USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 62
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Caleb Cheesahteaumuk, the only Indian who has graduated from Har- vard, was a native of the Vineyard, son of a petty sachem who lived near Holmes's Hole (now corrupted to Vineyard Haven). In Cotton Mather's catalogue of alumni of Harvard the name is " Checschaumuk," which bet- ter represents the pronunciation. Mayhew, in his Indian Converts, wrote " Cheshchaamog; " and there is on the Vineyard records a deed executed in 1685 by " Ponit Chceschchawmuck of Nopnoik," one of the same family. Joel, another Indian of the Vineyard, entered college with Caleb, but did not live to graduate. In 1659 these two boys, then in the Grammar School at Cambridge, "were called forth upon trial, at the public Commencement, before the Magistrates and Elders, and in the face of the Country, and there upon very little warning gave great contentment to them that were present," as.President Chauncey certified ; " they being examined in turning a part of a chapter in Isaiah into Latin, and showing the construction of it." 2
1 He was a Nipmuck, the son of Naoas, and brother of Tukapewillin, who was teacher of the Christian Indians at Hassanamisco (Grafton, Mass.). When a child, he was sent to the In- dian school in Cambridge, and was apprenticed to Green in 1659. His Indian name (subscribed to a deed in 1682) was Wowaus. See Thomas's
Ilistory of Printing, i. 290, 291 ; Drake's History of Boston, p 422.
2 An elegy in Latin verse and an epitaph in Greek on the Rev. Thomas Thacher of Boston, composed by Eleazer, " Indus Senior Sophister " of Harvard College in 1678, are preserved in Mather's Magnalia, bk. iii. ch. xxvi.
478
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Several catechisms and primers were printed before Eliot's death, - the first in 1653 or 1654, others in 1662, 1669, and "about 1684." That of 1662 is mentioned in the records of the Commissioners as "a new impres- sion " of the Catechism. No copy of either of these first two impressions is known ; and only a single copy of The Indian Primer of 1669, which is in the library of the University of Edinburgh.1 One of the catechisms translated by Eliot - probably much abridged - was the Rev. William Perkins's Foundation of the Christian Religion, gathered into Sixe Princi- ples. Increase Mather, in his letter to Dr. Leusden, in 1687, mentioned that " many of the Indian children had learned by heart the catechism, either of that famous divine, William Perkins, or that put forth by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster." Peirson borrowed much from the Six Principles for his Quiripi Catechism, Some Helps for the Indians, printed in 1658. In 1663 Baxter wrote to Eliot: "Methinks the Assembly's Catechism should be, next the Holy Scriptures, most worthy of your labours."
The Massachusetts Historical Society has a copy (not quite perfect) of a primer, on which is written, in the hand of Thomas Prince: "Mr. B. Green says, composed by Mr. Eliot, and printed at Camb: ab' 1684." It has no title-page; but the first signa- ture (eight leaves) is full. It has a abcchdefghijklma opqrfstavwxyz; text in Indian, Proverbs xxii. 6, " Train up a child," &c. This little book (it measures about three and one-half inches ABCh DEFGHIKLM NOPQRSTUVW XYZ. by two and seven-eighths inches) con- tains the alphabet, in Roman and Italic ; spelling and reading lessons; the Lord's abcdefskiklmnop. Prayer, with a catechetical exposition ; "The Ancient Creed," English and In- dian, with an exposition; "The Large Unnontoo wasla. Catechism" (fifty-nine pages) ; "A Short Catechism" (three pages) ; and & ciou. "The Numeral Letters and Figures." Neefontcowsath. The first reading lesson tells us (in Indian) what was the course of in- ai au ci >scanoioo oo ou, struction in the Indian schools. It says: "Wise doing to read Catechism. First, read Primer. Next, read Re- THE INDIAN PRIMER.2 pentance Calling (i.e., Baxter's Call). Then, read Bible."
John Cotton's Catechism, Spiritual Milk for Babes, translated by Grindall Rawson, and printed at Cambridge in 1691, has been mentioned. In 1720
1 " The Indian Primer ; or, The way of train- ing up of our Indian youth in the good knowledge of God, in the knowledge of the Scriptures, and in an ability to Reade. Composed by J. E. . . . Cambridge, Printed 1669." It has been re-
printed (Edinburgh, 1877), with an introduction by John Small, M.A., librarian of the Uni- versity.
2 { This is the full size of the outer page of the little book. - ED. ]
479
THE INDIAN TONGUE AND ITS LITERATURE.
Bartholomew Green printed in Boston The Indian Primer or The First Book. By which children may know trucly to read the Indian Language. And Mitk for Babes. This is a small duodecimo of eighty-four leaves, with English and Indian on opposite pages, the page-numbers (1-84) being double. On the verso of the Indian title is a representation of the scal of Massachusetts, and on the verso of the last leaf a ship bearing the name of "Royall Charles." Beginning with the alphabet and progressive spelling lessons from syllables of two letters to words " of fifteen syllables or parts," the volume comprises the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed, with catechetical expositions; Cotton's " Milk for Babes; " a series of selected texts, arranged under several heads, - " General Duties," "God's Judgments against Disobedient Children," "The Promises of God which the poor Indians may hope to receive," " Against Idleness," &c., - forms of Prayer, and a few Psalms in metre.1
As an example of the " Kuttoowongash nabo nishwe Syllablesooooaslı asuh Chadchaubenumooongash" (words of thirteen syllables or parts), take this : -
Num-meh-quon-tam-wut-te-a-ha-on-ga-nun-no-nash, --
meaning " our remembrances " or " recollections." The longest word (the only one that reaches fifteen syllables) is -
Nuk-kit-te-a-mon-te-a-nit-te-a-on-ga-nun-no-nash, -
which means " our mercies; " but to the Indians it meant a good deal morc than this, - having an exactness of denotation to which the English does not attain : (1) it distinguishes the mercies we receive from mercies we show or dispense to others; (2) it means our peculiar mercies, not shared by those to whom we speak, -" ours " only, not those which " you and we " enjoy in common; and (3) it designates these mercies as voluntarily be- stowed, - the manifestations of a merciful disposition. One might find it difficult to put all this in English in less than fifteen syllables.
Cotton Mather added several tracts to " The Indian library." Perhaps he was not unwilling to display his acquaintance with a language "wherein words are," he says, " of sesquipedalian and unaccountable dimensions." When questioning a bewitched girl, he discovered that the devils who tor- mented her " understood his Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; " but " the Indian language they did seem not well to understand." The devils who found Mather's Indian too hard for them were not without excuse. Judging from the specimens he printed, he had not mastered the rudiments of the grammar, and could not construct an Indian sentence idiomatically. It is not certain how much of these translations was his own work, and how much was ob-
1 A portion of this Primer (the spelling les- sons, Lord's Prayer, and Ten Commandments) was reprinted in the second volume of the Massa- chusetts Historical Collections, 3d series, in Mr. Pickering's Appendix to Cotton's Indian local ulary. There is a good copy of this Primer of
1720 in the Prince Library (Boston Public Li- brary), and another in the Lenox Library, New York. I have two copies; and there are two or three others in private libraries in this country. The British Museum has one (in the Grenville collection).
480
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
tained from incompetent interpreters. His Epistle to the Christian Indians, Wussukwhonk en Christiancuc asuh peantamwe INDIANOG, &c., was printed in 1700, and again in 1706; Family Religion excited and assisted, in 1714; A Monitor for Communicants, in 1716; and "a taste of the language," of four pages, in his India Christiana (a discourse before the Commission- ers for Propagating the Gospel), in 1721. In all these the English and Indian are on opposite pages throughout.
In 1707 Mather published Another Tongue brought in, to Confess the Great Saviour of the World, &c., - in " a tongue used among the Iroquois Indians in America," the first specimen of that language printed in this country.1
In 1735 the Rev. John Sergeant began his mission work among the Housatunnuk Indians at Stockbridge. These Indians were Mohegans, or " Muhhekanneuk." Their language abounds in gutturals ; and Mr. Sergeant had great difficulty in learning to speak and write it. In about five years, however, he succeeded so well that the Indians used to say: " Our minister speaks our language better than we ourselves can do." About 1737, by the help of interpreters, he translated, first, some prayers, and afterwards Dr. Watts's shorter catechism into this language. These were printed, though whether before or after Mr. Sergeant's death in 1749 I cannot say. Two tracts, one of sixteen and the other of twenty-four pages, are stitched to- gether. Neither has title-page or colophon. One contains " A Morning Prayer," "An Evening Prayer," and "Catechism; " the other, forms of Prayer, before and after Sermon, at the Sacrament, for the afflicted, of thanksgiving for recovery, &c. I do not find these tracts noticed by any bibliographer. They are very rare.2 In 1795 The Assembly's Catechism was printed at Stockbridge, by Loring Andrews, "in the Moheakunnuk, or Stockbridge Indian language," in an octavo pamphlet of thirty-two pages, which contains also (pp. 27-31) Dr. Watts's Shorter Catechism for Children, - a revised reprint, apparently, of Mr. Sergeant's translation. The edition, probably, was not large, and copies are now scarce.
Sofrumbully
1 Some account of this very rare volume has been given in the Catalogue of "Books and Tracts in the Indian Language," &c., in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, No. 61 (October, 1873). [This account is by Dr. Trumbull, and is the fullest yet published, and gives the libraries which contain them. There is a list comprising only the books printed by S. Green and M. Johnson, in Cambridge, given in Thomas's Hist. of Printing, new ed., i. 65. Mr. Whitmore gave a list of Eliot's publications in his edition of Dunton's Letters, p. 204, and it is copied by Mr. Marvin in his reprint, 1868, of Eliot's Brief Narrative of the Progress of the
Gospel among the Indians, 1670, London, 1671. Of the series of tracts on Christianizing the Indians, most will be found either in Sabine's reprints or in the Mass. Hist. Coll., and to them may be added the reprint by Marvin. The ac- count which Mather's Magnalia gives of Eliot's labors is largely copied by Dunton. A letter of Eliot's, 1664, with a note on his publications by Dr. Trumbull, will be found in the N. E. Ilist. and Geneal. Reg. April, 1855. - ED.]
2 I know of only two copies: one in the library of the Essex Institute, Salem, the other belonging to Hon. Henry C. Murphy, of Brook. lyn, N. Y.
CHAPTER XVIII.
LIFE IN BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
BY HORACE E. SCUDDER.
D URING the military occupation of Boston in the winter of 1775-76, a two-story, wooden, frame house which stood under the shadow of the Old South, and had lately been the parsonage attached to it, was pulled down by the soldiers for firewood. It was then old and decayed, and there is no description of it by which one can accurately reproduce it to his mind,1 but for nineteen years it was the residence of John Winthrop, the foremost man in the colony of Massachusetts Bay; in it he died in 1649, and upon its walls hung the portrait of its owner, which is now in the Senate Chamber at the State House in Boston ; in its parlor gathered the chief men of the town to consult upon the solemnities of the dead Governor's funeral; and here, during Winthrop's lifetime, was centred much of the social dignity of the town. The house, then not far from the centre of the town, must have been considerable in size, for his own household was large and he enter- tained many guests. On one occasion, when certain prisoners were brought to Boston, he " catised them to be brought before him in his hall, where was a great assembly; " but that it was plain to severity may be inferred not only from Winthrop's conscientious economy, but from the reproof which he administered to his deputy in 1632, " that he did not well to be- stow so much cost about wainscotting and adorning his house in the begin- ning of a plantation, both in regard of the public charges, and for example," - a reproof, to be sure, which should not mislead us as to the deputy's ex- travagance or ostentation, since the wainscot was affirmed to be only clap- boards nailed upon the inside of the house to keep out the cold.
We get a glimpse of the Governor's house and garden, and of his cerc- monious hospitality, when we read in his history, under date of 1646, -
1 [It stood nearly opposite the foot of School Street, end to the street ; and while the land on which the Old South stands was a garden attached, the place was called " The Green." When the British pulled down the house, they cut down also a row of fine button-woods, which skirted the VOL. I .- 61.
street. The estate passed from Winthrop to his son Stephen, whose widow conveyed it to John Norton, pastor of the First Church ; and by his will and his widow's consent it passed, in 1677, to the Old South Church, and the house be- came its parsonage. - ED.]
482
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
" Being the Lord's Day, and the people ready to go to the assembly after dinner, Monsieur Marie and Monsieur Louis, with Monsieur D'Aulnay his secretary, arrived at Boston in a small pinnace, and Major Gibbons sent two of his chief officers to meet them at the water side, who conducted them to their lodgings sine strepitu. The public worship being ended, the Governour returned home, and sent Major Gib- bons, with other gentlemen, with a guard of musketeers to attend them to the Gover- nour's house, who, meeting them without his door, carried them into his house, where they were entertained with wine and sweetmeats, and after a while he accompanied them to their lodgings. ... The Lord's Day they were here, the Governour acquaint- ing them with our manner, that all men either come to our public meetings or keep themselves quiet in their houses, and finding that the place where they lodged would not be convenient for them that day, invited them home to his house, where they continued private all that day until sunset, and made use of such books, Latin and French, as he had, and the liberty of a private walk in his garden, and so gave no offence." 1
At the time of his death, the Governor's house could not have been the most substantial in the town. Already a traveller was speaking of Boston as a city-like town and calling attention to its beautiful and large buildings, "some fairly set forth with brick, tile, stone, and slate, and orderly placed with comely streets, whose continual enlargement presages some sumptuous city."2 The harbor was marked by wharves, and lanes ran up from it past houses whose gardens extended to the water's edge, while on the streets were houses of shopkeepers who lived above their shops, as London trades- men then did almost universally. On either side of the cove in which the chief part of the town lay were a fort and a battery, with a second battery beneath the fort a little later, while a beacon rose from the hill behind, and Castle Island in the harbor suggested the possibility of other enemies than the Indians. There were pleasant farms at Brookline; and the neigh- boring towns of Cambridge, Roxbury, Dorchester, and Charlestown had their own independent life and fortune.
At the time of Winthrop's death the great flow of immigrants had sub- sided. The occupants of Boston were Englishmen in the prime of life, and a generation of young people born on the soil and receiving their first im- pressions from the circumstances of an intense settlement where the laws, customs, and opinions of the first settlers had not only full sway but all the activity which belongs to power at work upon plastic material. It is pos- sible to give but fragmentary pictures of a life which was restless, constantly changing, and mingling conservative and progressive characteristics, but the point of time which we have taken is perhaps the culminating point of col- onial life. After this, political, commercial, and social movements look for- ward to the provincial period. Before this, the elements of the colonial life had been in solution, and the immediate influence of England more em-
1 [See Mr. C. C. Smith's chapter on “ Boston and the Neighboring Jurisdictions " in this vol- ume. - ED.]
2 Johnson, Wonder-working Providence, p. 43. [See Mr. Bynner's chapter in this vol- ume. - ED.]
483
BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
phatic ; but now time had been allowed for a tolerably distinct community to assert its individuality.
The town was still thoroughly English in its social traditions, but the democratic leaven was at work. The ampler scope for individual energy, and the sudden accession of political rights and commercial import- ance, began to tell upon manners. Already, in 1651, the General Court was cnacting that if a man was not worth two hundred pounds he should not wear gold or silver lace, or buttons, or points at the knees; and, because of the scarcity of leather, they should not walk in great boots. Women not enjoying property to the value of two hundred pounds were forbidden to wear silk, or tiffany hoods, or scarfs. The distinctions of dress were familiar and accepted distinctions both of social rank and of occupation, and the ne- cessities of a primitive settlement emphasized them ; while the sumptuary laws borrowed from English legislation were inspired by Puritan repression, and aimed, not at destroying distinctions, but at regulating dress in accord- ance with sober and decorous principles. The statute-book shows the constant study of the magistrates to make the outward man conform to what was held to be the inward spirit of the community. As early as 1634, in view of " some new and immodest fashions," it was "ordered that no per- son, either man or woman, shall hereafter make or buy any apparel, cither woolen, silk, or linen, with any lace on it, silver, gold, silk, or thread, under the penalty or forfciture of such clothes, &c .; also, that no person, either man or woman, shall make or buy any slashed clothes, other than one slash in each sleeve, and another in the back; also, all cutworks, embroid- cred or needlework caps, bands and rails are forbidden hereafter to be made and worn, under the aforesaid penalty ; also, all gold or silver girdles, hat-bands, belts, ruffs, beaver hats, are prohibited to be bought and worn hereafter, under the aforesaid penalty, &c. . . . Men and women," however, had "liberty to wear out such apparel as they are now provided of, except the immoderate great sleeves, slashed apparel, immoderate great rails, long wings, &c." 1 Five years later a law was passed against "short sleeves, whereby the nakedness of the arm may be discovered in the wearing thereof," " sleeves more than half an ell wide in the widest place thereof," " immod- erate great breeches, knots of ribbon, broad shoulder-bands and rails, silk rases, double ruffs and cuffs," reasoning that " the excessive wearing of lace and other superfluitics " tended " to little use or benefit, but to the nourish- ing of pride and exhausting of men's estates, and also of evil example to others." 2
The leaders of the colony, seeking first the kingdom of God, after their fashion, took very much to heart the injunction not to be distracted for the body what it should put on. There can be little doubt that high-spirited men like Nathanael Ward looked with indignation upon a petty regard for dress when God was " shaking the heavens over his head and the earth under his feet ; " but the unceasing agitation of these questions regarding dress in-
1 Mass. Col. Records, i. 126. 2 Ibid. i. 274.
484
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
dicates the presence of an element in Boston life of that day which rarely found expression in literature, except in the objurgatory literature of its opponents. We confess to a lively interest in the men and women of Ward's time. who were obstinately letting their human nature skip about in fine clothes. They made a part of the community as clearly as did the Quakers, who wished to strip off all obstructions to the exhibition of nature, or the Puritans, who vainly sought for a perfect correspondence between the outer man and the inner sanctified spirit. Ward's fulminations were honest enough, and in his judgment altogether righteous; but they are serviceable now chiefly as revealing the presence of the coquette and the fop in the Boston of 1645, as distinguished from the gentlewoman and gentleman. He writes : -
" It is known more than enough that I am neither niggard nor cynic to the due bravery of the true Gentry. . . . I honor the woman that can honor herself with her attire : a good text always deserves a fair margent. I am not much offended if I see a trim far trimmer than she that wears it : in a word, whatever Christianity or Civility will allow, I can afford with London measure. But when I hear a nugiperous Gentledame inquire what dress the Queen is in this week ; what the mediustertian fashion of the court. - I mean the very newest : with egge to be in it in all haste, whatever it be, - I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cipher, the epitome of nothing ; fitter to be kicked, if she were of a kickable substance, than either honored or humored. To speak moderately [a delicious reserve ! ], I truly confess it is beyond the ken of my understanding to conceive how those women should have any true grace or valuable virtue that have so little wit as to disfigure themselves with such exotic garbs as not only dismantles their native, lovely lustre, but transclouts them into gaunt bar-geese, ill-shapen shotten shell-fish, Egyptian hieroglyphics, or at the best into French flirts of the pastry, which a proper English woman would scorn with her heels. It is no marvel they wear drails on the hinder part of their heads ; having nothing, it seems, in the forepart but a few squirrel's brains to help them frisk from one ill-favored fashion to another. . . . We have about five or six of them in our colony : if I see any of them accidentally, I cannot cleanse my fancy of them for a month after." 1
And then he passes in his contempt to the long-haired men, who also were attacked in legislation at a later period ; for in 1675 the grand jury was empowered to present to the county courts, at its discretion, men wearing long hair like woman's hair, either their own or others, and who indulge in " cutting, curling, and immodest laying out their hair, which practice doth prevail and increase, especially among the younger sort."
It is evident from the terms of the legislation that the Government was solicitous to preserve the distinctions of social rank, and to check that equality of dress and custom which was the outcome of a growing equality of condition. The Court in 1651, when limiting the use of gold and silver lace, put upon record, as the occasion of its law, " its utter detestation and dislike that men or women of mean condition should take upon them the
1 The Simple Cobbler of Agawam, 26, 27.
485
BOSTON IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
garb of Gentlemen, by wearing gold or silver lace, or buttons, or points at their knees, or to walk in great boots; or women of the same rank to wear silks, or tiffany hoods, or scarfs, which, though allowable to persons of greater Estates or more liberal Education, yet we cannot but judge it in- tolerable in persons of such like condition." A proviso, however, was added, which shows that the money test was only one convenient way of regulat- ing the dress ; for it is stated that " this law shall not extend to the restraint of any magistrate or public officer of this jurisdiction, their wives and chil- dren, who are left to their discretion in wearing of apparel, or any set- tled military officer or soldier in the time of military service, or any other whose cducation and employments have been above the ordinary degree, or whose estates have been considerable though now decayed."
A reference to the same matter occurs in an anonymous letter to Gov- ernor Winthrop, written probably in 1636-37 : -
"There is another thing that I have noted since I wrote the enclosed letter, that many in your plantations discover much pride as appeareth by the letters we receive from them ; wherein some of them write over to us for lace, though of the smaller sort, going as far as they may, for we hear that you prohibit them any other : and this they say hath very good vent with you. Non bene ripe creditur. They write over likewise for cut-work coiffes, and others for deep stammel dyes ; and some of your own men tell us that many with you go finely clad, though they are free from the fantasticalness of our land." 1
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