USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 34
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dug up on Cotton (Pemberton) Hill, has been taken to show that the peninsula was at one time well populated ; but few or no evidences of that kind have been disclosed in the general excava- tion of the land which has from time to time been made all over the territory of original Bos- ton. - ED.]
1 [This, one of the most fervent appeals for the Indian, is taken from the original manu- script of the centennial ode delivered by Charles Sprague at the celebration in 1830; and for the privilege of making the fac-simile we are in- debted to the courtesy of the son of the poet, Charles J. Sprague, Esq., of Boston. - ED.]
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THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS.
the causes and the conduct of the English wars with the natives as to conceal from us the evidence that the civilized man was generally the aggressor, and that though he expressed horror and disgust at the bar- barous and revolting atrocities of savage warfare, his own skill and cruelty in wreaking vengeance hardly vindicated his milder humanity.
The testimony on record in every case is complete, and without exception, to two facts, the significance of which, as setting forth the relations between the two races on this continent, can hardly be exaggerated. First, it is in evi- dence from the writings of all the voyagers, explorers, and colonists coming hither from Europe, beginning with those of the Spanish discoverers, that at every point along our whole coast, and on the shore of every inhab- ited island, the new-comers met a kindly reception from the natives. The sea-worn, fecble, and hungry adventurers, weakened by confinement and illness, craving fresh water, meat, and green vegetables, were made free partakers of the rude hospitality of the red man. In many instances, well authenticated, they would have perished from starvation without such succor. Second, it is also in evidence that in every case, with very rare exceptions, the kindness and hospitality of the savages were ill requited. Oppressive or cruel treatment was the base return. Nor do the exceptions which are to be allowed for present themselves in the journals of the early visits made to the New England coasts by English adventurers. On the contrary, the wrong was committed here by them with all its aggravations. Natives enticed on board English fishing or trading vessels here were in three instances kid- napped, carried off, and sold into slavery. This was the method of the introduction of the white man to the red man.
There are frequent and positive affirmations scattered over the writings of the first colonists of Massachusetts, that in no single instance did they assume the possession or occupancy of any parcel of land without the free consent and the fair compensation of the natives. The claim thus asserted, as if for the quieting of conscience, occasionally has the tone of a boast, as if indicating a supererogatory merit. At any rate the new-comers do not appear to have felt any reproaches at having displaced the original occu- pants. Among the grievances which the magistrates had against Roger Williams, in the first issue of contention opened by him, was his disputing the right of the English monarch to grant a patent to lands here without a recognition of the prior claims of the natives. It is observable, also, that, when under the so-called usurpation of Andros and the overthrow of the colony charter all the titles to land held by it were put in peril, the magis- trates of Boston made haste to secure a confirmation of the deed of the peninsula from the grandson of the old Sachem.
If we examine closely the matter and contents of the contracts by which these purchases of land from the Indians were secured, and the consideration paid for them, we must keep in view the relations of the respective parties, the value of wild land to each of them, and the uses to which it had been and was to be put. It is evident that the whites regarded the territorial
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
rights of the Indians. in their mode of occupancy for the time being of any particular region, as at best but vague and slender, while the way in which they scoured over it without in any way improving it, except by an oc- casional cornfield, did not insure ownership according to any test recog- nized by the law of nations. Our romantic notions of the aborigines assign to them in their tribes the long possession for generations of ancestral hunt- ing-grounds and burial-places. Well-certified facts that have been accumu- lating from all our knowledge of the relations of the Indian tribes on this continent before and since the coming hither of Europeans assure us that there is very much of mere fancy in those notions. In very rare cases, if, indeed, in any, - except as regards the Five Nations or Iroquois, of central New York, who had themselves farther back been intruders and conquerors, displacing previous occupants, - is there evidence of any long and quiet tenure of the same regions by the same tribe of savages. There was among them an endless and hardly intermittent internecine warfare. The tribes were constantly displacing each other. At the time of the colonization of New England, the Indians on its soil had been and were at feud; some of them had conquered, subjugated, and brought under tribute their weaker neighbors ; and of once powerful tribes there remained but feeble remnants. As the whites came to the knowledge of these facts, they of course natu- rally drew the inference that any particular clan or tribe who happened to be here or there were transient roamers rather than old-time inheritors. In 1633 the Court ordered " that the Indians had a just right to such lands as they possessed and improved by subduing the same. Gen. i. 28, ix. I." The condition demanded was actual occupation by tillage. The accepted rule was vacuum domicilium cedit occupanti. Plymouth devoted several necks of land to the Indians, and pronounced them inalienable.
The whites regarded land strictly for its uses, and in a wilderness these were substitutes for title-deeds. They recognized the right of the old Patriarch, returning with his family from a sojourn in Egypt during a fam- ine, to repossess himself of Canaan and to drive out the heathen, because of a title to it assured by the three ancient tokens of ownership in the altar of Bethel, the well of Jacob, and the tomb at Macphelah. The Indians raised and left no such token, no land-mark, structure, or betterment. Oc- cupancy, improvements, and an added value to field and stream were the white man's tests of rightful tenure. They saw no evidences of these in the vast forests and reedy meadows where the Indians lurked. The Indians simply wasted everything within their reach. They skimmed what was on the earth's surface. They required enormous spaces of wilderness for their mode of existence, - depths in which the game for their subsistence, and the creatures and the food on which that game might subsist, roamed free for natural propagation.
Under these circumstances, while we smile as in ridicule or contempt at the trifling compensation paid to the Indians in a purchase covenant for their lands, we must remember that the standard of values was quite unlike
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THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS.
our modern estimates. The deeds which are preserved, and the transactions on record from the earliest days, tell us of thousands and tens of thousands of acres being transferred for the consideration of a few utensils; tools, gew- gaws, yards of cloth, blankets, or coats. But an implement of iron or steel, a pot, kettle, spade, axe, or hatchet, was to an Indian the representative of an untold value. It extended and intensified his own natural resources, as steam and labor-saving machines reinforce the abilities of civilized man. Probably, too, the whites, in many cases, regarded the title-deeds of lands thus transferred to them as of very dubious authenticity and validity. It was really questionable if the chief or sachem of a tribe had such a vested right in any particular portion of territory as to have authority, on the con- sideration of a few perishable articles, to alienate it for all time from his temporary subjects and their posterity. If the Indians really owned it in any way equivalent to our own tenure of possession, it is evident that, if not a permanent annuity of perpetual benefit with a share to all, at least some better mode of compensation than that of a trifling gift so soon to perish in the using should have balanced the transfer.
It soon appeared, however, in many cases, that the Indians supposed that these deeds of theirs to the whites merely conferred upon the latter a right of joint occupancy with themselves. They seem to have had no idea that they had shut themselves out for all time from the liberty of roaming over their lands. King Philip, though he had been lavishly free in his gifts of large areas of land to the men of Plymouth, soon came to make bitter com- plaints against the white man's clearings and fences, as disabling the red man from using the regions in common.
There is no early contemporary notice of any claim set up by Indians on the score of their territorial rights on the peninsula of Boston, nor of any negotiations for a purchase or payment by the whites. It was only after more than a half century had elapsed since its settlement, when, in 1684, such claim was asserted and satisfied, that we learn that it had been ad- vanced some time previously. Finding the spot desolate, except as Mr. Blackstone had a lonely residence here, the whites inferred that its former occupants had perished by the plague, or had deserted it, so that they them- selves were free to take possession. Nor do we know of the occasion which prompted the demand for remuneration when it was subsequently made. There is in the Suffolk Registry a copy of an Indian deed of Boston, record- ed in 1708. It appears that at a town-meeting on June 18, 1685, a citizen of Boston, who was joined by some associates, was charged with the office of purchasing any claim, " legal or pretended," which the Indians might advance to "Deare Island, the Necke of Boston, or any parte thereof." The Indian chief in the negotiation was Wampatuck, by the English called Charles Josias, grandson of Chickataubut, who, the deed recites, " upon the first coming of the English, for encouragement thereof, did grant, sell, alienate, and confirm unto them and their assigns forever all that Neck of land, in order to their settling and building a Town there, now known by the VOL I .- 32.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
name of Boston, as it is environed by the Sea, and by the line of Roxbury, and the island called Deer Island, about two leagues easterly from Boston, &c .. - which have been quietly possessed by the said English for the space of about five-and-fifty years last past." This deed - on the consideration of " a valuable sum of money," the amount not being stated - was signed by the marks of the chief and some of his Indian " counsellors," witnessed and acknowledged before magistrates.1 It is singular that neither the Court Records, Winthrop, nor any other writer at the time make any reference to the carlier transaction with Chickataubut, of whom, however, Winthrop has frequent mention during the three years in which he lived after the arrival of the English. Intimations have been dropped that this deferred record of a bargain with the Indians for the absolute ownership of the peninsula was shrewdly contrived by the astute authorities of the town, as they were trembling over the royal challenging of their Colony Charter, the fall of which might render worthless all grants of parcels of territory that depended upon legislation under it. Chickataubut resided at Neponset. As there is no evidence that he ever bestowed the land on the English by formal trans- fer, so it is certain that he never made objection to its occupancy by them, and that he never molested them. On the contrary, he seemed to welcome their presence, and put himself under their patronage. Such is the tenure of the white man's home on this ancient soil.
There was never any serious collision on the spot between the natives and the occupants of Boston and its immediate neighborhood. The whites had to seek and destroy their enemies in places distant from these scenes when hostilities raged between them. There were occasional alarms in the early years, and measures of protection - like a night-watch, and orders re- quiring the colonists to have their arms in readiness -- showed that the people were at times anxious and always on their guard. Very soon, however, the whites came to understand the relations between themselves and the rem- nant of the natives scattered in the neighborhood, and felt that they were reasonably secure from harm. The apprehension was rather from the mis- chief that might be done by strolling and pilfering individuals or small parties in the night or in the woods, the firing of scattered dwellings, or the murder of a traveller, than from any assault in force. Before Winthrop's party had occupied the peninsula, it had been visited, and the immediate surroundings by land and water had been explored, by a boat-load of men from Plymouth.2 There was not a single Indian found at the time on this
1 [This original deed is now in the possession of General Charles G. Loring of Boston, and by his permission is here given in heliotype, much reduced. It is printed verbatim in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., March, 1879, having been less accurately printed before by Snow in his Hist. of Boston. Cf. Drake's Boston, p. 456. Mr. Charles Deane has examined the question of the comparative validity of the Indian and patent titles to land, in the MMuss. Hist. Soc. Proc., Feb- ruary, 1873. It appears by the Mass. Records,
v. 516, that, May 20, 1686, a committee (Samuel Nowell, John Saffin, Timothy Prout) was ap- pointed to receive from Rawson, the secretary, all such papers as referred to the negotiations to preserve the charter and to the Indian titles of the land, and to preserve them, - the " Mas- sachusetts books and papers " being about this time transferred to the custody of Andros and his secretaries. Sewall Papers, i. 168. - ED.]
2 [This visit is recounted in Mr. Adams's chapter of the present volume. - ED.]
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INDIAN DEED CONFIRMING THE TITLE OF BOSTON PENINSULA, 1684-85.
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THE INDIANS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS.
peninsula. Some deserted wigwams were seen in various places. Weak and sparse groups of natives were met, or traces of their lingering presence were observed, up the banks of the Mystic and the Charles. The first sight of white men seemed always to alarm an Indian, and he was inclined to run away and hide himself. But the natives were generally reassured by a sign of amity. We read of some friendly manifestations, such as the exchange of a bass for an English biscuit, and of communications in answer to ques- tions so far as the parties could make themselves understood. Occasionally some native would appear wearing some article of European apparel, or having a foreign implement or tool, showing that the random intercourse of previous years, between foreign adventurers and fishermen, had already heralded the time for deliberate colonization. The people of Boston were soon well assured of the security of their own position. The easily-guarded peninsula hanging by the slender stem of a narrow neck of land to Roxbury, with tide-waters and flats nearly surrounding it, was safe against the artifices of Indian warfare. When settlements were made in the interior, the trees which were felled for a clearing were used for a stockade, - as, for instance, the present College Yard and Common at Cambridge were originally en- closed and fortified by palisades, the trees being driven closely into the ground, and their tops united by birch withes. Within this enclosure the people, when alarmed, took refuge, and the cattle, which browsed outside by day, were driven at night.1
Some months elapsed after the settlement before the whites had any intercourse with others of the natives than those who harbored north of Charles River. At the end of March, 1631, Winthrop mentions that " Chicatabot came from Neponset on the south, with his sannops and squaws," and presented him with a hogshead of Indian corn. The Gover- nor gave the party a dinner, with a cup of sack and beer, and to the men some tobacco. Three of the party remained over night. "Chickatabot being in English clothes, the Governour set him at his own table, where he behaved himself as soberly as an Englishman. The next day, after dinner, he returned home, the Governour giving him cheese and pease, and a mug and some other small things." The sachem repeated his visit in less than a month, wishing to trade with the Governor for an English suit. But Winthrop, reminding him that it was not seemly " for sagamores to truck," gave orders to his tailor, and had the chief " put into a very good new suit from head to foot." Food being put upon the table, the chief refused to eat till the Governor had said grace; and after meat he was desired by the chief to return thanks. Winthrop received, as a return present, "two large skins of coat beaver." The Governor and the Court evidently tried to maintain relations of amity and equity with the natives near them. If a white man wronged an Indian he was duly punished, and required to make restitution. If the Indian was the trespasser, he in his turn suffered; and if chastisement was the penalty decreed, another Indian was made to inflict it.
1 [Cf. Paige's Cambridge. - ED.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
And here, with whatever of relief the fact may afford us in a review of the fierce conflict with the natives at a distance in which soldiers sent from Boston had a full share, it is to be frankly stated that the feuds and quarrels of contending Indian tribes furnished the occasion of the first, and one of the most ruthless, of our wars with the natives. Only because Indians were set against Indians, giving opportunity to the whites to find most effective allies in their forest warfare, could the early colonists from Spain, France, or England have been so uniformly the conquerors. It may safely be affirmed that if the natives of this continent had been at peace among themselves, and had offered a united resistance to the first feeble bands of European intruders, its occupation would have been long deferred.
The region extending from the bounds of Rhode Island to the banks of the Hudson was at the time of the colonization held in strips of territory mainly by three tribes of the natives, who had long had feuds among themselves and with other tribes. They were the Narragansetts, the Mohegans, and the Pequots. The Mohegans were then tributaries of the Pequots, and were restive under subjection to their fierce and warlike conquerors, who were estimated to number at the time a thousand fighting men. Fair and fertile meadows, ponds, fresh and salt streams, and virgin forests made the region rich and attractive. To the mind and eye of the Puritan it would present itself as a portion of the heritage which God had given to his children, especially to his elect, which in this fulness of time was no longer to be scoured over by scant hordes of heathen barbarians, but to be turned to the uses of a thriftful civilization under the Gospel. The way in which this end was to be brought about would depend entirely upon the relation and attitude in which the savages should put themselves to the whites; whether a friendly and docile one, - which would make them partners in a profitable trade, and easy subjects of conversion, - or one of hostility and resistance, using their own resources and modes of defensive and offensive warfare. The policy of the whites was to aggravate the dissensions of the tribes, and to make alliance with one or more of them. Winthrop records in March, 1631, the visit to Boston of a Connecticut Indian, probably a Mohegan, who invited the English to come and plant near the river, and who offered presents, with the promise of a profitable trade. His object proved to be to engage the interest of the whites against the Pequots. His errand was for the time unsuccessful. Further advances of a similar character were made afterwards, the result being to persuade the English that, sooner or later, they would need to interfere as umpires, and must use discretion in a wise regard to what would prove to be for their own interest. In 1633 the Pequots had savagely mutilated and murdered a party of English traders, who, under Captain Stone, of Virginia, had gone up the Connecticut. The Boston magistrates had instituted measures to call the Pequots to account, but nothing effectual was done. The Dutch had a fort on the river near Hartford, and the English had built one at its mouth. In 1636 several settlements had been made in Connecticut by
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