USA > Massachusetts > The story of western Massachusetts, Volume I > Part 8
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Williams' comments indicate that the "natives hunt two ways" only for the deer. One was by trapping and the other by "driv- ing". The latter method was the equivalent of a modern "deer drive", the last resort of disappointed nimrods, nearing the end of a limited vacation in the woods. Longing for a taste of venison, they organize a "drive" that gives the deer little chance for life;
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a method so unsportsmanlike as to be undertaken only by the most luckless of hunters.
This brings out the point that the Indians did not rely on bow and arrow for securing deer. In fact in his whole 32 chapters of 224 pages, including the chapter on hunting, Williams speaks of arrows in securing game only in connection with the killing of water fowl and sea bass, which could have been entirely from cover, at close range. He mentions arrows but seven times, and it is well to note just what he did say on a subject which moderns consider such an important factor in native life.
The native word for arrow is given as "cauquat".
"Some make only bows, some arrows, some dishes".
"With their bows and arrows they are ready for war".
"Seldom an arrow hits".
"Whenever their arrow sticks in an enemy, they follow it".
"The Indians kill water fowl with arrows".
"They kill bass with arrows or sharp sticks".
Actually, the bow and arrow was a rather futile weapon. Were it not for the Indian's extraordinary powers of still-hunting, so that he could generally approach very near his game, his success would have been small indeed. Due in part to its heavy stone head, the range of the arrow was most limited. Only by shooting "compass-wise" could any appreciable distance be achieved. Shooting high in the air, the path of the arrow described a long arc toward its goal, but only by the grace of God did it reach the desired mark. Very early the colonists learned to "dodge" such missles and not until the Indians were supplied with guns were they a great menace. One has but to recall the short time required to wipe out the entire Pequot nation, when they had only their native weapons.
On Cape Cod, at a point that Governor Bradford named "the place of the first encounter, a lusty man stood behind a tree within half a musket shot and let his arrows fly at them. He was seen to shoot three arrows, which were all avoided". That being before the Pilgrims had had any experience in native ways it suggests what slight effort was required to make a joke of such warfare.
Williams said that "their wars are far less bloody and devour- ing than the cruel wars of Europe, and seldom twenty slain in a pitched field, partly because when they fight in a wood, every tree is a buckler. When they fight in a plain, they fight with such leaping and dancing that seldom an arrow hits".
While the thick hide of an animal such as a deer was ordinarily a foil to the crude stone arrow head, when the natives obtained metal from the English, their arrows became far more effective and dangerous. Lionel Gardiner cautioned against supplying the Indians with copper kettles which they cut up into arrow points. Because a copper arrow point is today found on a plowed field, it is not safe to assume that it was "obtained in trade from Indians about Lake Superior, where native copper was available", as is often asserted.
WV. Mass .- I-5
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In any event, it was one thing to shoot an arrow through human skin and an entirely different proposition to attempt to penetrate the tough hide of a wild beast. That is why the colonists adopted the "buff coat" for Indian warfare.
At the fight at Mystic Fort in 1737, Capt. John Underhill "received a shot in the left hip, through a sufficient buff coat. Had I not been supplied with such a garment, the arrow would have pierced through me". Lionel Gardiner said that at Saybrook, in the Pequot War, he "was shot with many arrows, but my buff coat pre- served me. Only one hurt me". By the time of King Philip's War, however, when the Indians had guns, they "shot three bullets through Capt. Nathaniel Davenport, though he had on a very good buff suit at the time".
That under certain conditions, human beings could be and were killed by Indian arrows is undeniable, the evidence supplied by Gardiner's Relations being alone sufficiently convincing, but all of Gardiner's accounts refer to hand-to-hand skirmishes from close cover, as follows :
"Three men went fowling, a mile from the house and having loaded themselves with fowl, they returned. The Pequots let them pass at first, but at their return they rose out of their ambush and shot all three".
"They went ashore and fell to carrying off the hay and presently the Indians rose out of the grass and killed three".
"Another came down drowned to us ashore at our doors with
an arrow shot into his eye, through his head".
"I found the body of one man shot through, the arrow going in at the right side, the head sticking fast, half through a rib on the left side, which I took out and cleansed, to send to the Bay, because they said that the arrows of the Indians were of no force".
The latter comment illustrates the general contempt of the English for Indian arrows.
Such were the ways and means and the foods of the Indians when the sun smiled and the winds were tempered to their needs. In times of stress, of drought and flood, of rain and snow and storms or devastation by wars, they faced conditions when even the most provident suffered. A picture of life under those changed conditions is shown in the accounts of settlers taken captive in the Indian Wars.
The struggle for food was a large factor leading to the defeat of the Indians in King Philip's War. At Seekonk the natives had a secret store of corn in underground barns, which was visited in the spring of 1676 by Canonchet with a party of seventy-five, including thirty warriors. They secured the corn, but Canonchet and his escort were suprised and captured by a scouting party under Capt. George Denison. From that time the fortunes of the hostile tribes began to fade.
Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, wife of the minister at Lancaster, Massachusetts, was taken by the Indians on February 10, 1675-76 and in the Narrative of Her Captivity, she said :
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"It had been thought that if the corn was cut down, they would starve and die with hunger, so all their corn that could be found was destroyed and they were driven from the little store they had into the woods in the midst of winter, yet the Lord did preserve them for his ends and the destruction of many English. The Lord did so provide for them that in all the time I was among them I did not see one man, woman or child die of hunger".
"I was with the enemy eleven weeks and five days. Though many times they would eat things that a hog or dog would hardly touch, yet by that God strengthened them to be a scourge to his people. The first week of my being among them I hardly ate any- thing. The second week I found my stomach grow very faint for want of something yet it was very hard to get down their filthy trash. The third week, though I would think how formerly my stomach would turn against this or that and I could starve and die before I could eat such things, yet they were now very sweet and savory to my taste".
"When the Indians gathered their forces to go against North- ampton, one went about yelling and hooting to give notice of the design, whereupon they fell to boiling ground nuts and parching corn (as many as had it) for their provision".
"There sat an Indian boiling horses feet, they being wont to eat the flesh first and when the feet were old and dried and they had nothing else, they would cut off the feet and use them. I asked him to give me a little of his broth or water they were boiling in. He gave me a spoonful of samp and bid me take as much broth as I would. He gave me also a piece of the ruff, or ridding of the small guts and I broiled it in the coals".
"After the Fort Fight, when our army was in pursuit, the enemy was in such distress for food that our men could track them by their rooting in the earth for ground nuts, whilst they were flying for their lives. Their chief and commonest food was ground-nuts. They also ate nuts, acorns, artichokes, lily roots, ground beans and several other weeds and roots that I know not. Many of the Indians, for want of tobacco, smoked hemlock and ground ivy".
"They would pick up old bones and cut them to pieces at the joints and if they were full of worms and maggots they would scald them over the fire to make the vermin come out and then boil them and drink the liquor and then beat the great ends of them in a mortor and so eat them. They would eat horses guts and ears and all sorts of wild birds which they would catch; also bear, venison, beaver, tortise, squirrels, frogs, dogs, skunks, rattlesnakes; yea the very bark of trees, besides all sorts of creatures and provisions which they plundered from the English. I can but stand in admiration to see the power of God in providing for such a vast number of enemies in the wilderness, where there was nothing to be seen but from hand to mouth. Many times in the morning the generality of them would eat all up that they had and yet have some farther supply against they wanted".
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It might be thought that the difficulties of Mrs. Rowlandson's captors in procuring food were due entirely to the season of the year, but captives taken during the summer months relate experi- ences similar to hers. Mrs. Elizabeth Hanson, who was taken at Dover, New Hampshire, on June 27, 1724, and lived with the Indians for over a year, said :
"The greatest difficulty was want of food, having at times nothing to eat but pieces of old beaver skin match-coats, which the Indians having hid (for they came naked) which in their going back they took with them, and they were used more for food than raiment. Being cut into long narrow straps, they gave us little pieces, which by the Indians' example we laid on the fire until the hair was singed away and then we ate them as a sweet morsel. Of this poor diet we had but scanty allowance".
A match-coat was a large loose coat of skins, worn by the Indians. The native name, matshigode became machicote to the French and so, match-coat. John Smith said that matchcotes meant "skins or garments".
Mrs. Hanson continued :
"Sometimes the Indians would catch a squirrel or beaver and at other times we met with nuts, berries and roots which they digged out of the ground or the bark of some trees. We had no corn for a great while together, though some of the younger Indians went back and brought some corn from the English inhabitants (the harvest not being gathered) of which we had a little allowed us. When they caught a beaver we lived high while it lasted".
"When flesh was scarce we had only the guts and garbage, not being permitted to cleanse the guts other than by emptying the dung out. In that filthy pickle we must boil and eat them, which was very unpleasant, but hunger made this food pretty bearable to a sharp appetite, which otherwise could not have dispensed with it. What I had thought in my own family not fit for food, would here have been a dainty dish".
It is conclusive, that in spite of the traditional ability of the Indians to live off the land, that lacking the corn that had been their dependence for untold generations, their lives were but a sorry lot. Though by constant effort they could exist, that effort provided existence only.
CHAPTER VII
Indian Houses
T HE house of the Indians of the Western plains was the tepee. This word, which also appears as teepee and tipi, is from a Dakota word, the meaning of which is almost synonymous with "house". It was made by placing a number of poles about a circular area and bringing them together at the top, thus forming a conical framework coming to an acute apex. This frame was covered prin- cipally with buffalo skins.
When a camp was broken up, the tepee poles were fastened to the sides of the collar or saddle of a draft animal, one end trailing behind on the ground and on these poles were piled the skin coverings and the household gear. Such drags were known by the French- Canadian term "travois".
Before the coming of Europeans, only dogs were used as beasts of burden, as horses were unknown in America until they were brought here by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century.
In 1539, Hernando de Soto, with several hundred men, landed at Tampa Bay and explored the present states of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Mississippi. At the junction of the Red and Mississippi Rivers, De Soto died of a malarial fever, after many of his men had perished. From Mexico, many expeditions northward were made with similar results.
In accordance with the custom of the times, the men of these expeditions rode stallions while the animals of the baggage trains were mares. Many of these animals strayed away and became lost. Others were abandoned in times of stress. Colts were foaled and left by the way, to survive or die. The country was well adapted to their existence and the progeny of these Spanish horses became the wild horses of our Western plains.
The very word mustang is of Spanish origin, meaning a "stray animal". Bronco is also from the Spanish, denoting something "rude", that is, unbroken. The word cayuse, more or less a term of contempt, is, however, from the native Indian, being a small horse which came to be used by the Cayuse Indians of Oregon and Wash- ington,-a district too northerly to produce the best examples.
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The imitative native, having by observation, a first-hand knowl- edge of the uses to which the Europeans put horses, readily adopted these wild animals. With but a twisted cord for a bridle, and with no saddle whatever, they became such adept riders that horse and rider seemed but a single unit.
The tepee was a picturesque type of structure, its appearance lending itself most happily to the uses of the painter and the pageant master, so that it has survived as symbolic of the house of all American Indians.
The houses of the Indians of the Atlantic seaboard, however, were quite different from those of the plains. No skins were there avail- able comparable in size to those of the buffalo, and it was far easier to secure new poles, as needed, than to transport old ones.
Contemporary observers have described the Eastern houses in such detail that there is no question as to their appearance. By the English they were called "wigwams", from an Algonkian term mean- ing "house" (Abnaki, wigwom; Micmac, wigwom; Lenape, wikwam; Massachusetts, wekuam).
Verrazzano came to anchor in Newport Harbor, April 21, 1524. There he "saw their houses made in circular or round form, ten or twelve feet in compass, covered with mats of straw, wrought cun- ningly together, which save them from wind and rain".
At Tadoussac, on the St. Lawrence, in May, 1603, Champlain said that "their cabins are low and made like tents, being covered with the bark of the birch tree. The whole top for a space of about a foot, they leave uncovered, whence the light enters, and they make a num- ber of fires directly in the middle of the cabin, in which there are sometimes ten families at once". Again, he says,-"they are large, of a circular shape and covered with thatch made of grass or the husks of Indian corn".
In July, 1605, Champlain was at Cape Cod. Of the Indians at Nauset Harbor, he said,-"their wigwams are round and covered with heavy thatch made of reeds. In the middle of the roof there is an opening about a foot and a half wide, where the smoke passes out".
Lescarbot, searching along the coast, in 1606, for the city of Norumbega, complained that there were "only a few scattered wig- wams made of poles covered with the bark of trees and the skins of wild beasts".
Hudson came into New York Harbor in 1609. He "saw there a house, well constructed of oak bark and circular in shape, with an arched roof".
At Salem, in 1629, Francis Higginson said, "Their houses are very little and homely being made with small poles pricked into the ground and so bended and fastened at the tops. On the sides they are matted with boughs and covered on the roof with sedge and old mats".
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Father Le Jeune first arrived at Tadoussac on June 18, 1632, and "saw savages for the first time. Their cabins are made of poles, clumsily covered with bark, the top left uncovered for the purpose of letting in light and of leaving an opening for the smoke to go out".
In 1637, Thomas Morton said that "They gather poles in the woods and put the great end in the ground placing them in the form of a circle, bending the tops of them in form of an arch. They bind
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--
Wigwam of Connecticut Valley Indians
them together with the bark of walnut trees so that they make the same round on the top for the smoke of their fire to pass through. These they cover with mats, some made of reeds and some of long flags or sedge, finely sewed together with needles made of the splinter bones of a crane's leg, with threads made of their Indian hemp. The fire is always made in the middle of the house. When they are minded to remove, they carry away the mats with them; other materials the place adjoining will yield. They use not to winter and summer in one place, for that would be a reason to make fuel scarce but remove sometimes to their hunting places, where they remain for that season, and sometimes to their fishing places, where they abide for that season, and at the spring, when fish comes in plentifully, they have meetings from several places."
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WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS
Philip Vincent described the native wigwams in 1637, saying that "these huts or little houses are framed like our garden arbors, some- thing more round, very strong and handsome, covered with close- wrought mats, made by their women, of flags, rushes and hempen threads, so defensive that neither rain, though never so bad and long, nor yet the wind, though never so strong, can enter. The top, through a square hole, giveth passage to the smoke, which in rainy weather, is covered with a pluver".
Lechford, in 1642, said that "they live in wigwams or houses made of mats, like little huts, the fire in the midst".
In his Key Into the Language (1643) Roger Williams speaks of "the long poles, which men commonly get and fix and then the women cover the house with mats and line them with embroidered mats. The men make the poles and stakes, but the women make and set up, take down, order and carry the mats and household stuff." Williams also mentions birch bark and chestnut bark "which they dress finely and make a summer covering for their houses".
These were a nomadic people, living by their corn fields or fishing camps in the summer, retiring to the deep swamps during the winter. As Williams tells it: "From thick, warm valleys where they winter, they remove a little nearer to their summer fields when it is warm spring, then they remove to their fields where they plant corn. Some- times, having fields a mile or two, or many miles asunder, when the work of one field is over, they remove the house to the other. Some- times they remove to a hunting house in the end of the year, and for- sake it not until snow lie thick and then will travel home, men, women and children, through the snow, thirty, yea, fifty or sixty miles, but their great remove is from their summer fields to warm and thick wood bottoms where they winter. They are quick; in half a day; yea, sometimes at few hours warning to be gone and the house up elsewhere, especially if they have stakes ready pitched for their mats. I once, in travel, lodged at a house, at which in my return I had hoped to have lodged again there the next night, but the house was gone in the interim and I was glad to lodge under a tree".
In other words, it is evident that when the Indians abandoned a wigwam, they took away merely the covering, leaving the frame for possible future use, as the dismantled poles were of no value to them. Such custom survived and is common even today among primitive people. The ill-fated Hubbard-Wallace expedition across Labrador in 1903, when hoping against hope of finding the Nascaupee Indians, were frequently cheered by finding "a great many wigwam poles".
Gookin, in 1674, said that "their houses, or wigwams are built with small poles fixed in the ground, bent, and fastened together with barks of trees, oval or arborwise on the top. The best sort are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with the bark of trees, stripped when the sap is up. The meaner sort of wigwams are covered with mats they make of a kind of bullrush, which are tight and warm, but not so good as the former".
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William Byrd described the houses which he saw in Virginia, in 1728, as "close arbors made of saplings, arched at the top and covered so well with bark as to be proof against all weather. The fire is made in the middle".
A recapitulation of the many descriptions of the Algonkian wig- wams shows them to have been made of a framework of saplings more or less permanently set into the ground, such frame being covered with bark and removable mats or skins. They varied in size according to the needs of the family. Some were rectangular with arched roof, while others were circular, with domed roof. The fire was always in the center of the floor, the smoke usually passing out through a hole in the roof.
CHAPTER VIII Setting the Stage
"If we reture wor from our adventure. if the sea claims us. and Wis sandy foor. amid his Armida gardens, the silver- singing mermaiden wortel of thai wreckage which was once s tall ship and of those bomes which once were animate,-if strange islamis kmow our resting place, suwk for evermore in huge. colored there-set and most unkindly forests .- if. being but pains in a mighty gome. we are lesi or changed. happy. however, in that the white hand of our Queen hath touched us. giving thereby consecration to our else Wwworthiness .- if we find wo gold. mor take one ship of Spain. Mor umy cify fresswre-stored .- if we sufer a myriad of sorrows and at the last we perish miserably .- I drink to those who follow after .- I drink to those who fail .- pebbles cast into water whose ring still widemeth. reacheth God knows what ungwessable shore where loss muy yer be counted gaim. I drink to Fortune her minions. to Francis Drake and John Hawkins and Martin Frobisher: to all adventurers God their deeds in far-of seas. I drink to merry England and to the Gay when erery sea shall bring her tribute .- to England, like Aphro- dife. wew risen from the mais. Drink with me".
Sir Mortimer Ferne.
P RIOR to the discovery of America, the hardy mariners of England had driven their tiny ships to the commercial ports of the known world. From Africa they gathered gold and ivory. Furs. lumber. mercury, and such came from Russia and adjacent lands. Spices. perfumes. eloth-of-guld. carpets and other oriental fabrics were pro- vided by the Levant. For these were exchanged woven cloth. blankets. hats, shoes, stockings, copper kettles, needles, scissors, mirrors and other wares of British manufacture. Operations were financed by groups of private bankers who were known as adventurers because they ""ventured" their capital, or by wealthy individuals. It was a profitable business for all concerned. and from long experience the risks and perils of such expeditions and the average profit or loss to be expected could be readily estimated. As detailed reports came of the naked savages of the new lands in the West. a ready market for wearing apparel amongst the natives was envisaged. Richard
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SETTING THE STAGE
Hakluyt, acting as a one-man chamber of commerce, published count- less first-hand reports of the experiences of ship captains who had ventured to the New World. Then as now, England's prosperity depended on the importation of raw materials and the exportation of manufactured goods.
By the late sixteenth century, England had fallen on evil days. For generations she had led the world in the manufacture of stuffs woven from the wool grown by British farmers, but the spinners and weavers of the Low Countries across the North Sea had become so adept as to outstrip those of England and the British growers found it more profitable to have their fleeces processed by foreign hands than by their own home people. Many were thus thrown out of work which led to a general business depression that gradually spread throughout the British Isles.
As opportunities in America became apparent, influential people recommended for relief of the economic pressure, that unemployed workers be deported. It was proposed to send here the inmates of the orphan asylums, professional beggars and petty offenders from the jails. Self-appointed propagandists published enticing books on the subject. In 1582 Hakluyt's Divers Voyages came from the press, and his Principal Navigations in 1589. There was also his Discourse on Western Planting, colonizing being called "planting" in that era.
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