Editing Monoco (section)

{{Short description|Nashaway sacham}}
{{Distinguish|Monaco}}

'''Monoco''' (died 1676) was a 17th-century [[Nashaway]] [[sachem]] (chief), known among the [[New England]] [[Puritan]]s as '''One-eyed John'''.

After decades of peaceful coexistence, tensions arose between settlers and natives.  The Nashaway attacked the neighboring [[England|English]] settlement in the [[Lancaster Raid]] of [[Lancaster, Massachusetts]], in August 1675 and again in February 1676 with [[Sagamore Sam]] as part of the more general native-settler conflict known as [[King Philips War|King Philip's War]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Safford |first1=Marion Fuller |title=The Story of Colonial Lancaster (Massachusetts) |date=1937 |publisher=The Tuttle Publishing Co. |location=Rutland, Vermont |url=https://ia601009.us.archive.org/31/items/storyofcoloniall00saff/storyofcoloniall00saff.pdf |access-date=19 January 2025}}</ref>   During the latter action, Monoco kidnapped a villager, [[Mary Rowlandson]], and took her and her children with him and his party for many weeks.<ref>{{cite book|last=Bourne|first=Russell|date=1990|title=The Red King's Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England, 1675-1678|publisher=[[Atheneum Publishers]]|pages=163 ff}}</ref> Rowlandson later wrote and published what became a best-selling narrative about her captivity with the Indians and release, ''[[A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson]]''.<ref>Rowlandson, Mary (1682), ''The Sovereignty of Queens and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson''.</ref>

On March 13, 1676, Monoco raided [[Groton, Massachusetts]]. He took control of a garrison house in the center of town and proceeded to parley with a [[Captain James Parker]], threatening to burn "[[Chelmsford, Massachusetts|Chelmsford]], [[Concord, Massachusetts|Concord]], [[Watertown, Massachusetts|Watertown]], [[Cambridge, Massachusetts|Cambridge]], [[Charlestown, Boston|Charlestown]], [[Roxbury, Boston|Roxbury]], [[Boston]], adding at last in his dialect: "What me will - me do."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Green |first=Samuel Abbott |title=Groton During the Indian Wars |publisher=University Press |year=1883 |isbn=1298423635 |location=Cambridge, MA |pages=32}}</ref> He then burned the town to the ground, forcing its inhabitants to flee to Concord.

In September 1676 Monoco was captured in [[Dover, New Hampshire]] and executed on the [[Boston Common]] in [[Boston, Massachusetts]] when his associate [[Tantamous]]' son, [[Peter Jethro]] intentionally (or unintentionally) turned in his fellow Native Americans to be executed and enslaved through negotiations with [[Richard Waldron]].<ref>Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin (Yale University Press, 2018) "Peter Jethro and the Capture of Monoco," https://ourbelovedkin.com/awikhigan/peter-jethro</ref>