You see the names all over town: Musketaquid, Nashawtuc, Nashoba, Squaw Sachem. These words invite us to learn the stories of the people who lived in this place for thousands of years before English settlers arrived.
The English named this place Concord in 1635, but it had long been known by the region’s first peoples as Musketaquid. In the Algonquian language, the name means “grassy river” or “grassy island,” and the Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord Rivers have always been the lifeblood of the land. As Lemuel Shattuck recounts in his 1835 History of Concord, the local people lived “[by] planting, hunting, or fishing . . . and few places produced a supply more easily than Musketaquid.” 1
The Concord Museum is unveiling a portion of its newly renovated and redesigned galleries on October 11, 2019. This is the first part of a multi-phased project that traces the lives of the people of Concord for over 10,000 years, beginning with the people of Musketaquid. The new galleries will also chronicle other key moments in Concord’s history –igniting the war for our nation’s independence, the blossoming in the American literary renaissance, and debates over slavery and women’s rights.
