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Home , Experience Mayhew, Gideon Hawley, Josiah Cotton, Sachem

Losing the Language: The Decline of Algonquian Tongues and the Challenge of Indian Identity in Southern

DA YID J. SIL VERMAN Princeton University

In the late nineteenth century, a botanist named Edward S. Burgess visited the Indian community of Gay Head, Martha's Vineyard to interview native elders about their memories and thus "to preserve such traditions in relation to their locality." Among many colorful stories he recorded, several were about august Indians who on rare, long -since passed occasions would whisper to one another in the language, a tongue that younger people could not interpret. Most poignant were accounts about the last minister to use Massachusett in the Gay Head Baptist Church. "While he went on preaching in Indian," Burgess was told, "there were but few of them could know what he meant. Sometimes he would preach in English. Then if he wanted to say something that was not for all to hear, he would talk to them very solemnly in the Indian tongue, and they would cry and he would cry." That so few understood what the minister said was reason enough for the tears. "He was asked why he preached in the Indian language, and he replied: 'Why to keep up my nation.' " 1 Clearly New England natives felt the decline of their ancestral lan­ guages intensely, and yet Burgess never asked how they became solely English speakers. Nor have modem scholars addressed this problem at any length. Nevertheless, investigating the process and impact of Algonquian language loss is essential for a fuller understanding Indian life during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and even beyond. For as the above story illustrates, a distinct language heritage was an essential component of the way Indians defined themselves, and the way outsiders defined them, as Indians. Algonquian language loss effectively began with the spread of debt­ driven Indian indentured servitude. By the turn of the seventeenth century, the spread of English farms, the related decline of the Indians' mixed

1 Edward S. Burgess, "The Old South Road of Gay Head," Dukes County Intelligencer 12 (1970), 22. LOSING THE LANGUAGE 347 subsistence base, and the natives' susceptibility to debilitating illness, had rendered Indians dependent upon store-bought food and clothing. Thereafter, while skirting along poverty's edge, it took only an ill-timed disease or costly brush with the law, to push the natives into "desperate debtor" status, and pull them into court to answer their creditors. Thus a cycle began that enveloped entire Indian families, and eventually entire communities, at a time: a father indentured himself for a year of so; with his labor and wages unavailable, his family charged more food and clothing at local stores; creditors inevitably came calling again, and so the mother and/or eldest siblings either bound out themselves out in order to maintain their credit lines, or else were forced into service by local authorities. Sometimes younger children accompanied their mothers into colonial homes, but at other times were bound out until adulthood by their parents, who sought some guarantee of food, shelter, clothing, and, they hoped, formal education, for their offspring.2 No individual so thoroughly detailed this process as Mashpee's mis­ sionary Gideon Hawley. In 1760 he surveyed the natives' social landscape and noted: There is scarcely an Indian Boy among us not indetted to an English Master... their neighbors find means to involve the Indians so deeply in debt as they are obliged to make over i" boys, if they have any, for security till payment. The case is thus, an Indian having got in debt (he hardly knows how) obliges himself to go a whaling till he answers it: and because life is uncertain, his master obliges him in his Covenant or Indenture to include his Boy, who is bound to serve in case he should die or should not take up the Indenture by such a term or should get farther in debt to him. The Indian faithfully serves his master, every season for whaling as long as he is fit for such a service (for the longer he serves, the more he is embarassed) till finally being worn out he is turned off and becomes an object of charity. As for the boy, he is forfeited, because his father, tho' he has earned his master thousands, never was out of debt. 3 Despite Hawley's silence on the indenture of Indian girls, it is clear

2 David Silverman, "The costs of debt," Paper presented at the American Society for Ethnohistory, Mashantucket, Conn., October 1999; Ruth Walhs Hem don, "Racia­ lization and feminization of poverty in early America." Empire and others, ed. by Martin Daunton and Rick Halpem (London: UCL Press, 1999), 186-203. 3 "Gideon Hawley to Andrew Oliver, 9 Dec. 1760," Gideon Hawley Journal and Letters, Congregational Library, , Mass. See also "Hawley to Anonymous, I June 1794" Hawley Letters, Historical Society (MHS), Boston, Mass.; " to William Ashhurst, 5 Jan. 1716," Cotton and Increase Mather Letters, MHS. 348 DA YID J. SIL VERMAN that they also served as collateral. For example, Elizabeth Pattompan of Christiantown, Martha's Vineyard, was bound out in 1704 when her father, Josias, found himself saddled with court fees. 4 Similarly, Vineyarder Thomas West's 1728 estate listed "an Indian girl servant 7 years service due" among an inventory ofhorses, cows, sheep and swine.5 The problem of bound-out children was so vast and complicated that when the Mashpees petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for assistance, they admitted, "we can[']t at present think of any other method to prevent it."6 Nor could the government. Laws that required the signature of two appointed guardians or magistrates to validate an indenture never took into account how easy those signatures were to come by. 7 And so the system churned out one child servant after another. Hearkening back to his life in Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard during the 1790s and early 1800s, James Athearn Jones wrote "it was my grandfather's custom, and had been that of his ancestors ... to take Indian boys at the age of four or five years until they had attained their majority ... During my minority we had three of these little foresters in our house. "8 Yet the work was not over for Jones' s childhood companions once they reached adulthood, for then "they usually left us to be sailors," both willingly and by court order. 9 This line of employment took Indian boys and men even farther afield from their home villages. Indians working the coastwise trade during the 1730s traveled back and forth between Boston and Carolina, while whalers typically hunted the waters off Cape Breton, Newfoundland, and Labrador. After the Revolution, whaling voyages extended to the Brazilian coast, Falkland Islands, and later the Pacific. As

4 , Indian converts, (London, 1727), 238. See also 202,203, 261; Dukes County Court Records (DCCR), 1:126, 145, Dukes County Superior Court, Edgartown, Mass. 5 Dukes County Courthouse. Probate Records (DCP), 2:53-54, 66-67, Dukes County Registry of Probate. See also Hemdon, "Racialization and feminization of poverty," 197. 6 "Mashpee Indians to a Committee Appointed to Hear Indian Grievances, 13 August 1761 ," Haw1ey Letters, MHS. 7 "Haw1ey to Anonymous, 1 June 1794," Hawley Letters, MHS; "Hawley to Anonymous, 29 August 1801," "Hawley to Anonymous, 22 Dec. 1801," and "Hawley to Ephraim Spooner, 2 Dec. 1801 ," Hawley Letters and Journal. 8 James Atheam Jones, Traditions of the North American Indians. (London, 1830), 1 :x. 9 Jones, Traditions of the North American Indians, 1 :x. LOSING THE LANGUAGE 349

for the coastal trade, in 1782, J. Hector St. John de Crevecour wrote of the r, Indians of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, "go where you will from

~r Nova Scotia to the Mississippi, you will find almost every where some :e. natives of these two islands employed in seafaring occupations."10 Naturally, regular at-sea employment, forced or otherwise, led natives to 11 lt migrate to port towns such as Nantucket, New Bedford, and Providence. These towns also drew native women who found employment as domestic ~, lt servants and thereby managed remained close to their men, at least while 12 0 they were in port. 0 It proved difficult for Indians to break out of the cycle of servitude. For n instance, in 1725, Abigail J oel of Gay Head contracted to work one year for n Mary Clifton of Portsmouth New Hampshire. Yet during her service, s clothing that Joel had purchased from Clifton put her in debt over £30. lt Then she twice became pregnant, prompting Clifton to dock her for lost [1 time and the cost of maintaining the children. Soon thereafter Joel charged e more clothing, including a pricey wedding dress, and then was fined for attempting to run away. 13 Unless they remained shoddily dressed, sexually y inactive, and resigned to meet the full terms of their service, the chances h for female servants to win their freedom were slim indeed. s Men obviously did not bear the burden ofpregnancy during their terms, e but they faced their own obstacles to freedom. Among the English, [} 10 J. Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American farmer, (New l, York, 1967 [London, 1782]), 167. See also Paul Cuffee, Narrative of the life ofPaul s Cuffee, a Pequot Indian, during thirty years spent at sea, and in travelling in foreign lands (Vernon, Conn., 1839), 3-6; Daniel F. Vickers, "The first whalemen of s Nantucket," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series 40 (1983), 568. 11 Crevecoeur, Letters from an American farmer, "148. DCCR, 1: 199; Dukes r County Deeds (DCD) 6:273; 7:66, 81; 8: 193; 10:588, Dukes County Courthouse, Registry of Deeds (DCRD). 12 s James Freeman, "A description of Mashpee, in the county of Barnstable, f September 16th, 1802," Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections (MHSC), 2nd ser., 3 (1815) 5; F. W. Bird, Whiting Griswold, and Cyrus Weekes, Report of the commissioners relating to the condition of the Indians in Massachusetts, Massa­ chusetts House Document No. 46 (Boston, 1849), 75; "B.G. Marchant to John Milton Earle, 17 September 1859," John Milton Earl Papers, Box 2, File 2, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.; "Gorham Hatch to S.K. Lothrop, 9 June 1863," Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in North America, Records, Box 2, File 15, Philip's Library of the Peabody Museum, Salem, Mass. 13 New Hampshire State Archives, Provincial Court Records, Case 18462, Concord, NH. I am grateful to Holly Mitchell for providing me with a copy of this manuscript. 350 DAVID J. SILVERMAN mariners had a singular reputation for improvidence rivaled only by Indian seamen, generally held to be the most profligate ofthe lot. 14 "Their employ­ ment operates as a disqualification to any industry while they are on shore," wrote the guardian of Christiantown, in 1817. "Having expended the profits of one Voyage around Cape Horn they engage again." 15 Yet many suc­ cessful mariners never even saw their money upon a journey's completion because they had received wages long before shipping off. 16 One traveling observer noted that merchants recruited Indian whalemen through "a sort of crimping, in which liquor, goods, and fair words are plied, till the Indian gets into debt and gives his consent." 17 The Indians ofChristiantown called this "a more soft manner of Kidnapping." 18 Part of the problem was that 'Yhalers had fixed expenses far beyond those oflanded wage earners. When preparing to sail from New Bedford in 1803, Gay Head Indian Caleb&)?ond bought three pairs of stockings, two pairs of mittens, three coats, three pairs of thick trousers, boots and shoes, three flannel shirts, a hat, thirty pounds of tobacco, paper, a tin pail, a chest lock, as well as passage from Martha's Vineyard to dockside. Without anything particularly superfluous, Pond already carried a debt of £25. 19 Since whaling ships did not want hands much over the age of forty, Indian men enjoyed some prospective end to their hard labor at sea. 20

14 Marc us Rediker, Between the devil and the deep blue sea. (: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 147-9; W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black jacks (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 183-5. 15 Massachusetts State Archives (MSA), Passed Legislation Packet, Acts 1817, eh. 99, Boston, Mass. See also the work and spending patterns ofHezekiah Joel in William Mayhew Account Book, July 1797, Martha's Vineyard Historical Society (MVHS), Edgartown, Mass. 16 David Konig, ed., Plymouth court records, 1686-1852. (Washington, D.C.: Michael Glazier, Inc. for the Pilgrim Society, 1978), 7:42. 17 Edward Augustus Kendall, Travels through the northern part of the United States in the years 1807 and 1808 (New York, 1809), 2:194-5. Similar recruiting tactics were used to secure British seamen. See Rediker, Between the devil and the deep blue sea, 81-82. 18 Passed Legislation Packet, Acts 1804, eh. 84, (MSA). See also Guardian of Indian plantation records, Box 3, File 15, 22 September, 1818, (MSA); William Comstock, A voyage to the Pacific (Boston, 183 8), back cover. 9 1. "Account of Caleb Pond, 3 April 1803," John Look Account Book, MVHS. 2° Crevecoeur, Letters from an American farmer, 168. Ages of native Vineyard whalers during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century were compiled from Crew Lists, Genealogical Services, New Bedford Free Public Library, New Bedford, Mass. Average age at the time of signing contract: 24.5 years. Of 124 sailors, two LOSING THE LANGUAGE 351

Thereafter, in middle and late age Indian couples tried to cobble together a living by leasing land, men fishing and performing farm work for locals, and women selling crafts as well as doing occasional wage work in English kitchens. 21 The less fortunate set up wigwams or shacks on the land of their creditors and continued to live as informal bondspeople.22 Throughout the eighteenth century and beyond ':lnd from childhood through midlife, the cycle of indenture and debt struck Indians across New England and with marked consistency. As early as 1713, Nar­ ragansett/Niantic sachem Ninigret told missionary Experience Mayhew "that his people were many of them indebted to the English, & lived with them, and so did not care for him." Another twenty-five miles eastward, Mayhew could not find an audience to proselytize because "the Indians were so scattered among the English, that I could not come at them. "23 Very little changed during the following decades. A 1729 observer commented that the Indians of Rhode Island "are either all servants or labourers for the English," while a 1774 Rhode Island census found that approximately 35 percent of natives in every age and sex category lived in white families. 24 Investigators discovered similar conditions in Connecticut and Massachu­ setts. In 1731, 19 of 31 adult Mashantucket Pequot males lived among the colonists and four years later the Connecticut census noted that of the were less. than 15 years old; three were between 40 and 54; none were 55 or older. 21 "Samuel Sewall to Sir William Ashhurst, 8 May 1714,"New England Co. (NE Co.) MS 795511, 56-57, Guildhall Library, London; John Alien Account Book, account of Josiah Horsewit (unpaginated, 1732) and Joshua Coomes (p. 12) (MYHS); E. Mayhew, Indian converts, 140, 170; Jean O'Brien, "Divorced from the land." Gen.der, kinship, power, ed. by Mary Jo Maynes, Ann Waltner, Brigitte So land, and Ulrike Strasser (New York: Routledge, 1996), 319-333. 22 , Memoirs, p. 376, MHS; John Wood Sweet, "Bodies politic" (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1995), 26-28. 23 Experience Mayhew, "A brief journal of my visitation to the Pequot & Indians 1713." Some correspondance between the governors and trea­ surers ofthe New England Company in London and the commissioners ofthe United Colonies in America, ed. by John W. Ford (London, 1896), 110-1. 24 Alexander C. Fraser, ed., The works of George Berkeley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871), 243, cited in William Simmons, "Red Yankees." American Ethnologist 10 (1983), 258. See also, Carl Bridenbaugh, ed., Gentleman's progress (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 1948), 98; John A. Sainsbury, "Indian labor in early Rhode Island." New England Quarterly 48 ( 197 5), 3 92-3; Ruth Wallis Hem don and Ella Wilcox Sekatau, "The right to a name." Ethnohistory 44 (1997), 440-1. 352 DA YID J. SIL VERMAN colony's Indians "many of them dwell in English families."25 Meanwhile, in Massachusetts during the 17 60s, the Indians ofDartmouth and Ware ham were "mostly living with [the] English" as servants and wage la borers, an inheritance they passed on to three generations. 26 In 1807, the Rev. James Freeman found 100 of242 Gay Head Indians absent from their homes "being children put out to service in English famili~s; and others whale-men."27 Given the anecdotal and statistical evidence, a conservative estimate is that at least one-third of Indian children and young adults were away from home throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The numbers probably ran higher. As one would expect given such figures, New England Indians became increasingly proficient in English over the course of the eighteenth century. According to Experience Mayhew, as late as the 1720s, the vast majority of Indians understood their own tongue "much better" than English. 28 But by 1732, Josiah Cotton found that four of five Indian families on the Plymouth side of Eel River understood English "pretty wel1." 29 Hawley preached in English for the first time at Mashpee on 3 July 1757 and believed "ye Indians understood me" despite their dissatisfaction that he could not speak Massachusett.~ 0 Then in 1767, joint communion services between the natives of and Martha's Vineyard began to include

25 Connecticut State Archives,"Indian Series," Doe. 151, Hartford, Conn.; A. Holmes, "Additional memoir of the Moheagans, and ofUncas, their ancient sachem," MHSC 1st ser., 9 (1804), 78. On Connecticut Indians being sold into whaling service, see Nathaniel Philbrick, Abram 's eyes (Nantucket: Mill Hill Press, 1998), 211. On Long Island, see John A. Strong, The of Long Island from earliest times to 1700. (Interlaken, N.Y.: Empire State Books, 1997), 269-279. 26 Franklin B. Dexter, ed., Extracts from the intineraries and other miscellanies of Ezra Stiles, D.D., LL.D., 1755-1794, with a selection from his correspondence (New Haven: Press, 1916), 166; "Report of committee on the state of the Indians in Mashpee [1767]," MHSC 1st ser., 10 (1815), 16. 27 James Freeman, "A description of Dukes County, Aug. 13th 1807." MHSC2nd ser., 3 (1815), 94. For a similar description thirty years later, see "Daniel Wrighte to Alden Bradford, 9 April 1839"; Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians and Others in North America, Records 1752-1948, Box 6, MHS. 28 Experience Mayhew, "A Brief account of the State of the Indians on Martha's Vineyard," appendix to his A discourse shewing that GOD dealeth with men as with reasonable creatures (Boston, 1720), 9-10. 29 Josiah Cotton Memoirs, unpaginated, MHS. 30 Gideon Hawley, Diary, 3 July 1757, MHS; "Hawley to Anonymous, 1 June 1794," Hawley Letters, MHS. LOSING THE LANGUAGE 353 a morning session in Massachusett and afternoon worship in English. 31 Indians needed bilingual skills if they were to communicate with children who returned home after years in English-language settings. Consider the case of To bit Potter. Born in 1709 as the illegitimate son of Martha's Vineyard Indian Elizabeth Uhquat, Potter probably spent most of his childhood shuttling between a mainland English household, where his mother worked as an indentured servant, and other colonial homes to which he .was temporarily bound out. His mother finally gained her release some time after Potter's ninth birthday, but she could not bear the cost of supporting her son and therefore committed him to serve Edward and Mary Milton of Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard, while she returned to her home village of Christiantown. After four years with the Miltons, Potter fell seriously ill. When he experienced a fleeting recovery, his masters packed up their now-useless Indian and transferred his services to yet another English family. But the change of environment did nothing to improve the boy's health and soon Potter found himself on the way to Christiantown to be nursed by his impoverished mother. In theory, this was a homecoming. In practice, it was his.first extended stay in an Indian village. Consequently, Potter's arrival was awkward; despite being recognized as a native and treated by colonists as such, Potter could not speak the Massachusett language to other Indians-he knew only English. 32 If Potter had survived more year in Christiantown, his relatives certainly would have tried to teach him the Indian language, but time would have worked against them. Young men promptly left their villages again to ship out on whaling voyages, while young women became house servants, meaning that most Indians could not immerse themselves in the native tongue until middle or old age. By then it was too late. Not only is language acquisition more difficult for adults than children but, as anthropologist Anya Peter son Royce notes, learning the behaviors of one's ethnic group as an adult is "laden with stress" because one is not given

31 "Report of a committee on the state of the Indians in Mashpee, 13. 32 Experience Mayhew, Indian converts. (London, 1727), 194-6, 257- 260. See also the account of Joseph Quasson ofMonomoy, an Indian v111age near Plymouth. In 1703, Quasson 'smother bound him out at age six to pay off a £5 debt. Quasson gained his release at age 18 and returned to the native community. Owing to his poor wardrobe, he also shifted his attendance from the English to the Indian church where, he admitted, "I understood nothing." Samuel Moody, Summary account of the life and death ofJoseph Quasson, Indian (Boston, 1726), 4. 354 DAVID J. SILVERMAN much latitude for mistake. Thus "he or she can be easily discouraged unless the rewards are sufficiently tempting or the first identity is particularly negative."33 The pull was not strong enough. Compounding this process was an organized effort by missionaries to spread the English language among Indians. Although at least half of the Indians' eighteenth century schoolmasters were natives, the other half were colonists devoted to English-only instruction, consistent with the instruc­ tions of their sponsor, the New England Company.34 Colonial missionaries to the Indians supplemented this movement. As Hawley explained in 1779, "My design here has been to anglecize the Indians. [I] have therefore always preached in English to the Cape Cod Indians."35 Other missionaries followed suit, with none ever bothering to learn the traditional of their charges. Further restricting the Indians' access to their ancestral tongue was the New England Company's decision to cease its Massachusett language publications, a series that included the Bible, primers, catechisms, and several instructional pieces. 36 Thereafter, every tom page of a native version of the New England Confession ofFaith, or water-logged chapter of the Practice of Pieiy, or burnt copy of Call to the Unconverted, repre­ sented a blow to the future of printed Algonquian. As early as 1720, island Indians began to complain "much for want of Indian BIBLES, having now but very few among them. "37 Their requests for more went unheeded. Even if they were met, many Indians would not have been able to take advantage of the Massachusett texts since few indentured children were being educated to read and write, and none were trained in Algonquian

33 Anya Peterson Royce, Ethnic identity. (Bloomington: University Press, 1982), 188. 34 NE Co. MS 7955/2, 15-16; MS 7953, 21, 23, 24, 32. 35 "Hawley to Sewall, 15 Sept. 1779," Hawley Letters, MHS. 36 On the "Indian Library," see Frederick L. Weis, "The New England Company of 1649 and its missionary enterprises, " Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions 38 (1947-51), 216-8; William Kellaway, The New England Company, 1649-1776 (New York: Bames and Noble, 1961), eh. 6; Kathleen J. Bragdon, "'Another tongue brought in"' (Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 1981 ), eh. 2; Jill Lepore, The name of war (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 30-41; Richard W. Cogley, John Eliot's mission to the Indians before King Philip 's war(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 119-24; Edward Gray, New world babe! (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), eh. 3. 37 E. May hew, "A brief account," 10. LOSING THE LANGUAGE 355

languages. Ministers and government officials constantly issued complaints y about such educational neglect, at least in regard to English-language skills. In 1708 the commissioners of the New England Company issued a circular

0 letter to local ministers asking them to pressure masters to teach Indian 38 e bonds reading and the catechism. Similarly, a Connecticut study charged ·e that "many of the Indians in this Government put out theire Children to the English to be brought up by them, and yet sundry of the persons hauveing such Children do Neglect to learn them to read, & to Instruct them in the principals of the Christian faith, so that such Children are in danger to continue heathen."39 Further restricting the education of adolescent Indian males was that whaling precluded- access to schools and home training. House servants were less mobile and therefore theoretically subject to more regular lessons. However, most of them had to wait until the winter months for thorough tutoring if they received it at all. Although most colonial ;e women could read, until the end of the eighteenth century, a far lesser percentage could write, meaning that few of the native children among 40 re them would have acquired fullliteracy.

~r Outside of service, to the extent that schools were established among the Narragansetts, Pequots, , and Niantics, they were poorly Ld attended, often left unmanned, and always subject to closure depending 41 w upon the state of chronic disputes between the natives and their guardians. Students and Indian instructors who did attend were always subject to ce having their work disrupted by creditors. As Hawley recalled, "every re Indian had his master ... [and] these Indians and their Children were 42 m transferred from one to another master like Slaves." Tattered texts and erratic, English-language, schooling would have ty 38 E. Mayhew, "A brief account," 10. 39 Connecticut State Archives, "Indian Series." Doe. 131. 40 WilliamApess, On our own ground, ed. byBarry O'Connell (Amherst, Mass.: 1Y University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), 7. James Axtell, The school upon a hill of (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 129, points out that after 1695 masters were not required by law to instruct their servants. ~w en 41 NE Co. MS 7953, 71, 78 (rand v), 90, 96, 104; MS 7955/2, 132-3; MS 8011 A, :y, "Indian affairs at Groton, Conn., 20 June 1755." See also, Margaret Connell Szasz, ~). Indian education in the American colonies, I 607-1783 (Albuquerque: University of ''s New Mexico Press, 1985), 186-9. ·ld 42 "Hawley to Anonymous, I June 1794," Hawley Letters, 1754- 1807, MHS; E. Mayhew, "A b[ief account," 4; NE Co. MS, 7953, 36v. 356 DA VID J. SIL VERMAN posed little challenge if young natives regularly interacted with Indian adults, but conditions in native communities hardly promoted such relationships. Native villages were bereft of young and middle-aged adults, especially males. A fever in 1763 and 1764 devastated native Nantucket andMartha's Vineyard, wiping out about two-thirds of the Indians at the first island. The survivors, reported one colonist, were "principally children."43 Military service took an especially high toll. Action in the Seven Years War took the lives of7 of 18 enlisted Western Niantic men, leaving the home community with 9 widows compared to 10 married couples.44 During the Revolution Mashpee lost half of all its men, including 25 of 26 from one regiment.45 By the late eighteenth centuries, Indian villages housed a decidedly unbalanced population. In 1790, Mashpee contained 30 widows, half the adults were unmarried, and females outnumbered males about 100 to 30. 46 Similar events left Gay Head in 1798 with 115 females to only 85 males.47 In 1790, the Chappaquddicks petitioned the Massachusetts Legislature for money to pay their legal debts, noting "that the greatest part of the Natives are Female, some of them very old and helpless."48 David Kendall's 1807 assessment ofMohegan and Gay Head applied equally to Indian communi­ ties throughout southern New England over the previous forty years. These communities were inhabited "for the most part [by] very aged persons,

43 "Andrew Oliver to Israel Manduit, Oct., 1764," Worth Family Papers, 1743-1912, 17:66-67, Nantucket Historical Society. Reprinted in Edouard A. Stackpole, "The fatal Indian sickness of Nantucket that decimated the Island aborigines," Historic Nantucket 23 (1975), 8-13. 44 Laura E. Conkey, Ethel Boissevan, and Ives Goddard, "Indians of southern New England and Long Island," Handbook of North American Indians, v. 15: Northeast, ed. by Bruce G. Trigger (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 185. 45 Jack Campisi, The Mashpee Indians (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1991), 88. See also Jean M. O'Brien, Dispossession by degrees (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), eh. 6; Ezra Stiles,"Number of the Nyhantic tribe of Indians," MHSC 1st ser., 10 (1809), 104; Connecticut State Archives, "Indian Series," Doe. 329a. 46 Gideon Hawley, "An account of the number·oflndian houses in Mashpee. 47 Moses Howwoswee, "Account of the Indians resident at Gay Head, MHS; "A list of children under eighteen years of age, the 14th day of May, 1798, at Gay head, Dukes County," Mise. MS, MHS. 48 Massachusetts State Archives, Passed Legislation Packet, Resolves 1790, Ch. 106. LOSING THE LANGUAGE 357 widows, and fatherless children. The young men go to sea and die."49 The climate was rife for systematic change. Linguist Joshua Fishman explains that a language shift "implies the breakdown of a previously established societal allocation of functions, the alteration of previously recognized role-relationships, situations, and domains, so that these no longer imply or call for the language with which they were previously associated. "50 No description better captures social life in Indian villages that functioned as way stations for those too young as yet to labor for colonists, adults in­ between indentures, or those too old for English service. The normal channels of Algonquian language transfer had eroded under the strain of indentured servitude and wage work, as well as English­ only schooling and publications, but they were finally swept away by a wave of marriages between native women and free blacks, the latter whom were unable to participate in Massachusett, Pequot, or N arragansett conver­ sations. 51 This was particularly the case during the period between 1760 and 1810, when so many Indian men died at sea, on the battlefield, or in

49 Kendall, Travels, 1:201-2,2:194-5. See also Freeman, "Description ofDukes County," 93-94; "D. Wrighte to Alden Bradford, 9 April 1839." For similar conditions in Natick, see O'Brien, Dispossession by degrees, 198. Crew Lists, New Bedford Free Public Library, New Bedford, Mass., document several Vineyard natives who worked consecutive voyages from the ports around new Bedford during the nineteenth century (see Appendix). Especially eloquent on the difficulty of New England Indian domestic life at the turn of the eighteenth century is Barry O'Connell, "William Apess and the survival of the Pequot people." Algonkians ofNew England: past andpresent, ed. by Peter Bennes (Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife. Boston: Boston University Press, 1993), 89-100. 50 Joshua Fishman, Language and ethnicity in minority sociolinguistic perspec­ tive (Clevedon/Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters, 1989), 22. Also informing the following discussion is William L. Leap, American Indian English (Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1993); A. Richard Diebold, Jr., "Incipient bilingualism." Language in culture and society, ed. by Dell Hymes (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 495-506. 51 Daniel R. Mandell, "Shifting boundaries of race and ethnicity," Journal of American History 85 (1998-99), 466-501; Mandell, "The saga of Sarah Mucka­ mugg." Sex, Love, Race, ed. by Martha Hodes, (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 72-90; Thomas L. Doughton, "Unseen neighbors." After King Philip 's war, ed. by Collin G. Calloway (Hanover, N.H.: University Press ofNew England, 1997), 207-30; Sweet, "Bodies politic"; Jack D. Forbes, "Mulattoes and people of colorin Anglo-North America," Journal ofEthnic Studies 12 (1984), 17-62; Lorenzo Johnston Greene, The Negro in colonial New England, Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law 494 (1942), 95-96, 198-200; Charles G. Woodson, "The relations of Negroes and Indians in Massachusetts," Journal of Negro History 5 (1920), 45-57. 358 DAVID J. SILVERMAN ,

diseased military camps. An 1823 census compiled by schoolteacher and missionary Frederick Bay lies, contains a detailed blood quantum for every person of Indian ancestry living on Martha's Vineyard, data that are corro­ borated by a 1792 census taken by Gay Head native Moses Howwoswee and several other documents.s2 The census shows that among males over the age of forty, only about 40%) were of half-Indian ancestry or more, · compared to 91% for women. Baylies' figures also demonstrate that exogamous marriage stabilized Indian communities. By the early nine­ teenth century, the island's native population was growing naturally again, the male-to-female ratio was evening out, and, contrary to the slights of most white observers, the quantum of Indian "blood" in most of those communities was on the rise.s3 However, the earlier demographic crisis had left an indelible mark. Children from out-marriages, especially ifthey spent time in service, proved all the less likely to gain fluency in the Indian tongue of their mothers and relatives. Indian tongues gradually became more of a ritual language of native churches and less a part ofhome and casual conversation.s4 In 1779 Hawley noted "tis now more than 20 years since I have had any occasion to converse in Indian. ,ss In 1797, Step hen Badger reported that at Natick only one elderly woman, the daughter of a former deacon, could understand the Massachusett language, "but of this she has not lately had a trial. "s6 Some

52 Frederick Baylies, "The names & ages of the Indians on Martha's Vineyard, taken about the 1st of Jan., 1823," MS A, S53, Folder 1Ha, New England Historic and Genealogical Society, Boston, Mass.; Moses Howwoswee, "Account of the Indians resident at Gay Head. 53 Kendall, Travels, 2:4 7--49; "Joseph Thaxter to James E. Freeman, 1 March 1823," Mise. bound MS, MHS; "Report of a committee appointed to investigate the condition of the Indians, 1 March 1827," Passed Legislation Packet, Acts of 1827, Ch. 114, (MSA) "Report of a visit of enquiry at Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and to the Narragansett Indians, by Francis Parkman, 29 Oct. 1835," Andrews-Eliot Collection, MHS; Bird, Griswold, and Weeks, "Report of the commissioners," 6. 54 Kathleen J. Bragdon, "Native Christianity in 18th century Massachusetts," New dimensions in ethnohistory ed. by Barry Gough and Laird Christine (Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1991 ), 119-126; Bragdon, "Language, folk history, and Indian identity on Martha's Vineyard," The art and mystery of historical archaeology, ed. by Anne Elizabeth Y entsch and Mary C. Beau dry (Boca Raton, Flo.: CRC Press, 1992), 334-6. 55 "Hawley to Sewall, 15 Sept. 1779," Hawley Letters, MHS. 56 Stephen Badger, "Historical and characteristic traits of the American Indians," MHSC 1st ser., 5 (1798), 44-45. LOSING THE LANGUAGE 359

twenty years later the Reverend Phineas Fish ofMashpee wrote that "they have forgotten their ancient names, and indeed their language also, with the exception of a very few individuals, who retain a slight knowledge of it, and are able to converse a little. "57 In 1827 a Massachusetts state committee surveyed the native population and determined "so far from needing instruction in English they have nearly lost their mother tongue & your Committee found some difficulty in finding an individual who still retained it. "58 Samuel Davis confirmed this finding. In 183 8 he went to Mashpee to compile a Massachusett vocabulary. Speaking with a "half blood," aged forty, Davis found, "in his infancy he learned the English tongue. These specimens there, of the Aboriginal, he has acquired, from the Old natives of whom scarcely any more remain that speak it. "59 Similar conditions existed on Martha's Vineyard. An 1844 visitor to Gay Head discovered "only two of them are still living who can speak their mother tongue; all the rest speak only English." 60 So too the N arragansetts. In 1861 Usher Parsons claimed that Narragansett had "ceased to be a spoken language in 61 the tribe for nearly half a century. " . These were hardly value-neutral observations. Mentioning the loss of Indian languages went hand-in-hand with commentary about the lack of "pure-blooded" Indians, the decline of distinct Indian behaviors without their replacement by the more positive habits of"civilized" people, and the tendency of natives to absorb white society's more destructive habits. Trafficking in these observations contributed to the argument that Indians possessed innate racial characteristics-aversion towards steady work, prodigality, love of wandering, and the like-that inevitably put them on the quick road to extinction. As several scholars have noted, this discourse ·--· ------..; 57 Jedidah Morse, A report to the Secretary of War ofthe United States on Indian affairs (New Haven, 1822), 70. 58 "Report of a committee appointed to investigate the condition of the Indians," Passed Legislation Packet, Acts 1827, eh . 114, 12, (MSA). 59 Samuel Davis, Papers, May 1841, uncatalogued, MHS. 60 Dr. Albert C. Koch, Journey through a part ofthe United States, trans. and ed. r by EmstA. Stadler(Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Press, 1972), 23. 61 Wmiam S. Simmons and Cheryl L. Simmons, eds., Old light on separate ways (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1982) xxx n. 8. See also Albert S. Gatchet, "Narragansett vocabulary collected in 1879," International Journal of American Linguistics 39 (1973), 14. On the decline of Mohegan-Pequot, see Frank G. Speck, "Native tribes and dialects ofConnecticut," Bureau ofAmerican Ethnology Annual Report 43, (Washington, D.C., 1928), 223-4. 360 DAVID J. SILVERMAN

of the vanishing Indian freed whites from responsibility for their roles in the problems that plagued Indian communities and, equally important, justified the elimination of laws that protected native land from division, alienation, or simply appropriation.62 For if it was hopeless to think that Indians would assimilate into white society, if many of those claiming to be Indians were instead-"people of col or" because they no longer spoke indigenous languages and contained some African ancestry, and if fate of Indians living among whites was disappearance, it was perhaps best to get on with it. The Indians refused to co~form to white projections. Not only did Wampanoag, Narragansett, Mohegan, and Pequot people hold on to portions of their ancient land base, but also portions of their languages. In the late 1920s, Mohegan Gladys Tantaquidgeon visited Gay Head and found one-hundred Massachusett words "generally understood and commonly used among the people," while her mentor, Frank Speck, reported that at Mohegan "there are still in the tribe a number who know scattered words and sentences" of their traditional dialect. 63 The Indians were acutely aware of their inability to engage in full native-language conversations, but nonetheless, their continued use of a distinct, albeit limited, Algonquian vocabulary marked them as belonging to one another and the ancestors, as well as distinguished them from surrounding whites. American men-of-letters could make dramatic declarations about the extinction ·of the eastern tribes and dismiss the remaining natives as blackened remnants hardly resembling "real" Indians-meaning those of Wild West Shows and novels such as Last of the -, but when the Indians themselves subtly sprinkled Algonquian words and sayings throughout their English conversations, they reinforced their own understanding of who they really were.

62 Roy Harvey Pearce: Savagism and civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988 [1953]), eh. 2-5; Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., The white man's Indian (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 157-166; Brian W. Dippie, The vanishing American (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1982); Ann Marie Plane and Gregory Burton, "The Massachusetts Indian Enfranchisement Act," Ethnohistory 40 (1993), 587-618; Jeffery Steele, "Reduced to Images," Dressing infeathers ed. by S. Elizabeth Bird (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996), 45-64; Jean O'Brien, '"They are so frequently shifting their place of residence'," Empire and others, ed. by Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern (London: UCL Press, 2000), 204-216. 63 Gladys Tantaquidgeon, "Notes on the Gay Head Indians of Massachusetts," Indian Notes 7 (1930), 3; Speck, "Native tribes and dialects of Connecticut," 224. LOSING THE LANGUAGE 361

Sill Perhaps not surprising, then, that Algonquian languages are making ant, something of a comeback today as part of native New England's economic 64 lOll, and cultural revival. The reasons for this are very much the same as those that that brought the Gay Headers to tears more than a hundred years ago. g to Indian languages were, and are, a central component of the way both oke natives and non-natives define certain peoples as "Indian."-A speaker of a e of native language is symbolically linked to the ancestors and to other ' get speakers in the contemporary community. Furthermore, he or she is distinguished from those who cannot speak the language. Last, and did certainly not least, the speaker is able to counter those who would try to 1 to define away Indians as "people of col or" or "mixed bloods," rather than s. In grapple with the complexities of native survival long after the cession of and colonial wars. Should these languages rise again, after their decline as a and result of indentured servitude and wage work, disease and war, colonial eck, education policies, and exogamous marriage with English-only speakers, now they will serve...as yet another buttress to keep up a nation. .1ans 1age APPENDIX lbeit These records characterize the complexions of these men as "Indian," "black," >ther "yellow," or "copper." To ensure that these men were in fact members of the Lites. Vineyard's Indian communities, I have cross-checked their names and ages against census reports, deeds, petitions, and Seaman's Protection Papers from the period, : the the latter also housed at the Free Public Library. The following is a list of the :s as sailors' names, their home villages (note: Gay Head is often listed as Chilmark, se of Chappaquiddick as Edgartown, and Christiantown as Tisbury), and the dates on nthe which they signed up for and then returned from their voyages: Coombs Cooper ofChilmark (18 Nov. 1826-4 May 1828; 23 Aug. 1828-26 May rmgs 1831; 19 Aug. 1831-2 June 1834) own Elijah Cooper ofChilmark (30 Jan., 1818-22 July 1820; 27 Nov. 1820-12 Dec. 1823; 15 July, 1824-2Dec.1827) Alex David of Gay Head (12 June 1865-29 July 1868; 6 June, 1867-lost at sea in ity of 1870) nan 's James Francis ofChilmark (4 Aug. 1819-24 May, 1820; 30 June 1820-13 June, ·shing 1821; 18 Sept. 1821-2 April 1824; 29 June 1824-27 June 1825; [?]Aug. e and 1825-17 July 1826; 22 Sept., 1826-[?] July, 1829; 13 July 1832-13 May )ry40 1833; 5 June, 1833-15 Aug. 1836) ~d. by Thomas Francis of Chilmark (29 June, 1822-5 June 1823; 29 July 1825-10 June, Brien, '"S, ed. 64 Laurence M. Hauptman and James D. Wherry, eds., The Pequots in southern New England (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993); Strong Woman and setts," Moondancer, "Bringing back our language," American Indian Culture and Research 224. Journal22 (1998),215-222; Tobias Vanderhoop, personal communication July 1999. 362 DAVID J. SILVERMAN

1826; 10 June 1826-2 June 1828 Francis Goodrich of Edgartown (23 July 1828-8 July 1829; 9 Nov. 1829-23 Feb 1833) Samuel Goodrich of Edgartown (2 May, 1831-3 March, 1832; 16 May 1832-8 March 1833) Elemouth Howwoswee of Gay Head (2 Aug. 1817-7 June 1818; 16 July 1818-3 July 1819; 20 June 1820-[?] Jan. 1821; 20 June 1821-5 June 1823; 26 July 1823-25 July 1824; 11 Sept. 1824-14 Feb. 1827) Thomas James of Edgartown (3 March 1831-14 March 1832; 16 June 1832-9 Sept. 1833) Isaac Madison of Gay Head (23 May, 1866-[unknown]; 6 June 1867-ship lost in Falklands) William Madison of Edgartown (13 June 1827-9 Oct. 1827; 20 Nov 1827-8 June 1830; 6 June 1830-1 Oct. 1832) Thomas Manning of Chilmark (12 June 1832-14 April 1833; 24 June 1833-12 March 1834) Asa Peters of Tisbury (20 Aug. 1827-1 June 1828; 14 July 1828-19 June 1829) George Peters ofTisbury (14 July-19 June 1829; 16 June 1831-25 Feb 1832-26 May 1832-14 April 1833; 27 June 1833-27 March 1834) Johnson Simpson of Edgartown (25 July 1826-21 June 1827- 8 Aug 1829-26 March 1831; 3 July 1832-29 April 1832; 6 June 1833-13 March 1835- 2 July 1833-25 Feb. 1835; 15 June 1835-22 Nov. 1836) William A. Vanderhoop of Chilmark (22 Oct. 1860-15 June 1864- 18 June 1866-24 May 1870). REFERENCES AMS Xlf' RT°rt of ^committee on the state of the Ind.ans in Mashpee and parts adjacent. Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections. 1 st ser 1012-17 Apess William. 1992. On our own ground: the complete writings of William Apess a AxteH Tames6 971 n7s kl""^ tfT ^^ °f M^usetts Pres7 '

Bad8 C r S ephen 7 8 Hlstonca, and a n H th f K, ? ; , character^ traits of the American Indians in general *nd*4°seo^^ Baylies, Frederick 1823.The names & ages of the Indians on Martha's Vineyard taken SSfitf^iiSL^S53'Folder ,Ha-New HngLVd,nSd;,ctaakn3

Bird, V.W., Whiting Griswold and Cvrus WPPI^PC 1840 P . s ; ^

Conference on E,nnoUs,or, an, E,nJZ£Z% ^To^H'J^^Z LOSING THE LANGUAGE 363

(Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization), 119-126. . 1992. Language, folk history, and Indian identity on Martha's Vineyard. The art and mystery of historical archaeology: essays in honor of James Deetz, ed. by Anne Elizabeth Yentsch and Mary C. Beaudry. (Boca Raton, Flo: CRC Press), 331-342. Bridenbaugh, Carl (ed.) 1948. Gentleman 's progress: The itinerarium ofDoctor Alexander Hamilton, 1744. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Burgess, Edward S. 1970. The Old South Road of Gay Head. Dukes County Intelligencer 12:1-35. Campisi, Jack. 1991. The Mashpee Indians: tribe on trial. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Cogley, Richard W. 1999. John Eliot's mission to the Indians before King Philip's war Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Comstock, William. 1838. A voyage to the Pacific: descriptive of the customs, usages, and sufferings on board of Nantucket whale-ships. Boston. Conkey, Laura E., Ethel Boissevan, and Ives Goddard. 1978. Indians of southern New England and Long Island: late period. Handbook of North American Indians, v. 15: Northeast, ed. by Bruce G. Trigger (Washington, D.C: Smithsonian Institution), 177-189. Connecticut State Archives. Indian Series. 2 vols. Hartford, Conn. Crevecoeur, Hector St. Jean de. 1967 [1782]. Letters from an American farmer. New York [London]. Cuffee, Paul. 1839. Narrative of the life ofPaul Cuffee, a Pequot Indian, during thirty years spent at sea, and in travelling in foreign lands. Vernon, Conn. Dexter, Franklin B. (ed.) 1916. Extractsfrom the intineraries and other miscellanies of Ezra Stiles, D.D., LL.D., 1755-1794, with a selection from his correspondence. New Haven: Yale University Press. Diebold, A. Richard, Jr. 1964. Incipient bilingualism. Language in culture and society: a reader in linguistics and anthropology, ed. by Dell Hymes (New York: Harper & Row), 495-506. Dippie, Brian W. 1982. The vanishing American: white attitudes and U.S. Indian policy Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. Doughton, Thomas L. 1997. Unseen neighbors: Native Americans of central Massachusetts, a people who had vanished. After King Philip's War: presence and persistence in Indian New England, ed. by Collin G. Calloway (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England), 207-230. Dukes County Courthouse. Court Records (DCCR). Dukes County Superior Court. Edgartown, Mass. . Dukes County Registry of Deeds (DCRD). Edgartown, Mass. . Probate Records (DCP). Dukes County Registry of Probate. Edgartown, MA. Earl, John Milton. Papers. American Antiquarian Society. Worcester, Mass. Fish, Joseph. 1765-76. Old light on separate ways: the Narragansett diary ofJoseph Pish, 1765-75, ed. by William S. Simmons and Cheryl L. Simmons. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England. Fishman, Joshua. 1989. Language and ethnicity in minority sociolinguistic perspective. Clevedon/Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters. Forbes, Jack D. 1984. Mulattoes and people of color in Anglo-North America: implications for Black-Indian relations, Journal of Ethnic Studies 12:17-62. Freeman, James. 1802. A description of Mashpee, in the County of Barnstable, September 16th., Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 2nd ser. 3:1-12 [1815], . 1807. A description of Dukes County, Aug. 13th. Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections. 2nd ser. 3:38-94. [1815]. Gatchet, Albert S. 1973. Narragansett vocabulary collected in 1879. International Journal oj American Linguistics 39:14. . Gray, Edward. 1999. New world babel: languages and nations in Early America. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Greene, Lorenzo Johnston. 1942. The Negro in Colonial New England. Columbia 364 DAVID J. SILVERMAN

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Massachusetts State Archives. 1790. Passed legislation packets: resolves. Boston Mass . 1804. Acts, ch. 84, 106. . 1817. Acts, ch. 99. . 1827. Acts, ch. 114. . 1818. Guardian of Indian Plantation records. Mayhew, Experience. 1713. A brief journal of my visitation to the Pequot & Mohegan Indians. Some Correspondance between the governors and treasurers of the New England Company in London and the commissioners of the United Colonies in America, ed. by John W. Ford (London), 97-127. . 1720. A discourse shewing that GOD dealeth with men as with reasonable creatures. Boston. . 1727. Indian Converts: Or, Some ACCOUNT of the LIVES and Dying SPEECHES of a considerable Number of the Christianized INDIANS of Martha's Vineyard, in New-England. London. Moody, Samuel. 1726. Summary account of the life and death ofJoseph Quasson, Indian. Boston. Morse, Jedidah. 1822. A Report to the Secretary of War of the United States on Indian Affairs, Comprising a Narrative of a Tour Performed in the Summer of 1820, Under a Commission of the President of the United States, for the Purpose of Ascertaining, the Use of the Government, the Actual State of the Indian Tribes in Our Country. New Haven. New Bedford Free Public Library. Geneaological services. Crew lists. New Bedford, Mass. . Seamen's protection papers. New England Company (NE Co.). Manuscripts. Guildhall Library. Corporation of London. Great Britain. New Hampshire State Archives. Provincial court records. Case #18462. Concord, N.H. O'Brien, Jean M. 1996. Divorced from the land: accommodation strategies of Indian women in eighteenth-century New England. Gender, kinship, power: a comparative and interdisciplinary history, ed. by Mary Jo Maynes, Ann Waltner, Brigitte Soland, and Ulrike Strasser,. (New York: Routledge), 319-333. . 1997 Dispossession by degrees: Indian land and identity in the Natick, Massachu­ setts, 1650-1790. New York: Cambridge University Press. . 2000 'They are so frequently shifting their place of residence': land and the construction of social place of Indians in colonial Massachusetts. Empire and others: British encounters with indigenous peoples, ed. by Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern (London: UCL Press), 204-216. O'Connell, Barry. 1993. William Apess and the survival of the Pequot people. Algonkians of New England: past and present, ed. by Peter Bennes (Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife. Boston: Boston University Press, 1993), 89-100. Pearce, Roy Harvey. 1988. Savagism and civilization: a study of the Indian and the American mind. Berkeley: University of California Press. [1953]. Philbrick, Nathaniel. 1998. Abram 's eyes: the Native American legacy of Nantucket Island. Nantucket: Mill Hill Press. Plane, Ann Marie, and Gregory Burton. 1993. The Massachusetts Indian Enfranchisement Act: ethnic contest in historical context, Ethnohistory 40:587-618. Rediker, Marcus. 1987. Between the devil and the deep blue sea: merchant seamen, pirates, and the Anglo-American maritime world. New York: Cambridge University Press. Royce, Anya Peterson. 1982. Ethnic identity: strategies of diversity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sainsbury, John A. 1975. Indian labor in early Rhode Island. New England Quarterly 48:378-393. Silverman, David J. 1999. The costs of debt: the impact of indentured servitude on the Indians of Southeastern New England. Paper presented at the American Society of Ethnohistory. Mashantucket, Conn. October 1999. Simmons, William. 1984. Red Yankees: Narragansett conversion in the Great Awakening. 366 DAVID J. SILVERMAN

American Ethnologist 10:253-271. Simmons, William S., and Cheryl L. Simmons, eds. 1982. Old light on separate ways: the Narragansett diary of Joseph Pish, 1765-1766. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England. Speck, Frank. 1928. Native tribes and dialects of Connecticut: a Mohegan-Pequot diary. Bureau of American Ethnology Annual Report 43 (Washington, D.C), 205-282. Stackpole, Edouard. 1975. The fatal Indian sickness of Nantucket that decimated the island aborigines. Historic Nantucket. 23:8-13. Steele, Jeffery. 1996. Reduced to images: American Indians in nineteenth-century advertising. Dressing in feathers: the construction of the Indian in American popular culture, ed. by S. Elizabeth Bird (Boulder, Colo: Westview Press). Strong, John. 1997. The Algonquian peoples of Long Island from earliest times to 1700. Interlaken, NY.: Empire State Books. Strong Woman and Moondancer. 1998. Bringing back our lost language. American Indian Culture and Research Journal 22:215-222. Stiles, Ezra. 1761. The number of the Nyhantic tribe of Indians. Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections. 1st ser. 10:104. [1809] Sweet, John Wood. 1995. Bodies politic: colonialism, race, and the emergence of the American north, Rhode Island, 1730-1830. Ph.D. dissertation,. Princeton University Szasz, Margaret Connell. 1985. Indian education in the American colonies, 1607-1783. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Tantaquidgeon, Gladys. 1930. Notes on the Gay Head Indians of Massachusetts, Indian Notes 7:1-26. Vickers, Daniel. 1983. The first whalemen of Nantucket, William and Mary Quarterly. 3rd Series. 40:560-583. Weis, Frederick L. 1947-51. The New England Company of 1649 and its missionary enterprises, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions 38:134-218. Woodson, Charles G. 1920. The relations of Negroes and Indians in Massachusetts. Journal of Negro History 5:45-57.