Disease strikes today’s South Boston.

So many Native Americans die that their bodies lay unburied in the area then known as Mattapanock and subsequently as Dorchester Neck. John Thompson, a member of one tribe who subsequently moves to Framingham, later tells the story of the misery that occurred there and of the memorial service of the dead held for many years after. English settlers later use the Native American name Mattapan (“meeting place”), which had been applied to the Washington Village area, for the area at the intersection of today’s Blue Hill Avenue and River Street in what was then part of the Town of Dorchester.