Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 5

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802

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The Indians divided themselves very strictly into three social classes: those of royal blood, including the sachems, shamans, elders of the council, and subordinate chiefs; commoners or freemen with rights to the tribal lands; and 'outsiders' of alien blood, usually captives, with no tribal rights. Descent was commonly reckoned through the female line, and the office of head chief or sachem was hereditary. If tribes were large and important they might be governed by several under-chiefs, and each tribe had a council of elders of noble blood. The shamans or pow-wows possessed great influence. They were partly seers, partly wizards, and partly physicians. When, as occasionally happened, the offices of sachem and shaman were combined, the person vested with this dual authority held tremendous power.

Polygamy was fairly common, and divorce was approved and frequent, the right being exercised as freely by women as by men. Justice was a simple matter. If any tribesman was wronged, all related to him were bound to see that proper restitution was made. Murder was avenged or suitably punished by the kinsmen of the victim.

The Algonquins believed that Manitou, a supernatural power, was inherent in all things. An evil power personified as Mattand was feared and placated. Elaborate communal ceremonies celebrated the harvest, and rituals concerned with sun, rainfall, and a plenitude of game were

Massachusetts: The General Background

performed religiously. In all these ceremonies, as in secular matters, smoking had definite significance.

On a day in March, 1621, a flurry was created among the citizens of Plymouth when a strange Indian suddenly appeared, quite alone, in the middle of Leyden Street. He caused even greater excitement when, with an air of grave friendliness, he spoke two words in English: 'Welcome, Englishmen!' The stranger was Samoset, a member of one of Massa- chusetts' first families come to offer aid to these white aliens. He had learned a few words of English from casual fishermen at Monhegan, and he spoke them with unconscious drama, unaware that they spelled the doom of his race.

When the Pilgrims first arrived in the new country, they settled on lands belonging to Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoags, whose favorite residence was at Pokanoket (Mount Hope, Bristol, Rhode Island), a spot which was to witness the death not only of his son Philip but of the hopes of his race. On April 1, 1621, on Strawberry Hill, Plymouth, Massasoit in solemn council ratified the first treaty between Indian and white man. The treaty, effected by the good offices of Samoset, was faithfully sup- ported by Massasoit, and lasted the fifty-four years of his lifetime. Massasoit was never converted to Christianity, but without his generous help the settlement of Massachusetts would have been infinitely more difficult and perhaps impossible.

Another Indian who gave the Pilgrims much practical aid in their adjustment to the conditions of life in a wild country among savage peoples was Squanto, who served as an interpreter. He was one of five Indians carried to London in 1605 by Captain George Weymouth. In 1614 he was brought back to Cape Cod by John Smith, but in the same year he again visited England - this time with Captain Thomas Dernier. Returning to America in 1619, he fell in with the Pilgrims at Plymouth. He is supposed to have been the only Indian to escape the Patuxet (Plymouth) plague.

Not all tribes, of course, were friendly to the first settlers. Before the arrival of the Pilgrims the savage Pequot (destroyer) Indians had fought their way through from the west and settled in what is now eastern Con- necticut. In 1636 Boston joined the towns of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor in a concerted attack against the Pequots with the aid of the Mohicans. The remnants of the tribe were sold to the Bermudans, who purchased no bargain, as the Indians proved to be 'sullen and treacherous.' They were poor laborers in the fields, but as whalers and sailors they developed considerable skill and daring.

First Americans

One of the most determined foes of the white settlers was King Philip, who believed that the continued encroachment of the white men must end in the extermination of the red men, and that the colonists were consciously working toward this end. The gradual extension of the colonists for two generations brought about a condition in which Indian and white land claims conflicted. Roger Williams had once in a letter to Governor Bradford hotly protested the validity of the land titles of the colonists. 'Why lay such stress,' he demanded, 'upon your patent from King James? 'Tis but idle parchment. James has no more right to give away or sell Massasoit's lands and cut and carve his country than Mas- sasoit has to sell King James' kingdom or to send Indians to colonize Warwickshire.' In addition, the colonists had gained presumption with power, and insisted on administering justice to everybody. To the Indians this not only seemed an unwarrantable interference with their rights, but also made it difficult, if not impossible, for them to obtain fair hearings in the English courts.

Along with his belief that the Indian must drive out the intruder or be exterminated, Philip had perhaps a personal reason for his hatred of the whites - a belief that his brother Wamsutta had been murdered. At all events, he prepared for war secretly and with intelligence. Shortly before the outbreak of hostilities in 1675 the Governor of Massachusetts sent an ambassador to Philip asking him to pledge peace. Philip returned a proud but not undiplomatic reply: 'Your governor is but a subject of King Charles of England. I shall not treat with a subject. I shall treat of peace only with the King, my brother. When he comes, I am ready.'

Philip undoubtedly intended a simultaneous movement of all the tribes on the North Atlantic seaboard against the white men. An un- expected event, however, precipitated war a year sooner than he had intended and destroyed his plans: the treachery of Sassamon.

The latter, one of Philip's tribe, had been converted to Christianity, had lived at Harvard College for a short time, and was a school teacher in the Praying Town of Natick. He became Philip's secretary, and it was he who imparted news of Philip's plans to the Governor at Plymouth. Philip learned of the treachery, and Sassamon's body was found in Assawompsett Pond in Middleborough. The implication was obvious, and the English authorities promptly apprehended three of Philip's tribesmen and brought them to trial.

In order to give a semblance of fairness to the trial, six Indians were included on the jury. The concurrence of the six in a verdict of guilty could reasonably be counted on. But the court took no chances. Before

Massachusetts: The General Background

the six Indians were empaneled, a legal jury of twelve good (white) men and true had been drawn. In case of a 'bolt' by the Indians, a legal conviction was still assured. The Indians were executed in June, 1675, creating the overt act which forced Philip's hand. Before this event no hostilities had been undertaken by Philip or his warriors against the whites: now he immediately attacked Swansea.

Town after town fell before him. While the English forces were march- ing in one direction, the Indians were burning and laying waste in an- other. The Narragansetts had not yet heartily engaged in the campaign, though there is no doubt that they stood pledged to it. In order to secure their strong support, Philip went to their country. This tactical necessity, forced upon him by the precipitation of war, turned out to be fatal. In December an army of fifteen hundred English concentrated upon this region where Philip was known to be. The whole Narragansett Nation was trapped in an immense swamp at South Kingston, Rhode Island, and Philip was overwhelmingly defeated.

This was the turning-point of the war. When success in Massachusetts no longer attended Philip's cause, his southern allies began to desert him. He was driven from place to place, losing more and more of his warriors. His wife and son were captured and sold into slavery; his heart and cour- age were broken. He took shelter at last in his ancient seat at Pokanoket, but even here there was no longer any refuge. He was driven out and slain by one of his own men, in vengeance, according to the English report, for the life of a brother who had been shot by Philip.

A few miles south of Kingston, a stone shaft by the railroad track marks the grave of the Narragansett Nation. The barrel of the gun with which Philip was killed is now in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, and its lock is in the keeping of the Massachusetts Historical Society of Boston.

With the death of King Philip the power of the tribes of southern New England was completely destroyed. The war dragged on for two years more, until 1678. After Philip's rout, however, there was never any doubt as to its outcome. During its course the Wampanoags and their lesser allies, as well as the Narragansetts, were all but wiped out. The few survivors fled northward or westward beyond the Hudson.

The extermination of the red men was not accomplished without dread- ful casualties among the English. One in every ten of the five thousand Englishmen of military age in the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies is estimated to have been killed or captured. It was forty years before the devastated frontiers were reoccupied.

Not only among the Indians were there idealists who, like Samoset

First Americans

and Massasoit, believed that there could be brotherhood between red men and white. Such idealists existed also among the colonists. One of the most active of these was John Eliot, the 'Apostle to the Indians.' Eliot was a sincere evangelist and a man of tremendous industry. He mastered the Algonquin language and translated the Bible into this tongue so that his converts might read it for themselves. He believed that before the Indians could be converted they must first be civilized, and in that belief the famous Praying Towns were conceived.

In founding these centers of Christian education, Eliot associated with himself Gookin, Mayhew, and other men of intelligence and altruism. They established some thirty Praying Towns with schools and a teacher in each. The first was at Natick in 1651. A set of by-laws was formulated . and an Indian named Waban was appointed justice of the peace. In the following year another Praying Town was established at Concord, and soon there were others sprinkled over the territory from Cape Cod to Narragansett Bay. Eliot traveled from one to another, preaching, teach- ing, and supervising. At first he was violently opposed by the local chiefs and priests, who feared the undermining of their power, but behind Eliot's gospel teachings loomed the heavy shadow of the English au- thorities, and gradually opposition was emptied of force. By 1674 there were eleven hundred converts in Massachusetts - five hundred in Plymouth and the rest in Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Many of these conversions were no doubt genuine, but whether they were due more to religious conviction than to friendship for the white teachers is problematical.

Eliot's plan embraced the possibility of higher education for his protégés. The first brick building at Harvard College was erected for Indian students, but they did not make use of it in numbers sufficient to justify the building, and it was transformed into a printing shop. One Indian, Caleb Cheeshahteamuck, was graduated from Harvard in the class of 1665; at least three others studied at the college but did not graduate.

The Indians on Cape Cod and the adjacent islands had been in large part Christianized before the outbreak of King Philip's War. It is probable that some of them left the Praying Towns to join Philip, as did many from the Praying Towns around Boston.

It was the undeserved fate of the Christian Indians to be treated by Philip as allies of the English and to be suspected by the English of treacherous commerce with Philip. One of the blacker pages in the history of the relations of the colonists and the Indians is the chronicle

Massachusetts: The General Background

of English treatment of the Christianized Naticks. Without overt act on the part of the latter to justify any suspicion of their loyalty, they were ordered to emigrate in the dead of winter. The Praying Town at Wamesit (Tewksbury) was broken up, and its inhabitants driven out to Long Island and Deer Island. The Indians suffered terribly in their con- finement at such a season to an area where they had neither shelter nor stores. After several weeks the General Court, yielding to adverse public opinion, gave permission for their removal from the islands - providing, however, that this must be done without expense to the colony. Those who had survived were taken to Cambridge, where a humane citizen, Thomas Oliver, gave them refuge on his lands along the Charles River until spring, when most of them returned to the ruins of their homes. Ill, weakened by exposure and hunger, they were too feeble to maintain many towns, and the remoter ones were abandoned.

This setback dealt a death blow to any further attempts to Christianize the Indians. The 'Apostle to the Indians' strove in vain. Six years after the conclusion of King Philip's War, only four Praying Towns remained out of some thirty thriving centers which John Eliot had established. His life work had been undone.

The Indians at Natick, who at one time held all the town offices, were gradually replaced by white men, and their land titles extinguished. At various times and places Indian reservations were established. In 1861 there were reservations at Chappequiddick, Christiantown, Gay Head, Herring Pond, Natick, and Ponkapog. But this restricted life was not favorable to the red man. Mentally and physically, the Indians de- generated with the taking on of the white men's vices.

Today there are only two places in Massachusetts where the Indians have been able to preserve a semblance of their ethnic identity: Mashpee and Gay Head. The former town, incorporated in 1871, comprises Mashpee, South Mashpee, and a part of Wakeby. It has a public library, a town hall, and two churches; one of the latter, the Indian Mission Church, founded in 1684, is of interest to visitors. But the real sight in Mashpee is the cranberry bogs, the principal support of the town, which belong mostly to the white non-residents who employ the Indians as pickers. In the season, bending their backs over the bog, can be seen the half-breed descendants of the proud and friendly savages who once roamed the windswept dunes of Cape Cod.

On the farthest tip of Martha's Vineyard, across Menemsha Pond, rises a peninsula that ends in cliffs composed of strata of incredibly varie- gated clays - red, blue, orange, tan, and black - alternating with a

HISTORICAL LANDMARKS

A GOOD many landmarks in the history of Massachusetts are still standing. The pictures of some of these landmarks are reproduced here: the house of John Alden, who was one of the heroes of Longfellow's poem, 'Miles Standish'; the Paul Revere House; the Old South Meeting-House; the Old State House, which saw the Boston Massacre take place be- neath the stately carvings of the Lion and the Unicorn which adorn its roof.

Also included among the pictures are two ships, for the sea has always been important in the making of Massachusetts. First is the 'Arbella' - a reconstruction -- which floats on the waters of the Salem Harbor not far from the spot where the original vessel dropped anchor in 1630. And there is the frigate 'Constitution,' famous for its victories in the War of 1812, and the subject of Holmes's poem, 'Old Ironsides.'

THE ARBELLA, SALEM

JORNALDEN HO ISE 653

-----

JOHN ALDEN HOUSE, DUXBURY

PAUL REVERE HOUSE, BOSTON

COMMODORE'S QUARTERS, U.S. FRIGATE CONSTITUTION

BY THE RUDE BRIDGE THAT ARCHED THE FLOOD, THEIR FLAG TO APRIL'S BREEZE UNFURLED, HERE ONCE THE EMBATTLED FARMERS STOOD, AND FIRED THE SHOT HEARD ROUND THE WORLD.

THE MINUTEMAN STATUE, CONCORD

und ig ton of

SHE LEFT

....

waterpolo nepo putin

OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE, BOSTON

LEYDEN ST., PLYMOUTH, FIRST STREET IN MASSACHUSETTS

ADRKAN PRINCE SO

ASCETLLEL

så

OLD STATE HOUSE, BOSTON

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS HOUSE, QUINCY

First Americans

dazzling white sandy substance. This is Gay Head. From these bright clays the Indians, who have kept their racial stock more nearly pure here than elsewhere, fashion small vases and jars which preserve the designs and patterns inherited from remote ancestors. The sale of these souvenirs by silent Indian children waiting by the roadside for the hordes of sum- mer tourists is the last reminder of a primitive culture that could not survive the rape of its free forests and wide lands.

ENOUGH OF ITS HISTORY

TO EXPLAIN

ITS PEOPLE

MASSACHUSETTS (măs-să-chū'sēts) 190 miles long, 60 to 100 miles broad, 8266 square miles in area; bounded northerly by New Hampshire and Vermont, westerly by New York, southerly by Connecticut, Rhode Island, and the At- lantic, easterly by Massachusetts Bay and the Atlantic, lies between the parallels of 41° Io' and 42° 53' north latitude and between 69º 57' and 73° 30' west latitude. Its name is a combination of three Algonquin words mean- ing 'near the great mountain': adchu (mountain or hill), set (location near or in the vicinity of), massu (great).

MASSACHUSETTS' history begins not with the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth but when Martin Luther dramatically nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door at Wittenberg. The Protestant Reformation from which the religious dissension of the reign of Henry VIII may be traced drove Pilgrim and Puritan to Massachusetts in quest of theological freedom for themselves if not for other religious and social dissenters.

Before religious nonconformists became the first permanent settlers, the coast of the Bay Colony had been well explored by hardy adventurers. Leif, son of Eric the Red, may have touched Massachusetts with his Norsemen in the year 1000; it is probable, too, that French and Spanish fishermen cast their nets on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland in the middle of the fifteenth century and that many of them touched Cape Cod, lured by the fish from which the sickle-shaped promontory takes its name. The first voyage definitely recorded was that of John Cabot, Venetian navigator, whose exploration in 1497 and 1498 gave England her claim to the region of North America. During the next century scattered ex- plorers slowly added to Europe's meager knowledge of the region: John Rut, a shipmaster of the English Royal Navy, Verrazzano under the fleur de lis, Gomez under the flag of Spain, all sought a route to the fabled riches of Zipangu and Cathay. Unsung fishermen, too, contented with the less romantic cod of Massachusetts' shores, looked for shelter from the North Atlantic's storms in the snug harbors of the coast.

Commercial enterprise and the search for exotic Eastern treasure

Enough of Its History to Explain Its People

motivated these early voyages, and similar motives were responsible for the first attempts to settle Massachusetts. The patent for the coloniza- tion of southern New England which Sir Humphrey Gilbert obtained from Elizabeth in 1578, recognizing that permanent population must precede trade, authorized the planting of an English community beyond the seas. Sir Humphrey unfortunately died before this was accomplished; returning from his first exploratory voyage, his frail ten-ton vessel was swamped by the huge waves of an Atlantic storm, and his seamen on an accompanying ship had a last glimpse of their commander standing on the afterdeck, waving a book and shouting, 'We are as near to heaven by sea as by land.' Gilbert's patent descended to his half brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, but England, bent on harrying Spain, was too much concerned with the success of her marauding sea dogs to be interested in colony planting. A few attempts at settlement followed, but they were made in violation of the Raleigh patent. In 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold explored Massachusetts Bay, christened Cape Cod, built a fort on the island of Cuttyhunk in Buzzard's Bay, and finally returned to England with his ships loaded with sassafras.

Raleigh's waning power ended with the death of Elizabeth, and James I, the new Stuart monarch, assigned the land to a group of Plymouth merchants and adventurers known as the Plymouth Company. Com- merce and profits stimulated Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Sir John Popham, and the other gentlemen who managed the destinies of this new company. Learning of the richness of the New England coast from George Wey- mouth, a private explorer, the Plymouth Company attempted to found the colony of Sagadahoc on the Kennebec River in what is now Maine (1607), at the time that the first permanent English colony was being established in Virginia. This venture failed completely and the company lapsed into inactivity, although lands were granted to a number of small fishing and trading colonies that sprang up along the Massachusetts coast in the early seventeenth century, inspired by John Smith's glowing ac- counts of the region. One visionary explorer, licensed by the company, devoted a season to gold-digging on Martha's Vineyard, but only 'spent his victuall and returned with nothing.'

The lust for trade failed to entice a population sufficient to make Massachusetts important, but where desire for gain failed the Reforma- tion succeeded. Introduced to England by the oft-wedded Henry VIII,' it had barely taken root when his successor, Mary, returned the land to Catholicism and sent Protestant leaders scurrying for their lives. Eliza- beth attempted a compromise settlement that satisfied neither extreme

Massachusetts: The General Background

Catholics nor extreme Protestants, although the compromise laid the basis for the Church of England. The Elizabethan settlement was par- ticularly distasteful to Protestants who had fled from England during the reign of 'Bloody Mary,' and had imbibed the radical teaching of Luther and Calvin while sojourning on the Continent. It was from this group that Massachusetts received its first wave of settlement.

First among these enthusiastic Protestants to reach the New World were the Separatists or Pilgrims. They believed each congregation should be entirely independent of all other congregations, and the compromise establishing the Church of England was particularly unacceptable to them. A small band of these people had been driven by the uncongenial atmosphere of their native Scrooby to seek a haven for their beliefs in Holland early in the seventeenth century, but the industrialism of Leyden displeased sons of English soil, who determined to turn instead to the New World. After securing support from London financiers they obtained a grant (1619) to settle on the James River in Virginia, and it was for that point that the 'Mayflower' set sail in 1620. Storms drove them off their course, however, and it was in Provincetown harbor that the small ship cast anchor on a bleak November day. The appearance of the countryside disturbed them: 'For sumer being done, all things stand upon them with a weatherbeaten face; and ye whole countrie, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage heiw.' Disheartened at the prospects, the Pilgrims spent some time looking for more hospitable surroundings. Plymouth harbor was finally selected, and on the day after Christmas, 1620, they began to erect their first common house for themselves and their goods.

In founding their colony at Plymouth, the Pilgrims were on land to which they had no right; they were, in a sense, beyond the pale of English law which would have followed them had they reached their destination in Virginia. To protect themselves until governmental control could be made to include them, they drew up the 'Mayflower Compact' while their ship was still anchored in Provincetown harbor. By this agreement, based upon Calvinistic principles, all agreed to abide by the majority will. A pattern of democracy was cast for this first Massachusetts colony which served throughout the trying winter and allowed the colony to enter upon a period of slow but steady growth. Within a comparatively short time the London backers were paid in full and Plymouth became economically sound and independent. In this the Pilgrims made their greatest contribution: they demonstrated that a colony could be self- supporting and encouraged others to attempt the experiment.

Enough of Its History to Explain Its People

. A number of small communities were founded along the Massachusetts coast during the next decade. Nearly all were villages or posts dedicated to fishing and trade, and all secured their grants from the Council for New England, which had by this time taken over the claims of the Ply- mouth Company. Most famous among these early settlements was one sent out in 1622 by Thomas Weston, a London merchant who had aided the Pilgrims, at Wessagusset, now Weymouth. When abandoned by Weston, the post built by his men was taken over by Captain Robert Gorges and became a dispersing point for isolated settlements. From this point the militant churchman, Thomas Walford, commenced his trek to Mishawum, now Charlestown; Samuel Maverick, a gentleman-trader, established himself in what is now East Boston; the Reverend William Blaxton (or Blackstone), a rebel Anglican clergyman, sought solitude in what was later to be known as Beacon Hill; and David Thompson re- moved to the island in Boston harbor that still bears his name. The re- ligious-minded Pilgrims had little in common with most of these adven- turers, but they objected particularly to the settlement of a group of in- dentured servants led by Captain Thomas Wollaston and Thomas Morton at Quincy in 1625. Morton and his fellows were jolly sportsmen, and while they traded with the Indians they reserved time enough to frolic. 'They also set up a Maypole,' wrote the horrified Bradford, Governor of Ply- mouth, 'drinking and dancing aboute in many days togeather, inviting the Indian women for their consorts, dancing and frisking togeather like so many fairies or furies.' These 'beastley practicses of the madd Bac- chinalians' did not cease until the Pilgrims sent Miles Standish to cap- ture the post and deport Morton to England. A fishing post under the command of Roger Conant had also been established at Cape Ann in 1623 by an English trading concern called the Dorchester Company. These villages were all small and could not, unaided, have expanded into a united colony, but they gave Englishmen a foothold and an interest which, when the time was ripe, attracted migration and laid the founda- tions of the Commonwealth.

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Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 5

Author: Publication date: 1937 Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company Number of Pages: 802

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802