No Name is a Good Name

Police called this place Murderpan…

Mattapan is a word of uncertain origin, probably appropriated from the Algonquin natives. It’s a tiny neighborhood on the southern edge of Boston. It’s located around the estuaries of the Neponset river, and recent migrants have been settling here for hundreds of years.

Some say Mattapan derives from native words meaning a good place to settle. C. Lawrence Bond says it means “evil spread about the place." Whatever the meaning, the lore of Dorchester (as defined by the Atheneum) shrouds Mattapan with a sick blanket: “In 1617 a pestilence killed so many Indians in what is now South Boston, that they lay unburied. For many years those who escaped [the sickness] returned to hold memorial services at what became K Street. In 1630 a ship load of Puritans settled there and called it Dorchester, named for the place they had left in Dorsetshire. Eventually that part of Dorchester was transferred to Boston, and the name, Mattapan, was revived for a village on the Neponset, without knowledge as to its significance.”

Mattapan is a place of raw, wrought and convoluted identity. Europeans have lived side by side with natives, farming and scheming in Mattapan for almost 400 years. But people thrived in areas along the Neponset river for thousands of years before.

Now many of the people living in Mattapan come from the African diaspora. Many hold West Indian, Haitian, Dominican and Jamaican identities. These roots resonate with rebellion, the casting off of shackles from English, French, Portuguese and Spanish colonizers and slavers. This legacy of rebellion echoes into this present moment.

Boston is a small city. The gangs here are mostly local. As much (if not more) of the violence here starts from youthful bravado and jealousy, as it does from drugs or otherwise under the table dealing. This is a place where the best way to live is to “Mind your business” and be quiet. But this place deserves some definition and a better reputation.