USA > Massachusetts > The story of western Massachusetts, Volume I > Part 3
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In 1675 Josselyn said: "The country is strangely incommodated with flys which the English call musketaes. They will sting so fiercely in summer as to make the faces of the English swelled and scabby, as if the small pox, for the first year."
In 1632, Winthrop said that "this summer was very wet and cold, except now and then a hot day or two, which caused great store of musketoes and rattlesnakes."
In England, protestants against the colonization of New England enlarged upon "the annoyance of men by muskitoes and serpents" to such an extent that John White (Planter's Plea, 1630) remonstrated that "the muskitoes indeed infest the planters, about four months in the heat of summer, but after one year's acquaintance, men make light account of them; some slight defence for the hands and face, smoke and a close house may keep them off. Neither are they much more noisome than the fennish parts of Essex and Lincolnshire."
Such was southern New England when first settled.
Uplands, free from trees and brush, interspersed with swampy woodlands. So open was the country that the traveler could espy the swamps from afar and easily avoid them. If more convenient, the beaver swamps could be readily crossed on the dams. Such practice brought trails which were succeeded by permanent roads which have continued to this day. Many a modern road is partially imposed upon a beaver dam of old.
CHAPTER III
An Indian Census
A T A PUBLIC FORUM in Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 6, 1936, Dr. Lyman Bryson of Columbia University said: "It is probable that the present Indian population of the United States is larger than it was when America was discovered".
His obvious intent was to focus attention on the small number of Indians here in the sixteenth century, but the statement represents no more than a wild guess, for no statistics exist on which to base a reliable estimate of the number of Indians here at the time of the discovery. By the time America was visited by people competent to compute the number of natives, the population had been so reduced that conditions then bore little relationship to those of 1492.
In 1517, smallpox was carried from Europe to Hayti, and three years later it reached Mexico, where it wrought fearful devastation and whence it spread with intense virulence through much of the new world. William Robertson (History of America, 1777) said that three and a half million people were destroyed in Mexico alone. Again, this can hardly be more than a guess. In 1707, the disease was intro- duced into Iceland, where more than a quarter of the whole population fell victims. It reached Greenland in 1733 and nearly depopulated the country. These illustrations offer striking proof of the law that seems universally true; that a contagious disease is always most virulent on its first introduction to a new sphere of action.
What then, was the situation by the time Europeans saw beyond the New England coast line and acquired a knowledge of the natives of the interior ?
In 1621, Governor Bradford related that "they found the people not many, being dead and abundantly wasted in the late great mor- tality which fell in all those parts about three years before the coming of the English, wherein thousands of them died. They not being able to bury one another, their skulls and bones were found in many places lying still above ground where their houses had been".
In 1629, Francis Higginson said "The Indians are not able to make use of the one fourth part of the land, neither have they any settled places, as towns to dwell in, nor any ground as they challenge for their own possession, but change their habitation from place to place. The greatest sagamore about us cannot make above three
W. Mass .- I-2
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hundred men and other less sagamores have not above fifteen subjects and others near about us, but two. Their subjects, above twelve years since, were swept away by a great and grievous plague that was amongst them, so that there are very few left to inhabit the country".
A letter to William Pond, from Boston, March 15, 1631, said, "Here are but few Indians. A great part of them died this winter. It was thought it was of the plague".
Such plagues continued, for in 1633 Governor Winthrop reported "a great mortality among the Indians. The disease was the smallpox. Some of them were cured by such means as they had from us. The infection spread to Pascataquack, where all the Indians except one or two died".
For years the Plymouth and Boston people cast longing eyes at the Connecticut Valley, but were deterred from attempts to settle there through fear of the Indians. In time, however, the scouts and ne'er-do-wells from the coast, penetrated to the interior, carrying the infections with them.
Bradford tells us that in 1634 "it pleased God to visit us with an infectious fever. This disease also swept away many of the Indians from all the places near adjoining. A company of Indians lived up above (Windsor) in the river of Connecticut. It pleased God to visit these Indians with a great sickness and such mortality that of 1,000 above 950 of them died and many of them did rot above ground for want of burial. This spring also, those Indians that lived about our trading house (at Windsor) fell sick of the smallpox and died most miserably. Very few of them escaped notwithstanding we did all we could for them to the hazard of ourselves. The chief sachem died and almost all his friends and kindred".
Thus was the stage set for the occupation of the valley by the English. It is small wonder that William Pynchon found less than a score of adult natives at Springfield in 1636.
Apparently Pynchon assumed that Indian lands were owned in common and that therefore every adult occupant was an owner and entitled to a share in the proceeds of a sale. The bounds of the tract at Springfield, which he acquired in 1636, were quite indefinite but certainly included more than twenty-five square miles. For these he gave twenty coats, eighteen fatham of wampum, eighteen hatchets, eighteen howes and eighteen knives, indicating that eighteen adults occupied the territory or claimed ownership in it; about one Indian to each one and a half square mile.
Similar reasoning is seen in his purchase in 1641, of several square miles north of the Chicopee River, which seems to have been neutral territory, used merely for the fishing by various near-by bands. Payment was made to Nippumsuit and Jancompowin of Nonatuck now Northampton; to Misquis, of Skipmuck, now Chicopee Falls; to Mishqua and her son Saccarant; to Secousk and to Wene- pawin, the latter four being all of Woronoco, now Westfield. Secousk was the widow of Kenix, who was one of the Indians from whom
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AN INDIAN CENSUS
Pynchon had bought the land at Springfield, five years earlier, in which sale this Wenepawin also joined. Secousk is a compound word which means no more than "widow woman"; that is, secou-squaw, literally, a "left behind woman". In composition, the Pynchons, both father and son, invariably (as Roger Williams did frequently) slurred over the noun, so that it remained simply as sk, or qua. The same elision is here seen in the name of Mishqua, the "chief woman"; the saunk-squaw, or squaw sachem. She was the same woman, later known to the younger Pynchon as "Mishnoasqus, alias Margery", from whom he bought the lands at Suffield.
To these seven Indians, besides "certain fish hooks and other small things", Pynchon agreed to give fifteen fatham of wampum, one hoe and a "coat" or blanket of one and three quarter yards of double width shag baize, all of which evidently went to Nippumsuit, as the acknowledged leader of the band. Then more significantly, was additional payment made of seven knives, seven awls and seven pairs of scissors, which seems a recognition of the fact that the above seven Indians alone claimed sole joint ownership.
On coming to put his mark to the formal deed, Wenepawin proved recalcitrant and Pynchon was obliged to give him a yard and a quarter of baize for a "coat", as well as a pair of breeches and a coat to Misquis "and six knives to them all". A month later, May 24, 1641, the widow Secousk dropped in to set her mark, for which she held Pynchon up for another knife and twelve hands of wampum. Jan- compowin delayed his part in completing the bargain for some two and a half years, but on the "9th day of the 8th month, 1643, he set his hand to this writing and Mr. Pynchon gave him a coat and a knife. He came not to set his hand till this day". So matters rested until June 27, 1644, when "the woman called Secousk, above said, who was the widow of Kenix, came again to Mr. Pynchon, desiring a further reward. Thereupon Mr. Pynchon gave her a child coat of red cotton, a glass and a knife, in the presence of Janandua, her present husband, and she was fully satisfied". Even this was not the end. Nippumsuit demanded "another large coat for his sister that he said had right in the said land". Pynchon had no option. The settlers had long since been warned that "if any of the savages pretend right of inheritance to all or any part of the lands granted in our patent, we pray you endeavor to purchase their title that we may avoid the least scruple of intrusion". With the delivery of the coat for Nippumsuit's sister, the transaction seems to have been completed. Still another Indian, Wauhshaues of Nonotuck, also signed the deed, but only as a witness and he made no claim to ownership. All of which would justify the assumption that not more than seven or eight Indians occupied or claimed ownership in this tract of some twenty-five square miles.
A final witness to this deed was the Indian Coa, and his inclusion explains much.
Coa (or Coe or Coo) was an Indian from whose wife Niarum Pynchon had bought land at Springfield, five years earlier. When
Indian Skulls From Long Hill, Showing Extra Suture
Indian Skulls From Long Hill
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AN INDIAN CENSUS
negotiating for that land, Pynchon brought from Boston, a recognized Indian interpreter, who evidenced that "to all within expressed, they understood; by Ahaughton, an Indian of the Massachusett". When John Pynchon, in 1653, bought the land for the settlement at North- ampton, the deed was witnessed by "Wutshamin, a chief man of Nammeleck, who helped to make the bargain". To the 1660 deed for the land which became Hatfield, "Woassomehuc alias Skejask, an Indian witness" set his mark.
It was a Pynchon custom and without doubt, in this case it was Coa "who helped to make the bargain", which explains why the leader was called Nippumsuit, "he who speaks another language", that is, a man of another tribe. And why his abiding place was called Nonotuck; "the place far off".
This name is a perfect example of the dialectal interchange of the 1, n and r. That which to the Springfield Indians was Nonotuck, to other Indians was Nolwotogg and Norwotock. The same nouns; the same adjectives; the same meaning. But the vocal organs of the natives habituated to the n sound, could not sound the 1, or r, and vice versa. We have a modern example in the "Pidgin English" of the Chinese, whose "Melican man velly well", we consider a bit humorous and due to unintelligence, but which is simply because of his inability to sound the r.
It might be added that the names Jancompowin and Janandua are entirely unlike any other local personal or place names. The initial, J, seems not to have existed in the Connecticut Valley. It should be suspected that the very, very careless Mr. Pynchon here used a J for a sound which could have been much better represented by ch; giving Chancompowin and Chanandua.
In the early days of the settlements, the natives were friendly and helpful to the English. At Salem, in 1629, Francis Higginson said that "they do generally profess to like well our coming and planting here, partly because there is abundance of ground that they cannot possess nor make use of, and partly because our being here will be a means both of relief to them when they want and also a defence from their enemies, wherewith, before this plantation began, they were often endangered".
By 1634, familiarity had bred contempt and the cooperative spirit faded. Then began the episodes that brought on the Pequot War. Estimates of the number of Indians engaged in this and in King Philip's War, forty years after, as made by later generations from stories of their ancestors, do not stand up under analysis. These exaggerations, however, are perfectly understandable. Under stress, a couple of savages, behind trees, in the dead of night, might well seem like a whole tribe, especially to timorous women and children. James Truslow Adams' suggestion in The Founding of New England, that "perhaps the original settlers faced in all, five thousand war- riors" is utterly absurd. In Vermont there were almost no natives, except possibly about Lake Champlain. A similar condition existed in New Hampshire where small bands were about Lake Winnepesaukee
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and the short stretch of sea coast. Western Massachusetts and north western Connecticut were practically uninhabited.
Contrary to general thought, the food of the natives was mainly corn and fish. Their weapons lacked range and effectiveness, so that what little game they secured was taken by traps and snares. More- over, game was not plentiful. The Indians deeply resented the killing of a deer by the English. Lionel Gardiner told of certain Indians who, amongst themselves, had "resolved to fall upon them all, at one appointed day, and kill men, women and children, but no cows, for they will serve to eat until our deer be increased again".
As a result of all these factors, it was the coasts and the lower reaches of the rivers that the natives occupied.
In 1637, the Pequots had two palisaded villages or "forts" in southern Connecticut; one at Mystic River and another on the Thames. Apparently, each accommodated, roughly, one-half the tribe. On the night of May 26, 1637, the English attacked the Mystic fort and destroyed its inhabitants.
There are six contemporary accounts of this episode: Governor Winthrop's, Governor Bradford's, Philip Vincent's, Capt. Jolin Under- hill's, Lionel Gardiner's and Capt. John Mason's. Vincent's True Relation, written in 1637 and printed in 1638, gives the number of natives slain at the Mystic fort as "betwixt three and four hundred". Underhill's News from America, also published in 1638 says that "Many were burnt in the fort, both men, women and children. It is reported by themselves that there were about four hundred souls in this fort and not above five escaped out of our hands". Gardiner's reminiscences were written in 1660, twenty-three years after the war, as a result of a reunion of some of the principal actors. He said that they "killed three hundred", at the destruction of the fort.
These three recorders seem to agree that the Pequots not destroyed in that affair, numbered about three hundred. Thus the total number of Pequot "souls; men, women and children" was apparently between six and seven hundred. During the summer the tribe was entirely annihilated and that fall Vincent said that "a day of thanksgiving was celebrated, the Pequetans now seeming nothing but a name, for not less than seven hundred are slain or taken prisoners".
Just when Mason's Brief History was written is not clear. Both his and Gardiner's accounts were attempts to refute the claims of Massachusetts that she "won the war" and so was entitled to a share in the territory. On October 2, 1656, the Connecticut General Court asked Mason to write a statement of the facts. When he finally delivered his manuscript to the Court, he commented on "how often I have been requested to write something in reference to the subject". His preface is subscribed from Norwich, which was not settled until 1660 and had no recognition as a town prior to 1661, when it was known as Norridge. When the history was printed by Thomas Prince, in 1735, he said that it was "about three score years since the narra- tive was written". Three score years would have been in 1675, but
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AN INDIAN CENSUS
Mason had died in 1672. A bit "above three score years" would have been within his lifetime. It seems probable that it was written during the closing years of his life; a last gesture. The preface closes with the single word, "farewell". That would place it thirty-five years after the events; hardly the time accurately to recall the precise number of Indians slain in any particular skirmish.
Mason said that "in a little more than an hour's space was their impregnable fort, with themselves, utterly destroyed, to the number of six or seven hundred, as some of themselves confessed". It would appear quite evident that Mason's figure was the total of all the Pequots "utterly destroyed" in that short war.
Bradford, in his contemporary account of the slaughter at the Mystic fort said that "they thus destroyed about four hundred at this time". Winthrop wrote to Bradford on July 28, 1637 that "they have now slain or taken in all, about seven hundred".
Of this seven hundred, two hundred might have been warriors; an estimate of three hundred would be very generous. Three hundred warriors in an area of perhaps three hundred square miles; the most densely populated in New England.
On November 24, 1638, Theophilus Eaton and John Davenport bought for themselves and other English planters the land at Quin- nipiac which became New Haven, Connecticut. Their deed recites that "the number of Quinnipiac Indians, men and youth, grown to stature fit for service being forty-seven".
On December 11 of that same year, Montowese sold a tract northerly of this, which was thirteen miles wide and ten miles long, from which the sachem reserved planting ground "for his men which are ten and many squaws".
On September 29, 1639, the settlers of Guilford, Connecticut, bought the land from East River to Stony Creek, the native inhabi- tants of which were "thirteen men, eight women and twelve children, or thirty-three in all".
Van der Donck, in 1655 said that "the Indians affirm that before the arrival of the christians, and before the smallpox broke out amongst them, they were ten times as numerous as they now are and that the population has been melted down by this disease, where nine-tenths of them died".
During King Philip's War, in 1675 the Indians of western Massa- chusetts conspired to destroy the town of Springfield. Engaged in this conspiracy were all those from Westfield to Brookfield; from Springfield to Deerfield; an area of a thousand square miles. Immedi- ately after the affair, a competent observer said that "there appeared not above one hundred Indians" in the raid. One hundred warriors in all. One warrior to each ten square miles of the territory.
The only logical conclusion is that at the time of the early settle- ments, the native population of New England was very sparse. A more precise statement is hardly justified.
Up to about seventy-five years ago, Indian censuses were merely estimates; often very rough guesses and they have varied widely
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in even more recent years. It is also a fact that from time to time, persons of mixed ancestry, not living on reservations, but scattered through the general population have been "discovered" and added to the Bureau of the Census enumeration. It is a complicated situa- tion because there exists no legal definition of an Indian, whereas, the racial intermixture which has been going on since 1492 is con- stantly on the increase and accounts for a large proportion of the alleged growth in population.
Under modern conditions, recognition as an Indian and adoption into a tribe, usually confers valuable rights in land and other prop- erty. Hence, amongst certain classes, there is an eagerness to claim Indian ancestry. When the Oklahoma Choctaws were finally enrolled, six thousand residents of Mississippi, "apparently white or negro" claimed a share in the tribal estate. The South Carolina Cherokees have a rule excluding all persons of less than one-sixteenth Cherokee blood from the privileges and emoluments of the tribe.
In Samoa, legitimate half-castes and natives married to white men have always had full European status. Many believe that a similar rule in this country would do away with much needless profiteering in a minor fraction of aboriginal blood.
One is prone to think of civilization in New England as begin- ning at Plymouth in 1620, but Charles Knowles Bolton, in his Terra Nova (1935) gives a detailed list of six or seven hundred "persons on the north east coast before 1602". This includes such names as Verrazzano, Cabot and Gomez, in their persons only, but does not include members of their crews, otherwise the list would be greatly lengthened. Long before Winthrop came to Massachusetts Bay in 1630, thousands of Europeans were fishing off the coast for six months in each year. It is not suprising that the Pilgrims were greeted by an Indian with the words, "Welcome Englishmen". It is far more surprising that they did not meet with many more English- speaking natives.
For a hundred years prior to the coming of the English to Plymouth, countless explorers, fishermen and traders ranged the New England coast and were made welcome, especially by the native women. These strangers combined in the eyes of the Indian girl, all that was dashing and heroic in a warrior of her own race, with all that was glorious and mysterious in the white race. There was no comparison, in the eyes of an aspiring belle of the wilderness, between a European and an Indian. The native code of hospitality made so easy the course of these loose-living rovers that there must ever remain a question as to how many full-blood Indians there really were on the New England coast after the sixteenth century. Travelers wrote home of the chaste native women, but such were of the class who saw only the higher things of life or only that which they most wished to see.
Verrazzano, in relating his experience in Narragansett Bay in 1524, told of his "men staying two or three days on a small island near the ship, for their various necessities, as sailors are wont to do".
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AN INDIAN CENSUS
This naive statement is not very elucidating, but one familiar with the habits of the mariners of that period would feel quite confident that these men were not ashore to wash out their handkerchiefs or to gather sea shells.
In 1631, Winthrop records that "at the last court a young fellow was whipped for soliciting an Indian squaw to incontinency". In 1640, Coddington, at Rhode Island wrote to Winthrop, regarding "one Thomas Savery, who hath a child by an Indian woman, which is a boy, and is not black haired like the Indian children, but yellow haired, as the English". The earliest explorers often stressed the fact that the hair of the natives was black; raven; jet black. No other color was mentioned. Gradually a change came. At Roanoke, in 1584, Arthur Barlowe said that "their hair is black for the most part and yet we saw children that had very fine auburn and chestnut colored hair".
What people of that age knew about birth control is another question. They seem to have had a glimmering of an idea regarding it for Bradford, in 1625, told of two Plymouth neighbors, engaged in illicit relations and "though he satisfied his lust on her, yet he endeavored to hinder conception".
In 1671, the Rev. John Russell lived at Hadley, Massachusetts. Some twenty miles south, at Springfield, lived John Pynchon. On a reservation at Springfield was an English-built "fort"; the home of the Agawam Indians. Pastor Russell's Negro slave, lonesome in that white-man's town, borrowed his master's dugout and slipped down the Connecticut for a visit with the natives where he probably was an honored guest; treated at least as a equal. The experience of Capt. William Clark's Negro slave, York, among the Ricaras on the Missouri in 1804, would indicate what this black man's recep- tion was.
Eventually, the whereabouts of the truant became known and Pynchon engineered his return, for which he charged Russell, "July 11, 1671-To payment to the Indians who brought your negro and the canoe from the Indian fort,-£1.". One pound was a lot of money in those times when a skilled artisan worked for only two shillings a day and suggests an unusual feat on the part of the Indians.
The written history of the case ends here but it does not com- plete the story.
Adjacent to the Indian fort was a native burial plot in which no interments were made earlier than 1666 and none later than 1675. This cemetery was excavated in 1896 and the skulls recovered plainly indicate a "nigger in the woodpile" of the Agawams. He who so glibly speaks of a "typical Indian skull" would do well to ponder on the variations in these. A primitive Indian skull can, with certainty, be found only in a prehistroic burial place, among the remains of those who died prior to 1492.
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