Old Speen, - 1685

Old Speen, as he is called, was a sagamore of the Natick people, and a member of a prominent ruling family there.  He was the father of James, Anthony, Robin, and John Speen, all of whom were Christianized under the influence of John Eliot.  Shortly before his death in 1685, Old Speen represented the Natick in a significant land trade with the Town of Sherborn.  Daniel Mandell, Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts (Lincoln, NE:  University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 33.  Jean O’Brien, Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1790 (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1997), 43.