Cotton Mather

PEOPLE MENTIONED OR ALMOST MENTIONED IN CAPE COD: THE REVEREND COTTON MATHER COTTON MATHER CAPE COD: The Harbor of Provincetown —which, as well as the greater part of the Bay, and a wide expanse of ocean, we overlooked from our perch— is deservedly famous. It opens to the south, is free from rocks, and is never frozen over. It is said that the only ice seen in it drifts in sometimes from Barnstable or Plymouth. Dwight remarks that “The storms which prevail on the American coast generally come from the east; and there is no other harbor on a windward shore within two hundred miles.” J.D. Graham, who GRAHAM has made a very minute and thorough survey of this harbor and the adjacent waters, states that “its capacity, depth of water, excellent anchorage, and the complete shelter it affords from all winds, combine to render it one of the most valuable ship harbors on our coast.” It is the harbor of the Cape and of the fishermen of Massachusetts generally. It was known to navigators several years at least before the settlement of Plymouth. In Captain John Smith’s map of New England, dated 1614, it bears the name of JOHN SMITH Milford Haven, and Massachusetts Bay that of Stuard’s Bay. His Highness, Prince Charles, changed the name of Cape Cod to Cape James; but even princes have not always power to change a name for the worse, and as Cotton Mather said, Cape Cod is “a name which I suppose it will never lose till shoals of codfish be seen swimming on its highest hills.” REVEREND COTTON MATHER HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: COTTON MATHER “I was emptying the Cistern of Nature, and making Water at the Wall. At the same Time, there came a Dog, who did so too before me.” — The Reverend Cotton Mather 1635 April 13: At the urging of the Reverend John Cotton, the Boston town meeting approved creation of a tax-supported academy. (This Boston Latin School, which now is the oldest public school in America with a continuous existence, antedates not only Salem Latin School but even Harvard College.) What the reverend had in mind was a school similar to the Free Grammar School of Boston, England, at which Latin and Greek were being taught. The town records have it that: On the 13th of the second month, 1635, Att a Generall meeting upon publique notice … it was … generally agreed upon that our brother Philemon Pormort shall be intreated to become scholemaster for the teaching and nourtering of children with us. 2 Copyright 2011 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: COTTON MATHER Thus the 1st public school in America, with its braggadocio motto: SVMMVS PRIMI During this month “our brother Philemon Pormont” became school master “for the teaching and nurturing the children among us.” Initially the classes would be held in his home, although within a few months our brother Philemon relocated to another settlement. Eventually the Town of Boston would vote “to allow forever fifty pounds to the Master, and a house, and thirty pounds to an usher” (assistant to the Master). Matriculating at Boston Latin School during this first century of its existence would be:1 • 1635: John Hull who would become Mint Master • 1635: John Leverett who would become governor of the Bay Colony • 1640: William Stoughton who would become the colony’s Lieutenant Governor and Chief Justice • 1648: Elisha Hutchinson who would become Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas • 1669: John Leverett who would be president of Harvard College from 1707 to 1724 • 1669: Cotton Mather who would become a minister and a theologian • 1680: Benjamin Lynde who would become Chief Justice of Massachusetts • 1684: Samuel Mather who would in England become a minister and a theologian • 1689: Jonathan Belcher who would be governor of Massachusetts / New Hampshire / New Jersey 1. You are undoubtedly presuming on the basis of this plausible story of continuities, that the school in question was known at that time as the Boston Latin School. No, in fact in this complex world of ours, continuity is no such simple matter: that name would only come later. If during the next century you had been able to inquire of Benjamin Franklin, say, what school he had attended in Boston as a child, he would not have been able to recall such a name as Boston Latin School. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: COTTON MATHER 1637 May: The General Court granted to Concord “liberty to purchase lande within their Limits of the Indians ; to wit : Attawan and Squaw Sachem.” This was the “marke of the Squa [Squaw] Sachem Awashunckes [Awashonks]”2: It was the beginning of the fighting season: having found that their new homeland was “then covered with nations of barbarous Indians and infidels, in whom the ‘prince of the power of the air’ did ‘work in a spirit’,” a few hundred miles to the southwest, in Connecticut, the Puritan fathers were surrounding and putting to the torch a Pequot fort in a swamp containing not only warriors but their wives and their children. The doleful, ghostly, ghastly Reverend Cotton Mather would later report, in MAGNALIA CHRISTI AMERICANA; OR THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF NEW-ENGLAND, that: In a little more than one hour, five or six hundred of these barbarians were dismissed from a world that was burdened with them. MATHER’S MAGNALIA, I MATHER’S MAGNALIA, II Another white historian has commented that the proximate cause of this sad slaughter could only have been the sin of pride: Thus by their horrible pride they fitted themselves for destruction. “As the star of the Indian descended, that of the Puritans rose ever higher.” — Tourtellot, Arthur Bernon, THE CHARLES, NY: Farrar & Rinehart, 1941, page 63 2. The “shonks” or “shunks” or “suncks” portion of this name was an honorific, signifying leadership. Her intimates would have called her Awa. 4 Copyright 2011 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: COTTON MATHER “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: COTTON MATHER This being the race politics which was going down only a few hundred miles to the southwest, there was no reason to anticipate that Attawan and Squaw Sachem would be anything other than very very polite and very very cooperative when approached alongside the gently flowing Musketaquid by groups of courteous armed men bearing sackfulls of hostess gifts. Here is Doctor Lemuel Shattuck’s rendition of the course of events: A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;...: Musketaquid, the original Indian name of Concord and Concord River, for a long time before it was settled by our fathers, had been one of the principal villages of the Massachusett tribe. Nanepashemet was the great king or sachem of these Indians. His principal place of residence was in Medford MA near Mystic pond. “His house was built on a large scaffold six feet high, and on the top of a hill. Not far off, he built a fort with palisadoes 30 or 40 feet high, having but one entrance, over a bridge. This also served as the place of his burial, he having been killed about the year 1619, by the Tarrantines, a warlike tribe of eastern Indians, at another fort which he had built about a mile off.” He left a widow — Squaw Sachem, and five children. Squaw Sachem succeeded to all the power and influence of her husband, as the great queen of the tribe. Her power was so much dreaded, when she was first visited by the Plymouth people in 1621, that her enemies, the sachems of Boston and Neponset, desired protection against her, as one condition of submission to the English. She married Wibbacowitts, “the powwaw, priest, witch, sorcerer, or chirurgeon” of the tribe. This officer was highest in esteem next to the sachem ; and he claimed as a right the hand of a widowed sachem in marriage ; and by this connexion became a king in the right of his wife, clothed with such authority as was possessed by her squawship.1 Both assented to the sale of Musketaquid, though Tahattawan, hereafter to be noticed, was the principal sachem of the place. This tribe was once powerful. Before the great sickness already mentioned, it could number 3,000 warriors. That calamity, and the small-pox, which prevailed among them with great mortality in 1633, reduced it to nearly one tenth of that number. The Musketaquid Indians suffered in common with the brethren of their tribe elsewhere. When first visited by the English, their number was comparatively very small.... The place where the principal sachem lived was near Nahshawtuck (Lee’s) hill. Other lodges were south of the Great Meadows, above the South Bridge, and in various places along the borders of the rivers, where planting, hunting, or fishing ground was most easily obtained. From these sources the Indians derived their subsistence ; and few places produced a supply more easily than Musketaquid. South of Mr. Samuel Dennis’s are now seen large quantities of clamshells, which are supposed to have been collected by the Indians, as they feasted on that then much frequented spot. Across the vale, south of Capt. Anthony Wright’s, a long mound, or breast-work, is now visible, which might have been built to aid the hunter, though its object is unknown. Many hatchets, pipes, chisels, arrow-heads, and other rude specimens of their art, curiously wrought from stone, are still frequently discovered near these spots, an evidence of the existence and skill of the original inhabitants.

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