by Carlene Phillips ·
Friday, January 16, 2026
Daniel Boudillion and Sagamore Strong Bear Medicine, a descendant of the Nashobahs, will be speakers at the Warner Free Lecture Friday, Jan. 23, at 7 p.m. in Volunteers Hall. (Courtesy photo)
From 1654 to 1676, the Nashobah Praying Indians, who had adopted Christianity and Puritan laws and customs, had a thriving settlement, largely in what is now Littleton. Daniel Boudillion, a local historian, has been researching them for more than 20 years. He and Sagamore Strong Bear Medicine, a descendant of the Nashobahs, will be speakers at the Warner Free Lecture Friday, Jan. 23, at 7 p.m. in Volunteers Hall. Boudillion will talk about the history of the Nashobahs, with pictures and graphics; Strong Bear Medicine will add his unique Native perspective and will do some singing and drumming.
The Rev. John Eliot was the Englishman who, between 1646 and 1675, established 14 praying villages in Massachusetts, of which Nashobah was one. During the talk, Strong Bear Medicine will relate details of what the process of conversion was like for Native people.
Strong Bear Medicine grew up in Ponkapoag, one of the old praying villages. His mother was grand chief, later his sister became chief, and now his niece is chief. The tribe is officially the Nashobah, Natick, Ponkapoag Praying Indians. After Metacom’s (King Philip’s) War ended in 1678, members of the Nashobah village, along with most of the other surviving Praying Indians, reestablished themselves at the “mother village,” the Natick Praying Indian Village. Strong Bear Medicine currently resides in Littleton at the old village site. The tribe gathers once a month at the Eliot Church in South Natick for religious services.
Boudillion grew up in Littleton and as a boy knew all about Chief Tahattawan, the Praying Indians, and the old village at the Sarah Doublet Forest between Fort Pond in Littleton and Nagog Pond, on the border with Acton. In an email he wrote, “Much of my youth was spent exploring the woods and lakes where the old village used to be. What I remember most of these days was the mystery and wonder of walking the very land that Chief Tahattawan had walked. My explorations gave me a glimpse of the land as it used to be, both Native and Colonial, before the development erased much of it.”
Boudillion moved back to Littleton in 2000, and he said it was then that he wanted to “take what I knew of the old places that still remained, mostly forgotten, and look at the historical side of it. Over the years I developed a deep knowledge of the history and how it fit into the land.”
In 2017 Boudillion met Strong Bear Medicine in a chance encounter that he said “turned into one of the most wonderful turning points in my life, and changed my life forever.” Both men were at an event of the Westford Historical Society. A fellow board member of Boudillon from the Littleton Historical Society heard Strong Bear Medicine talking about Chief Tahattawan. “Hearing that familiar name, she introduced herself and said that Bear needed to meet me. Both Bear and I were skeptical of each other until we met for a walkabout at the Sarah Doublet Forest in December of 2017. After about five minutes we became great friends, and continue to be so to this day. Bear is family.” Boudillion added, “Bear is a storyteller, and I have heard many wonderful tales from him.”
At the time, Boudillion said he believed, as did most people in Littleton, that the Nashobah Praying Indians were extinct. Meeting Strong Bear Medicine “was quite an amazing moment to find this was not true at all.” Bouillon said he did not start out to do anything more than pass on his historical knowledge of Littleton-
Nashobah to the town, “but that chance meeting with Strong Bear Medicine changed everything.” He published “History of the Nashobah Praying Indians: Doings, Sufferings, Survival & Triumph” in 2023. The book covers the period from 1654 to 1676.
According to Boudillion, the 1654 Nashobah Plantation encompassed most of what we know today as Littleton, about one-third of Boxborough, and a small slice of Acton. Nashobah (both before and during the Praying Indian era) was a Massachusett tribe village, and the band was the Nashobah band. Nashope (as it was called at the time) was Chief Tahattawan’s principal village. It was at the northeast end of Fort Pond, so named for the fort the Indians had erected to protect themselves from Mohawk raids. Boudillion said that, according to Eliot’s records, before Metacom’s war (1675 to 1678), there were about 58 people living in Nashope. They were captured during the war and imprisoned on Deer Island in Boston Harbor. When released from Deer Island, there were about 50 survivors, and most of them resettled in Natick.
Boudillion said that while people from the praying villages of Natick and Punkapoag spent six months on Deer Island, the Nashobah spent only three. He explained that this was because John Hoar of Concord got permission from the Great and General Court to house the Nashobah on his property in Concord, which he did for about three months. John Hoar’s house is better known today as Orchard House, which is where the Alcott family eventually resided after the failed experiment at Fruitlands in Harvard.
“History of the Nashobah Praying Indians,” is a stand-alone book of four chapters excerpted from a 24-chapter book (still in editing) on Littleton-Nashobah history, 1654-1720. Boudillion said the entire book took about 20 years of research and fieldwork, and two years to write. He used original documents wherever possible, including deeds, and his own fieldwork. “At some point,” Boudillion said, “I plan to write a book on the modern Nashobah, and this will include the many tales I’ve heard from Bear, Caring Hands, and current Chief Quiet Storm.”
The book, for sale at the program, is $20 cash, and all proceeds go to the Nashobah Praying Indians charitable organization to help fund such things as their annual powwow in Littleton in June.