USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Cape Cod, the right arm of Massachusetts : an historical narrative > Part 25
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Succannessett, (Old John), 72
Other places, (not in the county), 495
"Besides boys and girls under 12, which are supposed to be three times as many. None were accounted praying Indians unless they publicly renounced their former heathenish manners, and gave themselves up to be praying Indians."
Gov. Hinckley says, "They have their courts and judges ; but a great obstruction to bringing them to more civility and christianity, is the great appetite the younger generation have for strong liquors, and the covetous ill-humor of sundry of our English in furnishing them therewith, notwithstanding all the court orders and means used to prohibit the same." The number of Indians who were not enumerated among the "praying," or christianized Indians, there is no means of determining, with anything approaching accuracy. If half were of this description, and, allowing for children under 12, the entire native population must have been two or three thousand souls.
Besides Mr. Bourne and Mr. Tupper, who were the leading pioneers in the work of civilizing and evangelizing the Indians, Rev. Samuel Treat of Eastham and Rev. Thomas Thornton of Yarmouth, labored with great zeal, devotion and considerable results, in the same direction. Mr. Thornton labored through the native teachers, and his labors were crowned with a large measure of success. Mr. Treat engaged with earnestness in the work, and prosecuted it with zeal during a great number of years. In Gov. Hinckley's enumeration, already adverted to, five hundred of the praying Indians were comprised in Mr. Treat's
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parish, besides boys and girls, who were supposed to be more than three times that number. He preached to the Indians in their own langnage, which he spoke with great facility. The Indian teachers in their several villages read to their congregations sermons which he had written for them, and he translated the Confession of Faith into the Nauset language, for the edification of his converts. But all these efforts did not save them from disease and decay, and year by year their numbers diminished, until the Nauset tribe disappeared from the face of the earth.
It would hardly be fair to assume, as is sometimes done, that the decay of the Indian race is due to contact with civilized life, since, before the European nations had found a lodgment here or the natives had made more than a nominal acquaintance with the new comers, their decline had commenced, and through pestilence and privation the mortality of the race had become rapid and beyond the power of man to check. Their decadence, after this, was never so great as before, and it seems more probable that contact with civilization, with the comforts and ameliorations of their condition, retarded, rather than helped forward, the decay of the aboriginal races, which, from the first, appears to have been inevitable. In the order of Providence they seem to have been doomed to extinction, and the precepts and examples of christianity were powerless to avert their impending fate. The love of the Indian for intoxicating liquors has many times been enlarged upon, but it does not entirely account for their decay. The English consumed vastly more alcoholic drinks than the Indians, their means of procuring it being greater, but they grew and prospered, in spite of this drawback. The ministers exhorted against their appetite in this regard, to the great disgust many times of their auditors. Mr. Stone, the Provincetown preacher,
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felt that he had a mission to exhort the Indians on this subject. One of the Mashpee Indians, to whom he preached on exchange, was asked how he liked Mr. Stone? He answered, "Mr. Stone is one very good preacher, but he preach too much about rum. Indian think nothing about it ; but when he tells how Indian love rum, and how much they drink, then I think how good it is, and think no more 'bout the sermon, my mouth waters all the time so much for rum." The use of spirituous liquors easily overcame them, but Anglo-Saxons were hard drinkers, and survived, and had sufficient self-control to become in the end comparative abstainers. In effect, it will be found that the vices which overmastered the natives were resolutely overcome by the English, and that under precisely the same conditions the natives decayed and the newcomers flourished, and became powerful and prosperous. It was a trial of races and civilizations, and in the end the fittest survived.
This view of the question need not be regarded as depreciating the efforts and aims, nor the mission of Richard Bourne, Thomas Tupper, Revs. Thornton, Treat, and the other evangelists, who labored for the spiritual interests of the Indian races. There has seldom been exhibited on this continent so fine an example of devotion, of sacrifice aud of entire and unselfish consecration to a great and beneficent end, as the life-work of Richard Bourne. He saw before him, not a feeble and decaying race,-he indulged in no generalizations about the end of Providence in planting the aborigines on these shores ; but recognizing, according to his creed, the immortal destinies and the spiritual needs of these men, he at once devoted his life to their service. His work and character were conspicuous in this field of effort. The other evangelists, in the same spirit, though in a less marked degree, continued the work. That they did not
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avert the impending extinction of the race, is no impeach- ment of their sagacity nor of their unselfish devotion to the work. They failed, not because their efforts lacked intelligence and self-consecration, but because destiny and the laws of the universe, hidden for the time from them, were working out a different result.
Mr. Bourne's superiority to his contemporaries is evinced by his administrative abilities displayed in the organization of the District of Mashpee. His worldly sagacity was shown in insisting upon setting apart for the natives a portion of the soil of their ancestors, which should not be alienated and which should be sacredly secured to them and their descendants. This condition was observed long after the last pure Indian was extinct. No better spot could be selected than the District of Mashpee, a region of picturesque scenery, diversified by ponds, groves, streams, woodland, its waters abounding in fish, its woods filled with wild game, and its facile soil adapted to the growth of corn and vegetables. To this region, the remnants of the native Indians from other parts of the county resorted, as to a sanctuary, when driven by an advancing civilization from their primitive retreats. And to this community, founded by the foresight of Richard Bourne, the Indian owes the only recognition which remains for his race within the limits of Barnstable county. The works or institutions of few public men endure longer than their lives or those of their immediate descendants, but those founded by Mr. Bourne have not yet failed to exert their beneficent influence upon the remnants of the Indian race, nor have they faded from the grateful recollections of posterity. He could not avert a doom which was inevitably theirs, but he ameliorated the condition of thousands of the race and rendered more tolerable their lot for many succeeding generations.
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The Society for Propagating the Gospel in New England, about the year 1767, sent a committee to Mashpee to inquire into the condition of the Indians there, particularly, and incidentally, those in other parts of Barnstable county. They met at Mashpee, on the communion Sabbath, a house filled with Indian worshippers, and the service was carried on in their own language, by Indian ministers, Solomon Briant, the Mashpee pastor, and Zachary Osooit, the pastor at Gay Head. John Ralph was mentioned as minister at Potenumacut, and Isaac Jephrey at the Ponds in Plymouth. Mr. Hawley, the English pastor at Mashpee, gave the agent of the society some statisties of the numbers of Indian worshippers and of other matters relating to the Indians, which, in comparison with Gov. Hinckley's figures of eighty years before, show how rapid had been the decline of the native population, in spite of all the ameliorating influences of the English missionaries and other friendly aids to advancement in the arts of civilized life. At that time, according to this authority, there were in all about 271 inhabitants in Mashpee ; in Scauton (East Sandwich) there were nine wigwams, number of inhabitants not stated; at Sacconesset (Falmouth), about 20 who belonged to the meeting. There were six wigwams in Yarmouth, the inhabitants of which belonged to the church and congrega- tion at Potenumacut, "where are a larger number of Indians than at any other place in that neighborhood, besides Mashpee." They also speak of eight Indian families, of about thirty persons, at Pocasset.
From this time the native Indians began again to decay. In Yarmouth, large numbers were carried off by the small pox. Soon after the Revolutionary War their lands were sold, and, in 1797, there were living on the Indian reservation, in the southeasterly part of the town, a negro
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and a squaw, occupying one wigwam .* These soon after disappeared. In 1802, there were three Indians remaining in Potenumacut (Orleans), and one in Eastham. These were also destined to speedy extinction.
If the accounts of the latest remnants of the Indian tribes of Yarmouth are not greatly idealized, they were a most interesting and attractive people in their social and moral character. One of their annalists* describes them as living in Arcadian simplicity of life in a little cluster of wigwams in the southeastern part of the town, near Bass River. A suspicious deaeon, who was in quest of the despoiler of his poultry yard, in the early morning hours, found the occupants of three wigwams engaged in their morning devotions, and felt humiliated that he should have mistrusted these people. Deacon Nauhaught, their chief character, once found a pocketbook containing a quantity of money, but such were his ideas that he would not open it, nor would he suffer any one else to do so, until he got to a public house. "If I was to do so," said he, "all the trees in the woods would see me and testify against me." The tale which is related of this striking and unique character, when assailed by snakes, though amply re-enforced by the testimony of several white deacons and other veracious authorities, is so apochryphal that the foreign readers may be pardoned for expressing, as they did, some degree of suspicion in relation to it. "This Indian, who was a very athletic man, was once attacked by a large number of black snakes. Being at a considerable distance from any people, and having no weapons about him except what the God of Nature had given him, he knew not what to do. He found it impossible to escape from them by attempting to run. He experienced, however, very little from any fearful
*Alden's Mem. of Yarmouth.
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apprehensions on account of his personal safety. He was perfectly self-collected, and thought he would stand firm on his feet and suffer the snakes to take their own course, for a time, without annoyance. They approached him from every direction with elevated heads and tremendous hissing. They soon began to wind themselves about his legs. Presently one of them got up to his neck and seemed to act as if he was attempting to get his head into Nauhaught's mouth. Nauhaught opened his jaws, which were furnished with a noble set of teeth. The snake immediately thrust in its head and the deacon bit it off ! a fortunate circumstance, as the result proves; for the blood, streaming from the decapitated leader in the attack, so alarmed the rest of the invading enemy, that Nauhaught was immediately left master of the field !"
There must have been some peculiar influences operating upon the Yarmouth natives to produce such exceptional characters as these. The Mashpee Indians were not described by their contemporaries, as of a heroic type. An account of them, written in 1802, from memoranda com- municated by Rev. Mr. Hawley, Dr. Thacher and Dr. Eliot,* places them low in point of morals and character, and implies that the experiment of Mr. Bourne and his successors was a lamentable failure. But the virtues of the one people no more averted the decay of the race in this county, than the vices of the other, contributed to their annihilation. The last Indian of pure strain in Yarmouth died before the beginning of the present century ; and the last of the Mashpees departed about the year 1804-5.t The present inhabitants of Mashpee have but little of the aboriginal blood in their veins ; the morals of the inhabitants are of a high order, and no people in the country attend
*Mass. Hist. Soc. Col., vol. 8, 1st series. +Dr. Alden.
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with more fidelity than they to the civil duties of the citizen.
For a race once so populous here, it seems strange that no memorials of them remain upon our soil. A few shell- heaps, stone utensils and arrow-heads, scattered over the fields, are all that are left to remind us of their former existence. Even their last resting-places are known in but few instances. In two or three towns, spots known by tradition or other evidence, to have been used as their places of sepulchre, have been enclosed or marked by suitable inscriptions.
CHAPTER XX. CAPE AUTHORS AND NEWSPAPERS.
Early Writers-Freeman's History of Cape Cod-Other Local Works -Poetry -Fiction-Occasional Writers-The Newspapers of Barn- stable County.
PEAKING of our achievements in the field of letters, it may be said that the S w intelligence and capacity of the people of the Cape have not, heretofore, been evinced so much in what they have said, as in what they have dared and accomplished. The founders of her towns were not usually men of literary taste or acquirements, except her clergy, who ranked well with those of their class in other parts of the colony. It was some time after they had settled the towns, subdued the wild face of nature, and helped to conquer the savage foe, before they turned their attention to scholarship. Then it was that the fisheries on their shores helped to found and maintain the first public grammar school established by the colony. It was, indeed, the chief reliance of that enterprise.
The first of their written compositions which are extant are in the form of sermons, and of these it may be said, that their style was as rugged and forbidding to our present taste, as were the ideas they were intended to convey. In hours of deep affliction the fathers sometimes essayed to woo the muses. The earliest specimen of elegaic verse
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preserved, is found in the lines composed on the death of his accomplished wife, by Governor Thomas Hinckley, of which production Mr. Palfrey says, " It breathes not, indeed, the most tuneful spirit of song, but the very tenderest soul of affection."
The earliest books published in this county seem to have been those of Edward Perry of Sandwich, a Friend, between the years 1676 and 1690, and bear the titles, "A Warning to New England ;" "To the Court of Plymouth, this is the Word of the Lord;" "A Testimony Concerning the Light;" "Concerning True Repentance," etc. Not more than one copy is known to be in existence.
Dr. John Osborn, born in Sandwich in 1713, a son of Rev. Samuel Osborn, minister for some time of the south precinct of Eastham, wrote a Whaling Song, which has obtained celebrity. It is quite an advance, in literary finish, upon anything preceding it which had been produced by a Cape Cod writer. The opening lines are :
"When spring returns with western gales, And gentle breezes sweep The ruffling seas, we spread our sails, To plough the wat'ry deep.
"For killing northern whales prepared, Our nimble boats on board, With craft and rum (our chief regard,) And good provisions stored."
Then follow sixteen stanzas, which describe, in spirited style, the pursuit, killing and capture of the monsters of the deep.
Rev. Thomas Prince, the distinguished author of New England's Annals and Chronology, a native of Sandwich and a grandson of Governor Hinckley, produced a work of exceeding value. In the opinion of Dr. Chauncey, "No one in New England had more learning except Cotton Mather."
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He published other works, though the Annals is esteemed the most important.
James Otis, Jr., called "the patriot," besides being a peerless orator, was the author of several important political treatises, among which may be mentioned his Rights of the Colonies Vindicated, which was styled "a masterpiece of good writing and argument."
Mercy Warren, daughter of Col. James Otis, was born in West Barnstable, Sept. 25, 1728, died in Boston, Oct. 19, 1814. She received her education from Rev. Jonathan Russell, who also fitted her distinguished brother for college. Her feelings were soon enlisted on the side of her father and brother, and her letters, patriotic verses and political satires, throw much light upon the history of the period. She married James Warren of Plymouth, one of the leaders of the Revolutionary party, and was in intimate correspon- dence with the two Adamses, Thomas Jefferson and other distinguished patriots. In 1790 she published a volume of poems, including two tragedies, entitled "The Sack of Rome," and "The Ladies of Castile." Her most important work, however, was her "History of the American Revolution," (3 volumes, 820, Boston, 1805,) prepared from notes taken during the war, and which is a standard authority with writers on that subject.
Rev. Dr. Samuel West, a native of Yarmouth, for some time a school-master in Barnstable and Falmouth, was renowned for his metaphysical and controversial talents, as well as for his great learning and profound scholarship. " He was," said Dr. Timothy Alden, Jr., "as remarkable for his mental powers, as Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great biographer and moralist. He was supposed to have much resembled him in personal appearance, and with the same literary advantages, would unquestionably have equalled
MERCY WARREN.
From "Mercy W'arren," in "W'omen of Colonial and Revolutionary Times." Copyright, 1897, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
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him for reputation in the learned world." He wrote several important tracts during the revolutionary period.
Rev. Dr. Timothy Alden, Jr., a native of Yarmouth and president of Alleghany College, Meadville, Pa., about the middle of the century published the Collection of American Epitaphs, in four volumes, a book which contained a fund of interesting and valuable information.
Rev. James Freeman, D. D., minister of the Stone Chapel, Boston, a native of Truro, contributed, soon after this time, a series of most important papers relating to the history of the towns of the county and published in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. These papers are still quoted and relied upon as authority on the subjects to which they are devoted.
With such a record for enterprise, adventure, patriotism and identification with the great movements of the age as the Cape presents, it would be strange if there were not others of her sons who should attempt to do her honor, or at least justice. In 1858, Rev. Frederick Freeman, of Sandwich, commenced the publication of a History of Cape Cod. The book was finally completed, in two large volumes, and to all time must be the foundation upon which other works of the kind will be based. The difficulties in Mr. Freeman's way were numerous; he had to begin without any considerable previous aid ; he was justly emulous of the fame of his illustrious ancestors; and being himself a minister of the church of England, it seemed to some that he did tardy and stinted justice to the Pilgrim and Puritan elements. Some of the important epochs were not written up with the fullness and elaboration of the others. But despite these drawbacks, Mr. Freeman's book will always be quoted, as the first filial attempt of any Cape Cod man to do appropriate honor to the memory of the pioneers and their
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successors, and as such should be held in high estimation.
Rev. Enoch Pratt, in 1842, published his history of Eastham, Wellfleet and Orleans. There is much in it which is interesting, unique and worthy of preservation. Mr. Shebnah Rich, in his Truro, Cape Cod, has embodied in an original form, and attractive rhetoric, a mass of important information respecting one of the most interesting towns of the Old Colony. In 1861, Mr. Amos Otis commenced a series of articles in the Barnstable Patriot, respecting the history of the Barnstable Families. Nothing has yet been published which evinees so familiar an acquaintance with the habits, manners, motives and impelling principles of the pioneers of the town as these sketches, by one of their descendants. They will always be referred to as authority on the points which they discuss, and be regarded as a monument to the intelligence, zeal and industry of their author. In 1884, Charles F. Swift published a history of Old Yarmouth, including the towns of Yarmouth and Dennis, in one volume, 283 pages. Mr. Swift has also published a Fourth of July oration, 1858, a continuation of Barnstable Families, several occasional addresses, and contributions to magazines and newspapers, principally on biographical and historical subjects. The sketches of the History of Falmouth up to 1812, by the late Charles W. Jenkins, were issued in a collected form by the Falmouth Local press, in 1889. They were written before so much was known as has since transpired about the early history of the town, and the book is a filial and creditable work. Mr. Josiah Paine of Harwich, who contributed to Blake's Cape Cod the chapters on the history of Harwich and Brewster, has written, with intelligenec and discrimination, other important historical papers, for the newspapers and maga- zines, and has a manuscript collection of great value
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regarding old Harwich and its people. Mr. Joshna H. Paine, his brother, has also written an exhaustive unpub- lished account of the War of 1812 in its relation to Harwich. In 1890, Messrs. H. W. Blake & Co. published a History of Barnstable County, a book of over 1000 pages, copiously illustrated, and handsomely bound and printed. Without being a complete and continuous history, it contains a vast amount of valuable information, and much biographical matter, particularly of contemporary individuals, who contributed the data and were responsible for its dissemi- nation.
In other departments of literary effort the natives of the Cape have somewhat distinguished themselves. The early bards of the county have already been alluded to. Several others remain to be noticed. Daniel Barker Ford, son of Dr. Oliver Ford of Hyannis, who was an apprentice in the Yarmouth Register office about 1842-4, evinced much poetic and rhetorical talent. His best known piece, "A Lay of Cape Cod," was modeled in style and treatment from Whittier's Lays of Labor, and was a most spirited and stirring production. A few of its inspiring lines are quoted :
"Hurrah! for old Cape Cod, With its sandy hills and low, Where the waves of ocean thunder, And the winds of heaven blow; Where through summer and through winter, Through sunshine and thro' rain, The hardy Cape man plies his task Upon the heaving main.
* * * *
" Hurrah! for the maids and matrons That grace our sandy home, As gentle as the summer breeze, As fair as ocean's foam ; Whose glances fall upon the heart, Like suulight on the waters;
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Who're brighter in the festal hall Than France's brightest daughters."
Dr. Thomas N. Stone of Wellfleet published, in 1869, a volume, entitled Cape Cod Rhymes. He possessed the true poetic temperament, was witty, pathetic, and alive to the sights and scenes of nature around him. He also wrote and delivered felicitous occasional orations and addresses. Asa S. Phiuney, also a printer in the office of the Yarmouth Register, in 1845 collected and issued a little pamphlet, Accepted Addresses, etc. There were twenty-four pieces in all, some of which evinced considerable poetic ability. Mr. Phinney was also a frequent and welcome contributor to the Cape newspapers.
Mrs. Frances E. Swift of Falmouth has written for several years for the current magazines and newspapers, under the nom de plume, "Fanny Fales." She published, in 1853, Voices of the Heart, and has a large number of superior compositions not yet in collected form. Mrs. Swift is not only an easy and graceful versifier, but has shown a high poetic fancy and a deeper insight into the emotions and feelings of the human heart. We present a single specimen in her reflections upon Longfellow's line, "Into each life some rain must fall":
"If this were all, O if this were all, That 'Into each life some rain must fall'- There were fainter sobs in the Poet's rhyme, There were fewer wrecks on the shores of time.
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