Part 1

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

Bold text is denoted by =equal signs=.

There are 563 separate Notes anchored in the main text; these anchors are indicated by [number]. The Notes remain in the same place as in the original book, after the main text.

There are only two Footnotes in the book. These anchors are indicated by [A] and [B] and the Footnotes themselves have been moved to the end of the book, in front of the Notes.

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THE WAMPANOAGS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY:

An Ethnohistorical Survey/CATHERINE MARTEN

[Illustration: (Ink drawing of Plimoth Plantation.)]

OCCASIONAL PAPERS IN OLD COLONY STUDIES

NUMBER 2/DECEMBER 1970

PUBLISHED BY PLIMOTH PLANTATION INCORPORATED $1.00

=OCCASIONAL PAPERS IN OLD COLONY STUDIES= is a multi-disciplinary journal, appearing at irregular intervals and publishing original contributions generally in the fields of Sociology, History, Anthropology, and Demography which treat as a subject Plymouth Colony prior to the 19th century.

=OCCASIONAL PAPERS= are available for purchase at varying rates at Plimoth Plantation or by mail. Correspondence concerning the publication and its contents should be addressed to The Editor, Occasional Papers, Plimoth Plantation, Box 1620, Plymouth, Massachusetts 02360. Contributions of original material as described above will be accepted for reading and possible publication. Manuscripts and photographs or drawings are sent at the author’s risk and will be returned only when accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope.

Plimoth Plantation is a non-profit educational organization which receives no tax moneys and is supported principally by admissions to historical exhibits, contributions, and memberships.

=OCCASIONAL PAPERS IN OLD COLONY STUDIES/NUMBER 2/DECEMBER 1970= EDITOR: CATHERINE MARTEN Cover Design: Eric G. Engstrom Map: Charles McCann Typesetting and Printing: R. E. Smith Printing Co., Inc., Fall River, Mass.

[Illustration: This map showing the approximate locations of the various New England tribes in the early 17th century is based upon the following sources: Harold E. Driver and William C. Massey, COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS, TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, ns. Vol. 47, part 2, 1957; Douglas Edward Leach, FLINTLOCK AND TOMAHAWK: NEW ENGLAND IN KING PHILIP’S WAR, 1959; Charles C. Willoughby, ANTIQUITIES OF THE NEW ENGLAND INDIANS, 1935]

PREFACE

The paper which follows was written by me in 1965. It was originally intended to serve as an in-house guide for Plantation staff to use when explaining Wampanoag culture to visitors. The absence of any other comprehensive treatment of Plymouth’s aboriginal population has made the paper an item much in demand by Plantation staff, visitors, and members of the academic community. Hopefully its publication in the OCCASIONAL PAPERS series will make this ethnographic information available to an even greater number of interested persons.

CM

FOREWORD

by Dr. Alex F. Ricciardelli, Director of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Brown University.

This monograph represents the only extensive ethnography we have of the Wampanoag Indians and provides us with the best understanding available of Massasoit and his people at the time they occupied the coastal areas of southern New England. The author has consulted all the known historical sources and arranged the material into a series of topical categories which will serve as a handy reference to the literature. Useful also are the author’s comments regarding those parts of Wampanoag culture about which we presently have no knowledge.

Southern New England has been one of the neglected areas in the anthropology of North America. This seems strange when one considers that the oldest museums and departments of anthropology in the United States are located here. The usual explanation seems satisfactory enough at first glance: there has been no extensive record of anthropology in southern New England because there are no subjects for study. The indigenous people were among the first to experience the ravages of contact with European colonists. Disease, war, and forced migrations throughout the 17th and 18th centuries effectively depopulated the area of most of its original inhabitants. Those few who remained were supposedly detribalized and merged with the Europeans. Even their artifacts were carted off across the ocean to be placed in cabinets of curiosities. To this day some of the best and largest ethnographic collections of New England Indian material culture are found in European museums and private estates. Further, Colonial towns were located on prehistoric and early historic Indian camps and villages, and in other ways the growing industrial complex of the Northeast covered over or erased the Indian sites. As a result, at the end of the 19th century, when anthropology as a formal discipline emerged, the native peoples and most of the material vestiges of their presence were gone.

There is undoubtedly much truth to this explanation, but one must also examine the history of anthropology in order to understand the reasons for this relative neglect. Shortly after the turn of the century, the subjects anthropologists were seeking inevitably led them westward to the Plains, the Southwest, and other places where the frontier had only recently passed. Anthropology at that time meant studying peoples who still retained, or at most had only recently lost, their tribal organization. Tribal societies were rapidly disappearing and it was crucial that anthropologists bend all their efforts to creating a record of these peoples’ cultures before they were irretrievably lost. The small groups of surviving Algonkian Indians in southern New England, who retained few visible evidences of their traditional culture, therefore attracted almost no attention. Frank G. Speck is a notable exception among the younger anthropologists who were prominent in shaping the discipline in the United States.

The practice of anthropology today is considerably different from the anthropology of 70 years ago. Tribal cultures and societies which are still relatively intact continue to be an important concern, but new dimensions for the study of man have appeared. These new developments make southern New England an important resource for anthropological study. Inter-ethnic relations are now attracting the attention of students to a society which is no longer considered an inevitable melting pot. Portuguese, French-Canadians, Italians, and other immigrants have been a prominent part of New England towns and cities for decades, but we do not yet understand the processes by which they have adapted to American culture. These ethnic segments include the Wampanoag and other Indian groups who have retained their Indian identity after over 300 years of intensive contact. They obviously represent an important phenomenon for study. Many Indian groups are now moving to large cities, including Boston, and some anthropologists are trying to understand how tribal peoples adapt to urbanism as a way of life.

Ethnohistory, the writing of ethnographies from historical documents, is another relatively new way of practicing anthropology. Although the source materials for southern New England are not as rich as those from other areas in North America, there is still a great deal which can be mined from them. Early colonists traded, fought, and proselytized the Indians and the accounts and records they left contain many possibilities for studying cultural processes. We are learning that the value of documents as source materials is as much a function of their ability to answer the kinds of questions that intrigue us as it is a matter of bulk.

It is true that archaeology in New England has been generally less immediately rewarding than in many other areas of North America. The poorer conditions of preservation, the apparent absence of deeply stratified sites and the dense settlement pattern in this region have contributed to this condition. With the emergence of what is now being called historical archaeology, however, new potentials are being realized in New England. The efforts of Plimoth Plantation are showing dramatically that Colonial history can be meaningfully rewritten through the lenses of anthropology and that archaeology does not by any means end where history begins. Indeed, a new understanding is being achieved for that period in early Colonial history when an immigrant European culture was transformed into something distinctively American.

For many anthropological studies that will undoubtedly be made about southern New England, the culture of the 17th century Indians will be an important baseline. This monograph will be one of the valuable sources for scholars undertaking such studies.

THE WAMPANOAGS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

An Ethnohistorical Study

_by Catherine Marten_

_And also those which should escape or overcome these difficulties, should yett be in continuall danger of the salvage people; who are cruell, barbarous, and most trecherous, being most furious in their rage, and merciles wher they overcome; not being contente only to kill, and take away life, but delight to tormente men in the most bloodie manner that may be; fleaing some alive with the shells of fishes, cutting of the members and joynts of others by peesmeale; and broiling on the coles, eate the collops of their flesh in their sight whilst they live, with other cruelties horrible to be related._

One of many fearsome prospects awaiting Europeans who would settle upon the American continent was thus described by William Bradford—Indians. In faraway Europe this simplistic view of the cruel and hostile primitives that inhabited the New World seemed adequate. But Bradford and his friends—known to history as the Pilgrims, who settled at Plymouth Massachusetts in 1620—were destined to see one group of North American Indians in a different way. Who were the Indians that greeted the Pilgrims and what can be told of their culture?

The Indians that inhabited New England are often collectively designated as Algonquians. This name actually signifies a group of tribes whose languages are related and are therefore classified together as members of the Algonquian language family. Speakers of Algonquian languages are not restricted to New England, however; rather they are spread widely over the North American continent. To the west on the Great Plains such tribes as the Blackfoot and the Arapaho, to the north the Naskapi, Abnaki, and Micmac, and to the south along the Atlantic Coast the Powhattan and the Chickahominy are a few examples of members of this large linguistic family. Besides noting that the languages spoken by these groups are related to one another, we can also speak of some broad similarities in culture shared by speakers of Algonquian languages. However, by the time of European contact both languages and cultures had diversified enough that Algonquian speakers from widely separated areas would not have understood one another’s speech and customs.

The tribe of Algonquians with which this monograph is chiefly concerned is the Wampanoags, which inhabited the immediate area around New Plimoth and from whose ranks came such familiar figures as Squanto, Massasoit, Hobomock, and Metacomet (King Philip). This tribe was also sometimes called the Pokanokets, after Pokanoket, Rhode Island, where the Sachems kept their principal headquarters.[1] Because they were closely related linguistically and culturally, however, one can with justification include information pertaining to the immediate neighbors of the Wampanoags—the Nausets, the Massachusetts, and the Narragansetts.[2] The lumping of these groups for the purpose of more completely filling out a cultural description of the Wampanoags is further legitimatized by the fact that since the devastation caused by a plague in 1616 or 1617 the members of these tribes had intermixed to some extent anyhow. The Indian village of Patuxet had formerly been located on the site where the Pilgrims were to establish New Plimoth; it had been wiped out by a plague. The sole survivor from Patuxet was Squanto, who had joined the band of a sachem called Massasoit.

Political relationships among the Indian groups of southeastern New England were variable depending upon the leadership abilities and popularity of their several sachems at various times. Massasoit and his immediate successors seem to have been quite powerful rulers and to have held the several sub-tribes of Wampanoags into a cohesive body.[3] At various times the Wampanoags ruled the Nauset of Cape Cod. They were frequently allied with the Massachusetts and were frequently at war with the Narragansetts. At the time when the Pilgrims arrived both the Wampanoags and the Massachusetts were considerably weakened in numbers by the plague of a few years earlier, which had left the Narragansetts relatively unscathed. The Wampanoags seem to have recognized in the new arrivals a potential ally, hence the Pilgrims were welcomed, albeit cautiously.[4]

The pages that follow attempt to describe as fully as possible the culture of the Wampanoags as it would have been during the lifetime of Plymouth Colony—1620 to about 1690. A few words are in order in regard to sources of information. The normal procedure for gaining ethnographic information is for a trained observer—usually an anthropologist—to live among the people he wants to study, interviewing informants and observing with the aid of notebook, tape recorder, and camera the activities and habits of the groups under study. This sort of a systematic investigation, however, is an invention of modern anthropology and is a phenomenon dating only to the last hundred years or so. Long before that time, contact with the technology, ideology, and diseases of Europeans had so altered the culture and diminished the numbers of most of the Eastern seaboard tribes, including the Wampanoags, that such a study would have been impossible. To describe the culture of the Wampanoags, therefore, it is necessary to turn to the historical record—both written and archaeological—for the only surviving information on these people.

The best sources for information on Wampanoag culture are the journals and letters of travelers and settlers of the 16th and 17th centuries. Among the Pilgrims, Edward Winslow proved to be an exceptional ethnographer, having recorded a number of insightful observations on Indian culture. John Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay sent a collection of Indian artifacts back to England, some of which are still preserved in the British Museum. Of lesser value to the present purpose are writings of the latter half of the 17th century by missionaries who were trying to teach Christianity to the Indians. Their interests were in the progress of the civilized customs of a godly existence, and their writings do not focus upon aboriginal behavior. Information about artifacts and structures, often incompletely described by earlier chroniclers, can be added to by a study of the archaeological remains of Indian activity.

There will be omissions from the cultural description—questions never to be answered. But it is hoped that the bringing together in ethnographic format of what information is extant will give some insight into and further the understanding of Wampanoag culture as it was at approximately the time the Pilgrims encountered it.

DEMOGRAPHY

Estimates of population for the southern New England area are variable. The most widely quoted figure is that arrived at by Mooney—25,000 for the entire New England area, prior to the 1616-17 plague.[5] Other writers place the number at around 20,000 for southern New England alone.[6] In all likelihood, the lower number is the more nearly correct. Population estimates made by visitors to the New England area in the 16th and 17th centuries were based in the main upon what could be observed in the course of a coastwide voyage. And while Indian population appeared dense, the actual situation was one of a considerably concentrated population along the immediate coast, where rich marine resources were available, and a very sparse, often seasonal, occupation of vast tracts further inland.[7]

By the time the Pilgrims arrived, the population of eastern Massachusetts had declined greatly, as a result of the epidemic which we have mentioned before. No one really knows what the disease was that took such great numbers of Indians. The Massachusetts were virtually destroyed—first by the plague and then by wars with the Abnaki during the early decades of the seventeenth century. Population declined from perhaps three thousand to a mere five hundred between the years 1615 and 1630.[8] The Wampanoags had suffered less, but the effects of the plague were still felt heavily by them. Prior to the plague their numbers are estimated to have been two to three thousand, but death depopulated large tracts of land.[9] Altham writes that the nearest Indian town to Plymouth was fourteen miles away.[10] Gookin called them, “a potent nation in former times....”[11] In 1620 they numbered perhaps something over one thousand.[12] The Narragansetts, however, were untouched by the plague; they are said to have numbered some four thousand.[13]

The general result of the settlement of Europeans in New England was to further the trend of Indian depopulation. Whereas the Europeans might hope to have developed or inherited a degree of immunity to the diseases which they carried, such infections proved fatal to the Indians almost without exception. In 1632-33 the Narragansetts suffered a smallpox epidemic which killed some seven hundred, and at the same time it destroyed what remained of the Massachusetts tribe.[14] The well-meaning attempts of missionaries to Christianize the Indians by civilizing them and putting them into European clothes and houses also brought changes to the detriment of their general health. The “civilized” custom of washing, for example, removed the coating of animal fat that the Indian customarily wore to protect himself from cold and insects and exposed his body to previously unknown physiological shocks. Wars of the colonial period also took their toll of the Indian population.

As far as can be told from available information, the density of population in New England just prior to European colonization was .22 Indians per square mile.[15]

HISTORY AND CULTURE CHANGE

The few remnants of Wampanoag oral tradition are vague on the point of tribal history and origins. Most often mentioned is the idea that they came from somewhere to the south and west of their present home. Indeed, this may, according to the thinking of anthropologists, be the direction from which they received the corn that they were cultivating in at least the 16th century. However, the question of a true tribal history must, as is so often the case with pre-literate peoples, remain unanswered.

Early explorers and settlers had their own ideas as to the origins of the Indians they found in the New World. A popular belief was that these were descendants of one of the Biblical “lost tribes of Israel”. Some scholars went to great lengths to show that this was so by comparing the languages and religious concepts of the two groups. Along with this idea went a belief that the skin of the Indians was actually light, but that it was dyed brown during infancy.[16] Whatever may have been the course of their pre-contact history, the arrival of the white man was certainly a significant event for the culture of the Indians of southeastern New England.

Changes were being introduced into Indian culture long before the arrival of the first permanent European settlers. Fishing and whaling industries brought large numbers of ships (nearly four hundred in 1578) to the vicinity of Newfoundland and Cape Breton; incidental trade in furs between the Indians and these vessels covered a six-hundred mile range that undoubtedly included New England.[17] Indian graves which date from this period contain European trade items—the first evidence of the changes being introduced into native culture.[18] The Indians seem especially to have appreciated the value of the metal tools which the Europeans brought.[19] Their own use of metal had been limited to the making of ornaments out of native copper. For heavy work, such as felling trees and dressing game, stone tools were used.

The increasing substitution of metal tools for stone ones brought about changes in Indian technology that continued through the seventeenth century. The situation for New England Indians in general is summarized by Willoughby:

After and during the first two or three decades of the seventeenth century the Indians received from European traders, especially from the French and Dutch, cloth, kettles, hatchets, and many other objects, and the graves of that period have yielded numerous articles of this nature. The native industries of the people rapidly declined. It was principally among the women that the finer arts survived for a time, such as the better class of bag and basket making, porcupine and moose-hair embroidery, etc., although the men continued for a period the production of their excellent wooden bowls and drinking cups.[20]

Technological change was not, however, only a matter of the loss of skill at aboriginal crafts. The Indians were quick to learn useful new techniques from the English settlers. They learned the art of pewter casting, and thus produced pipes and buttons.[21] A further use for their new-found knowledge of metallurgy was noted by Governor Bradford:

They have also their moulds to make shotte, of all sorts, as muskett bulletts, pistoll bullets, swan and gose shote, and of smaler sorts; yea, some have seen them have their scruplates to make scrupins themselves, when they wante them, with sundery other implements, wher with they are ordinarily better fited and furnished then the English them selves.[22]

The history of contact between primitive peoples and Europeans has tended to be similar throughout the world, in that the first to contact and deal with the natives were usually entrepreneurs looking for new profits, followed by missionaries looking to save souls. The Wampanoags likewise experienced this phenomenon. While it was the intention of those who went there to settle to bring Christianity to the Indians, preparations for such a monumental task were not very well laid. English colonists had their hands full for a number of years just getting a living. They had made no provisions for the maintenance of missionaries to the Indians, and English congregations were not eager to spare their own ministers for the task. Thus, it was not until the middle of the seventeenth century at least before systematic attempts to change the Indians’ belief system were begun.

Notable among those who took up the mission to the Indians of southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island were Roger Williams, John Elliot, and the Mayhews, father and son. Quite a number of converts were made.[23] Converted Indians were encouraged to dwell together in what came to be dubbed “praying towns”. Such Indians were required to adopt European culture wholeheartedly in terms of dress, housing, habits, etc., and they were required to learn to read as part of their conversion so that they could study the scriptures. The majority of Indians seem to have refused conversion; however, the change on the part of some of them can hardly but have had influence upon the rest.

Another introduction from European culture was alcohol, previously unknown to the Wampanoags and their neighbors. This became a popular item of trade, and some Indians undertook the cultivation of apples for the purpose of making cider.[24]

FOOD QUEST

=Annual Cycle=: The environment of coastal southern New England was rich in a variety of wild food resources. Because these resources were available seasonally in several differing localities, the Wampanoags, who lived by a combination of hunting, fishing, collecting, and horticulture, moved several times during the year.

Beginning in about April, large numbers of Indians, probably the populations of several localized winter camping groups, would gather at the falls of certain rivers for the upstream runs of fish such as herring.[25] Migratory birds were also taken at this time.[26] The period of taking fresh water and androgynous fish along streams and in lakes continued until planting season, when the Wampanoags moved to the coast.

Summer was a time of gardening; it was also the time when the vast array of marine resources was exploited. In addition, summer brought an abundance of shore birds. Planting involved two crops, with people sometimes moving from a house by an early field to one by a later field in the middle of the summer.