184 Mar. THE INDIAN PLAGUE. CHAP. neither man, woman, nor child remaining, as indeed X. we have found none; so as there is none to hinder our 1621. possession, or to lay claim unto it. All the afternoon 16. we spent in communication with him. We would gladly have been rid of him at night, but he was not willing to go this night. Then we thought to carry these extremes, as well as the Nauset Indians, on Cape Cod, escaped, whilst the intermediate inhabitants were almost entirely swept off. Some tribes were nearly extinct; the Massachusetts, in particular, are said to have been reduced from 30,000 to 300 fighting men. Capt. Dermer, who was here in 1619, says, "I passed along the coast where I found some ancient plantations, not long since populous, now utterly void. In other places a remnant remains, but not free of sickness; their disease the plague, for we might perceive the sores of some that had escaped, who described the spots of such as usually die." Higginson, in his New England's Plantation, printed in 1629, says, "their subjects above twelve years since, were swept away by a great and grievous plague that was amongst them, so that there are very few left to inhabit the country." Morton, in his New English Canaan, b. i. ch. 3, says, some few years before the English came to inhabit at New Plymouth, the hand of God fell heavily upon the natives, with such a mortal stroke, that they died on heaps. In a place where many inhabited, there hath been but one left alive to tell what became of the rest; 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, near the Massachusetts, it seemed to me a new-found Golgotha. This mortality was not ended when the Brownists of New Plymouth were settled at Patuxet, and by all likelihood the sickness that these Indians died of was the plague, as by conference with them since my arrival and habitation in these parts I have learned." Johnson, in his Wonderworking Providence, b. i. ch. 8, says, " about the year 1618, a little before the removal of that church of Christ from Holland to Plymouth, in New England, as the ancient Indians report, there befell a great mortality among them, chiefly desolating those places where the English afterwards planted; their disease being a sore consumption, sweeping away whole families, but chiefly young men and children, the very seeds of increase." "What this disease was," says Gookin, who wrote in 1674, "that so generally and mortally swept away the Indians, I cannot well learn. less it was some pestilential disease. I have discoursed with some old Indians, that were then youths, who say that the bodies all over were exceeding yellow, describing it by a yellow garment they showed me, both before they died, and afterwards." "There are some old planters," says Increase Mather, writing in 1677,"surviving to this day, who helped to bury the dead Indians, even whole families of them all dead at once." See Purchas, iv. 1778; Mass. Hist. Coll. i. 122, 148, xii. 66; Hutchinson, i. 34. Doubt In the Great Patent of New England, granted Nov. 3, 1620, the desolating effects of this pestilence are assigned by King James as a reason for granting it. "We have been further given certainly to know, that within these late years there hath, by God's visitation, THE NAUSITES. 185 X. him on shipboard, wherewith he was well content, CHAP. and went into the shallop; but the wind was high and the water scant, that it could not return back. We 1621. lodged him that night at Steven Hopkins's house,' and watched him. 17. The next day he went away back to the Masasoits,2 Mar. from whence he said he came, who are our next bordering neighbours. They are sixty strong, as he saith. The Nausites are as near southeast of them, and are a hundred strong; and those were they of whom our people were encountered, as we before related. They are much incensed and provoked against the English; and about eight months ago slew three Englishmen, and two more hardly escaped by flight to Monhiggon. They were Sir Ferdinando Gorge's 3 men, as this sav reigned a wonderful plague amongst the savages there heretofore inhabiting, in a manner to the utter destruction, devastation, and depopulation of that whole territory, so as there is not left, for many leagues together, in a manner, any that do claim or challenge any kind of interest therein; whereby we, in our judgment, are persuaded and satisfied that the appointed time is come in which Almighty God, in his great goodness and bounty towards us and our people, hath thought fit and determined, that these large and goodly territories, deserted as it were by their natural inhabitants, should be possessed and enjoyed by such of our subjects and people as shall by his mercy and favor, and by his powerful arm, be directed and conducted thither." Plymouth Colony Laws, p. 3. Hutchinson, in his Hist. of Mass. i. 35, remarks, "Our ancestors supposed an immediate interposition of Providence in the great mortality among the Indians, to make room for the settlement of the Eng 3 lish. I am not inclined to credulity, 1 See note on page 126. 186 HUNT, THE KIDNAPPER. CHAP. age told us; as he did likewise of the huggery, that X. is, fight, that our discoverers had with the Nausites, 1621. and of our tools that were taken out of the woods, which we willed him should be brought again; otherwise we would right ourselves. These people are ill affected towards the English by reason of one Hunt,' a master of a ship, who deceived the people and got them, under color of trucking with them, twenty out of this very place where we inhabit, and seven men from the Nausites, and carried them away, and sold them for slaves, like a wretched man (for twenty pound a man,) that cares not what mischief he doth for his profit. Mar. 17. 18. Saturday, in the morning, we dismissed the salvage, and gave him a knife, a bracelet, and a ring. He promised within a night or two to come again and to bring with him some of the Massasoyts, our neighbours, with such beavers' skins as they had to truck with us. Saturday and Sunday reasonable fair days. On this day came again the savage, and brought with him five other tall, proper men. They had every man a deer's pany, whom he had sent over to The name of this Captain Hunt a difference in the accounts of the number of the natives which he thus seized and carried off. The President and Council of New England, in their Brief Relation of its Discovery and Plantation, state the number as 24; Gorges mentions 30; whilst Capt. John Smith, says 27, agreeing with the number mentioned in the text. Hunt carried these Indians to Spain, where they were humanely rescued and set at liberty by the monks of Malaga. Several of them got over to England, and proved of essential service to Gorges. See Mass. Hist. Coll. xix. 6, xxvi. 58, 61, 132. DESCRIPTION OF THE INDIANS. 1 2 187 X. Mar. skin on him, and the principal of them had a wild cat's CHAP. skin, or such like, on the one arm. They had most of them long hosen up to their groins, close made, and 1621. above their groins to their waist another leather; they 18. were altogether like the Irish trousers. They are of complexion like our English gipseys; no hair or very little on their faces; on their heads long hair to their shoulders, only cut before; some trussed up before with a feather, broad-wise, like a fan; another a fox tail, hanging out. These left (according to our charge given him before) their bows and arrows a quarter of a mile from our town. We gave them entertainment as we thought was fitting them. fitting them. They did eat liberally of our English victuals. They made semblance unto us of friendship and amity. They sang and danced after their manner, like antics. They brought with them in a thing like a bow-case, (which the principal of them had about his waist,) a little of their corn pounded to powder, which, put to a little water, they eat.3 1 Leggins. 2 Morton, in his New English Canaan, b. i. ch. G, says, “of such deer's skins as they dress bare, they make stockings, that come within their shoes, like a stirrup stocking, and is fastened above at their belt, which is about their middle. When they have their apparel on, they look like Irish, in their trousers, the stockings join so to their breeches." Wood, in his New England's Prospect, part ii. ch. 5, says, "in the winter time the more aged of them wear leather drawers, in form like Irish trousers, fastened under their girdles with but tons." "The Indians make a certain sort of meal of parched maize. This meal they call nokake. It is so sweet, toothsome, and hearty, that an Indian will travel many days with no other food but this 188 THE INDIANS' USE OF TOBACCO. CHAP. He had a little tobacco in a bag; but none of them X. drank1 but when he liked. Some of them had their 1621. faces painted black, from the forehead to the chin, four 18. or five fingers broad; others after other fashions, as they liked. They brought three or four skins; but we Mar. ful of water from the brook, have I made many a good dinner and supper." Roger Williams's Key, in Mass. Hist. Coll. iii. 208. "If their imperious occasions cause them to travel, the best of their victuals for their journey is nocake, (as they call it,) which is nothing but Indian corn parched in the hot ashes. The ashes being sifted from it, it is afterwards beat to powder, and put into a long leathern bag, trussed at their backs like a knapsack, out of which they take thrice three spoonfuls a day, dividing it into three meals. If it be in winter, and snow be on the ground, they can eat when they please, stopping snow after their dusty victuals. In summer they must stay till they meet with a spring or brook, when they may have water to prevent the imminent danger of choking. With this strange viaticum, they will travel four or five days together, with loads fitter for elephants than men." Wood's New England's Prospect, part ii. ch. 6. That is, smoked. This was formerly a common expression. Thus Brereton, in his Journal of Gosnold's Voyage, says, "they gave us also of their tobacco, which they drink green, but dried into powder, very strong and pleasant." Rosier, in his account of Weymouth's Voyage to New England, in 1605, printed in Purchas's Pilgrims, iv. 1662, says, "We drank of their excellent tobacco, as much as we would, with them; but we saw not any great quantity to track for, and it seemed they had not much left of old, for they spend a great quantity yearly by their continual drinking." Johnson, in his Wonderworking Providence, b. i. ch. 41, mentions a lusty man (doubtless Underhill) who held forth to his pastor before the whole congregation, that the spirit of revelation came to him as he was drinking a pipe of tobacco." In the Records of Plymouth Colony, under the year 1646, is the following entry. Anthony Thacher and George Pole were chosen a committee to draw up an order concerning disorderly drinking tobacco." This use of language was probably descriptive of the manner in which the weed was formerly inhaled, and which still prevails in the East. Lane, in his account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, i. 187, says, "In smoking, the people of Egypt, and of other countries of the East, draw in their breath freely, so that much of the smoke descends into the lungs; and the terms which they use to express 'smoking tobacco' signify 'drinking smoke,' or drinking tobacco.' Winslow, in his Good News from New England, says, "the men take much tobacco." Roger Williams, in his Key, chs. ii. and XX. says, "they generally all take tobacco, and it is the only plant which men labor in, the women managing all the rest. They say they take tobacco for two causes; first, against the rheum, which causeth the toothache, which they are impatient of; secondly, to revive and refresh them, they drinking nothing but water. Their tobacco bag hangs at their neck, or sticks at their girdle, and is to them instead of an English pocket." |