[230] Peddock’s, or Pettick’s, Island, still so called, is one of the largest islands in Boston Bay. It lies directly opposite to George’s Island and Hull, from which last it is separated by a narrow channel, and is between Weymouth and Quincy bays, on the east and west. See Shurtleff’s Description of Boston, p. 557.

[231] Leonard Peddock seems to have been in the employment of the Council for New England. In the records of the Council for the 8th of November, 1622, is the following entry: “Mr. Thomson is ordered to pay unto Leo: Peddock £10 towards his paynes for his last Imployments to New England.” Subsequently, on the 19th of the same month: “It is ordered that a Letter be written from the Counsell to Mr. Weston, to deliver to Leonard Peddock, a boy Native of New England called papa Whinett belonging to Abbadakest, Sachem of Massachusetts, which boy Mr Peddock is to carry over with him” (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, April, 1867, pp. 70, 74).

Andrew Weston had returned to England in the Charity, leaving Wessagussett in September, 1622 (supra, 7). He would seem to have brought over the Indian boy in question with him. From the entry in the records of the Council for New England, just quoted, it would appear that Leonard Peddock was in New England during the summer of 1622. The reference to him in the text is additional evidence that Morton was there at the same time, and in company with Weston.

[232] This is undoubtedly a misprint for Auckies, which was a sailor’s corruption for Auks. The Great Auk (Alca impennis) is probably referred to. This bird, now supposed to be extinct, was formerly common on the New England coast. Audubon, writing in 1838, says: “An old gunner, residing on Chelsea Beach, near Boston, told me that he well remembered the time when the Penguins were plentiful about Nahant and some other islands in the bay.” (Am. Ornithological Biog., vol. iv. p. 316.) Professor Orton, alluding to this passage, in the American Naturalist (1869, p. 540), expresses the opinion that the Razor-billed Auk was the bird referred to; but Professor F. W. Putnam adds, in a foot-note, that “the ‘old hunter’ was undoubtedly correct in his statement, as we have bones of the species taken from the shell-heaps of Marblehead, Eagle Hill in Ipswich, and Plum Island.” Dr. Jeffries Wyman found them in the shell-heaps at Cotuit. See Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 12.

There is an elaborate paper on the Great Auk, under the title of “The Garefowl and its Historians,” by Professor Alfred Newton, in the Natural History Review for 1865, p. 467.

[233] Morton would seem to be mistaken in this statement. Between 1614 and 1619 two French vessels were lost on the Massachusetts coast. One was wrecked on Cape Cod, and the crew, who succeeded in getting on shore, were most of them killed by the savages, and the remainder enslaved in the way described in the text. Two of these captives were subsequently redeemed by Captain Dermer (Bradford, p. 98). The other vessel was captured by the savages in Boston Bay, and burned. This is the vessel referred to by Morton as riding at anchor off Peddock’s Island. The circumstances of the capture are described in Phinehas Pratt’s narrative (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. pp. 479, 489). All the crew, he says, were killed, and the ship, after grounding, was burned. Pratt’s statement is distinct, and agrees with Bradford’s, that the captives among the Indians were the survivors from the vessel wrecked on Cape Cod, not from that captured in Boston Bay.

[234] Pratt’s account of this survivor among the French crew is to be found in IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. pp. 479, 489. He says that “one of them was wont to read much in a book (some say it was the New Testament), and that the Indians enquiring of him what his book said, he told them it did intimate that there was a people like French men that would come into the country and drive out the Indians.” The account given by Mather (Magnalia, B. I. ch. ii. § 6) is curiously like that in the text. After quoting the substance of Pratt’s statement he adds: “These infidels then blasphemously replied, ‘God could not kill them;’ which blasphemous mistake was confuted by a horrible and unusual plague, whereby they were consumed in such vast multitudes that our first planters found the land almost covered with their unburied carcases; and they that were left alive were smitten into awful and humble regards of the English by the terrors which the remembrance of the Frenchman’s prophecy had imprinted on them.”

Pratt, whom Mather followed, claims to have derived his knowledge of these events during the winter of 1622-3 directly from savages concerned in them. The probability is that the tradition of the French captive, and his book and prophecy, was a common one among the settlers both at Plymouth and about Boston Bay. Pratt apparently had a habit, as he grew old, of appropriating to his own account many of the earlier and more striking incidents of colonial history. (Mather’s Early New England, p. 17.)

[235] The mysterious pestilence, which in the years 1616 and 1617 swept away the New England Indians from the Penobscot to Narragansett Bay, is mentioned by all the earlier writers, and its character has recently been somewhat discussed. There can be no doubt that it practically destroyed the tribes, especially the Massachusetts and the Pokanokets, among which it raged. The former were reduced from a powerful people, able, it is said, to muster three thousand warriors, to a mere remnant a few hundred strong. The Pokanokets were in some localities, notably at Plymouth, actually exterminated, and the country left devoid of inhabitants (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 148; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 183). Winslow gave a description of the desolation created by this pestilence, and of the number of the unburied dead, very like that in the text (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 183, 206). On this subject, see also, Bradford, pp. 102, 325; Johnson, p. 16; Wood’s Prospect, p. 72; III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 57.

No definite conclusion as to the nature of this pestilence has been reached by medical men. It has been suggested that it was the yellow-fever (Palfrey, vol. i. p. 99, n). As, however, it raged equally in the depth of the severest winter as in summer, this could not have been the case (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 57; Bradford, p. 325). Other modern medical authorities have inclined to the opinion that it was a visitation of small-pox (Dr. Holmes in Mass. Hist. Soc., Low. Inst. Lect., 1869, p. 261; Dr. Green’s Centennial Address before the Mass. Med. Soc., June 7, 1881, p. 12). In support of this hypothesis Captain Thomas Dermer is quoted, who, sailing along the coast in 1619-20, wrote “we might perceive the sores of some that had escaped, who described the spots of such as usually die” (Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1778). On the other hand, none of the contemporaneous writers who speak of the disease ever call it the small-pox, though all of them were perfectly familiar with small-pox, and a very large portion of them probably bore its marks. Dermer speaks of it as “the plague.” Bradford, when the same pestilence raged on the Connecticut, described it as “an infectious fever.” Dr. Fuller, the first New England physician, then died of it (Bradford, p. 314). He could not but have been familiar with the small-pox and its symptoms; and it would seem most improbable that he should have died of that disease among his dying neighbors, and not have known what was killing him. Moreover, in 1633-4 the small-pox did rage among the Indians, and Bradford, in giving a fearfully graphic account of its ravages, adds, “they [the Indians] fear it more than the plague.” Josselyn also draws the same distinction, saying (Two Voyages, p. 123): “Not long before the English came into the country, happened a great mortality amongst [the Indians]; especially where the English afterwards planted, the East and Northern parts were sore smitten by the contagion; first by the plague, afterwards, when the English came, by the small-pox.”

It would seem, therefore, that the pestilence of 1616-7 was clearly not the small-pox. More probably it was, as Bradford says, “an infectious fever,” or some form of malignant typhus, due to the wretched sanitary condition of the Indian villages, which had become over-crowded, owing to that prosperous condition of the tribes which Smith describes as existing at the time of his visit to the coast in 1614 (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 109).

[236] “Their houses, which they call wigwams, are built with poles pitcht into the ground of a round form for most part, sometimes square. They bind down the tops of their poles, leaving a hole for smoak to go out at, the rest they cover with the bark of trees, and line the inside of their wigwams with mats made of rushes painted with several colors. One good post they set up in the middle that reaches to the hole in the top, with a staff across before it; at a convenient height, they knock in a pin upon which they hang their kettle. Beneath that they set up a broad stone for a back which keepeth the post from burning. Round by the walls they spread their mats and skins where the men sleep whilst their women dress their victuals. They have commonly two doors, one opening to the south, the other to the north, and, according as the wind sets, they close up one door with bark and hang a deers skin or the like before the other. Towns they have none, being always removing from one place to another for conveniency of food, sometimes to those places where one sort of fish is most plentiful, other whiles where others are. I have seen half a hundred of their wigwams together in a piece of ground and they show prettily; within a day or two or a week they have been all dispersed.” (Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 126). See also Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 144.

[237] Giving in his Key (p. 48) the Indian combination of words signifying “let us lay on wood,” Roger Williams adds: “This they do plentifully when they lie down to sleep winter and summer, abundance they have and abundance they lay on: their fire is instead of our bed-clothes. And so, themselves and any that have any occasion to lodge with them, must be content to turn often to the fire, if the night be cold, and they who first wake must repair the fire.” Elsewhere he says: “God was pleased to give me a painful, patient spirit, to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes.” See also Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 150.

When Stephen Hopkins and Edward Winslow were sent on their mission to Massasoit, in June, 1621, they say of their entertainment on the night they arrived at his lodge: “Late it grew, but victuals he offered none; for indeed he had not any, being he came so newly home. So we desired to go to rest: he layd us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end and we at the other, it being only planks layd a foot from the ground, and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us; so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our journey.” (Mourt, p. 45). Two nights of this entertainment sufficed for the embassadors who “feared we should either be light-headed for want of sleep, for what with bad lodging, the savages barbarous singing, (for they use to sing themselves asleep,) lice and fleas within doors, and musketos without, we could hardly sleep all the time of our being there.” (Ib., p. 46) Another observer remarked of the New England Indians: “Tame cattle they have none, excepting Lice, and Dogs of a wild breed” (Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 127); and to the same effect Roger Williams notes (Key, p. 74): “In middle of summer, because of the abundance of fleas, which the dust of the house breeds, they [the Indians] will fly and remove on a sudden to a fresh place.”

Smith, describing the Virginia Indians, says (True Travels, vol. i. p. 130): “Their houses are built like our arbors, of small young springs bowed and tyed, and so close covered with mats, or the barkes of trees very handsomely, that nothwithstanding either winde, raine, or weather, they are as warm as stoves, but very smoaky, yet at the toppe of the house there is a hole made for the smoake to go into right over the fire.

“Against the fire they lie on little hurdles of Reeds covered with a mat, borne from the ground a foote and more by a hurdle of wood. On these round about the house they lie heads and points, one by the other, against the fire, some covered with mats, some with skins, and some stark naked lie on the ground, from six to twenty in a house.”

In Parkman’s Jesuits in North America there is a lively account of Le Jeune’s experience in passing the winter of 1633-4 among the Algonquins: “Put aside the bear-skin, and enter the hut. Here, in a space some thirteen feet square, were packed nineteen savages, men, women and children, with their dogs, crouched, squatted, coiled like hedge-hogs, or lying on their backs, with knees drawn up perpendicularly to keep their feet out of the fire.... The bark covering was full of crevices, through which the icy blasts streamed in upon him from all sides; and the hole above, at once window and chimney, was so large, that, as he [Le Jeune] lay, he could watch the stars as well as in the open air. While the fire in the midst, fed with fat pine-knots, scorched him on one side, on the other he had much ado to keep himself from freezing. At times, however, the crowded hut seemed heated to the temperature of an oven. But these evils were light when compared to the intolerable plague of smoke. During a snow-storm, and often at other times, the wigwam was filled with fumes so dense, stifling, and acrid, that all its inmates were forced to lie flat on their faces, breathing through mouths in contact with the cold earth. Their throats and mouths felt as if on fire; their scorched eyes streamed with tears.... The dogs were not an unmixed evil, for by sleeping on and around [Le Jeune], they kept him warm at night; but, as an offset to this good service, they walked, ran and jumped over him as he lay” (pp. 27-8).

[238] In regard to the food of the Indians and their alternate gluttony and abstinence, see Josselyn’s Two Voyages, pp. 129-30; Wood’s Prospect, p. 57. Wood’s account of the Indians is usually the best. As respects eating, he says: “At home they will eate till their bellies stand South, ready to split with fulnesse: it being their fashion, to eate all at sometimes, and sometimes nothing at all in two or three days, wise providence being a stranger to their wilder dayes.”

[239] “Cattup keen? ‘Are you hungry?’ Meechin, ‘meat;’ or, as an Indian would be more likely to say, Meech, ‘eat.’ In Eliot’s orthography, Kodtup kēn? Meechum, ‘victuals, food,’ or meech, ‘eat.’”—J. H. Trumbull.

[240] In regard to the hospitality of the Indians, Wood says (Prospect, p. 59): “Though they be sometimes scanted, yet are they as free as Emperors, both to their countrymen and English, be he stranger or mere acquaintance; counting it a great discourtesie not to eat of their high conceited delicates, and sup of their un-oat-meal’d broth, made thick with fishes, fowles and beasts boiled all together; some remaining raw, the rest converted by over-much seething to a loathed mass, not halfe so good as Irish Boniclapper.” See also Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 153.

So also Roger Williams (Key, ch. ii. and iii.): “If any stranger came in, they presently give him to eat of what they have; many a time, and at all times of the night (as I have fallen in travel, upon their houses) where nothing hath been ready, have themselves and their wives, risen to prepare me some refreshing.”

“In Summer-time I have knowne them lye abroad often themselves, to make room for strangers, English, or others.”

[241] In regard to the games and removals of the Indians, see Williams’s Key, chs. xi. and xxviii.; Smith’s True Travels, vol. i. p. 133; Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 153; and Wood’s Prospect; pp. 63, 73-5. Wood gives an excellent description of the Indian game of foot-ball: “Their goals be a mile long placed on the sands, which are as even as a board; their ball is no bigger than a hand-ball, which sometimes they mount in the air with their naked feet, sometimes it is swayed by the multitude; sometimes also it is two days before they get a goal; then they mark the ground they win, and begin the next day.... Though they play never so fiercely to outward appearance, yet anger-boiling blood never streams in their cooler veins; if any man be thrown, he laughs out his foil, there is no seeking of revenge, no quarrelling, no bloody noses, scratched faces, black eyes, broken shins, no bruised members or crushed ribs, the lamentable effects of rage; but the goal being won, the goods on the one side lost; friends they were at the foot-ball, and friends they must meet at the kettle.” To the same effect see Strachey’s Historie, p. 78.

[242] Ipsisque in hominibus nulla gens est neque tam immansueta, neque tam fera, quæ non, etiam si ignoret qualem habere deum deceat, tamen habendum sciat (De Legibus, Lib. I. § 8).

Quæ est enim gens, aut quod genus hominum, quod non habeat sine doctrinâ anticipationem quandam deorum? (De Natura Deorum, Lib. I. § 16).

[243] The reference here is to Wood’s New England’s Prospect (p. 70). In regard to the time when this work was written and published, see Mr. Deane’s preface to the edition in the publications of the Prince Society. Morton makes numerous references to it in the New Canaan (infra, *38, 53, 64, 84, 99). The present reference is one of the few unintelligible passages in the book. Wood’s language, to which Morton apparently takes exception, is as follows: “As it is natural to all mortals to worship something, so do these people; but exactly to describe to whom their worship is chiefly bent, is very difficult; they acknowledge especially two, Ketan, who is their good God, to whom they sacrifice after their garners be full with a good crop: upon this God likewise they invocate for fair weather, for rain in time of drought, and for the recovery of their sick; but if they do not hear them, then they verify the old verse, Flectere si nequeo Superes, Acheronta movebo, their Pow-wows betaking themselves to their exorcisms and unromantick charms ... by God’s permission, through the Devil’s help, their charms are of force to produce effects of wonderment.” Morton would seem to have wished to depreciate Wood, as an authority on New England, and so, playing upon his name and the title of his book, he implied that he had taken a much more elevated view of the religious development of the Indians than could be justified either by the actual facts, or the judgment of the best informed.

Being unintelligible, the passage, from the word “neither” to the end of the paragraph, is reproduced here in all respects, including punctuation, as it is in the text of the original edition.

[244] There is no expression of this nature to be found anywhere in those writings of Sir William Alexander which have come down to us and are included in the publications of the Prince Society. He may have used the expression quoted in conversation, or in a letter. Winslow, in Mourt, says: “They [the savages] are a people without any religion, or knowledge of any God” (p. 61). This statement he subsequently, however, retracted in his Good News (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 355), where he says, “therein I erred, though we could then gather no better.”

The subject of the religion of the North American aborigines has been treated by Parkman in the introduction to the Jesuits in North America (pp. lxvii.-lxxxix.), and he concludes that “the primitive Indian, yielding his untutored homage to an All-pervading grand Omnipotent Spirit, is a dream of poets, rhetoricians and sentimentalists.” To the same effect Palfrey, at the close of his vigorous discussion of the same subject (vol. i. p. 45), declares that the devout Indian of the “untutored mind is as fabulous as the griffin or the centaur.”

[245] Thomas May, better known as the historian and secretary of the Long Parliament, was born in 1595 and died in 1650. In 1627 he published a translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia, with a supplementum, or continuation (1630), by himself in seven books. This continuation he subsequently translated into Latin, and it is included in Lemaire’s edition of the Pharsalia in his Bibliotheca Classica Latina (Paris, 1832). The passage to which Morton refers is in the third book of the continuation (ll. 108-78). The following are some of the verses:—

[246] In his Latin poem on New England, which the Rev. William Morell wrote during his eighteen months’ residence at Wessagusset as the spiritual head of the Robert Gorges settlement of 1623, there is a description of the Indian and his garments. The following is the author’s English rendering of his more elegant Latin original:—

[247] Supra, 16, note.

[248] Speaking of a ceremony common to the Algonquins and the Hurons, of propitiating their fishing-nets by formally marrying them every year to two young girls, Parkman says: “As it was indispensable that the brides should be virgins, mere children were chosen” (The Jesuits in North America, p. lxix. note). The subject of female chastity among the Indians has already been referred to (supra, p. 17), and it is extremely questionable whether they had any conception of it. Winslow, in his Good News (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 364) says:—“When a maid is taken in marriage, she first cutteth her hair, and after weareth a covering on her head, till her hair be grown out. Their women are diversely disposed; some as modest, as they will scarce talk one with another in the company of men, being very chaste also; yet others seem light, lascivious, and wanton.... Some common strumpets there are, as well as in other places; but they are such as either never married, or widows, or put away for adultery; for no man will keep such an one to wife.” Strachey (Historie, p. 65), says of the Virginians: “Their younger women goe not shadowed [clothed] amongst their owne companie, until they be nigh eleaven or twelve returnes of the leafe old, nor are they much ashamed thereof, and therefore would the before remembered Pochahuntas, a well featured, but wanton yong girle, Powhatan’s daughter, sometymes resorting to our fort, of the age then of eleven or twelve yeares, get the boyes forth with her into the markett place, and make them wheele, falling on their hands, turning up their heeles upwards, whome she would followe, and wheele so her self, naked as she was, all the fort over; but being over twelve yeares, they put on a kind of semecinctum lethern apron (as doe our artificers or handycrafts men) before their bellies, and are very shamefac’t to be seen bare.” Ellis, in his Red Man and White Man (p. 185), remarks on this point: “The obscenity of the savages is unchecked in its revolting and disgusting exhibitions. Sensuality seeks no covert.”

Under these circumstances it is unnecessary to say that Morton’s statements as to the red cap and the Sachem’s privilege are pure fiction, and what Parkman says of the Hurons is probably true of the Massachusetts,—their women were wantons before marriage and household drudges after it. (Jesuits in North America, p. xxxv).

[249] To the same effect Roger Williams says: “Most of them count it a shame for a woman in travell to make complaint, and many of them are scarcely heard to groane. I have often known in one quarter of an hour a woman merry in the house, and delivered and merry again: and within two dayes abroad, and after foure or five dayes at worke.” (Key, ch. xxiii.). See also Josselyn’s Two Voyages, p. 127. Wood’s account is almost as comprehensive, though not quite so detailed and graphic as Josselyn’s: “They likewise sew their husband’s shooes, and weave mats of Turkie feathers; besides all their ordinary household drudgery which dayly lies upon them, so that a bigge belly hinders no businesse nor a childbirth takes much time, but the young infant being greased and footed, wrapped in a Beaver skin, bound to his goode behaviour with his feete up to his bumme, upon a board two foot long and one foot broade, his face exposed to all nipping weather, this little Pappouse travels about with his bare-footed mother, to paddle in the Icie Clammbanks after three or four daies of age have sealed his passe-board and his mother’s recovery.” (Prospect, p. 82). See also Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 358.

[250] The idea that the Indian was born white was very commonly entertained in the first half of the seventeenth century. Lechford, in his Plaine Dealing, says (p. 50): “They are of complexion swarthy and tawny; their children are borne white, but they bedaube them with oyle, and colours, presently.” Josselyn also speaks of the Indians “dying [their children] with a liquor of boiled Hemlock-Bark” (Two Voyages, p. 128). Speaking of the Virginia women, Smith says: “To make [their children] hardie, in the coldest mornings they them wash in the rivers, and by paynting and oyntments so tanne their skinnes, that after a year or two, no weather will hurt them.” (True Travels, vol. i. p. 131). Strachey gives a more particular account of the supposed process: The Indians “are generally of a cullour browne or rather tawny, which they cast themselves into with a kind of arsenick stone, ... and of the same hue are their women; howbeit, yt is supposed neither of them naturally borne so discouloured; for Captain Smith (lyving somtymes amongst them) affirmeth how they are from the womb indifferent white, but as the men, so doe the women, dye and disguise themselves into this tawny cowler, esteeming yt the best beauty to be neerest such a kynd of murrey as a sodden quince is of (to liken yt to the neerest coulor I can), for which they daily anoint both face and bodyes all over with such a kind of fucus or unguent as can cast them into that stayne.” (Historie, p. 63).

[251] “If there was noticed a remarkable exemption from physical deformities, this was probably not the effect of any peculiar congenital force or completeness, but of circumstances which forbade the prolongation of any imperfect life. The deaf, blind or lame child was too burdensome to be reared, and according to a savage estimate of usefulness and enjoyment, its prolonged life would not requite its nurture.” Palfrey, vol. i. p. 23.

[252] Mr. Trumbull writes: “Morton’s nan weeteo stands for Eliot’s nanwetee (nanwetue, Cotton), ‘a bastard.’ Titta should be tatta, a word common among Indians, which is well enough translated by Morton. Eliot renders it ‘I know not,’ and R. Williams adds to this meaning, ‘I cannot tell; it may be so.’

“Cheshetue is unknown to me, but I am inclined to believe that Morton heard something like it, in the connection and substantially with the meaning he gives it,—some adjective of dispraise, qualifying squaa, or, as we write it, squaw.”

[253] [likenesse.] See supra, 111, note 1.

[254] The observations of Roger Williams led him to a different conclusion: “Their affections, especially to their children, are very strong.... This extreme affection, together with want of learning, makes their children saucie, bold and undutifull. I once came into a house, and requested some water to drink; the father bid his sonne (of some 8 yeeres of age) to fetch some water: the boy refused, and would not stir; I told the father, that I would correct my child, if he should so disobey me &c. Upon this the father took up a sticke, the boy another, and flew at his father: upon my persuasion, the poore father made him smart a little, throw down his stick, and run for water, and the father confessed the benefits of correction, and the evill of their too indulgent affections.” (Key, ch. v.)

To the same effect Champlain wrote (Voyages, vol. iii. p. 170): “The children have great freedom among these tribes. The fathers and mothers indulge them too much, and never punish them. Accordingly they are so bad and of so vicious a nature, that they often strike their mothers and others. The most vicious, when they have acquired the strength and power, strike their fathers. They do this whenever the father or mother does anything that does not please them. This is a sort of curse that God inflicts upon them.” Winslow, on the other hand, in his Good News, lends some support to Morton’s statement in the text. He says: “The younger sort reverence the elder, and do all mean offices, whilst they are together, although they be strangers.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 363.)

[255] This Sachem, “the most noted powow and sorcerer of all the country,” is better known by the name of Passaconaway. There is quite an account of him in Drake’s Book of the Indians (B. III. ch. vii). He is the Pissacannawa mentioned by Wood in his Prospect (p. 70), of whom the savages reported that he could “make the water burn, the rocks move, the trees dance, metamorphize himself into a flaming man.” Morton says of the Indian conjurers, “some correspondency they have with the Devil out of all doubt;” Wood, to the same effect, remarks that “by God’s permission, through the Devil’s helpe, their charmes are of force to produce effects of wonderment;” Smith declares of the Indians, “their chiefe God they worship is the Devil” (True Travels, vol. i. p. 138); Mather intimates that it was the devil who seduced the first inhabitants of America into it (Magnalia, B. I. ch. i. § 3), and Winthrop, describing the great freshet of 1638, records that the Indians “being pawawing in this tempest, the Devil came and fetched away five of them” (vol. i. p. *293).

See also Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 154; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 356; and Champlain’s Voyages, vol. iii. p. 171. Champlain says the Indians do not worship any God; “they have, however, some respect for the devil.”

[256] [Ingling.] See supra, 111, note 1.

[257] In regard to the Indian Powaws, priests, or medicine men, and their methods of dealing with the sick, see the detailed account in Champlain’s Voyages, vol. iii. pp. 171-8; Josselyn’s Two Voyages, p. 134; Wood’s Prospect, p. 71; Williams’s Key, ch. xxxi.; Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 154; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 317, 357; Lechford’s Plaine Dealing, (Trumbull’s ed.) p. 117; Parkman’s Jesuits in North America, pp. lxxxiv.-lxxxvii.; also Magnalia, B. III. part. iii., where Mather says: “In most of their dangerous distempers, it is a powaw that must be sent for; that is, a priest who has more familiarity with Satan than his neighbors; this conjurer comes and roars and howls and uses magical ceremonies over the sick man, and will be well paid for it when he is done; if this don’t effect the cure, the ‘man’s time is come, and there’s an end.’” For a summary in Indian medical practice, see further, Ellis’s Red Man and White Man, pp. 127-33.

[258] Passaconoway, already referred to (supra, p. 150, note), dwelt at a place called Pennakook, and his dominions extended over the sachems living upon the Piscataqua and its branches. The young Sachem of Saugus was named Winnepurkitt, and was commonly known among the English as George Rumney-marsh. He was a son of Nanepashemet, and at one time proprietor of Deer Island in Boston Harbor. (Drake’s Book of the Indians, ed. 1851, pp. 105, 111, 278.) The incident in the text has been made the subject of a poem, The Bridal of Pennacook, by Whittier, and Drake repeats it; but as Winnepurkitt is said by Drake to have been born in 1616, and to have succeeded Montowampate as Sachem in 1633, and as Morton, at the close of the present chapter, declares that “the lady, when I came out of the country [in 1630], remained still with her father,” the whole story would seem to be not only highly inconsistent with what we know of Indian life and habits, but also at variance with facts and dates.

[259] [not determined.] See supra, 111, note 1.

[260] Josselyn’s account of the Indian wampum is written, more than any other which has come down to us, in the spirit of the New Canaan: “Their Merchandize are their beads, which are their money, of these there are two sorts, blew Beads and white Beads, the first is their Gold, the last their Silver, these they work out of certain shells so cunningly that neither Jew nor Devil can counterfeit, they dril them and string them, and make many curious works with them to adorn the persons of their Sagamores and principal men and young women, as Belts, Girdles, Tablets, Borders for their womens hair, Bracelets, Necklaces, and links to hang in their ears. Prince Phillip, a little before I came for England, coming to Boston, had a coat on and Buskins set thick with these Beads in pleasant wild works, and a broad belt of the same; his Accoutrements were valued at Twenty pounds. The English Merchant giveth them ten shillings a fathom for their white, and as much more or near upon for their blew beads.” (Two Voyages, pp. 142-3.)

There is a much better description of wampum in Lawson’s account of Carolina, quoted by Drake (Book of the Indians, p. 328), in which he says that wampum was current money among the Indians “all over the continent, as far as the bay of Mexico.” Lawson’s explanation of the fact that wampum was not counterfeited to any considerable extent is much more natural than Morton’s. It cost more to counterfeit it than it was worth. “To make this Peak it cost the English five or ten times as much as they could get for it; whereas it cost the Indians nothing, because they set no value upon their time, and therefore have no competitors to fear, or that others will take its manufacture out of their hands.”

Roger Williams (Key, ch. xxvi.) devotes considerable space to this subject, and says: “They [the Indians] hang these strings of money about their necks and wrists; as also upon the necks and wrists of their wives and children. They make [girdles] curiously of one, two, three, foure and five inches thickness and more, of this money which (sometimes to the value of ten pounds and more) they weare about their middle and as a scarfe about their shoulders and breasts. Yea, the Princes make rich Caps and Aprons (or small breeches) of these Beads thus curiously strung into many formes and figures: their blacke and white finely mixt together.” See also Trumbull’s notes in his edition of the Key, and Palfrey, vol. i. p. 31. Parkman (Jesuits in North America, pp. xxxi., lxi.) says of wampum: “This was at once their currency, their ornament, their pen, ink and parchment.” He describes the uses to which it was put among the Hurons and Iroquois, but adds: “The art [of working it] soon fell into disuse, however; for wampum better than their own was brought them by the traders, besides abundant imitations in glass and porcelain.”

[261] “How have foule hands (in smoakie houses) the first handling of these Furres which are often worne upon the hands of Queens and heads of Princes!” (Williams’s Key, p. 158.)