Peter Jethro
Peter Jethro (also known as Jethro or Animatohu or Hantomush) ( – ) was an early Native American (Nipmuc) scribe, translator, minister, land proprietor, and Praying Indian affiliated for a period with John Eliot in the praying town of Natick, Massachusetts. Early life Peter Jethro was born in approximately 1614 and was the son of the Nipmuc medicine man Tantamous (also known as "Old Jethro"), although some early records and histories confuse the father and son. Peter Jethro stated that he was "one of the ancient native hereditary Indian proprietors of" Assabet (near what is now Maynard, Massachusetts). By 1635 Peter Jethro resided in Nashobah (near Nagog Pond on the modern day boundary of Littleton and Acton) near Concord and was present with a group of Native Americans to witness the sale of what is now downtown Concord to local colonists. By around 1650 Peter Jethro moved to the praying town of Natick near where his father resided on Nobscot Hill, and while in Natick Peter Jethro studied under John Eliot who stated that "Jethro, after he had confest Christ and was baptized, was sent to preach Christ to" "[p]eople (sundry of them) dwelling at Panatuket-Fort." In 1674 Daniel Gookin, superintendent of the Praying Indians, vouched for Peter Jethro as a "grave and pious Indian" and commissioned him to work as a missionary minister in Nashaway (Lancaster) and Weshakim (Sterling). Using his knowledge of English and local Algonquin dialects, Peter Jethro served as a translator and scribe for various land transactions between settlers and Native Americans in Massachusetts. In 1665 he was part of a group of Indians that transferred Quinsigamoge Pond to the settlers. King Philip's War In August 1675 Peter's father, Tantamous, and ten other Indians were falsely accused of committing a murder in the first Lancaster attack after allegedly falling under suspicion due to their "singing, dancing, and having much powder and many bullets and slugs hid in their baskets," but they were acquitted when the true murderer, Monoco, a Nashaway, was discovered. King Philip purportedly captured Peter Jethro at the outbreak of King Philip's War, and Jethro accompanied the Indians against the English during their expedition on the Connecticut River and was present at Battle on Beer's Plain in Northfield in September 1675 where he freed an English captive. Peter Jethro later communicated with the captors of Mary Rowlandson, a captive taken during the February 1676 Lancaster raid, to obtain her release. Peter eventually escaped and turned himself in to the English authorities in response to an offer of a pardon for any Indian who did so. Pardoning Jethro in return for his service was criticized strongly by Rev. Edmund Brown of Sudbury. During King Philip's War, the government ordered Peter's father, Tantamous, and his family to Deer Island, but Tantamous escaped, and Peter alerted the authorities (with alleged assurances that his family would not be harmed) of his father's whereabouts, but his father was captured at Cochecho (Dover, New Hampshire) and executed on the Boston