The Native Americans in Massachusetts were mostly from the Algonquian Nation; tribes included the Massachuset, Nauset, Nipmuc, Pennacook, Pocumtuc, and Wampanoag. Tragically, disease brought by pre-pilgrim European settlers decimated the Indians in 1616 and 1617.

There is a legend that Lief Erikson and his Norsemen touched the coast in the year 1000, and probably fishermen from France and Spain, bound for the teeming waters off the Grand Banks, stopped now and again to cast their nets for cod. In 1602 Bartholemew Gosnold explored the bay and christened Cape Cod for the fish that swarmed about it. Twelve years later John Smith wrote of his New England journeys with a fervor that stirred the blood of discontented English farmers.

The Pilgrims, seeking religious freedom, set sail for North America in 1620 and established their colony in Plymouth, which they had chosen under the influence of Smith's "A Description of New England". There they set up a democratic government in accordance with the famous "Mayflower Compact", an agreement binding all to confirm to the will of the majority. In 1621 the first Thanksgiving was observed.

A royal charter was granted to the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629, to promote the settlement of the territory "from sea to sea" that had been granted to the Puritans, and to govern its colonies. When John Winthrop and a large group of Puritans arrived at Salem in 1630, bearing with them the prized charter, a self-contained English colony, governed by its own members, was assured. Many immigrants felt it their mission to "civilize" the land and its people; the seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony shows a Native American Indian saying, "Come Over and Help Us."

The Massachusetts Bay Colony worked out its problems without interference from across the sea until 1660. Thereafter, a policy of stricter control was instituted. Massachusetts stoutly resisted all attempts at regulation from abroad, and consequently lost its charter in 1684.

The new restrictions applied in Massachusetts and elsewhere, provoked the series of controversies that culminated in the Revolutionary War. During the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century, Massachusetts grew in population and maritime trade. Boston became known as "The Mart of the West Indies".

The Sugar Act (1764) almost abolished the foreign trade upon which Massachusetts depended for its gold; the Stamp Act (1765) taxed out of the colony most of the funds remaining to her. Rioting and boycotts brought about the repeal of the Sugar Act in 1766, but other repressive measures followed and the people of Massachusetts were active in their defiance of each new imposition.

The "Boston Massacre" of March 5, 1770, when British Soldiers fired upon a taunting crowd of citizens, was an ominous portent of the Revolution to come. When the Tea Act was passed in 1773 it gave overwhelming subsidies, by means of a tax rebate, to the East India Company. Samuel Adams organized and directed a group of Bostonians, disguised as Indians, and dumped the cargoes of three East India Company ships into Boston Harbor. England retaliated by closing the Port of Boston and by other "Intolerable Acts". The colonial patriots called a Continental Congress that ordered a general boycott of English goods. On April 19, 1775, the embattled farmers, warned by the historic rides of Paul Revere and William Dawes, engaged the British regulars at Lexington And Concord, firing "the shot heard round the world". There followed the siege of Boston, the "glorious defeat" at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and on March 17, 1776, the British evacuation. Massachusetts, where the first blood of the Revolution was shed, had won the first important victory.

With Independence came the post-war problems of government, social, and economic progress without the English Parliment's guidance. After several years, a Constitutional Convention drew up a constitution drafted mainly by John Adams, and the people ratified it on June 15, 1780.

Following a period of economic depression and political discontent, the Federal Constitution was adopted, and under the presidency of Washington, Massachusetts prospered and expanded her foreign commerce.

Then began a new era, the gradual development of the industrial interests that were eventually to absorb the capital and enterprise heretofore devoted almost entirely to commerce. During the War of 1812 the American States had been forced to manufacture essential goods, which could not be brought across the sea from England. In 1816 a protective tariff was enacted to shield the infant industries from foreign competition. Gradually manufacturing became more and more concentrated in New England, particularly in Massachusetts.

The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 accelerated the decline of agriculture. Products from the fertile West now moved cheaply and rapidly to New England. Massachusetts farmers went West or left their farms for the factories. Young women were also employed in great numbers in the factories, for the first time; this allowed women to be more accepted in public life.

At the close of the century Massachusetts factories produced more than one-third of the nation's woolen goods. Fall River, Lawrence, Lowell, and New Bedford were preeminent in cotton textiles.

The floods of immigrants that had rolled in since the early nineteenth century, drawn here by the industrial opportunities, transformed the once predominantly English population into a mixture of national groups. In 1930 the inhabitants of Massachusetts numbered 4,249,614, of whom 65.04% were either foreign-born or of foreign or mixed parentage.

Source: State of Massachusetts.