Massachusett people. Beyond being a sacred site, the various hills were mined extensively by the indigenous inhabitants due to the abundance of a type of rare stone formed by the volcanic eruption of Massachusett 200 million years ago that was highly favorable for stone tools. These tools were traded among the indigenous people of the Northeast due to the rarity of the stone. This also indicates that the trade networks of the indigenous Northeast were far more expansive than previously thought. At the time of the first European contact, the Neponset tribe was led by the sachem Chickatawbut, who died along with many other Neponset in a large virgin soil epidemic of the introduced European disease smallpox in November 1633 and was succeeded by his brother Cutshamekin. English colonization The area that became Milton began to be sparsely settled by English colonists in the late 1620s and early 1630s as a part of Dorchester, but was formally established as an organized settlement in 1640 by Puritans from England. Richard Collicott, one of the first English settlers, built a trading post near the Neponset River, and negotiated the purchase of Milton from Sachem Cutshamekin. Many of the initial English settlers arrived during the 1650s, fleeing the aftermath of Oliver Cromwell's deposition from power and the English Civil War. Many early Puritan families of Milton would later become influential in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, including the Sumners, Houghtons, Hutchinsons, Stoughtons, Tuckers, Voses, Glovers, and Babcocks. The original name for the area, translated to "Lower Falls" was adapted as "Lower Mills" after the establishment of Israel Stoughton's Grist Mill in 1634, the earliest mill in the United States. Furthermore, in 1640, English settlers began shipbuilding at Gulliver's Creek, a tributary of the Neponset, using the innumerable quantity of Eastern white pines found in early Milton's dense forests. In 1662, "that part of the Town of Dorchester which is situated on the south side of the Neponset River commonly called 'Unquatiquisset' was incorporated as an independent town and named Milton in honor of Milton Abbey, Dorset, England." A powder mill established in 1674 may have been the earliest powder mill in the colonies, taking advantage of the town's water power sites. Boston investors, seeing the potential of the town and its proximity to the city, provided the capital to develop 18th-century Milton as an industrial area, including an iron slitting mill and sawmills, and