Nanepashemet

Nanepashemet
Died	1619 Massachusetts
Title	Sachem
Spouse(s)	Squaw Sachem
Children	Sagamore John, Sagamore James, Sagamore George

Nanepashemet (died 1619) was the leader, or Great Sachem, of the Pawtucket Confederation of Abenaki peoples in present-day New England before the landing of the Pilgrims. He ruled over a large part of what is now coastal Northeastern Massachusetts.

After his death in 1619, his wife, recorded by the English only as Squaw Sachem, and three sons governed the confederation's territories, during the period of the Great Migration to New England by English Puritans from about 1620 to 1640. By 1633, only the youngest son of the three, Wenepoykin, known to the colonists as "Sagamore George," had survived a major smallpox epidemic that year that decimated the tribes. He took over his brothers' territories as sachem, except for areas that had been ceded to colonists.

By c. 1607, Nanepashemet controlled the lands from the Charles River of present-day Boston, north to the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth and west to the Concord River. His influence stretched north to the Pennacook tribe, which inhabited the White Mountains region of present-day New Hampshire. As a tribal area, the Pawtucket controlled several territories: Winnisemet (around present-day Chelsea, Massachusetts), Saugus or Swampscott (Lynn), Naumkeag (Salem) (see Naumkeag people), Agawam (Ipswich), Pentucket (Haverhill), from the coast going up the Merrimack. Daniel Gookin includes Piscataqua (Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Eliot, Maine) and Accominta (York, Maine) in the Pawtucket alliance. Other sources name Mishawum (Charlestown, Massachusetts), Mistic (Medford, Massachusetts), Musketaquid (Concord, Massachusetts) and Pannukog (Concord, New Hampshire) as Pawtucket territory.

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