In March 1685, fifty-five years after John Winthrop and a group of English settlers established the seat of government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony on a hilly peninsula that they named Boston, several colonists procured a quitclaim deed for this land from the Massachuset Sachem Wampatuck. The Massachuset Indians relinquished any claim they had to Boston or Deer Island in Boston Harbor, granting it to the colonists in exchange for "a Valuable Summe of Money." According to the deed, Wampatuck (who was also known as Charles Josias or Josias Wampatuck) was simply renewing a similar agreement that his grandfather, the Sachem Chicatabut, made with the English when they first settled in Boston in 1630, although there is no evidence of this initial transaction in John Winthrop's writings or the colony's official records.

What took so long?

Boston town records from June 1684 suggest that the colonists sought a formal deed soon after local Native Americans asserted a claim to Deer Island and other Boston Harbor islands. In response, the Boston selectmen commissioned Simon Lynde to negotiate an agreement in which the town would purchase any claim the Massachuset Indians had to Boston and Deer Island.

Historians also have speculated that English colonists felt compelled to formalize land agreements with local Native Americans amid the charter crisis of the 1680s. In 1684 the Crown revoked the Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter, and in 1686 installed a royal governor to preside over a consolidated colony named the Dominion of New England. The colonists may have feared that the annulment of the Massachusetts Bay Charter would render their land grants worthless, and therefore sought to bolster their property rights by procuring deeds from the Indians.