Boston's Deep-Rooted History With Indian Affairs Surfaces at the Longfellow House

Long before today's South Asian diaspora called Boston home, the city was already shaping its relationship with 'Indian' affairs through civic organizations — a history the National Park Service is now bringing to wider attention.

🏛️ Alice Longfellow and Boston's Legacy of Indian Advocacy

A new article published by the National Park Service explores Alice Longfellow's role as president of the Massachusetts Indian Association, a position she held beginning in 1900. In December 1901, Longfellow welcomed delegates from across the country to the annual meeting of the Women's National Indian Association, held at Boston's Old South Church. In her address, she linked her organization's mission of improving living conditions for Native people to Massachusetts's long history of Indigenous education, reaching back to the seventeenth-century work of John Eliot. The piece, authored by a Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow, is published in connection with the Longfellow House Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site and sheds light on Boston's complex and often overlooked history of organized engagement with Indian communities. [1]

Sources: [1] National Park Service (.gov)