USA > Massachusetts > Barnstable County > Truro > Truro-Cape Cod; or, Land marks and sea marks > Part 3
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Says a late leading journal : "There is an accumulating passion for histories which promises to enrich the common life of the country."
The town of Truro has been settled at least two hundred years, and as a part of Eastham, since 1646. She has nourished and brought up more than ten thousand men and women who have made homes in the lengths and breadths of the land. She has fulfilled all the functions and privileges of a corporate and municipal town. She has been enterprising, loyal, and patriotic, under misfortunes and calamities unparalleled prob- ably in the history of the State.
In 1796 Rev. Dr. Freeman of King's Chapel, a native of Truro, and for many years Secretary of the Massachusetts Historical Society, wrote a short sketch of the town, which was published by the Society to which we shall refer. In 1861, Rev. Frederick Freeman, of Sandwich, published in two volumes a history of Cape Cod, and of the thirteen towns. This able and valuable work is a standard history of the Cape. Truro received a liberal share of attention, highly creditable to the author and the town.
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INTRODUCTION.
This is all that has been written, and comparatively little of the two hundred years could be touched only in a general manner. To unite the scattered records now growing dim, to gather the unrecorded history and tradition from a generation rapidly pressing to their graves, has been my purpose in these pages.
In the early ages the old bards extolled their heroes, till, ceasing to be men, they became gods and demi-gods. In the Middle Ages the wandering troubadour sang the valorous deeds of their fathers -
And Yarrow, as he flowed along, Bore burden of the minstrel song.
In our day we turn to the record. Tradition or history, whether fact or myth, if not recorded, is soon locked in the grave. Neither bard nor troubadour repeat the story. Facts stranger than fiction, and heroic deeds, and chivalrous man- hood, and brave women have passed away.
For reasons that possibly may appear as we proceed with our history, marked individuality and intense personality were prominent traits with the Cape people. The trend of mind flowed and quickened in these channels. There were men and women in every neighborhood who thought, and talked, and acted for themselves. Without a model, and without a master, unaffectedly and unconsciously, they were really strong characters. Shakespeare could have here found a moralizing Jacques, or a volatile Mercutio, with ready words in their mouths. For latitude of expression and quaint thought, Haw- thorne should have visited Truro. Sometimes he would have found Solomon, and sometimes -
Rabelais laughing in his easy-chair.
They were wiser than the ancients, and became quoted as authority. Linked with past generations and local history, they were a history in themselves. This peculiar phase and expression of character was not, as may first seem, accidental. but an evident outcome of certain conditions of birth and education.
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TRURO - CAPE COD.
De Tocqueville, in his Democracy of America, says : " Indi- vidualism is of democratic origin, and threatens to spread in the same ratio as equality of condition. Aristocracy makes a chain of all the members of the community, from the peasant to the king ; democracy breaks that chain, and severs every link of it. As social conditions become more equal, the num- ber of persons increases who, although they are neither rich nor powerful enough to exercise any great influence over their fellows, have nevertheless acquired or retained sufficient education and fortune to satisfy their own wants." Had the French statesman made a study of this people, he could not better have described them.
Fifty years ago, a short sail in the weekly packet, with the traditional " cap'n," set the visitor face to face with the Cape families. They lived happily and contentedly, and very much as had the generation who had preceded them. Here was rest, and peace, and comfort. A luxury, it sometimes may be, not to have the conveniences and modern improvements ; not to vibrate by the pendulum of society : to enjoy for a season blunt hospitality, homespun manners, old-fashioned freedom, and a mail once a week. In 1798 Provincetown petitioned the General Court " for a mail to come down the Cape," with- out specifying whether once a week or once a month. As railroads and other innovations have pushed in, bringing facil- ities, simplicity, and hearty good cheer, and old-fashioned good breeding, have pushed out, taking oceans of home comforts with them. Great improvements are great vandals to the peace of a quiet country home. The railroad and modern trunk are great levelers. Not a village or hamlet, in the mountains, or by the seashore, that has not been invaded and profaned by fashion and newspapers. Individuality and true independence shrink from commonplace uniformity. Long- cherished provincialisms and long-respected customs have been dethroned. Achilles is sleeping in his tent. In spite, however, of these facts and our prejudices, honesty compels the confession that this wide-awake, eagle-eyed spirit, this newspaper millennium, practically and commercially, has
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INTRODUCTION.
brought its equivalent in a new life. This I cannot deny how much the world is the gainer or loser thereby, is not my province to discuss.
While our history is principally the sayings and doings for two hundred years of a small Massachusetts coast-town, we claim it as representing the sterling manhood which has always made the common people the glory and crown of our Common- wealth.
" The great mass of mankind are, and always will be, the plain common people. They live by their daily toil, and are daily covered by the dust of the farm or shop, or the spray of the ocean. They have good common sense, and big warm hearts."
Few of the men of whom we write were known beyond the General Court, the town meeting, and the business callings of life. Neither rich or poor, learned or ignorant, high or low, they were just such men and women as seldom rise or fall to public notice, but patiently strive to be useful in their day and generation.
Inured early to the wholesome discipline of toil, they early assumed the responsibilities of life, and cheerfully bore its burdens. Dutiful children, a support and blessing to their parents, self-sacrificing and faithful to their families, kind and obliging to their neighbors, industrious, enterprising and religious, they were prized in life, sincerely mourned for in death, and left the world better for having been born.
Men of broader influence it would not be difficult to find ; but in the direct obligations of society, growing out of home, neighbors, friends, Church, and State, I have yet to find a higher average of model citizenship.
For nearly one hundred and fifty years there were no very important changes in the customs, employments, education, and condition of the people. Many times war checked their enterprise, destroyed their capital, and ruined their business : they as often rallied, multiplied in numbers, and increased in substance.
Many times appalling misfortunes overwhelmed them. The ocean swallowed the young men, and the mourners went
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TRURO-CAPE COD.
about the streets. But still fathers and sons launched away, braving the elements, and returned laden with ocean spoils. They lived, as the records show, in great peace among them- selves ; and had there not been a jail in the land, they would have been no better or worse.
Educated in schools they were only to a moderate extent ; but according to the theory of a late writer, that "modern education is a beginning of many things, and it is little more than a beginning," they had a good start.
It was the boast of Earl Douglas to St. Bothan, that, -
Son of mine, Save Gawain, ne'er could pen a line.
What shall we say of those other sons of Douglas, ignorant of letters, but describing a broad realm of trained capacities ?
Alcibiades only learned his letters, to play on the cithera, and to wrestle. These made up his education. Said Socrates, his teacher, in carefully enumerating these accomplishments : " I also pretty accurately know what thou hast learned; thou wilt tell me if anything has escaped me."
This man is described as one of the most celebrated Athenians of ancient Greece. As living in the most refined and intellectual society, himself mentally and bodily the per- fect type of his splendid race. An eloquent and powerful speaker, and a most capable commander by sea and land. On the other hand, as illustrating the boundaries of education, Sir Walter Scott has been spoken of as a half-educated man, because he was not a master of the language of Alcibiades.
These differences, however, are only apparent ; they are not the true pole : there is no antagonism. Our tangent makes the false dip. The standard of education is not too high or too broad ; the work is higher and broader, and indirectly points to the college of the future.
The schoolhouse does a part, but outside the schoolhouse, be it the academy or the university, multitudes are laying down fresh trophies in the domains of science and discovery.
The men of this community were educated in the school of experience. Their course of study was the practicable and
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INTRODUCTION.
the possible things of life. This is a school of self-support and self-respect ; of individuality ; how best to accomplish a given purpose with given means.
This education gives educated faculties and educated judg- ment, always in demand. To this practical trait of the Eng- lish mind the world is undoubtedly indebted for the strong guarantees of constitutional rights, civil and political. Lord Bacon seems to suggest this thought in that splendid passage on learning, concluding, "That it will make learned men wise in the use and administration of learning."
Much has been said of the barrenness of Cape Cod. The accidental fact, to an individual or a community, of being cast where the crust of our planet is a few feet or a few inches thick, whether of sand or clay, shingle or shale, should not discriminate unduly to their praise or censure. The laws of physical geography, however, reveal the fact that these accidental causes have an overruling agency in the develop- ment of mankind. From certain climate and soil, we may as surely expect a certain crop of men, as of corn or potatoes. Fine soil is not a sure indication of a fine crop of men. The rugged places of the world ever produce a rugged race of men, with strong physical and mental organic forces.
The sandy dunes and strands of Cape Cod are not suggest- ive of high-standing corn-fields, or rich-rolling meadows. If her crop of men is no better, there need be little said. Stran- gers and visitors, in describing the nakedness of the land, sometimes indulge their fancy by comparing the poverty of the soil with the homes of the people. They wonder for the hundredth time, what kind of people live in such a sandy place, how they live, and what they do, and why they live there, when there are so many other places in the world ? I trust an answer will be found to these questions in the careful perusal of these pages.
That so many generations have lived and reasonably fulfilled the duties and obligations of citizenship, and contributed some- thing to the outside world, disarms all criticism, or changes it to compliment.
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TRURO -CAPE COD.
It is not my province to magnify their virtues, but to write their history. " The historian should not appear an advocate." If it shall appear that they have run well in the race of life, and are entitled to an honest reward, I shall feel an honest pride in that verdict. But I am not anchored alone to that verdict.
If in these pages the memory of the dead shall be honored ; if pleasant memories shall come to those who have fough hard on the field of life, and are resting in serene old age ; and if the young shall take new courage for a noble manhood and womanhood, re-consecrating their native soil, then I shall be content. Then we may all say :-
Our land, our land, our fatherland, O land of precious worth ! There's not a height by breezes fanned, There's not a dale, there's not a strand More loved than that that gave us birth,- Than our dear fatherland.
CHAPTER II.
THE NATIVE AMERICAN.
Elizabeth's Court. National Niche. Greek Mythology. Common Structure. The dumb Nations. Test of Civilization. Nature and Religion. Pliny. Roger Wil- liams. Liquid Language. Courage. Canonicus the Brave. The Challenge. The Pequots. Judge Potter. The Paomets. Cape Tribes. Nine Kings. A lusty Pamet. Capt. Standish and Winterwemet. Capt. Richard Bourne. Praying Indi- ans. The simple League. The young "Injuns." Indian Trinity. Indian Nobility. Indian Poetry. Indian Pictures. Indian Graves.
W HEN Queen Elizabeth's court was most brilliant with the learning and splendor of Europe, a white foot had scarcely pressed these shores. Contemporary with this grand English age, a strange, wonderful, and almost unknown race were living where now stand the queenly cities and towns of America. From the savage barbarism of the American Indian to our present enlightenment, a greater contrast has never existed. The Indian has become a prominent figure in American history.
Not a small portion of our great libraries are devoted to their mysterious origin, and their rightful place in the scale of nations. While they approximate almost every ancient nation, they touch none. Some of the Western tribes had a tradition of great warriors or braves sleeping in the great mounds ; as the Greeks kept alive for centuries, wheremurdered Agamem- non had been entombed. The burial customs and ceremonies of some of the tribes are almost identical with the Greek. They have stories exactly corresponding with Hercules going down to the dark realms of Pluto and forcing the gods to release Theseus ; but the Indian Pluto had a war-club instead of Cer-
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berus. The doctrine of transmigration of souls agrees with Py- thagoras', brought over to Greece from the priests of Thebes.
They had traditions, or broken relations, of one who walked on the sea and wrought mighty miracles, plainly indicating some knowledge of Christ the Lord. In some respects they resemble the Jews, in some the Hindoo, the Tartar, and the Malay races.
It is an accepted principle that, although there may not be a word in common in the one thousand six hundred and twenty-four dialects among the tribes from the Straits of Magellan to the Arctic Ocean, yet a common structure is anal- ogous to them all ; and that this structure is identical with the Tauranian nations of Northern Europe and Asia, as the Lapps, Finns, and Tartars. These all fall into the Malay race, to which the indigenous American is now, I think, generally admitted.
These hyperborean tribes must have reached Greenland by the west, and America proper by Asia across the Behring's Straits. The Esquimaux tribes in Greenland living in the sterile lati- tudes from seventy to eighty degrees, have the same physical characteristics as their probable ancestors ; while the tall, straight tribes of the continent show as plainly their Tartar extraction. The American Indian, whatever his original history, is fast fading from the family of man. By a law as fixed as fate, his end is sealed. But they have written themselves imperishably upon our history, and are interwoven in the fabric of our national life. We have wisely adopted many of their proper names, which glide gracefully into and enrich the English tongue. More than half of our States, rivers, great lakes, and grand mountain ranges, will perpetuate their musi- cal language as long as the language endures.
Scholarly antiquarians and archæologists, by heroic sacri- fices and consuming labor, have brought to light things of old. The crude hieroglyphics of the Pharaohs, and the long-buried cities of Pompeii and Mycena have found a tongue, but the Indian remains dumb as the everlasting hills. The history of men who piled the great earth-mounds of the West, who built the subterranean cities of Central America ere Rome
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THE NATIVE AMERICAN.
was founded, and offered thousands of human beings at a single sacrifice in the great temples of the Sun, before Abel brought the firstlings of his flock, who shall tell ?
The Indians never possessed the art of bread-making. Food and clothing are a standard of civilization. The only animal that cooks his food and wears clothing, is man. When we find a man that does not cook his food and wear clothing, we say he is a savage or a barbarian.
As the wants of mankind are developed by artificial appli- ances, so he rises in the scale of civilization. This is edu- cation. This development brings more definite conceptions of the future life, and opens up a wider field of speculation, but does not increase worshipful faculties. Religious belief and religious worship in some form, is the normal and uni- versal outflow of human nature. No nation or people has been discovered so rude or degraded as to reject a God, or gods, and a spirit world, with existence in some conditions.
That this spontaneous belief, this out-reaching of humanity towards the spiritual, is a proof, or an argument of the fact, seems analagous. Nature is neither niggard or prodigal of her resources.
She decks herself in lovely and varied tints to please the eye, exhales sweet fragrance to please the sense, and creates harmony to please the ear ; and because there is an eye, a sense of smell, and an ear to be pleased.
She has created in the mother love toward her offspring. If there be a failure of these instinctive duties, we say, a monster! because love is God-given. Man has been created with a nature grasping for God and immortality. If he dies like a beast, goes out like the snuff of a candle, then natural law is a mockery and a lie. Then " lo the poor Indian," who-
Sees God in trees, and hears him in the wind,
had been badly cheated before the Pale Faces crossed the great waters. For want of this faith, or rather because rejected, the heathen Pliny exclaimed, " Man's nature is a lie !"
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TRURO-CAPE COD.
Roger Williams spent a generation among the Indians. As a faithful minister of Jesus Christ, he sought their spiritual and temporal good.
He says : "I believe they are lost ;" but as an apology for his theology, his great heart of Christian charity reveals the moral grandeur of Roger Williams as he concludes the sentence : "and yet I hope, in the Lord's holy season, some of the wildest of them shall be found to share in the blood of the Son of God. I know not with how little knowledge and grace of Christ the Lord may save, and therefore will neither despair nor report much."
This sentiment was two hundred years in advance of his age. The Poet-laureate revives the same chord : -
Oh 1 yet we trust that somehow, good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will, Defects of doubt and taints of blood.
The Indian language is no less a puzzle than their origin. Instead of crude monosyllabic sounds, they have long, ryth- mic words, exuberant with poetic imagery. Their proper names, and their relentless wars and courage, would make a tragic poem.
Massassoit and Canonicus, Tecumseh and Pocohontas, sound as heroic as Homer, Achilles and Ulysses, Hector and Helen ; while Ohio and Alabama, Saratoga and Monongahela, are no less liquid than Argos and Attica, Olympus and Mycena. The Indian could count hundreds of miles between his battle- fields, where the Greeks could count leagues.
In courage, the world has never seen a higher order. " I like it well that I shall die before my heart grows soft, or that I shall have said anything unworthy of myself," said the brave Canonicus, spurning the offer of liberty if he would betray his tribe.
The brightest pages of Grecian or Roman history narrate nothing more heroic or grand. It was the same chief who sent Miles Standish a bundle of arrows tied with a snake- skin. The doughty captain, not to be outdone by a savage,
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THE NATIVE AMERICAN.
kept the arrows, but returned the snake-skin stuffed with powder and shot.
" Your governor is only a subject of King Charles ; I shall treat only with the king, my brother. When Charles of Eng- land comes I am ready," was King Philip's reply to the. governor's messenger.
The cruelty of the Indians was for real or imaginary
RETURNING THE SNAKE-SKIN.
wrongs. It was their boast that they scalped only their ene- mies. History regards the Pequots as the most bloodthirsty tribe in New England ; but as fair a man as Governor Win- throp said, "The Pequots had done Massachusetts no harm." Judge Potter charges the English with being responsible for the Pequot War. But the judge fans his indignation on the Puritans, to better defend the Quakers whom history has nobly honored.
Comparatively little is known about the Pamets; but it
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becomes our history not to pass unnoticed the original inherit ors of our homes. They lived in the same sunny valleys ; the smoke of their wigwams curled in the same sky ; they drank from the same springs ; they planted their corn, beans and pumpkins in the same fields, fished in the same waters, and were buried in the same mother earth. It is doubtful if they were ever as populous in the country as has been generally believed. The Indians knew nothing of cal- culating numbers. They discoursed in figurative language, and were inclined to cultivate the wonderful. A few score of warriors were more than the leaves of the forest or the fish in the sea.
It is not possible to make a complete connection of the Cape tribes with the Wampanoags or Pawkunnawkutts, which embraced them, and of whom Massassoit was king. History is conflicting touching the jurisdiction and authority of the great sachem, and exceedingly vague as to the fealty of the petty chiefs.
Comparing the best authority, I believe the Cape tribes, and those of the Vineyard Islands, were nearly independent, as they were generally harmonious and in sympathy on all important interests. It is well known that they refused to fight with King Philip, and were faithful allies of the English during that terrible war, although Massassoit, his father, claimed to own all of Cape Cod.
Gookin says, " The Pawkunnawkutts were a potent nation in former times, and could raise, as the most creditable and ancient Indian affirms, about three thousand men."
Great numbers of them perished by a fearful epidemic, or an " unwonted plague," a few years before the Pilgrims came. In Plymouth and vicinity all had died, thus leaving their lands ready for the new planters. This was accepted as a divine interference. In King James' Charter, November 3, 1626, he refers to this mortality: " Also that we have been further given certainly to know, that within these late years, there hath by God's visitation reigned a wonderful plague."
The principal Cape tribes were the Cammaquids, Nausets and Pamets, or Payomets. Iyanough was the courtly, gen-
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THE NATIVE AMERICAN.
erous, but unfortunate sachem of the Cammaquids. For him was named the beautiful village of Hyannis, sitting like a gem on the southern coast of the Cape.
The Nausets, a quite powerful people with Aspenet as chief, occupied Eastham and the neighboring towns. It is to be regretted that a name so significant should have been laid aside for Eastham, and again neglected to patronize the French Court, when Orleans was incorporated. The late David Snow honored one of his largest ships with this name, and a majestic figurehead of the proud chieftain, which she bore to all climes.
The Payomets owned all north of the Nausets. They were a considerable tribe, and the first of whom we have a his- torical record. That they were greatly reduced when the Pilgrims landed, is evidenced by the deserted wigwams and numerous graves which they found.
Some years after this time Mr. Gookin writes: "The next tribe of importance were the Pamets, whose possessions were the Cape, below Nauset, with their principal settlements at Pamet and Meshaum.
The first landing of Gosnold was on Cape Cod, in 1602, and must from his description have been among the Pamets. "When a young Indian with plates of copper hanging in his ears, and with a bow and arrow in his hand, came to him in a friendly manner, offered his services -. " This is the first notice that I have found of any writer of a Cape Indian, and it is worthy of notice that he came in a friendly manner.
Captain John Smith coasted the Cape, and often landed there before the great pestilence. He says, "On the Cape doth inhabit the people of Pawmet."
Mr. Winslow, in narrating an excursion by Captain Stan- dish to the Cape after corn in March, 1621, says : " There was a lusty Indian of Pawmet, or Cape Cod, there present, who had ever demeaned himself well towards us, being in his gen- eral carriage very affable, courteous, and loving, especially towards the captain.
" This savage was now entered into confederacy with the rest, yet to avoid suspicion, made many signs of his continued
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