[Sowam, and at other times at Namasket, now Middleborough. The Nipnets, who were seated upon some lesser rivers and lakes or large ponds, more within the continent, where Oxford now is, and towns near it, were supposed to be tributaries to Massasoiet. The Indians upon cape Cod, although not considered as part of the Wamponoags, yet were supposed to be also under some kind of subjection to Massasoiet. However, it is certain, that when Philip, the son of Massasoiet, had engaged almost all the other Indians of the country in war with the English, his solicitations could not prevail with those of Manamet to join him, but they adhered to the English, and were a defence to Sandwich, and the towns further upon the cape. There seems to have been two cantons or sachemdoms of the Cape Indians, one extending from Eel river in Plymouth, to the s. shore of the cape, and comprehended what are now called the Mashpee Indians, and then extended upon the eape to the e. part of Barnstable, and as far w. as Wood's Hole, and divers petty sachems or sagamores were comprehended in this division, of which Mashpee was one; the e. part of the cape from Nobskusset or Yarmouth made another sachemdom, the capital of which was Nausit or Eastham: these were known to the people of New Plymouth by the name of Nausit Indians. The Indians upon Nantucket, and those upon Martha's Vineyard, are supposed to have been distinct and separate tribes, having their own sachems and sagamores. The Nantucket Indians were a large body. The several scattered tribes from the Pockanockets to Piscataqua river, were called the n. Indians, and by some Aberginians. There were many distinct settlements upon the lesser channels of Piscataqua or Newichewannock river. Merrimack also had its receptacles, from the mouth 50 miles or more, as Wainooset, Patucket, Amoskeag, Pennicook, &c.; and Newbury Falls was a noted plantation, there being plenty of fish there at all seasons. And for the same reason, and because of the great plenty of shell-fish, at Agawam (Ipswich) there was a noted tribe with their sachem. Naumkeag (Salem and Marblehead) and Saugus (Lynn) made another division. Saugus Indians had a distinct sachem, known by the English name of George, who lived 40 years or more after the English came there. At Massachusetts, near the mouth of Charles river, there used to be a general rendezvous of Indians. That circle which now makes the harbours of Boston and Charlestown, round by Malden, Chelsea, Nantasket, Higham, Weymouth, Braintree, and Dorchester, was the capital of a great sachem, much reverenced by all the plantations of Indians round about, and to him belonged Naponset (Dorchester Mills, now Milton), Punkapog (Stoughton), Wessagusset (Weymouth), and several places upon Charles river, where the natives were seated. At Mistick a sagamore was seated upon a creek which meets with the mouth of Charles river. It is not possible to make a just computation of the number of Indians within the limits of New England. It is agreed that they looked with at jealous eye upon the English planters, and when it was too late, repented that they had not, by a general union, discouraged and prevented the first attempts of settlements among them. The life of hunters and fishermen is said to be averse to human society, except among the members of single families. The accounts which have been transinitted of the natives, at the first arrival of the Europeans, represent them to have been as near to a state of nature as any people upon the globe, and destitute of most of the improvements which are the usual effects of civil society. Some writers tell us, that husbands and wives, parents and children, lived always in one room or wigwam, without any apartments, and made no privacy of those actions which nature teaches even some irrational animals to be ashamed of in public. All agree, that a young woman was not less esteemed for having accompanied with a man, their usual practice being to live together upon trial, before they took one another for husband and wife. Champlain, who lived a whole winter, about 1615, among the Algonquins, says, "They have a sort of marriage: when a young girl is arrived to 11, 12, 13, 14, or 15 years, she will have suiters in proportion to her charms, and must apply to her father and mother; although often enough, except among the discreeter sort, the girls will not stay for their consent. The enamoured Indian tenders to his mistress a few belts, chains, or bracelets of wampom. If the girl likes him she will receive the present, and he comes and lodges with her three or four nights, without saying one word, where they enjoy the fruits of their affections. If, after a week or fortnight spent in this manner, they cannot agree, which is very often the case, she quits her lover, who leaves his wampom and other presents made her. Disappointed, he seeks another mistress, and she another humble servant, and continues so to do until two meet together who are agreeable each to the other.. There are some who pass their youth thus with many such husbands, who have not the sole pos-] [session, for as soon as it is night, the young women, although married, run from one wigwam to another and favour whom they like; but no violence is offered to the women, all depending on their consent. The husband takes the like liberty, without raising any jealousy, or but little, between them; nor is it any damage or loss of reputation to them, such being the custom of the country." It is thus not wonderful that we hear of no ininstances of refined conjugal affection. The superior strength of the man to that of the woman, instead of being employed in the most laborious services necessary for their mutual support, was made use of to keep the wife in subjection, and oblige her to every kind of drudgery, not only to the carrying her children upon her back in all their removes, but to the carrying their provisions and packs of every kind, in their huntings and other marches. The women not only provided bark and stakes, the materials of their houses or cabins, but were the house-wrights who built them; and as often as the family moved, for the sake of fishing or hunting, the women took down the houses and carried them on their backs. They planted, hoed, and gathered the corn, and provided barns (holes in the ground cieled with the rind of trees) for the reception of it. Not to mention their employments in providing shell-fish and other fish for the family, bearing burdens of wood and water, dressing their food, &c. The men commended themselves for keeping their wives employed, and condemned the English husbands for spoiling good working creatures. A family seems necessarily to carry an idea of government, but parents had no authority over their children. There was no great degree of affection observed towards their young by the parents, and no return was made on the part of the child; but, as soon as it was capable, it was as ready to resist and oppose its parent as any other person. Every nation or tribe had one whom they acknowledged as the head or chief. The son succeeded to the father: if no son, the queen ruled; if no queen, the next of kin of the blood royal. They gave the title of sachem to the chief, and sometimes that of sagamore. Some suppose these two titles to be indifferently used, others that the sagamores had a small territory, and perhaps were, in some degree, dependent upon a sachem. There were several sagamores in the Massachusetts bay, Sagamore George at Saugus or Lynn, John at Medford, Passaconaway at Merrimack, his son at Wechuset, Shawanon at Nashaway, and many others. Massasoiet, the chief of the Wamponoag Indians, was always called sachem, so was Myantinomo, chief the Naragansets, and Saccus of the Pequods. What power and authority the sachems and sagamores had, it is more difficult to determine. Murder, and a bare attempt upon the life of their chief, are said to have been capital offences. Such a malefactor being apprehended, (an escape to another nation was not very difficult), the sachem called some of his wisest men together, and the offender being pronounced guilty, his brains were beat out with a tomahawk. Other punishments they had not. We hear of no laws. Where they had no idea of property, but few laws were necessary. They had nothing to lose, worth even any corporal punishment, much less the life of a subject, where they were not overstocked. Of personal injuries and affronts every man was his own avenger; they had no religion which forbad rendering evil for evil. Military authority they had none; every man fought and ran away at his pleasure; for this reason, they never could stand a body of English, and their wars between them. selves were extremely precarious: Uncas, with an inferior number of Mohegins, and of no repute, beat Myantinomo at the head of the Naragansets, who held the Mohegins in contempt. Their arms were bows and arrows, their captains only carried a spear. Their bow-strings were made of moose sinews: their arrows were pointed with a small flat stone, of a triangular form, the basis of which they fastened with a leathern string into a cleft made in the end of a young stick of elder wood; and simple as they were, they did execution upon naked bodies. Many of these stones or heads of arrows are found to this day in the earth, in places where the Indians used to resort. After the arrival of the English, they made the heads of their arrows of brass, fastened them to a small stick six or eight inches long, formed to fix into the end of the pithy elder, which they bound round to strengthen it. They seldom missed their mark, when they aimed at a beast or bird, running or flying. In their wars they are said to have always engaged in a loose disorderly manner, and as soon as their artillery was spent, to have taken to their heels. The Mohawks secured their bodies against the arrows of other Indians by a covering of seahorse skins. Their principal weapon was the tomahawk, a club two or three feet long, with a knob at the end, (since they knew the use of iron,) improved by the addition of a sharp-pointed hatchet opposite to the knob. Roger Williams says it was their constant practice to strike off the heads of their dead enemies, at which they were very expert.] [They were remarkable for firm well-compacted top, where they fixed their meat, and placed them bodies, strong and active, capable of enduring round a fire, until they had sufficiently toasted it. the greatest hardships and fatigues, regardless of The earth was their table; trenchers, napkins, or cold whilst travelling in the severity of winter. knives they knew not the use of. Salt they had Having made holes in the ice, they would sit none, nor bread. Indian corn boiled was the round them, upon their naked bottoms, catching nearest akin to bread. They had no set meals, eat pickerel, breams, perch, and other fresh-water when they were hungry as long as victuals lasted, fish. A small pouch of parched corn, ground or and being improvident, not caring for the morrow, rather pounded into meal, and called nuichicke, they and their families would sometimes keep a which is well enough translated nocake, would fast of two or three days together. Water was support them several days in their travelling, their only drink. Their household furniture was when they could get no other provisions; and very small: a skin or mat was their bed: they sometimes they were destitute even of this; but never used a chair or stool, always sitting on the after abstinence they never failed of a propor- ground: a few earthen and wooden vessels answertionable indulgence, the first opportunity they had ed all the purposes of a family. As they had no for it, and would make up at one meal for all they metals of any kind, what few tools they had were had missed. Their clothing was of the skins of of stone: their hatchet and chisel are kept as curiosiwild beasts; after the English came they began to ties; the former somewhat in shape like an iron use woollen, and in a few years wholly laid aside hatchet, and this, instead of having an eye for the skins. One of their old garments of skins would handle, was furnished with a neck, where they fastpurchase a new one of woollen, and a good quan- ened a withe. Their arts and manufactures lay in a tity of strong water or sack into the bargain. The very narrow compass. Their skins they dressed by men threw a light mantle or covering over them, scraping and rubbing, and sometimes stained or and although they wore a small flap, called Indian coloured them with odd sort of embroideries. breeches, yet they were not over nice in conceal- They had a sort of cordage or lines, from the ing their nudities. The women were more mo- wild Indian hemp, with which they made nets, 30 dest, and wore a coat of cloth or skins, wrapt like or 40 feet long, for taking sturgeon. They had a blanket about their loins, and reaching down two sorts of canoes, one of pine or chesnut trees, to their hams, which they never put off in com- which they burned hollow, and then scraped the pany; and if the husband had a mind to sell the inside with clam-shells and oyster-shells, and hewwife's beaver petticoat, he must have provided ed the outside with stone hatchets. Those were another of some other sort, before he could pre- generally two feet wide, and about 20 feet long; vail with her to part with it. In winter, the old the other sort were made of the bark or rind of the men sometimes wore a sort of trowsers of skins, birch tree, with knees or ribs, and though easily fastened under their girdles with buttons. Their broken upon the rocks or shore, yet were tight Some of these were shoes without heels, which they called mockassins, and secure against the waves. were cut out of a moose's hide. Their ornaments very neat, and the most ingenious of any part of were pendants in their ears, carved of bone, shells, their manufactures. and stone, in the form of birds, beasts, or fishes, belts of wampompeag upon their arms, and hanging down over their shoulders. Their hair was cut into various forms and stuck with feathers Upon their cheeks, and in many parts of their bodies, some of them, by incisions into which they conveyed a black unchangeable ink, made the figures of bears, deer, moose, wolves, eagles, hawks, &c. which were indelible, and lasted as long as they lived. Their food in winter was birds and beasts of all sorts, fish from the ponds, and shell-fish. In summer they had fish from the sea, but no way to save that or their meat from putrefaction; berries of all sorts, green corn, beans, and squashes. They boiled their victuals in earthen pots; their spits were sticks fastened in the ground, cleft at VOL. II. They that speak most favourably give but an indifferent idea of the qualities of their minds. Mr. Wilson speaks of them, but with compassion, as the most sordid and contemptible part of the human species. Mr. Hooker says, they are the veriest ruins of mankind upon the face of the earth. Perhaps, the Indians about the Massachusetts bay were some of the lowest of the American nations. We hear nothing of that formality and order in their counsels, and little of those allegories and figures in their speeches and harangues, which the French have observed among the Iroquois and other nations, at the beginning of their acquaintance with them. Indeed, in their discourses together upon any matter which they deemed im portant, they seldom used any short colloquies, but each spake his mind at large without interrup-] 3 R [tion, the rest of the company giving attention, and when he had finished some other gave as large an answer. They shewed courtesy to the English at their first arrival, were hospitable, and made such as could eat their food welcome to it, and readily instructed them in planting and cultivating the Indian corn; and some of the English who lost themselves in the woods, and must otherwise have perished by famine, they relieved and conducted home. Their manner was to come into the English houses without knocking, and to sit down without ceremony. R. Williams compared the Quakers to them. There was no trading with them but for ready pay: he that trusted them lost his debt and his customer. The principle or persuasion that all things ought to be in common might cause hospitality, where the like was expected in return, without any great degree of virtue. Some appearances there were of compassion, gratitude, and friendship, and of grief at the death or distress of their children or near relations. Some degree of these social affections is inseparable from human nature. Vices they had many. They were false, malicious, and revengeful. The least injury caused in them a deadly hatred, which could never be allayed. They were infinitely cruel to their enemies, cutting and mangling their bodies, and then broiling them alive upon hot embers, and inflicting the most exquisite torments they could invent. They were not known to feed upon the flesh of their enemies after the English came among them. The men were lazy and idle, never employing themselves about any other business than what was of absolute necessity for their support, and such as the women were not capable of. More dirty, foul, and sordid than swine, they were never so clean and sweet as when they were well greased. Drunkards they were not, but the only reason was they had nothing that would intoxicate them. As soon as they had a taste of the English sack and strong waters, they were bewitched with them, and by this means more have been destroyed than have fallen by the sword. The English women had nothing to fear, as to any attempt upon their honour. The same observation is made of the Canada Indians, with respect to the French women. La Hontan, a French author, who has given a different account, is charged with a fondness for embellishing his memoirs, and being very credu lous. These Indians had their choice among their own women; but we have but little reason to wonder that so few Englishmen incline to cohabit with such disgusting objects. They had some sports and games with which they sometimes diverted themselves: foot-ball was the chief, and whole cantons would engage one against another. Their goals were upon the hard sands, as even and firm as a board, and a mile or more in length; their ball not much larger than a hand-ball, which they would mount in the air with their naked feet, and sometimes would be two days together before either side got a goal. They had two principal games of chance, one they called puim, this was much the same with a game Charlevoix mentions among the Miamis, which he calls jeu des pailles, or the game of straws. They took a number of packets of small sticks or straws, unequal in number but near of a size, and shuffling them together, he to whose lot the highest num ber fell, was the forwardest in the game. Another game they called hubbub, the same the French called jeu du plat, the game of the dish, among the Hurons. They took five small pieces of bone, flatter than a die and longer, black on the one side and white on the other, these they put into a small wooden tray or platter, and giving it a stroke on the ground the bones all flew into the air, and the gamesters whisk their hands to and fro among the bones, and then smite themselves on the breast and thighs, crying out hub, hub, hub, so as to be heard at a great distance. According as the bones happened to be more or less of one colour, so they won or lost whilst any one continued to win he held the tray, and upon his losing gave it to the next. The Negroes in Guinea have a game of the same sort, which they call paw-paw. Shooting at marks was diversion for their children, as soon as they were capable of drawing a bow. Swimming, running, and wrestling, they were as early accustomed to. Their hunting and fishing being all they did which could be called labour, for their maintenance or support, served also as diversions deer, moose, and bears were their chief objects; wolves, wild cats, raccoons, otters, musquashes, and even beavers, were not much regarded until the English, from the value they set upon their skins or furs, encouraged the pursuit of them. Besides their bows they had other devices to take their game, sometimes by double hedges a mile or two in length, and a mile wide at one end, and made narrow by degrees until they came to a gap of about six feet, against which they lay hid to shoot the deer as they came through in the day-time, and at night they set deer-traps, being springs made of young trees: they had their traps also for beavers and otters. Their ordinary fishing was with hooks and lines: they made their hooks of bones, their lines of wild hemp, stronger and neater than the English lines. They had a] [way of taking sturgeon by lighting a torch made of birch bark, which waving to and fro by the side of their canoe, would delight the sturgeon, and cause them to come tumbling and playing, throwing up their white bellies, into which the Indians struck their spears or darts: the sturgeons backs were impenetrable. They had grand fishings at the several falls of the rivers, at most of which a canton or company of Indians had their chief residence, and at fixed seasons the several neighbouring cantons met by turns, partly for recreation and partly to make provison for the year. During these meetings all that came were at home, and had all things in common, and those who had entertained their neighbours expected the like kind ness. Religion they had as little as can well be imagined. Some notions they had of a future state. A A Mahometan paradise where they were to solace themselves in fruitful corn-fields and fine flowery meads, with pleasant rivers to bathe in; curious wigwams provided for them without any labour of their own; hunting, fowling, and fishing with out any weariness or pains to molest them; but at the door was a snarling animal, who denied a peaceful entrance to all unworthy of it. This caused them to bury the bows and arrows of the deceased with their bodies, to affright or repel Cerberus, and good store of wampompag to purchase some peculiar favours or privileges. Their enemies, and others unworthy the joys of Elysium, they consigned to an eternal habitation and place of torment. However cold some of their imaginations might be, it is agreed that in general no people had greater fears of death, as was evident by the distress and despair of the dying person, and the sighs and groans of the surviving parents or near friends, who mourned without hope. Idolatry there were no signs of among them. They acknowledged a God, whom they mentioned by the word Ketan; he gave them rain in time of drought, and fair weather after great rains. Upon him they had their first dependence for recovery from sickness, but if he failed them they applied to their powows, which it is most likely brought upon them the charge of worshipping the devil. The powows the English call their priests. We have many idle stories of the intercourse they had with the devil. Their craft was in danger from the preachers of the gospel, who condemned their cheats and juggles as diabolical, and they were great opposers of the gospel, and threatened the new converts with death and destruction, and many were so intimidated that the powows were sup. posed to have fascinated or bewitched them. Passaconaway, a great sagamore upon Merrimack river, was the most celebrated powow in the country: he made the Indians believe strange things; that he could make water burn, rocks move, and trees dance, and metamorphose himself into a flaming man; that in winter he could raise a green leaf out of the ashes of a dry one, and produce a living snake from the skin of a dead one. When the powow was sent for in any malady, after a hideous bellowing and groaning he made a stop, and all the auditors with one voice uttered a short note, and then the powow renewed his roaring, smiting his naked breast and thighs, and jumping about until he foamed at the mouth. The patients were frequently cured of imaginary distempers by these ridiculous pranks, and such instances of recovery worked upon the credulity of the Indians, so far as to make them suppose the powows could heal them and poison them when they pleased: the latter was the easiest, and it is not unlikely that they had enough of the devil in them to do it, in order to carry on the fraud and raise their characters. These poor deluded creatures were soon convinced that the English medicines had a healing virtue beyond all the charms of the powows. Some of them were jugglers, and without arriving to any great degree of perfection, they might raise the admiration of the generality of their blockish countrymen. However, the contemporaries of the aboriginals all say, that besides the Ketan or their good spirit, they had some notions of an evil spirit, which is sometimes called Chepian, but generally Abomocho, lord of those infernal regions to which they consigned their enemies. Mr. Mayhew, in a letter dated in 1650, relates a conversation between Hiacoomes, a Christian Indian, and Moyoxco, a chief man of a place at the Vineyard. Moyoxco demanded how many gods the English worshiped, and being answered one, he reckoned up about 37 principal gods he had; " and shall 1," said he, "throw away these 37 gods for one?" The Indians of Canada, according to Charlevoix, had an infinite number of genii or subaltern spirits, good and bad, who had their particular worship. Very circumstantial accounts have been published, by the French writers, of the religious rites and ceremonies of the n. Indians, their feasts and fasts, their priests, and even their nuns or vestal virgins; which accounts have either been too easily received, or else the n. differed much from the more s. Indians, who, at best, gave themselves but little concern upon any point of religion.] |