Philip was actively coordinating the support of many sachems for a war against the English colonists. Sassamon trudged through winter snows to Plymouth to warn Governor Josiah Winslow of the danger. His message was dismissed because, as Winslow explained, “there was but this one testimony of an Indian….” Sadly, the Governor offered Sassamon no protections for his journey home.

Metacom and his loyal followers probably considered Sassamon to be a traitor. On his way home to Namasket, Sassamon crossed a frozen waterway and was killed or drowned at Assawompset Pond. Murder, suicide, accidental drowning—all have been suggested as the cause of his death. Chroniclers of the 17th century could not agree on the circumstances, but some Christians and English colonists considered Sassamon a martyr. An English court quickly convicted and sentenced to death three Wampanoag supporters of Metacom/King Philip for assassinating Sassamon. The trial and sentencing undermined the sovereignty and jurisdiction of Native nations, and further fueled rising tensions in colonial New England. By the end of 1675, English colonists and Algonquian nations were engaged in one of the bloodiest wars in American history: King Philip’s War, 1675-78.

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TAKAWAMBPAIT, Natick’s first Native American minister, click here

NATICK’S BEGINNINGS, CLICK HERE

THE FIRST PRAYING INDIAN VILLAGE, CLICK HERE

THE ALGONQUIAN AND ENGLISH ROOTS OF NATICK, CLICK HERE

THE ELIOT CHURCH, CLICK HERE

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Sources and additional readings:

Natick Historical Society collections.

DeLucia, Christine M. Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018.

Lepore, Jill. “Dead Men Tell No Tales: John Sassamon and the Fatal Consequences of Literacy.” American Quarterly 46, no. 4 (December 1994): 479-512.

Lepore, Jill. The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.

Morley, James W. Natick 1651-2000: The Many Lives of a Storied New England Town. 2019).

Nash, Gary B. Red, White & Black: The Peoples of Early North America. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.