Ready for a little history lesson? Take notes, there'll be a quiz later ... joking! ;-)
Massachusetts (officially, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts) is a state in the New England region of the United States of America. Its nickname is the Bay State. Other nicknames are the Old Colony State, and less commonly the Puritan state and the Baked Bean state. On December 18, 1990, the Legislature decided that the people of the Commonwealth would be designated as Bay Staters.
The United States Postal Service abbreviation for Massachusetts is MA and its traditional abbreviation is Mass.
Seven ships of the United States Navy have been named USS Massachusetts in honor of this state.
Early settlement
Various Algonquin tribes inhabited the area prior to European settlement. In the Massachusetts Bay area, the Massachusett tribe resided. Near the Vermont and New Hampshire borders and the Merrimack River valley was the traditional home of the Pennacook tribe. Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and southeast Massachusetts were the home of the Wampanoag, who the Pilgrims met. The extreme end of the Cape was inhabited by the closely related Nauset tribe. Much of the central portion and the Connecticut River valley was home to the loosely organized Nipmuc peoples. The Berkshires were the home of both the Pocomtuc and the Mahican tribes. Spillovers of Narragansett and Mohegan from Rhode Island and Connecticut, respectively, were also present.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was named after the indigenous population, the Massachusett, whose name means "people of the great hills" in reference to a small mountain chain known today as the "Blue Hills" (located on the boundary of Milton and Canton, just south of Boston). The Massachusett tribe were all but wiped out by a plague shortly after the arrival of Captain John Smith in 1614. The Pilgrims from the Humber region of England established their settlement at Plymouth in 1620, arriving on the Mayflower. Until 1691 when they merged, Massachusetts Bay Colony and Plymouth Colony were separate colonies.
