The hill from which the Massachusett people, and hence the state, take their name, a.k.a. the Great Blue Hill. A highway running next to a large, snow-covered hill.
12 March 2022
The name of the state comes from the name of an Indigenous people. When English settler-colonists arrived in what would become the colony and state of Massachusetts in 1620, the Massachusett people dwelled to the north of the Plymouth Colony, around and to the south of what is now Boston. Their name comes from mass- (large) + -adchu- (mountain) + -s- (little) + -et (locative suffix, place), that is “at the big hill.” The name is a reference to the highest point in the greater Boston area, called the Great Blue Hill by English settler-colonists, a reference to the color of the granite found there.
A combination of disease, war, forced emigration, and assimilation into other tribal groups resulted in the disappearance of a distinct Massachusett people by the mid nineteenth century, although a few pockets of people with a Massachusett identity survive to this day, although none have federal or state recognition.
The name of the people appears in English writing as early as 1616 when John Smith includes it in his Description of New England. The 1616 date is not a typo; the book is an account of a 1615 exploration of the region and predates English colonization of New England:
The Iles of Mattahunts are on the West side of this Bay, where are many Iles, and questionlesse good harbors: and then the Countrie of the Massachusets, which is the Paradise of all those parts: for, heere are many Iles all planted with corne; groues, mulberries, saluage gardens, and good harbors: the Coast is for the most part, high clayie sandie cliffs.
Smith also refers to the hill, from which the people took their name:
The cheefe mountaines, them of Pennobscot: the twinkling mountaine of Aucocisco; the greate mountaine of Sasanon; and the high mountaine of Massachusit: each of which you shall finde in the Mappe; their places, formes, and altitude.
Sources:
Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020. Oxfordreference.com.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2000, s.v. Massachusett, n. and adj.
Smith, John. A Description of New England. London: Humfrey Lownes for Robert Clerke, 1616, 26, 29. Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Photo credit: Joseph Finley, 2018. Fair use of a copyrighted image to illustrate the topic under discussion.