USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Milton > The history of Milton, Mass., 1640 to 1877 > Part 62
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626
HISTORY OF MILTON.
BIRD VISITS.
These winter birds may afford much amusement, and con- tribute in no small degree to the life and cheer of the country home, during the period of ice and snow. The method here described of bringing them into close and fearless connection with ourselves and our dwellings was first observed many years ago at the pleasant residence of the Miss Bents on Brush Hill ; it is now not uncommon in Milton.
Within twenty feet of the drawing-room windows a wide board, with a rim around the edge, is suspended from a tree, six feet above the ground. On this is placed corn, wheat, barley, oats, cracked-corn, meal, and bran, - a variety to meet the taste and capacity of the guests. At the specific time, which is the first heavy fall of snow, our little friends who have before been our guests expect the entertainment; and if, for any reason, it is not ready, they remind us of the neglect by flitting from limb to limb in a disturbed and restless way, so that we cannot mistake their meaning. And when the feast is pre- pared the Snow Buntings and Chickadees gather their friends, and the Blue Jays scream to their fellows, and there is a general flying together, seemingly of old acquaintances. From this time they favor us with their presence till the snow disappears. Sometimes five or six Blue Jays are seen at once. The smaller birds prefer the meal and bran and broken wheat. The Blue Jays invariably take the corn; and, if the supply fails, they are sure to remind us of it, as they are not over-modest, and are favored with a strong voice. Last year, for the first time, the English Sparrows discovered the festive board ; they evidently thought themselves in luck, and took possession, sending the Chickadee and Snow Bunting to the ground to pick up the crumbs that had fallen from the master's table; nor did they discover the mistake until the lordly Blue Jay gently reminded them of the true state of things.
BIRD CONCERTS.
Expositors do not attribute that outburst of the Royal Psalmist in his "Spring Psalm" to the bird-concerts at the opening and closing of the day : "Thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice." But when we listen to the sweet blending of bird-notes, that wake the morning and hush the evening to repose, it is scarcely possible to give it another meaning.
From the doors and windows of every dwelling in Milton,
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BIRDS.
especially of those near trees and woods, which is true of almost all, the sublime bird-chorus may be heard. The grand season of song commences about the middle of May, and extends into June, covering the time of bird-loves, before the labor of nest- building and the care of birdlings come on.
The morning concert is opened at the break of dawn by solo voices answering each other from tree to tree; as the light opens and the day advances the voices increase in number and volume, until the dwellers of every tree and thicket and grove join in one grand chorus of exultant song.
The sunset concert is more sub- dued, but not less enchanting. It begins as the sun is about setting, and continues till dark. The feathered song- sters lift up their evening song of praise, carolling, warbling, trilling, in soft and liquid notes, until the day departs.
QUAILS INESTIN ROTICH'S WOODS
APPENDIX.
APPENDIX A.
MASSACHUSETTS.
TI THE consideration of the origin and meaning of the word " Massachusetts," though not strictly a portion of our history, and perhaps of no special interest to the general reader, should, nevertheless, have a place in the annals of the town, from whose hills, according to the highest authority, the name was derived. It will surely be of deep interest to many citizens not of Milton alone, but of other towns in the Commonwealth.
Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull,1 of Hartford, Conn., whose au- thority in the Algonkin dialects is unquestioned, in answer to a letter directed to him, asking his latest thoughts and con- clusions on this point, replies as follows : --
HARTFORD, Dec. 9, 1884.
REV. DR. TEELE : -
MY DEAR CLASSMATE, - Massachusetts is an anglicized plural of Massachusett - which unquestionably signifies " at the great hills " or "hill."
I send you a sheet from the Proceedings of the Am. Antiquarian Society for October, 1867, containing a letter I wrote about the name, - though I was then less confident than now, and offered my interpretation only as conjectural. I have, as you will see, explained Williams' "Blew Hill " and Cotton's "arrow-head."
By the way, is there any one of that range of hills which may be said to have the shape of an (Indian) arrow-head? It is worth look- ing for.
Yrs. sincerely, J. HAMMOND TRUMBULL.
1 The Rev. Dr. Henry M. Dexter, of Boston, thus writes respecting Dr. Trumbull : -
" BOSTON, 8 Feb., 1879.
"MY DEAR SIR, -No living man can correet J. Hammond Trumbull in Algonkin, or tell whether he be right in his deduetions from it, because he is the only man who knows the language.
" But the result of all my puny investigations in the same dircetion has always been to persuade me that a more accurate scholar does not live than he is.
" Consequently, I trust him, and, trusting him, I have no doubt myself that his account of the matter is a truc one.
" Faithfully,
"HENRY M. DEXTER."
632
HISTORY OF MILTON.
A part of Dr. Trumbull's letter to Dr. E. E. Hale, of the American Antiquarian Society, which was regarded by that distinguished Society "as a very intelligible and satisfactory determination of the subject," is here inserted, as follows : -
And now, as to the signification of the name. Hereupon, I am not prepared to speak positively, and therefore would have preferred to say nothing, until I should receive more light. But in reply to your query, I very willingly give you as much as I know, and add what I guess. There is no doubt, I think, about " the achu part." Adchu (as Eliot wrote it) was the generic name for " hill " or "mountain." In Eliot's version it occurs frequently, with the pronominal prefix of the third person, Wadchu (=00adchu) : in the plural, wadchuash (as in Is. xl. 12, for " mountains " and " hills ") . With the locative suffix (wadchu-ut), it signified at, in, into, or on, the mountain ; see Gen. xxxi. 54; Exod. xix. 12, and xxiv. 18; Is. xxvii. 13. ("Olivese wadchu " (Zech. xiv. 4) = " Wadchu Olives" (Luke xix. 29), for " the Mount of Olives.") Mas- represents, I believe, the adjective missi, mussi, or as Eliot more frequently (but not always) wrote it, mishe, - " great." The first vowel was obscure, or rather there was between the m and s only a sh'wa, and m'si is perhaps a better spelling. The final vowel is necessarily lost in composition. M's-adchu (Eliot has mishadchu, as in Luke iii. 5, and Rev. viii. 8), " a great mountain." (In Luke iii. 5, we have mishadchu kah wadchu, " mountain and hill.") At, or in, the great mountain, would be expressed by m's-adchu-ut (not -set) ; but the adjective formed from m'sadchu, or its plural, m'sadchuash, might be m'sadchuse (or as in the before-mentioned title of the Indian Psalter, Massachusee). So, Massachuse-ôhke (= Messachusiack, of Gorges, ut supra ; Messats8sek, of Râle's Dictionary, s. v. " Noms "), for " the great-hill country ; " and Massachusee-og (= Massachuseuck, of R. Williams and Winslow ; " the Massachusets," of Smith and Mourt's Relation ; " Mussachisans," of Gorges), for "the great hill people." (Par parenthèse, that name was earned on the 17th of June, 1775, if never before ; and may be held by a new tenure when the Hoosac Tunnel is bored.)
The " two wholly diverse explanations," to which you allude as given in the books, I understand to be the statement of Roger Will- iams, and a note at the end of Cotton's Vocabulary. Williams was informed " that Massachusetts was called so from the Blew Hills ; " Cotton, that " Massachusetts " was " an hill in the form of an arrow's head." Neither professed to translate the name. From one, we learn that the " great hill " was one of those sometimes called " Blew Hills ; " from the other, its shape.
I should say, then, that " Massachusetts " was originally an angli- cized plural of a corrupt form (Massachuset), in which he who first used it blended, through ignorance of the language, the description of the place (m'sadchu-ut), "at the great hill " (or "hills ") with
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APPENDIX A.
the tribal name of the Indians who lived thereabouts, M'sadchuseück, " great hill people."
It may be, however, - and in other Algonkin dialects I find some- thing to give probability to the supposition, - that the termination or suffix, set, in such names as Massachu-set, Wachu-set, Narragan-set, Nepon-set, and the like, had the signification of "towards," " near to," or " in the vicinity of," in distinction from the simple locative ut, et, or it, signifying " in," " on," or "at." But I find no trace of such affix in the writings of Eliot, Williams, or Râle. - Letter of J. Hammond Trumbull to Dr. E. E. Hale.
ARROW-HEAD HILL.
No little significance is given by local historians to that refer- ence to Massachusetts found at the close of Cotton's Vocabulary, as follows : " Massachusetts, an hill in the form of an arrow's- head."
It is conceived that "Massachusetts Hummock " (so called in ancient plans and deeds), situated in the town of Quincy, on the Squantum road, to which Chickataubut removed his head- quarters after the pestilence, resembles an arrow-head; and that the above allusion to Massachusetts by Cotton, in connec- tion with this peculiar hill, known to have been the head-quarters of the tribe, furnishes a key to the origin and meaning of the word.
To throw light on this matter, it is proper to state that " the manuscript volume of Cotton's Vocabulary is of small quarto size, and consists of sixty leaves and one hundred and twelve pages, with two other leaves containing an imperfect index of English words which occur in it." The Vocabulary proper ends on page 111.
The whole of page 112, containing six independent entries, among which is the said reference to Massachusetts, is here transcribed : -
Page 112 of Cotton's Vocabulary.
" When 2 or 3 o together, how to be pronounced ? "
" Massachusett, an hill in the form of an arrow's head."
" Nequt, a thing that is past."
" Pasuk, a thing in being."
Next, five printed lines and two words on a sixth line, in the Indian language, in the midst of which is the abbreviation Luk : 16, 26.
" Let us sing to the praise of God, Psalm 23. Kuttoohumontuh en wawenomaonganit God."
In order to secure all attainable light and knowledge on the arrow-head conjecture, and, if possible, to settle and determine
634
HISTORY OF MILTON.
a question of so great interest, the whole matter was re-sub- mitted to Dr. Trumbull, with plans, deeds, and all docu- mentary evidence touching the arrow-head theory that could be gathered.
He was also asked to unveil the mysteries of page 112. In accordance with his wonted courtesy the following reply was received, and is here submitted : -
HARTFORD, March 6, 1885.
Rev. A. K. TEELE, D.D. : -
MY DEAR CLASSMATE, - I have yours of the 3d, "with accom- panying documents." Cotton's Vocabulary - compiled in 1707 and 1708, when he was studying (but had not advanced far in the knowl- edge of) the Indian language of Massachusetts - originally ended on page 111 of the manuscript. On the next page (112) le set down a query, and certain memoranda, - which made no part of the Vocab- ulary. First, a query : " when 2 or 3 o" come together, how they are " to be pronounced ?" The digraph o (= 00) and the double o will be found in a great number of words in the Vocabulary : in many, triple and quadruple o's (000 and oooo), and in one word at least, p. 87, a quintuple, 00000. The pronunciation of some of these words puzzled Mr. Cotton, and he noted the matter for further inves- tigation. The third and fourth entries (as printed) are : " Nequt, a thing that is past." " Pasuk, a thing in being." Now, the English is not the translation of either word, for both nequt and pasuk mean "one," and can be translated by no other English word ; but there was a distinction between the two words, which Mr. Cotton was try- ing to get at ; and, though not quite successful, he came tolerably near it. (I may add parenthetically, that nequt is " one " as a nume- ral -i. e., the first of a series ; and pasuk is " one " absolutely, - a unit, admitting no second : a distinction not to be lost sight of by a missionary.) "Next, five printed lines and two words on the sixth line in the Indian, in the midst of which is the abbreviation Luk. 16. 26." These lines supply forms for beginning and ending a sermon, and were very likely written by the younger Cotton from his father's dictation, and set down on this blank page for ready reference. Literally translated, they mean this and nothing more : "At the beginning of teaching [or preaching], ' Hear ye the word of God, and prepare yourself to receive that which is written in Luke 16:26 ;'at the end, say, 'Now (or thus) you have heard the good word [= gospel] of God; if you carefully observe it, by the mercy of God you shall be blessed forever.'"
Then follows the form, in English and Indian, "Let us sing to the praise of God, Psalm 23."
To go back to the second entry, -in which you are most inter- ested, - in which Massachusetts is identified with "an hill in the form of an arrow-head." This is not given as a translation, or a
635
APPENDIX A.
definition. It is merely the description of a locality, or tract of land to which Cotton had been told this name belonged.
" Massachusetts " does not signify "an hill in the form of an arrow-head," any more exactly than " nequt " signifies "a thing that is past." Cotton had learned - on some authority or other -- that the name belonged to such a hill. But there is not - and here I speak positively - any element in the name itself which can possibly signify " arrow-head," or the " form of an arrow-head," or can have any reference to an arrow, or its head or its shape, in the Massa- chusetts dialect or in any other known Algonkin language. The hill, or rather the locality, was Massachuset ; the Indians who lived there- abouts were "amongst themselves," Massachuseuck, as Roger Will- iams wrote it in 1643 - the Massachusets or Massachuseucks (the final s being added to form an English plural or possessive), named in Winslow's "Good News from N.E." (See Young's " Chron. of the Pilgrims," p. 285, and my edition of R. Williams' " Indian Key," Note 7.)
There can be, I think, no reasonable doubt that Massachuset desig- nated a locality at or near a " great hill," or "great hills," and that the Indians thereabouts were called "people of the great hill (or hills)" Massachusêuck, and by the English " Massachusets."
I cannot give you the meaning of Neponset, or of the pseudo-In- dian " Hoosick-Whisick." I find the name of the river written "Aponsett," in 1639, by Thomas Lechford. In Connecticut (Had- dam) we have a " Punset " brook, anciently called "Cockaponset ; " and in Massachusetts (IIalifax) " Moonponset " or " Munponset." As yet these names resist analysis, though we may be tolerably cer- tain that they are nearly related.
Very truly yours, J. HAMMOND TRUMBULL.
JOSIAH COTTON.
Josiah Cotton, the compiler of the manuscript Vocabulary, was the second son of Rev. John Cotton, for twenty-eight years pastor of the First Church, Plymouth. Josiah was born in 1680, and graduated at Harvard in 1698, when eighteen years of age. His father removed to Charleston, S.C., in 1697, and became minister of the church there, where he died, Sept. 18, 1699. Rev. John Cotton was an eminent Indian scholar, and corrected the edition of Eliot's Indian Bible, printed at Cam- bridge in 1685. We learn from John Pickering that " the volume is principally in the handwriting of the author him- self; but there are numerous additions and corrections in the handwriting of his father." It bears the dates of 1707 and 1708 in two or three different places.
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HISTORY OF MILTON.
It therefore follows, that the Vocabulary must have been the work of Josiah in his boyhood, in order to secure corrections from his father, who died in a distant city the year after the graduation of his son and when he was but nineteen years of age.
COTTON'S VOCABULARY.
The Cotton Vocabulary was first printed by the Massachu- setts Historical Society in 1830. (3 Mass. Hist. Coll., II., 147 ff.) It is preceded by an introductory notice of the author, giving a statement of his missionary life among the Indians, his ready use of their language both in speaking and writing, and vari- ous reasons for reliance on the correctness of the Vocabulary. Appended to the introduction are the initials J. D. These ini- tials are understood to represent the name of Hon. John Davis, of Plymouth, who was "one of the most profound antiquarians of New England."
Following this introduction is a " Notice of the Manuscript, with Remarks on the Author's Orthography and the Pronun- ciation of the Language ; " to this are attached the initials J. P. These are said to stand for the Hon. John Pickering, of Salem, an eminent philologist and writer of law. Among his published writings are essays on " The Uniform Orthography of the Indian Language," and the " Indian Languages of America."
IMPORTANT QUESTION.
The question arises, How has it happened that the "arrow- head " definition got its place, and kept its place in Cotton's Vocabulary, prepared by the son, revised and corrected by the learned father, and, after the lapse of more than a century, passing under the keen scrutiny of the Hon. John Davis and Dr. John Pickering?
The leading answer is, that Cotton's reference to Massachu- setts is not included in, and is independent of, the Vocabulary, which ends on page 111. It is set down on this one hundred and twelfth page, among the disconnected entries there, as a query, a tradition, a matter of conjecture, or a memorandum for further consideration. It seems not unlike the third and fourth entries on said page, "Nequt " and " Pasuk," neither of which is translated by the English which follows it, though each indicates a search after the true meaning.
That the learned father would have allowed the son to re- cord and perpetuate so grave an error, which he might have corrected, had he looked upon it in the light of an error, is
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APPENDIX A.
hardly to be supposed. The father may never have seen this entry, as the Vocabulary was not completed until seven or eight years after his decease; or, if the sentence met his eye, its true import and value were suggested by the character of other entries on the same page, none of which received his correction.
The acute minds of the present century who have reviewed the work have doubtless taken a like view with the distin- guished living scholar, Dr. Trumbull, as no reference is made by them to any inaccuracies in the body of the work, or in the memoranda on this fly-leaf.
CONCLUSIONS.
The following hypothesis is therefore submitted as a reason- able solution of the matter : -
The hummock rising out of the marsh at Squantum, which is thought to have the shape of an arrow-head, and on which Chickataubut lived after the pestilence, took the name of "Massachusetts" from the name of the tribe camping there. " Massachusetts" is inscribed on this hummock in a plan of the section drafted as early as 1687, and the same appears in various deeds of conveyance.
Mr. Cotton having learned the name given to this hill, and its shape, raised the query, or jotted down the memorandum, " Massachusett, an hill in the form of an arrow's head."
To the suggestion that, after a fuller and more accurate knowledge of the language, from forty years of missionary labor among the Indians, Mr. Cotton would naturally perfect his unfinished work and correct the errors of his early efforts, it is pertinent to respond that, as he progressed in the language, the results of his crude beginnings might have been thrown aside as useless, or wholly forgotten in the riper knowledge of mature years.
After the foregoing pages on Arrow-Head Hill had been written, embodying Dr. Trumbull's letter of March 6, 1885, the manuscript was forwarded to him for his approval and correc- tion, and he was solicited to furnish any new thoughts or additional facts on the arrow-head theory. Within a few days the following valuable paper was received, in which the whole question is restated and discussed in a most lucid and satis- factory manner:
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HISTORY OF MILTON.
HARTFORD, May 12, 1887.
MY DEAR DR. TEELE, - With reference to recent discussion by lo- cal historians as to the origin and meaning of the name " Massachu- setts," you ask me if I care to revise or add to my letter to you of March 6, 1885, which was written by way of supplement to my reply to Rev. Dr. E. E. Hale, printed in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society in 1867. You recall my attention to Cotton's note on "Massachusetts " as "an hill in the form of an arrow-head," and to the question of the identity of the " Massachu- setts hummock," so called, in Quincy, with the hills earlier known as those of the " Massachusetts."
To begin at the beginning, - Captain John Smith, when exploring the coast of New England, in 1614, noted, among " the cheef moun- taines," " the high mountaine of Massachusit," and distinguished it on his map as the highest of the " Cheuyot hills " (the name which Prince Charles gave to Smith's "Massachusets Mount ").
A glance at Smith's map (" Description of New England," 1616) shows conclusively that this "Massachusets Mount " - " the high mountain of Massachusit " - was not a mere "hummock " rising from a marsh. And here note that Smith's name of the mountain was recorded at least two years before the pestilence of 1616-17, which induced Chickataubut's removal from the " Massachusetts Fields " to the hummock at Squantum.
As to the meaning of the name : Smith has very nearly translated it (if it be restricted to Great Blue Hill) by " the high mountain." But the form of the Indian name - Massachu-s-et - shows that it originally designated the country " at or about the great hills " (plural), i.e., the Blue Hills. The name, as I have before written, is formed from massa, " great," wadchu, " mountain," which in com- position loses its initial w, and in the plural becomes wadchuash (as Eliot wrote it) or adchuis, and the locative suffix et, "at or near." I am now confident, as I was not in 1867, that the s of the penult is a mark of the plural ; i.e., that the name Massachusets means "at (or near) the great hills." (So the name Wachuset, now restricted to a single mountain, originally designated the country at or near the mountains and hills (now in Princeton and Westminster) of which Wachuset is the highest.) " Massachuset " includes the Indian plural sign ; but Smith and those who came after him added a final s, as a mark of the English plural or the English possessive. Smith (" Description of N.E.," 1616) distinguishes the " high mountaine of Massachusit " and " Massachusets Mount ; " in 1631 (" Advert. for the Unexper. Planters ") he names " Massachuset " as a place or " country "(p. 14) ; the natives, called " the Massachusets " (p. 15) ; and " the Bay of the Massachusets" (p. 10).
So, in Mourt's Relation of a Voyage from Plymouth "to the Massachusets," in 1621, this distinction is observed : " the Massa- chuset bay," " Massachusets [possessive] Queene," and " the Mas- sachusets " Indians (p. 57). In their own language, they were
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APPENDIX A.
" Massachusêuck " (as Roger Williams wrote it). On the title-pages, Indian and English, of the Psalter of 1709 - of which an Indian, " James Printer," was one of the correctors of the press - we have the two adjectives, Indian " Massachusee," against English " Mas- sachuset." In Râle's Abnaki dictionary the same name is given to the locality (or rather to the colony and its capital), " Messatsoosek, Baston," the Abnaki -ek corresponding to Mass. - et, as the locative suffix.
Now, about the " arrow-head " story. Where young Josiah Cotton learned it we need not take the trouble to inquire. Nearly a hundred years before he wrote, Captain John Smith had named " the high mountaine of Massachusit," or "Massachusets Mount," - which certainly was not the " hummock" or (as Hutchinson calls it) " the rising upland, near Squantum ; " and this, I repeat, was before the traditional removal of the Sachem Chickataubut " from Massachusets fields [or Mount Wollaston] where the greatest Sagamore in the country lived before the Plague," to the " arrow-head " hummock. Nearly seventy years after Smith's coming, Roger Williams, who had known the Indians and their language for half a century, deposed that he " had learnt that the Massachusetts was called so from the Blue Hills." That the hummock, after Chickataubut's removal to it, began to be called by the name of the tribe, is not improbable. It came to be, in fact, the Massachusets' hummock. Then, conjectures began as to the origin of the name. The hummock was " in the form of an arrow-head," - such stone arrow-heads as were picked up by dozens or quarts on the site of every ancient Indian fort or village in New England. Next, an " Indian " name for " arrow-head " was to be supplied ; and this was found, by the proprietor of the hum-
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