USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Marion > Lands of Sippican on Buzzards Bay > Part 2
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A copper kettle and skulls were taken from the garden of a little house on the road to "the wharf", and all sorts of spear and arrow heads from around Handy's Tavern which was built on a favorite knoll that was near the water in the old days, but the old chieftain's grave is still covered with pine needles undis- turbed.
So many years ago he lived in Sippican. Which was his of the Indian names that have come down to us? Perhaps Watachpoo, perhaps Sepican, we do not know.
The King of the Sippican Indians was the great chief of the Wampanoags, Massasoit, perhaps the greatest personage who ever knew the "Lands of Sepican." If he had been of a different type New England history might not begin as it does.
Massasoit had thirty villages under him, which he gov- erned from his main lodge Sowans, near what is now Warren, Rhode Island. He had other lodges and the forests and waters of all this section were a part of his kingdom.
In 1620 Massasoit must have been worried. He had had great grief over the dread sickness that had destroyed so many of the Patuxet (Plymouth) Indians; there was constant trouble with the Mohawks who came cat-like, skulking along the forest trails, and now the runners come with news of the great canoe seen along the Patuxet shore.
We can picture the dark messengers gliding along the "Rhode Island Path" sometimes by the great ponds, sometimes through Mattapoisett, "place of rest", reporting to Massasoit every move of the new comers.
There must have been many anxious confabs and long silent hours after the messengers had told the tale of the land- ing and cutting of trees, the building of queer shelters, the noise of the deadly firearms in the Plymouth woods.
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ADVENTURERS, RED SKINS AND TWO KINGS
And then the decision was made and in March of that Spring of long ago from his great lodge at Mount Hope the great chief himself with sixty warriors came through the Ply- mouth woods "tall proper men. They had every man a deer's skin on him and the principal of them had a wild cat's skin, or such like on the one arm - no hair on their faces, on their heads long hair to the shoulders only cut before, some trussed up before with a feather broad-wise like a fan; another a fox tail hanging out."
Samoset, the chief who knew a little English, with a few others with him, was sent swiftly ahead as messenger to the settlement.
We know from Purchas Pilgrims just how he looked as he stepped out alone from the Plymouth woods on that day, March the 21st in 1621 - "stark naked only a leather about his waist, with a fringe about a span, a little more - he had a bow and two arrows, the one headed, and the other unheaded. He was a tall straight man, the hair of his head black, long be- hind, only short before, none on his face at all."
He stopped outside the little group of houses and as their custom was, made his presence known. by "a note of amaze- ment." He called "Welcome. English!"
They came and listened, those strange newcomers who had taken possession of the lands of his people, and he told them of Massasoit, a tribe they thought, until later they found it was his king of whom he spoke.
When he went back to Massasoit he was sent again with four others to tell of the coming of the great chief.
And then on a hill beyond was seen Massasoit himself with sixty warriors. From an old diary we read the description of an eye witness - "In his person he is a very lusty man in his best years, an able body, grave of countenance and slow of speech; in his attire little or nothing differing from the rest of his followers only in a great chain of white bone beads about his neck. His face was painted a fed red like murray and oiled. All his followers likewise were in their faces, in part or in whole, painted, some black, some red, some yellow and some white; some with crosses and other antic works; some had skins
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on them, and some naked except for a piece of leather; all strong tall men in appearance. The king had in his bosom, hanging on a long string a great long knife."
Massasoit is described by one writer as "a man who pos- sessed the elements of a great and noble mind and generous heart. He went to the pale faces who landed in his territory as a king to meet the representative of a great king over the water of whom he had heard."
He whose statue now looks out over Plymouth harbor, was a powerful chief who must have seen how small was the group that met him, only fifty, some of whom were children. Sick, miserable, five hundred miles from any of their fellow country men; tired with caring for the sick and burying forty dead, some under the snow - thirteen dying during the month of March just before Massasoit came.
Two kings there were who influenced the beginning of the Plymouth colony.
From the country of King James of England during whose reign it was said "the courage of the English was buried in the tomb of Elizabeth," had come 101 people to Plymouth who were to change the face of a vast continent on whose edge they had landed, and as more than one historian has said whose small adventure was so great an influence in English history as to be written on the walls of the House of Lords.
James the "stuttering, slobbering little man" who swore that those who differed with him and his ideas of the Church, Puritan and Separatist alike, he would harry out of the land. "Make them conform themselves, or I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse."
And Massasoit, to whose kingdom they came, and who for fifty-four years kept covenant with them.
Of King James it was said, "No king could be less respect- ed and less lamented at his death."
When Massasoit lay very ill, we read in the old Book so often quoted (Purchas Pilgrims) one of his men broke forth- "My loving Sachem! My loving Sachem! Many have I known but never any like thee" and the writer goes on "and turning
MIDIINTE TO FORAT
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ADVENTURERS, RED SKINS AND TWO KINGS
to me he said - Whilst I lived I should never see his like amongst the Indians; saying he was no liar; he was not bloody and cruel like other Indians. In anger and passion he was soon reclaimed; easy to be reconciled towards such as had offended him; ruled by reason in such measure as he would not scorn the advice of mean men and that he governed his men better with few strokes than others did with many; truly loving when he loved; yea, he feared we had not a faithful left among the Indians, showing how he oftimes restrained their malice, etc. - continuing a long speech with such signs of lamentations and unfeigned sorrow as it would have made the hardest heart relent." A great love his people had for Massasoit. For half a century there was a good man over the "Red Men" on the "Lands of Sepecan."
CHAPTER 2
OUR ANCESTORS AND THE LANDS.
"No like body ever cast so great influence over human history." CALVIN COOLIDGE-1920
And so twenty miles away from the Indian village of Sepecan there grew an English settlement in the place that on Captain John Smith's map is called "Plimoth."
. They called themselves "Pilgrims." A little group who had worshipped God as they chose at William Brewster's manor house in Scrooby, England, "harried out of the land", fleeing to Holland, breaking ties again when the children began to grow up with foreign ways. With such a fierce determination to be free in thinking of things eternal that neither lack of this world's goods, nor pain of parting with neighbors and friends, nor terrifying thoughts of a long voyage into the unknown could keep them from setting forth. Leaking vessels putting back into harbors; again tearful partings; and at last one hundred and two persons, twenty-nine of whom were women, crowded into a little ship of one hundred and eighty-four tons, the Mayflower.
They sailed on September 16, 1620 "to plant a colony in the northern part of Virginia."
For two months they tossed about on the Atlantic until the "mighty headland" appeared, just as it did to Gosnold eighteen years before; and although they turned about South- ward to find the Hudson River, they were so tired, drenched with brine, discouraged and all but lost, that they wanted more than anything else dry land, and on November 13 the men ex- plored land and "the women washed" on Cape Cod.
A disturbance made by a few on board, because the ship was not going to Virginia, was the cause of the compact in the
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little cabin that has become famous as "the birth of popular constitutional liberty."
It began "In the name of God Amen" and was signed by forty-one men, of whom eleven were called "Mister".
"We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, etc., having undertaken for the glory of God and the advance- ment of the Christian faith and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern part of Vir- ginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the pres- ence of God and one of another covenant and combine our- selves together into a civil body politic, for our better observ- ance and preservation and furthermore of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the gen- eral good of the colony, into which we province all due submis- sion and obedience, in witness whereof, we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the 11th of November (O.S.) in the year of our sovereign lord, King James of Eng- land, France and Ireland the eighteenth and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Dom. 1620."
A Governor was chosen - John Carver, and so began the first government in America, if not in the world, with a written constitution.
That winter of 1621! A time of horror! Indians appear- ing in canoes in the bay; dark forms lurking in the forests, sud- denly showing and then vanishing silently.
Dressed in their faded stained garments of russet, purple, buff doublets and jerkins, and cloaks lined with dim gay colors, they come and go on the Plymouth lands, with the Mayflower as a refuge from storms and cold, lying three miles off from the shore.
"Most of these were humble folk" Henry Cabot Lodge said at the 300th anniversary of the Landing, and he added "but the fact is too often over looked that these humble folk were the offspring of youth moving and stirring in every field of human
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thought and human activity. They were the contemporaries of Raleigh, Shakespeare and of Bacon and were the true children of their wonderful age, with all its hope and daring courage strong within them."
And when one by one they grew sick and to one by one death came, this "daring courage" kept the small remnant from despair.
Even Captain Miles Standish, although he was an adven- turer "a soldier from the Low Countries" and as Hubbard, the historian says "never entered the school of our Saviour Jesus Christ", was as gentle as a mother when sickness came. Cheer- ful Elder Brewster with his scholarly mind, his little library of classics, his wit, was a great comforter, as he and the little "pepper pot" Captain nursed the sick, going in and out doing all the "homely and necessary offices for them."
Such a pitifully small number; men, women and children in a trackless wilderness, with wolves and dark skinned un- known tribes surrounding them. So sick and alone, so far from home and yet so brave. There are those who live in old Sippican today who can say with Hoar -
"I am descended from the little company of whom more . than half died before spring and of whom none went back to England."
There were forty-four who were buried secretly, silently, some under the snow, thirteen in the month of March.
And then Massasoit came!
. The clouds lifted a bit, there was a feeling of spring in the air; the Plymouth woods didn't seem so gloomy, with bird songs fluting.
The Mayflower sailed for home. Death took Governor Carver and Mrs. Carver, and William Bradford was chosen for the high office. A brave sounding title! There were only fifty left to govern, but the problems were great.
No small task to keep everybody contented that summer. They were supposed to work, besides building houses and till- ing the fields, were to hunt and trap for furs, fish and fell trees for timber, to pay up the London backers of the undertaking.
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The little settlement was a communist group. Everything was held for the common good and use of all.
When the Fortune arrived from England in November, Robert Cushman, one of the leaders, who had been left behind when the Mayflower sailed, came ashore to find discouragement, . and a little grumbling at the working out of the plan.
Cushman took them to task in a talk entitled "the sin and danger of self love" called the first sermon preached in New England.
His words paint the picture of that first summer. "And let there be no Prodigal Person to come forth and say,-'Give me the portion of lands and goods that appertaineth to me, and let me shift for myself' ;- Luk. 15. 12. It is yet too soon to put men to their shifts: Israel was seven years in Canaan, before the land was divided into Tribes, much longer before it was di- vided into Families, and why wouldst thou have thy particular portion, but because thou thinkest to live better than thy neigh- bor, and scornist to live so meanly as he? But who, pray thee, brought this particularizing first into the world? Did not Satan who was not content to keep that equal state with his fel- lows, but would set his throne above the stars? - and nothing in this world doth more resemble heavenly happiness than for men to live as one, being of one heart and one soul; neither anything more resembles hellish horror, than for every man to shift for himself; for if it be a good mind and practice, thus to affect particulars, mine and thine, then it should be but also for God to provide one heaven for thee, and another for thy neigh- bor - But some will say, if all men will do their endeavors as I do. I could be content with this generality, but many are idle and slothful, and eat up others labours, and therefore it is best to part, and then every man may do his pleasure. - First, this, indeed, is the common plea of such as will endure no incon- veniences, and so for the hardness of men's hearts, God and man doth often give way to that which is not best, nor perpetual - go not whispering to charge men with idleness; but go to the governor and prove them idle; and thou shall see them have their deserts." Acts 19.38 2 Thes. 3.10 Deut. 19.15.
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But the restless feeling of dissatisfaction grew through the years, until in 1627 the land, cattle, everything was divided, and the experiment was ended.
In the meantime, little ships came in from the home country across the sea, the Ann, the James; but the group was still pitifully small and poor, living on shell-fish, and venison and corn that the Indians brought in, for by this time their bronzed neighbors were coming and going in a friendly fashion with furs and supplies.
Edward Winslow writes to a friend:
"We have found the Indians very faithful in their coven- ants of peace with us, very loving and ready to pleasure us. We go with them in some cases, fifty miles into the country; and walk as safely and peaceably in the woods as in the highways in England. We entertain them familiarly in our homes; and they are friendly in bestowing their venison upon us."
Edward Winslow was sent back to England on the Ann the second year for supplies and to see if he could "plant at Ply- mouth" more settlers.
He came back in March in the ship Charity, with several cattle. These "four neat kine" the first in New England, as time went on, caused the keen "viewers of land" to scan with appraising eyes the "grassy plains" of Agawam and Sepecan.
The Governor with his captains in armor had visited tribes on Buzzards Bay and the surrounding country. He had looked on lands and waters; he had explored the marshes and shores; had even given his opinion on many matters in regard to cli- mate and advanced an opinion on the "muskeet." At the com- plaining of the new comers, he says they "are too delicate and unfitted to begin new plantations and colonies that cannot en- dure the sting of a muskeet. Yet the place is as free as any" -- he had explored far and wide - "and experience teacheth that ye land is tild and ye woods cut down, the fewer there will be and in the end scarce any at all". If he had added "drained the marshes" he would have solved the problem three hundred years ago.
So as the years go by the English knew Buzzards Bay, and the Indians knew Plymouth, but Plymouth has grown to be a
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OUR ANCESTORS AND THE LANDS
real English village, and yet a few miles away there are only wigwams and the gutteral notes of the real Americans.
The restless bustling British building fishing boats; by 1627 they had a pinnace in Buzzards Bay and trade had begun with the "Duch".
How amazed the Sepecan Indians must have been as they watched from the "necks" and islands as the trumpets rang out and Isaac DeRasieres, agent from Fort Amsterdam, "the chief merchant and second to the Governor" sailed past Bird Island and on to Manomet to meet the Plymouth people, and so over- land to the settlement.
Dark forms all along the shores, impassive, alert, silent. And the little ships come in from England and there is a new colony north of Plymouth, and families and neighbors go from home out onto the new lands, and settlements are growing into towns.
The great storm of 1635 felled hundreds of thousands of trees in six hours, and the tide rose twenty feet along the coast! Did the dark people think all the good spirits had de- serted because of the white man's coming, and did they pray hard to the bad ones to do no more evil? Three years later there was an earthquake and well might the Sepecan Indians pray, for on Jan. 22, 1638 "the plantation of Seppekann" ex- tending nearly to Plymouth and beyond Dartmouth "was offered to eight men of Scituate for the benefit of the congregation of the Rev. John Lothrop who had fled from London to escape the persecution of Archbishop Laud."
· Thomas Prince went in Governor that year, and he was interested in new lands, and a great land owner.
The Plymouth "surveighers" had not only come down the "trodden paths" but they had tramped in the forests, been around the shores and measured and scanned, and now offered to give this plantation to respectable settlers who would estab- lish an English village on the harbor. The Lothrop party went to Barnstable instead.
Eight English towns and 2500 people and more ships coming and going.
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As the "surveighers" tramp about Sepecan in the winter months, it is sunny and warm, and "a new grant of Sepecan is offered to the Townsmen of Plymouth as a place of pasturage and wintering of cattell in 1649." It is all mapped out by 1651; almost the boundaries of the present town, "eight miles by the sea and four into the land", although the "Lands of Sepecan" stretched far beyond on all sides.
New land; ships and colonists; troubles with hostile tribes; French and Dutch on the horizon; stilted letters sent out from the Governor in protest to unfriendly attitudes.
"You again professe a claime from Cape Henlopen to Cape Cod?"
"Leave it to Superiors to judge!"
And strange men and cattle coming down the narrow In- dian trails where for centuries only moccasined feet had touched lightly the pine needles. Trails dusty, brooks muddy! The conquering race has reached the waters of Sepecan. The day of the Indian is closing into night. "Seven men of Ply- mouth" are "Imploying men in hearding and wintering cat- tell at Sepecan."
Where are those old meadows?
From some of the ancient deeds and account books we find that Ram Island was a meadow; all along the shore they lay green in the sunshine, the old Indian gardens grown up to "hey". On Charles Neck and Great Neck and Little Neck, along the banks of the rivers and up across the center of the lands. For generations the Indians had planted and then left the "grassie plains" and made new gardens, and now the white man came in, built his log hut, hung up his musket at night and made himself at home with friendly Indians while some dark forms stood motionless in the forest behind trees and boulders, and dark eyes watched stoically with a growing distrust in the heart.
A wonder, a silent resentment was spreading throughout the tribes, but the good chief Massasoit still lived. Puzzled Indians who thought when they sold land they were only giving permission to their white friends to hunt and fish as the tribe
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did over the land, and when they were ordered to take up their wigwams and move off, what did it mean!
And the prices! The bargains those settlers struck! One hundred thousand acres bought from Wesamequen and Wam- sutta, the young son of Massasoit, for thirty yards of cloth, 2 light moose skins, fifteen axes, fifteen hoes, fifteen pairs of breeches, eight blankets, two kettles, one cloak, two pounds in Wampum, eight pairs of shoes, one iron pot, and ten shillings "in another commodity," "probably rum" because rum had come into the life of the Indian.
As far back as 1637 a man was arrested for "more than ordinary refreshing." From the records we judge "drunk and lay under the table" meant "more than ordinary refreshing." In buying from the Indians, besides the shining little pieces of polished blue and white quahog shells, clothes and rum were used for money.
The old colonists had held swamps and lands in common; fishing and hunting over lands were free to all; old pathways were kept open; every man was "alowed a convenient way to the water were so ever the lott fale." As new colonists came, as the sons and daughters began to go out for land, the cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, appears. The Indians begin to see what their marks have meant on those pieces of paper, that were so easy to make for wampum and firewater and a "coate" or two. At the court at Plymouth June 5, 1655, "liberty was granted to the towne of Plymouth to purchase lands of the Indians of Sepecan to winter cattle on," which tells a story in itself. Restless Indian owners of fenceless land; cattle trampling on corn fields and wandering about the little In- dian settlement. The cloud was getting darker. June 13, 1660 "Mr. Thomas Hinckley and Nathaniell Bacon are appointed by the court to sett the bounds of the lands granted to the towne of Plymouth att Sepecan." More unrest and friction; the matter taken to the Court to settle; and as an undertone, the lowing of cattle, the sound of ax and hammer and saw in the woodland, and English voices on "the lands of Sepecan."
In 1662 Massasoit died.
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The new chief Wamsutta was ordered to Plymouth. Im- patient at his slowness in coming, armed messengers are sent out for him. Not a group of fifty Pilgrims, sick and alone in the wilderness but English colonists, sure of their rights, or at least of their desires and demands.
The boy is taken ill and his alarmed people beg that he be allowed to go home.
But it was not at home he died, and his brother Philip now head of the tribe, suddenly burdened with the weight of the welfare of his people, brooded over the thought that his brother had been poisoned.
He waited. The power wasn't his yet; the opportunity waited beyond the months. His time would come. In the Plymouth court room, the setting for many scenes in the tragic years that are coming, one day in August, Philip puts his mark at the bottom of a paper which reads that
"he will not att anytime needlessly or unjustly provoke or raise war with any other of the natives not att anytime give, sell or any way dispose of any to him or them appertaining to any strangers, or to any without our consent or appointment, but will in all things endeavor to carry peasably and inoffen- sively towards the English."
And "war" is written on the Plymouth records!
His "majestie" has the "piouse designe of converting the heathen nations," but strangers fell the timber in Philip's swamps, and he has to ask permission of the Plymouth court to buy a horse. The court gives him a horse "as judging it meeter than give him libertee to buy one."
John Eliot translates the Bible into Philip's language, and Philip rides "the horse provided for the trumpeter be- longing to the troop of horses", and the trumpeter is given a new one. The cloud grows larger.
There are comets in the skies, and colonists wish they hadn't whipped the Quakers and driven them out, and they shudder at omens and signs.
They bring Indians into the courts away from their own homes and chiefs; collect wampum for fines; make the braves crazy with rum; order Philip here and there; and the chiefs
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