The history of Maryland : from its first settlement, in 1633, to the restoration, in 1660 ; with a copious introduction, and notes and illustrations, Part 12

Author: Bozman, John Leeds, 1757-1823
Publication date: 1837
Publisher: Baltimore : J. Lucas & E.K. Deaver
Number of Pages: 1062

USA > Maryland > The history of Maryland : from its first settlement, in 1633, to the restoration, in 1660 ; with a copious introduction, and notes and illustrations > Part 12

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# Smith has thus explained this term-" This word, Werowance, which we call and construe for a king, is a common word, whereby they call all command- ers ; for they have but few words in their language, and but few occasions to use any officers more than one commander, which commonly they call Wero- wance or Caucoronse, which is captaine."-Smith's Hist. vol. 1, p. 143.

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spake the language of Powhatan, wherein they made such de- SEC. VII. scriptions of the bay, isles, and rivers, that often did us exceed- 1608. ing pleasure. Passing along the coast, searching every inlet and bay, fit for harbours and habitations. Seeing many isles in the midst of the bay we bore up for them, but ere we could ob- taine them, such an extreame gust of wind, rayne, thunder, and lightening happened, that with great danger we escaped the unmerciful raging of that ocean-like water. The highest land on the mayne, yet it was but low, we called Keale's hill,* and these uninhabited isles, Russell's isles.t The next day, searching them for fresh water, we could find none; the defect whereof forced us to follow the next eastern channel, which brought us to the river of Wighcocomico .¿ The people at first with great fury

* From Smith's location of this " hill" on his map, it must have been some high land or rising ground on the bay-coast of Northampton county ; perhaps some where about Onancock. He appears throughout his exploration of the Chesa- peake to have appropriated names to several places in compliment to individuals of his crew; probably from some incidental circumstances attending their disco- veries, not mentioned in the narration of his voyage. Richard Keale, one of his " souldiers," might possibly have first observed or discovered this " hill," and Smith called it after him.

t These isles, which Smith called Russell's isles, (probably in compliment to his friend and present companion, Doct. Russell,) were the lowest cluster within the bay. It is a very extraordinary circumstance, however, that in the latest and best maps of Maryland and Virginia a disagreement occurs in the denomi- nation given to these lowest islands. In Griffith's map of Maryland, published in 1794, they are called Tangier islands; but in that of Virginia, published by Bishop Madison in 1807, these same islands are denominated Watt's islands. The latter denomination we may suppose to be the most correct.

# The uncertainty of the location of this river, here called by Smith Wighco- comico, but, in his map, the Wighco, (a name, which he most probably had from the natives,) was subsequently in a great part the occasion of much contest and litigation, not only in the first place between Virginia and Maryland, soon after the first colonization of the latter, but also between the proprietaries of Mary- land and Pennsylvania-Lord Baltimore and William Penn, when the latter came into possession of the three lower counties on the Delaware, now the Dela- ware state. Supposing the allegation to be well founded, as it appears to be, which was made in the bill in chancery filed by the Penns, and drawn by the celebrated Lord Mansfield, when acting as counsel for them, in the year 1735, against Lord Baltimore, for a specific performance of the agreement before that time made between the said Penns and Lord Baltimore, relative to the bounds of their two provinces, and in which it was alleged, that " the tracts of land grant- ed to Lord Baltimore, and described in his charter, were so described and bounded by the half of Captain Smith's History and map of what was then called Virginia, and no other, and so all skilfull persons do own, acknowledge and be- lieve, which manifestly appears, for that the said map has all and every of the names of the several places which are contained and mentioned in the said let- ters patent, and no other map or maps whatsoever, which was extant in the year 1632, and at the time of granting the said letters patent, (save only the said

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SEC. VII. seemed to assault us, yet at last with songs and dances and 1608. much mirth, became very tractable, but searching their habita- tions for water, we could fill but three barricoes,* and that such puddle, that never till then we ever knew the want of good wa- ter. We digged and searched in many places, but before two daies were expired, we would have refused two barricoes of gold

Smith's map of Virginia,) hath or have the names and descriptions of the seve- ral places mentioned in the said letters patent,"-it followed that the division line between the two provinces, Maryland and Virginia, described in Lord Bal- timore's charter for Maryland, to be " a right line drawn from the promontory or head land, called Watkin's point, situate upon the bay of Chesapeake, near the river Wighco, on the west, unto the main ocean on the east,"-must have in a great measure depended on a precise ascertainment of the river Wighco, as well as Watkyn's point. But, although Smith's map is wonderfully correct, consi- dering the time and circumstances under which it was made, yet it is certain, that, by comparing it with the latest and best maps of the Chesapeake, particu- larly Griffith's map of Maryland, we may perceive many material errors, espe- cially in those parts of it contiguous and adjacent to Watkin's point. It is evi- dent from Smith's map, and more particularly from his location therein of Wat- kin's point, that what he has laid down in his map as the river Wighco, was what is now called the Pocomoke, and that the true river Wighco was, even at the time of this his first exploration of the Chesapeake, the same as that now called the Wicomoco. This mistake of his may be reconciled, by reflecting on the unfavourable circumstances which attended this part of his voyage,-the want of water, the violent gusts of wind, which he describes, and the misinfor- mation, or his misunderstanding of what information he derived from the In- dians. Tradition also seems to confirm the supposition, that the river laid down in Smith's map as the Wighco was what is now called the Pocomoke. In the map, annexed to the articles of agreement entered into between Charles, Lord Baltimore, and the Penns, on the 10th of May, 1732, (referred to in the before- mentioned bill in chancery, a copy of which is now before me,) the name Wighco is affixed to the Pocomoke. Lord Baltimore, in this agreement, must have grounded himself on the evidence of maps or charts long before made, and particularly on certain maps mentioned in certain instructions sent by his great grand-father, Lord Cecilius, to his governor of Maryland, in the year 1651, when the dispute between Virginia and Maryland relative to their respective bounds on the Eastern Shore appears to have first commenced, but which maps do not appear to be now in existence, at least among the records of Maryland. Wat- kin's point, then, seems to have been a spot on Smith's map correctly handed down to posterity as being the same " promontory or head-land," (to wit, the south-western extremity on the Chesapeake of what is now called Somerset county) as was intended and meant both by Smith, in his map made in the year 1629, and by Lord Cecilius, (or Lord George his father,) in the draught of his charter for Maryland, in the year 1632. This given point being assumed as a datum, it evidently results from an inspection of Smith's map, that what he desig- nated as the Wighco, (on which he has denoted an Indian Wighcocomoco, ) was really and truly the Pocomoke, and that the real Wighco river, of which he, without doubt, received information on this excursion, lay further north, and emptied it- self into the bay above Watkyn's Point.

*The word " barricoes" here used, I take to be a corruption of the French word burriques, which signifies a hogshead or barrel,

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for one of that puddle water of Wighcocomoco. Being past SEC. VII. these isles, which are many in number, but all naught for habi- 1608. tation, falling with a high land upon the mayne, found a great pond of fresh water, but so exceedingly hot, wee supposed it some bath; that place we called poynt Ployer, in honour of that most honourable house of Monsay in Britaine, that in an ex- treame extremitie once relieved our captaine .* From Wighco- comico to this place, all the coast is low broken isles of morass, growne a myle or two in breadth, and ten or twelve in length, good to cut for hay in summer, and to catch fish and foule in winter; but the land beyond them is all covered with wood, as is the rest of the country."

"Being thus refreshed in crossing over from the maine to other isles, we discovered the wind and waters so much increased with thunder, lightning and raine, that our mast and sayle blew over- board, and such mighty waves overracked us in that small barge, that with great labour we kept her from sinking, by freeing out the water. Two dayes we were inforced to inhabite these unin- habited isles, which for the extremitie of gusts, thunder, raine, stormes, and ill wether we called Limbo.t Repairing our saile

* This alludes to an incident in the extraordinary adventures of Smith, which occurred to him in France. He had, by a most knavish imposition, been robbed in France of all his money and clothes. Wandering thus in great distress in Brittany, he was there most fortunately relieved by an "earle of Ployer," a French nobleman, who, during the then late civil wars in France, had, together with his two younger brothers, been sent to England and had there received their education. This circumstance most probably inspiring them with a particular partiality for an Englishman, they with great generosity and kindness entertain- ed and befriended Smith in his " extreame extremitie," as he calls it.

But considerable difficulty arises in ascertaining with certainty, at this day, where this point Ployer was ; as Smith has omitted to lay it down by that name in his map, I cannot but think it to have been the same point of land, which, when he subsequently formed his map, he denominated Watkyn's po'nt, most probably after James Watkins, one of his " souldiers" in the list of his crew, as first herein stated, and who was the first discoverer, as he afterwards states. It could not have been Reade's point, which he has laid down as forming the head- land on the northern side of the mouth of the river Pocomoke, called by him the Wighco ; for, the beginning of his next sentence,-" from Wighcomoco to this place," &c., that is, from the river Wighco to point Ployer, excludes Reade's point, the preposition from being exclusive ; and he has designated no other place of note between Reade's and Watkins's points, but has characterised the face of the country along the south shore of Somerset county bordering on Po- comole bay, as it now appears,-" isles of morass," or marsh, of many miles in length, from the mouth of the Pocomoke to Watkins's point.

t The word Limbus, (or, in the ablative case, in Limbo,) was originally a term in the Romish theology, used for that place where the patriarchs are sup- posed to have waited for the redemption of mankind, and where they imagine

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SEC. VII. with our shirts, we set sayle for the maine and fell with a pretty 1608. convenient river on the East called Cuskarawaock,* the people ran

our Saviour continued from the time of his death to that of his resurrection. Du Cange says, the fathers called this place limbus, eo quod sit limbus infero- rum, as being the margin or frontier of the infernal regions or other world; and, in this sense, it seems to have been used in Shakspeare's "All's well that ends well;" (act v.)-" Indeed, he was mad for her, and talk'd of Satan, and of limbo, and of furies, and I know not what." But it was also used to signify any place of misery and restraint, and in this sense it is more than once used by Butler in his Hudibras.

"This 'tis t'engage with dogs and bears, Pell-mell together by the ears, And after painful bangs and knocks, To lie in limbo, in the stocks ; And, from the pinnacle of glory, Fall headlong into purgatory."

The confinement for " two dayes," which Smith and his companions experi- enced in these islands, on account of the gusts and wind, induced him to give them the name of Limbo.

*In a "History of Maryland" stated to be "By a gentleman of Baltimore," the commencement, or a small part of which was published in the year 1818, in a periodical work, entitled "Journal of the Times," it is stated, that the Rus- karawaock "tribe" of Indians, "dwelt upon a river of the same name, and which is probably now called Chester, on the Eastern Shore."-Although the word Rus- karawaock, as here written, varies in a letter from the mode in which it is spelt in Smith's History, viz: Kuskarawaock and Cuskarawaock, in one place with a K, and in another with a C, yet we may suppose, that as the writer professes to follow Smith's History only, in his account of the Virginia and Maryland In- dians, this variance from him in the mode of spelling the name might have been either an accidental or typographical error. But, it is somewhat surprising, that the author of this anonymous history professing to follow Smith solely, and con- sequently having Smith's map of the country before him, should suppose that the Cuskarawaock river was the same as that now called the Chester. On this map Smith has laid down the Cuskarawaock river as emptying into the Chesapeake opposite to the isles or isle which he called Limbo, where he had been detained by a gust or storm, prior to his crossing the bay to Riccard's cliffs, evidently the highlands on the Western Shore just above the Patuxent. The Cuskarawaock could never then be what is now called the Chester river, which empties into the Chesapeake nearly opposite to the Patapsco, which, as we shall presently see is the Bolus river of Smith. From this, and various other circumstances, which will hereinafter appear, there can be no doubt, that the Cuskcarawaock of Smith was the present Nanticoke river on the Eastern Shore. Without this supposition it would be impossible to reconcile Smith's designation of the town or residence of the Nantiquaks, a tribe of Indians, whom he has located on the right bank or north side of that river, at a place, answering as nearly as may be to the still well known scite of the large and numerous tribe subsequently known by the name of the Nanticokes, the last remnant of whom did not migrate therefrom until about the year 1768. It is observable also, that Smith has designated in his map the town of the Kuskarawaocks near the head of the river so called by him. The scite or location of this town on Smith's map very nearly conforms to the location of the lands on Broad Creek emptying into the Nanticoke, near the head thereof, laid out under an act of Assembly of this Province, passed in the year 1711, en-

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as amazed in troups from place to place, and divers got into the SEC. VII. tops of trees, they were not sparing of their arrowes, nor the 1608. greatest passion they could expresse of their anger. Long they shot, we still ryding at an anchor without their reatch making all the signes of friendship we could. The next day they came un- armed, with every one a basket, dancing in a ring to draw us on shore, but seeing there was nothing in them but villany, we dis- charged a volly of muskets charged with pistoll shott, whereat they all lay tumbling on the ground, creeping some one way, some another into a great cluster of reedes hard by, where thare companies lay in ambuscade. Towards the evening we wayed, and approaching the shoare, discharging five or six shot among the reedes, we landed where there lay a many of baskets and much bloud, but saw not a salvage. A smoake appearing on the other side the river, we rowed thither, there we left some peeces of copper, beads, bells, and looking-glasses, and then went into the bay, but when it was darke we came back againe. Early in the morning foure salvages came to us in their canoes, whom we used with such courtesie, not knowing what we were, nor had done, having beene in the bay a fishing, bade us stay and ere long they would returne, which they did and some twen- tie more with them; with whom, after a little conference, two or three thousand men, women and children, came clustering about us, every one presenting us with something, which a little bead would so well requite, that we became such friends they would contend who should fetch us water, stay with us for host- age, conduct our men any whither, and give us the best content.

titled, "An act to impower commissioners to appoint and cause to be laid out three thousand acres of land on Broad-creek, in Somerset county, for the use of the Nanticoke Indians." Broad-creek was then supposed to have been in Mary- land; but after the ascertainment of the division line between the Penns and Lord Baltimore, it fell into what is now the Delaware state. By this act of As- sembly it appears, that certain Indians, called in the said act "the Nanticokes," were then, prior to the said act, settled on Broad-creek in Nanticoke river. But,. as it appears from the act of 1723, ch. 18, entitled, "An act for quieting the pos- sessions of the Indians inhabiting on Nanticoke and Choptank rivers," that the Nanticoke Indians still (in 1723) occupied, and had not altogether removed from their ancient scite on the Nanticoke, as located by Smith, which was by this act of Assembly confirmed to them, it may be fairly inferred, that the Indian town called Kuskarawaock, was situated on Broad-creek, that the lands on Broad-creek appropriated to the Indians there by the act of 1711, were at or near this ancient seat of the Kuskarawaocks, and that the Indians there settled on Broad-creek, though called the Nanticokes in the act, were yet really and truly a remnant of the Kuskarawaocks of Smith's History.

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SEC. VIT. Here doth inhabite the people of Sarapinagh, Nause, Aroeck,*

1608. and Nantaquak, the best marchants of all other salvages. They much extolled a great nation called Massanomekes, t in search of

*Smith has not designated on his map the habitations or towns of either the Sarapinagh or Aroeck. That of the Nause he has located on the north side of the Cuskarawaock river near the mouth thereof. The Nantiquaks and Cuskara- waocks as before stated.

+The scite, or place of residence, which Smith has given in his map to these Nantaquaks on the Cuskarawaock river, corresponding as near as may be with the still well known ancient scite of the Nanticoke Indians, in Dorchester County, Maryland, and on the right bank or north side of what is now called the Nanti- coke river, seems to establish the fact beyond a doubt, that these Nantaquaks and the late well known Nanticokes were one and the same tribe or nation of Indians. Mr. Charles Thompson in his annotations annexed to Mr. Jefferson's notes on Virginia, has said, that "a nation, now known by the name of Nanticocks, Con- oys, and Tuteloes, and who lived between Chesapeake and Delaware bays, and bor- dering on the tribe of Chihohocki, entered into an alliance with the Five Nations, called by themselves Mingoes, by the French writers Iroquoise, and by the In- dians to the southward, with whom they were at war, Massawomacs." In another passage he states that " the Nanticocks and Conoies were formerly of a nation that lived at the head of Chesapeake bay, and who, of late years, have been adopted into the Mingo or Iroquois confederacy." It is to be regretted, that Mr. Thompson, as is too often the usage of American historians, has omitted to cite his authority for these statements. That the Nanticocks mentioned by him, and the Nanticokes on the Nanticoke river, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, were one and the same tribe or nation, seems to be established by the fact stated, of their "being adopted into the Mingo or Iroquois confederacy," a circumstance recognized by the Provincial records of Maryland, as to the Nanticokes last men- tioned. But, that these last mentioned Nanticokes formerly lived at the head of Chesapeake bay and between that bay and the Delaware, bordering on the tribe of Chihohocki, seems doubtful. Europeans, at the time of their first settlement in this country, not understanding the languages of the Indians with whom they conversed, which could be usually done only by signs, were too frequently liable to mistakes and misapprehensions of what the Indians informed them. The opinion, that the Nanticokes ever lived at the head of the Chesapeake bay, has most probably re- sulted from some such mistake. When Smith visited them in this "first voy- age" of his up the Chesapeake, in the year 1608, they are represented as a tribe or nation permanently fixed on the Cuskarawaock, supposed by us to be the Nanticoks, and as being among "the best merchants of all other salvages." This mercantile disposition seems to indicate that they were not then new-comers, just settled on the Nanticoke. It is true, they are said by him, to have "much extolled a great nation called Massawomaks," but this does not necessarily imply that they were then in alliance with them. They might more probably have extoll- ed them from fear than friendship, as Indians are said to have worshipped the devil. It appears that these Massawomaks had spread terror among even the Powhatans of Virginia. The Kecoughtans, at Hampton in Virginia, expressed to Smith their apprehensions of danger from them. The Chihohocki's fare laid down by Smith on his map as seated on what he supposed to be the Atlantic Ocean, but evidently on the Delaware river, and on that part of it which subtends or is op- posite to the Elk river on the Chesapeake side of the peninsula, most probably some where on the Delaware, between the Assoquinimy and Christina creeks. The Nanticokes, therefore, could not well be said to have lived at the head of

W B e i

the pos nia ant he Ma M P kr th

wh tran W the exp

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whom we returned by Limbo; " this river but onely at the en- SEC. VII. trance is very narrow, and the people of small stature as them of 1608. Wighcomoco, the land but low, yet it may prove very commodi-

the bay, "bordering on the Chihohocki," for any short time previous to Smith's exploration of the Chesapeake in the year 1608.

As to the Massawomecks being the same nation of Indians as those called by the English the Five Nations, and by the French the Iroquois, although this sup- position be highly probable, yet there does not appear to be any positive unde- niable evidence of it. Mr. Jefferson, in the text, to which Mr. Thompson has annexed his note, seems to state the fact with some hesitation. "Westward," he says, "of all these tribes," (meaning those of the Powhatans, the Monacans, and Manahoacs,) "beyond the mountains, and extending to the great lakes, were the Massawomecks, a most powerful confederacy, who harrassed unremittingly the Powhatans and Monahoacs. These were probably the ancestors of the tribes known at present by the name of the Six Nations." It may be here remarked, that Smith, in his map of the Chesapeake or Virginia, has located the Massawo- mecks on what he supposed to be the ocean or a great lake, situated in a direct west course from the head of the Chesapeake, and in the direction from the head of that bay towards Allegany county, or the most western parts of Maryland ; which probably induced Mr. Jefferson to fix the scite of the Massawomecks west- ward of the then habitable parts of Virginia and beyond the Allegany mountains. But in speaking of the Massawomecks, as they existed at the time of Smith's exploration of the Chesapeake, there is certainly some inaccuracy in suppos- ing them to have been then "the ancestors of the Six Nations." They must have been the Five Nations themselves, (if their identity with the Massawo- mecks be assumed) then in the year 1608, well known by the French under the denomination of the Iroquois, as inhabiting the country round about those small northern lakes in the present State of New York, which are in the neighbourhood of the greater lakes of Ontario and Erie. The Monacans, afterwards called Tuscaroras, subsequently joining these Five Nations, made a sixth. If such was their home and place of residence in the year 1608, Smith was mistaken in his location of them, and Mr. Jefferson consequently so in following him. They did afterwards, when the Dutch of New York had furnished them with fire-arms, ex- tend their conquests on the western side of the Allegany mountains, as Colden (their historian) says, as far south as Carolina. Heckewelder's idea, or tradi- tional story from the Indians, that all the Indians, on the Atlantic coast of the northern and middle States of the Union, originally sprung from the two nations -the Lenni Lenape, commonly called Delawares, and the Iroquois or Five Na- tions, both of whom migrated into the country on this side of the Allegany mountains from parts beyond the Mississippi, seems to be founded on some mis- understood tradition or idle Indian story. It savours something of the priest- hood in endeavouring to bolster up the improbable supposition, that all man- kind sprung from one common parentage, and that the Indians of America ori- ginally crossed Cook's narrow straits between Asia and this continent. It is, moreover, entirely repugnant to the accounts of these Iroquois, as handed down to us by Champlain and others, who first founded Quebec and settled in their neighbourhood, in the year 1608, and about the same time of that year, in which Smith was exploring the Chesapeake, where he met with the Massawomecks. Supposing the Iroquois and the Massawomecks to be the same people, the first scite or place of their residence according to historians, (see Colden's Hist. of the Five Nations, p. 23) was at the place now called Montreal in Canada; but this was many years prior to the arrival of Champlain at Quebec, or of Smith's ex-

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The history of Maryland : from its first settlement, in 1633, to the restoration, in 1660 ; with a copious introduction, and notes and illustrations, Part 12

Author: Bozman, John Leeds, 1757-1823 Publication date: 1837 Publisher: Baltimore : J. Lucas & E.K. Deaver Number of Pages: 1062

Author: Bozman, John Leeds, 1757-1823
Publication date: 1837
Publisher: Baltimore : J. Lucas & E.K. Deaver
Number of Pages: 1062