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Massasoit Sachem ( ) or Ousamequin (1661)"Native People" (page), "Massasoit (Ousamequin) Sachem" (section), MayflowerFamilies.com, web page: MFcom-Native was the sachem or leader of the Wampanoag confederacy. Massasoit means Great Sachem. Although Massasoit was only his title, English colonists mistook it as his name and it stuck.Bicknell, p. 12
Massasoit's people had been seriously weakened by a series of epidemics and were vulnerable to attacks by the Narragansetts, and he formed an alliance with the colonists at Plymouth Colony for defense against them. It was through his assistance that the Plymouth Colony avoided starvation during the early years.
Outbreaks of an unidentified disease had devastated the Pokanokets, and Massasoit 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,Bradford, William (1952). Morison, Samuel Eliot (ed.). Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 80, n.8 and he learned to speak English from fishermen who plied those waters. Massasoit sent him to approach the colonists to find out whether their intentions were peaceful.
Massasoit 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. "Pokanoket Leaders", Wampanoag Nation According to English sources, Massasoit prevented the failure of Plymouth Colony and the starvation that the Pilgrims faced during its earliest years.
The alliance came under other tension in later years, as the colonists expanded into new lands in order to support their growing colony. Massasoit sold a tract of land 14 miles square to Myles Standish and others of Duxbury in 1649 to alleviate tension and maintain the peace. The sale took place atop Sachem Rock, an outcropping on the Satucket River in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts. The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The half century of peace that Massasoit so assiduously maintained collapsed soon after his death. Wamsutta broke away from his father's diplomacy and began an alliance with Connecticut Colony.
Sources describe Massasoit as humane and honest, kept his word, and endeavored to imbue his people with a love for peace. He kept the Pilgrims advised of any warlike designs toward them by other tribes. It is unclear when Massasoit died. Some accounts claim that it was as early as 1660; others contend that he died as late as 1662. He was anywhere from 80 to 90 at the time.
Wamsutta died suddenly within a year of his succession, and Massasoit's second son Metacom became sachem of the Pokanokets and chief sachem of the Greater Wampanoag Confederacy. He concluded that Wamsutta had been murdered at the hands of the Colonists, and this was one of the factors that led to King Philip's War, one of the bloodiest wars in Colonial American history.
A statue of Massasoit by sculptor Cyrus E. Dallin stands near Plymouth Rock, with others outside the Utah State Capitol building, on the campus of Brigham Young University, at the Springville Museum of Art in Springville, Utah, and in Kansas City, Missouri at the corner of Main Street and Emanuel Cleaver II Blvd. In Massachusetts, both Massasoit Community College and Massasoit State Park "Massasoit State Park", Commonwealth of Massachusetts are named for him.
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