USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Salem > Short story of three centuries of Salem : 1626-1926 > Part 2
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"Unconscious builders? Yea, the conscious fail; Unconscious, yea, they thought it might avail To build a gloomy creed about their lives And shut out all dissent. But naught remains Of their poor structure and we know to-day Their mission was less pastoral than lay. More nation-seed than gospel-seed were they".
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To Enili cat
CHAPTER II. THE SETTLEMENT PERIOD
"A voice from out the future, "Onward" cries, But o'er the past my hovering spirit lies Mute, motionless, aghast".
N 'O doubt from some secluded spot a few of the Naumkeag tribe of Indians, having possession and sovereignty over this territory, watched the Puritans landing on our shores. Our thoughts of the Indians may be limited, through unfair emphasis, to their scalping of the white man. The latter was ready to emulate this ex- ample. Massachusetts by public authority offered fifteen pounds for an Indian's scalp and eight pounds for the scalp of an Indian woman or child. The immigration of white men to the New World meant the ultimate ex- tinction of the natives, "whose monarch tread was on these broad green lands" and their certain expulsion from the fields and forests of their ancestors.
Indian names designate many places throughout the country. Our first settlement bore an Indian name and it links us very closely with the wigwam and the Saga- more. In reflective mood we often give some thought to the Indian and perhaps our reflections are deepened picturing him watching the lakes shining in golden splendor and the sunsets making magic in the clouds, with charming vistas beckoning, and friendly skies cov- ering, him. Speculation as to the Indian's development under auspicious circumstances need not engage us to- day. He loved his country and his freedom and he voiced
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his protest at the white man's aggression and appealed to the white man's beliefs, but it was all unavailing. Whether in North or South America, whether by Eng- lish Protestants or Spanish Catholics, the children of the Great Spirit were ruthlessly destroyed and often brutally and mercilessly sent on their journey to the Golden Land of the Sun. Let us think of the Indians, watching the Puritans landing, as nature's children, lovingly enfolded in nature's arms, borne away in ecstasy by her charms, knowing while they wandered through this country that once was theirs, companionship and love; love of their kind and love of their country, and possessing a courage that scorned every danger and an endurance that tri- umphed over torture.
Religion was so dominant a force among the fore- fathers that it may not be amiss to refer, in passing, to the religion of the Indians. To impress one's religious belief upon another may be attempted with unquestioned motives, and, in this way, Christians proselytize among their own sects and all of them try to convert the savage. The Indian was the object of solicitude on the part of earnest white Christians but not at first. What the In- dian's religion was and how the white man's religion im- pressed him, is set forth in one of the Indian orations delivered long after our settlement days, or about 1800.
"A young missionary named Cram was sent into the country of the Six Nations by the Evangelical Mission- ary Society of Massachusetts to found a mission among the Senecas. A council of their chiefs was convoked to hear his propositions. These were made in a short speech to which the Indians listened with earnest atten- tion. After a long consultation among themselves, Red Jacket arose and spoke, in part, as follows :
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"Friend and Brother :
"It was the will of the Great Spirit that we should meet together this day. He orders all things and has given us a fine day for our council. Our eyes are opened that we see clearly ; our ears are unstopped that we have been able to hear distinctly the words you have spoken. For all these favors we thank the Great Spirit, and him only.
"Brother : This council was kindled by you. We have listened with attention to what you have said. You say you want an answer to your talk before you leave this place. Listen to what we say. There was a time when our forefathers owned this great land. Their seats ex- tended from the rising to the setting sun. The Great Spirit had made it for the use of Indians. He had cre- ated the buffalo, the deer, and other animals for food. He had made the bear and the beaver. Their skins served us for clothing. He had scattered them over the country and taught us how to take them. He had caused the earth to produce corn for bread. All this he had done for his red children because he loved them. If we had some disputes about our hunting ground, they were gen- erally settled without the shedding of much blood. But an evil day came upon us. Your fathers crossed the great water and landed on this island. Their numbers were small. They found friends and not enemies. They told us they had come here to enjoy their religion. They asked for a small seat. We took pity on them, granted their request and they sat down amongst us. We gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison whiskey in re- turn.
"Brother, continue to listen :
"You have got our country but are not satisfied ; you want to force your religion upon us. You say you are sent to instruct us to worship the Great Spirit agreeably
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to his mind, and if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach, we shall be unhappy here- after. How do we know this to be true? We understand your religion is written in a book ; if it were intended for us as well as you, why has not the Great Spirit given to us, and not only to us, but why did he not give to our forefathers, the knowledge of that book, with the means of understanding it rightly? We only know what you tell us about it; how shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people. You say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agree, as you can all read the book? We are told your religion was given to your forefathers and has been handed down from father to son; we, also, have a religion which was given to our forefathers and has been handed down to us their children. We worship in that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favors we receive, to love each other, and to be united. We never quarrel about religion.
"Brother : The Great Spirit has made us all but he has made a great difference between his white and red children. He has given us different complexions and different customs. To you he has given the arts; to these he has not opened our eyes. We know these things to be true. Since he has made so great a difference be- tween us in other things, why may we not conclude that he has given us a different religion, according to our un- derstanding? The Great Spirit does right. He knows what is best for his children. We are satisfied. We do not wish to destroy your religion or take it from you. We only want to enjoy our own.
"Brother: We are told you have been preaching to the white people in this place. These people are our
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neighbors. We are acquainted with them. We will wait a little while and see what effect your preaching has upon them. If we find it does them good, makes them honest and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again what you have said.
"Brother : You have now heard our answer to your talk and this is all we have to say at present. As we are going to part, we will come and take you by the hand and hope the Great Spirit will protect you on your jour- ney and return you safe to your friends".
As thus expressed, the religion of the Indian presented familiar Christian essentials. In a simple and confident way, it expresses a belief in a Supreme Being loving us and providing for us; it acknowledges His bounty; it proclaims the Golden Rule; significantly it questions the effect on the white man's conduct of the white man's reli- gion and also urges the tolerance of which Christians stand in need. But as a part of his religious belief the Indian, also, felt that spirits, friendly and otherwise, lived in everything, in the trees, in the lakes, and in fishes and animals. This belief in spirits impregnated the minds of the Puritans here for a brief but awful period later when evil spirits were thought to be pos- sessing and tormenting them.
There was no trouble with the Indians here at Naum- keag. They proved friendly as did Samoset and Squanto at Plymouth. "The Indians bid us welcome and showed themselves very glad that we came to dwell among them". Fear of their enemies, the Tarrantines, and re- duced numbers due to a recent devastating epidemic, may have influenced their attitude toward the whites but we may believe that in their savage natures there was the spirit of peace and brotherhood. "The Indians and the English had a field in common fenced in to- gether". The Indian village was along the shores of the
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North River and "ye North and South side of that river was called Naumkeke", the word Naumkeke, being va- riously interpreted as meaning "Eeland", "good fishing grounds", and "bosom of consolation".
The Squaw Sachem who married for her second hus- band, Wappacowet, the great medicine man, died here in 1667, and, of her three sons, Sagamore George included Salem in his inheritance. George died in 1684 leaving a son and two daughters on whom, tradition says, nature had endowed great beauty. The descendants of Saga- more George, including his two grandsons, David and Samuel and his daughter Cicely signed the deed to the settlement at Salem, October 11, 1686, for a considera- tion of twenty pounds and this deed, preserved through the centuries, today adorns the walls of the Council chamber at City Hall.
Salem is an ancient city with a motive and a beginning running well back in the pages of Old World history, but let us look for early scenes and persons at a picture drawn by our local novelist of whom we shall later speak.
"The white man's axe has never smitten a single tree ; his footstep has never crumpled a single one of the withered leaves, which all the autumns since the flood, have been harvesting beneath. Yet, see; along through the vista of impending boughs, there is already a faintly traced path, running nearly east and west, as if a prophe- cy or foreboding of the future street had stolen into the heart of the solemn old wood. ********* What foot- steps can have worn this half-seen path? Hark; Do we not hear them now rustling softly over the leaves? We discern an Indian woman-a majestic and queenly wom- an, or else her spectral image does not represent her truly-for this is the great Squaw Sachem, whose rule with that of her sons, extends from Mystic to Agawam.
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That red chief who stalks by her side, is Wappacowet, her second husband, the priest and magician, whose in- cantations shall hereafter affright the pale-faced settlers with ‹ grisly phantoms, dancing and shrieking in the woods at midnight. But greater would be the affright of the Indian necromancer, if, mirrored in a pool of wa- ter at his feet, he could catch a prophetic glimpse of the noon-day marvels which the white man is destined to achieve; if he could see, as in a dream, the stone front of the stately hall, which will cast its shadow over this very spot; if he could be aware that the future edifice will contain a noble Museum, where, among countless curiosities of earth and sea, a few Indian arrow-heads shall be treasured up as memorials of a vanished race. No such forebodings disturb the squaw Sachem and Wappacowet. They pass on, beneath the tangled shade, holding high talk on matters of state and religion, and imagine, doubtless, that their own system of affairs will endure forever. Meanwhile, how full of its own proper life is the scene that lies around them. The gray squirrel runs up the trees, and rustles among the upper branches. Was not that the leap of a deer? And there is the whirr of a partridge. Methinks too, I catch the cruel and stealthy eye of a wolf, as he draws back into yonder im- pervious density of underbrush. So, there amid the mur- mur of boughs, go the Indian Queen and the Indian priest; while the gloom of the broad wilderness impends over them, and its sombre mystery invests them as with something preternatural; and only momentary streaks of quivering sunlight, once in a great while, find their way down, and glimmer among the feathers in their dusky hair. Can it be that the thronged streets of a city will ever pass into this twilight solitude-over those soft heaps of the decaying tree trunks, and through the swampy places green with water moss, and penetrate
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that hopeless entanglement of great trees, which have been uprooted and tossed together by a whirlwind? It has been a wilderness from the creation. Must it not be a wilderness forever?"
Naumkeag was not destined to be a wilderness for- ever. Englishmen started to subdue this wilderness choosing, as the poet says, "the path where every foot- step bleeds".
Roger Conant was a stout hearted soul but privation menaced him and his company. He defeated a proposal of Lyford, one of his number, to move to Virginia, and Woodbury, another of the company, was sent to England to make known the conditions here. As a result, Endecott came over and Conant was superseded in authority. There were disputes over the growing of tobacco and other matters and Conant did not like the subordinate position assigned to him after Endecott's coming. Har- mony finally prevailed and, as one result, the name of Salem, signifying peace, was given to the settlement. "Every phase and circumstance of this pioneer life" says the historian, "reminded our fathers of their de- pendence on nature and the Supreme Power behind na- ture, while at the same time the continued need and ap- plication of neighbor's cooperation with neighbor, brought out brotherly love in charming strength and beauty".
Pioneer life everywhere in the settlements was about the same. The dwellings of log huts clustered about the meeting house, and family life, though severe in its rou- tine, was potent and far reaching in its beneficent effects. "He who would understand the richest side and the deepest moving forces of our national life and develop- ment must not overlook the New England fireside scenes". Toil was severe and constant and comforts elemental. Much of the furniture was home made but
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UPHAM
HOUSE OF PHILIP ENGLISH
new embarkations brought cattle and tools and village carpenters and blacksmiths. Their food must have been reduced often in quantity and variety. Though they slept on mattresses of hay and leaves, they had, before 1700, the luxury of feather beds. These feather beds fig- ure as important items in many wills recorded on our records and were doubtless of such importance in the minds of the early settlers and immediate successors as · to be "bequeathed as a rich legacy unto their issue". They kept warm in church as best they could with hot stones and bags wrapt about their feet. They gathered nuts, and salted fish, and dried berries, and set them aside for the winter use.
Salem is an ancient city ; our settlement was at the foundation of a new country, destined to be the home of civil and religious liberty, destined to be a "kingdom not of kings, but men". Today the vanished past is pro- truding itself. Here amid early struggles, struggles of the body, mind, and spirit, another contribution to the new country was made, a country now glorious in ac- complishment and purpose, great in strength, with free- dom, mercy and justice written in her laws. We are an ancient city ; the aborigines gave us our title deed and from the Old Testament we took the Scriptural name of Salem. Where stand our modern structures, the cabin of the founders sent its smoke wreaths into the shades of the wilderness, curling and rising through the trees of the primeval forest. The early morning hours found the Puritan with the Scriptures in his hand and the declining day saw him in thanksgiving and prayer. Where now busy and populated streets join home and hall and church, three centuries ago narrow paths joined the In- dian village, the settlement, and the rivers; kine-bells tinkled at eventide and the young people, with bow and arrow, practiced for recreation and defence.
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The story of the time since Conant and Endecott landed here, the story of the Puritans' labors, sufferings, growth and success, is forcing itself today upon us. Every quarter of a century, or less, saw our settlement rise, every era is pregnant with human interest, and near- ly every family history might furnish, in one generation or another, the outline of a romance.
Now with the forefathers, as has been said, religion was a very dominating influence. "They feared some things men ought to fear" but the evil spirits in which the Indians believed, in which all Europe believed, were accepted as very real for a little while, and, it is to be remembered that "there was no colony where the belief in astrology, necromancy, second sight, ghosts, haunted houses, love spells, charms, and peculiar powers attach- ing to rings, herbs, etc. did not prevail". And law and religion were their stern masters and for small offences there were grave and inhuman punishments, all of them, however, consistent with the period. The meeting house, the jail, the pillory and the whipping post, were struct- ures of strong prevailment, the pillory being used in Salem as late as 1801. Sermons were hours long and, as indicating how sadly they were drifting, "boys bring- ing home the cows were cautioned to let down the bars softly as it was the Lord's Day".
The Quakers came to our settlement with notions of their own on the inflaming subject of religion. In Eng- land under George Fox, their leader there, they were first called the Children of Light and later the Society of Friends. They did not believe that women should keep silent and anyone, man or woman, could preach in or out of church, if the spirit so dictated. Because the early preaching in England was often so vehement among the less cultivated of their number as to cause many of the auditors to tremble or quake, they became known as Quakers.
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According to Mr. Higginson, there was a little "nest of Quakers" in Salem. They had distinguishing prac- tices in social and religious matters, they would take no oath, bear no arms, bestow no compliments, and wear no funeral garb. They designated the months of the year and the days of the week by numbers rather than by names and they would not lift their hats to the Gov- ernor or anyone else. Long after our settlement days when George Washington came to Salem, Quaker Northey, who was chairman of the general reception committee, kept on his hat when he said, "Friend Wash- ington we are glad to see thee, and in behalf of the in- habitants, bid thee welcome to Salem". Rank or position, merely, aroused no reverence among the Quakers. When William Penn was in England he would not lift his hat to the king. But if they did not reverence position they did reverence better things. They never attempted to exert political influence and they made their conscience their guide and discountenanced slavery and had the dis- tinction of being the first Christian body to attack it.
And the Quakers preached to the Indians as well as to the white man. William Penn and Robert Barclay were the educated leaders of the Quakers and truly rep- resented them. Penn came over here and founded the great state of our Union which perpetuates his name. The picture of him under the great elm making a treaty with the Indians keeps fresh in the memory since school boy days.
After our King Philip's War, Philip's "sorrowing, in- nocent wife and son were brought prisoners to Ply- mouth; their case was referred to the ministers; after long deliberation and prayer, it was decided that they should be sold into slavery, and this was their fate". It is related of King Philip, who respected and guarded the chastity of Mrs. Rawlinson, the minister's wife,
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when she was his prisoner of war, that "his body was subjected to indignities and his head exposed for twenty years at Plymouth". And the bloody Spaniards in the South, "inflicted upon hundreds and thousands of the natives all the forms and agonies of fiendish cruelties, driving them to self starvation and suicide as a way of mercy and release from an utterly wretched existence". The Indians came to view them as "fiends of hate, malig- nity and all dark and cruel desperation".
In his dealings with the Indians, Penn, the Quaker, seemed to give a little life and spirit to the principle of the brotherhood of man. He made a treaty with them without an oath and, after a full test of his justice and fidelity, the Indians said, "We will live in love with William Penn and his children as long as sun and moon shall shine". And the Indians kept that promise and never shed a drop of Quaker blood.
The special belief of the Quaker was that "there is an immediate revelation of the Spirit of God to each in- dividual soul, that this light is universal and comes both to the heathen and the Christian"; and that "The inward light of each individual was the only true guide for his conduct". Their beliefs brought them in violent contact with the Puritans. Massachusetts feared them and passed laws against them and several Quakers were hanged in Boston. Learning of our laws they invaded Massachusetts with the enthusiasm and spirit of martyrs. They became religiously overheated, and agitated and protested, and may be said fairly to have been disorderly in the extreme. Some few are said to have gone naked as a sign of the spiritual nakedness of the Puritans and, also, doubtless to emphasize their cause in the same way that the hunger strikers sought in modern days to em- phasize their cause and beliefs. "The County records show that at Ipswich and Salem during the four years
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from 1658 to 1661, inclusive, there were 138 convictions for attending Quaker meteings and absence from public worship". The Puritans worked fast but the Quakers kept them busy. The descendants of Quaker Northey are with us today and, happily, neither the Quakers nor their ideas were fully banished from our midst. The im- mediate and ultimate influence of the Quakers was good for the Puritans; probably it was redeeming. The Pu- ritans needed the jolt the Quakers gave them. It opened their eyes and stirred their rigid minds. Were it not for the martyrdom of the Quakers and, later, that of the Witches, religious insanity might have vanquished the early settlers. The Quakers quickened the spirit of free- dom and democracy. They were, in a very true sense, Children of Light in the unhappy night of early Salem. A Quaker apologist rather convincingly states, "the early Quakers were abreast, if not in advance, of the foremost advocates of religious and civil freedom. They were the pioneers who by their heroic fortitude, patient suffering and persistent devotion, rescued the old Bay Colony from the jaws of the certain death to which the narrow and mistaken policy of the bigoted and sometimes insincere founders had doomed it; the religion of the Society of Friends is still an active force, having its full share of influence upon our civilization ; the vital principal-The Inward Light-scoffed at and denounced by the Puritans as a delirium,-is recognized as a profound spiritual truth by sages and philosophers".
And so blood stained the ground again in the New World, as it had in the old so often before, in religion's name. Our forefathers "thought to build a gloomy creed about their lives and shut out all dissent" and the rigidity of their discipline and their fanaticism, left mercy a life- less thing and were leading them, as they must lead all others so dispositioned or afflicted, to rebellion or mad-
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ness. The wilderness surrounding them accentuated this condition. The forest was the abiding place of the Black Man, as real to them as the trees that grew there, as formidable as the impregnable rocks on the shores of the harbor. We had our dismal settlement days when gloom assailed us, crushing the spirit, dethroning reason; days of danger, superstition, witchcraft, and bloody pun- ishments; days when the instincts of the heart were crushed; days when the eyes were closed to the inspira- tion and beauty of nature; days when the sermon "warned more of Satan's malice than it soothed by the promise of God's mercy".
Hawthorne speaks of the "sombre spirit of our fore- fathers who wove their web of life with hardly a single thread of rose-color or gold". He says, "when the new settlement had become a little town, its daily life must have trudged onward with hardly anything to diversify and enliven it, while all its rigidity could not fail to cause miserable distortions of the moral nature; such a life was sinister to the intellect and sinister to the heart, especially when one generation had bequeathed its reli- gious gloom and the counterfeit of its religious ardor to the next; for these characteristics, as was inevitable, as- sumed the form both of hypocrisy and exaggeration by being inherited from the example and precept of other human beings and not from an original and spiritual source".
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