USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 11
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 11
USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. I > Part 11
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Gall and sweetness could not be more opposite than these two theories. A war of conditions was the consequence. In this conflict the parties never more than half comprehended each other. Misunderstandings and dissatisfactions con- tinued through centuries. Both parties were suspicious of each other to the last degree. The Indians were often cruel and treacherous. Arms were appealed to, when reason would have been better. But the teacher and the philanthropist, the humanitarian and the Christian, plied their cases with renewed vigor whenever the pauses in the contest rendered it practicable. For centuries together, councils and treaties, war and peace, succeeded each other with fitful and uncertain periods.
If we call into testimony Apaumet, a Mohican scholar, who was carefully educated at Princeton University, where he acquired the knowl- edge of classical and English literature which rendered him an auth- ority to command respect, we get a little of the Indian point of view. "Why," asked Apaumet, "do you believe letters and arts superior to the pursuits of the bow and arrow? Do they more truly fulfill the am- bitions of the human heart, according to the measure of light and knowledge, which determine the actual conditions of the different races of men?"
Apaumet returned to his tribe in Western New York. He said that his knowledge, gained in a white man's university, was useless to him because he had no letters to write, and no accounts to keep; and that his study of history had taught him that his people were savages, and he himself a lettered savage, alike unfit for Indian or civilized life. He was disappointed with civilization and discouraged with life. He at- tempted frequently to drown his sorrows with intoxicating liquors, which were first given to the Indians at the first peace conference with Massasoit at Plymouth. While inebriated, he would recite passages
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from Homer, and quote some of the finest passages in literature which appealed to him, as he had a very retentive memory.
Without the white man's instruction which gave them an inferiority complex, as in the case of Apaumet, or aroused their inherent feeling of animosity, the Indians regarded themselves as having once been the peculiar favorites of the Great Spirit, and they looked back to that period as a sort of golden age, when every want was supplied. Bravery and endurance were the chief objects of human attainment. They never suspected themselves to be savages and they reverenced the council of their old men and were a unit in convictions, one common thought pervading the whole tribe.
Dr. Samuel Johnson depicted the traits of the aborigines and wrote: "Whether more enlightened nations ought to look upon them with pity, as less happy than themselves, some skeptics have made, very unnecessarily, a difficulty of determining. More, they say, is lost by the perplexities than gained by the instruction of science; we enlarge our vices with our knowledge, and multiply our wants with our at- tainments, and the happiness of life is better secured by the ignorance of vice, than by the knowledge of virtue." Perhaps the Indians had some such point of view. The argument is not unlike that made in defense of slavery before the Civil War. Some of the slaves may have been happier in a condition of slavery with all their physical wants supplied, so long as their desires were largely confined to the physical. The Indian philosophy was that "the chase was the poetry of their existence, war the true path to honor, and the traditions and remi- niscences of their forefathers the proper intellectual food of the Indian mind. Books were for scholars, and labor for slaves."
Indians constitute an anomalous feature in history. Where they came from we do not know and the white people never agreed with them where they were going to, zealous as they seem to have been to set them on their way. They appear to be a branch, or branches of Oriental stock, who lapsed into the nomadic state at some primeval period, but we know they had an inherent love of liberty, as marked as any immigrants who ever came to these shores. In the breast of the Indian the passion for independence subdued every other and he might well have cried aloud, as did Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty or give me death."
"The aborigines roamed over domains which monarchs might be proud to own, and satraps and rajahs covet. They made voluntary offerings to gods of the elements, which they regarded as subject to the rule of a cosmic Great Spirit. Horrific idols, there were none, from the capes of Florida to the St. Lawrence, from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains. Neither a Brahma nor a Siva, a Gunga or a Juggernaut
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received the knee-worship of millions. No victim of superstition plunged himself into a sacred stream; no widow sacrificed herself on the fun- eral pyre of her husband; no mother was the cruel murderess of her own female infant. The Great Spirit was adored as the giver and taker of life. Such were the Indians. They neither raised costly temples to false gods, nor paid taxes to man." When the white men came, Powhatan and Massasoit were but the presiding chiefs of sachem- doms and bashabaries, the people of which were living in their primeval state. Power and custom had not then degenerated into tyranny; religion required no human sacrifice. The prescriptive laws of war left to each tribe and clan the choice of its own totemic banner of skin or feathers, and, by leaving the hunter tribes untrammelled in their ac- tions, secured to them the power of effectively refusing their assent to wars and conquests not approved. Even their demigods, Manabo and Hiawatha, were the impersonations of kindness and benevolence.
Thomas Harriot, a noted mathematician and scholar, was sent with the second expedition to Virginia by Sir Walter Raleigh for the pur- pose of describing the character of the Indians who inhabited the eastern shore of the new country. From him we can get another good description of the customs, rites, creed and opinions of the In- dians, which they were expected by the white men to give up for what, to them, was a new religion, filled with fears and anticipations of pun- ishments in the future life, which they did not have in theirs. Ac- cording to Harriot's report :
They believe in one God who is self-existent and eternal, and the creator of the world. After this, he created an order of inferior gods, to carry out His govern- ment. That then the sun, moon and stars were created as instruments of the secondary gods. The waters were then made, becoming the vital principle of all creatures. He next created a woman, who, by the congress of one of the gods, brought forth children, and thence mankind had their beginnings. They thought the gods were all of human shape, and worshipped them, by their images, dancing, singing and praying, with offerings. They believed in the im- mortality of the soul, which was destined to future happiness, or to inhabit Popagussa, a pit, or place of torment, where the sun sets; and this doctrine they based on the assertion of persons who had returned after death.
Such a people possessed noble elements in their character. Fearless of death, brave in war, and eloquent in council, they were exemplifi- cations of the highest perfection of the foresters' estate; and when, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, they endeavored to oppose the growth and spread of European colonization, their efforts were but attempts to cement more closely the links which had bound them together for unnumbered centuries. The hunter state was symbolically the Golden Age, which it was deemed essential to guard with jealous vigilance.
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Massasoit Was a Peaceful King-Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602 dis- covered Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands. The following year Captain Pring and Mr. Saltern followed nearly the same track as that followed by Gosnold. Two years later George Wey- mouth visited a part of the eastern coast and is supposed to have en- tered Narragansett Bay. On every side were found tribes of the Al- gonquin lineage, speaking their language and having identical man- ners and customs. They were mild, affable and fond of trading, but suspicious. Their chiefs were called sagamores and there was a higher class of rulers called Bashabas. Indian tribes roved over large areas after deer and in pursuit of war and the hunt, rather than occupying the country. Massasoit in Massachusetts and Powhatan in Virginia, noted Indians who are prominent in history at the time of the early colonial period, were more like kings. Powhatan had raised himself to his kingly eminence by his bravery, energy and wisdom in coun- cil. Then there was the claim of hereditary right which the Indians recognized. He was surrounded by numerous kindred, lineal and col- lateral, by virtue of the practice of polygamy. The confederacy of which he was the ruler when he was approximately sixty years of age, numbered 24,000, including about 1,500 warriors within sixty miles of Jamestown.
Massasoit was probably a few years older than Powhatan at the time the Pilgrims landed. The Pokanoket Tribe, or Wampanoags, which he governed were regarded by surrounding tribes as the most powerful organization on the coast, from the Narragansett to the Massachusetts Bay, which was probably the fact. The Wampanoags were from early times, it appears, the custodians of the imperial shell, or medal. They were brave and warlike.
Referring to Massasoit, at the age mentioned (seventy years or less) Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, LL. D., has written: "Though the fire of youth had departed from his eye, yet his step was firm and dig- nified, and he bore himself with an air. that betokened he not only had a vivid remembrance of the achievements of his tribe, but also deemed himself the true monarch of the land. The colonists found the vicinity of their location unoccupied ; old cornfields, deserted lodges, and graves hastily covered, denoting the ravages of the pestilence which had de- populated this region. They made it their early endeavor to seek an in- terview with Massasoit, and establish friendly relations with him, the conference being managed carefully, with a view to effect; music- ians and soldiers, armed with muskets, accompanied the English gover- nor, and the negotiations afforded a fair specimen of both Indian and colonistic diplomacy. It was characterized, also, by the introduc- tion to the Indians of that element, which has since proved a source
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of so much injury to the race. Here the Indians first learned to drink intoxicating liquors.
"Neither the fact that the Narragansetts nor the Pequots in the west, nor the Penacooks in the north, having made grants in the territory of Massachusetts, is conclusive proof that the authority of Massasoit was supreme.
"It was not until both Powhatan in Virginia and Massasoit in Massachusetts had gone on to the happy hunting ground that the colonists of Jamestown and Plymouth had serious conflict with the Indians. At any time the colonists might have been annihilated by those 'kings,' and it is possible that Powhatan might have cherished some such idea, as it is recorded that 'when the first ship returned to England from Virginia, leaving barely one hundred men in the colony, there were thirty tribes and 5,000 warriors under the control of Pow- hatan and, at that time, the Indians, who at first appeared to be friend- ly, now assumed a hostile attitude, and attacked the town. No more corn being delivered, speedy ruin impended; and, had it not been for John Smith, who stepped forward in this emergency, utter destruction to the colony must have resulted.'"
Opechanganough and Metacomet Cruel Plotters-Just how much in- fluence Pocahontas had in saving the life of John Smith and incidentally the life of the colony, in the time of Powhatan, her father, it is dif- ficult to estimate, without, perhaps, detracting from the romantic story so familiar to every reader of history. She, however, lived only eight years after the foundation of Jamestown, and Powhatan but ten.
At the age of seventy, the terror of the coast tribes and the colonists was no more, but one of his brothers, Opechanganough, an unflinch- ing enemy of the colonists, reigned in his place. He plotted the de- struction of the colony, laid his plans carefully and secretly, and was ready to strike March 22, 1622, four years after the death of his dis- tinguished brother. On that date the massacre took place, under or- ders from Opechanganough to spare no one with an English face, neither man, woman nor child. Three hundred and forty-seven men, women and children fell that morning, among them being six of the colonial council. The slaughter would have been much greater, had not an Indian convert, named Chanco, revealed the plot of the In- dians to fly to arms at an appointed hour. The revelation came the night before and the colonists were thus able to take some precau- tions for personal safety of a part of the community.
According to Prince, the news of the massacre in Virginia, March 22, 1622, reached Plymouth in May, and made the colonists more fear- ful of Indian treachery, realizing the fate which might be theirs if
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the natives should take a notion to wipe them out. Massasoit, how- ever, faithfully kept the agreement which he had made with the colonists, even though, in all fairness, it does not appear from the records of the white men themselves that they were equally scrupulous in keeping their word.
It was not until the successor to Powhatan reigned that Jamestown colonists were up against the Indians in their savage and vindictive mood, and not until King Philip, succeeding Massasoit, sat upon the throne of the Wampanoags that the Plymouth colonists faced an anni- hilation plot, engineered by a warrior who never surrendered.
Dr. Mather was notorious in his hatred of the Indians. In his "Magnalia" he says: "The natives of the country had been forlorn and wretched heathen ever since their first landing here; and though we know not when or how they first became inhabitants of this mighty continent, yet we may guess that probably the devil decoyed these miserable savages hither, in hopes that the gospel should never come here to destroy or disturb his absolute empire over them. But our Eliot was on such ill terms with the devil as to alarm him with sounding the silver trumpets of heaven in his territories, and make some noble and zealous attempts toward ousting him of his ancient possessions here. There were, I think, twenty-seven nations of Indians upon this spot of ground, and our Eliot was willing to rescue as many of them as he could from the old usurping landlord of America."
The ministrations of Rev. John Eliot evidently found favor in the eyes of Mather but the magistrates were greatly displeased with him for censuring their treatment of the Indians. Rev. John Eliot and Gookin were "threatened and dared not for some time leave their houses or go into the street. Bancroft and other historians say that such was the rage of the people that the governor of Massachusetts gratified them with a victim; an Indian was executed."
Indian Dreams and Superstitions-The Algonquin Indians, of which the Wampanoags under Massasoit, were a division, have two terms to express the word "dream." Both are important to the Indians, as it is their conviction that dreams exert a marked influence on the re- ligious opinions and acts. Inabundum refers to that panorama of sen- sations presented to the mental vision during sleep. A vision or sacred dream is called an apowa. Dreams are regarded as revelations and therefore to be sought by abstinence and fasts.
Some of the Indians believed in duplicate souls, one of which re- mains with the body while the person sleeps. The other is free to roam on excursions. After the death of the body, the soul departs for the Indian elysium, at which time a fire is lighted on the newly-
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made grave and rekindled for four nights in succession, the period allowed for the departed to reach the Land of the Dead. It is be- lieved that this practice was common to all the Algonquins, and was of a very impressive nature.
Among the mythological subjects was Weeng, the god of sleep, represented as having small emissaries at his command.
In the superstitious rites of the Indians, the symbol of the sun is frequently seen in their pictograph scrolls, or, from an earlier period, in their rock inscriptions. Chingwalk, the Algonquin pictographist, recognizes the symbol of it in the inscription on the Dighton Rock, on the Taunton River. Chingwalk was versed in this species of the peculiar knowledge of his people, and pronounced the Dighton Rock inscription one of their ancient muzzinabiks, made when their internal wars were rife. Taking it, figure by figure, he readily explained it to be the record of a victory gained by the chief of the tribe, over enemies, probably, of the ancestors of the Pokanokets.
Uncas Leads Against Sassacus-When, in 1636, the Pequots formed a conspiracy to slay all the English in their territory, they asked Canonicus and Miantonomah, leaders of the Narragansetts, old ene- mies, to make a treaty of peace with them and join in the war against the settlements. The inclination of the Narragansetts was to make common cause against the white men. Roger Williams was living among the Narragansetts and he used all his persuasive powers to prevent Canonicus joining the alliance, and was successful, much to the disgust of some of the Narragansetts.
The Pequots entered upon the campaign alone. The Pequots at that time had the prestige of being a powerful and warlike people. They had escaped the great pestilence which had desolated the Massachusetts coast, about the year 1617. They had 600 fighting men and a popu- lation of something like 3,000. They were expert bowmen and pos- sessed sixteen guns which they had obtained in barter with the traders. The military strength of Connecticut was at that time estimated as 200 men. If the Pequots had gone against them in an offensive war- fare, the existence of the colony would have been settled forever.
The war on the part of the settlers was conducted by John Mason, a veteran soldier who, with Myles Standish and Underhill, had learned the art of war under that renowned military tactician, William, Prince of Orange. The Pequots were bent on destroying the colonists. Shock- ing murders had been perpetrated in the settlements. Energetic and prompt action was required and this leader of unflinching nerve went forth with ninety men, half the militia strength of the colony, relying on assistance which had been promised by the Plymouth colony and from other sources, and that of Uncas. The latter had been born a Plym-7
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Pequot and in one of their quarrels had rebelled against his sachem and became the leader of a strong schism. He had a confirmed jeal- ousy against Miantonomah, or Miontonimo, who wished to become ruler of all the New England Indians. Uncas brought into the force against the Pequots, seventy Mohigans.
Sassacus, with whom a contest had been waged by Uncas, for the Indian sovereignty, was leader of the Pequots and was personally in command of a Pequot fort situated on the Mystic River. John Mason pushed forward energetically as he believed everything depended upon striking against Sassacus before the latter had time to mature his plans. Uncas was impatient to meet his former contestant and had 500 Indians under his command. Mason did not place much reliance upon them and asked Uncas how many of them would run away when the battle commenced. "Everyone but myself," was the reply, and this proved to be the fact.
They made forced marches through the wilderness, not stopping for food. It was in May and unusually warm for that month. The men were weary, hungry and footsore, and the Indians with them became terror-stricken as they neared the Pequot fort, situated on an eminence, two hours before dawn, on a moonlight night.
Atrocity Perpetrated by White Troops-Mason and his men were within a rod of the northeast sally port before they were seen by the Pequots, who were aroused by the barking of a dog inside the walls of the fortifications. Mason entered the fort at one end with sixteen men, while Underhill, his second in command, entered at the opposite end with the balance of the followers. The Pequots were enraged at being thus surprised and ran about in frenzy. Fire-arms and swords were used against arrows and clubs in a hand-to-hand struggle. There were about seventy lodges, constructed of thick matting, inside the enclosure and many of the Indians took shelter in these wigwams, covering themselves with thick mats, from which it was impossible to dislodge them, and from which they fired their arrows as opportunity presented. Mason and Underhill applied firebrands to the windward side of the enclosure and soon it was an area of roaring flames, fed by the combustible material. One authority says :
The living and the dead together were roasted in heaps. The English, being themselves expelled by the furious flames, formed a circle outside the palisades, to prevent any of the enemy from effecting their escape. Their Indian aux- iliaries, having recovered their courage now came up, and completed the work. Forty of the Pequots, who attempted to scale the palisades, were shot as they emerged from their flaming prison. How many hundred men, women and chil- dren were roasted on this gigantic funeral pyre, has never been estimated.
Though the Pequots had, with dreadful cruelty, massacred the unsuspecting Oldham and Sleeping Stone and his companions, though they had invaded the
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sanctity of dearly-loved homes with the fury of the tiger and the hyena, yet this was a dreadful retribution, the severity of which could not have been premedi- tated, and for which we have not a word to offer in palliation. Having inflicted this terrible blow upon the Pequots, Mason deemed his position to be a perilous one. He anticipated the speedy vengeance of Sassacus, who was but a few miles distant, at the upper fort, and many of his men were wounded, although but two had been killed in the conflict. It was necessary to carry the wounded on biers, and the soldiers were unprovided with either food or ammunition.
The capture and burning of the Pequot fort on the Mystic exercised a con- trolling influence on the future prosecution of the war. It was a blow more terrible, even, than at first appeared. The night previous to the attack, the post had been reinforced by one hundred and fifty warriors from the upper fort, as Sassacus was conscious of the perils of this position. More than half of his available force had certainly been destroyed. Sassacus, realizing his hazardous position, determined to abandon his country, and fly westward. The allies, hav- ing resolved to pursue Sassacus, Uncas accompanied them, with an effective force of Mohicans, this species of warfare requiring the exercise of that peculiar skill in following a trail for which the minute observation and knowledge of Indian habits has so admirably adapted the aborigines.
Last of the Pequots-Sassacus having been at variance with the race residing in New England, it is not improbable that the sympathies of the Mohicans of the Hudson leaned towards Uncas. However this may be, the Mohicans of the Hud- son, from its head waters to its mouth, were the vassals of the Mohawks. The fugitive chief was no sooner recognized by them, than an arrow was driven through his heart. With him fell the Pequots; the power, once the terror of the New Eng- land colonies, was destroyed, and from this time forth, they ceased to be known as a tribe.
With Sassacus fell his brother, and Mononotto, his second in command, who, at first, only wounded, was finally killed, together with five other sachems, all of whom were scalped, and the reeking trophies sent to the English, with the hope of receiving a reward. From the statement of the Indians it being apparent that there were nearly two hundred Pequots dispersed among the various tribes, a price was set upon their heads. They were hunted throughout the country in all directions, anyone being not only permitted, but encouraged, to shoot them down at sight. This remnant of the tribe at last having offered to surrender them- selves as vassals to the English, the proposition was considered and accepted.
A few of the prisoners were sold in the West Indies as slaves, others distributed among the Mohicans or as household servants to the English. But the alliance into which the whites had entered in order to divide their savage foes was the occasion of future entanglements in a tortuous policy, and of later bloody struggles of an appalling char- acter.
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