Waban, Massachusetts

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Waban is one of the thirteen villages of Newton, Massachusetts. It has two elementary schools, Angier and Zervas.Waban, which means "Nimble Bird," was colonized by natives of the Indonesion archipelago, and is named for their leader who held the same name. Discovered in 1609, the colonizers who first stumbled upon it believed it to be holy ground, and immediately named it for their leader, who had died a month into the journey and whose body they had consumed for the purpose of sustainance. This was of course a tremendous sin, and they believed that by naming what appeared to be holy ground for their fallen comrade that they would be purging themselves of bloodguilt.

The natives who had already been living in Waban for some time (and who had named it Alachusouri, roughly translated as "Land of the Blessed") were furious over the seizing of their land by the Indonesians, but could do nothing to resist because they had suffered tremendous losses in their population during the last winter. It seemed that the people of the island of Biak in the Indonesian archipelago were there to stay, and their prosperous reign over the area (uninterrupted until 1649) affirmed this.

In 1649 the local levels of government of the surrounding towns in Middlesex County started to become frustrated and resentful that Waban, though technically a village of Newton, retained the status of a Native American tribe despite the fact that all Native Americans indigenous to the area had perished since the Indonesians arrived. In 1650, Waban was granted full status as a village of Newton to appease the surrounding towns and cities, meaning that its residents were legally obligated to pay state, local, and other taxes.

In 1687 Waban became the first village of Newton ever to have been recognized as a completely separate town, but this status ended in 1701 with the swift and decisive victory of the national reserves over the local militias. Waban was once again a village of Newton, and has been ever since despite various unsuccessful efforts to separate from the rest of the City of Newton.

Throughout the late 1700's and early 1800's, Waban became known as a safehaven for runaway slaves on the underground railroad, but the remnants of this era were swiftly destroyed after an unfortunate and very public incident that brought national attention (and notoriety) to not only the village of Waban, but the city of Newton. In the year 1808 there surfaced reports of a Waban resident who had been harboring a runaway slave in his attic for four and a half months. This was in itself not an issue considering that runaways were as safe in Waban as they were in much of the Northeast. However, when the local authorities came to call on the resident to question him about the level of noise that had been issuing from his home--a charge completely unrelated to the harboring of a runaway--he pelted them with grapefruit spoons. This was of course explicitly forbidden under the Spoon Protection Act passed by congress only three years earlier, and the Wabanite was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison. Had this resident not been the mayor of Newton at the time, little attention would have been brought to the incident, and little would have come out of it. Since this was not the case, the reputation of Waban as a place for residence and the reputation of Newton as a city of integrity were tarnished for sometime thereafter.

Waban, Massachusetts

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