Cesareo Contreras MetroWest Daily News, February 1, 2022
FRAMINGHAM — For too long, the story behind the “Eames Massacre” hasn’t been explained in proper context, according to Framingham History Center Curator Stacen Goldman.
As it has often been told, the story goes that on Feb. 1, 1676, a fight occurred at Mount Wayte between 11 Nipmuc men and the family of a white settler named Thomas Eames.
Eames’ wife was killed, along with five of his children. His other four kids were kidnapped. Eames was in Boston at the time seeking military protection for his family from the Native Americans.
But the description doesn’t share the Native Americans’ side of the story, or the fact that the event occurred during the height of King Philip’s War, also known as the First Indian War, Goldman said.
Using audio, illustrations and written texts, the exhibit “Watched and Worried Men: King Philip’s War in Framingham” aims to provide proper context surrounding the massacre.
“In retelling this story now, it is not my aim to condone violence or excuse murder. Rather, it is to closely examine the circumstances that surround it, and to cast light on the pieces of the story that have remained in the dark,” Goldman wrote in a statement along with the exhibit. “This is an examination of the circumstances that provoke violence, the ways in which violence begets more violence, and the consequences that reverberate into modern Framingham and beyond.”
Today is the 346th anniversary of the event.
The exhibit went live in November, during Native American Heritage Month.
The war was named for Wampanoag chief Metacom, who led the Native Americans’ 14-month “last-ditch effort” to stop English settlers from taking over their land and becoming the authority, according to History.com. Metacom gained the nickname King Philip.
“The ‘Eames Massacre,’ as it has since come to be called, has been interpreted as one of the significant moments in Framingham’s history, and the Eames family has largely been painted as the sole victims. But the truth is that this event was more complex and mutually destructive than the traditional story has led us to believe,” reads a portion of the digital exhibit.
The Framingham History Center was inspired to put on the exhibit after it received an email from a Natick resident who saw a sign describing the history of the incident while on a biking path near Mount Wayte, Goldman said in an interview with the Daily News. The resident was worried the sign didn’t tell the entire story.
She was right.
The sign reads: “WHILE THOMAS EAMES SOUGHT HELP FROM BOSTON FEBRUARY 1, 1676, THE INDIANS ATTACKED HIS WIFE AND FIVE CHILDREN WERE SLAIN AND FOUR CHILDREN WERE CAPTURED.”
The sign seems to have been put up by the Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Commission. The commission had been created in 1930 to celebrate the 300th birthday of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Up the hill, at the location of the incident, there is another sign on a rock that is placed where Eames’ home is believed to have been built.
It reads: “HERE STOOD THE HOME OF THOMAS EAMES. BURNED BY THE INDIANS IN KING PHILIP’S WAR FEB. 1. 1676. HIS WIFE AND FIVE CHILDREN WERE SLAIN AND FOUR CARRIED INTO CAPTIVITY.”
That memorial was placed by the Eames family in 1900, according to the sign.
The Nipmuc tribe were the original settlers of modern-day Framingham and the land surrounding it, Goldman said. Nipmuc translates to “Fresh Water People since the land was known for its freshwater rivers, lakes, and ponds.
As white settlers came in, they destroyed the natives’ land, forced them into debt, and pushed them into the outskirts, according to the exhibit.
“In the face of encroachment methods, Native people had three choices: cede, share or resist. Each person made their own choice for complex individual reasons, which did not preclude changing one’s approach in the future,” reads a portion of the exhibit.
At the height of King Philip’s War in December 1675, all remaining members of the Praying Indian tribe were forced into internment camps on Deer Island, a peninsula in Boston. The camps had few resources for them to survive the winter. It’s estimated that 500 to 1,100 people were forced into the camps, according to the exhibit. Half of them died of starvation and exposure.
Many Native Americans living within the Praying Indian tribe fled when they heard about the internment camps. Among them was a Native American man named Netus. He fled to a Nipmuc stronghold called Menimesit, where he was able to meet up with old friends.
Born in Hassanmesit — what is now modern-day Grafton — Netus had spent much of his adult life in Sudbury, where he was able to obtain a significant number of landholdings. At least that was before he was unfairly put into debt by white settlers and slowly forced to give up all of his land, according to the exhibit.
In January 1676, Netus, along with a group of men at the camp, made the journey to an abandoned harvest at Magunkagquog, hoping to find some corn. It was a Praying Village somewhere between Natick and Hassanmesit, according to the exhibit. When they got there, the place had been cleared out. Netus was among the men who insisted the corn had been taken by Eames, who lived the closest to the harvest, according to the exhibit.
They traveled to Eames’ home to take back their corn. At the time of their arrival, Eames had been away in Boston, and the men were fed up.
“Perhaps for Netus, this was the last straw. Despite decades of adherence to English rules and conventions, he was repeatedly denied his means of survival,” reads an excerpt from the exhibit.
No one exactly knows how the event played out, but after the incident, along with what happened to his family, Eames said he lost 30 loads of hay, 10 bushels of wheat, 40 bushels of rye and 210 bushels of Indian corn.
To learn about the aftermath of the event, visit the exhibit at https://exhibitions.framinghamhistory.org/home/watched-and-worried/.
Cesareo Contreras can be reached at 508-626-3957 or ccontreras@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @cesareo_r.