Column: Tribes show long presence on Massachusetts coast

When the first English settlers came to Marblehead, there were very few Native Americans left in the area. This was because the local tribe had already been decimated by inter-tribal wars. They had also succumbed to diseases brought by European trappers and traders long before the white settlers appeared.

Marblehead’s great harbor and its west shore continually reveal signs of Native American presence — in arrowheads, fragments of tools, bits of shell and other signs that this area had been a fertile fishing ground and seasonal settlement for many centuries.

All of the tribes of the Northeast were nomadic. They followed the seasons to find food and moved from place to place. The Naumkeags, part of the Algonquin nation of woodland tribes, came to Marblehead in the warmer weather for the same reason that people come today: They fished and lived by the shore in a relaxed and healthful way.