USA > Rhode Island > The lands of Rhode Island : as they were known to Caunounicus and Miantunnomu when Roger Williams came in 1636 : an Indian map of the principal locations known to the Nahigansets, and elaborate historical notes > Part 4
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THE TREACHERY OF THE "PRAYING INDIANS".
known among them. The treachery of the Massachusetts pray- ing Indians steeled the heart of every Narragansett against all their teachings in religion, which was as Roger Williams once wrote, "pray or be shot."
Mr. Williams says: "They are very desirous to come into debt ; but he that trusts much sustain a two fold loss; first, of his com- modity : secondly, of his custom, as I have found by dear experience. Some are ingenuous, plain hearted, and honest. But the most never pay unless a man follow them to their several abodes, towns, and houses, as I have been forced to do, which hardship and travels it hath yet pleased God to sweeten with some experience and some little gain of Language" ( Indian Key 186). The Indian Feasts were of a peculiar character. Mr. Williams says: "They are of two sorts, public and private. The public sort was in case of a general Sickness, or Drouth, or War, or Famine. The private sort was often after a Harvest, or a Hunt, when they enjoy a caulme of peace, plenty, and prosperity." There is another feast called by the Indians Nickommo. This was a Winter feast "for them, as the Turk says of the Christian, they run mad once a year in their kind of Christ- mas feasting" ( Indian Key 153). The first of these sorts of feasts was religious in character. Mr. Williams says: "They keep open house for all to come to help to pray with them, unto whom also they give money" ( Indian Key 187). Their Priests, or Conjuring Doctors, manage these feasts ( 152). Mr. Williams says: "He or she that makes this Nickommo Feast or Dance, besides the feasting of twenty, fifty, an hundred. yea. I have seen near a thousand per- sons at one of them : they ( who give the feast ) give, I say, a great quantity of money and all sorts of their goods ( according to and sometimes beyond their estate) in several small parcels of goods, or money, to the value of eighteen pence, two shillings, or thereabouts. to one person ; upon receiving this gift, the person receiving goes out, and hollowes thrice (gives three cheers) for the health and prosperity of the party who gave the Feast" ( Indian Key 153). Mr. Williams continues : "By this feasting and these gifts the Devil drives on their worship pleasantly, as he doth all false worship. by such plausible earthly arguments, &c., Immunities. Dignities and Rewards unto submitters, and the contrary unto refusers" (153), "so
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THEIR "CHRISTMAS" FESTIVAL;
the Indian runs, far and near, to aske, 'who makes a feast.' " Mr. Edward Winslow (Good News from New England, London, 1624) gives some account of these Feasts of the Narragansetts. He says "they exceed in their blind devotion, and have a great spacious house wherein only some few that are, as we term them, priests come. Thither at certain known time ( Christmas) resort all their people, and offer almost all the riches they have to their Gods, as kettles, skins, hatchets, beads, knives, &c., all which are cast by the priests in a great fire that they make in the midst of the house and these consumed to ashes." This account differs somewhat from that by Mr. Williams, but it does not discredit Mr. Williams. Stone im- piements, like kettles, hatchets, knives, &c., could not be burned to ashes by any possible Indian fire in any conceivable Indian house. That this was a thing peculiar to the Narragansetts appears from a further statement by Mr. Winslow: "This the other Indians about us approve of as good, and with their Sachems would appoint the like: and because the plague hath not reigned at Nanohigganset as at other places about them, they attribute to this custom there used." Mr. Alexander Young, whose reprint of Winslow I am obliged to follow, here makes two notes ( Chronicles of the Pilgrims 359) which apparently he thinks shatters this statement of Winslow's, but the two references do not touch except to confirm it.
Mr. Williams says: "Of the Hunting," that is, the pursuit of game, "they hunt in two ways; first, when they pursue their game. especially Deer, which is the general and wonderfull plenteous hunt- ing (in companies of ) twenty, forty, fifty. yea, two or three hundred in a company, as I have seen, when they drive the woods before them. Secondly, they hunt by traps of several sorts, to which purpose, after they have observed in Spring-time and in Summer, the haunts of the Deer: then about Harvest they go, ten or twenty together and sometimes more, and withal, if it be not too far. wives and children also, where they build little hunting houses of barks and rushes, not comparable to their dwelling houses ; and so each man takes his bounds of two or three or four miles where he sets thirty. forty, or fifty traps, and baits his traps with that food the Deer loves, and once in two days he walks his round to view his traps" ( Indian Key 189). "They are very tender of their traps, where
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THEIR GAMES OF CHANCE.
they lie, and what comes at them, for they say the Deer will soon smell and be gone." Wolves were abundant and sometimes seized and devoured a deer entrapped, and sometimes the Indian killed the wolf, thus obtaining some recompense for the venison lost, in the wolf's skin which he valued. Then Mr. Williams tells this story : "I remember how a poor Deer was long hunted and chased by a Wolf : at last, as in their manner, after a chase of ten. or may be more miles, running, the stout wolf tired out the nimble Deer, and seising upon it, killed. In the act of devouring his prey, two English swine. big with pig, past by, assaulted the wolf, drove him from his prey. and devoured so much of the poor Deer as they both surfeited and dyed that night." Then Mr. Williams moralizes thus : "The Wolf is an emblem of a fierce blood-sucking persecutor; the Swine of a covetous, rooting, worldling ; both make a prey of the Lord Jesus in his poor servants (Indian Key 191). "When a deer is caught by the leg in the trap, sometimes there it lies a day together before the Indian comes, and so lies a prey to the raging wolf and other wild beasts. but most commonly the wolf, who seaseth upon the Deer and robs the Indian. Upon this the Indian makes a falling trap called Sunnuckhig, with a great weight of stones, and so sometimes knocks the wolf on the head with a gainful revenge. especially if it be a black wolf, which skins they greatly prize" (Indian Key 191).
Games of chance were common to all Indians : there were two sorts; one Mr. Williams says was "a game like unto the English cards, yet in stead of cards they play with strong rushes." Mr. Williams gives no explanation of the game, but Mr. Wood ( New England's Prospect ) gives a brief account. It was called Puim and was played with 50 or 60 small Bents of a foot long, whichi they divide to the number of their gamesters, shuffling them first between the palms of their hands ; he that hath more than his fellow is so much the forwarder in his game ; many other strange whimseys be in this game, which would be too long to commit to paper." And so we are left. Bents is the English Provincial name of a kind of grass, "hard. dry, coarse grasses, reeds and rushes" (Wright's Provincial Dictionary). Mr. Williams: "Secondly, they have a kind of Dice, which are Plum-stones painted, which they cast in a
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THEIR "PLAYING" ARBOUR. 35
tray with a mighty noise, and sweating." Here Mr. Williams fails to give us the details, so I again quote Mr. Wood: "Hubbub is a game not much unlike cards and Dice, being no other than lotterie." It is played with "five small bones in'a small smooth tray ; the bones bee like a Die, but something flatter, black on one side and white on the other, which they place in the ground, against which violently thumping the platter, the bones mount, changing colors with the windy whisking of their hands too and fro which action in that sport they must use, smiting themselves on the breast and thighs, crying out Hub, Hub, Hub. They may be heard a quarter of a mile off. The bones being all black or white make a double game ; if three be of a color, and two of another, then they afford but a single game : four of a color and one different is nothing." Mr. Trumbull, to whom I am indebted for this note, gives us also this : "The Abnakis played this game with eight such dice, or counters. When the black and white turned up, 4 and 4, or 5 and 3, the player made no count. For 6 and 2 he counted 4. For 7 and I he counted 10; and when all eight were of one color, twenty" ( Narr. Club 1, 194). This account came from Sebastien Rale's "Dictionary of the Abnaki Language." Rale was killed, in what is now Maine. in 1724. His Dictionary was three-quarters of a century after Mr. Williams' Key was written, and after three generations of Indians had succeeded the players whom Williams and Wood de- scribed. Mr. Williams says their public games are solemnized with the meetings of hundreds, sometimes thousands, and consist of many varieties, none of which I durst ever be present at, that I might not countenance and partake of their folly" (Indian Key 194). "The chief gamesters much desire to make their Gods side with them in their games, as our English gamesters so far also acknowledge God; therefore I have seen them keep as a precious stone a piece of thunderbolt, which is like unto a crystal. which they dig out of the ground under some tree, thunder smitten, and from this stone they have an opinion of success." I have known "an intelligent" white man who turned his stockings inside out, and wore them thus, to his broker's office, to turn the current of stock prices to his interest. This in Providence in the 20th century. Those Indians were bar- barians. Mr. Williams thus describes these Puttuckquapnonck or
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THEIR LONG HOUSE QUANNEKAMUCK.
playing arbour : "This arbour or play house is made of Poles set in the earth, four square, sixteen or twenty foot high, on which they hang great store of their stringed money, have great stakings. town against town, and two chosen out of the rest by course to play the game at this kind of dice in the midst of all their abettors with great shouting and solemnity." Bailey's Dictionary (1735) defines "solemnity" as "the pomp of celebrating an annual feast." Foot Ball was another favorite game, also "town against town, upon some broad sandy shore, free from stones, or upon some soft heathie plot, because of their naked feet ; at which they have great stakings, but seldom quarrel" ( Indian Key 196). Mr. Williams also says: "They do also practice running of races." "I have known many of them run between four score or an hundred miles in a Summer's day, and back within two days" ( Indian Key 98). "But their chiefest Idol, of all, for sport and game is, if their land be at peace, towards Harvest. when they set up a long house called Quannekamuck, which signifies long house, sometimes an hundred and sometimes two hundred feet long, upon a plain near the court. where many thousands, men and women meet, where he that goes in danceth in the sight of all the rest ; and is prepared with money. coats, small breeches, knives, or what he is able to reach to, and gives these things away to the poor, who yet must particularly beg and say Cowequetummous, that is, I beseech you ; which word, al- though there is not one common beggar among them, yet they will often use when their richest are amongst them" ( Indian Key 197).
Mr. Williams gives the word Juhettitea, meaning "Let us Fight." and Juhetteke, meaning "Fight." These words are. I think, the only words in the "Indian Key" in which the letter J will be found. The latter. he says, "is the word of encouragement which they use when they animate each other in war. They use their tongues instead of drums and trumpets" ( 199). They were quickly aroused to indignation, "not only in war, but in peace also; their spirits, in naked bodies, being as high and proud as men more gallant. from which sparks of the lusts of pride and passion begin the flame of war." The Indian word Kekaumwaw means "a scorner, or mocker." Mr. Williams says : "This mocking between their great ones is a great kindling of wars amongst them." Their method of battle Mr.
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THEIR WARS AND MANNER OF FIGHTING.
Williams thus sets forth: "Their wars are far less bloody and devouring than the cruel wars of Europe, and seldom twenty slain in a pitcht field ; partly because when they fight in a wood every tree is a bucklar ; when they fight in a plain, they fight with leaping and dancing that seldom an arrow hits. When a man is wounded, unless he that shot follows upon the wounded, they soon retire and save the wounded. Having no swords nor guns, all that are slain are commonly slain with great valor and courage; for the con- queror ventures into the thickest and brings away the head of his enemy" (Indian Key 204). In a preceding chapter (VII) Mr. Williams gives these illustrations: "Timequaissin means 'to cut off' or 'behead,' which they are most skilfull to do in fight. For whenever they wound and their arrow sticks in the body of their enemy, they, if they be valourous, and possibly can, follow their arrow, and falling upon the person wounded tearing his head a little aside by his hocke (scalp) in the twinckling of an eye fetch off his head though but with a sorry knife." "I know the man yet living who in time of war pretended to fall ( desert) from his own camp to that of the enemy, proffered his service in the front with them against his own army from which he had revolted. He propounded such plausible advantages that he drew them out to battle, himself keeping in the front : but on a sudden shot their chief Leader and Captain, and being shot, in a trice fecht off his head and returned immediately to his own again from whom in pretence he had revolted" (Indian Key 79). The man here referred to by Mr. Williams was Socho, or Sosoa, from whom the Mishquomacuk lands (now Westerly ) were first obtained. The preceding note does not quite clearly set forth the case.'Socho was a Pequot : he married a Niantic squaw. The two tribes entered upon a war before the English came. Socho fought against his own nation. Of course they knew him, and supposing he had returned to them, they received him. Then, pretending to lead them, he killed their chief, whom, of course, he well krew. It was treachery double dyed. It brought him the Niantic lands, and these lands lie sold to the English. These things are more fully set forth in the note on Miskquomacuk which follows herein. ( Letters of Roger Williams. Narr. Club 6. 39. ) Mr. Williams says: "The Indians are much delighted after a
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THEIR GREAT COUNSELLOR POTUCK.
battle to hang up the hands and heads of their enemies“ ( Indian , Key 80).
Concerning the treachery of the Narragansetts, let me note the story told by William Harris in August, 1676, concerning Potuck, the great counsellor of Quaiapen. "Potuck he came to Providence lately inquiring how he might get to Boeston safe, pretending peace (the great Indian war was then in progress) ; but some unadvisedly not reaching his intent told him he had better goe to Rhode Island (the island), disafacting his going to ye Bay, and they neither con- sidering that Rhode Island could make noe peace with him ( Potuck) that would be ye Indeans peace with ye United Colonies, for that Rhode Island was not in that Confederacy. A peace made by Rhode Island would not be regarded by the Colony, thus preventing the war as binding upon them, to wit, these Colonies." Harris con- tinues : "It was not safe for Rhode Island to trust the Indeans promeses, they are soe perfideons allsoe". He proceeds: "Three men at Providence consented to his ( Potuck's) going to ye island aforesaid, and sent him by water, and promesed him safe return." On this fair promise Potuck went. Upon his arrival "ye inhabitants girt on their swords and said he should not goe from the island alive." It has been usually written that Potuck was killed with his Queen at or near Natick by Connecticut troopers on the 2nd July. 1676. But if Harris states the fact, he was alive on the 12th of August, when his account, was written-Potuck was never again heard from as being alive -- on which side was "perfideous" action on that occasion? (Coll. R. I. Hist. Soc. 10, 175). The following footnote appears in the same volume : "Potuck was a Narragansett chief who seems to be first mentioned in connection with King Philip's war as an opponent to Christianity." Concerning this see the name Pojack among the notes following, and the work of the Praying Indians herein set forth. Concerning the religious twaddle of the time, read this severe note written by Williams to the Massa- chusetts Bay government in 1654: "I besecch you consider how the name of the most Holy and jealous God may be preserved be- tween the clashings of these two, viz, the glorious conversion of the Indians in New England. and the unnecessary wars and cruel de- structions of the Indians in New England" ( R. I. Col. Rec. 1, 294).
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SICKNESSES AND MEDICAL PRACTICE.
The glorious conversion of the Indian was a never failing "card" at that time used by designing men from Massachusetts in begging money to be used in such schemes. The Indian Bible was one of the results. Ten thousand dollars was twice begged, and books printed, which no Indian on earth could read and understand: this to save his soul according to the English fashion.
Mr. Williams uses this phrase in this elaborate paper: "All In- dians are extremely treacherous" (page 297). But as applied to the Narragansetts, Mr. Williams renders it innocous by a preceding clause : "The Narragansetts as they were the first, so they have been long confederates with you; they have been true in all the Pequod wars to you."
In cases of sickness, Mr. Williams says, "their misery appears, for they have not a raisin, nor a currant, nor physic, nor fruit, nor spice, nor any comfort more than their corn and water, wanting all means of recovery or present refreshing. I have been constrained beyond my power to refresh them, and I believe to save many from death." The visit of friends was all their refreshment or encourage- ment under such conditions; and their visits did not occur when a disease was thought to be infectious. "Then all forsake them and fly. I have often seen a poor house left alone in the wild woods, all being fled." They had actually no knowledge of any remedial agents in case of sickness. He illustrated Burton's classification of diseases ( Anatomy of Melancholy ). There were two; of one you will recover ; of the other you will die; and that was the way with the Indian. "Their priests, or conjurers, bewitch the people. and not only take their money, but do most certainly, by the help of the Devil (not by drugs ) work great cures : though most certain it is that the greatest part of their priests do merely abuse them and get their money in times of sickness, and to my knowledge long for sick times." In spite of "working great cures," Mr. Williams says. "the poor people commonly die under their hands, for alas they administer nothing, but howl and roar over them, and begin a song to the rest of the people about them" ( Indian Key 213). Again, Mr. Williams says: "In sickness the priest comes close to the sick person and .performs many strange actions about him, and threaten and conjure out the sickness ( Indian Key 152). When sickness
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' THE FINE CHARACTER OF CANONICUS.
appears in a family the females, young and old, blacken their faces. with soot or black earth (plumbago) : when death . takes place the men follow the women and blacken with sout their faces". This "blacking" and lamenting lasts a longer or shorter time, according to the person, from a month to a year. Mr. Williams says: "As they abound in lamentations for the dead, so they abound in consolation to the living, and visit them frequentiy, using this word, Kutchimmoke, 'be of good cheer,' which they ex- press by stroaking the cheek and head of the father, or mother, hus- band or wife of the dead" ( Indian Key 215). When a Narragansett died, his name died with him. It was never again allowed to be spoken. They had certain words, given by Mr. Williams ( Key 216), which might be used. Mockuttasuit, for this was the name of the office of what we now call an "undertaker" or "Funeral Director," was, Mr. Williams says, "one of chief esteem who winds up and buries the dead; commonly some wise, grave and well educated man hath that office. When they come to the grave they lay the dead by the Grave's mouth, then all sit down and lament ; after the dead is laid in the grave, and sometimes some goods cast in with the dead, a second great lamentation follows: then upon the grave is spread the mat on which the party died ; the dish he ate in; and sometimes a fair coat of skin hung upon a tree near to the grave, which none will touch, but suffer it there to rot with the dead. I saw with mine own eyes the chief and most aged peaceable Father of the Country-Canonicus-having buried his son, he burned his own Palace and all the goods in it, to a great value, in a solemn remembrance of his son, and in a kind of humble expiation to the Gods" (Indian Key 218).
Roger Williams gives to Canonicus this fine character: "Many English have experimented them to be inclined to peace and love with the English nation. Their late famous long-lived Canonicus so lived and died, and in the same most honorable manner and solemnity, in their way, as you laid to sleep your prudent peace- maker, Mr. Winthrop, did they honor this their prudent and peace- able prince" (R. I. Col. Rec. v. I, p. 296).
There is another and directly opposite statement of the Indian character, specifically that of the Narragansetts, attributed to Mir.
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THEIR MORAL DEGENERACY UNDER CIVILIZATION,
Williams. It is by the Rev. John Callender, a young Baptist clergy- man at the time of his writing. Mr. Callender said: "Mr. Williams at first gave a promising character of the morals of these people, but on longer acquaintance and more experience he seems to have altered his opinion of them, as appears by some expressions in a manuscript of his yet remaining. 'The distinction of drunken and sober honest Sachems is (says he) both lamentable and ridiculous; lamentable that all Pagans are given to drunkenness, and ridiculous that those (of whom he was speaking ) are excepted. It is ( says he) notori- cusly known what consciences all Pagans make of lying, whoring. murdering, &c., 25th, 6th, m. 1658" (Callender's Historical Dis- course, 1738, p. 85). Mr. Callender does not cite the location of the Document from which he made his quotation. I cannot deny that he may have seen it: but no other writer has ever seen it. There is known another Document written by Roger Williams, the exist- ence of which cannot be questioned. It was written to the Massa- chusetts General Court, 5 October, 1654, nearly four years before Mr. Callender's citation : and while not directly contrary to that citation, it raises very serious doubt. In this statement of 1654 Mr. Williams said: "I cannot yet learn that it ever pleased the Lord to permit the Narragansetts to stain their hands with any English blood, neither in open hostilities nor secret murders, as both Pequots and Long Islanders did, and Mohegans also, in the Pequot wars. It is true they are barbarians, but their greatest offences against the English have been matters of money, or petty revenging of themselves on some Indians, upon extreme Provoca- tion, but God kept them clean of our blood" ( Narr. Club 6, 274). While this is not direct contradiction to the citation, it in effect obscures it. The authority used by Mr. Callender even if true would not justify the language which he uses. In the preceding paper the Indian character is described as it existed here in 1642, as Mr. Williams then saw it. It was printed in London in the summer of 1643. Fifteen years later had Mr. Williams had occasion to describe the Indian character as it then existed, it might have been a very different matter. This clause of 1658 does not show that Mr. Wil- liams had "altered his opinion of them." as lie had stated it fifteen years before. In the copy of Callender's Discourse which I have
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BENEDICT ARNOLD, A FACTOR FOR MASSACHUSETTS.
used there is a manuscript note written by Moses Brown at some time between 1802 and 1838. This is Mr. Brown's note: "It would be sorrowful if they were corrupted in their morals by the inter- course of, and the temptation to, drunkenness by the white people among them. Does not this seem to be the case, seeing Roger speaks so favorably of them at first and so differently at last? Per- haps himself was not in so good a state to judge of them at last as at first ; they certainly treated him and his associates at first with great hospitality." In 1885 the Historical Society published in its Collections (vol. 7, pp. 134-237) a paper on the Narragansetts, by Henry C. Dorr. It is positively an awful description of corrupt rottenness as Mr. Dorr saw it. On page 154 Mr. Dorr says: "The process of debasement went on unchecked under the influence of English trade." The writer has carefully reviewed this paper by Mr. Dorr, but has never printed his conclusion. There is scarcely a paper ever printed here so utterly rotten in the fundamental state- ments in it as this by Mr. Dorr. Moreover, the logical sequences are absurd. The writer tried to explain some of them to Mr. Dorr, but he would not listen. The paragraph which I have cited in an instant overturns the entire paper. The Historical Society has preserved to us one other citation. It is this: "Benedict Arnold traded with the Indians on the Sabbath, being a factor - (an agent of a merchant) for them from Massachusetts, supplied with com- modity for those having toleration to sell provisions to the Indians. but not the English" of Providence or Warwick. his own country- men. Is it to be supposed that rum was not among the commodities with which Benedict Arnold was supplied for the Indians? ( R. I. Ilist. Soc. Col., vol. 2, 52). A note concerning a Massachusetts Indian Sachem named Cutshamokin may not be here without in- terest. This Sachem was the first sought by Eliot for conversion ; and he was the first converted by the preaching of Eliot ( Francis' Life Eliot, 171). He became one of the "Praying Indians". Mr. Francis, a Unitarian clergyman at Cambridge, wrote in 1835. this, concerning this Indian Sachem: "He had been to the Narragansett country to appease some strife among his brother Sachems. On the journey he and his companions had purchased 'much strong water' at Gorton's settlement, the consequences of which were
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