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Note: This profile defers to Ousamequin's actual name, not his Anglophone one. Contrary to popular belief, "Massasoit" is not a given name in Wampanoag; rather, it is a title meaning "Great Sachem." Though not an absolute comparison, an Anglophone, Western/colonized parallel for a sachem is a governor of an individual U.S. state, while a Massasoit is similar to an elected president who is the senior governor of the entire United States.
Ousamequin, most commonly known to settlers as Massasoit, was both the sachem (chief) of the Pokanoket Tribal Nation and the elected Massasoit (great sachem) of the 69-tribe Wampanoag Confederacy, which consisted of the areas now called Rhode Island, southeastern Massachusetts, and the eastern half of New York's Long Island.
At the time of the pilgrims' arrival in Plymouth, the realm of the Pokanokets included parts of Rhode Island and much of southeastern Massachusetts. Ousamequin lived in Sowams, a village at Pokanoket in modern-day Warren, Rhode Island. He held the allegiance of lesser Pokanoket sachems. In 1621, he sent Squanto to live among the colonists at Plymouth.
Outbreaks of smallpox had devastated the Pokanokets, and Ousamequin sought an alliance with the colonies of New England against the neighboring Narragansetts who controlled an area west of Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island. Samoset was a minor Abenaki sachem (sagamore) who hailed from the Muscongus Bay area of Maine, and he learned to speak English from fishermen who plied those waters. Ousamequin sent him to approach the colonists to find out whether their intentions were peaceful.
Ousamequin forged critical political and personal ties with colonial leaders William Bradford, Edward Winslow, Stephen Hopkins, John Carver, and Myles Standish, ties which grew out of a peace treaty negotiated on March 22, 1621. The alliance ensured that the Pokanokets remained neutral during the Pequot War in 1636. According to English sources, Ousamequin prevented the failure of Plymouth Colony and the starvation that the Pilgrims faced during its earliest years.
The text above incorporates text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
As noted above, he is known as "Massasoit" to colonists, but that was actually his title. His given name, Ousamequin, means "Yellow Feather" (ousa = "yellow," mequin = "feather").
"Ousamequin" appears with many different spellings in English-language documents, including Woosamequin, Asuhmequin, Oosamequen, Osamekin, Owsamequin, Owsamequine, and Ussamequen.
The wife or wives of Ousamequin was not recorded, but records show that he had four known children:
Older genealogies and histories list a third son, Sunconewhew (or Sonkanuhoo). In 1996, that was definitively disproven by Terence G. Byrne and Kathryn Fairbanks.
1600 |
1600
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near Motaup (present-day Mount Hope), present-day Bristol County, present-day Rhode Island
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1639 |
1639
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Sowans, Mount Hope, Bristol, Rhode Island
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1661 |
September 1661
Age 61
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Pokanoket, Bristol County, Rhode Island
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