USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > The story of Essex County, Volume I > Part 11
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By law of the Colony the office of town-crier originated in 1642. The duty of this officer was to act as an announcer of sales, the lost, strayed or stolen, and to give immediate notice of anything concern- ing the public; the pay was two pence for every article cried.
I2I
DAILY LIFE AND SOCIAL CUSTOMS
A curious custom existed in Middleton, where the poor were put up at auction and struck off to the best bidder. Some of the very feeble were bid in by their relatives so that they would not get into the hands of strangers. This sounds almost like slavery, but seems to have been the custom in towns where there were no poorhouses. In some towns the poor were boarded out until almshouses were built.
In closing our description of the early settlers, it is well to note that these early adventurers were men of all walks of life : merchants, ministers, soldiers, lawyers, mechanics, seamen and farmers, and there were some in each settlement who were untrained and had come as servants to others: It was fortunate that the group was so diversi- fied, because life in the settlements was to demand the utmost use of all the talents that the group possessed. Quoting from Phillips, because his words bring out this point very well :
"They were a sturdy, God-fearing group of men, but it can fairly be said that they did not fear much of anything else. They had learned the lesson of self-reliance in a hard school and they believed in themselves and in their ability to meet all contingencies. They never appealed to any government for assistance. They prayed to God for his blessing and then worked and fought for those blessings with an energy and per- sistence that merited any blessing that could have been given. Their motto was not those words of deceit, 'The world owes me a living'; but rather, 'There is no world where my strength and brains and energy will not win me a living'; and they made their motto good against great odds."
As has been shown, the first permanent settlement in this county was at Salem, in 1629. Marblehead was also settled in this year by emigrants from the isles of Guernsey and Jersey in the British Chan- nel, but was a corporate part of Salem as were also Beverly, Danvers, Manchester, Peabody, Middleton and parts of Topsfield, Wenham and Lynn. Gloucester was settled by adventurers from the settle- ment of Plymouth in about 1631. When population increased, the General Court recognized the rights of the several towns to be sepa- rate, and each was allowed to have its own board of selectmen. Thus the towns worked out their own destiny and in doing so set, in a large measure, the pattern of town life throughout the United States.
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THE STORY OF ESSEX COUNTY
BIBLIOGRAPHY-"Salem in the Seventeenth Century," J. Duncan Phillips, Boston and New York, 1933.
"The Beginnings of New England or the Puritan Theocracy in Its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty," John Fiske, Boston and New York, 1899.
"The New England Quarterly," Vols. I and V.
"Economic and Social History of New England, 1620-1789," Wil- liam B. Weeden, Boston and New York, 1890.
"History of Essex County, Massachusetts," published by J. W. Lewis and Co., Philadelphia, 1888.
Relations Between Indians and White Men
CHAPTER IV
Relations Between Indians and White Men
By Dr. Warren King Moorehead and Scott H. Paradise.
We have dealt in Chapter II with the Indian tribes of Essex County before the coming of the white man, and with that period when the relations between the two peoples may be described as watchful waiting to see what the future held in store rather than any more active hostility. But in the nature of things this situation could not last. The seeds of the coming conflict were deeply planted, and the white and red races were to pass from a state of suspicious tolera- tion of each other to a bloody and long drawn out war. The conflict and the outcome were alike inevitable.
Essex County was fortunate in that there was no major campaign within her borders. The sachems here seem not to have been of that aggressive, warlike type to be found farther south. Passaconaway, of the Pennacook tribe, was early converted to Christianity. Montowam- pate, at Lynn, and Masconomet, who ruled from the Naumkeag to the Merrimac, were apparently more fearful of their hereditary enemies, the Tarratines, who periodically came down in great war canoes from the north to ravage their lands, than they were of the English. In fact, there is one case in which a native saved the Eng- lish settlers from these savage freebooters :
"It appears that they came against the English, who would possibly have been utterly cut off, but for one Robin, a friendly savage of Ipswich. The English at Ipswich numbered about thirty, and this day upon which the attack was to be made most of the men were away from home. By some means Robin dis- covered their hostile intention and went to John Perkins, to
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THE STORY OF ESSEX COUNTY
whom he revealed the danger impending over the little settle- ment, telling him that four Tarratines would come into the settlement on the pretense of trade. Their real purpose would be to 'draw them down the hill to the water-side,' when forty canoes filled with armed Tarratines would make an attack on them. It turned out as Robin had said: but the Indians were frightened off by an exaggerated show of numbers on the part of the English, the beating of a drum, and the noise of a few muskets."1
When Masconomet placed himself under English protection for the sake of being defended against the Tarratines, he was required to answer a series of questions. His replies seem to show an almost humorous and fatalistic attitude toward life which would not be likely to lead him into warfare. At the same time his answers could hardly be excelled by any civilized adept in adroit evasiveness.
"Question I-Will you worship the only true God, who made heaven and earth, and not blaspheme ?
"Answer-We do desire to worship the God of the Eng- lish and to speak well of Him, because we see He doth better to the English than other gods do to others.
"Question 3-Will you refrain from working on the Sab- bath, especially within the bounds of Christian towns ?
"Answer-It is easy to us-we have not much to do on any day, and we can well rest on that day."
Consequently, Essex County was free from any great Indian trou- bles, and the raids which later fell upon Haverhill and Andover, towns then on the frontier, were the backwash of larger disturbances elsewhere. At the same time Essex County towns contributed their due share of men to take part in the Pequot and King Philip's wars and in other campaigns at a distance from her borders.
There were a number of factors which led to the growing animos- ity between the settlers and the Indians. In Chapter II we have touched upon the effect of the Puritan character upon the contact between the races.
I. Cobbet's MS. Narrative. Quoted by Sylvester : "Indian Wars of New Eng- land," Vol. I, p. 173.
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RELATIONS BETWEEN INDIANS AND WHITE MEN
"With the coming of the Puritan began the encroachments of the settler upon the prescriptive rights of the Indians, the absorption of their hunting grounds, their maize-fields, and the streams that supplied them with their fish. The Puritan was a trader, with a trader's conscience. The Englishman made his superior civilization the apology for his slender honesty with the aborigine. If the Indian had any prescrip- tive rights, they were ignored. If the Indian gave a deed of his lands to the English, it was by an instrument of which he had no comprehension, the consideration for which was a pit- tance -- a something to tempt the appetite of the savage, which ranged from strong waters to pumpkins. The Puritan took shelter behind these conveyances, and divers historians have been at great pains to establish the fact that the Indians were compensated for their lands, when the fact remains that the poor savage was a modern Esau who parted with his birth- right for a mess of pottage -- and poor pottage at that."2
It is true that the first letter of instruction from the New England Company to Governor Endicott contained the following: "If any of the savages pretend right of inheritance to all or any of the lands granted in our patent, we pray you endeavor to purchase their title, that we may avoid the least scruple of intrusion." But we notice nothing said about the price to be paid, and the way was open for shrewd men to obtain much for very little.
This "peaceful penetration" of the Indians' lands had a fore- runner in the fur trade, which did little to allay the rising suspicions of the natives. The profits of the fur trade lured many traders into a wilderness where none but the red man had ever trod before, and in fact the Merrimac valley was first explored by seekers for furs. Fol- lowing the example of Captain John Smith, who relates that at Mon- hegan, in 1614, he obtained for trifles "near 11,000 beaver skins, 100 martin, and as many otters," the trader exchanged axes, knives, glass beads, and cheap clothes of brilliant coloring for skins worth untold sums. While many of these traders were honest, there were some who did little to raise the Indian's estimate of the white man's char-
2. Sylvester: "Indian Wars of New England," Vol. I, pp. 63, 64. W. B. Clarke Co., Boston, 1910.
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THE STORY OF ESSEX COUNTY
acter. C. H. McIlwain3 states "that the evidence indicates that most of these traders were the very scum of the earth, and their treatment of all Indians was such as hardly to be suitable for description," a condemnation perhaps a little severe when we consider such highly respectable men as the Pynchons and Mullcrops. But there is the case of John Sheple, a trader at Groton, who claimed to have a foot weighing exactly a pound. His custom was to put his foot on one side of the scale, and balance it with furs on the other.4 And there is the case of Major Waldron, for when the major bought beaver skins of the Indians, he was wont to put his hand on the opposite scale, as a weight, while he weighed them. It did not take the savages long to see through such trickery, and later, when they had Waldron in their power, a savage cut off his hand and called for the scales to weigh it.5
In 1694 a trading post was established at Dunstable, on the Mer- rimac, as this river afforded means of transportation by canoe and later by bateau to the coast. For the fur concession of the Merrimac valley Simon Willard and three associates agreed to pay £25 a year.
In another way the fur traders helped bring on the conflict between the English and the Indians. At a very early date it was found that the traders by selling arms, ammunition, and liquor to the natives were endangering the very existence of the colonies on Massachusetts Bay.6
There was another grievance which with justice festered in the Indian mind-the selling of their race into slavery. One of the first to indulge in this traffic was Thomas Hunt, who accompanied Captain John Smith in 1614, and as Smith relates, "betrayed four and twenty of those poor savages aboard his ship, and most dishonestly and inhumanly, for their kind usage of me and all our men, carried them to Malaga ; and there, for a little private gain, sold these silly savages for rials of eight." The practice of enslaving the Indians was freely indulged in by the English during the Pequod and other wars when they found any captives in their hands. In an encounter with the Pequods many Indians were taken prisoners. The men were slaugh-
3. McIlwain : "Wraxall's Abridgment," pp. xli-xiv.
4. Weeden: "Economic and Social History of New England," Vol. I, p. 402.
5. Sylvester, Vol. II, p. 414.
6. The account of the fur trade is largely drawn from Dr. MacFarlane's thesis, "Indian Relations in New England," Widener Library, Harvard, 1933. To him credit for his extensive researches should be accorded.
RELATIONS BETWEEN INDIANS AND WHITE MEN 129
tered in cold blood as is callously described by Hubbard in his "Indian Wars":
"The Men among them to the Number of thirty were turned presently into Charon's Ferry-boat, under the Command of Skipper Gallop, who dispatched them a little without the Harbor. The Females and Children were disposed of according to the Will of the Conquerors."7 The "will of the conquerors" in the case of these eighty squaws and their children was to give thirty to the Narragan- setts, three to the Massachusetts Indians, and to send the rest to the Massachusetts colonists. In connection with them Governor Win- throp had this letter from Captain Stoughton :
"By this pinnace you shall receive 48 or 50 women and children; unless there stay any here to be helpful, concerning which there is one, I formerly mentioned, that is the fairest and largest amongst them to whom I have given a coate to cloathe her. It is my desire to have her for a servant, if it stand to your good liking, else not. There is a little squaw that steward Culacut desireth, to whom he hath given a coate. Lieut. Davenport also desireth one, to wit, a small one, that hath three strokes upon her stomach thus; - ||| +. He desireth her, if it will stand with your good liking."
Apparently there was no objection to holding Indians as slaves in Massachusetts, and while Essex County cannot be counted among the worst offenders, we find the following examples, taken from Dr. MacFarlane's work, of specific prices paid for Indian slaves within our own boundaries :
1693 Ipswich-I Indian £4. 1683 Ipswich-One boy and one girl £5.
1683 Newbury-One Indian £20. 1684 Salem-Indian Boy £20.
1684 Salem-Indian Maid £15. 1710 Salem-Indian Girl £15. 17II Newbury-One Indian £20.
1713 Newbury-Spanish Indian Boy £38.
1714 Newbury-Indian Boy £25.
7. Quoted by Sylvester. Vol. I, p. 292.
Essex-9
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THE STORY OF ESSEX COUNTY
"The Handbook of American Indians" states that large numbers of male children of the conquered Pequots were transported to the West Indies from Massachusetts and sold into slavery, while women and girls were scattered among white families.8
The depth and bitterness of the hatred that had arisen between the two races is indicated by the savage attitude of the New England clergy, who above all should have been leaders in Christian charity, towards the red man. The Reverend Solomon Stoddard wrote Gov- ernor Dudley after the Deerfield massacre, "they act like wolves and are to be dealt withall as wolves,"? and the Reverend Increase Mather complacently observed after the Fairfield Swamp fight: "It is sup- posed that no less than 500 to 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day."
Not all the religious men in New England were in this war-like frame of mind. We must not forget the missionary labors of Daniel Gookin, and John Eliot, who did much to elevate Indian men and women both morally and spiritually. But even their efforts tended, in the end, to widen the rift between the white men and the red.
The Indians were not at all eager to accept the untold blessings that the whites assured them would come with their conversion. Cal- vinism was not the most alluring form of Christianity to the savage mind. The ornaments and vestments of the ecclesiastical churches, no matter how crude they might be in the depths of the wilderness, presented something tangible to the Indian mind, while the abstrac- tions of Calvinism were quite beyond the comprehension of the aver- age Indian. Nor was the seventeenth century Puritan's emphasis on the "fear of God" likely to make his faith more acceptable to a rather easy-going group of people. And the rigid code of morality which the Puritans tried to impose on their converts must have seemed sense- less to the savage mind. Some of the regulations drawn up for the Christian Indians at Concord were:
"That everyone that shall abuse themselves with wine or strong liquors, shall pay for every time so abusing them- selves 20 s.
"That there shall be no more Powwowing amongst the Indians. Henceforth Powwower and his Procurer shall pay 20 s. apeece.
S. "Handbook of American Indians," Vol. II, p. 600.
9. "Massachusetts Historical Collections," Vol. III, pp. 235-37. Quoted by Sylvester.
I31
RELATIONS BETWEEN INDIANS AND WHITE MEN
"Whosoever shall steal from another shall restore four- fold.
"They desire that no Indians shall have any more than one wife.
"They shall weare their hair comely as the English do, and whosoever shall offend herein shall pay 5 s.
"They intend to reform themselves, in their former greas- ing themselves under Penalty of 5 s. for every default.
"They doe all resolve to set up Prayer in their wigwams, and to seek to God both before and after meate.
"Whoever shall play at their former games shall pay a shilling.
"They shall not disguise themselves in their mournings, as formerly, nor shall they keep a great noyse by howling.
"No Indian shall take an Englishman's canoe without leave under penalty of 5 s.
"No Indian shall come into any Englishman's house except he first knocks : and this they expect from the English.
"The medicine men were even more hostile to Christianity than their people. The introduction of the religion of the whites robbed them of their means of livelihood and also of their power within the tribe. It was only natural that such a vested interest should resist to the end, a new force which threatened to destroy its privileged position." ("Massachu- setts Historical Collections," 3d series, Vol. IV, p. 139.)
"The more powerful sachems were also bitterly opposed to the missionaries. They saw in the new doctrines an attack on native institutions which would soon extend from the religious to the political sphere. So marked was the opposition in one section of Martha's Vineyard that all tribesmen who accepted Christianity were threatened with death by their chiefs. In 1650 Eliot wrote, 'for the Sachems of the Country are gen- erally set against us, and counter-work the Lord by keeping off their men from praying to God as much as they can; and the reason of it is this, they plainly see that Religion will make a great change among them, and cut them off from their former tyranny.'' ' "'10
IO. MacFarlane.
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THE STORY OF ESSEX COUNTY
Such then were the differences between the colonists and the native tribes, the inevitable outcome of which was war to the death. White man and red man apparently could not live side by side, and Essex County, happily removed from the main scene of conflict, was to experience the effects of the long and bloody struggle. In the story of the relations between the settlers and the Indians the course of those hostilities overshadows every other topic.
From the earliest days each Essex County town had kept up some form of military organization. A law passed as early as 1631 required all able-bodied men in each town to train on Saturday. By a law passed in 1640 the lads from ten to sixteen years of age were ordered to be "instructed upon ye usual training days, in ye exercise of arms, as small guns, halfe pikes, bowes and arrows, etc." Theoretically, the Colony was always under martial law, and such preparedness could have no purpose except defense against the Indians. The set- tlers never attended town meetings or religious worship without tak- ing their arms with them. Nor could a man safely go to work in the fields without carrying his gun along. At meeting the men entered last and made their exit first that they might be ready to protect the women and children in case of attack. During the service the men sat at the ends of the pews so as to be ready for any eventuality, a custom which still survives.
But it was not until the Pequot War of 1636-37 that the Essex County men had much occasion to serve as soldiers. This encounter arose from the act of a punitive expedition led by John Endicott. While dealing with some Indians, subsidiary to the Narragansetts, who had murdered a trader named John Oldham, the English force helped themselves to some Pequot corn and hurried away. The Pequots retaliated against Saybrook and Wethersfield, Connecticut, and in the spring of 1637 a force including men from Essex County surprised the Indian village at Mystic, near Long Island Sound, burned it, and slaughtered about six hundred persons, losing in the encounter two white men killed and about twenty wounded. How the captives of this fight were dealt with has already been described, the men being taken out to sea and thrown overboard by Skipper Gallop, and the women and children sent as slaves to Boston. It was at the close of this one-sided conflict that Captain Mason exclaimed in triumph, "Thus was God seen in the Mount, crushing his proud enemies."
I33
RELATIONS BETWEEN INDIANS AND WHITE MEN
Of the Essex County men who went to the Pequot War eight were furnished by Newbury, and a company under Captain William Trask was sent from Peabody. At the outbreak of the war in 1636 Cap- tain Nathaniel Turner, of Lynn, commanded one of the companies detailed to serve in the first campaign and did efficient service at Block Island and New London. For the second campaign Lynn fur- nished twenty-one men. One of the Lynn soldiers, Christopher Lind- sey, was among those wounded, and in 1655 petitioned the court for an allowance, saying that he was "disabled from service for twenty weekes, for which he never had any satisfaction." He was allowed three pounds. Salem sent one company commanded by Ensign Dav- enport to the Pequot War in 1636, and the next year furnished twenty-eight men as part of the quota of one hundred and sixty from the Massachusetts Colony. Lieutenant Davenport and a party of his Salem men particularly distinguished themselves. Francis Wain- wright, of Ipswich, was famous for his exploit in this war when attacked by two Indians and breaking the stock of his gun, he killed them both with the barrel. Essex sent four men, and in consideration for the service thus rendered they each received, two years later, a grant of several acres of land. Thus perhaps Essex County began the practice of paying a bonus to ex-service men, a custom which was to cause so much controversy in later years.
When war seemed imminent in 1645 with the Narragansetts because the colonists had directed Uncas, of the Mohegans, to put his captive, Chief Miantonomo, of the Narragansetts, to death, Essex County again did its share. The Salem troops marched with the expedition against the natives, but before blows had been struck, the Indians sued for peace.
The most savage and long-continued Indian conflict the colonists had to wage was King Philip's War, 1675-78. It has been computed by Channing that in this struggle "Of the five thousand men of mili- tary age in Massachusetts and New Plymouth, one in ten had been killed or captured." The chroniclers of the time estimated a total English loss of six hundred to eight hundred in the course of the war, which would sustain this proportion.11
The antagonism between the Indians and the whites already referred to had been gradually growing until it reached the breaking
II. Hart: "Commonwealth History of Massachusetts," Vol. I, p. 552.
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RELATIONS BETWEEN INDIANS AND WHITE MEN
point, and the opposing points of view may be clearly seen in the contemporary statements. What the Indian attitude was is shown in the report of John Easton, who thus quotes an interview with Philip:
"'The Indians owned yt fighting was the worst Way; then they propounded how Right might take Place. We said, by Arbitration. They said that all English agreed against them, and so by Arbitration they had had much Rong; mani Miles square of Land so taken from them, for English would have English Arbitrators; and once they were persuaded to give in their Armes, yt thereby Jealousy might be removed, and the English having their Arms wold not deliver them as they had promised, untill they consented to pay a 100 pound, and now they had not so much Sum or Muny; yt thay wear as good be kiled as leave all their Liueflyhode.' Further discussion followed, and the English assured the Indians of the justice of English courts.
"'But Philip charged it to be dishonestly in us to put of the Hering to just Complaints, therefore we consented to hear them. Thay said they had bine the first in doing Good to the English, and the English the first in doing Rong; said when the English first came, their King's Father was as a great Man, and the English as a littell Child; he constrained other Indians from ronging the English, and gave them Corn and shewed them how to plant, and was free to do them ani Good, and had let them have a 100 Times more land than now the King had for his own Peopell. . ... And another Greavance was, if 20 of these onest Indians testified that a English man had dun them Rong, it was as nothing; and if but one of their worst Indians testified against any Indian or ther King, when it pleased the English it was suffitiant.' ''12
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