USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester county; a narrative history, Volume I > Part 3
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But when King Philip, sachem of the Poconokets, sought the alliance of the Nipmucks, only the Praying Indians, and by no means all of these, failed to answer his call. They were on the warpath while many of his own people were still vacillating between him and the English. Only a few weeks elapsed after the attack on the settlers at Swansea in Rhode Island before the Nip- mucks descended upon the settlement at Mendon. Theirs was the first act of real war. The Swansea killings were little more than the murder of next door neighbors. The Nipmuck warriors proved themselves as skillful and
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brave, as treacherous and ruthless and cruel, as the best of the Narragansetts and Poconokets.
Nipmuck Tribes and Their Villages-The Nipmuck country extended from Natick to the easterly parts of what are now the counties of Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin, and from north of Mt. Wachusett to Woodstock, then a part of Massachusetts, now over the line in Connecticut. The Nip- mucks had a number of branches, each named for the locality it inhabited. There were the Nashways of Lancaster, and the Washacums of Sterling; the Wachusetts of the region of the mountain; the Pegans of Dudley, and the Quaboags of the Brookfields. But a great part of the tribe, occupying the principal portion of what is now central and southern Worcester County, and were actually "Pond Indians," had no other name than Nipmuck. At the time of the settlement of Plymouth it is estimated that in all Massachu- setts there were no more than 10,000 natives. The Indian population of Worcester County must have been relatively meager. Not many years later, when Eliot was working among the Indians, the number was set at 1, 150.
There were villages in Worcester, at Lake Quinsigamond and on Tat- nuck and Pakachoag Hills; in Grafton; in Dudley, on the shore of Lake Chaubungungamaug; on the Sudbury, in Marlboro, which included the lands of the present towns of Westboro, Southboro, and Northboro; on the Quaboag in Brookfield ; at Tantiusque in Sturbridge; on the Nashua River in Lancaster; on Lake Washacum in Sterling; at Wachusett, in Princeton ; at Nichewaug, on the Swift River; in Petersham on the Ware River in New Braintree, in Oxford, and Uxbridge on the Blackstone. Doubtless, from time to time, the Nipmucks pitched their wigwams elsewhere.
The Indians of New England lived a simple and improvident life. Their tribal territories probably had no sharply defined boundaries so far as hunt- ing grounds were concerned, but the tribes usually respected one another's rights of domain. Each territory had certain characteristics-ample hunting grounds, arable lands for the crops, groves of chestnut, oak and walnut, which were carefully guarded in the burning of the forests, and good fish- ing grounds on lake or stream.
Friendly tribes held certain fishing places as common property, particu- larly the river-sides, at the foot of falls of the larger rivers, where they gathered in great numbers for the annual run of salmon and shad, and at certain camp-sites on the smaller streams up which alewives ran in the spring of the year. Immense numbers of fish were taken from the rivers. As the salmon or shad ascended the stream they were caught in scoop-nets and with spears and shot with arrows. As they descended on their way back from their spawning grounds to the sea, they were caught with the aid of rudely
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constructed weirs, which consisted of rude stone walls built out from the opposite banks, pointing down stream and nearly but not quite meeting. At this narrow opening was set a large trap of stout twigs fastened to hoops by withes of young elm or other tough bark. In this manner, great quan- tities of fish were caught. The Indians, old and young, gorged themselves with the bounteous food and held high festival with dances and general jol- lity. Until the white man came, it must be remembered, there was no drunken revelling, for the Indians knew no other drink than water. The surplus fish were cured by smoking, for want of salt, and carried back to the villages for storage.
In locating a village site certain requisites were demanded-a conven- iently situated fishing place, on a river or not far from the outlet of a pond ; large fields for planting; a level spot spacious enough to provide room for the wigwams and "long-houses," and also for the holding of the frequent councils and festivals and dances, and for the incantations, of the pow-wows, in which they invoked the spirits to help them in whatever emergency had arisen ; and finally, strategic advantages over an attacking enemy. Certain of the villages were fortified with palisades, perhaps not all the time, but when there were strained relations with another tribe.
Podunk has a certain quality of sound to the modern ear that lends itself to jest. But no word in the Indian language is less deserving of merriment. Podunk was "the place of burning," where captives were given over to tor- ture. The village of Quaboag in Brookfield had this grim convenience, and others in the Nipmuck country were no doubt equally well equipped for giv- ing their prisoners the opportunity to display stoic courage.
Manners of Indian Living-The wigwam had for its framework poles or branches set in a circle and made to converge at the top and there tied together. To this structure was fastened a covering of mats or bark, leav- ing a small opening at the top to serve as chimney for the escape of smoke from the fire beneath in the center of the earthen floor. The better sort of wigwam had also lining of mats, or, in winter, of furs. A mat or skin, arranged to drop over a small opening in the side of the wigwam, served as a door, of which ordinarily there were two on opposite sides, so that one was always for the time being to the windward and could be kept closed.
Some of the villages had "long-houses" or lodges, stoutly built of poles and withes, and with weather-proof roofs of bark or rush mats. Gookin, writing in 1674, tells us that the smallest of these were twenty feet long, and others were forty feet, and he had seen them even a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad. In them the Indians developed a technique similar to that of the portable house of today, for sometimes they built their lodges
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in removable slab-like sections. They stripped off great sections of the bark of trees when the sap was running and it was soft and pliable, and pressed together a number of them under heavy weights, such as a tree-trunk or rock. Then the slabs were set each in its place in the wall and there per- mitted to dry. When they were removed they retained their form. By this means, with a minimum of labor, a "long-house" could be taken down and set up again elsewhere.
In cold weather the lodges had more than one fire, the number depending upon the size of the structure, so that all the occupants would be kept com- fortable. Each fire had its opening in the roof above it. On the roof, close to each hole, was suspended a small mat, which was manipulated from within by a cord. When the smoke beat down this windscreen was turned to the windward side, and the nuisance was abated. The walls of the lodges were hung with mats or skins, as in the wigwams, and the entrances were sim- ilarly closed. "I have often lodged in their wigwams," wrote Gookin, "and found them as warm as the best English houses."
In sleeping the Indians made use of a kind of "couch or mattress, firm and strong, raised about a foot from the ground; first covered with boards which they split out of trees; and upon the boards they spread mats gen- erally, and sometimes bear skins and deer skins. These were large enough for three or four persons to lodge; and one might draw either nearer or keep at a more distance from the fire, as they pleased, for their mattresses were six to eight feet broad."
These were the apartment houses of the Indians, for in them lived, per- haps, several distinct families, or the ramifications of one family. Eliot did not approve of them, and preached against them, particularly as he tried to stamp out the common practice of polygamy.
Of greatest importance in the Nipmuck village were the "barns," in which the squaws stored their dried corn and peas and smoked fish, and probably smoked meats, likewise. These were circular excavations in the ground, commonly in the sloping side of a knoll or bank, to secure dryness by good drainage. The smaller "barns" were from three to five feet in diameter, and of an equal depth. The larger were from ten to fifteen feet in diameter by five to ten feet deep. In digging, the sides were left slightly converging, and in tenaceous soil were not likely to cave in. Where the soil was sandy the sides were lined with a coating of clay mortar, which was hardened by fire. Clay, thus treated by the Indians and used in their "barns," is sometimes found unbroken, even at this late day. When filled, the pits were covered with poles and long grass, brush and sod, and thus made weatherproof. They were placed close together, in order that they might
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be encircled by a palisade, which was made strong enough to keep out bears, wolves, and other wild marauders.
The clothing of the male Indians in the summer was nothing more than a piece of skin, like an apron around the waist, in winter a bearskin or robe made of the skins of smaller animals. One old writer said: "Their coats are made of divers sorts of skins, whence they have their deer-skin coats, their beaver coats, their raccoon coats and their squirrel coats. Within this coat of skin they sleep very contentedly by day or night, in the house or in the woods. They also have the skin of a great beast called moose, as big as an ox, which some call a red deer, which they commonly paint for their summer wearing with a variety of forms and colors."
Of the women, head, arms and legs were uncovered. A mat or a skin, neatly prepared, tied over the shoulders and fastened to the waist by a girdle, extended from the neck to the knees. The summer garments of moose and deer-skin were painted in many colors, and they had mantles fash- ioned of the most brilliant feathers of the wild turkey, fastened by threads of wild hemp or nettle. These were made by the old men as well as by the women. The Nipmuck Indians carried their art beyond their raiment. Some of their earthenware was decorated, particularly around the brim, with char- acteristic handsome designs in color.
Upon the feet men and women alike wore moccasins of finely cured deer-skin. In winter their snowshoes made it possible to hunt the deer and moose in their "yards," no matter how deep the snow might lie.
The Nipmuck hunted the bear and deer and moose with bow and arrow, and, of course, after the English came and they had secured firearms, with powder and bullet. They also trapped the larger animals in pits. They were past masters in the art of snaring the smaller animals and the game- birds. The flesh of wild creatures was, naturally, a very important part of their diet.
They were husbandmen, also. They cleared and cultivated spacious fields, where their corn and beans, squash and pumpkins throve in rich, virgin soil. Corn to them was as much the staff of life as bread is to man today. As the ears came into milk they were boiled or roasted, and eaten as we eat our corn on the cob. Dried, it was pounded with a stone pestle in a stone or wooden mortar into a meal. Or it was hulled or cracked into hom- iny, in stone or earthen kettles, or boiled with beans as succotash. Parched corn was the mainstay of the hunter in the forest or the brave on the war- path. With a supply of it in a basket or pouch on his back or in his girdle, he had but to seize his bow or gun, his quiver of arrows or powder-horn and bullet pouch, his tomahawk and scalping knife, and he was ready for
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action. Their meat they roasted in the embers or on spits before the fire, or boiled or broiled over the coals.
But we have only suggested the general diet of the Nipmuck Indians. In reality they had a considerable variety of foods. The wild bees gave them ample stores of honey. Generations before the whites came they had learned how to draw the sap from the maple and boil it down into syrup or sugar. Gookin, who must have known their cooking well, wrote of it: "Their food is generally boiled maize or Indian corn, mixed with kidney beans, or sometimes without. Also they frequently boil in this potage fish and flesh of all sorts, either new taken or dried, as shad, eels, alewives or a sort of herring, or any other sort of fish. Also they boil in this furmenty all sorts of flesh; as venizen, beaver, bear's flesh, moose, otter, rackoon, or any kind that they take in hunting; cutting this flesh into small pieces, and boil- ing it as aforesaid.
"Also they mix with the said potage several sorts of roots; as Jerusalem artichokes, and ground-nuts, and other roots, and pompions (pumpkins) and squashes, and also several sorts of nuts and masts, as oak acorns, chestnuts, walnuts, these husked and dried and powdered, they thicken their potage therewith. With this meal they make bread, baking it in the ashes, covering the dough with leaves. Sometimes they make of their meal a small sort of cakes, and boil them.
"They also make a certain sort of meal of parched maize. This meal they call nokake. It is so sweet, toothsome and hearty, that an Indian will travel many days with no other food but this meal, which he eateth as he needs, and after it to drinketh water. And for their need, when they travel a journey, or go a hunting, they carry this nokake in a basket or bag, for their use." It is conjectured that these "journey cakes," as they came to be called, were the original Johnnycake, the later name being a corruption of the former.
But the Indians were fearfully improvident. When there was plenty, they devoured food with no thought for the morrow, and, worse than that, no thought for the winter. Among the Nipmucks, early summer, too, was often a time of scarcity, and they were compelled to depend upon small game, little fish, fresh water clams, crawfish, ground-nuts, greens and berries. George Bancroft pictures "troops of girls with baskets of bark gathering the fragrant wild strawberry, and the blueberry and blackberry and raspberry."
The Indian's dishes and spoons and ladles were fashioned of a wood which had no tendency to split, and were of excellent craftsmanship and finish. Their kettles of earthenware were frail affairs, and they were quick to trade for the iron and copper utensils of the English. Their pails
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with which to carry water were made of birch bark, artfully folded up with four corners to which were caught a handle. According to Gookin's descrip- tion, some of these would hold two or three gallons, and one could be made in an hour's time.
From the same bark they made baskets great and small, some holding three or four bushels, and so downward to a pint. In these they kept their provisions, and they were, of course, indispensable. Other baskets were made of rushes, or splinths, corn husks, a wild hemp and a kind of silk grass. "Many of them were very neat and artificial, with the portraitures of birds, beasts, fishes and flowers."
The money of the Indians was wampumpeage, which was made from the shell of the quahaug clam, both white and purple parts being used for the purpose. It was fashioned into button-like pieces about a sixteenth of an inch thick and a quarter of an inch in diameter, with a hole in the center for stringing on a cord of bark or hemp. The purple and white pieces alternated on the string, and the purple was considered to have twice the value of the white. Until the white settlement, very little of it entered into the dealing of the inland tribes, however, for they were far removed from the source of raw material. Their trade was confined to barter. The English fixed a value on it of five shillings a fathom or six feet. After it ceased to have use as money, it was still valued highly by the natives in adorning their persons.
Our Indians had a deep knowledge of the medicinal values of the roots and barks, and seeds and leaves of the vegetable life about them. Their medicine men, whom they called pow-wows, were credited even by the Eng- lish with having considerable skill in the treatment of the sick and injured. They certainly contributed notably to the sum total of European medicinal knowledge of the day. As with all primitive people, the pow-wows claimed for themselves supernatural powers, and accompanied their ministrations with grotesque ceremony and incantation. They played prominent parts in some of the festivals, such as those of the corn and the fishing, and had still more important rôles in times of trouble and stress, when their duty was to drive away or propitiate malignant or angry spirits. Naturally, they convinced the English that they were boon companions of the devil and all his minions. Daniel Gookin voices the general attitude of the Puritans, in the following paragraph :
"There are among them certain men and women whom they call powows. These are partly wizards and witches, holding familiarity with Satan, that evil one; and partly are physicians and make use, at least in show, of herbs and roots, for curing the sick and diseased. They are sent for by the sick and wounded, and by their diabolical spells, mutterings and exorcisms, they
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seem to do wonders. Sometimes broken bones have been set, wounds healed, sick recovered; but together with these there sometimes are external appli- cations of herbs, roots, splinters, and binding up the wound. These pow- ows are reputed, and I conceive justly, to hold familiarity with the devil; and therefore are by the English laws prohibited from exercising their spells within the white settlements, under penalty of heavy fine."
Family Life of the Nipmucks-The Indians loved their children dearly and treated them kindly. Father and mother alike were very close to their offspring. Bancroft describes this relationship, thus :
"The squaw loved her child with instinctive passion; and if she did not manifest it by lively caresses, her tenderness was real, wakeful and constant. No savage mother ever trusted her babe to a hireling nurse. To the cradle, consisting of thin pieces of light wood, and gayly ornamented with quills of the porcupine, and beads, and rattles, the nursling was firmly attached, and carefully wrapped in furs; and the infant, thus swathed, its back at its mother's back, was borne as the topmost burden,-its dark eyes now gleefully flashing light, now accompanying with tears the wailings which the plaintive melodies of the carrier cannot hush. Or, while the squaw toils in the field, she hung her child, as spring does its blossoms, on the boughs of a tree, that it might be rocked by the breezes from the land of souls, and soothed to sleep by the lullaby of the birds. Did the mother die, the nursling-such is Indian compassion-shared her grave."
"On quitting the cradle, the children were left nearly naked in the wig- wam to grow hardy, and learn the use of their limbs. Juvenile sports are the same everywhere; children invent them for themselves. There was no domestic government ; the young did as they would. They were never ear- nestly reproved, injured or beaten; a dash of cold water in the face was the heaviest punishment. If they assisted in the labors of the household, it was as a pastime, not as a charge. Yet they showed respect to their chiefs, and deferred with docility to those of their wigwam.
"The attachment of savages to their offspring was extreme; and they could not bear separation from them. Hence every attempt at founding schools for their children was a failure. A missionary would gather a little flock about him, and of a sudden, writes Le Jeune, 'my birds flew away.' From their insufficient and irregular supplies of clothing and food, they learned to endure hunger and rigorous seasons; of themselves they became fleet of foot, and skillful in swimming; their courage was nursed by tales respecting their ancestors, till they burned with a love of glory to be acquired by valor and address. So soon as the child could grasp the bow and arrow, they were in his hand; and, as there was joy in the wigwam at his birth, and
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his first cutting of a tooth, so a festival was kept for his earliest success in the chase."
The warriors held themselves above most manual labor. At home they did little but sit around with crossed arms, or engage in gambling games, or meet in council, of which they were very fond, or sing and play, and eat and sleep. Their greatest toil was to build the palisades of the fort, or fashion a canoe, or prepare for the hunt or war, perhaps to repair the wigwams, and always to adorn their persons.
Woman was the laborer. She cultivated the fields, with clamshell or wooden mattock. She planted the corn and beans and squash, guarded the growing crops against birds and beasts and gathered the harvest. She pounded the corn, dried the meat and fish, prepared winter stores of dried fruits, chopped and carried the wood, drew the water from the brook or pond, and prepared the meals. Her husband constructed the framework of the canoe, and she stitched the bark of elm or birch with slit ligaments of the pine root, and seared the seams with resinous gum. The man prepared and placed the poles of the wigwam, the squad completed it, and on the march she bore it on her shoulders.
The hospitality of the Indian was rarely withheld, wrote Bancroft. The stranger entered his wigwam by day or night, without asking leave, and was entertained "as freely as a thrush or a blackbird that regales himself on the luxuries of the fruitful grove." He would give up his own bed to his guest. Nor was the visitor questioned as to the purpose of his coming. He chose his own time to deliver his message. Festivals, too, were common, at some of which it was the rule to eat everything that was offered ; and the indulgence of appetite surpassed belief. "But what could be more miserable than the tribes in the depth of winter-suffering from the annual famine; driven by the intense cold to sit indolently in the smoke round the fire in the cabin, and so fast for days together ; and then, again, compelled by faintness for want of sustainance, to reel into the woods, and gather moss or bark for a thin concoction that might, at least, relieve the extremity of hunger?"
The Case for the Indians-As we recall the attacks upon the unpro- tected little settlements of the Nipmuck wilderness, we think of the Indians only as cruel, bloodthirsty human devils, just as the good Puritans thought of them. In their warfare on the English of New England, they slaughtered the men and many of the women and children. They tortured prisoners, scalped the victims of their war-lust. They carried helpless women and chil- dren into captivity. The case against them as barbarians, is a strong one.
But, for a moment, consider the pious Puritans. They sold hundreds of Indians into alien slavery. At the Great Swamp fight in Rhode Island, in 1675, they gave no quarter to the Narragansett warriors and burned alive
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hundreds of the women and children and aged in their wigwams. They did not scalp their dead enemies, but they paid well for scalps and for heads, as well.
Hannah Dustin and her woman companion and Samuel Leonard, a Wor- cester boy, received four times as much money from the Massachusetts Gen- eral Court for the scalps of the ten Indians they tomahawked in making their escape, as was paid the Sachem for all the land, and more, occupied by the city of Worcester. In King Philip's War, Colonial commanders, at the request of their Mohegan allies, delivered to them a captive Narragansett warrior, that they might put him to the torture. This they did, because according to Rev. William Hubbard, in his contemporaneous narrative, "The English, though not delighted in blood, yet at this time were not unwilling to gratify their humor, lest by denial they might disoblige their Indian friends ; partly also that they might have an occular demonstration of the savage cruelty of these heathen." So the band of Englishmen looked on, but not unmoved. says this ancient chronicler, for "such barbarous and unheard-of cruelty they were unable to bear, it forcing tears from their eyes." Yet they let the fiendish work proceed to the death. Moreover, in comparing customs of the two races, there were men in the American colonies in that day who had endured the refined and terrible torments of the English torture chamber, with the inquisitor sitting at their side. And one cannot forget the octo- genarian Giles Corey, one of the twenty "witches," who died at Salem, who was pressed to death under a great stone.
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