Pictured above: Photo taken by Hassanamisco Nipmuc Sonksq, Cheryll Toney Holley, of the  Massachusett Psalter that was published in 1709. Credit to Wawaus for his printed works appears  only once in print as shown, “J. Printer.”

NOTE: DRAFT

Wawaus, alias “James-the-Printer” later shortened to “James Printer,” was an important Nipmuc leader who experienced and observed the beginning of a wide range of genocide[5,6], from physical to biological to cultural, on his person, community, and livelihood. Wawaus is most known today for his integral work translating and typesetting the first bible printed in the Americas in 1663, usually referred to as the Eliot Bible or the Indian Bible. He was a skilled scholar, linguist, printer, and eventually community leader, yet like many Indigenous people during the 17th century in New England, was mistreated, abused,  arrested, threatened, falsely imprisoned, and forced into exile on Deer Island in the Boston Harbor by the newly settled foreign imperialists. Many members of his Nipmuc community were sold into slavery, hunted down, or displaced from their lands. Wawaus survived the war and lived until 1709; his home land has survived today as an important anchor for the Nipmuc Tribe.

Wawaus was the son of a Nipmuc leader named Naoas. Wawaus was born sometime around 1640 at Hassanamesit, one of the many Nipmuc villages that existed before contact with the English Puritans, and which still exists today southeast of Worcester, Massachusetts. Even though the Nipmuc were a matriarchal society, the name of Wawaus’ mother was not recorded.

Before the age of six, Wawaus was taken and sent to Harvard College’s Indian school and was later “put  to apprentice” under his “master” Samuel Green as a “printer’s devil”; a person, typically a  young boy, serving at or below the level of apprentice in a printing establishment. In Indigenous culture at that time, sending a child to live with allies was an act of diplomacy. The child would learn the culture and practice of the other community and bring that knowledge and  understanding back to their own people to build and “seal” the alliances between them. Unbeknownst to the local Indigenous communities, English methods of education and customs  were vastly different and most likely horrifying for the Indigenous youth themselves who were  subjected to isolation and corporal punishment, which was foreign to their own cultures and  communities. The physical punishment of children was not practiced in Native space. In their  culture children are “the most humored, cockered, indulged things in the world.” The rigid  disciplinary system that was meant to “break the will of their young people” and “tame” the  “wildness” and “natural depravity” of children was rejected by Nipmuc and neighboring communities. [1]

In 1656, Wawaus with one of his brothers, Job Kattenanit, along with several other indigenous  children from neighboring tribes, entered Daniel Weld’s preparatory school on Crooked Lane in  the town of Roxbury, Massachusetts. At the Roxbury grammar school (which continues today

as Roxbury Latin), Wawaus and his peers learned to read and write in Latin, English, Greek, and  Algonquin, to cipher, along with learning to adopt English social customs. In the year 1659, at  the end of his tutelage at the grammar school, Wawaus arrived in Harvard Yard and was put to

work on the printing press at the Indian College. Wawaus’ days were spent performing arduous  work for long grueling hours. He was put to work on two presses, twelve to thirteen hours a day on  the lower floor of the Indian College, printing one sheet at a time after setting out each individual piece of type by hand. [1]

Wawaus was invaluable to the printing process. Without Wawaus’ dual fluency and mastery of  the art of typesetting the process would have been maddeningly slow and “grossly inefficient,”  according to Elliot. By 1661, the press had published a first print run of 1,500 copies of the New Testament in the Massachusett language. By 1663, the entire bible was ready for publication. Wawaus remained for a time at the Indian College where he continued to work the press and publish bilingual literature before being able to return to Okkanamesit in Nipmuc country, after the arrival of one of his nephews and before the start of King Philip’s War (1675-1677) in New England.

Before King Philip’s war began, the “praying Indians” at Hassanamesit declared that they  “accounted themselves as the English, and they would not fight against themselves.” At a  meeting at Hassanamesit in June of 1675, the people of Hassanamesit were not asked to pledge  their assistance to the English should violence break out, but only to inform them if they heard  of any word going to Metacom, the Pokanoket leader. On August 21, 1675, Wawaus went out hunting with a group of  men north of Okkanamesit. Together they successfully tracked and shot three deer and divided the meat among them, returning that evening. The next morning was Sabbath where they attended church at their fort. On August 30, Wawaus was still at Okkanamesit with his brothers and kin when Samuel Mosely, a settler and militiaman who had a reputation for barbaric brutality and spontaneous cruelty, including feeding captives to his dogs, forced his way into Okkanamesit, dragging Wawaus and his kin at gunpoint from the fort and bound them like captives. His father and brother had to watch as Wawaus’s arms were shackled behind his back and rope tied around his neck, which Mosely used to bind him to his fellow kin. From Okkanamesit, Mosely and his men rode horseback literally dragging James and his ten kin for thirty miles straight to a jail in Cambridge.

On the same day that Wawaus and his kin were prejudicially imprisoned, the Massachusetts  Council changed the rules of their diplomacy “declaring that all Christian Indians be forthwith  confined” to five of their “plantations.” Wawaus and his kin were imprisoned until late  September. The weeks during their imprisonment were filled with many fights amongst the local  settlers who advocated and demanded the execution of James and his kin without a jury or trial.  They were “several times” over “tried for their lives and condemned to die,” narrowly averting a  lynching by a mob of 40 men. A force led by Plymouth Captain Gorham and Massachusetts  Lieutenant Upham in early September “destroy[ed] much of the corn and burn[ed] the  wigwams’ ‘ at Wawaus’s home, Hassanamesit. It was only through the pressure applied by local  Mohegan allies that James and his kin were finally released and allowed to stand trial. The court  found Wawaus and all but two of the men not guilty, and released them into the hands of  Wabun, the ruler at Natick. There was no apology or compensation for the extended and unjustified imprisonment.

After Wawaus’s release he went back into the colonial-assigned Nipmuc plantations. The new order from the Massachusetts Council criminalized all independent movement, prohibiting travel more than one mile from that “center” lest they be taken as an “enemie,” unless they were “in the company of some English, or in their service.” Any indigenous person found outside of these small limits could be “taken” or killed without a trial, as the council had declared that their “blood” would “be upon their own heads.” These enforced meager limits impacted their ability to provide food, water, and other necessities for sustenance and survival. In the words of the Massachusetts Council: “Any Indian travelling in any of our towns or woods…command  them under their guard and examination, or kill and destroy them as best they can.” The Massachusetts General Court also enacted a law, called the Indian Imprisonment Act, in 1675 that prevented colonists from entertaining Natives: “That, from this publication herof, no person or persons whatever, in the said town,  shall, upon any pretense whatsoever, entertain, one, or countenance any Indian, under  penalty of being betrayer of this government.” This order effectively banned all Indigenous people from entering the city of Boston without benefit of the “two musketeers” required as an escort. Rather shockingly, this law was not repealed until 2005.

Even though Wawaus had been falsely accused of murder, imprisoned, and nearly lynched by those with whom he had worked with including fellow scholars and former English neighbors, and even after all of the education he had acquired, these experiences could not have prepared Wawaus for the real threat of being falsely imprisoned again in Cambridge, taken to the desolate Deer Island where his brother Job now was placed, being sold into slavery and shipped off to the Caribbean or Barbados, or killed by either side.

On a brisk November day, some three hundred of their Nipmuc relations came down from the north to Hassanamesit. They carried an urgent message, asking the families at Hassanamesit to “go with them quietly” to Menimesit. They warned, if “you go to the English again” they would  “force you all to some Island as the Natick Indians are, where you will be in danger and starved with cold and hunger, and most probably in the end be all sent out of the country for slaves.” Just days before this message, the community at Natick had been carried away bound in chains and tied up with rope as captives in horse-drawn carts in the middle of the night, then taken by canoe down the Charles River, past the Indian College, and loaded onto ships to cross the turbulent, windy harbor to be “disposed of to Deer Island.” This place that was once used as a  planting place for their ancestors was now an isolated place, long deforested and barren of  shelter, deer, and essential resources. By the end of that same year, Natick Natives were joined in the same manner by Punkapoag and Nashoba Natives for the duration of the war. Wawaus and his relations knew that if they were all forced to Deer Island, “they should bee in danger to famish.” Whether Wawaus and his kin left willingly, perhaps “redeemed” by their relations, or were  “carried away captive” as Gookin described, has been lost to history.

Wawaus and his kin left Hassanamesit and went to Menimesit with the warrior Nipmucs, where he became a key instrument in written communications between the significant Wampanoag  Sonskq, Weetamoo, and the invading colonists. While at Menimesit, in stark contrast with the  conditions of the “Praying Indians” under “protection” of the English on Deer Island, the thousands of people there were very well fed and well housed, with plenty of resources. In  February and March, raiding parties emerged from Menimesit and led raids on the English  towns in their territory. After the successful raid on Medfield as the warriors left the town, they  set fire to the bridge that crossed the Charles River, symbolically breaking the chain that had  bound them to the Massachusetts colonists. Wawaus would have walked that very bridge as he  traveled between Cambridge and Hassanamesit. Wawaus is credited with writing this  awikhigan (an Abenaki word originally referring to birchbark maps and scrolls, but has come to encompass letters, petitions, books, and words of art) [1] , posted “at the foot of the bridge which they fyred”: “Thou English man hath  provoked us to anger & wrath & we care not though we have war with thee this 21 years for there are many of us 300 of which hath fought with thee at this time, we have nothing but our lives to loose but thou hast many fair houses cattell & much good things.” The letter made clear that it was the English that started the war and that while Indigenous people may lose their lives, the English would lose possessions and land. The letter also showed that the Nipmucs knew how precious possessions and land were to the English and how little value the English placed on Nipmuc lives.

Wawaus penned a second letter to the English which negotiated and led to the successful  release of captive Mary Rowlandson in May of 1676. During this time his brother Job had been  allowed to leave Deer Island under the condition of serving as a scout for the English; in doing  so he was securing survival of his wife, children, father and other kin that were displaced on the  island with him as well. As the war was coming to an end, Wawaus fought alongside Sonskq  Weetamoo and Job alongside the English. After the war “ended,” the retaliation by the English  was swift and brutal.

Job, having been able to “prove” himself loyal to the English, along with a few other Natives,  were able to petition for the redemption of his kin and other fellow Natives who sought  liberation. In this petition they pleaded for “The lives and libertyes of those few of our poor  friends and kindred.” Unfortunately, this only forestalled the enslavement and death of those  promised amnesty. The English did not stand by their own declaration which promised “lives  and liberty” even “to those that have been our enemies.” James and Job were forced to watch as their kin and relations that came in under the guise of protection were sentenced to death,  forced to work as scouts for the English, trafficked into slavery to the Caribbean, and the  children who came in were divided among the colonists and bound to servitude.

Not long thereafter, Wawaus returned to working at the printing press at the Indian College, where they printed a second edition of the Indian Bible in 1685.  In a letter to Robert Boyle in 1683, Eliot wrote, “We have but one man viz. the Indian printer that is able to compose the sheets, and correct the press, with understanding.” He also attained the role as leader and teacher at Hassanamesit after his older brother, Annaweekin, had died. In his later years he continued to advocate for the protection of Nipmuc lands for his kin and relations who survived. The final remaining parcel of Nipmuc lands at Wawaus’ home in Hassanamesit has never been out of the possession of the Nipmuc Tribe, and today it remains a sacred meeting place where he is well remembered and revered by his descendants.

Sources/for further reading:

1. Brooks, Lisa. Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War. New Haven, CT: Yale  University Press, 2018.
2. Drake, Samuel G. The book of the Indians of North America. Boston: Josiah Drake, 1833.
3. O’Brien, Jean M. Dispossession by degrees: Indian land and identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1790. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
4. www.Cherylltoneyholly.com
5. The American Genocide of the Indians—Historical Facts and Real Evidence (fmprc.gov.cn)
6. When Native Americans Were Slaughtered in the Name of ‘Civilization’ | HISTORY