USA > New Hampshire > History of New Hampshire, from its first discovery to the year 1830; with dissertations upon the rise of opinions and institutions, the growth of agriculture and manufactures, and the influence of leading families and distinguished men, to the year 1874; > Part 2
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-"a thousand ways
Upward and downward, thwarting and convolv'd, The quiv'ring nations sport. "
For a time, the fame of Columbus was eclipsed. Slanderous tongues defamed his character, envious rivals wore his laurels, cruel hands manacled his limbs, ungrateful sovereigns withheld his reward, and an Italian adventurer gave his own name to the new continent. Scarcely one of earth's great benefactors has been more unkindly treated than Columbus. Death, which usu- ally extinguishes envy, did not wholly silence rival claims. Old
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traditions have been revived to rob him of the originality of con- ceiving as well as executing this great plan of discovery. From very remote times there existed rumors of an unexplored land beyond the pillars of Hercules. Greek and Roman writers made frequent allusion to it. Plato, 400 B. c., speaks of an island larger than Lybia and Asia, called Atlantis, far off in the ocean, which was suddenly submerged by an earthquake. The Car- thaginians and their ancestors, the Phoenicians, were the most distinguished navigators of all antiquity. There can scarcely be a doubt that the Phoenicians sailed round the Cape of Good Hope; but that abates not one tittle of the glory of Vasco de Gama, who performed the same exploit more than two thousand years later. Tradition also reports that Hanno, the Cartha- ginian, sailed westward from the Pillars of Hercules for thirty days in succession ; but, unfortunately, there is no existing record of his voyage. The historian Ælian, 200 B. C., contains an extract from Theopompus, a writer in the time of Alexander the Great, in which he alludes to a continent in the West, densely populated and exceedingly fertile, with gold and silver in unlimi- ted abundance. In a work ascribed to Aristotle similar allus- ions are found. Seneca, the Roman philosopher, uttered a kind of prophecy of its future discovery. He wrote : "The time will come, in future ages, when the Ocean will loosen the chains of nature and a mighty continent will be discovered. A new Tiphys [or pilot] will reveal new worlds and Thule shall no longer be the remotest of lands." This was a happy conjecture which time has confirmed.
The earlier traditions were chiefly composed of such stuff as dreams are made of, and belong rather to the realms of imagin- ation than history. The Northern nations of Europe, in the dark ages, can furnish better claims to priority of discovery. The Scandinavians, from their earliest history, were all seamen. The Northmen were the terror of all Europe long before they became its conquerors. The Saxons, Jutes and Angles, in their native homes, were pirates. They came in ships to England in the fifth century. Invited by the Celts as allies, they remained as rulers. The Danes, some centuries later, imitated their ex- amples, and for a time governed the island. Some eight or nine hundred years ago, the Norwegians repeatedly visited the American continent. This assertion, like every thing old, is questioned ; yet the preponderance of evidence seems to con- firm it. These old sea-kings visited and explored all the north- ern shores, from Greenland to Rhode Island, and possibly still farther south. They wintered, repeatedly, in a land which they named Vinland, or wine land, from the abundance of grapes that grew there. These were brave old vikings, who deserve a bet-
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ter name than that of pirates. That word, however, from its etymology, may yet raise them to the rank of explorers. Ban- croft rather discredits the Icelandic historian who claims this discovery for his ancestors. He says : "The nation of intrepid mariners, whose voyages extended beyond Iceland and beyond Sicily, could easily have sailed from Greenland to Labrador ; no clear historic evidence establishes the probability that they accom- plished the passage. Imagination had conceived the idea that vast uninhabited regions lay unexplored in the West ; and poets had declared that empires beyond the ocean would one day be revealed to the daring navigator. But Columbus deserves the undivided glory of having realized that belief. "
CHAPTER V.
THE ABORIGINES OF AMERICA.
The origin of the primitive inhabitants of the new world is still an unsolved problem. No subject of human research has been more fruitful in theories ; none less satisfactory in results. Of all the divisions of our race, according to color, the red men may claim a very early origin and a widely extended dominion. They have flourished in Mongolia, Madagascar, China, Hindoo- stan, Egypt, Etruria and Palestine ; and with the inhabitants of all these countries, the Indians, in their arts, customs and com- parative anatomy, present stronger analogies than with the white or black races. But with no one of them can they be identified. Says Dr. Palfrey : "The symmetrical frame, the cinnamon color of the skin, the long, black, coarse hair, the scant beard, the high cheek bones, the depressed and square forehead set upon a triangular conformation of the lower features, the small, deep- set, shining, snaky eyes, the protuberant lips, the broad nose, the small skull, with its feeble frontal development, make a combina- tion which the scientific observer of some of these marks in the skeleton, and the unlearned eye turned upon the living subject, equally recognize as unlike what is seen in other regions of the globe." Every science that throws light upon the origin and affinities of races has been questioned, but the oracles are dumb, or "palter with us in a double sense." We, to-day, know no better whence they came than did the first explorers who pronounced the natives "to be of tall stature, comely pro-
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portion, strong, active, and, as it should seem, very healthful." To them the Indians looked like earth-born aborigines, retaining the solid structure and firmness of their kindred hills. There was no sick, decrepit nor feeble person among them. Their war- riors were brave, cunning and apparently invincible.
Their strength, beauty and valor were greatly exaggerated. Upon further inquiry, it was found that none but the most robust constitutions could survive the hardships to which their infancy was exposed ; that a majority of every tribe died young ; that the number of births among them hardly equaled that of the deaths ; and that only the finest and healthiest specimens of the race were preserved. The reason of the absence of diseased and deformed persons arose from the fact that such were either borne down by the hardships of savage life or left to die, unpitied and alone. The same is true of those decrepit by age. They were often exposed by their children and left to perish by starvation. Of the sick, it has been aptly said : "Death was their doctor, and the grave their hospital." Privation, imprudence and the pestilence have often swept away whole tribes. More of the aborigines of North America have probably fallen by disease than by war. On the first arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth the adjacent territory was literally desolated by an epidemic. In profound peace they have often suffered most. Their indo- lent and filthy habits induced disease. Their remedies were, for the most part, mere charms and incantations ; and consequently they "died like sheep." The Indians of our day know almost nothing of vegetable remedies. They make use of amulets and consecrated medicine-bags as curative agents ; and yet, civilized men often have recourse to these savages to learn the healing art' and, in their simplicity, acquire a knowledge of "simples." Sometimes a veritable Indian doctor appears among us, with more brass than copper in his face, and, by his gravity and so- lemnity in consulting the astronomical signs, in watching the "stellar influences," and in gathering herbs and balsams by moonlight, imposes upon the unwary, and relieves his patients, not of their diseases, but of their money. Their skill, speed, strength, valor, wisdom and eloquence have all been greatly over-estimated. The American Indians are capable of great ef- forts, when strongly excited, and sometimes show respectable reasoning powers ; but they are neither able to endure sustained and continued labor of mind nor body. Their physical and mental powers are undeveloped and weak. They are more re- markable for agility than strength. They are fleet of foot for limited journeys, and possess almost a canine sagacity of pursu- ing game. When reduced to slavery, they droop and die. As trained soldiers they are always inferior to the whites. They
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succeed better in ambuscades and sudden onsets than in pitched battles.
The aborigines, in their untutored state, possessed neither sci- ence nor culture. In writing they never advanced beyond rude pictorial inscriptions and hieroglyphics. Their implements were made of stone ; their vessels of clay. Their languages abound in metaphors and symbols. They multiply compounds and ex- press a whole sentence in one long word ; hence, philologists de- nominate their languages agglutinative or holophrastic. As in- struments of thought, they are worthless. The Indians are nat- urally stolid and taciturn, not eloquent. Lofty oratory is as rare among them as exalted genius. Some of their speeches have been preserved. They were mostly made at treaties, where the red man, with subdued pride, yielded to the claims of the impe- rious white man. Consequently they breathe a sorrowful spirit. They are usually pathetic and touching, sometimes lofty and dig- nified, often bold and magnanimous. They seldom discourse, except on grave and momentous occasions, and then with evi- dent preparation.
Their religion is peculiar. The tribes of North America have no public worship. In this respect they differ from the Aztecs of Mexico and Central America. They held common assemblies and reared public altars where their horrid rites were celebrated. The religion of the northern tribes is chiefly private and particu- lar ; each man entertaining his own superstitious notions respect- ing his relations to his Deities. "The Indian god," says Mr. Schoolcraft, "exists in a dualistic form ; there is a malign and a benign type of him ; and there is a continual strife, in every pos- sible form, between these two antagonistical powers, for the mas- tery over the mind. Legions of subordinate spirits attend both. Nature is replete with them. When the eye fails to recognize them in material forms, they are revealed in dreams. Necro- mancy and witchcraft are two of their ordinary powers." The Great and Good Spirit, so much talked of by Indian admirers, as corresponding to Jehovah of the Jews, seems to receive far less notice from them than his malignant antagonist. The great ob- ject of their worship is to propitiate or avert evil demons. They literally pay divine honors to devils. All diseases are the work of evil spirits ; hence incantations and exorcisms are among their most potent remedies. They are fatalists with regard to their own destiny. Every event is unalterably determined by fixed laws ; hence they never blame their medicine men for failing to make good their splendid promises. They believe in the im- mortality of the soul. Departed spirits go to the islands of the blest to be compensated for the evils suffered in this world. 'Their mythology is a chaos of wild and incoherent fancies.
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Some portions of it have been gracefully illustrated by Mr. Long- fellow, in that unique poem entitled "Hiawatha."
Their manners and customs have been graphically portrayed by Mr. Cooper in "The Last of the Mohicans." Their virtues have been eulogized by Mr. Catlin, who visited forty-five tribes for the purpose of painting the portraits of their chiefs. He says : "In all these little communities, strange as it may seem, in the absence of all jurisprudence, I have often beheld peace, happiness and quietness reigning supreme, for which even kings and emperors might envy them. I have seen rights and virtues protected and wrongs redressed. I have seen conjugal, filial and paternal affection, in the simplicity and contentedness of nature." His picture is painted in bright and glowing colors. While reading his honest praise, we for the moment feel inclined to adopt the reasoning of Rousseau and denounce civilized life as a state of degradation and long for the return of that age of primeval innocence when
"Wild in the woods, the noble savage ran."
Catlin's climax of Indian woes is thus stated : "White men, whiskey, tomahawks, scalping knives, guns, powder and ball, small-pox, debauchery, extermination." There is a dark side to this picture, which the early settlers of New England saw to their sorrow. They tried to live peaceably with the Indians and could not. The apostle anciently prayed to be delivered from "unreasonable and wicked men." Such were the savages of New England, when the Puritans first set foot upon its shores. The Indians of our day have, undoubtedly, been cheated by pol- iticians, robbed by speculators and demoralized by adventurers. The strong have deceived and oppressed the weak ; the crafty have cheated the simple ; the Christian has corrupted the sav- age ; and the words in which Bryant has expressed the lament of an Indian chief are fearfully true :
"They waste us-ay-like April snow, In the warm noon, we shrink away ; And fast they follow, as we go Towards the setting day, Till they shall fill the land and we Are driven to the western sea."
But there is no propriety in imputing modern vices and crimes to our ancestors. The Massachusetts colonists sincerely sought to civilize and christianize the red man. In a few years more than four thousand praying Indians were gathered into churches by Eliot and Mahew; but, true to their natural instincts, when war came they joined the enemies of the colonists and were ex- terminated. When, therefore, the Indian eulogist points to the decaying and retreating tribes of the South and West and tri- umphantly asks : "Where are the Indians of New England ?" I
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answer, with all confidence, Extinct by the Providence of God- through improvidence and crime their own executioners !
New Hampshire, during colonial times, was possessed by as many as twelve different tribes of Indians, taking their names from some local peculiarity of the lands or streams where they had their homes. Many of these names remain to this day, like the old Celtic names in England, and mark the abodes of the primitive inhabitants, while not a solitary descendant of theirs lives within the limits of the state. Nashua, Souhegan, Amos- keak, Swamscott, Merrimack, Winnipiseogee and Ossipee are of Indian origin. The meaning of these names has been variously given by different philologists. Such etymologies can rarely be trusted. When foreigners first began to write Indian words as they heard them from the savages, it was difficult to determine their true sounds. It was rare for two authors to represent the same name by the same letters. Winnipiseogee, it is said, has been spelled in forty different ways. A few Indian names of rivers and mountains have, probably, been rightly interpreted. These enduring names are the only memorials the red men have left upon the physical features of the state.
Mr. Hubert Hare Bancroft, of San Francisco, is preparing an elaborate work on "The native Races of the Pacific States of North America." The first volume, an octavo of 797 pages, treats of the wild Indians alone. Of these he enumerates six great families and more than seven hundred tribes, living in pre- historic times, west of the Rocky Mountains. His purpose is to delineate the character of the various races of aborigines from the Arctic ocean to the Caribbean sea. His library of In- dian lore amounts to about eighteen thousand volumes. As these books all belong to modern times, it is doubtful whether the collation of them will satisfactorily answer these great ques- tions : Are the natives of America of one race? Are they a degraded people, or do they occupy now their highest plane of development? Did they build those mighty structures whose ruins exist to-day in Central America and Mexico? If the red men of the North were a distinct race, did they belong to the stone or bronze age? Mr. Bancroft will, undoubtedly, throw great light upon the habits, customs and mythology of the abor- igines of our country ; but no research of his, no critical sagac- ity, can tell us whence they came or what was their primitive condition. He evidently joins the ranks of Indian advocates. He says : "Left alone, the natives of America might have un- folded into as bright a civilization as that of Europe." All his- tory teaches a different lesson. Savages do not rise by their unaided efforts. Mr. Parkman, commenting upon Mr. Bancroft's conclusions respecting the proper mode of dealing with our
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Indian tribes, who now number about three hundred thousand souls, says :
"A word touching our recent Indian policy. To suppose that presents, blandishments and kind treatment, even when not counteracted by the fraud and lawlessness of white men, can restrain these banditti from molesting travelers and settlers is a mistake. Robbery and murder have become to them a second nature, and, as just stated, a means of living. The chief ene- mies of peace in the Indian country are the philanthropist, the politician and the border ruffian; that is to say, the combination of soft words with rascal- ity and violence. An Apache, a Comanche, or an Arapahoe neither respects nor comprehends assurances of fraternal love. In most cases he takes them as evidence of fear. The Government whose emissaries caress him and preach to him, whose officials cheat him, and whose subjects murder him, is not likely to soothe him into ways of peace. The man best fitted to deal with Indians of hostile dispositions is an honest, judicious and determined soldier. To protect them from ruffians worse than themselves, strictly to ob- serve every engagement, to avoid verbiage, and speak on occasion with a de- cisive clearness, absolutely free from sentimentality, to leave no promise and no threat unfulfilled, to visit every breach of peace with a punishment as prompt as circumstances will permit, to dispense with courts and juries and substitute a summary justice, and to keep speculators and adventurers from abusing them-such means as these on the one hand, or extermination on the other, will alone keep such tribes as the Apaches quiet. They need an officer equally just and vigorous; and our regular army can furnish such. They need an army more numerous than we have at present; and as its business would be to restrain white men no less than Indians, they need in the execu- tive a courage to which democracy and the newspaper sensation-monger are wofully averse. Firmness, consistency and justice are indispensable in deal- ing with dangerous Indians, and so far as we fail to supply them we shall fail of success. Attempts at conciliation will be worse than useless, unless there is proof, manifest to their savage understanding, that such attempts do not proceed from weakness or fear."
CHAPTER VI.
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TITLE TO THE SOIL.
The right of property, in a new country, is based on discov- ery, conquest or occupation. If occupation gives the best title, the Indians certainly owned this continent ; for they possessed it, from the frozen north to Patagonia. In a country previously unexplored, cultivation would seem to be good evidence of own- ership. It is a dictate of justice that any man may appropriate and till so much of nature's wilderness as is necessary for his support. "Moreover, the profit of the earth is for all : the king himself is served by the field," says the wise man. The Indians possessed, by metes and bounds, only a few acres of the entire
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continent. It would not seem reasonable that God designed that one half the earth should remain a wilderness; and that every roving hunter should hold a park of his own, and retain it for his sole use, when the rest of the world was crowded with inhabitants. Is it in accordance with natural justice, that a sin- gle lordly savage should roam over thousands of acres, while hundreds of other men, better than himself, were suffering for food? Were the wild beasts his as well as their lairs and feed- ing grounds? Had no stranger a right of warren in these pri- meval forests? Was the red man the sole proprietor of the soil and of the game that fed upon it? He was first there, and ac- cording to the law of nations owned it by discovery. He had the best title to that portion of the territory which he had culti- vated that political philosophy ever devised. Possibly, if the history of the aborigines could be recovered, he owned it by conquest, for the mounds and remains of art testify to an earlier occupation of the country than that of the red men. Accord- ing to that body of rules made by the strong for the weak, called International Law, the Indian was the rightful owner of the soil ; but his title, being only vague and presumptive when tested by natural justice, could be easily vacated by purchase or conquest. The New England colonists did generally purchase their lands from the Indians. They paid but small sums and in articles of little value to themselves, yet the Indians prized them highly ; and they alone had a right to judge of the worth of their terri- tory and of the price of the goods given in exchange for it. They sold willingly and received the pay with joy. The settlers of New Hampshire were perhaps less careful than others to ex- tinguish the Indian claim, because chartered companies and royal proprietors assumed the ownership of the soil. And here we may ask, what right had European monarchs to grant lands more extensive than their own kingdoms? King James I. of England gave away territories ten times larger than his own lit- tle realm, on the plea that English navigators had visited the shores of the new world and thus acquired, by discovery, a title, not only to all the coast but to all the land that lay behind it, even to the Pacific Ocean. His charters extended from sea to sea and from "the river to the ends of the earth." Human gov- ernments are said to be of divine origin, because justice, reason, conscience and inspiration all unite to enforce obedience to them ; but neither justice vindicates, nor reason demonstrates, nor conscience approves, nor scripture confirms a title to new territory because it has fallen under the eye of an exploring nav- igator or been marked by the foot-prints of an invading army. But the public good seemed to require some rules called laws, expressly or tacitly approved by the nations of christendom, to
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regulate the conduct of explorers ; and this international code was usually dictated by the strongest. So the world has ever been governed ; for there is not a kingdom or state on earth that is not based on conquest ; not a rood of land occupied by man that was not wrested from previous owners by force. "I have observed," said the infidel Frederick the Great, "that Provi- dence always favors the strong battalions."
CHAPTER VII.
ENGLISH CHARTERED COMPANIES.
" A belt of twelve degrees on the American coast, embracing the soil from Cape Fear to Halifax, except perhaps a little spot then actually possessed by the French called Acadia, was set apart by James I. in 1606, to be colonized by two rival compa- nies." He divided this territory into two nearly equal parts ; the one, called North Virginia, extending from the forty-first to the forty-fifth degree of north latitude ; the other, named South Virginia, from the thirty-fourth to the thirty-eighth degree. The district lying between these limits was open to both companies ; but neither was allowed to make settlements within one hundred miles of the other. The northern portion was granted to a company of "knights, gentlemen and merchants" from the west of England called "the Plymouth Company ;" the southern half to a company of "noblemen, gentlemen and merchants," mostly residing in the Capital and called "the London Company." The king was the sole governor of these immense territories, because he retained in his own hands the appointment of all officers both at home and abroad. He also, like a feudal lord, exacted homage and rent. One-fifth of all the precious metals and one-fifteenth of copper were to be returned to the royal treasury. So this English Solomon, who was called by Sully "the wisest fool in christendom," granted lands to which he had no title and exacted rents to which he had no claim. Not an element of popular liberty was introduced into these charters ; the colonists were not recognized at all as a source of political power ; they were at the mercy of a double-headed tyranny com- posed of the king and his advisers, the Council and their agents. But liberty, like hope in Pandora's box, lay at the bottom. The Council of Plymouth received a new charter dated November 3,
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