[Magdalen] Grammar Nightmare.

[ME Michaud]

One of my favorite local histories is of Natick (rhymes with hay-tick),
Massachusetts. On the shores of Lake Cochituate (rhymes with the
*noun* habituate).

In the colonial period, some of the native people were converted to
Christianity. Their own tribes & people didn't want them back and
the colonists sure didn't want them either. And so the town of Natick
was founded. But the people who lived there could barely communicate
since they spoke different dialects. They were called Praying Indians
or Christianized Indians. Eventually they were moved off the land that
had been granted them by the Puritan forefathers (grrrrrr), many died
of disease or, possibly, broken hearts.

O those Puritans!
-M