Chapter XI: Part 11

[165] See Mr. Deane’s note on the “Plough patent,” in IV. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. vii. pp. 88-96. Also the note on Cleaves, _Ib._ p. 363. D’Israeli (_Curiosities of Literature_, vol. iii. p. 488) gives a singular anecdote of Rigby.

[166] IV. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. vii. p. 343.

[167] IV. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. vi. p. 148.

[168] Palfrey, vol. ii. p. 147, _n._

[169] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *189.

[170] _Supra_, 61-3.

[171] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *298.

[172] _N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll._, 1869, p. 40.

[173] _Records_, vol. ii. p. 90.

[174] _Hist. of New England_, vol. ii. p. 225.

[175] _Infra_, *138.

[176] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *192.

[177] _New York Hist. Soc. Coll._, 1869, p. 40.

[178] “It is undeniable that Morton became an object of aversion largely for the reason that he used the Prayer Book.” (_Mag. of Amer. Hist._, vol. viii. p. 83.)

[179] White’s _Memoirs of the Protestant Episcopal Church_, p. xxii. _n._ See also Oliver’s _Puritan Commonwealth_, pp. 37-9.

[180] _Infra_, *138. See, also, *50, 332, _note_ 2.

[181] _Mag. of Amer. Hist._, vol. viii. p. 89.

[182] _Wonder-Working Providence_, p. 30.

[183] “Such a rake as Morton, such an addle-headed fellow as he represents himself to be, could not be cordial with the first people from Leyden, or with those who came over with the patent, from London or the West of England. I can hardly conceive that his being a Churchman, or reading his prayers from a Book of Common Prayer, could be any great offence. His fun, his songs and his revels were provoking enough, no doubt. But his commerce with the Indians in arms and ammunition, and his instructions to those savages in the use of them, were serious and dangerous offences, which struck at the lives of the new-comers, and threatened the utter extirpation of all the plantations.” (_Notes of John Adams_, 1802.)

[184] _Infra_, 249-52, and _note_.

[185] _Infra_, 290, _note_.

[186] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *14.

[187] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *166.

[188] See Deane’s note to Bradford, p. 254.

[189] _Harvard Univ. Library Bulletin_, No. 10, p. 244.

[190] _Supra_, pp. 78-9.

[191] _Mag. of Amer. Hist._, vol. viii. p. 94, n.

[192] Mr. DeCosta says that the titlepage of the copy in the Library of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel reads in this way. _Mag. of Amer. Hist._, vol. viii. p. 94, n. 4.

[193] This copy was in the Adams Library for many years, and until within a quite recent period. It cannot, however, now (1882) be found. It would appear to have been stolen, together with many other volumes and almost innumerable autographs, which formerly lent a peculiar value to the John Adams Collection, given by him in 1822 to the town of Quincy.

[194] “Mint and cumin” uniformly appears as “muit and cummin;” “humming-bird” as “hunning-bird.”

[195] _Ante_, pp. 61-3.

[196] In regard to the Board of Lords Commissioners of 1634, see _supra_, 57-60. The royal letter patent in the original Latin is in Hazard, vol. i. pp. 344-7. There are translations of it in Hubbard (pp. 264-8) and in Bradford (pp. 456-8), together with notes by Harris in his edition of the former, and by Deane in the latter.

[197] [seth.] Wherever in this edition an apparently obvious misprint in the text of 1637 has been, as in the present case, corrected, the misprinted word, as it appears in the original, is printed between brackets as a foot-note.

[198] In regard to Sir Christopher Gardiner, see _infra_, *182-4 and _note_.

[199] [_Connick._] See _supra_, 111, _note_ 1.

[200] [_stife._]

[201] [_muit._]

[202] The Isle of Sall appears on the map in the _Geography_ of Peter Heylyn, London, 1674, as one of the Cape Verde Islands. It is called in the text Insula Salis, and on other old maps Isle of Sal, or Ilha do Sal. There are some ten islands in the group. Professor J. D. Whitney writes that several islands are known by the name of Sall, and that the one referred to by Morton is probably that off the north shore of Cuba. “A good deal has been written about the poisonous fishes of the waters about the island of Cuba. The disease produced by eating poisonous fish is called _ciguatera_, and the fish itself is said to be _ciguato_. All that is definitely known about the matter seems to be that quite a large number of species of fish in that region are believed to be liable to some disease, the nature and course of which is unknown; and that those who eat the fish thus diseased are themselves liable to be attacked by the malady called _ciguatera_.”

[203] Morton here apparently refers at second hand to Aristotle’s _resumé_ of the ancient belief of five zones, two only of which were habitable. _Meteorologica_, B. II. ch. v. § 11.

[204] From this passage it would appear that the Isle of Sall and the tropical waters, which Morton in this chapter refers to as having been visited by him, were in the neighborhood of the Western and Cape Verde Islands. In his time the word _tornado_ had probably not been adopted into the English language, and in writing it Morton gives to the letter _d_ the peculiar Western Island or Portuguese pronunciation.

[205] Morton here confounds Davis with Hudson. Davis’s three voyages were made in 1585-6-7, and it was in the first of them that he discovered the straits which bear his name. He afterwards made five voyages to the East Indies, in the last of which he was killed in a fight with some Japanese on the coast of Malacca. Hudson made four voyages between 1607 and 1610, during the last of which he passed a winter, frozen in, near the entrance to Hudson Bay. His crew mutinied, and turned him adrift in an open boat, on the 22d of July, 1610. He was never heard of again; and it is his “fate,” probably, which Morton had in mind. No other noted discoverer of the Northwest Passage was lost prior to 1634. The discovery of that passage, however, then excited as active an interest as it has since, or does now. In 1632 Edward Howes sent out to Governor Winthrop a printed “Treatise of the North-West Passage” (IV. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. vi. p. 480) which is still in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

[206] The phrase in the _Meteorologica_ (_ubi supra_, 117, _note_ 1.) is, “the parts under the Bear (_i.e._, north) by cold are uninhabitable.”

[207]

Impiger extremos curris mercator ad Indos,
Per mare pauperiem fugiens, per saxa, per ignes.

HORACE, _Epist._ I. ll. 45-6.

[208] “18. Yea, I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.

“19. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool?”

_Ecclesiastes_, ch. ii. vers. 18, 19.

[209] Sir Ferdinando Gorges, of Ashton Phillips in Somerset, has already been frequently referred to in the introductory portions of this volume. Of an old West Country family and pure English descent, he was born about the year 1560 (IV. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. vii. p. 329). He early devoted himself to a military and naval life, and in 1591 served under Essex at the siege of Rouen. Subsequently he is said to have been wounded, either at Amiens, or during the siege of Paris by Henry IV. In consequence of his services he was appointed by Queen Elizabeth royal governor of Plymouth, and in 1597 was designated as one of the staff of Essex in the Ferrol expedition, with the title of Sergeant-Major. In 1601 he was concerned in Essex’s insurrection, and was one of the principal witnesses against the Earl at his trial. After a considerable period of imprisonment he was released, and, on the accession of James I., was reappointed governor of Plymouth. In 1605 he became interested in American discovery and colonization, and in 1607 he was one of the projectors of the Popham colony in Maine. During the next thirteen years he was engaged in fishing and trading ventures to New England, and indefatigable in collecting information as to America. (Palfrey, vol. i. p. 79.) In 1620 he procured from James I. the great patent of the Council for New England. In 1623 he sent out the Robert Gorges expedition which settled itself at Wessagusset. (_Supra_, 2-4.) His subsequent connection with Morton, and his intrigues against the Massachusetts colony and charter, have been sufficiently referred to in this volume. During the Civil War Gorges espoused the royal side, and was made a prisoner when Fairfax captured Bristol in August 1645. He died probably about the 10th of May 1647, as he was buried on the 14th of that month.

In regard to Gorges, see Belknap’s _American Biography_; Folsom’s _Catalogue of Original Documents in the English Archives relating to the Early History of the State of Maine_; Williamson’s _Maine_; Palfrey’s _New England_ (vol. i.); Poole’s Introduction to Johnson’s _Wonder Working Providence_; Devereux’s _Earls of Essex_ (vol. i.); and the _Briefe Narration_ (III. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. vi. p. 44), and Gorges’s own letters, to Winthrop and others, in the _Winthrop Papers_. (IV. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. vii.)

[210] That is, in 1634. See _supra_, 78.

[211] These are the Inner Harbor (Boston), so called, and Dorchester, Quincy, and Weymouth bays. The latter includes all the inlets south and west of Nut and Pettuck’s islands and Hull, among which is Hingham Bay.

[212] “Sleetch, _n._ The thick mud or slush lying at the bottom of rivers.” _Webster._

[213] [iland.] See _supra_, 111, _note_ 1.

[214] _Supra_, 6-7.

[215] In the letter already quoted from (_Supra_, 14), Mr. J. H. Trumbull remarked that “Morton, as he shows in chap. ii. of book I., could not write the most simple Indian word without a blunder.” As respects the words which Morton believed to be Indian-Greek, Mr. Trumbull has further kindly furnished the following notes: “_En animia_--_Wunanumau_, as Eliot wrote it, signifies ‘he is well disposed, or well minded toward another,’ or ‘is pleased with’ him. There is another word, nearly related, which Morton may have had in mind, meaning ‘to help,’ ‘do a favor to,’--_aninumeh_, ‘help me’ (Eliot), _anúnime_ (R. Williams).”

[216] “_Paskanontam_ (Eliot), ‘he suffers from hunger,’ ‘is starving.’ In Eliot’s orthography, _paskuppoo_ would signify ‘he eats hungrily,’ or ‘as if starving,’ and from this comes the verbal _Paskup-wen_ or _Paskuppoo-en_ ‘a starving eater’--Morton’s ‘greedy gut.’”

[217] “Eliot’s _paskanontam_, as above, which is well enough translated by ‘halfe starved.’”

[218] “I can make nothing of these words. They certainly do _not_ mean ‘set it upright.’”

[219] “An island is _munnoh_ (Eliot).”

[220] “Here Morton mistook the word. _Cos_ is, probably, _Koüs_ (Eliot), ‘sharp-pointed,’ or, from the same root, _mukqs_, (Eliot), _mucks_ (R. Williams), ‘an awl,’ used for boring wampum, beads, &c.; _cau-ompsk_ (R. Williams) was ‘a whetstone,’ _i. e._, a sharpening stone.”

[221] “_Om_ (_aum_, Eliot), is fish-hook; _aumau-i_, ‘he is fishing’ (with hook and line,) R. Williams; whence _omaën_, (Eliot) ‘a fisherman.’”

[222] “Probably misprinted for _Pantucket_--the equivalent of _Pautucket_, meaning ‘at the fall’ of the river. (The _n_ was not distinctly sounded, but represents the nasalization of the preceding vowel.)”

[223] “_Mattapan_ means ‘sitting down’--or ‘a _setting_ down’--and usually designates the end of a ‘carry’ or portage, where the canoes were put in water again.”

[224] Winslow, in his Relations, says of the Indians: “The people are very ingenious and observative; they keep account of time by the moon, and winters or summers; they know divers of the stars by name; in particular they know the north star, and call it _maske_, which is to say, _the bear_.” (Young’s _Chron. of Pilg._, pp. 365-6.) See also to the same effect, Roger Williams’s _Key_ (_Publications of the Narragansett Club_, vol. i.) and Mr. Trumbull’s note (p. 105). Mr. Trumbull now further adds: “The name (_maske_) was given to Ursa Major or Charles’s Wain, not to the North Star; and by nearly all Algonkin tribes. An interesting note on this point can be found in Hopkins’s _Hist. Memorials of the Housatonic Indians_ (p. 11), and another in Dawson’s _Acadian Geology_ (2d ed. p. 675), showing that the Micmacs still know that constellation as _Mooin_, ‘the bear.’”

[225] Roger Williams, in the preface to his _Key_ (p. 23), says: “Wise and judicious men, with whom I have discoursed, maintain their [the Indians] original to be northward from Tartaria.” The Asiatic origin of the North American Indians was a necessary part of the scriptural dogma of the origin and descent of man. It is safe, however, to assert that, first and last, every possible theory on this subject has been carefully elaborated. It is not necessary, in connection with the _New Canaan_, to enter into the discussion, as the views of those, from St. Gregory to Voltaire, who have taken part in it, have been laboriously collected by Drake in his _Book of Indians_ (ch. ii.).

[226] [muit.] See _supra_, 111, _note_ 1.

[227] See _Infra_ *182-4 and _note_.

[228] David Thomson occupied the island in Boston Harbor, which still bears his name, from some time in 1625, apparently, until his death in 1628 (_supra_, 24). He left a widow and an only son, who inherited the island. Originally, Thomson seems to have been a messenger, or possibly an agent, of the Council for New England. In November, 1622, a patent, covering a considerable tract of land, was issued to him, and the next year, he then being apparently a young man and newly married, he came out and established himself at Piscataqua, whence he afterwards moved to Boston Harbor. All that is known of Thomson can be found in Mr. Deane’s _Notes to an Indenture, &c._, in the _Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc._, 1876 (pp. 358-81). See also, _Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc._, 1878 (p. 204), and _Memorial History of Boston_ (vol. i. p. 83).

[229] Morton’s attempt to trace the origin of the North American Indians from Brutus, and the support he finds for his theory in the resemblance of some Indian to Greek words, there being no reason to suppose that Brutus or the Latins had any acquaintance with Greek, reads like a humorous satire on the historical methods in vogue with the writers of his time. Until within the last century there were two historical events, or events assumed to be historical, to one or the other of which it was deemed safe to refer the origin of any modern nation. These events were the Siege of Troy and the Flood,--the profane and the sacred beginnings of modern history. Morton wrote in 1635, and his mind naturally had recourse to the profane theory. Fifteen years later, Milton began his history of England, and at the outset came in contact with Brutus. “That which we have,” he then remarks, “of oldest seeming, hath by the greater part of judicious antiquaries been long rejected for a modern fable.” He nevertheless “determined to bestow the telling over even of these reputed tales, ... seeing that ofttimes relations heretofore accounted fabulous have been after found to contain in them many footsteps and reliques of something true; as what we read in poets of the flood, and giants little believed, till undoubted witnesses taught us that all was not feigned.” Then passing on, he says: “After the flood, and the dispersing of nations, as they journeyed leisurely from the East, Gomer, the eldest son of Japhet, and his offspring, as by authorities, arguments and affinity of divers names is generally believed, were the first that peopled all these west and northern climes.” Coming down to Brutus and the whole progeny of kings, and following Geoffrey of Monmouth, Milton then recounts in detail the marriages, voyages, adventures and mishaps of the descendants of Æneas until Brutus reached an “island, not yet Britain but Albion, in a manner desert and inhospitable; kept only by a remnant of giants, whose excessive force and tyranny had destroyed the rest. These Brutus destroys,” and, after this, “in a chosen place, builds Troja Nova, changed in time to Trinovantum, now London.”

The superiority of Morton’s historical method to Milton’s, or to that in use in Milton’s time, is obvious. Accepting the common origin, he premises that he does _not_ find that “when Brutus did depart from Latium his whole number went with him at once.” Accordingly, some of them being put to sea, “_might_ encounter with a storm,” and then being carried out of sight of land, “they _might_ sail God knoweth whether, and so _might_ be put on this coast, as well as any other.” And hence the author is “bold to conclude that the original of the natives of New England may be well conjectured to be from the scattered Trojans, after such time as Brutus departed from Latium.”

It would be easy to quote from many serious productions, contemporaneous with the _New Canaan_ and a century after it, examples of the same method of daring historical hypothesis; a single instance will, however, suffice. In his history of Lynn, written in 1829, the Rev. Alonzo Lewis says (p. 21): “The Indians are supposed by some to be the remnants of the long lost ten tribes of Israel; and their existence in tribes, the similarity of some of their customs, and the likeness of many words in their language, seem to favor this opinion.”

More sensible than either Thomas Morton or Mr. Lewis, William Wood, in writing his _New England’s Prospect_, in 1633, remarks (p. 78), that “Some have thought they [the Indians] might be of the dispersed Jews, because some of their words be near unto the Hebrew; but by the same rule they may conclude them to be some of the gleanings of all nations, because they have words which sound after the Greek, Latin, French, and other tongues.”

There is in the _Magnalia_ (book III. part iii.) a lengthy but highly characteristic passage, in which Mather recounts the points of resemblance which the evangelist Eliot saw between the Indians and “the posterity of the dispersed and rejected Israelites.”

[230] Peddock’s, or Pettick’s, Island, still so called, is one of the largest islands in Boston Bay. It lies directly opposite to George’s Island and Hull, from which last it is separated by a narrow channel, and is between Weymouth and Quincy bays, on the east and west. See Shurtleff’s _Description of Boston_, p. 557.

[231] Leonard Peddock seems to have been in the employment of the Council for New England. In the records of the Council for the 8th of November, 1622, is the following entry: “Mr. Thomson is ordered to pay unto Leo: Peddock £10 towards his paynes for his last Imployments to New England.” Subsequently, on the 19th of the same month: “It is ordered that a Letter be written from the Counsell to Mr. Weston, to deliver to Leonard Peddock, a boy Native of New England called papa Whinett belonging to Abbadakest, Sachem of Massachusetts, which boy Mr Peddock is to carry over with him” (_Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society_, April, 1867, pp. 70, 74).

Andrew Weston had returned to England in the _Charity_, leaving Wessagussett in September, 1622 (_supra_, 7). He would seem to have brought over the Indian boy in question with him. From the entry in the records of the Council for New England, just quoted, it would appear that Leonard Peddock was in New England during the summer of 1622. The reference to him in the text is additional evidence that Morton was there at the same time, and in company with Weston.

[232] This is undoubtedly a misprint for Auckies, which was a sailor’s corruption for Auks. The Great Auk (_Alca impennis_) is probably referred to. This bird, now supposed to be extinct, was formerly common on the New England coast. Audubon, writing in 1838, says: “An old gunner, residing on Chelsea Beach, near Boston, told me that he well remembered the time when the Penguins were plentiful about Nahant and some other islands in the bay.” (_Am. Ornithological Biog._, vol. iv. p. 316.) Professor Orton, alluding to this passage, in the _American Naturalist_ (1869, p. 540), expresses the opinion that the Razor-billed Auk was the bird referred to; but Professor F. W. Putnam adds, in a foot-note, that “the ‘old hunter’ was undoubtedly correct in his statement, as we have bones of the species taken from the shell-heaps of Marblehead, Eagle Hill in Ipswich, and Plum Island.” Dr. Jeffries Wyman found them in the shell-heaps at Cotuit. See _Mem. Hist. of Boston_, vol. i. p. 12.

There is an elaborate paper on the Great Auk, under the title of “The Garefowl and its Historians,” by Professor Alfred Newton, in the _Natural History Review_ for 1865, p. 467.

[233] Morton would seem to be mistaken in this statement. Between 1614 and 1619 two French vessels were lost on the Massachusetts coast. One was wrecked on Cape Cod, and the crew, who succeeded in getting on shore, were most of them killed by the savages, and the remainder enslaved in the way described in the text. Two of these captives were subsequently redeemed by Captain Dermer (Bradford, p. 98). The other vessel was captured by the savages in Boston Bay, and burned. This is the vessel referred to by Morton as riding at anchor off Peddock’s Island. The circumstances of the capture are described in Phinehas Pratt’s narrative (IV. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. iv. pp. 479, 489). All the crew, he says, were killed, and the ship, after grounding, was burned. Pratt’s statement is distinct, and agrees with Bradford’s, that the captives among the Indians were the survivors from the vessel wrecked on Cape Cod, not from that captured in Boston Bay.

[234] Pratt’s account of this survivor among the French crew is to be found in IV. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. iv. pp. 479, 489. He says that “one of them was wont to read much in a book (some say it was the New Testament), and that the Indians enquiring of him what his book said, he told them it did intimate that there was a people like French men that would come into the country and drive out the Indians.” The account given by Mather (_Magnalia_, B. I. ch. ii. § 6) is curiously like that in the text. After quoting the substance of Pratt’s statement he adds: “These infidels then blasphemously replied, ‘God could not kill them;’ which blasphemous mistake was confuted by a horrible and unusual plague, whereby they were consumed in such vast multitudes that our first planters found the land almost covered with their unburied carcases; and they that were left alive were smitten into awful and humble regards of the English by the terrors which the remembrance of the Frenchman’s prophecy had imprinted on them.”

Pratt, whom Mather followed, claims to have derived his knowledge of these events during the winter of 1622-3 directly from savages concerned in them. The probability is that the tradition of the French captive, and his book and prophecy, was a common one among the settlers both at Plymouth and about Boston Bay. Pratt apparently had a habit, as he grew old, of appropriating to his own account many of the earlier and more striking incidents of colonial history. (Mather’s _Early New England_, p. 17.)

[235] The mysterious pestilence, which in the years 1616 and 1617 swept away the New England Indians from the Penobscot to Narragansett Bay, is mentioned by all the earlier writers, and its character has recently been somewhat discussed. There can be no doubt that it practically destroyed the tribes, especially the Massachusetts and the Pokanokets, among which it raged. The former were reduced from a powerful people, able, it is said, to muster three thousand warriors, to a mere remnant a few hundred strong. The Pokanokets were in some localities, notably at Plymouth, actually exterminated, and the country left devoid of inhabitants (I. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. i. p. 148; Young’s _Chron. of Pilg._, p. 183). Winslow gave a description of the desolation created by this pestilence, and of the number of the unburied dead, very like that in the text (Young’s _Chron. of Pilg._, pp. 183, 206). On this subject, see also, Bradford, pp. 102, 325; Johnson, p. 16; Wood’s _Prospect_, p. 72; III. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. vi. p. 57.

No definite conclusion as to the nature of this pestilence has been reached by medical men. It has been suggested that it was the yellow-fever (Palfrey, vol. i. p. 99, _n_). As, however, it raged equally in the depth of the severest winter as in summer, this could not have been the case (III. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. vi. p. 57; Bradford, p. 325). Other modern medical authorities have inclined to the opinion that it was a visitation of small-pox (Dr. Holmes in _Mass. Hist. Soc._, _Low. Inst. Lect._, 1869, p. 261; Dr. Green’s _Centennial Address before the Mass. Med. Soc._, June 7, 1881, p. 12). In support of this hypothesis Captain Thomas Dermer is quoted, who, sailing along the coast in 1619-20, wrote “we might perceive the sores of some that had escaped, who described the spots of such as usually die” (Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1778). On the other hand, none of the contemporaneous writers who speak of the disease ever call it the small-pox, though all of them were perfectly familiar with small-pox, and a very large portion of them probably bore its marks. Dermer speaks of it as “the plague.” Bradford, when the same pestilence raged on the Connecticut, described it as “an infectious fever.” Dr. Fuller, the first New England physician, then died of it (Bradford, p. 314). He could not but have been familiar with the small-pox and its symptoms; and it would seem most improbable that he should have died of that disease among his dying neighbors, and not have known what was killing him. Moreover, in 1633-4 the small-pox did rage among the Indians, and Bradford, in giving a fearfully graphic account of its ravages, adds, “they [the Indians] fear it more than the plague.” Josselyn also draws the same distinction, saying (_Two Voyages_, p. 123): “Not long before the English came into the country, happened a great mortality amongst [the Indians]; especially where the English afterwards planted, the East and Northern parts were sore smitten by the contagion; first by the plague, afterwards, when the English came, by the small-pox.”

It would seem, therefore, that the pestilence of 1616-7 was clearly not the small-pox. More probably it was, as Bradford says, “an infectious fever,” or some form of malignant typhus, due to the wretched sanitary condition of the Indian villages, which had become over-crowded, owing to that prosperous condition of the tribes which Smith describes as existing at the time of his visit to the coast in 1614 (III. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. vi. p. 109).

[236] “Their houses, which they call wigwams, are built with poles pitcht into the ground of a round form for most part, sometimes square. They bind down the tops of their poles, leaving a hole for smoak to go out at, the rest they cover with the bark of trees, and line the inside of their wigwams with mats made of rushes painted with several colors. One good post they set up in the middle that reaches to the hole in the top, with a staff across before it; at a convenient height, they knock in a pin upon which they hang their kettle. Beneath that they set up a broad stone for a back which keepeth the post from burning. Round by the walls they spread their mats and skins where the men sleep whilst their women dress their victuals. They have commonly two doors, one opening to the south, the other to the north, and, according as the wind sets, they close up one door with bark and hang a deers skin or the like before the other. Towns they have none, being always removing from one place to another for conveniency of food, sometimes to those places where one sort of fish is most plentiful, other whiles where others are. I have seen half a hundred of their wigwams together in a piece of ground and they show prettily; within a day or two or a week they have been all dispersed.” (Josselyn’s _Voyages_, p. 126). See also Young’s _Chron. of Pilg._, p. 144.

[237] Giving in his _Key_ (p. 48) the Indian combination of words signifying “let us lay on wood,” Roger Williams adds: “This they do plentifully when they lie down to sleep winter and summer, abundance they have and abundance they lay on: their fire is instead of our bed-clothes. And so, themselves and any that have any occasion to lodge with them, must be content to turn often to the fire, if the night be cold, and they who first wake must repair the fire.” Elsewhere he says: “God was pleased to give me a painful, patient spirit, to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes.” See also Gookin’s _Indians_, I. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. i. p. 150.

When Stephen Hopkins and Edward Winslow were sent on their mission to Massasoit, in June, 1621, they say of their entertainment on the night they arrived at his lodge: “Late it grew, but victuals he offered none; for indeed he had not any, being he came so newly home. So we desired to go to rest: he layd us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end and we at the other, it being only planks layd a foot from the ground, and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us; so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our journey.” (_Mourt_, p. 45). Two nights of this entertainment sufficed for the embassadors who “feared we should either be light-headed for want of sleep, for what with bad lodging, the savages barbarous singing, (for they use to sing themselves asleep,) lice and fleas within doors, and musketos without, we could hardly sleep all the time of our being there.” (_Ib._, p. 46) Another observer remarked of the New England Indians: “Tame cattle they have none, excepting Lice, and Dogs of a wild breed” (Josselyn’s _Voyages_, p. 127); and to the same effect Roger Williams notes (_Key_, p. 74): “In middle of summer, because of the abundance of fleas, which the dust of the house breeds, they [the Indians] will fly and remove on a sudden to a fresh place.”

Smith, describing the Virginia Indians, says (_True Travels_, vol. i. p. 130): “Their houses are built like our arbors, of small young springs bowed and tyed, and so close covered with mats, or the barkes of trees very handsomely, that nothwithstanding either winde, raine, or weather, they are as warm as stoves, but very smoaky, yet at the toppe of the house there is a hole made for the smoake to go into right over the fire.

“Against the fire they lie on little hurdles of Reeds covered with a mat, borne from the ground a foote and more by a hurdle of wood. On these round about the house they lie heads and points, one by the other, against the fire, some covered with mats, some with skins, and some stark naked lie on the ground, from six to twenty in a house.”

In Parkman’s _Jesuits in North America_ there is a lively account of Le Jeune’s experience in passing the winter of 1633-4 among the Algonquins: “Put aside the bear-skin, and enter the hut. Here, in a space some thirteen feet square, were packed nineteen savages, men, women and children, with their dogs, crouched, squatted, coiled like hedge-hogs, or lying on their backs, with knees drawn up perpendicularly to keep their feet out of the fire.... The bark covering was full of crevices, through which the icy blasts streamed in upon him from all sides; and the hole above, at once window and chimney, was so large, that, as he [Le Jeune] lay, he could watch the stars as well as in the open air. While the fire in the midst, fed with fat pine-knots, scorched him on one side, on the other he had much ado to keep himself from freezing. At times, however, the crowded hut seemed heated to the temperature of an oven. But these evils were light when compared to the intolerable plague of smoke. During a snow-storm, and often at other times, the wigwam was filled with fumes so dense, stifling, and acrid, that all its inmates were forced to lie flat on their faces, breathing through mouths in contact with the cold earth. Their throats and mouths felt as if on fire; their scorched eyes streamed with tears.... The dogs were not an unmixed evil, for by sleeping on and around [Le Jeune], they kept him warm at night; but, as an offset to this good service, they walked, ran and jumped over him as he lay” (pp. 27-8).

[238] In regard to the food of the Indians and their alternate gluttony and abstinence, see Josselyn’s _Two Voyages_, pp. 129-30; Wood’s _Prospect_, p. 57. Wood’s account of the Indians is usually the best. As respects eating, he says: “At home they will eate till their bellies stand South, ready to split with fulnesse: it being their fashion, to eate all at sometimes, and sometimes nothing at all in two or three days, wise providence being a stranger to their wilder dayes.”

[239] “_Cattup keen?_ ‘Are you hungry?’ _Meechin_, ‘meat;’ or, as an Indian would be more likely to say, _Meech_, ‘eat.’ In Eliot’s orthography, _Kodtup kēn?_ _Meechum_, ‘victuals, food,’ or _meech_, ‘eat.’”--_J. H. Trumbull._

[240] In regard to the hospitality of the Indians, Wood says (_Prospect_, p. 59): “Though they be sometimes scanted, yet are they as free as Emperors, both to their countrymen and English, be he stranger or mere acquaintance; counting it a great discourtesie not to eat of their high conceited delicates, and sup of their un-oat-meal’d broth, made thick with fishes, fowles and beasts boiled all together; some remaining raw, the rest converted by over-much seething to a loathed mass, not halfe so good as _Irish Boniclapper_.” See also Gookin’s _Indians_, I. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. i. p. 153.

So also Roger Williams (_Key_, ch. ii. and iii.): “If any stranger came in, they presently give him to eat of what they have; many a time, and at all times of the night (as I have fallen in travel, upon their houses) where nothing hath been ready, have themselves and their wives, risen to prepare me some refreshing.”

“In Summer-time I have knowne them lye abroad often themselves, to make room for strangers, English, or others.”

“_I have known them leave their House and Mat
to lodge a friend or stranger,
Where Jewes and Christians oft have sent
Christ Jesus to the manger._”

[241] In regard to the games and removals of the Indians, see Williams’s _Key_, chs. xi. and xxviii.; Smith’s _True Travels_, vol. i. p. 133; Gookin’s _Indians_, I. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. i. p. 153; and Wood’s _Prospect_; pp. 63, 73-5. Wood gives an excellent description of the Indian game of foot-ball: “Their goals be a mile long placed on the sands, which are as even as a board; their ball is no bigger than a hand-ball, which sometimes they mount in the air with their naked feet, sometimes it is swayed by the multitude; sometimes also it is two days before they get a goal; then they mark the ground they win, and begin the next day.... Though they play never so fiercely to outward appearance, yet anger-boiling blood never streams in their cooler veins; if any man be thrown, he laughs out his foil, there is no seeking of revenge, no quarrelling, no bloody noses, scratched faces, black eyes, broken shins, no bruised members or crushed ribs, the lamentable effects of rage; but the goal being won, the goods on the one side lost; friends they were at the foot-ball, and friends they must meet at the kettle.” To the same effect see Strachey’s _Historie_, p. 78.

[242] Ipsisque in hominibus nulla gens est neque tam immansueta, neque tam fera, quæ non, etiam si ignoret qualem habere deum deceat, tamen habendum sciat (_De Legibus_, Lib. I. § 8).

Quæ est enim gens, aut quod genus hominum, quod non habeat sine doctrinâ anticipationem quandam deorum? (_De Natura Deorum_, Lib. I. § 16).

[243] The reference here is to Wood’s _New England’s Prospect_ (p. 70). In regard to the time when this work was written and published, see Mr. Deane’s preface to the edition in the publications of the Prince Society. Morton makes numerous references to it in the _New Canaan_ (_infra_, *38, 53, 64, 84, 99). The present reference is one of the few unintelligible passages in the book. Wood’s language, to which Morton apparently takes exception, is as follows: “As it is natural to all mortals to worship something, so do these people; but exactly to describe to whom their worship is chiefly bent, is very difficult; they acknowledge especially two, Ketan, who is their good God, to whom they sacrifice after their garners be full with a good crop: upon this God likewise they invocate for fair weather, for rain in time of drought, and for the recovery of their sick; but if they do not hear them, then they verify the old verse, _Flectere si nequeo Superes, Acheronta movebo_, their Pow-wows betaking themselves to their exorcisms and unromantick charms ... by God’s permission, through the Devil’s help, their charms are of force to produce effects of wonderment.” Morton would seem to have wished to depreciate Wood, as an authority on New England, and so, playing upon his name and the title of his book, he implied that he had taken a much more elevated view of the religious development of the Indians than could be justified either by the actual facts, or the judgment of the best informed.

Being unintelligible, the passage, from the word “neither” to the end of the paragraph, is reproduced here in all respects, including punctuation, as it is in the text of the original edition.

[244] There is no expression of this nature to be found anywhere in those writings of Sir William Alexander which have come down to us and are included in the publications of the Prince Society. He may have used the expression quoted in conversation, or in a letter. Winslow, in Mourt, says: “They [the savages] are a people without any religion, or knowledge of any God” (p. 61). This statement he subsequently, however, retracted in his _Good News_ (Young’s _Chron. of Pilg._, p. 355), where he says, “therein I erred, though we could then gather no better.”

The subject of the religion of the North American aborigines has been treated by Parkman in the introduction to the _Jesuits in North America_ (pp. lxvii.-lxxxix.), and he concludes that “the primitive Indian, yielding his untutored homage to an All-pervading grand Omnipotent Spirit, is a dream of poets, rhetoricians and sentimentalists.” To the same effect Palfrey, at the close of his vigorous discussion of the same subject (vol. i. p. 45), declares that the devout Indian of the “untutored mind is as fabulous as the griffin or the centaur.”

[245] Thomas May, better known as the historian and secretary of the Long Parliament, was born in 1595 and died in 1650. In 1627 he published a translation of Lucan’s _Pharsalia_, with a _supplementum_, or continuation (1630), by himself in seven books. This continuation he subsequently translated into Latin, and it is included in Lemaire’s edition of the _Pharsalia_ in his _Bibliotheca Classica Latina_ (Paris, 1832). The passage to which Morton refers is in the third book of the continuation (ll. 108-78). The following are some of the verses:--

“But in a higher kind (as some relate)
Do Elephants with men communicate.
(If you believe it) a religion
They have, and monthly do adore the Moon,
Besides the loftie Nabathæan wood,
Of vast extent, Amylo’s gentle flood,
Gliding along, the sandie mould combines.
Thither, as oft as waxing Cynthia shines
In her first borrowed light, from out the wood,
Come all the Elephants, and in the floud
Washing themselves (as if to purifie)
They prostrate fall; and when religiously
They have adored the Moon, return again
Into the woods with joy.”

[246] In his Latin poem on New England, which the Rev. William Morell wrote during his eighteen months’ residence at Wessagusset as the spiritual head of the Robert Gorges settlement of 1623, there is a description of the Indian and his garments. The following is the author’s English rendering of his more elegant Latin original:--

“Whose hayre is cut with greeces, yet a locke
Is left; the left side bound up in a knott:
Their males small labour but great pleasure know,
Who nimbly and expertly draw the bow;
Traind up to suffer cruell heat and cold,
Or what attempt so ere may make them bold;
Of body straight, tall, strong, mantled in skin
Of deare or bever, with the hayre-side in;
An otter skin their right armes doth keepe warme,
To keepe them fit for use, and free from harme;
A girdle set with formes of birds or beasts,
Begirts their waste, which gentle gives them ease.
Each one doth modestly bind up his shame,
And deare-skin start-ups reach up to the same;
A kind of _pinsen_ keeps their feet from cold,
Which after travels they put off, up-fold,
Themselves they warme, their ungirt limbes they rest
In straw, and houses, like to sties.”

I. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. i. p. 131.

Wood’s description of the Indian apparel is very like Morton’s. He says, however: “The chiefe reasons they render why they will not conforme to our English apparell are because their women cannot wash them when they be soyled, and their meanes will not reach to buy new when they have done with their old; and they confidently beleeve, the English will not be so liberall as to furnish them upon gifture: therefore they had rather goe naked than be lousie, and bring their bodies out of their old tune, making them more tender by a new acquired habit, which poverty would constrain them to leave.” (_Prospect_, p. 56).

The description given by Winslow (Young’s _Chron. of Pilg._, p. 365) is very similar to Morell’s. See also Gookin’s _Indians_, I. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. i. p. 152; Josselyn’s _Two Voyages_, pp. 128-9, and Williams’s _Key_, ch. xx.

Smith (_True Travels_, vol. i. p. 129) says: “For their apparell, they are sometimes covered with the skinnes of wilde beasts, which in winter are dressed with the hayre, but in Sommer without. The better sort use large mantels of Deare skins, not much differing in fashion from the Irish mantels. Some imbrodered with white beads, some with copper, others painted after their manner. But the common sort have scarce to cover their nakednesse, but with grasse, the leaves of trees or such like. We have seene some use mantels made of Turkey feathers so prettily wrought and woven with threads that nothing could be discerned but the feathers.”

[247] _Supra_, 16, _note_.

[248] Speaking of a ceremony common to the Algonquins and the Hurons, of propitiating their fishing-nets by formally marrying them every year to two young girls, Parkman says: “As it was indispensable that the brides should be virgins, mere children were chosen” (_The Jesuits in North America_, p. lxix. _note_). The subject of female chastity among the Indians has already been referred to (_supra_, p. 17), and it is extremely questionable whether they had any conception of it. Winslow, in his _Good News_ (Young’s _Chron. of Pilg._, p. 364) says:--“When a maid is taken in marriage, she first cutteth her hair, and after weareth a covering on her head, till her hair be grown out. Their women are diversely disposed; some as modest, as they will scarce talk one with another in the company of men, being very chaste also; yet others seem light, lascivious, and wanton.... Some common strumpets there are, as well as in other places; but they are such as either never married, or widows, or put away for adultery; for no man will keep such an one to wife.” Strachey (_Historie_, p. 65), says of the Virginians: “Their younger women goe not shadowed [clothed] amongst their owne companie, until they be nigh eleaven or twelve returnes of the leafe old, nor are they much ashamed thereof, and therefore would the before remembered Pochahuntas, a well featured, but wanton yong girle, Powhatan’s daughter, sometymes resorting to our fort, of the age then of eleven or twelve yeares, get the boyes forth with her into the markett place, and make them wheele, falling on their hands, turning up their heeles upwards, whome she would followe, and wheele so her self, naked as she was, all the fort over; but being over twelve yeares, they put on a kind of semecinctum lethern apron (as doe our artificers or handycrafts men) before their bellies, and are very shamefac’t to be seen bare.” Ellis, in his _Red Man and White Man_ (p. 185), remarks on this point: “The obscenity of the savages is unchecked in its revolting and disgusting exhibitions. Sensuality seeks no covert.”

Under these circumstances it is unnecessary to say that Morton’s statements as to the red cap and the Sachem’s privilege are pure fiction, and what Parkman says of the Hurons is probably true of the Massachusetts,--their women were wantons before marriage and household drudges after it. (_Jesuits in North America_, p. xxxv).

[249] To the same effect Roger Williams says: “Most of them count it a shame for a woman in travell to make complaint, and many of them are scarcely heard to groane. I have often known in one quarter of an hour a woman merry in the house, and delivered and merry again: and within two dayes abroad, and after foure or five dayes at worke.” (_Key_, ch. xxiii.). See also Josselyn’s _Two Voyages_, p. 127. Wood’s account is almost as comprehensive, though not quite so detailed and graphic as Josselyn’s: “They likewise sew their husband’s shooes, and weave mats of Turkie feathers; besides all their ordinary household drudgery which dayly lies upon them, so that a bigge belly hinders no businesse nor a childbirth takes much time, but the young infant being greased and footed, wrapped in a Beaver skin, bound to his goode behaviour with his feete up to his bumme, upon a board two foot long and one foot broade, his face exposed to all nipping weather, this little _Pappouse_ travels about with his bare-footed mother, to paddle in the Icie Clammbanks after three or four daies of age have sealed his passe-board and his mother’s recovery.” (_Prospect_, p. 82). See also Young’s _Chron. of Pilg._, p. 358.

[250] The idea that the Indian was born white was very commonly entertained in the first half of the seventeenth century. Lechford, in his _Plaine Dealing_, says (p. 50): “They are of complexion swarthy and tawny; their children are borne white, but they bedaube them with oyle, and colours, presently.” Josselyn also speaks of the Indians “dying [their children] with a liquor of boiled Hemlock-Bark” (_Two Voyages_, p. 128). Speaking of the Virginia women, Smith says: “To make [their children] hardie, in the coldest mornings they them wash in the rivers, and by paynting and oyntments so tanne their skinnes, that after a year or two, no weather will hurt them.” (_True Travels_, vol. i. p. 131). Strachey gives a more particular account of the supposed process: The Indians “are generally of a cullour browne or rather tawny, which they cast themselves into with a kind of arsenick stone, ... and of the same hue are their women; howbeit, yt is supposed neither of them naturally borne so discouloured; for Captain Smith (lyving somtymes amongst them) affirmeth how they are from the womb indifferent white, but as the men, so doe the women, dye and disguise themselves into this tawny cowler, esteeming yt the best beauty to be neerest such a kynd of murrey as a sodden quince is of (to liken yt to the neerest coulor I can), for which they daily anoint both face and bodyes all over with such a kind of fucus or unguent as can cast them into that stayne.” (_Historie_, p. 63).

[251] “If there was noticed a remarkable exemption from physical deformities, this was probably not the effect of any peculiar congenital force or completeness, but of circumstances which forbade the prolongation of any imperfect life. The deaf, blind or lame child was too burdensome to be reared, and according to a savage estimate of usefulness and enjoyment, its prolonged life would not requite its nurture.” Palfrey, vol. i. p. 23.

[252] Mr. Trumbull writes: “Morton’s _nan weeteo_ stands for Eliot’s _nanwetee_ (_nanwetue_, Cotton), ‘a bastard.’ _Titta_ should be _tatta_, a word common among Indians, which is well enough translated by Morton. Eliot renders it ‘I know not,’ and R. Williams adds to this meaning, ‘I cannot tell; it may be so.’

“_Cheshetue_ is unknown to me, but I am inclined to believe that Morton heard something like it, in the connection and substantially with the meaning he gives it,--some adjective of dispraise, qualifying _squaa_, or, as we write it, _squaw_.”

[253] [likenesse.] See _supra_, 111, _note_ 1.

[254] The observations of Roger Williams led him to a different conclusion: “Their affections, especially to their children, are very strong.... This extreme affection, together with want of learning, makes their children saucie, bold and undutifull. I once came into a house, and requested some water to drink; the father bid his sonne (of some 8 yeeres of age) to fetch some water: the boy refused, and would not stir; I told the father, that I would correct my child, if he should so disobey me &c. Upon this the father took up a sticke, the boy another, and flew at his father: upon my persuasion, the poore father made him smart a little, throw down his stick, and run for water, and the father confessed the benefits of correction, and the evill of their too indulgent affections.” (_Key_, ch. v.)

To the same effect Champlain wrote (_Voyages_, vol. iii. p. 170): “The children have great freedom among these tribes. The fathers and mothers indulge them too much, and never punish them. Accordingly they are so bad and of so vicious a nature, that they often strike their mothers and others. The most vicious, when they have acquired the strength and power, strike their fathers. They do this whenever the father or mother does anything that does not please them. This is a sort of curse that God inflicts upon them.” Winslow, on the other hand, in his _Good News_, lends some support to Morton’s statement in the text. He says: “The younger sort reverence the elder, and do all mean offices, whilst they are together, although they be strangers.” (Young’s _Chron. of Pilg._, p. 363.)

[255] This Sachem, “the most noted powow and sorcerer of all the country,” is better known by the name of Passaconaway. There is quite an account of him in Drake’s _Book of the Indians_ (B. III. ch. vii). He is the Pissacannawa mentioned by Wood in his _Prospect_ (p. 70), of whom the savages reported that he could “make the water burn, the rocks move, the trees dance, metamorphize himself into a flaming man.” Morton says of the Indian conjurers, “some correspondency they have with the Devil out of all doubt;” Wood, to the same effect, remarks that “by God’s permission, through the Devil’s helpe, their charmes are of force to produce effects of wonderment;” Smith declares of the Indians, “their chiefe God they worship is the Devil” (_True Travels_, vol. i. p. 138); Mather intimates that it was the devil who seduced the first inhabitants of America into it (_Magnalia_, B. I. ch. i. § 3), and Winthrop, describing the great freshet of 1638, records that the Indians “being pawawing in this tempest, the Devil came and fetched away five of them” (vol. i. p. *293).

See also Gookin’s _Indians_, I. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. i. p. 154; Young’s _Chron. of Pilg._, p. 356; and Champlain’s _Voyages_, vol. iii. p. 171. Champlain says the Indians do not worship any God; “they have, however, some respect for the devil.”

[256] [Ingling.] See _supra_, 111, _note_ 1.

[257] In regard to the Indian Powaws, priests, or medicine men, and their methods of dealing with the sick, see the detailed account in Champlain’s _Voyages_, vol. iii. pp. 171-8; Josselyn’s _Two Voyages_, p. 134; Wood’s _Prospect_, p. 71; Williams’s _Key_, ch. xxxi.; Gookin’s _Indians_, I. _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vol. i. p. 154; Young’s _Chron. of Pilg._, pp. 317, 357; Lechford’s _Plaine Dealing_, (Trumbull’s ed.) p. 117; Parkman’s _Jesuits in North America_, pp. lxxxiv.-lxxxvii.; also _Magnalia_, B. III. part. iii., where Mather says: “In most of their dangerous distempers, it is a _powaw_ that must be sent for; that is, a priest who has more familiarity with Satan than his neighbors; this conjurer comes and roars and howls and uses magical ceremonies over the sick man, and will be well paid for it when he is done; if this don’t effect the cure, the ‘man’s time is come, and there’s an end.’” For a summary in Indian medical practice, see further, Ellis’s _Red Man and White Man_, pp. 127-33.