[392] Doubtless the magnetic iron oxides. None of these are known to me nearer than in the mountains forming the westerly part of the Berkshire Hills, from New York City to the Adirondacks, except in Cumberland, R. I., where there is some iron of this nature.
[393] No ironstones are known around Massachusetts bay; the nearest deposits are in Rhode Island.
[394] Small quantities of galena ore have been found in Woburn and that vicinity. There are some localities near Newburyport where the savages may have found small quantities of galena.
[395] Black leade is doubtless plumbago, or graphite; it is found in Wrentham and in Worcester, Mass., as well as at various points in Rhode Island.
[396] Red leade is doubtless an ochre, such as may have been found near Cranston, R. I.
[397] Boll armoniack is the Bolus armeniaca of the old apothecaries. Bolus is the prefix to several old pharmacopial names, having lost its original special signification and come to be a given term for all lumpy substances. Here it means a sort of reddish clay, such as may be used for marking,—a clayey ochre such as may have come from about Providence, R. I.
[398] Vermilion oxide of mercury is not known to occur this side of the Rocky Mountains. It is likely that he mistook some brilliant ochre for true vermilion. It may be, however, that the aborigines traded for it with western tribes. Their copper implements probably came from Lake Superior. Many evidences of almost as wide a commerce could be adduced.
[399] Brimstone, or sulphur, does not exist in its metallic state this side of the Cordilleras. He may have seen some pyrite-bearing schists, such as occur in Maine, which in dumping give a sulphuric smell.
[400] Tin does not occur in this region. Some localities are known in Maine and elsewhere in New England, but they could hardly have been found by the Savages, or known to Morton.
[401] Copper in its metallic state, the only form in which he would have recognized it, does not occur about Massachusetts Bay. A very little of it has been found in Cumberland, R. I., in the valley of the Blackstone River.
[402] No silver, except when combined with lead and zinc ore, has ever been found in this district. Some occurs in the district from Woburn to Newburyport. Metallic silver could not have been known to the natives. The nearest localities for metallic gold are the streams of Vermont, New Hampshire, and western Maine, in which district placer gold occurs in considerable quantities, and some auriferous quartz veins are known.
Professor Shaler adds to his foregoing notes: “The general impression which I get from the writer is that he was a bad observer, but not more untruthful than most of the seventeenth century travellers. He does not say that gold or silver had been seen by him, and limits his hearsay evidence to a single mine. Except for the extraordinary stuff about the whetstones,—wherein we may perhaps see something of the Maypole humor,—it is, for its time, a rather sober and reasonable story.”
[403] This is the name by which Morton invariably designates John Endicott. For reasons which have been explained in the preliminary matter to this edition of the New Canaan (supra, pp. 38-42), its author felt—and, as will be seen, never missed an opportunity to express—a peculiar bitterness towards Endicott.
[404] For the notes to this chapter I am indebted to Theodore Lyman, of the Massachusetts Fish Commission. Higginson, in his New England’s Plantation, has a passage on Fish (Young’s Chron. of Mass., pp. 248-51), and Williams, in his Key, devotes a chapter (xix.) to the same subject. Wood again, in his Prospect (pp. 27-31), deals with it in his peculiar manner, and Josselyn, both in his Voyages (pp. 104-15) and in his Rarities (pp. 22-37), devotes a good deal of space to the enumeration of the different kinds of New England fishes, their peculiarities, and the methods of taking them. In editing the Rarities, Mr. Tuckerman remarked that he had “little to offer in elucidation of the list [of fishes], which, indeed, in good part, appears sufficiently intelligible,”—a remark equally applicable to the present chapter of the New Canaan.
[406] This proves that the local Cod, i. e., those that breed close to the shore, have much decreased; and this partly by over-fishing, and partly by the falling-off of their food in the form of young fishes coming to the sea from rivers and brooks.
[407] This is perhaps the first mention in America of cod-liver oil, now so much used in medicine.
[408] The Striped Bass (Labrax). The Bass mentioned four paragraphs below, as chasing mackerel “into the shallow waters,” may perhaps be the Bluefish (Temnodon).
[409] This is either an expression which has wholly passed out of use, or else a misprint. Probably the latter. It may, however, also be surmised that Morton characteristically coined a word from the Latin, and here meant to refer to the various large fish in New England waters, such as the Horse Mackerel (Thynnus secundo dorsalis), the Mackerel Shark (Lamna punctata), and the common Dogfish (Acanthias Americanus), all of which follow schools of mackerel, bass, &c., into shoal waters and prey upon them.
[410] “These Macrills are taken with drailes, which is a long small line, with a lead and a hooke at the end of it, being baited with a peece of a red cloath.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 30.) This instrument still bears the same name and is used in the same way.
[411] When caught in the Thames, within the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor of London, the Sturgeon (Acipenser) is a royal fish reserved for the sovereign. “The Sturgeon is a Regal fish too, I have seen of them that have been sixteen foot in lenghth.” (Jossel., Two Voyages, p. 105.)
[412] But little attention has been paid as yet in the United States to the Sturgeon fisheries, in spite of their great abundance.
[414] “There be a greate store of Salt water Eeles, especially in such places where grasse growes: for to take these there be certaine Eele pots made of Osyers, which must be baited with a peece of Lobster, into which the Eeles entering cannot returne backe againe; some take a bushell in a night in this maner, eating as many as they have neede of for the present, and salt up the rest against Winter. These Eeles be not of so luscious a tast as they be in England, neither are they so aguish, but are both wholsom for the body, and delightfull for the taste.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 30.)
[415] Morton confounds the Shad (Alosa præstabilis), or Allize (corruption of the French Alose), with the smaller Alewife. This, with the Smelt and the Eel, are among the few shore fishes that are still found in comparative plenty. The Menhaden is used in our time to set corn.
[416] At the present time the Halibut (Hippoglossus) is seldom caught near the shore or in shoal water. It is taken by the Gloucester fishermen along the outer banks, in depths of a hundred to two hundred fathoms. The New England Turbot (Lophopsetta) of our coasts is a different fish, and rarely ventures to the north of Cape Cod. The fishermen frequently sell our turbot as chicken-halibut.
[417] The Flounder (Pseudopleuronectes), whereof there are several species.
[418] Hake (Phycis) are still somewhat common.
[419] Morton probably means the Menhaden (Brevoortia). The European Pilchard, the adult of the Sardine, is not found on our coast.
[420] Probably the Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax dilophus). The Common Cormorant (P. carbo) also occurs in New England, but it is rare to the southward of Maine. Both species breed abundantly on rocky shores about the Gulf of St. Lawrence and northward, visiting New England waters during the autumn and winter. While with us they are exclusively maritime, frequenting by choice the vicinity of outlying ledges and small, rocky islands. When passing from place to place, they often fly in large flocks, which are usually arranged in long lines or single files. They live on fish, which they capture by diving.
[421] This paragraph, and the one on clams immediately following it, throw considerable light on the formation of the shell-heaps, a question which has been recently much discussed. See the paper of Professor F. W. Putnam, read at the meeting of the Maine Historical Society in Portland, in December, 1882, which will appear in the report of the proceedings of that meeting in the Collections of the Society.
[422] We, in this country, have not retained the European taste for mussels and for razor-shells (Solen).
[423] The eating of scallops (Pecten) has been revived within a few years.
[424] A strong spirit of emulation existed in the early years of the seventeenth century, between the advocates of New England and those of Virginia, as sites for colonization. Morton was always a stanch New Englander, and in this chapter, as well as in those which immediately precede and follow it, he loses no opportunity to assert the superiority of the Massachusetts climate and products over those of the country further south. It is needless to point out that his advocacy led him into ludicrously wild statements.
[425] There is no natural spring of any kind at Mount Wollaston, though water is easily obtained by digging.
[426] Winnisimmet, the Indian name of Chelsea. Upon the significance of the name Mr. Trumbull writes: “I have my doubts about Morton’s Weenasemute, but am inclined to believe that his interpretation is founded on fact. Ashim (= asim, in local dialect) is once used by Eliot (Cant. iv. 12) for ‘fountain.’ It denotes a place from which water (for drinking) is taken. Winn’ashim, or Winn’asim, means ‘the good fountain,’ or spring; and Winn’asim-ut (or et) is ‘at the good spring.’ The efficacy of the water ‘to cure barrenness’ may have been Morton’s embellishment, but not improbably was an Indian belief.”
[427] Squantum, in Quincy.
[428] This is a gross exaggeration. Thomas Wiggin, in November, 1622, wrote: “For the plantation in Mattachusetts, the English there being about 2000 people, yonge and old.” (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. viii. p. 322.) Writing on May 22, 1634, about the time Morton referred to (Supra, 78), Governor Winthrop says: “For the number of our people, we never took any surveigh of them, nor doe we intend it, except inforced throughe urgent occasion (David’s example stickes somewhat with us) but I esteeme them to be in all about 4000: soules and upwarde.” (Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., Dec. 14, 1882.) So in the New England’s Prospect (p. 42), Wood speaks of the population of Massachusetts as “foure thousand soules.” In the spring of 1634 there may have been five hundred persons in the Plymouth colony, and as many more in New Hampshire and Maine, making a total New England population of five thousand at the time Morton was writing. When the New Canaan was published, however, in 1637, the population undoubtedly was as large as 12,000.
[430] This astounding proposition was in the early days of the settlement not peculiar to Morton. Higginson, in his New Englands Plantation, speaks of the “extraordinary clear and dry air, that is of a most healing nature to all such as are of a cold, melancholy, phlegmatic, rheumatic temper of body,” and concludes what he has to say on the subject with his often-quoted sentiment that “a sup of New-England’s air is better than a whole draught of Old England’s ale.” (Young’s Chron. of Mass., pp. 251-2.) Williams, too, says in his Key (ch. xiii.): “The Nor-West wind (which occasioneth New-England cold) comes over the cold frozen Land, and over many millions of Loads of Snow: and yet the pure wholesomnesse of the Aire is wonderfull, and the warmth of the Sunne, such in the sharpest weather, that I have often seen the Natives Children runne about starke naked in the coldest dayes.” Again, in the pamphlet entitled New England’s First Fruits, printed in London in 1643, it was stated, in reply to the objection of extreme winter cold, that “the cold there is no impediment to health, but very wholsome for our bodies, insomuch that all sorts generally, weake and strong, had scarce ever such measure of health in all their lives as there.... Men are seldome troubled in winter with coughes and Rheumes.” (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 249.) Josselyn, however, writing nearly thirty years later, remarks: “Some of our New-England writers affirm that the English are never, or very rarely, heard to sneeze or cough, as ordinarily they do in England, which is not true.” (Two Voyages, p. 184.)
[433] Wood in his Prospect (p. 2), referring to the approach to Boston Bay from Cape Anne, had said: “The surrounding shore being high, and showing many white Cliffes, in a most pleasant prospect.”
[434] The Second Book of the New Canaan, it would seem, originally ended with this chapter. The next chapter was an afterthought of the author, written before December, 1635, as is evident from the allusions in it to events then taking place. (Supra, 78.) Wood’s Prospect was published in 1634, and the constant references to it in the first two books of the New Canaan show that they were both written subsequent to its publication, probably during that year. In the Third Book there are no allusions to the Prospect, and the reference to the Third Book in the Second (Supra, *51), to which attention has already been called, show that it must have been written before the others, and probably during the year 1633. It would seem to have been completed in May, 1634. There is, however, also a reference to be found in the Third Book to the Second (Infra, *120), but it was probably interpolated during a revisal of the manuscript.
[435] Now Lake Champlain. “By the Indians north of the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, it was called the Lake of the Iroquois, as likewise the River Richelieu, connecting it and the River St. Lawrence, they called the River of the Iroquois. Champlain discovered the lake in 1609, and gave it his own name. (Voyages, Prince Soc. ed., vol. ii. pp. 210-20; Parkman’s Pioneers of France, p. 316.) On some of the early maps it is put down ‘Lake Champlain or Irocoise.’ It is so called in Purchas’s Pilgrims (vol. iv. p. 1643). The region about the lake was sometimes called Irocosia. The Iroquois lived on the south of the lake, and, as their enemies on the north approached them through this lake, they naturally called it the Lake of the Iroquois.” (MS. letter of Rev. E. F. Slafter.)
[436] The measurement and distance here given are very nearly correct. Lake Champlain is 126 miles long by about 14 in width at its broadest part. Burlington is not far from 240 miles from Boston.
[437] In regard to the imaginary attractions and advantages of Laconia and its great lake, see Belknap’s American Biography, vol. i. p. 377.
[438] The two brothers, William and Emery de Caen, became prominent in the history of Canadian settlement in 1621, and remained so for a number of years. They did not, however, plant a colony of French in America, nor was the name of Canada, or of its famous river, derived from their name. On this point see Parkman’s Pioneers of France, pp. 184, note, and 391-5. Morton’s derivation of the name Canada is entitled to much the same weight as his derivation of the names Pantucket and Mattapan. (Supra, 124.) It was not, however, peculiar to him as, forty years later, Josselyn also speaks (Rarities, p. 5) of “the River Canada, (so called from Monsieur Cane).”
[439] On the breaking out of the war between England and France in 1627, under the influence of Buckingham, Sir William Alexander had been instrumental in organizing an expedition to seize the French possessions in America. At its head were three Huguenots of Dieppe,—David, Louis and Thomas Kirk, brothers. The expedition was successful, and on the 20th of July, 1629, Champlain surrendered Quebec to Louis Kirk. Daniel Kirk, the admiral of the expedition, returned to England in November of the same year; but his brother Thomas remained in Canada and held Quebec as an English conquest until July, 1632, when, in accordance with the conditions of the peace of April 14, 1629, it was restored to France. See Kirke’s First English Conquest of Canada, pp. 63-93; Parkman’s Pioneers of France, pp. 401-11; also Mr. Deane’s note in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. for 1875-6, pp. 376-7.
[440] The number of beaver-skins really carried to England by Kirk was seven thousand. (Kirke’s First English Conquest of Canada, p. 85.)
[441] It is unnecessary to say that Morton was here writing at random. He confounds the Potomac with the Hudson, though, a few paragraphs further on (Infra, *99), he states the facts in regard to the latter river correctly; and the latitude he gives has no significance, being that of Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson, and Cleveland, on Lake Erie. The Potomac nowhere flows so far north as 40°. The falls referred to are probably those of Niagara. They had not then been discovered (Parkman’s Jesuits in North America, p. 142), though vague reports concerning them had reached the French through the Indians, and they are plainly indicated on Champlain’s map of 1629. (Voyages, Prince Soc. ed., vol. i. p. 271, note.) Some loose stories in regard to the rivers, falls, lakes and islands of the interior had been picked up by Morton, probably in his talks with seamen and others who had taken part in Kirk’s expedition. He certainly fell in with these in London, and it is more than likely that at the house of Gorges he saw Champlain’s map of 1629; though upon that the falls are placed at 43½ degrees of latitude, instead of at 41½. In 1634 there was no other map. On the strength of the information thus gathered, he made the statements contained in this chapter. The little he knew had been obtained in England, after his return there in 1631; for the Massachusetts Indians can hardly have known much of the remote interior, and in 1630 no attempts even at exploration away from the seashore had been made by the straggling occupants of the New England coast.
[442] The stories here referred to probably came from the Indians of Connecticut and Maine, and referred to the rivers and lakes of New England, but were afterwards supposed to have had a wider significance.
[443] Williams (Key, 64) gives Macháug as the Indian word for No, but it really signifies no-thing (Key, 182). Matta, as Morton gives it, is the simple negative.
[444] Henry Josselyn was a brother of John Josselyn, author of New Englands Rarities and the Two Voyages to New England, frequently quoted in the notes to this edition of the New Canaan. He came out from England in the interest of Mason, as stated in the text, in 1634, and passed the remainder of his life in Maine, living at Black Point in the town of Scarborough. He died in 1683. He was deputy-governor of the province, and one of the most active and influential men in it, holding, through all changes of proprietorship and government, the most important offices. See Mr. Tuckerman’s Introduction to the New Englands Rarities; Hist. of Cumberland County, Maine, p. 362.
[445] Of Captain John Mason of New Hampshire and the Laconia enterprise, it is not necessary to speak at length in this connection. Mason was the most prominent character in the early history of New Hampshire, and the loss which his death, in December 1635, entailed on the projects of Gorges and Morton has already been referred to (Supra, 76). The late Charles W. Tuttle, of Boston was at the time of his death engaged in preparing a life of Mason, which would unquestionably have been a valuable addition to the history of the settlement of New England. The material he had collected is now in the possession of his family. In regard to the Laconia Company and its projects, see Belknap’s American Biography, under the title Gorges, and Mr. Deane’s note in the Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1875-6, pp. 376-80.
[446] Wood’s statement here referred to is found on the first page of the Prospect, and is as follows: “The Place whereon the English have built their Colonies, is judged by those who have best skill in discovery, either to bee an Island, surrounded on the North side with the spacious River Cannada, and on the South with Hudsons River, or else a Peninsula, these two Rivers overlapping one another, having their rise from the great Lakes which are not farre off one another, as the Indians doe certainly informe us.”
[447] In 1631 no less than 15,174 skins, the greater portion beaver, were exported from the New Netherlands, valued at about £12,000. (O’Callaghan’s New Netherland, p. 139.)
[448] The Nipmucks, or Nipnets, inhabited the present county of Worcester. (Hist. of Worcester County, vol. i. p. 8.)
[449] This is a confused, rambling account of the familiar Indian incidents which took place during the first year after the landing at Plymouth. There is nothing of historical value in it, and nothing which has not been more accurately and better told by Bradford, Winslow, Mourt and Smith.
[450] Captain Thomas Hunt, who commanded one of the vessels of Smith’s squadron, in his voyage of 1614. (Bradford, p. 95.)
[451] Morton, in this chapter, confounds Samoset with Squanto. It was Squanto who was kidnapped by Hunt and had been in England, but it was Samoset who walked into the Plymouth settlement, on the 26th of March [N. S.], 1621, and saluted the planters with “wellcome in the English phrase.” Squanto was a native of Plymouth, but Samoset belonged at Pemaquid, in Maine. (Mourt, Dexter’s ed., note 295, p. 83.) Hence Morton speaks of his having been detained by Massasoit as a captive. He apparently came to Massachusetts the year before on Captain Dermer’s vessel, in company with Squanto. Dr. Dexter is seriously in error in his account of Squanto in note 315 of his edition of Mourt. Squanto could not have been one of the Weymouth captives of 1605.
[452] This is the familiar anecdote of Squanto. (Bradford, p. 113; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 292.)
[454] The most connected account of Thomas Weston and his abortive plantation at Wessagusset, already referred to (Supra, 2), is that contained in Adams’s Address on the 250th Anniversary of the Settlement of Weymouth, pp. 5-22. Winslow in Young’s Chron. of Pilg., Bradford, and Phinehas Pratt (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv.) are the original authorities.
[455] This is a wholly confused and misleading account of the skirmish which took place between the Plymouth party, under command of Miles Standish, and the Massachusetts Indians living near Wessagusset, immediately after the killing of Pecksuot and Wituwamat, in March, 1623. The correct account of the affair is in Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 341. Why Morton speaks of it as a battle between the English and the French is inexplicable.
[456] See supra, pp. 11, 162, 170. The Plymouth people may have despoiled the grave of Chickatawbut’s mother of its bear-skins during some one of their earlier visits to Boston Bay. Their last visit to those parts, prior to the “battle” spoken of in this chapter, was in November, 1622 (Young’s Chron. of Pilg. p. 302), when they got little in the way of supplies, and heard nothing but complaints from the Indians of Weston’s people, who had then been several months at Wessagusset. It is far more probable that these latter stripped the grave at Passonagessit. In any event there can be little doubt that Morton himself had visited the spot while taking his “survey of the country” during the previous summer (Supra, 6), and it is quite clear that the despoiling the grave had no connection with the subsequent “battle,” in which Chickatawbut took no part.
[457] “Insomuch as our men could have but one certain mark, and then but the arm and half face of a notable villain, as he drew [his bow] at Captain Standish; who, together with another both discharged at once at him, and brake his arm.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 341.)
[458] This is the famous Wessagusset hanging which Butler introduced into his poem of Hudibras (Canto II. lines 409-36), in the passage already referred to (Supra, 96). It is as follows:—
That a man was hung at Wessagusset, in March 1623, for stealing corn from the Indians, there can be no doubt. There is equally little doubt that it was the real thief who was hung. (Pratt’s Relation, IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. p. 491; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 332; Bradford, p. 130.) I have already (Supra, 96) given my own theory as to how the incident came to take the shape it did in Butler’s poem. He wrote, I think, from a vague recollection of an amusing traveller’s-story, which he had heard told somewhere years before. There is no reason to suppose that he had ever seen the New Canaan.
It has always been assumed that Butler’s version of the affair,—the vicarious execution version,—coming out as it did in 1664, at a period of violent reaction against Puritanism, and when the New England colonies were in extreme popular disfavor,—obtained a foothold in English popular tradition; much such a foothold, in fact, as the Connecticut Blue Laws. It was an intangible something, always at hand to be cast as a mocking reproach in the face of a sanctimonious community. As such it was sure to be resented and disproved; but never by any disproof could it be exorcised from the popular mind, or finally set at rest. This may have been the case, and the references to the matter in Hutchinson (vol. i. p. 6, note), in Hubbard (p. 77), and in Grahame (Ed. 1845, vol. i. p. 202, note), certainly look that way. I do not remember, however, to have myself ever met this particular charge among the many and singular charges, much more absurd, which English writers have from time to time gravely advanced against America. In Uring’s Voyages (p. 116-8) there is a singular account of a similar vicarious execution, which never could have met the eye of the author of Hudibras, inasmuch as it was not published until 1726; but it shows that either some such event did take place, or that its having taken place was at one period a stock traveller’s-tale.
[459] Three of Weston’s company were among the Massachusetts Indians at the time of the Wessagusset killing; one of the three had before domesticated himself with them; the other two, disregarding Standish’s orders, had straggled off, the day before the massacre, to a neighboring Indian village. After the massacre the savages put all three to death by torture. (Pratt’s Narrative, IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. p. 486; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 344.)
[460] Will Sommers was the famous jester and court fool of Henry VIII. His witticisms are frequently met with in the plays and annals of the period; and the portrait, said to be by Holbein and of him, looking through a window and tapping on the glass, was formerly a prominent feature in the gallery at Hampton Court. It is very questionable, however, whether the story alluded to in the text belongs to Sommers. He had been dead eighty years or more when Morton wrote, and the stories connected with him had been gotten together by Armin, and printed in his Nest of Ninnies, in 1608. This book Morton had probably seen. In it there is a story of another famous fool, Jack Oates, of an earlier period, which is probably the one Morton had in mind. Oates is represented as giving an earl, the guest of his patron, Sir William Hollis, “a sound box on the ear,” for saluting Lady Hollis, and then excused himself on the ground of “knowing not your eare from your hand, being so like one another.” (Doran’s Court Fools, p. 182.) Remembering this story in the Nest of Ninnies, Morton, with his well-developed faculty for getting everything wrong, seems to have fathered it on the most famous and popular of the occupants of the Nest.
[461] For the detailed account of the Wessagusset killing, see Winslow’s Relation in Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 336-41; Adams’s 250th Anniversary of Weymouth, pp. 18-22.
[462] Mr. Trumbull, in a note (125) to Williams’s Key (p. 59). explains a blunder here made by Morton. The correct word is wotawquenauge, which means “coat-men,” or men wearing clothes, the waútacone-nûaog of Williams. This, Morton confounded with another name for Englishmen, chauquaqock, meaning, “knife- [i. e., sword-] men,” which he understood to mean “cut-throats.”