USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 17
USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 17
USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Plymouth, Norfolk and Barnstable counties, Massachusetts, Vol. II > Part 17
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59
To refer again to the matter of immigration and emigration, for both have come about to a large extent since the Civil War, it is related elsewhere how thousands of people went from this section and helped colonize Kansas and the Western Reserve and other parts of the West or Middle West, and the "Days of '49" brought the West strongly into notice on the Atlantic seaboard. It is related in that interesting book enitled "Hawkers and Walkers," to which reference has already been made and will again, much about commercial wanderers of water- ways. As the author says :
As soon as the Revolutionary War was over, began the serious and persistent pushing forward of the frontiers. In the seventeen years between the Peace of Paris and the turn of the nineteenth century, more than half a million people left their original homes forever and migrated to Western New York and the hinter- lands of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Many of them were New Eng- landers, for New England was a nursery of men, whence were annually trans- planted into other parts of the United States thousands of its natives. By 1816 the Ohio Valley was filling up. The Ordinance of 1787 had opened that territory to settlement. The Ohio Company, with the Rev. Manasseh Cutler of Ipswich, Massachusetts, as one of its leaders, lured many old Revolutionary soldiers and their descendants to the fertile banks of this valley. By 1840 the cotton states of the Southwest were witnessing the arrival of a steady stream of new families. Illinois and Indiana received great quotas of settlers. Georgia enjoyed a veritable land boom. By 1860 the Mississippi Valley was hectic with gauche towns and squatters. Eleven years before this the discovery of gold in California served as a magnet to draw vast hordes of new people to the Pacific Coast. The California and Oregon trails became beaten paths and their camps echoed to the refrain of "Oh Susanna" and "The Days of '49."
In each of these advancements, rivers afforded the principal means of trans- portation. Fourteen states can be said to have been settled by this river migra- tion - Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michi-
Plym-51
802
PLYMOUTH, NORFOLK AND BARNSTABLE
gan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. It is a dependable axiom that if you would seek old houses and old settlements, you must look first along the watercourses.
Settlements established, an active and picturesque river traffic sprang up. From conveyors of people the boats became conveyors of goods. The waterway itinerant of the rivers and canals grew to the status of a commonplace figure.
There is scarcely an early description of the Ohio, Mississippi or any other river-drained valley but has its record of the various kinds of transporting, mer- chandising, and working boats along these rivers. English visitors especially were intrigued by them.
The people from the Old Colony were largely represented in this group which established settlements and the fever has lasted to a greater or lesser extent. In days of old and yesterday days, the youth has received its education in New England universities, more espec- ially those of Massachusetts, or has gone forth without any overplus of education, to try fortunes in distant places. In recent years there have been those who have complained bitterly about the tendency of "big business" in the West to come hereabouts with the intention of picking up the best talent, fresh from the Eastern institutions of learning. It shows that those who have gone West on their own account have given a good account of themselves and attracted suf- ficient favorable attention to cause the demand to exceed the normal supply. There is a saying that "The New England man makes good anywhere," and if he chooses to overlook "acres of diamonds" at home to seek the pot of gold which adorns the end of a rainbow which has one horn in the West, it is merely the spirit of adventure and desire to conquer distant battles with the world. The history of the bar of the Old Colony shows numerous instances of young men going direct from Harvard or other universities to locations in the wilderness, as it was then, and rising to eminence.
It is scarcely half a century ago that many farmers did their own butchering, or hired a neighbor, who was an itinerant butcher, to kill a "beef critter," in exchange for some favor already done or promised when the right season came for its fulfillment. If it was a cash trans- action, the charge, way back in 1700, was five shillings and meals while on the job. The price was about the same, proportionately, as long as the itinerant butcher was available.
After butchering on the farm, the attic and smoke-house would contain sufficient food to keep the family through the winter. The fats and tallows would be used in making candles, until whale-oil provided a better means of illumination. The householder who did not have his attic well-hung with hams, sausages and pork and a barrel or two filled with corn beef in his cellar was not considered a good provider and hardly a safe citizen.
803
CUSTOMS IN "THE GOOD OLD DAYS"
At various times during the year droves of cattle went through the towns, out of which the householder who wished to select a "beef critter" to fatten against the day of its slaughter, might secure a winter's supply. Nearly everyone in the smaller towns slaughtered one or more hogs and the conversation around the railroad stove at the postoffice or country store usually concerned itself with the relative weight of the various hogs in the neighborhood, in which a neigh- borly interest was taken.
Evils in the "Good Old Days"-In the section of this history con- cerning Plymouth County some pages are devoted to a reference to the so-called "Good Old Days." We have always heard considerable about those days and reformers have been prone to advise to "return to the days of democracy" when matters have been running especially bad in this day and generation. We hear of the days of James Otis, the days of Daniel Webster and others well known from personal history in Barnstable County, as though, in those early days there was no corrup- tion of electorates, no grafting, no insidious influences.
Let us call as witnesses John Adams and George Washington, who held positions which enabled them to know what was going on. Adams tells us that the Continental Congress during the Revolution was "debauched and inefficient, the rage for office was great. The Congress was torn to pieces by disputes over spoils." This statement makes us feel immediately at home. We have heard of such things before, if not so early.
Of this same Continental Congress George Washington says: "Party disputes and personal quarrels are the great business of the day." How thoroughly up-to-date!
Surely Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts was a wise man but his ideas of democracy had not developed up to the present standards when he said, in the Constitutional Convention in 1787: "The evils we experi- ence flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots." The people who sat in that convention had no idea of conferring upon all citizens the right to vote. The vote was for those whom Alexander Hamilton called "the wealthy and well born." Some cynical persons of today say the class to which Hamilton referred hardly takes the trouble to vote in these days. No citizen of Massachusetts could be a governor unless he owned one thousand pounds worth of real estate. A senator must own three hundred pounds worth. Members of the General Court had to be "Christians," according to the Constitution.
Political methods, at least, must have been spotless in "the good old days" but, if such was the case when Massachusetts was under the care,
804
PLYMOUTH, NORFOLK AND BARNSTABLE
as governor, of that venerable patriot, Governor Gerry, what about the invention of what was called, in honor of him, the Gerrymander? This was nothing more nor less than an ingenious scheme for robbing the majority of its power. The Federalists were in the majority in 1812 and the Republicans found it expedient to do something to break their power. So the existing election districts or units of representation were cut up, so that a large number of Republicans would be opposed in the same district by a smaller number of Federalists. The plan worked so well in Massachusetts that New York, New Jersey and Maryland adopted the plan, but in 1815 the Federalists still had a majority of one in the General Assembly, in spite of two wards being joined to Long Island to form an election district and other funny lines run. The remedy was to throw the Federalist out in cold blood and this was done in "those good old days !"
But these things were in the first generation and surely, after the political machine had attained a certain mileage and the parts been well worked in, it became a creation incorruptible, for there must have been "good old days" sometime, or we would not hear so much about them. We all revere Hon. George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts and know he was careful in his utterances. Rising in his seat in Congress, May 5, 1876, he said :
My own public life has been a very brief and insignificant one, extending little beyond the duration of a single term of senatorial office. But in that brief per- iod, I have seen five judges of a high court of the United States driven from office by threats of impeachment for corruption or maladministration. I have heard the taunt, from the friendliest lips, that when the United States presented herself in the East to take part with the civilized world in generous competition in the arts of life, the only product of her institutions in which she surpassed all others be- yond question was her corruption. I have seen in the State in the Union fore- most in power and wealth four judges of her courts impeached for corruption, and the political administration of her chief city become a disgrace and a by-word throughout the world. I have seen the chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs in the House, rise in his place and demand the expulsion of four of his as- sociates for making sale of their official privilege of selecting the youth to be edu- cated at our great military school.
When the greatest railroad of the world binding together the continent and uniting the two seas which wash our shores, was finished, I have seen our na- tional triumph and exaltation turned to bitterness and shame by the unanimous re- ports of three committees of Congress-two of the House and one here-that every step of that mighty enterprise had been taken in fraud.
I have heard in highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown old in public office that the true way by which power should be gained in the re- public is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service, and the true end for which it should be used when gained is the promotion of selfish am- bition and the gratification of personal revenge. I have heard that suspicion haunts the footsteps of the trusted companions of the President.
805
CUSTOMS IN "THE GOOD OLD DAYS"
So it couldn't have been that the "good old days" were half a century ago, according to Senator Hoar. History is a cure for pes- simism. With all our faults we have progressed and the "good old days" are in the future, not in the past. The whipping post, the branding iron and ducking stool, so popular in Colonial days, are out of date, as much so as the filthy jails. We have exterminated slavery, no longer imprison for debt. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was not a deaf and dumb asylum in the country, nor a blind asylum nor insane asylum. We have one crime punishable by death but in those days there were no less than fifteen. We have schools and libraries, societies for civic betterment, have improved working con- ditions and established all kinds of institutions to guard against disease, poverty and crime, but they did not come down from the fabulous times mentioned as "good old days." We have evils enough at the present time but they are few compared with those endured and unquestioned a century ago. There were few newspapers in the old days to let in the light on what was going on, and public opinion was little heeded, as most people occupying places of preferment hadn't arrived at the conviction that there was such a thing as public opinion which had rights to protect.
Nearly all of the sins since the World War have been laid to prohibi- tion forcing young men and women to drink, smoke cigarettes, roll their stockings, paint their faces and descend into all kinds of dissipation until we ask "what is the world coming to?" One would think all these things were something new, but Chauncey M. Depew is quoted as having said on his birthday when the flappers were flapping their strongest : "In my youth, temperance was unknown. It was an insult to refuse to drink. Most of the public men whom I met in the legisla- ture died from alcoholism."
CHAPTER XXXIX ENGLISH SPOKEN BY THE INDIANS
Some Samples of How the King's Tongue Was Used by "Praying Indi- ans" and Some Without Piety-Official Correspondence With King Philip and Others-Indians' Morality and Reverence for Their Dead -Those of Today Forsake Calumet for Cigarette, War Paint for Rouge and War Dances for Charleston and Black Bottom-Squaw Island Given to Barnstable-Princess Wontonskanuske Descendant of Massasoit.
Samoset, a tall, straight Indian, naked except for a fringe about his waist, entered the log village at Plymouth three months after the first encounter with the Indians on Cape Cod, and surprised the Pilgrim Fathers by greeting them with the words in English "Welcome Eng- lishmen." He had learned a few English words from fishermen on the coast of Maine and used those few to good advantage. On a later call; he brought with him Massasoit, his great sachem, and Squanto, who acted as interpreter for Massasoit and the Pilgrims when the treaty was made between them and faithfully kept fifty-two years, when the death of Massasoit occurred.
Squanto was a real find. He had been kidnapped by Captain Hunt seven years before, sold into slavery in Spain, freed, made his way to London, finally to Newfoundland and there picked up by an English sea rover and brought back to Plymouth. While he was away the plague had ravaged the Massachusetts coast and there was not one of Squanto's tribe alive to welcome him or tell the tale. He became a friend and associate of the Pilgrims and taught them what they needed most to know to keep soul and body together in the wilderness. He not only knew more about Patuxet, as the Indians called Plymouth and vicinity, but he had seen more of England than most of the Pilgrims and he could speak their language sufficiently well to understand and be under- stood. He was the most useful citizen in Patuxet in inter-relationships betwen the whites and red men. He was at once on the inside looking out and on the outside looking in. He was at once a God-send and a bone of contention, since the hundred per cent Americans were dis- pleased to see him such a good mixer in the company of the foreigners from across the water.
It is interesting to recall how Squanto, with his knowledge of the English tongue, was "a special instrument sent of God" to the Pilgrims and it brings up the question what kind of English the Indians spoke in
808
PLYMOUTH, NORFOLK AND BARNSTABLE
this vicinity, as naturally they picked up English words here as Squanto did in England and Samoset in Maine. A copy of the "Old Farmer's Almanac" for 1797 had among its anecdotes one about an alleged Indian warrant, issued by a justice of the peace. According to the "Almanac," "an Indian who was appointed a Justice of the Peace, issued the follow- ing warrant, "Me High Howder, yu constable, yu deputy, best way yu look um Jeremiah Wicket, strong yu take um, fast yu hold um, quick yu bring um before me.
Captain Howder."
This anecdote has charm for the investigator, as Judge John Davis, in 1826, in his edition of Nathaniel Morton's "New England Memorial," printed :
At the courts in Barnstable County, formerly, we often heard from our aged friends and from the Vineyard gentlemen, amusing anecdotes of Indian rulers. The following warrant is recollected, which was issued by one of those magistrates directed to an Indian constable, and will not suffer in comparison with our more verbose forms.
I Hihoudi
You Peter Waterman,
Jeremy Wicket; Quick you take him, Fast you hold him, Straight you bring him, Before me, Hihoudi.
Mr. Davis was at Barnstable as a tutor in the family of General James Otis shortly after his graduation from college in 1781, and he began the practice of law at Plymouth in 1787. The chances are that he heard this anecdote before 1800. His version of the writ, as well as that in the "Almanac," obviously represents an Old Colony tradition. Hihoudi, or High Howder, has not been identified, though a friendly red man called How Doe Yee is mentioned in the Plymouth Colony Records. Wicket is a familiar Indian name, perpetuated in the designation of Wicket Island on Onset Bay.
There is, however, another tradition which ascribes the eccentric writ to Waban, or Thomas Waban, and which, as we shall see in a moment, is closely connected with the history of the Colony of Massa- chusetts Bay. Dr. William Allen, president of Bowdoin College, in the second edition of his "American Biographical and Historical Diction- ary," published in 1832, gives the warrant as follows :
You, you big constable, quick you catch um Jeremiah Offscow, strong you hold um, safe you bring um afore me. Waban, justice peace.
809
ENGLISH SPOKEN BY THE INDIANS
Dr. Allen publishes another anecdote about this same official, which, however, occurs in a somewhat more lively form in William Bigelow's "History of Natick," 1830, along with the warrant. Since Mr. Bigelow appeals directly to the "authority of tradition" and does not appear to have derived his material from Dr. Allen, it is worth while to reproduce his exact words :
The following is handed down as a true copy of a warrant, issued by an Indian magistrate .- "You, you big constable, quick you catchum Jeremiah Offscow, strong you holdum, safe you bringum afore me.
"Thomas Waban, Justice peace."
When Waban became superannuated, a younger magistrate was appointed to succeed him. Cherishing that respect for age and long experience, for which the Indians are remarkable, the new officer waited on the old one for advice. Having stated a variety of cases and received satisfactory answers, he at length proposed the follow- ing :- "when Indians get drunk and quarrel and fight and act like Divvil, what you do dan?"-"Hah! tie um all up, and whip um plain- tiff, whip um fendant and whip um witness."
Mr. Bigelow, it will be observed, gives the justice's name as Thomas Waban, whereas Dr. Allen calls him Waban, pure and simple. The discrepancy is of some moment. The two names are not identical, but belong to different generations, --- Waban was the father and Thomas Waban the son. Both were inhabitants of Natick, and both were men of note in their day. Let us see if we can get any light on the subject of this Natick legend by an appeal to authenticated history.
Old Waban is a famous character in New England annals. He was well disposed toward Christianity from the outset, and it was in his wigwam at Nonantum, now a part of Newton, that the apostle Eliot preached his first sermon to the aborigines. The Rev. John Wilson, to whom we probably owe our account of this historic service, speaks of "Waaubon" as "the chief minister of Justice among them," and remarks that he "gives more grounded hopes of serious respect to the things of God, then any that as yet I have knowne of that forlorne generation."
It appears then, that both the Old Colony and the Massachusetts Bay tradition of the Indian warrant, though they may owe their precise form to some jocose white man, have manifest touches of local color. There were Indian magistrates who were similar to justices of the peace, and there were Indian officers who were known as constables. There were Indians named Wicket in Plymouth Colony; there was a Thomas Waban as well as an Offscow of Natick; and it is barely pos- sible that Hihoudi is a form of the name How d' ye. It may be added that Thomas Waban is decorated with the title of Captain in the Natick town record, of 1719, as Howder is in one version of the warrant.
810
PLYMOUTH, NORFOLK AND BARNSTABLE
The punishment of whipping, which, according to another anecdote, seemed to Squire Waban appropriate for plaintiff, defendant, and wit- ness in cases of drunken brawling, it was of course within the power of the native rulers to inflict.
There can be no doubt that Thomas Waban was old Waban's son. It was a regular practice for a converted Indian to adopt the name of his father as a surname and to receive a Christian name at baptism. When Eliot and his three companions visited Waban's wigwam to hold their first service (October 28, 1646), they found Waban's eldest son "standing by his father among the rest of his Indian brethren in Eng- lish clothes." And later, according to the same authority, Waban voluntarily offered this son "to be educated and trained up in the knowledge of God hoping, as hee told us, that he might come to know him, though hee despaired much concerning himself." The offer was accepted and the boy was sent to school at Dedham. His English learn- ing is thus accounted for.
The written documents, showing the Indians' attempts at English, were the work largely of "praying Indians" who were taught to read and write in the Indian schools established under the influence of John Eliot.
Communication from King Philip - An undated letter from King Philip to Governor Prence may head the list. The authorship is usually credited to John Sassamon, the praying Indian who at one time acted as Philip's secretary and whose tragic fate (told elsewhere in this book) was the signal for the outbreak of hostilities. The exact date of the epistle is unknown. The irregularities are chiefly syntactical; the spelling is quite as good as that of most records of the time and throws little light on the peculiarities of pronunciation.
To the much honored governor mr. thomas prince, dwelling at plimouth
honored sir,
King philip desire to let you understand that he could not come to the court, for tom his interpreter has a pain in his back that he could not travil so far, and philips sister is very sik.
Philip would intreat that faver of you and aney of the maiestrats, if aney english or engians speak about aney land he pray you to give them no answer at all. the last sumer he maid that promis with you that he would not sell land in 7 years time for that he would have no english trouble him before that time he has not forgat that your promis him
he will come asune as possible he can to speak with you and so I rest your very loving frind philip dwelling at mount hope nek.
Another document of Philip's, dated 1666, also concerns the vital question of selling land to the settlers. It amounts to a power of
811
ENGLISH SPOKEN BY THE INDIANS
attorney appointing two Indians his general agents in such matters. It begins with great decorum but soon runs off into unconventionality :
Know all men by these presents, that Philip haue giuen power vnto Watuchpoo and Sampson and theire brethren to hold and make sale of to whom they will by my consent, and they shall not haue itt without they be willing to let it goe shal be sol by my consent, but without my knowledge they cannot safely to: but with my consent there is none that can lay claime to that land which they haue marked out, it is theires foreuer, soe therefore none can safely purchase any otherwise but by Watuchpoo and Sampson and their bretheren.
Philip 1666.
Early and Recent Indians-It is known that the Indians of Cape Cod practiced agriculture and the Pilgrims helped themselves to the stores of corn and beans belonging to the aborigines when they made their first landing. Each year the Indians burned over the tribal lands to remove the dried grass and dead leaves. Captain John Smith referred in 1616 to "the countrie of Massachusetts which is the Paradise of all those parts. For heere are many isles all planted with corn ; groves, mulberries, salvage gardens and good harbours. The Sea Coast as you pass, shews you all along large corn fields and great troupes of well proportioned people."
Frederick Freeman, in his "History of Cape Cod," has the following to say of the Indians who occupied the territory about Plymouth :
Indians were always remarked for the reverence which they entertain for the sepulchres of their kindred. Tribes that have passed generations exiled from the abodes of their ancestors have been known, when by chance they have found themselves travelling in the vicinity, to turn aside from the highway, and, guided by wonderfully accurate tradition, have crossed the country for miles to some tumulus, buried perhaps in woods, where the bones of their tribe were anciently deposited, and there have spent hours in silent meditation.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.