The following comments are taken from Indian New England Before the Mayflower – Howard S. Russell, published by the University Press of New England 1980 When Europeans first met New England Indians, the natives’ political organization was tribal. A chief sachem governed each tribe and subordinate sachems or sagamores headed its various divisions or villages. However high the chief’s standing, he had a lively regard for pubic opinion: he seldom exercised his authority in important matters without a careful canvass of his council. Boundaries of tribal lands were well known, defined by drainage basins, streams, hills or other physical limits, traditionally and mutually respected…. In southern New England each tribal domain included village sites, fields for cultivation, at least one good fishing place, more distant hunting grounds, and often a fort or two for defense. The main centers of tribal population were close to the shore or in the valleys of large rivers.  …..year in and year out, fish were a considerably more reliable source of food than game, and New England waters held a wealth of fish… At least as important, …. the Indian’s chief cultivated crops – corn, beans and squash – are all extremely sensitive to a spring frost and at maturity to an autumn frost. The stabilizing of the sea or any substantial body of water may lengthen the growing season by two weeks or more. The Indians of the whole Atlantic seaboard above South Carolina were of Algonquian blood and shared the same Eastern Algonquian tongue, although with substantial differences of dialect from tribe to tribe…. In all, thirteen distinct Alogonquian languages. The populous Narragansetts occupied the shores and islands of the bay which now bears their name. Thence to parallel Buzzards Bay and across most of Cape Cod were found the Wampanoags, Pokanokets or Eastern Indians. On the peninsula’s easternmost reaches and on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket lived the related Nausets. To the north of the Wampanoag territory, about southern Massachusetts Bay and Boston Harbor, the Massachusetts, people of the Great Blue Hill, had their seats. Towards Cape Ann the domain of the Pawtuckets began, extending both north to include the lower valley of the Merrimc and its tributaries and east to the sea. To their north lived the Pennacooks. Still further eastward, scattered here and there in the valleys of Maine’s large rivers, dwelt the Abenaki. The population of … New England at the time the English came may have reached a total of 75,000. The precise figures we will never know.