Pittimee, Andrew

Andrew Pittimee was one of Christian Indians from Natick imprisoned at Deer Island during King Philip’s War.  He served as a captain of Indian guides in Major Thomas Savage’s unit in 1676.  Pittimee’s wife, sisters and some of their children were murdered at Hurtleberry Hill at Watertown, Massachusetts in August 1676.  He emerged from the conflict as a community leader, serving as an interpreter and counselor.  In 1683, he was one of those who sold twenty acres of Natick land near Marlborough.  The following year, he acted as legal counsel to Waban in the 1684 land transfer of the Plantation of Marlborough and, in a different transaction, transferred five hundred acres of his portion of Nipmuck Country to Richard Wharton as payment for the ransom of a captive Indian woman “that spake the Maqua tongue.”  In 1687, he was witness to the deed to Towtaid, an eight-mile square between Quabaug and Worcester.  Drake, Indian Biography, 323-324, 269-270.  Bodge, Soldiers in King Phillip’s War, 402.  Massachusetts Archives.  Charles Hudson, History of the Town of Marlborough (Boston: Press of T. R. Marvin & Son, 1862), 91.  Connole, The Indians of the Nipmuck Country in Southern New England, 245, 279.