Netus, - 1676

Netus (Nataous, William of Sudbury) was a Nipmuc Indian from the northeast corner of Grafton, Massachusetts.  For a time he lived at Sudbury as a property owner at Nipmuc Hill about three miles north of the plantation at Natick and congregant of the Rev. Edmund Brown.  Netus sent his son to be taught by the schoolmaster Elijah Corlett, possibly with the understanding the education would be free.  However, the expense was refused by the missionary society, and Corlett sued Netus for the sum of a little more than four pounds, eventually receiving three hundred and twenty acres of the Indian's land.

Thereafter, Netus removed to Natick where he became one of the "good" and "prudent" leaders of that community.  However, after being rounded up and sent to Deer Island during King Philip's War, he escaped into the woods and joined with Metacomet's forces.  In early February 1676, Netus led a party of Natick men in search of buried corn supplies.  A confrontation with Mary Eames, the wife of a colonial settler at Framingham, left several of the Eames family dead or captive.  For his role in this, Netus was indicted by a colonial court.  However, before any legal proceedings ever began, he was killed during the second attack at Marlborough on March 27, 1676.    His wife was subsequently sold into slavery.

Josiah Howard Temple, A History of Framingham, Massachusetts (Boston, MA: James Monroe and Company,  1847), 8, 75-79.  James L. Parr and Kevin A. Swope, Framingham Legends & Lore (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2009).  Alfred Sereno Hudson, History of Sudbury, Massachusetts, 1638-1889 (Boston, MA: R. H. Blodgett, 1889) 16-17.