USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Warren > The history of Warren; a mountain hamlet, located among the White hills of New Hampshire > Part 4
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* They were sometimes called the Abnaki Indians of the east.
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
place no watch at night. They pray to their fetiches and, like the panther, lie down feeling secure. Arrived in the land of the Penobscots, for days together they hide in deep ravines and among the spruces of the mountains. When the moon is sleeping in the western waves, when the first blush of morning tinges the eastern sky, when sleep is soundest and sweetest, they rush upon the Penobscot villages. Like the tornado they sweep them away. The warriors of the Bashaba are slain. The Tarentine brave twists the scalp lock in his left hand, places his foot on the neck, cuts a circular gash around the head with the scalping 'knife, gives an accompanying dexterous jerk, and the scalp is his. Even the Bashaba himself, fighting bravely, finds a death-couch upon the bodies of half-a-dozen Tarentines. The score of war parties have a hundred scalps. The richest wampum, the choicest skins, strong bows, ornamented quivers full of arrows tipped with rose quartz, spears and nets, are among the spoils. Yet they return home with few captives.
As they approached their own villages they announced their return in triumph with loud yells of exultation. To celebrate their victory they renew the feast and dance the scalp dance. The latter was a unique performance. The scalps taken in former battles are attached to their girdles. With heads bent forward they hold by the hair the fresh scalps in their teeth. Then they howl and stamp around the fire in the centre of their cluster of wigwams, cutting all the uncouth antics imaginable, performing gyrations innumerable, and screaming and yelling in their intense jollification, "as though," in the language of a pious writer, " bedlam liad broken loose and all hell was in an uproar."
But this very interesting ceremony was only a gentle prelude to the good time that followed. Let no one be shocked at the recital. Men are the creatures of education. The effeminate and refined queen of Spain enjoys a bull-baiting on the Sabbath as much as northern Christians enjoy psalm singing and hosannas. Some of our near neighbors take a peculiar delight in cock-fight- ing, and the Roman matrons of old reached the acme of their bliss when they saw fierce gladiators butchering each other or contending with ferocious wild beasts. After the scalp dance had ceased the few Penobscot captives were brought forward. The
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METHOD OF TORTURE.
young Micmacs were enjoined by the old men to do well. A young brave from the west was to undergo the ordeal. With scornful eye and air of defiance he presents his hands to be crushed between the rough stones. His fingers are torn off one by one, yet not a cry escapes him. His nose is cut off-his tongue torn out-and still he does not flinch. His joints are separated ; he is flayed like a deer - and then the cold shivering spirits are driven away by pushing him up to the fire that he may enjoy the hot ones. Yet he survives this exquisite torture; and pitch faggots are thrust into his involuntary, quivering flesh, and lighted -- at which all the assembled braves, the tawny squaws, and their sunburnt daughters laugh and shout, in fiendish glee at the sickening misery. At dawn, if still alive, he is dragged beyond the wigwams and there hacked in pieces. Such was the practice, not only of the Tarentines, but of all gentle Indians .*
Some cunning writers, to show off the fine points of their heroes, draw a parallel between them and other notable characters. One might be set forth in this manner: Did the most Holy Pope of the Christian Catholic Church apply thumbscrews in the Inqui- sition -the Micmacs had as pleasing a torture in putting hands between the mashing rocks. Did his holiness unjoint limbs on the rack - the more primitive savage could unjoint them as well with his hands. Did God's vicegerent break limbs - Indians could do the same with a stone beetle. Did the good John Calvin burn Michael Servetus at the stake - Micmacs could roast the flayed victim and laugh at the sound of the quivering flesh cooked by the faggots. Did the Puritans scourge the backs, crop the ears, cut out the tongues of unoffending Quakers, and hang witches - the " brave " with as keen an avidity could cut off the nose, tear out the tongue, and hack in pieces.
But we will not carry this refined comparison further. There is a dark side to everything. If we looked only to the failings of men we might run mad with melancholy. The Indians have been strangely venerated. We are sometimes disposed to admire them.
*For an account of their method of torturing see V. Bancroft, Chap. 28.
One William Moody unhappily resigned himself into the hands of some French Mohawks, who most inhumanly tortured him by fastening him unto a stake and roasting him alive, whose flesh they afterwards devoured .- Penhallow's Indian Wars, N. H. Hist. Soc. Col. 61.
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
There is a disposition from some cause to hide their faults, but, for the sake of truth, their character should be correctly presented. Yet after all we do not see as they are much worse than many others who have pretended to vastly better things.
For a long time the Penobscot tribe was ruined. The Bashaba dead - all the New England Indians, including our Pemigewas- setts, who were no doubt exceedingly interested in passing events, were at sea without compass or rudder. The bond of union was broken. Each tribe now struggled for the supremacy. Like the earlier times, when Milton's Satan and his good angels showed a belligerent spirit in Paradise, primeval war raged .* It extended from the Hudson river to the St. John. How this very amiable contest, in which our proud Pemigewassetts engaged with delight, was conducted and ended, we shall endeavor most faithfully to narrate.
* After the death of the Bashaba the public business running to confusion for want of a head, the rest of his great sagamores fell at variance amongst them- selves, spoiled and destroyed each other's people and provision, and famine took hold of many; which was seconded by a great and general plague, which so vio- lently reigned for three years together that in a manner a greater part of the land was left desert, without any to disturb or oppose a free and peaceable possession thereof .- Sir Ferdinando Gorges' Des. of N. E., vii. Ms. Hist. Soc. Col. 3 Ser, vol. vi. 90.
CHAPTER V.
OF A TERRIBLE WAR, PESTILENCE, AND FAMINE, THE HEROES OF WHICH ARE ALL DEAD AND THEIR NAMES FORGOTTEN.
IT is much to be lamented that there were no historians among the Indians to record the names of their heroes and their victories. But the wild hordes of Asia, the highly'enlightened darkies of Africa, who have had their bright civilization crushed out by powerful European armies, which so frequently have rav- ished their beautiful lands at the sources of the Nile, have no place in history and never had. The Indians may thank their lucky stars that their European exterminators have taken so much pains to preserve the remembrance of the benevolent acts that thrust them out of existence and on to the page of history, where they still live. In this they have the advantage of the Esquimaux, the Negroes, some of the Asiatics, and their numerous cousins in the Pacific isles. The author of this excellent history has had occasion to be thankful to the renowned and the redoubtable Capt. John Smith for his notes on the Indians, and he here renews his thanks.
To take up the thread of this to us very interesting subject, we would say we are sure there was a most fierce fight among the Indians on the death of the Bashaba. Capt. Smith says so. In what tribe it commenced we never could learn, but when begun it proved universal. The strong fought for supremacy, the weak for existence. There was no necessity for the war-song or the war- dance. Every brave was compelled to enlist whether he would or not. The signal fire gleamed on the hill-top. The war-whoop was heard in the valley. New England, before nor since, never saw such carnage within her borders. The French war and the
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
Revolution were nothing compared to it. The battles of the Scot- tish clans, or those of the old Norsemen, might have been some- what similar, yet there were many points of difference. In fact, the red Indians had decidedly a style of their own-original, and one that could not well be imitated. The children of the forest were early to bed and early to rise, and they generally fought in the morning. The shrill war-whoop, the whistling arrow, the whirr of the tomahawk, the yells in the savage ou- slaught, or of the wounded who refused to groan though hurt to death, were a wild matin hymn to their fierce war-god, who smiled upon them in the blood-red streaks of dawn. All the tribes on the seacoast with euphonious names fought with wild frenzy. Numerous were the warriors slain, the captives taken, the scalp locks hanging on the poles of the wigwam .*
But the fiercest fighters of all were the mountaineers of New Hampshire. From their secret lurking places in the dark ravines they would steal out and drop silent and still as the falling dew into the pleasant villages of the coast. Then leaping up fiery and fierce, and shouting and yelling like fiends incarnate, they would massacre every inhabitant. They would traverse the passes of the mountains, and flying down swift as the scudding mist, in a few hours they would secure scalps enough to astonish their vil- lage. Then retreating up the beds of the torrents they would elude all pursuit. Invincible as their own mountains, and secret as the panther that crouched in the pathless forest gloom, their enemies fell beneath their blows like frost work under the morning sun.
Thus the war went on, and every tribe seemed about to be exterminated, when a foe more terrible than the mountain Indian entered the villages, and cut down alike men, women, and children.
The plague ; first appeared on the coast. But it soon jour- neyed inland and preyed on every tribe. Its ravages were terri- ble. One individual of a village smitten down, and despair seated
* Divisions arose as to the succession to the Bashaba, of which the Tarentines taking the advantage soon overpowered the other tribes of Maine, and extended a war of extermination along the coast of Massachusetts .- Potter's Hist. of Man- chester, 23.
Drake's Indian Biography, 81.
t Drake's Indian Biography, 3.
Not long before the English came into the country, happened a great mortality amongst them, especially where the English afterwards planted. The east and
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PESTILENCE AND FAMINE.
itself on the countenances of all. Flight was hopeless. One by one they would lie down and die. The dead were unburied. A terrible stench tainted the air. Strong warriors, who had coped with death in a thousand forms, lay rotting in the wigwams. In- fants lay on the breasts of their dead mothers, striving in vain to draw life from the bosoms that would never throb again. The strong and vigorous youth, the beautiful maiden, were alike a prey to it. In a few weeks whole villages were depopulated, and whole tribes ceased to exist.
Inland the crops were neglected, and when winter came the famine was as terrible as the plague. As the snow grew deeper, and the cold more intense, and the wind howled back the shrieks of the spectre famine, attenuated forms with haggard faces and sunken eyes and cheeks would sit for days in the smoke of their wigwam fires. Then with tottering steps they would reel into the woods for food, and there, chilled, would lie down and die.
Three summers the plague came, until on the seacoast not an Indian village remained; and for many leagues along the shore not five Indians in a hundred were alive. When the Pilgrim bark anchored in Plymouth Bay, " the hardy few found the country a solitude."
. One thing has troubled exceedingly in writing the above very minute and accurate account of this war, pestilence, and famine. A particular description cannot be given. The names of the warriors who fell, the men, women, and children who sickened
northern parts were sore smitten with the contagion, first by the plague, afterward ยท when the English came by the small pox .- John Josselyn, Gent., 2 Voyages to N. E. 123.
For that war had commenced, the Bashaba and most of the great sagamores, with such men of action as followed them, were killed, and those that remained were sore afflicted by the plague. [1616-1617.] So that the country in a manner was left void of inhabitants. Notwithstanding Vines and the rest with him that lay in the cabins with those people that died, some more some less nightly, (bless- ed be God for it !) not one of them ever felt their heads to ache while they staid there .- Sir F. Gorges' Description of New England, Chap. 10 Ms. H. C. 3 s. V. 6, 57.
"It seems God has provided this country for our nation, destroying them by the plague, it not touching our Englishmen, though many traded and conversant amongst them, for they had three plagues in three years successively, neare two hundred miles along the sea-coast, that in some places there scarce remained five in a hundred. *
* * * But most certain there was an exceedingly great plague amongst them; for where I had seen two or three hundred, within three years after there remained scarcely thirty .- Ms. H. C. vol. iii. 3 s. 40.
Thomas Morton, in his "New England Canaan," p. 23, says : "But contrary- wise [the Indians having said they were so many that God could not kill them, when one of the Frenchmen rebuked them for their wickedness, telling them God would destroy them] in a short time after the hand of God fell heavily upon them with such a mortal stroke that they died in heaps as they lay in their houses, and
D
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
and died, or of those who starved, cannot be told. Thucydides narrates how in the plague of Athens, during the Thirty Years War, such and such a distinguished man was stricken down. Our sympathies are particularly excited at the death of the noble and renowned Pericles and his doubtful wife, Aspasia, with their sweet children. Hume, in his narrative of the great plague in London, makes his history decidedly entertaining in giving the minute par- ticulars, and Moses of old, likewise, in telling of the plagues of Egypt. These great historians have all the advantage there, and one can but mourn that time has buried the names of all the old Indian heroes in oblivion.
the living that were able to shift for themselves would run away and let them dy, and let their karkases ly above ground without buriall. For in a place where many inhabited there hath been but one left alive to tell what became of the rest. The living being (as it seems) not able to bury the dead. They were left for crows, kites, and vermin to prey upon. And the bones and skulls upon the several places of their habitations made such a spectacle, after my coming into these parts, that as I travelled in that forest nere Mass. it seemed to me a new-found Golgotha."
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CHAPTER VI.
HOW THE PEMIGEWASSETTS AND THE REST OF THE NIPMUCKS WERE COMPELLED TO ENTER A NEW LEAGUE TO PROTECT THEMSELVES FROM THE MOHOGS, MARQUAS, OR MOHAWKS, WITH A SLIGHT SKETCH OF ANOTHER GREAT MAN WHO CAME TO BE BASHABA.
THE war is over. The famine and the pestilence, mighty woes in the land of. the Nipmucks, have passed. Peace comes again-and once more there is plenty in the wigwams.
But the terrible Mohawks still dwell in the west and the bloody Tarentine war-whoop still resounds from beyond the hunt- ing grounds of the Sokokis and the Penobscots.
There is no safety but in union; and our Nipmucks, whom we are pleased to style. Pemigewassetts, are compelled to enter into another mighty league, which is formed. among all the Nip- muck tribes, with a new Bashaba * at its head.
This great ruler, the second Bashaba, standing as he does on the confines of civilization, with the mellow twilight of history casting a halo of romance about him, seems to us one of the most prominent characters in our annals. He makes his first appearance in 1623. Acteon well remembered him, and as he was much beloved by our Pemigewassetts and all the rest of the Nipmucks, and was their great protector, we cannot pass him by without a brief notice.
Born, as tradition has it, about 1540, by his bravery and genius he won at length his proud position. Indian legends tell of his great prowess, and of his sanguinary battles fought and
* Potter's History of Manchester, 54.
Mass. Hist. Col. 3 series, vol. viii. 173,
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
won in the deep forests on the streams and mountains. These Indian tales, collated and adorned, might prove to Indian lovers as interesting as the account of the twelve labors of Hercules, or the voyage of the Argonautic Jason. But we cannot loiter in these pleasant fields. The demands of our most important history of a most important tribe compel us to hurry rapidly through these interesting chapters.
When the little province of Mariana, alias Laconia, other- wise New Hampshire, was first settled he was about eighty years old, and at this early period of life, having been schooled in all the cunning wiles of the forest, had won for himself the title of PAS- SACONAWAY *- "The Child of the Bear."
Of powerful frame, he was more than six feet tall. He could leap like a catamount across the streams, and bound like a wild deer through the pathless woods. No warrior could bend his bow, and his feathered arrows were lost in the deep blue of the sky. A cap of red plumes on his head, his quiver at his back, his bow in his hand, clothed only in a robe of the richest furs, shod with moccasins of the toughest moose hide, with flashing eye and haughty mien, the Nipmuck Bashaba was the most noble Indian that ever trod the Granite hills.t
But we must assure our readers that we draw the above pic- ture by reasoning a posteriori. He was Bashaba-only such an Indian could be a Bashaba-therefore such was Passaconaway.
Yet his appearance is much changed from this when he makes his first mythical bow in 1623. Modern painters ( who have seen him ) put a royal crown on his head in the shape of a dowdy skull.
* His name is indicative of his warlike character: Papisseconewa, as written by himself, meaning the child of the bear. Being derived from papoeis, a child, and Kunnaway, a bear .- Potter's Hist of Man. 48, 54.
+ Laws made by the Apostle Elliot for Passaconaway and his people :
Ist. That if any man be idle a week, at most a fortnight, hee shall pay five shil- lings.
2d. If any unmarried man shall lie with a young woman unmarried hee shall pay twenty shillings.
3d. If any man shall beat his wife his hands shall be tied behind him and he be carried to the place of justice to be severely punished.
4th. Every young man, if not another's servant, and if unmarried, he shall be compelled to set up a wigwam and plant for himself, and not live shifting up and down to other wigwams.
5th. If any woman shall not have her hair tied up, but hang loose or be cut as men's hair, she shall pay five shillings.
6th. If any woman goe with naked breasts she shall pay two shillings sixpence. 7th. All those men that weare long locks shall pay five shillings.
8th. If any shall kill their lice between their teeth they shall pay five shillings. -- Mass. H. C. vol. iv. series 3.
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PASSACONAWAY.
cap, with a crooked horn about four inches in length rising from its apex. Sashes of furs are worn on his shoulders, a pipe, a pouch, a bear's face-the Nipmuck totem-are attached to his girdle; his teeth are gone, his face is shrunk up, and his sunken eyes, shaded by the high cheek bones and the massive forehead, only gleam with their wonted fire when fierce excitement fills his breast.
His disposition is also changed. From what the English saw of him we should say that he had more the spirit of John Howard the philanthropist, coupled with that of old Potter the juggler, than of Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte. He had lost the war spirit of former years, and loved the retirement of his wig- wams. About them he assembled his council and his statesmen. To them the children of the forest brought his tribute. This did not always consist of soft furs, shad or salmon, venison or bear steaks, maize, squashes, or pumpkins, stone axes, arrow-heads, or gouges, canoes, paddles, spears or fish-nets-none of these. But when they saw the water in the freestone bowl burning with a blue flame; when they saw him sailing on a cake of ice over the shining lake on the hottest summer day, or at night changed into a will-o'-wisp and dancing a wild cotillon with the mighty forest trees; or weaving for himself garlands from snow-born flowers, and wreaths of honor from oak leaves growing on fields of glar- ing ice, and holding in his hand a writhing snake, sprung to life from the dead skin, the badge of honor on his left arm-they paid him a mighty tribute and great honor by opening their mouths in right good earnest to the fullest extent, while their eyes involun- tarily started from their sockets. By such astounding juggling feats Passaconaway in his old age extorted his tribute and retained his mighty power.
Another gift also aided Passaconaway to maintain his influ- ence. He was a great medicine man. He could beat all the renowned homeopaths, clairvoyants, and healing mediums of to- day clear out of sight. If one of his subjects was sick, he placed him in a tight wigwamn or lodge. Vessels of water were set by his side, and in them were put fiery hot stones. A warm steam naturally arose like a great cloud and filled the lodge. Passacon- away then dressed in the most agreeable manner possible, paint-
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HISTORY OF WARREN.
ing himself all over like a striped pig. With his head covered with a porcupine skin, a drum in his hands, and tinkling bells attached to his legs, he went howling and stamping round and round the lodge full a hundred times, all the while keeping step to the soul-stirring peals of his drum and the soft voluptuous notes of his tinklers. This was done to drive away the evil spirits. Then he oped his mouth and set his teeth firmly together; then gentle twitches spasmodically jerked all the muscles of his fair countenance; then he rolled up the whites of his eyes, and then slowly rolled them down, where they remained set like those of a dying calf; then his jaws relaxed, his tongue began to wag, and he pronounced incantations thirty-one, all different, to invoke the healing spirits. For a full hour and a half he thus performed, like a medium, the steaming and sweating being only a preliminary of little use, while the aforesaid howls, music, and incantations effected the cure, pretty much in the same manner as the homeo- paths' very little doses from the smallest possible bottles, with just nothing at all in them, effect extraordinary cures at the present day .*
Passaconaway was an orator .; His eloquence was great, and with it he could mould the council at his will. Several splendid speeches which it is said he made are still extant. These have been handed down to us by the politeness of the historians. The first, as given by Hubbard, is said to have been delivered at a great public fish-feast, when all the Indians were assembled at Pawtucket falls, and is as follows:
"I am now ready to die," said Passaconaway, " and not likely to see you ever meet together any more. I will now leave this word of counsel with you, that you may take heed how you quar- rel with the English; for though you may do them much mischief, yet assuredly you will all be destroyed and rooted off the earth if you do; for I was as much an enemy to the English on their first coming into these parts as any one whatsoever; and I did try all ways and means possible to have destroyed them, at least to have prevented their sitting down here; but I could in no way effect
* Force's Historical Tracts, vol. ii. New England Canaan, 25, 26. John Josselyn, Gent., 2 Voyages to New England, 131.
t Drake's Indian Biography, 277.
Hubbard, Indian Wars. 67, 68.
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INDIAN ORATORY.
it. [Meaning by his incantations and sorceries.] Therefore I advise you never to contend with the English nor make war with them."
Dr. Bouton, a celebrated modern historian, gives the follow- ing much prettier version, as he had probably a reporter on the spot: "Hearken to the last words of your dying father. I shall meet you no more. The white men are the sons of the morning, and the sun shines bright above them. In vain I opposed their coming ; vain were my arts to destroy them; never make war with them; sure as you light the fires, the breath of heaven will turn the flames to consume you. Listen to my advice. It is the last I shall ever give you. Remember it and live !"*
Now there is much beauty in all this, as well as in many other speeches that have been attributed to him, and what is better a great probability that the old chief delivered the speech quoted. Hubbard says it was done at Pawtucket in 1660, and was his dying speech to his tribe. Bouton in his book says the speech he gives is the identical one delivered by Passaconaway in 1660, and we may well believe it, for he affirms that it was delivered at the same place, to the same audience, and at the same time as Hub- bard's. We come to the probably correct conclusion that Passa- conaway said something very pretty and exceedingly eloquent sometime.t
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