Editing Medford, Massachusetts (section)

=== Indigenous history ===
[[File:Wood 1634 Medford Detail.png|left|thumb|296x296px|Detail of William Wood's 1634 map of New England, showing Naumkeag sachem Wonohaquaham, known by English colonists as Sagamore John, in Medford<ref>{{Cite web|title=The south part of New England as it planted this yeare, 1634|url=https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:q524n611v|access-date=2021-12-11|website=www.digitalcommonwealth.org|language=en}}</ref>]]
[[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]] inhabited the area that would become Medford for thousands of years prior to [[European colonization of the Americas]]. At the time of European contact and exploration, Medford was the winter home of the [[Naumkeag people|Naumkeag]] people, who farmed corn and created fishing weirs at multiple sites along the [[Mystic River]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|last=Massachusetts Historical Commission|date=1980|title=MHC Reconnaissance Town Reports: Medford|url=https://www.sec.state.ma.us/mhc/mhcpdf/townreports/Boston/mdf.pdf}}</ref> Naumkeag [[sachem]] [[Nanepashemet]] was killed and buried at his fortification in present-day Medford during a war with the [[Tarrantine]]s in 1619.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last1=Bradford|first1=William|url=http://archive.org/details/mourtsrelationo00dextgoog|title=Mourt's relation or journal of the plantation at Plymouth|last2=Winslow|first2=Edward|last3=Dexter|first3=Henry Martyn|date=1865|publisher=Boston, J. K. Wiggin|others=Harvard University}}</ref> The contact period introduced several European infectious diseases which would decimate native populations in [[virgin soil epidemic]]s, including a smallpox epidemic which in 1633 killed Nanepashemet's sons, sachems [[Montowampate|Montowompate]] and [[Wonohaquaham]]. Sagamore Park in West Medford is a native burial site from the contact period, which includes the remains of a likely sachem, either Nanepashemet or Wonohaquaham.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0" /> After the 1633 epidemic, Nanepashemet's widow, known only as the [[Squaw Sachem of Mistick]], led the Naumkeag, and over the next two decades would deed large parts of Naumkeag territory to English settlers. In 1639, the [[Massachusetts General Court]] purchased the land that would become present-day Medford, then within the boundaries of [[Charlestown, Boston|Charlestown]], from the Squaw Sachem.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 24., The Indians of the Mystic valley and the litigation over their land.|url=http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2005.05.0024:chapter=26|access-date=2021-12-11|website=www.perseus.tufts.edu}}</ref>