John Eliot, Apostle to the Indians Hdt What? Index

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A WEEK AND CAPE COD:

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CAPE COD: Turning over further in our book, our eyes fell on the name of the Rev. Jonathan Bascom, of Orleans: “Senex emunctæ naris, doctus, et auctor elegantium verborum, facetus, et dulcis festique sermonis.” And, again, on that of the Rev. Nathan Stone, of Dennis: “Vir humilis, mitis, blandus, advenarum hospes; [there was need of him there]; suis commodis in terrâ non studens, reconditis thesauris in cœlo.” An easy virtue that, there, for, methinks, no inhabitant of Dennis could be very studious about his earthly commodity, but must regard the bulk of his treasures as in heaven. But, probably, the most just and pertinent character of all, is that which appears to be given to the Rev. Ephraim Briggs, of Chatham, in the language of the later Romans: “Seip, sepoese, sepoemese, wechekum”– which, not being interpreted, we know not what it means, though we have no doubt it occurs somewhere in the Scriptures, probably in the Apostle Eliot’s Epistle to the Nipmucks.

JOHN ELIOT

A WEEK: Two hundred years ago other catechizing than this was going on here; for here came the Sachem Wannalancet, and his people, and sometimes Tahatawan, our Concord Sachem, who afterwards had a church at home, to catch fish at the falls; and here also came John Eliot, with the Bible and Catechism, and Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted, and other tracts, done into the Massachusetts tongue, and taught them Christianity meanwhile. “This place,” says Gookin, referring to Wamesit, “being an ancient and capital seat of Indians, they come to fish; and this good man takes this opportunity to spread the net of the gospel, to fish for their souls.” —

JOHN ELIOT

1604

John Eliot was born in Widford in Hertfordshire.

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1622

The Powhatan offed more than a quarter of the whites living in England’s Jamestown colony. The directors of the Virginia Company would discover that one reason why the attack had been so successful was that most of their whites had been drunk. It is to be noted that the Indians generally spared the blacks — this, presumably, was due to significant intermarriage between runaway slaves and natives. (In 1930, sociologist Melville Herskovitz would estimate that 29% of African Americans have some native American ancestry — surely, therefore, a similar percentage of native Americans have some African ancestry.) READ ABOUT VIRGINIA

John Eliot graduated from Jesus College at Cambridge. He had fallen, or would fall, under the influence of Thomas Hooker.

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1629

At this point after the series of what is likely to have been measles or scarlet fever epidemics, the white intrusives on the Shawmut peninsula were able to count fewer than 500 surviving Massachusett natives — and the small pox would carry away many of these in 1633. Shortly afterward, the Reverend John Eliot would

begin his missionary work among the surviving few. The new converts would be gathered into 14 villages of “Praying Indians,” including the following, in which, subjected to strict Puritan rules of conduct, their tribal traditions would quickly disappear: • Cowate • Magaehnak • Natick • Pequimmit • Punkapog • Titicut • Wannamanhut

Job Nasutan, a Massachusett, would work with the Reverend Eliot to translate the BIBLE into Algonquin, and Crispus Attucks, who would be killed in the downtown brawl known as the Boston Massacre, would be born of a free black father and a Massachusett mother. Although there are now a few surviving individuals who are able to trace ancestry to the Massachusett, no organized group of the Massachusett is known to have survived into the 19th Century.

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1631

The Reverend Roger Williams and the Reverend John Eliot arrived at a New World where all male church members in the Bay Colony were becoming eligible to vote, and where, for impiety, in this year Philip Ratcliff’s ears were being severed (so how can someone’s ears be impious, did they wiggle during worship, or what?).

When Thomas Angell came with the Reverend Williams on the ship Lyon under Captain William Pierce (Captain William Peirce? Captain A. Pearce?), sailing from London to Boston, he was about thirteen years of age and was bound in service to the Reverend as an apprentice or servant. (Another source says he was instead the servant of Richard Waterman.) After a couple of months in Boston the two went to Salem, where they would remain until their departure for Providence, Rhode Island in 1636.

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1632

During this year the government function of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was being relocated from Salem to the Shawmut peninsula, to the settlement that was becoming known as Boston.

This was how, in later centuries, the Reverend John Wilson’s church on that peninsula would be remembered:

The Reverend John Eliot became the pastor of the church at nearby Roxbury, guarding the continental end of Boston Neck. He would begin a mission to the nearby native Americans, preaching at Nonantun

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(later Newton) and other of their towns.

THE SCARLET LETTER: At last, while attending a sick chamber, whither the Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale had been summoned to make a prayer, she learnt that he had gone, the day before, to visit the Apostle Eliot, among his Indian converts. He would probably return by a certain hour in the afternoon of the morrow. Betimes, therefore, the next day, Hester took little Pearl –who was necessarily the companion of all her mother’s expeditions, however inconvenient her presence– and set forth.

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1640

The first booke printed, our historians say, “in the New World north of Mexico City” (which means, you will understand, the first booke printed in the New World by true human beings, quite white, who really matter), titled THE WHOLE BOOKE OF PSALMES FAITHFULLY TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH METRE. The text for this booke was provided by Richard Mather, John Eliot, and Thomas Welde. It was printed by the Reverend John Cotton on a press in Cambridge MA [another source says Stephen Daye, so perhaps Cotton was providing the authority while Daye was providing the sweat equity]. Still in existence as of this writing are nine complete copies of this first edition of this “Bay Psalm Book” plus two copies which are defective but still of interest to the sort of people who pay immense sums in order that they may be said to “own” such a piece of historical booke. Here is some material from the preface by Richard Mather: If therefore the verses are not alwayes so smooth and elegant as some may desire or expect; let them consider that Gods Altar needs not our pollishings: Ex. 20. for wee have respected rather a plaine translation, then to smooth our verses with the sweetnes of any paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience rather then Elegance, fidelity rather then poetry, in translating the hebrew words into english language, and Davids poetry into english Meetre; that soe we may sing in Sion the Lords songs of prayse according to his owne will; untill he take us from hence, and wipe away all our teares, & bid us enter into our masters ioye to sing eternall Halleluiahs. It would be, presumably, this book that the Reverend was being depicted as carrying in the following relief

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illustration:

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1643

According to Joseph A. Leo Lemay’s “NEW ENGLAND’S ANNOYANCES”: AMERICA’S FIRST FOLK SONG (Newark NJ: U of Delaware P, 1985), this first folk song sung in America most likely was authored in 1643 by the Edward Johnson of Woburn MA who in 1648 would prepare the pro-emigration tract GOOD NEWS FROM NEW ENGLAND and who by 1653 in London would have prepared a HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND. Most likely the lyrics were first printed up at the colonial press in Cambridge MA on a broadside in this year, and most likely this broadside had been necessitated by a tract which was then appearing, NEW ENGLANDS FIRST FRUITS. (That tract was something of a report card of the progress of Harvard College and/or the progress of the Reverend John Eliot’s Christian Indians, and had been prepared by the Reverend Henry Dunster, Thomas Weld, and Hugh Peter.) The song, in quatrains made up of anapestic tetrameter lines, was to be sung to the tune known as “Derry down” and thus, between stanzas, there would have been some sort of refrain like “Hey down, down, hey down derry down.” Abundant internal textual evidence demonstrates that its intended audience was not as it represents, prospective immigrants from England, but instead, with irony, New Englanders who might be being tempted to try their luck elsewhere. Since the persona projected by the singer is interestingly similar to the what we now term the “hillbilly,” what we have here is evidence that this hardscrabble imago constitutes the original American self-characterization.

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Henry Thoreau may have had this merely as verbal material, for he was not using the version that Benjamin Franklin’s nephew Benjamin Mecom had used as filler material in a 1758 chapbook, FATHER ABRAHAM’S SPEECH,1 heading it “An Old Song, wrote by one of our first New England Planters, on their Management in Those good Old Times. To The Tune of a Cobler there was, etc.” which lacked the stanza from which he quoted in WALDEN: • He may have seen a copy that appeared in the Massachusetts Spy newspaper on February 3, 1774. • He may have seen a copy that appeared on pages 52 and 53 of the Massachusetts Magazine in January 1791. • He may have seen a copy that was reprinted in a Plymouth newspaper, The Old Colony Memorial, on May 18, 1822, as it had been presented in a private letter that had been discovered, that had been written in Cambridge MA on December 15, 1817. • He may have seen this on pages 230 and 231of John Farmer and Jacob Bailey Moore’s COLLECTIONS, HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS: AND MONTHLY LITERARY JOURNAL 3 of 1824. • He may have seen this on page 35 of Alonzo Lewis’s HISTORY OF LYNN published in Boston in 1829. • He may have seen this on pages 29 and 30 of the Massachusetts Historical Society’s COLLECTIONS, 3D SERIES, 7, for the year 1838. • He may have seen this on pages 71 and 72 of the 2d edition of Alonzo Lewis’s HISTORY OF LYNN, INCLUDING NAHANT published in Boston in 1844.

1. That’s the early title for Benjamin Franklin’s THE WAY TO WEALTH, which he was preparing as a preface for his POOR RICHARD IMPROVED: BEING AN ALMANAC ... FOR ... 1758, and which Thoreau would satirize in “Economy.”

WALDEN: I am not sure that I ever heard the sound of cock-crowing PEOPLE OF from my clearing, and I thought that it might be worth the while WALDEN to keep a cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird. The note of this once wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of any bird’s, and if they could be naturalized without being domesticated, it would soon become the most famous sound in our woods, surpassing the clangor of the goose and the hooting of the owl; and then imagine the cackling of the hens to fill the pauses when their lords’ clarions rested! No wonder that man added this bird to his tame stock, –to say nothing of the eggs and drumsticks. To walk in a winter morning in a wood where these birds abounded, their native woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow on the trees, clear and shrill for miles over the resounding earth, drowning the feebler notes of other birds, –think of it! It would put nations on the alert. Who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier and earlier every successive day of his life, till he became unspeakably healthy, wealthy, and wise? This foreign bird’s note is celebrated by the poets of all countries along with the notes of their native songsters. All climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He is more indigenous even than the natives. His health is ever good, his lungs are sound, his spirits never flag.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

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I have marked the materials which Thoreau utilized:

New England’s annoyances you that would know them, If flesh meat be wanting to fill up our dish, Pray ponder these verses which briefly doth show them. We have carrots and pumpkins and turnips and fish; The place where we live is a wilderness wood, And when we have a mind for a delicate dish, Where grass is much wanting that’s fruitful and good. We repair to the clam banks, and there we catch fish. ... Hey down, down, hey down derry down...... Hey down, down, hey down derry down.... From the end of November till three months are gone, Instead of pottage and puddings and custards and pies, The ground is all frozen as hard as a stone, Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies; Our mountains and hills and vallies below, We have pumpkin at morning and pumpkin at noon; Being commonly covered with ice and with snow. If it was not for pumpkins we should be undone. ... Hey down, down, hey down derry down...... Hey down, down, hey down derry down.... And when the north-wester with violence blows, If barley be wanting to make into malt, Then every man pulls his cap over his nose; We must be contented, and think it no fault; But if any’s so hardy and will it withstand, For we can make liquor to sweeten our lips, He forfeits a finger, a foot, or a hand. Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut tree chips. ... Hey down, down, hey down derry down...... Hey down, down, hey down derry down.... When the ground opens we then take the hoe, And of our green corn-stalks we make our best beer, And make the ground ready to plant and to sow; We put it in barrels to drink all the year: Our corn being planted and seed being sown, Yet I am as healthy, I verily think, The worms destroy much before it is grown. Who make the spring-water my commonest drink. ... Hey down, down, hey down derry down...... Hey down, down, hey down derry down.... While it is growing much spoil there is made, And we have a Cov’nant one with another, By birds and by squirrels that pluck up the blade; Which makes a division ’twixt brother and brother: Even when it is grown to full corn in the ear, For some are rejected, and others made Saints, It’s apt to be spoil’d by hog, racoon, and deer. Of those that are equal in virtues and wants. ... Hey down, down, hey down derry down...... Hey down, down, hey down derry down.... Our money’s soon counted, for we have just none, For such like annoyance we’ve many mad fellows All that we brought with us is wasted and gone. Find fault with our apples before they are mellow; We buy and sell nothing but upon exchange, And they are for England, they will not stay here, Which makes all our dealings uncertain and strange. But meet with a lion in shunning a bear. ... Hey down, down, hey down derry down...... Hey down, down, hey down derry down.... And now our garments begin to grow thin, Now while some are going let others be coming, And wool is much wanting to card and to spin; For while liquor is boiling it must have a scumming; If we can get a garment to cover without, But we will not blame them, for birds of a feather, Our innermost garment is clout upon clout. By seeking their fellows are flocking together. ... Hey down, down, hey down derry down...... Hey down, down, hey down derry down.... Our clothes we brought with us are apt to be torn, But you who the Lord intends hither to bring, They need to be clouted before they are worn, Forsake not the honey for fear of the sting; For clouting our garments does injure us nothing: But bring both a quiet and contented mind, Clouts double are warmer than single whole clothing. And all needful blessings you surely shall find. ... Hey down, down, hey down derry down...... Hey down, down, hey down derry down....

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And here is how the song would appear in Thoreau’s literary production (we may note well that neither in the original folk song, nor in Thoreau’s version of it, is there to be discovered any evidence of a psychic disturbance at the thought of the production of sweetness from sugar cane, in that it needed typically to be planted, tended, harvested, and processed by the black slave laborers in the plantations of the subtropics):

WALDEN: Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant and fluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any. For the most part the farmer gives to his cattle and hogs the grain of his own producing, and buys flour, which is at least no more wholesome, at a greater cost, at the store. I saw that I could easily raise my bushel or two of rye and Indian corn, for the former will grow on the poorest land, and the latter does not require the best, and grind them in a hand-mill, and so do without rice and pork; and if I must have some concentrated sweet, I found by experiment that I could make a very good molasses either of pumpkins or beets, and I knew that I needed only to set out a few maples to obtain it more easily still, and while these were growing I could use various substitutes beside those which I have named, “For,” as the Forefathers sang,– “we can make liquor to sweeten our lips Of pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips.” Finally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to obtain this might be a fit occasion for a visit to the seashore, or, if I did without it altogether, I should probably drink the less water. I do not learn that the Indians ever troubled themselves to go after it. Thus I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food was concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only remain to get clothing and fuel. The pantaloons which I now wear were woven in farmer’s family, –thank Heaven there is so much virtue still in man; for I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer;– and in a new country fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, if I were not permitted still to squat, I might purchase one acre at the same price for which the land I cultivated was sold –namely, eight dollars and eight cents. But as it was, I considered that I enhanced the value of the land by squatting on it.

SWEETS WITHOUT SLAVERY

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1644

May 29, Sunday: In Concord, Thomas Brooks was deputy and representative to the General Court.

Daniel Gookin was made a freeman of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The family would reside initially in Boston, but would relocate to Roxbury and become a near neighbor of the Reverend John Eliot, Sr., pastor of the First Church of Roxbury and “Apostle to the Indians.”

November 13: Herbert Pelham, Esq., of Cambridge, Thomas Flint and Lieutenant Simon Willard of Concord, and Peter Noyes of Sudbury were appointed commissioners “to set some order which may conduce to the better surveying, improving, and draining of the meadows [of the Concord River], and saving and preserving of the hay there gotten, either by draining the same, or otherwise, and to proportion the charges layed out about it as equally and justly (only upon them that own land) as they in the wisdom shall see meete.” All their efforts, however, were unavailing. Johnson says “the rocky falls causeth their meadowes to be much covered with water, the which these people, together with their neighbour towne [Sudbury] here several times essayed to cut through but cannot, yet it may be turned another way with an hundred pound charge.” A canal across to Watertown or Cambridge was then considered practicable at a “hundred pound charge!” In addition to these difficulties, it is intimated by Mather, author of the Magnalia, that others arose between the ministers and the people, which were settled by calling a council after the abdication of one of them. Some refused to bear their proportion of the public charges; and the town continued to decrease in population. Some families returned to England, others removed to older and others to newer settlements. In 1644, a large number went to Connecticut with the Rev. John Jones.2 According to the COLONIAL RECORD, the county courts were ordered “to take care of the Indians residing within their several shires, to have them civilized, and to take order from time to time to have them instructed in the knowledge of God.” These movements, and the disposition shown by particular Indians,3 led some individuals specially to prepare themselves to instruct them. The Rev. John Eliot of Roxbury was the first and most distinguished in these Christian labors. He has justly been styled the “Apostle, not a whit behind the chiefest Apostles.” He preached his first sermon Oct. 28, 1646 on the high grounds east of Newton corner, afterwards called Nonantum, — “a place of rejoicing,” where he was joyfully received by Waban and several other Indians, who assembled to hear him. Four other meetings took place there, the 11th and 26th of November, and 2. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) 3. See “New England’s First Fruits.” 14 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the 4th and 9th of December.4

1645

Daniel Gookin was one of the founders of the Free Grammar School of Roxbury. His daughter Elizabeth Gookin was baptized at the First Church of Boston (she would get married with the Reverend John Eliot, Sr.’s son).

Back on the plantation in Virginia, in this year Daniel’s black slave Jacob Warrow was murdered by the natives.

The Reverend John Eliot persuaded five Algonquin bands to begin to relocate themselves under the protection of the white colonists at Natick in the Bay Colony. These are some of the “Praying Indians” who a generation later would die of exposure and starvation on Deer Island. It would prove not to have been very wise of them to have been so trusting of Christians.

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1646

There was a “Cambridge Assembly” at Cambridge in New England, to define the colonial church.

The Reverend John Eliot began to preach to the Massachuseuck tribespeople (in English with interpreters) at Dorchester on Massachusetts Bay.

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August: The Reverend John Eliot described an infestation of army worms, the larvae or caterpillars of the Cirphis unipunctata moth, occurring in eastern New England and particularly in Rhode Island:5

This yeare about the end of the 5t month, we had a very strang hand of God vpon vs, yt vpon a suddaine, innumerable armys of Catterpillers filled the Country all over all the English plantations, wch devoured some whole meadows of grasse, & greatly devoured barly, being the most greene & tender corne, eating off all the blades & beards, but left the Corne, only many ears they quite eat of by byting the greene straw asunder below the eare, so yt barly was generally halfe spoyled, likewise they much hurt wheat, by eating the blads off, but wheate had the lesse hurt because it was a litle forwarder then barly, & so harder, & dryer, & they the lesse medled wth it. As for rie, it was so hard and neere ripe yt they touched it not, but above all graines they devoured Sylly oats. And in some places they fell vpon Indian Corne, & quite dvoured it, in other places they touched it not; they would goe crosse highways by 1000. Much prayer there was made to God about it, wth fasting in divers places: & the Lord heard, & on a suddaine tooke ym all away againe in all pts of the country, to the wonderment of all men; it was of the Lord for it was done suddainely.

Governor John Winthrop also wrote up this infestation of worms and God’s answer to their prayers:6

Great harm was done in corn (especially wheat and barley) in this month by a caterpillar, like a black worm about an inch and a half long. They eat up first the blades of the stalk, then they eat up the tassels, whereupon the ear withered. It was believed by divers good observers, that they fell in a great thunder shower, for divers yards and other bare places, where not one of them was to be seen an hour before, were presently after the shower almost covered with them, besides grass places where they were not so easily discerned. They did the most harm in the southern parts, as Rhode Island, etc., and in the eastern parts in their Indian corn. In divers places the churches kept a day of humiliation, and presently after the caterpillars vanished away.

JOHN WINTHROP JOURNAL

5. “John Eliot’s Records of the First Church in Roxbury, Mass,” NEW-ENGLAND HISTORICAL AND GENEALOGICAL REGISTER 33 (1879):65. 6. John Winthrop. THE HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND FROM 1630 TO 1649, ed. James Savage. Boston MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1853, Volume II, page 327. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 17 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Among many reasons to have a Fast Day or Day of Humiliation, “pests, plagues and prodigies” took, of course, a prominent place.7 For the 1646 infestation, the Reverend Eliot mentions much prayer with beneficial and prompt results: “... the Lord heard, & ... tooke ym all away.” Winthrop confirms this. Matters were not different almost 125 years later when the Reverend Thomas Clarke in a letter to Eleazar Wheelock, dated “North Perth County Albany, Septr 29th 1770” told, with a dramatic flourish of similar beneficial effects of fast days: 8

As to our affairs the Lord has been gracious this season tho’ that a dreadfull army of canker worms that cut off most of our corn & meadows in a few days our Elders & I appointed a fast day & yet they went on furiously next Sabath we appointed another day & the Lord graciously heard us for next morning after the fast day they began to die & fight among themselves they marched off from our houses & fields like flocks of sheep.

7. Love, W. DeLoss. THE FAST AND THANKSGIVING DAYS OF NEW ENGLAND. Boston MA: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1895, pages 180-1. 8. Dartmouth College Library, Special Collections, Ms. 770529.1. 18 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October 28, Monday: The Reverend John Eliot of Roxbury had hired an old Indian man named Job Nesutan to live with his family and teach him the native language, which was accomplished “in a few months.” On this date he took the first meeting of his missionary career, by persuading a group of five or six native Americans “near Watertown mill, upon the south side of Charles River, about four or five miles from his own house, where lived at that time Waban, one of their principal men [but said to be no sachem], and some Indians with him,” to take him to their village Nonantum at a spot which was afterward renamed Newton.

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The name “Waban,” or “Wauban” or “Waaubon,” indicated “wind.” The name “Nonantum,” or “Noonatomen,” indicated “a place of rejoicing,” or “rejoicing.” A large number of native Americans assembled, and the Reverend Eliot prayed, ran through the Ten Commandments, and warned of “the dreadful

curse of God that would fall upon all who brake them.” He then explained who Jesus Christ was, and indicated that “he would one day come again to judge the world in flaming fire.” This pitch took about an hour. There followed a question-and-answer period.

The manner in which the Reverend Eliot instructed the Indians, per Governor Winthrop’s Journal:

Mention was made before of some beginning to instruct the Indians, etc. Mr. John Eliot, teacher of the church of Roxbury, found such encouragement, as he took great pains to get their language, and in a few months could speak of the things of God to their understanding; and God prospered his endeavors, so as

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he kept a constant lecture to them in two places, one week at the wigwam of one Wabon, a new sachem near Watertown mill, and the other the next week in the wigwam of Cutshamekin, near Dorchester mill. And for the futherance of the work of God, divers of the English resorted to his lecture, and the governor and other of the magistrates and elders sometimes; and the Indians began to repair thither from other parts. His manner of proceeding was thus; he would persuade one of the other elders or some magistrate to begin the exercise with prayer in English; then he took a text, and read it first in the Indian language, and after in English; then he preached to them in Indian about an hour; (but first I should have spoke of the catechising their children, who were soon brought to answer some short questions, whereupon he gave each of them an apple or a cake) then he demanded of some of the chiefs, if they understood him; if they answered, yea, then he asked them if they had any questions to propound. And they had usually two or three more questions, which he hid resolve. At one time (when the governor was there and about two hundred people, Indian and English, in one wigwam of Cutshamekin's) an old man asked him, if God would receive such an old man as he was; to whom he answered by opening the parable of the workmen that were hired into the vineyard; and when he had opened it, he asked the old man, if he did believe it, who answered he did, and was ready to weep. A second question was, what was the reason, that when all Englishmen did know God, yet some of them wee poor. His answer was, 1. that God knows it is better for his children to be good than be rich; he knows withal, that if some of them had riches, they would abuse them, and wax proud and wanton, etc. therefore he gives them no more riches than may be needful for them, that they may be kept from pride, etc. to depend upon him, 2. he would hereby have men know, that he hath better blessings to bestow upon good men than riches, etc., and that their best portion is in heaven, etc. A third question was, if a man had two wives, (which was ordinary with them,) seeing he must put away one, which he should put away. To this it was answered, that by the law of God the first is the true wife, and the other is no wife; but if such a case fell out, they should then repair to the magistrates, and they would direct them what to do, for it might be, that the first wife might be an adulteress, etc., and then she was to be put away. When all their questions were resolved, he concluded with prayer in the Indian language. The Indians were usually very attentive, and kept their children so quiet as caused no disturbance. Some of them began to be seriously affected, and to understand the things of God, and they were generally ready to reform whatsoever they were told to be against the word of God, as their sorcery, (which they call powwowing,) their whoredoms, etc., idleness etc. The Indians grow very inquisitive after knowledge both in things divine and also human, so as one of them, meeting with an honest plain Englishman, would needs know of him, what were the first beginnings (which we call principles) of a commonwealth.

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November 11, Sunday: The Reverend John Eliot of Roxbury went out a 2d time to the village of Nonantum, catechized the children, preached for about an hour, and had a follow-on question-and-answer session.

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November 26, Monday: By the 3d meeting staged by the Reverend John Eliot, attendance had begun to fall off. According to the record, there was a suspicion that the tribespeople had been warned by their powwows and sachems to stay away, or threatened or something, but my own suspicion is that we don't need any elaborate conspiracy hypothesis to explain why the Reverend Eliot’s sort of stuff –which amounted to imitating and mocking religion– would sour quickly. The Reverend Eliot quickly realized that in order to make Christianity

attractive, it would have to provide some assistance to these people in their lives. So he formulated a principle: “The Indians must be civilized as well as, if not in order to their being, Christianized.” Well, “civilizing” somebody is not quite the same as “helping” them, but with a bit of good will and elbow grease it can be made to seem fairly close to helping them. So the Reverend Eliot took on the task of educating the children of a man named Wampas, and two other heads of families at Nonantum. To show their sincerity, these people were requested to move their wigwams to a place called Natick, and agree that while they lived in this place they would conform to “the English mode of living.” Of course these people knew that they were taking on the task of being “rice Christians.” But rice is nice.

“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

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1647

The Reverend John Eliot’s promotional, fundraising tracts began to appear in England. With an income stream all things are possible.

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1648

The Reverend John Eliot discovered that the native Americans with whom he was working were, sort of, the 10 lost tribes of Israel, which of course made him, sort of, their Moses. Since the Puritans were the “new true Israel” of the covenant, which had inherited God’s blessing and the abandoned status of the special people of God, this created a special relationship between the local natives and the local intrusives. The salvation of these Jews “among whom the Lord is now about a Resurrection-work, to call them into his holy Kingdome [sic]” would bring about the Second Coming of Christ.

So, you see, it wasn’t about the Indians — it was about accomplishing the end of this world. This pudgy white man needed for it to be all over with already. MILLENNIALISM

How did the Right Reverend discover that these Native Americans were Old Israel? –For deep background, you could peruse the Reverend Thomas Thorowgood’s JEWS IN AMERICA; OR, PROBABILITIES THAT THE AMERICANS ARE OF THAT RACE, printed in 1650. [The Reverend John] Eliot preached about three years at Nonantum and Neponset; and also occasionally at Concord and other places. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 25 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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About the beginning of the year 1648, he “went with Mr. Flint and Capt. Simon Willard of Concord, and sundry others, towards Merimack river unto the Indian sachem Passaconaway, that old witch and powwaw, who, together with both his sons, fled the presence of the light for fear of being killed.”9

9. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.)

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Winter: In the region of the Great Lakes, the Iroquois overran the Huron Confederacy, driving their remnants into Canada north of the Great Lakes and very much upsetting the tribal balance of power in North America. With their fur trade destroyed and a good possibility the Iroquois would attack their settlements, the French would be scrambling to protect themselves by making a new alliance, with the Algonquin in northern New England. During this period the Reverend John Eliot was spending three years among the Pennacook. Although headman Passaconnaway would attend this Reverend’s sermons on several occasions, he would never be persuaded to accept this gospel. Eliot would have better luck with the headman’s son Wanalancet, however, who, with his entire family, would allow themselves to be baptized during the 1670s.

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1649

The Reverend John Eliot discovered that the native Americans with whom he was working were, sort of, the 10 lost tribes of Israel, which of course made him, sort of, their plump Moses. Since the Puritans were the “new true Israel” of the covenant, which had inherited God’s blessing and the abandoned status of the special people of God, this created a special relationship between the local natives and the local intrusives. The salvation of these Jews “among whom the Lord is now about a Resurrection-work, to call them into his holy Kingdome [sic]” would bring about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. How did the Right Reverend discover that these Native Americans were Old Israel? –Consider the Reverend Thomas Thorowgood’s JEWS IN AMERICA; OR, PROBABILITIES THAT THE AMERICANS ARE OF THAT RACE, printed in 1650.

To fund this important work of the Reverend Eliot in the return of these lost Jews to the fold of the True Israel,

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the 1st ever missionary society was being created in England. This was named the Company for Propagating the Gospel in New England and Parts Adjacent in North America.

1650

The Reverend John Eliot established the first “praying Indian” mission at Natick under the rule of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Père Gabriel Druillettes left Québec on a trip to Boston, as the envoy of the Canadian government to negotiate a commercial treaty with the Puritans of New England, and to arrange for French/English mutual protection against the Iroquois. He was well received both by the Reverend John Eliot and by Governor John Endecott, while residing at the home of Major-General Edward Gibbons. NARRATIVE OF A VOYAGE

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1651

In this year the Reverend John Eliot persuaded headman Waban to renounce his native religion and embrace instead Christianity, for himself and for his people. The persuasive Reverend also persuaded the General Court of the Bay colony to recognize and legitimate the first of his “praying towns” for these Christianizing Pocumtuck natives, 2,000 acres of “plantation” at Natick “Place of the Hills” (although nearby Dedham promptly filed a protest at such an infringement upon its boundaries). We will give thee what is thine. Gee, that’s so mighty white of thee. –That’s “plantation” as in “reservation,” folks.

Writing about Natick as the old hometown of her husband, the Reverend Calvin Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe

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would later confess that:

The underlying foundation of life, therefore, in New England was one of profound, unutterable, and therefore unuttered, melancholy, which regarded human existence itself as a ghastly risk, and, in the case of the vast majority of human beings, an inconceivable misfortune.

1654

In Concord, Simon Willard and Thomas Brooks were deputies and representatives to the General Court.

Also, until 1667, Robert Merriam would serve as the Town Clerk.

Simon Willard would be an Assistant and Counsellor, until 1676.

Thomas Brooks was appointed in Concord to enforce sobriety among the resident Indians.

In general in the Massachusetts Bay Colony it was time for the “carrot and stick” approach to native populations. The enticing “carrot” was for some natives to be the BIBLE, and was for other natives to be “strong liquors,” while the “stick” was that if someone did not come into one or another Christianizing village his family would be hunted down and exterminated. The Reverend John Eliot printed off 500 or 1,000 copies of the 1st book of his “Indian Library,” A PRIMER OR CATECHISM in the Nipmuc language (what had previous to this been coming off his press, since 1647, had amounted to a series of pamphlets rather than books). The Reverend founded seven additional villages for his Christianizing natives, over and above Natick, including the Nashobah Plantation of Nagog Pond near Concord. Thomas Brooke, Senior of Concord and William Cowdrey of Reading obtained a liquor license to sell such “strong liquors to the Indians, as to their judgments shall seem most meete and necessary” — but at most one pint at a time. Meanwhile, among themselves, the

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four groupings of European intrusives in the New England area had managed to pull together an army of 40 armed white men with horses and 270 armed white men without horses, with which to wage race war upon the surviving native Americans who were still on the loose, who had not yet been rounded up into these Christianizing villages. Headman Ninigret of the Niantics became the designated target of the Commissioners of this ethnic cleansing –he being the Saddam Hussein double of his time– and Major Simon Willard of Concord being appointed by the Commissioners as in charge of the extermination campaign — he being the General Norman Schwartzkopf designate of his time. Pretty soon, the Commissioners became dissatisfied at the lack of killing, and wrote to their “loving friend Major Willard,” bringing to his attention “his non- attendance to his commission” to get out there into the forests and mountains and kill some Americans wholesale.10 “The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlers will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians.” — L. Frank Baum, author of the OZ books

Mr. Trust Me, the White Man’s Ambassador

It may be useful to compare and contrast this New England race encounter with race encounters at other locations on the globe during this same year. For instance, in the Cape region of Africa, a proposal was being contemplated to enslave the Khoikhoi and !Kung tribespeople,11 but the white tribe who had moved there evidently would decide that this couldn’t effectively be accomplished, for instead we find that they began to import their necessary slaves initially from West Africa, and then from the Malay peninsula and from Ceylon.12In 1654, an expedition had been undertaken by the United Colonies against Ninigret, principal Sachem of the Naraganset Indians, when 250 foot and 40 horsemen were raised and “sent forth under the Christian and most courageous Major Simon Willard of Concord as commander-in-chief.”13 Several of the Concord troops accompanied him; and this was the first time that our early settlers were engaged in war.14

10. It wasn’t the entire Willard family. During this period they were providing not only any number of white warriors to the cause of improved race relations but also two Presidents of Harvard College to the cause of a higher learning. 11. These were aboriginal peoples the whites of Capetown would later declare to have been “nonexistent,” in asserting their prior entitlement to that portion of the earth’s surface. 12. We can see that the correct translation for the Afrikanner concept “nonexistent” is “recalcitrant” or otherwise “invisible.” 13.Mather’s Relation, page 69. See Hoyt, Antiquarian Researches, page 70. 32 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1655

In the Bay Colony, the Reverend John Eliot published the 2d book of his “Indian Library,” GENESIS, in the Nipmuc language. (The 1663 version of GENESIS would differ significantly from this earlier effort.)

In the Bay Colony, the Reverend John Eliot published the 3d book of his “Indian Library,” MATTHEW, in the Nipmuc language.

14. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 33 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1658

The Reverend John Eliot imported a press, cases of fonts, and a pressman from England especially for the purposes of his “Indian Library.” In about this year in the Bay Colony, the 4th book of that series, A FEW PSALMS IN METRE, appeared in the Nipmuc language.

1659

The Reverend John Eliot’s THE CHRISTIAN COMMONWEALTH.

1660

In about this year the Indian Library of the Reverend John Eliot issued the 5th book of its series in the Nipmuc language, A CHRISTIAN COVENANTING CONFESSION. (This book was printed also in the English language.)

1661

July 6, Saturday: Samuel Sewall disembarked from the Prudent Mary in the port of Boston accompanied by his mother, his sisters, and his brothers. Soon the family would meet the father there and be taken to the town of Newbury.

Until the year 1667, little Samuel would be receiving his schooling there from the Reverend Thomas Parker.

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September: With the assistance of the newly arrived Samuel Sewall, the Indian Library press of the Reverend John Eliot produced 1,500 copies in the Nipmuc language of THE NEW TESTAMENT.

— what Henry Thoreau in CAPE COD would be referring to eventually as “the Apostle Eliot’s Epistle to the

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Nipmucks”:

JOHN ELIOT

November: A shipload of Quakers arrived in Boston harbor, among them Friend Samuel Shattuck. He appeared before Governor John Endecott with his hat on, and his hat was struck off. When he presented the king’s writ, the governor, sweeping off his own hat, ordered that Shattuck’s hat be replaced upon his head. A new era of tolerance of dissenting opinion seemed to have arrived nonviolently, through sheer patience in suffering, for rather than submit to the authority of the mother country by sending its religious prisoners to England for trial, the Boston authorities clearly preferred to take no more religious prisoners, and to release all religious prisoners then in custody. (Friend Samuel Shattuck had managed to arrive just in time to intercept the planned hanging of Friend Winlock Christian. This new era of tolerance would endure all of ten months.)

The obstreperous Quaker witness of this era, which involved the constant disruption of the church services of

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other groups, may well be the origin of New England’s “come outer” tradition:

Upon a lecture day at Boston in New England, I was much pressed to Spirit to go into their Worshiphouse among them, where I stood silent until the Man had done Preaching, then my mouth was opened to the People with a word of Exhortation, but through the violence of some of the People was haled to Prison, from whence, about three hours after, they fetched me out to the Court, where I was examined, and so returned to Prison again until the Morning: and into the Court I was brought again, where they had drawn up a Paper against me, as they thought, of what I had said the day before: and they said, Come thou Vagabond, and hear this paper read with two Witnesses, their Hands to it, for we will handle thee: and I said, Read on; Where I stood until they had done: And they asked me, Whether I owned it, or no: and I said, Yea, every Word and would make it good by sound Proof if I might have Liberty to speak. But they cried, Away with him; and some took me by the Throat and would not suffer me to answer it, but hurried me down Stairs, to the Carriage of a great Gun, which stood in the Market-Place, where I was stripped and tied to the Wheel and whipped with Ten Stripes, and then loosed, and tied to a Cart’s-tail; and whipped with Ten more to the Town’s End; and at Roxbury, at a Cart’s-tail, with other Ten; and at Dedham, at a Cart’s-tail, with Ten more, and then sent into the Woods.

—Thomas Newhouse, per AN ADDITION TO THE BOOK... by Ellis Hookes

Prior to the manifesto that had been issued by Friend George Fox and a few other elder Quaker males on January 21st of this year, Quakers had not been predominantly pacifist. George Bishop had, in NEW ENGLAND JUDGED, PART I, described in detail the treatment accorded to such unregulable religious dissenters in New England, and this book had come to Charles II’s attention. Upon the urging of one of the Quakers who had been expelled from Boston, subsequent to his coronation on April 23rd the king had signed a mandamus requiring that henceforth all such cases should be forwarded to England for their trial, and had entrusted this paper to Friend Samuel Shattuck of Salem, who had himself recently been expelled from the Bay Colony.

In result of this communication from the king, the death penalty for Quakers would be rescinded, the only thing left being a somewhat less Draconian “Cart and Whip Act.” When Friend Wenlock Christison and 27 other Quakers would be dragged from the prison behind carts and whipped to the borders of the colony, they would

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there find themselves untied and released rather than martyred by the neck until dead.

Eventually, in 1884, a memorial would be created in Boston in honor of Friend Nathaniel Sylvester of Shelter Island (so named because he sheltered Quakers there), and the four hanged Quaker ministers William Ledra, Marmaduke Stevenson, William Robinson, and Mary Dyer:

In a somewhat related piece of news, this year Massachusetts was censuring the Reverend John Eliot for an antimonarchical attitude.

In another somewhat related piece of news, the town meeting of Hartford CT in this year would vote to extend a limited degree of tolerance toward a particular family of wayfarers, despite the fact that they were Unchristians: “The Jews, which at present live in John Marsh his house, have liberty to sojourn in the town seven months.” To oversimplify perhaps, the town meeting solved the problem of enforcement by evading it. The meeting gave institutional expression to the imperatives of peace. In the meetings consensus was reached, and individual consent and group opinion were placed in the service of social conformity. — Michael Zuckerman, ALMOST CHOSEN PEOPLE: OBLIQUE BIOGRAPHIES IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN, 1993, page 59 Now here is Friend John Greenleaf Whittier’s somewhat tendentious and overly positive later rendition of the main dramatic scene of this year:

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THE KING’S MISSIVE 1661 Under the great hill sloping bare “Off with the knave’s hat!” An angry hand To cove and meadow and Common lot, Smote down the offence; but the wearer said, In his council chamber and oaken chair, With a quiet smile, “By the king’s command Sat the worshipful Governor Endicott. I bear his message and stand in his stead.” A grave, strong man, who knew no peer, In the Governor’s hand a missive he laid In the Pilgrim land, where he ruled in fear With the royal arms on its seal displayed, Of God, not man, and for good or ill And the proud man spake as he gazed thereat, Held his trust with an iron will. Uncovering, “Give Mr. Shattuck his hat.” He had shorn with his sword the cross from out He turned to the Quaker, bowing low,— The flag and cloven the may-pole down, “The king commandeth your friends’ release; Harried the heathen round about Doubt not he shall be obeyed, although And whipped the Quakers from town to town. To his subjects’ sorrow and sin’s increase. His brow was clouded, his eye was stern, What he here enjoineth, John Endicott, With a look of mingled sorrow and wrath; His loyal servant, questioneth not. “Woe’s me,” he murmured: “at every turn You are free! God grant the spirit you own The pestilent Quakers are in my path! May take you from us, to parts unknown.” Some we have scourged, and banished some, So the door of the jail was open cast, Some hanged, more doomed, and still they come, And like Daniel out of the lion’s den Fast as the tide of yon bay sets in, Tender youth and girlhood passed, Sowing their heresy’s seed of sin. With age-bowed women and gray-locked men. “Did we count on this? Did we leave behind And the voice of one appointed to die The graves of our kin, the comfort and ease Was lifted in praise and thanks on high. Of our English hearths and homes, to find Broad in the sunshine stretched away Troublers of Israel such as these? With its capes and islands, the turquoise bay... Shall I spare? Shall I pity them? God forbid! But as they who see not, the Quakers saw I will do as the prophet to Agag did: The world about them; they only thought They come to poison the wells of the Word, With deep thanksgiving and pious awe I will hew them in pieces before the Lord!” On the great deliverance God had wrought. The door swung open, and Rawson the clerk Through lane and alley the gazing town Entered, and whispered under breath, Noisily followed them up and down; “There waits below for the hangman’s work Some with scoffing and brutal jeer, A fellow banished on pain of death— Some with pity and words of cheer. Shattuck, of Salem, unhealed of the whip, So passed the Quakers through Boston town, Brought over in Master Goldsmith’s ship Whose painful ministers sighed to see At anchor here in a Christian port, The walls of their sheep-fold falling down, With freight of the devil and all his sort!” And wolves of heresy prowling free. Twice and thrice on the chamber floor But the years went on and brought no wrong; Striding fiercely from wall to wall, With milder counsel the State grew strong, “The Lord do so to me and more,” As outward Letter and inward Light The Governor cried, “if I hang not all!” Kept the balance of truth aright. “Bring hither the Quaker.” Calm, sedate, With the look of a man at ease with fate, Into that presence, grim and dread, Came Samuel Shattuck, with hat on head.

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It was all well and good that King Charles II had prohibited further executions of Quakers in the Massachusetts

... Edward Burrough named Samuel Shattuck, who, being an inhabitant of New England, was banished by their law, to be hanged if he came again; and to him the deputation was granted. Then he sent for Ralph Goldsmith, an honest Friend, who was master of a good ship, and agreed with him for three hundred pounds (goods or no goods) to sail in ten days. He forthwith prepared to set sail, and with a prosperous gale, in about six weeks’ time, arrived before the town of Boston in New England, upon a First-day morning. With him went many passengers, both of New and Old England, Friends, whom the Lord moved to go to bear their testimony against those bloody persecutors, who had exceeded all the world in that age in their bloody persecutions. The townsmen at Boston, seeing a ship come into the bay with English colours, soon came on board and asked for the captain. Ralph Goldsmith told them he was the commander. They asked him if he had any letters. He said, “Yes.” They asked if he would deliver them. He said, “No; not to-day.” So they went ashore and reported that there was a ship full of Quakers, and that Samuel Shattuck, who they knew was by their law to be put to death if he came again after banishment, was among them, but they knew not his errand nor his authority. [Friend Mary Dyer, Friend William Ledra, Friend Marmaduke Stevenson, and Friend William Robinson had already been executed.] So all were kept close that day, and none of the ship’s company suffered to go on shore. Next morning Samuel Shattuck, the King’s deputy, and Ralph Goldsmith, went on shore, and, sending back to the ship the men that landed them, they two went through the town to Governor John Endicott’s door, and knocked. He sent out a man to know their business. They sent him word that their business was from the King of England, and that they would deliver their message to no one but the Governor himself. Thereupon they were admitted, and the Governor came to them; and having received the deputation and the mandamus, he put off his hat and looked upon them. Then, going out, he bade the Friends follow him. He went to the deputy-governor, and after a short consultation came out to the Friends, and said, “We shall obey his majesty’s commands.” After this the master gave liberty to the passengers to come on shore, and presently the noise of the business flew about the town; and the Friends of the town and the passengers of the ship met together to offer up their praises and thanksgivings to God, who had so wonderfully delivered them from the teeth of the devourer. While they were thus met, in came a poor Friend, who, being sentenced by their bloody law to die, had lain some time in irons expecting execution. This added to their joy, and caused them to lift up their hearts in high praise to God, who is worthy for ever to have the praise, the glory, and the honour; for He only is able to deliver, to save, and support all that sincerely put their trust in Him.

FOX’S JOURNAL Bay colony, but they weren’t about to take that lying down. The Puritans of the colony sent the Reverend John Norton to London at an expense of £66 to reason with their monarch. The General Court of the colony feared

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that heretics were being tolerated to “ruin sincere servants of God,” and declared a Day of Humiliation.

1662

In the Bay Colony, the Reverend John Eliot printed off another 1,500 copies in the Nipmuc language of what had in 1654 been the 1st book of his “Indian Library”: A PRIMER OR CATECHISM.

1663

In the Bay Colony, the Reverend John Eliot had Samuel Green and a newly arrived professional printer, Marmaduke Johnson, print in Cambridge either 1,000 or 2,000 copies of MAMUSSE WUNNEETUPANATAMWE UP- BIBLUM GOD (THE-WHOLE HOLY HIS-BIBLE GOD, unpaged, 7 1/8 in. x 5 3/4 in.) in the Nipmuc language — what Henry Thoreau in CAPE COD would be referring to eventually as “the Apostle Eliot’s Epistle to the Nipmucks”:

(The version of GENESIS used this time differed significantly from the 1655 edition. During this year, also, the “Indian Library” series in the native language added THE METRICAL PSALMS.)

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THE MAINE WOODS: While lying there listening to the Indians, I amused myself with trying to guess at their subject by their gestures, or some proper name introduced. There can be no more startling evidence of their being a distinct and comparatively aboriginal race, than to hear this unaltered Indian language, which the white man cannot speak nor understand. We may suspect change and deterioration in almost every other particular, but the language which is so wholly unintelligible to us. It took me by surprise, though I had found so many arrow-heads, and convinced me that the Indian was not the invention of historians and poets. It was a purely wild and primitive American sound, as much as the barking of a chickaree, and I could not understand a syllable of it; but Paugus, had he been there, would have understood it. These Abenakis gossiped, laughed, and jested, in the language in which Eliot’s Indian Bible is written, the language which has been spoken in New England who shall say how long? These were the sounds that issued from the wigwams of this country before Columbus was born; they have not yet died away; and, with remarkably few exceptions, the language of their forefathers is still copious enough for them. I felt that I stood, or rather lay, as near to the primitive man of America, that night, as any of its discoverers ever did.

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The Reverend John Eliot’s Old Testament was printed. This completed the first Bible printed in North America. Henry Thoreau would make a humorous aside in CAPE COD about this translation into the Nipmuc:

But, probably, the most just and pertinent character of all, is that which appears to be given to the Rev. Ephraim Briggs, of Chatham, in the language of the later Romans: “Seip, sepoese, sepoemese, wechekum”– which, not being interpreted, we know not what it means, though we have no doubt it occurs somewhere in the Scriptures, probably in the Apostle Eliot’s Epistle to the Nipmucks.

Since this book has experienced an exceedingly hostile environment over the centuries, making it more and more rare, it is unlikely that Thoreau actually ever sighted it. More likely, Thoreau extracted this uninterpreted “Seip sepoese sepoemese wechekum” stuff from “A Description and History of Eastham” in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society:15

After a series of Mohawk attacks, the Pocumtuck warriors had been decimated and they were attempting to make peace. When this gesture would fail and the Mohawk attacks would resume in 1664, the Pocumtuck would be forced to abandon the Connecticut Valley. Some would find refuge with the Pennacook along the Merrimack River and continue to fight against the Iroquois. To appease the English, in 1652 and again in 1655 and 1656 the Pennacook had relinquished some of their territories. By this point so much of their prime land had been taken up by the intrusives that headman Passaconnaway was forced to petition the Massachusetts legislature for relief. Merely four decades after the First Comers had arrived at Plymouth, the Pennacook on the lower Merrimack had become no longer in a position to share or sell lands but had been reduced to petitioning the English to leave them some land on which they might live.

15. What I infer from James Hammond Trumbull’s NATICK DICTIONARY (Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1903) is that séip means river, sépoese stream, sepoêmese rivulet (all deriving from sibikinan, to pour out), while wechêkum is the seacoast or ocean, great producer of their sustaining food, from Wutcheken (Eliot), “it yields,” “produces,” “brings forth.” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 43 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1664

The Indian Library of the Reverend John Eliot printed 1,000 copies of a volume in the Nipmuc language, with the title BAXTER’S CALL TO THE UNCONVERTED.

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1665

The Indian Library of the Reverend John Eliot printed 200 copies of a volume in the Nipmuc language, with the title BAYLY’S PRACTICE OF PIETY.

By this point the native Americans of southern New England were simply in the way. The English no longer needed their wilderness skills to survive, and fishing and other commerce had largely replaced the fur and wampum trade which had been the mainstay of the colonial economy during earlier years. While there had been nothing to equal the devastation of the epidemics of 1614-1620, the native population had continued to decline from continuing epidemics: in 1633, in 1635, in 1654, and in 1661, and there would be yet another epidemic in 1667. The Puritans’ “humane” solution after 1640 had been the missionary work of the Reverend John Eliot and others. How “humane” such an effort actually was is a matter of opinion. Converts were settled in small communities of “Praying Indians” at Natick, Nonantum, Punkapaog, and other locations. Natives even partially resistant to the Puritan version of Christianity were unwelcome. Attendance at church was mandatory, clothing and hair changed to proper colonial styles, and even so much as a hint of the practice of any traditional ceremony or religious observance was grounds for expulsion. In the process, of course, tribal culture and authority were disintegrating.

“...The conflicts of Europeans with American-Indians, Maoris and other aborigines in temperate regions ... if we judge by the results we cannot regret that such wars have taken place ... the process by which the American continent has been acquired for European civilization [was entirely justified because] there is a very great and undeniable difference between the civilization of the colonizers and that of the dispossessed natives....” — Bertrand Russell, THE ETHICS OF WAR, January 1915

1666

The Indian Library of the Reverend John Eliot printed 500 copies of a volume in both the English language and the Nipmuc language, with the title THE INDIAN GRAMMAR BEGUN.

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1669

The Indian Library of the Reverend John Eliot issued a volume mostly in the Nipmuc language, with the title THE INDIAN PRIMER.

1670

The Indian Library of the Reverend John Eliot issued a volume in English and Nipmuc, under the title A CHRISTIAN COVENANTING CONFESSION.

The Reverend Eliot had spent three years among the Pennacook without ever persuading their headman, Passaconnaway, to accept the Christian teachings. During this period, however, the headman’s son Wanalancet, with his entire family, were allowing themselves to be baptized.

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1671

The Indian Library of the Reverend John Eliot issued an English-language book, THE INDIAN DIALOGUES. The Reverend entered into an agenda, with John Sassamon, to convert the sachem Metacom to Christianity.

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1672

The Indian Library of the Reverend John Eliot printed 1,000 copies of a volume in the English and Nipmuc languages, under the title THE LOGICK PRIMER.

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July: Friend George Fox visited Rhode Island, staying with Governor Nicholas Easton. Quakers were just becoming the dominant group in that colony’s government. Governor Easton, 11 of the 16 assistants, and perhaps seven of the 20 deputies were members of the Religious Society of Friends. Friend Nicholas Easton was the primary political leader there at this point, and the Reverend Roger Williams the primary spiritual leader. Friend George recorded that:

In New England there was an Indian king that said he saw that there were many of their people of the Indians turned to the New England professors. He said they were worse since than they were before they left their own religion; and of all religions he said the Quakers were the best.

Commenting on this, Jill Lepore surmises that this may be more than merely the “Quaker party line,” that although there is no extant record of such a visit, Friend John Easton of Rhode Island may have taken Friend George along on a visit to the sachem Metacom at Mount Hope. Alternatively, she offers, Friend George may simply have become aware somehow of the sachem Metacom’s rejection of the Reverend John Eliot’s proselytizing.

The conclusion Friend George Fox arrived at in his New World travels was that all humans did experience Christ’s light, however this experience might be conceptualized in a given culture:

Now Jews, and the Turks, and heathen, and Indians, that do not nor will not profess and own Christ in the flesh, to be the Savior; if one come to speak to them of their evil deeds and words, and ask them if there is something in them that tells them, they should not speak and do so, or so wickedly? (for the light of Christ troubles and condemns them if they do evil), here they will confess to the light of Christ though they know not what it is....

But Fox did not come to America during this period just prior to the outbreak of “King Phillip’s War” only to

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interrogate the indigenes. As mentioned above, he also came to deal with the intrusives, in particular with one intrusive, a Boston one named John Perrot. Fox wanted to counter the influence that was being exercised by Friend Perrot in Boston.

At the time Friend Perrot evidently was attempting to develop the Quaker insistence, that in matters of worship we ought to dispense with any form which might divide worshipers into opposing groups contemptuous of and intolerant of each other, to the point at which even the regularity of showing up on time for a silent meeting of worship, on First Day, was to be regarded as a “form” and discarded. George Fox sought to drive away such individuals, whom he characterized as “disorderly walkers.” And indeed, those Quakers who distrusted the growing levels of group control over individual conduct began to walk in other paths.

1674

In Concord, Peter Bulkeley was again deputy and representative to the General Court.

The Reverend John Eliot organized two churches of the Christian Indians, and 14 villages consisting of 1,100 inhabitants. Seven of these villages of native Christian converts were in Nipmuc Country. These were the villages, over and above, of course, Natick itself: • Chachaubunkkakowok (Chaubunagungamaug) • Hassanemesit • Magunkaquog (Magunkaquog, Magunkook)

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• Manchaug (Monuhchogok) • Manexit (Manexit, Mayanexit, Fabyan) • Massomuck (Wabaquasset, Wappaquasset, Wabaquasset) • Nashoba (Nashobah) • Okommakamesit (Ockoogameset) • Pakachoog (Pakachoog) • Quabaug (Quabaug) • Quantisset (Quinetusset) • Wacuntug (Wacuntuc, Wacumtaug) • Washaccum The missionary labors of Eliot [the Reverend John Eliot] and his associates were attended with considerable success. At Natick was a kind of theological seminary, where natives were educated and sent forth to be rulers and teachers in other places. The Bible and several other books were translated and printed in their language, which requires the word: Kummogkodonatoottummootiteaongannunnonash to express in English “our question.” This was indeed a Herculean task. In 1674, Eliot had organized two churches and fourteen towns, containing 1100 inhabitants [1 Historical Collections vol. i, page 195.] who had ostensibly embraced Christianity. A part of them only, however, appear to have been influenced by Christian principles. During Philip’s War, this number was very much reduced. Many of them became treacherous, and were among the worst enemies of the English. Some of them suffered death for their defection. [Mattoonus, constable at Pakachoog, was executed.] The remainder were gathered in English towns, behaved like exemplary Christians, and were of essential service to the English in Philip’s War. The whole number on the 10th of November 1676, was 567 only, of which 117 were men and 450 women and children. The Nashobah or Concord Praying Indians, who remained friendly to the English were 10 men and 50 women and children; and they then lived in Concord under the inspection of the committee of militia and the selectmen of the town. The other places where the Praying Indians met on the Sabbath for religious worship at this time, were Medfield, Andrew Deven’s Garrison, near Natick, Lower Falls, Nonantum and Dunstable.16 Some other notices of the Nashobah Indians, while resident in Concord will be given when the events of Philip’s War are treated of. After this time, they appear to have nearly abandoned their plantation, and to have removed to Natick. May 19, 1680, 23 inhabitants of Concord petitioned the General Court that the lands belonging to those Indians might be granted to them, but it was refused; because there were “debts due from the country which might be provided for by the sale of the land, if the Indians have no right or have deserted the place.” In reply the petitioners say, “There never were any lands purchased of the country for townships.” The petition was ineffectually renewed in 1691. It appears, however, that the 16. I have communicated to the American Antiquarian Society for publication, among other papers, a document in the hand writing of Major Gookin, giving a particular account of the disposition of all the Praying Indians at this time, from which the above facts are taken. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 51 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Honorable Peter Bulkeley of Concord [not the Reverend Peter Bulkeley, who had died in 1659, but a descendant] and Major Thomas Henchman of Chelmsford on the 15th of June, 1686, bought the easterly half of the Nashobah Plantation for 70 pounds sterling. The Indian grantors were as follows: “Kehonowsquaw, alias Sarah, the daughter and sole heiress of John Tahattawan, sachem, and late of Nashobah, deceased. Naanishcow, alias John Thomas. Naanasquaw, alias Rebeckah, wife to the said Naanishcow. Naashkinomenet, alias Solomon, eldest son of said Naanishcow and Naanasquaw, sister to the aforesaid Tahattawan. Weegrammominet, alias Thomas Waban. Nackcominewock, relict [widow] of Crooked Robin. Wunnuhhew, alias Sarah, wife to Neepanum, alias Tom Doublet. This tract of land was bounded by land sold by the aforesaid Indians to Robert Robbins and Peleg Lawrence both of Groton towne, which land is part of the aforesaid Nashobah Plantation, and this line is exactly two miles in length and runs east three degrees northerly, or west three degrees southerly, and the south end runs parallel with this line; on the westerly side it is bounded by the remainder of said Nashobah Plantation and that west line runs south seven degrees and thirty minutes east, four miles and one quarter. The northeast corner is about four or five poles southward of a very great rock that lieth in the line between the said Nashobah and Chelmsford plantation. [Registry of Deeds, vol. x., page 117]. The remaining history of Nashobah properly belongs to Littleton. It may be well, however, to remark that in 1714 when that town was incorporated, 500 acres of land were reserved for the Indian proprietors. Sarah Doublet, an Indian, was the only heir to it in 1734, being then old and blind, and committed to the care of Samuel Jones of Concord. She then petitioned for liberty to sell it to pay her maintenance and it was granted for the purpose to Elnathan Jones and Mr. Tenney. One corner was near the southeast part of Nagog Pond; then across the pond, north ten degrees west, 133 rods north of said pond to a point, and then making a right angle, it ran 286 rods, and then across Nagog Pond to the first place mentioned.17

17. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.)

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Major Daniel Gookin created his HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF THE INDIANS IN NEW ENGLAND, which would not be published until 1792.18

18. Actually, Daniel Gookin wrote two works on the native tribes: not only this HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF THE INDIANS IN NEW ENGLAND completed in 1674 and published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1792, but also THE DOINGS AND SUFFERINGS OF THE CHRISTIAN INDIANS (completed in 1677, published in 1836). — A postscript informs us that as early as this year he had “half finished” a HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND, ESPECIALLY OF THE COLONY OF MASSACHUSETTS, “in eight books” (only portions of this third work have survived). “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 53 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

DANIEL GOOKIN, 1792, 1806

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Here is what Henry Thoreau would copy into his Indian Notebook from the version that appeared in the MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS:

Their houses, or wigwams, are built with small poles fixed in the ground, bent and fastened together with barks of trees oval ... on the top. The best sort of their houses are covered very neatly, tight, and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at such seasons when the sap is up; and made into great flakes with pressures of weighty timber, when they are green; and so becoming dry, they will retain a form suitable for the use they prepare them for. The meaner sort of wigwams are covered with mats, they make of a kind of bulrush, which are also indifferent tight and warm, but not so good as the former. These houses they make of several sizes, according to their activity & ability; some twenty, some forty feet long and thirty feet [crossed out] broad. some I have seen of sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad. In the smaller sort they make a fire in the center of the house; and have a lower hole on the top of the house, to let out the smoke. They keep the door into the wigwams always shut, by a mat falling thereon, as people go in and out. this they do to fire-vent air coming in, which will cause much smoke in every(?) [Thoreau’s question mark] windy weather. If the smoke beat down at the lower hole, they hang a little mat in the way of a skreen [sic], on the top of the house, which they can with a ... turn to the windward side, which prevents the smoke. In the greater houses they make two, three, or four fires at a distance one from another, for the better accommodation of the peoples belonging to it. I have often lodged in their wigwams, and have found them as warm as the best English houses.

This, of course, has particular relevance, on account of Thoreau’s shanty at Walden Pond.

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Thoreau would derive the following material for A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS from Daniel Gookin:

A WEEK: In these parts dwelt the famous Sachem Pasaconaway, who was seen by Gookin “at Pawtucket, when he was about one hundred and twenty years old.” He was reputed a wise man and a powwow, and restrained his people from going to war with the English. They believed “that he could make water burn, rocks move, and trees dance, and metamorphose himself into a flaming man; that in winter he could raise a green leaf out of the ashes of a dry one, and produce a living snake from the skin of a dead one, and many similar miracles.” In 1660, according to Gookin, at a great feast and dance, he made his farewell speech to his people, in which he said, that as he was not likely to see them met together again, he would leave them this word of advice, to take heed how they quarrelled with their English neighbors, for though they might do them much mischief at first, it would prove the means of their own destruction. He himself, he said, had been as much an enemy to the English at their first coming as any, and had used all his arts to destroy them, or at least to prevent their settlement, but could by no means effect it. Gookin thought that he “possibly might have such a kind of spirit upon him as was upon Balaam, who in xxiii. Numbers, 23, said ‘Surely, there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel.’” His son Wannalancet carefully followed his advice, and when Philip’s War broke out, he withdrew his followers to Penacook, now Concord in New Hampshire, from the scene of the war. On his return afterwards, he visited the minister of Chelmsford, and, as is stated in the history of that town, “wished to know whether Chelmsford had suffered much during the war; and being informed that it had not, and that God should be thanked for it, Wannalancet replied, ‘Me next.’”

THOMAS HUTCHINSON

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And here is how Gookin’s material would appear in WALDEN; OR,LIFE IN THE WOODS:

WALDEN: A comfortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived PEOPLE OF mostly out of doors, was once made here almost entirely of such WALDEN materials as Nature furnished ready to their hands. Gookin, who was superintendent of the Indians subject to the Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, “The best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up, and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they are green.... The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not so good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English houses.” He adds, that they were commonly carpeted and lined within with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with various utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string. Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours; and every family owned one, or its apartment in one.

DANIEL GOOKIN

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1675

June: News of troubles reached Concord. The Wampanoag, under Metacom the 2nd son of Ousamequin Yellow Feather the Massasoit, had killed six Europeans at Swansea on Narraganset Bay. “KING PHILLIP’S WAR”

The native villages of “Praying Indians” were Punkapaog, Natick, Magunkaquog, Hassanemesit, Nashoba, and Wamesit, situated more or less in a half circle around Concord. Their closest village was Nashobah, which was six miles from Concord, on Nagog Pond. The leaders there were Tahattawan, and Waban, and the Squaw Sachem to whom the armed white men had presented their hostess gifts and from whom the English town of Concord had “purchased,” allegedly, its land. The tribal remnant of the epidemics of 1617 and 1633 had moved from Nawshawtuct Hill at the junction of the Assabet and the Musketaquid to beyond Nagog.

By 1675, possession and use of firearms was complete. Therefore:

An attempt was made to separate the friendly Christian Indians from the wild savages, and some were brought in to Deer Island in Boston harbor. Others [primarily women and young children, and excluding any males of warrior age] were brought to Concord and entrusted to John Hoar, who built a workshop and stockade for them next to his own house, which is now known as Orchard House. This caused a furor in Concord. Many considered the Christian Indians just spies and informers. The town defenses were in a precarious state [due to the fact that many of the white men were away, fighting in the race war].

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The Reverend John Eliot jotted in his diary that:

When the Indians were hurried away to an iland at half an hours warning, pore soules in terror thei left theire goods, books, bibles, only some few caryed thier bibles, the rest were spoyled & lost.

Nearly a mile long and 210 acres in extent, this inner island Deer Island is the 2d-largest in Boston Harbor. Our National Park Service now refers to these detainees of “King Phillip’s War” (a name designating the

blame for its initiation as his rather than ours) as “prisoners” and as “captives,” evidently in order to create the false suggestion in the minds of current visitors that these people had been captured hostile warriors rather than what they actually were, the innocent families of the Christian allies of the white people. However, the National Park Service does acknowledge that of the approximately 500 nameless persons whom they denominate “prisoners” and “captives,” the few who survived the 1675-1676 winter of exposure and starvation had been subsequently enslaved on the mainland.

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Awashonks, the Squaw Sachem of the Wampanoag band at Sakonnet, held a dance and invited Benjamin Church, a notable English settler of Little Compton, Rhode Island who during the coming genocide would make himself a white hero. When Church arrived at the dance he found six Wampanoag of Metacom’s band were attending in their war gear. Awashonks’s husband told Church he feared that Metacom’s band was preparing itself for a war which it had come to consider inevitable. Church persuaded Awashonks that she needed to remain loyal to the English.

Notice the disparity here. Church, because he was a white man, could show up armed for this meeting (below is his actual rough-and-ready sword, with a grip made out of ash wood and a guard made out of a piece of bent iron by a local blacksmith) and that wasn’t warlike and alarming — but when Indian braves attend this meeting

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in similar attire according to their own culture, because they are not white men that is warlike and alarming.)

July: Metacom’s warriors mounted attacks where they could, wiping out the town of Dartmouth; Rehoboth and Taunton were attacked soon after Swansea. In mid-July an attack on the town of Mendon by the Nipmuc would ominously foreshadow the spreading of the war. Job Nesutan, who had been helping the Reverend John Eliot in the translation of the BIBLE into the Nipmuc tongue for publication at the Cambridge press, was killed as he fought alongside the English. “KING PHILLIP’S WAR”

August 13: By order of the Massachusetts Counsel, all Christian Indians were to confine themselves to the close vicinity of their praying towns. The woodlands were to be a free-fire zone. The Reverend John Eliot wrote Governor John Winthrop, Jr. and the Council of the Bay Colony, in opposition to the sale of Indians “unto the Ilands for perpetual slaves,” because “to sell soules for mony seemeth to me a dangerous merchandize.” He proposed instead that the dangerous ones simply be executed: “To put to death men that have deserved to dy, is an ordinance of God, & a blessing is promised to it.” “KING PHILLIP’S WAR”

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December 13, Monday: After a night of milling about, the Massachusetts/Plymouth army arrived at Smith’s garrison- house at Wickford, Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, Major Simon Willard, the Reverend John Eliot, and Major Daniel Gookin were being put in charge of the resettlement the Christian Indians of the Nashobah community with John Hoar in Concord, in a workshop and stockade built next to his Orchard House. About the last of November, the Nashobah Indians removed to Concord; and December 13th, Major Simon Willard, the Rev. Mr. John Eliot, and Major Gookin, were appointed to order their settlement. They were placed under the care and superintendence of Mr. John Hoar, “the only man in Concord,” says Gookin, “who was willing to do it.” He was compensated by being exempted from impressment and taxation. This man was very loving to them, and very diligent and careful to promote their good, and to secure the English from any fear or danger by them.”19 The excitement generally was so great, that the Natick Indians had been previously carried to Deer Island for fear of being attacked by 19. Gookin’s MS. 64 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the English. From this time depredations continued to be frequently committed by the unfriendly Indians on the frontier settlements; and not-withstanding the precautions of the government, the friendly Indians occasionally suffered unjustly from the enmity of the whites. Companies of soldiers were often sent for the relief of these suffering towns, in which Concord was usually represented.20 “KING PHILLIP’S WAR”

Winter: There were already about 500 internees in the racial concentration camp on barren Deer Island, a site in Boston Harbor chosen of course because no white people had been able to subsist there.21 “’Tis Satan’s policy, to plead for an indefinite and boundless toleration.” Local food was utterly depleted.22 During a period of heavy snow the Native American villages of the Concord area, praying-ized by the Reverend John Eliot23 and not, had been surrounded while in their lodges by troops from Marlborough led by Captain Samuel Mosely, roped together at the neck, and shepherded through the town’s streets. Only 58 of the Reverend Eliot’s Praying Indians remained in the Concord area, working during the day and locked up at night in a stockade built for them, mostly Nashobah women and children.

20. Soldiers often volunteered on these occasions. When they could not be obtained in this manner, they were impressed into service. Precepts were issued by the committees of militia in the several towns to the constable; and none were freed from his arbitrary will, except by a special act of the government. Nathaniel Pierce, with several others of Concord, were pressed in September, 1675, went to Springfield, and continued in the service nearly a year, till they were thus liberated. Daniel Adams belonged to a party which went from Concord to Groton when that town was destroyed. He fired from Willard’s garrison and killed an Indian. It is impossible, however, to ascertain the names of all those who were engaged in this bloody war; but it is said that nearly all the able-bodied men bore arms in defence of their homes, at some time during this conflict. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) 21. Racial concentration camps for Praying Indian hostages would also be set up on Long Island in Boston Harbor and on Clark’s Island off Plymouth.

22. Our National Park Service now refers to the detainees of King Philip’s War as “prisoners” and as “captives,” evidently in order to create the false suggestion in the minds of current visitors to the sewage-disposal plant under construction at the site that these people had had the status of captured disarmed hostile warriors rather than what they actually were, the innocent families of the Christian allies of the white people, plus the miscellaneous innocent persons of color who were being swept up while going about their business in the race dragnets across the colony. However, the National Park Service does acknowledge that of the approximately 500 Americans whom they denominate “prisoners” and “captives,” the few who survived the 1675-1676 winter of exposure and starvation had indeed been subsequently reduced to slavery. 23. The Reverend Eliot was doing what he could to shield his flock “when some of the people of Massachusetts, actuated by the most infuriate spirit, intended to have destroyed them” (ALLEN’S BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY), but his position was inevitably a compromised and therefore a compromising position. It was much easier to make them be Christians than it was to force Christians to treat them like Christians. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 65 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1676

The English began moving into the vacated Narragansett lands and the surviving tribespeople submitted to what would prove to be long periods of indenture to colonial families. Those Narragansett tribespeople who had survived the war were merging with a small neighboring group, the Niantic, with whom their dominant families had extensively intermarried. The combined population eventually would come to be termed Narragansett. Neither Rhode Island nor Connecticut would exercise much control over the affairs of this now powerless tribe and it would be allowed to remain on more-or-less unwanted land between Kingston and Westerly under the hereditary leadership of a lineage of Narragansett/Niantic sachems. “KING PHILLIP’S WAR”

“HUCKLEBERRIES”: The largest Indian huckleberry party that I have heard of is mentioned in the life of Captain Church who, it is said, when in pursuit of King Phillip in the summer of 1676, came across a large body of Indians, chiefly squaws, gathering whortleberries on a plain near where New Bedford now is, and killed and took prisoner sixty-six of them — some throwing away their baskets and their berries in their flight. They told him that their husbands and brothers, a hundred of them, who with others had their rendezvous in a great cedar swamp nearby, had recently left them to gather whortleberries there, while they went to Sconticut Neck to kill cattle and horses for further and more substantial provisions.

Old Dartmouth suffered greatly in the race war. All was lost except one or two outlyingN homesEW BEDFORD and the homeMA of John Russell, known as Russells’ Garrison.

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The Pennacook’s region had been the Merrimack River valley of southern and central New Hampshire, including parts of northeastern Massachusetts and southern Maine. At this point, however, they found themselves forced to abandon the lower Merrimack. While some Pennacook villages would continue along the upper Merrimack until 1730, most of the tribe would move north to the Abenaki in Maine or the Sokoki (Western Abenaki) at St. Francois du Lac in Québec.

Here are the names of the praying native American villages as per D.E. Leach’s map of Massachusetts and Connecticut circa 1676, as recorded in 1957: • Ashquoash • Chabanakongkomun • Hassanemesit • Magunkaquog • Manchage • Menamesit • Nashobah on Nagog Pond near Nashoba Hill in Littleton • Natick • Paquoag • Peskeompscut • Punkapaug • Senecksig • Wamesit at the juncture of the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Washaccum to the southeast of Mount Wachusett

This Nashoba was the 6th of the Praying Indian towns and was made up of 10 families amounting to about 50 souls. Ralph Waldo Emerson would mention that at the instance of the Reverend John Eliot, in 1651, the desire of the Christian native Americans to continue to reside near Concord “was granted by the General Court, and Nashobah, lying near Nagog Pond, now partly in Littleton, partly in Acton, became an Indian town, where a Christian worship was established under an Indian ruler and teacher.... Such was, for half a century, the success of the general enterprise, that, in 1676, there were five hundred and sixty-seven praying Indians, and in 1679, twenty-four Indian preachers, and eighteen assemblies.”24 “KING PHILLIP’S WAR”

“HUCKLEBERRIES”: Early in August, in a favorable year, the hills are black with them. At Nagog Pond I have seen a hundred bushels in one field — the bushes drooping over the rocks with the weight of them — and a very handsome sight they are, though you should not pluck one of them. They are of various forms, colors and flavors — some round — some pear-shaped — some glossy black — some dull black, some blue with a tough and thick skin (though they are never of the peculiar light blue of blueberries with a bloom) — some sweeter, some more insipid — etc., etc., more varieties than botanists take notice of.

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June 29, Monday: In accordance with the unanimous decision that had been taken on June 20th in Charlestown by the governing council, Massachusetts observed its 1st colony-wide day of Thanksgiving since the beginning of the race war:

The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series of his Afflictive dispensations in and by the present Warr with the Heathen Natives of this land, written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant people in this wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern that in the midst of his judgements he hath remembered mercy, having remembered his Footstool in the day of his sore displeasure against us for our sins, with many singular Intimations of his Fatherly Compassion, and regard; reserving many of our Towns from Desolation Threatened, and attempted by the Enemy, and giving us especially of late with many of our Confederates many signal Advantages against them, without such Disadvantage to ourselves as formerly we have been sensible of, if it be the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed, It certainly bespeaks our positive Thankfulness, when our Enemies are in any measure disappointed or destroyed; and fearing the Lord should take notice under so many Intimations of his returning mercy, we should be found an Insensible people, as not standing before Him with Thanksgiving, as well as lading him with our Complaints in the time of pressing Afflictions: The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the 29th day of this instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such his Goodness and Favour, many Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced, but we doubt not those who are sensible of God’s Afflictions, have been as diligent to espy him returning to us; and that the Lord may behold us as a People offering Praise and thereby glorifying Him; the Council doth commend it to the Respective Ministers, Elders and people of this Jurisdiction; Solemnly and seriously to keep the same Beseeching that being perswaded by the mercies of God we may all, even this whole people offer up our bodies and soules as a living and acceptable Service unto God by Jesus Christ.

“KING PHILLIP’S WAR”

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Thanks were given to God for the signal victories of the English over their savage enemies.

The Reverend John Eliot accompanied Captain Tom Indian, or Watasocamponum, one of the Praying Indians who had been carried off to the forest by the warriors, to the Thanksgiving Lecture. After that sermon,

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Watasocamponum addressed the assembly of white people, explaining that

I never did lift up hand against the English, nor was I at Sudbury, only I was willing to goe away with the enemise that surprized us.

Then he and another native American man were hanged by the neck until dead. Watasocamponum was observed to die “praying to God not like the manner of the heathen.”

“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

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Major Samuel Sewall jotted in his diary:

Two Indians, Capt. Tom and another, executed after Lecture.

Jill Lepore hypothecates, on her page 144, that Captain Tom was executed at least in part not on account of his being red but on account of his being a male: “[I]t was more difficult for men to explain why they had chosen captivity over death than it was for women.” She points at the contrast between the treatment accorded a white woman, Mistress Mary Rowlandson, who chose captivity rather than death, and the treatment accorded a white man, Joshua Tift, who chose captivity rather than death. Rowlandson was allowed to write a book and redeem herself; when Tift was reclaimed from the savages, the English men who reclaimed him and began to interrogate him professed to not find him credible and executed him, on January 20, 1676: “[S]ince Tift was a man and Rowlandson a woman, Tift’s submission, his surrendering of his will, his willingness to go along with the Indians, were all the more culpable” (page 134).

Also according to the diary of Samuel Sewall, Just between the Thanksgiving, June 29, and Sab. day, July, 2, Capt. Bradfords expedition 20 killed and taken, almost an 100 came in: Squaw Sachem. “KING PHILLIP’S WAR”

1678

The Reverend John Eliot’s THE HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS.

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1680

The Indian Library press of the Reverend John Eliot printed another 2,500 copies in the Nipmuc language of THE NEW TESTAMENT that it had issued in 1661 — what Henry David Thoreau in CAPE COD would be referring to eventually as “the Apostle Eliot’s Epistle to the Nipmucks”:

(Most of these copies would be stockpiled to be bound together with the edition of THE OLD TESTAMENT which would be printed in 1685, in order to be able to issue them as complete Bibles.)

This all sounds most impressive. Neal Salisbury has pointed out, however, that the race war had brought about not one but two defeats: the utter destruction of the hostile natives and the utter destruction of the life work of the Reverend Eliot. As an illustration of this, we have the comparative life trajectories of two native Christian brothers who served the white troops loyally as guides against the red hostiles. One of these brothers was killed in action, and the other survived the conflict to receive at its end a certificate from his captain, for faithful service to the white army. This surviving red brother was then, despite his certificate of loyalty, despite his faithful Christianity, sold into slavery, and spent all the remainder of his life as the slave of a white man. There simply wasn’t any place for him in this new postwar world, as a person of color, except as somebody’s slave. Thus:

“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

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May 19: In Concord, the race war being won, the white people determined that it was time to portion out the loot. They therefore petitioned the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to distribute among them the lands that once had pertained to the Nashoba group of the Reverend John Eliot’s Praying Indians, known as Nashobah Plantation. This the authorities in Boston would prove to be unwilling to do, not in order to save this plot for the remaining red people, but in order themselves to obtain the profit. The missionary labors of Eliot [the Reverend John Eliot] and his associates were attended with considerable success. At Natick was a kind of theological seminary, where natives were educated and sent forth to be rulers and teachers in other places. The Bible and several other books were translated and printed in their language, which requires the word: Kummogkodonatoottummootiteaongannunnonash to express in English “our question.” This was indeed a Herculean task. In 1674, Eliot had organized two churches and fourteen towns, containing 1100 inhabitants [1 Historical Collections vol. i, page 195.] who had ostensibly embraced Christianity. A part of them only, however, appear to have been influenced by Christian principles. During Philip’s War, this number was very much reduced. Many of them became treacherous, and were among the worst enemies of the English. Some of them suffered death for their defection. [Mattoonus, constable at Pakachoog, was executed.] The remainder were gathered in English towns, behaved like exemplary Christians, and were of essential service to the English in Philip’s War. The whole number on the 10th of November 1676, was 567 only, of which 117 were men and 450 women and children. The Nashobah or Concord Praying Indians, who remained friendly to the English were 10 men and 50 women and children; and they then lived in Concord under the inspection of the committee of militia and the selectmen of the town. The other places where the Praying Indians met on the Sabbath for religious worship at this time, were Medfield, Andrew Deven’s Garrison, near Natick, Lower Falls, Nonantum and Dunstable.25 Some other notices of the Nashobah Indians, while resident in Concord will be given when the events of Philip’s War are treated of. After this time, they appear to have nearly abandoned their plantation, and to have removed to Natick. May 19, 1680, 23 inhabitants of Concord petitioned the General Court that the lands belonging to those Indians might be granted to them, but it was refused; because there were “debts due from the country which might be provided for by the sale of the land, if the Indians have no right or have deserted the place.” In reply the petitioners say, “There never were any lands purchased of the country for townships.” The petition was ineffectually renewed in 1691. It appears, however, that the Honorable Peter Bulkeley of Concord [not the Reverend Peter Bulkeley, who had died in 1659, but a descendant] and Major Thomas Henchman of Chelmsford on the 15th of June, 1686, bought the easterly half of the Nashobah Plantation for 70 pounds sterling. The Indian grantors were as follows: 25. I have communicated to the American Antiquarian Society for publication, among other papers, a document in the hand writing of Major Gookin, giving a particular account of the disposition of all the Praying Indians at this time, from which the above facts are taken. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 73 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“Kehonowsquaw, alias Sarah, the daughter and sole heiress of John Tahattawan, sachem, and late of Nashobah, deceased. Naanishcow, alias John Thomas. Naanasquaw, alias Rebeckah, wife to the said Naanishcow. Naashkinomenet, alias Solomon, eldest son of said Naanishcow and Naanasquaw, sister to the aforesaid Tahattawan. Weegrammominet, alias Thomas Waban. Nackcominewock, relict [widow] of Crooked Robin. Wunnuhhew, alias Sarah, wife to Neepanum, alias Tom Doublet. This tract of land was bounded by land sold by the aforesaid Indians to Robert Robbins and Peleg Lawrence both of Groton towne, which land is part of the aforesaid Nashobah Plantation, and this line is exactly two miles in length and runs east three degrees northerly, or west three degrees southerly, and the south end runs parallel with this line; on the westerly side it is bounded by the remainder of said Nashobah Plantation and that west line runs south seven degrees and thirty minutes east, four miles and one quarter. The northeast corner is about four or five poles southward of a very great rock that lieth in the line between the said Nashobah and Chelmsford plantation. [Registry of Deeds, vol. x., page 117]. The remaining history of Nashobah properly belongs to Littleton. It may be well, however, to remark that in 1714 when that town was incorporated, 500 acres of land were reserved for the Indian proprietors. Sarah Doublet, an Indian, was the only heir to it in 1734, being then old and blind, and committed to the care of Samuel Jones of Concord. She then petitioned for liberty to sell it to pay her maintenance and it was granted for the purpose to Elnathan Jones and Mr. Tenney. One corner was near the southeast part of Nagog Pond; then across the pond, north ten degrees west, 133 rods north of said pond to a point, and then making a right angle, it ran 286 rods, and then across Nagog Pond to the first place mentioned.26

26. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston MA: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy, 1835 (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.)

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1685

Joseph Bampfield (florut 1639-1685), COLONEL JOSEPH BAMPFIELD’S APOLOGY: “WRITTEN BY HIMSELF AND PRINTED AT HIS DESIRE.”At Philadelphia, Patrick Robinson, clerk of the Provincial Council, had rented a house WRITTEN BY HIMSELF

on the western side of 2nd Street, between High Street and the Christ Church, and had equipped it with fetters and chains for use as a gaol. The partitions in this prison were constructed of 4-inch poplar plank and the planks were dovetailed together at the corners. This house was surrounded by a very thick stone wall. Such an arrangement being inadequate, plans were being made for a 2-story prison house 20 feet long and 14 feet wide, “the upper seven feet, and the under six and a half feet, of which four feet under ground, with all convenient lights and doors, and casements — strong and substantial, with good brick, lime, sand and stone, as also floors and roofs very substantial; a partition of brick in the middle through the house, so that there will be four rooms, four chimneys, and the cock-loft, which will serve for a prison; and the gaoler may well live in any part of it, if need be — the whole to cost £140,” in the middle of High street, eastward of the court house on Second street.

The Indian Library press of the Reverend John Eliot did a 2d printing of its BAYLY’S PRACTICE OF PIETY, and produced a volume in English entitled DYING SPEECHES, and produced another 2,000 copies in the Nipmuc language of THE HOLY BIBLE that it had issued in 1663 — what Henry Thoreau in CAPE COD would be referring to eventually as “the Apostle Eliot’s Epistle to the Nipmucks”:

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(Actually during this year the press printed 2,000 copies of THE OLD TESTAMENT and bound them with 2,000 stockpiled copies of the edition of THE NEW TESTAMENT which had been printed in 1680.)

[on following screen]

This all seems most impressive. The historian Samuel Eliot Morison, however, has referred to this Indian Library of the Reverend Eliot as “the most notable –and least useful– production of the press of this period.”27 We simply don’t know what happened to the bulk of the materials that had been pushed through this press. It certainly has not shown up on the shelves of any libraries or private collections! One suspicion is that, to minimize the perplexity offered by the thought of red natives who were not real enemies and to minimize the perplexity offered by the thought of red natives who were other than hopelessly primitive, the whites of the Bay Colony were simply disposing of as much of the Reverend Eliot’s Nipmuc production as from time to time fell into their hands. —In other words, burning Bibles. But we don’t know, and probably will never know. All we now know for sure is:

“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

27. Professor Morison was the last Harvard historian to ride a horse to work. He taught the young Harvard men while attired in riding breeches. He refused to teach the Radcliffe girls because girls are so frivolous. He believed so passionately that the writing of history was an art that, when interrupted at his desk by the barking of a dog, he shot the dog. After WWII he taught while attired in an Admiral’s uniform. 76 Copyright  Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1687

It was in about this year the Indian Library of the Reverend John Eliot issued a 3d edition of its 1669 THE INDIAN PRIMER, mostly in the Nipmuc language.

Meanwhile the Christian religion was in payback mode as two families of Groton, the Lawrence family and the Robbins family, obtained for themselves a two-mile swath cut out of what had been the Nashobah Plantation for Praying Indians.

“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

A Declaration of Indulgence was issued by the king, which prohibited any discrimination against Catholics. This decree, combined with the tyranny of Andros made the Puritans quite upset; the next year, they sent the Reverend Increase Mather over to England, in order that he might persuade James to revoke the royal charter and to give New England back its old one. No sooner had Increase arrived and nearly convinced James, than he was overthrown and a new pair of monarchs, William and Mary, assumed the throne of England. Again Mather tried to lobby for the old charter of Massachusetts, but to no avail.

The Reverend Cotton Mather’s MILITARY DUTIES, RECOMMENDED TO AN ARTILLERY COMPANY; AT THEIR ELECTION OF OFFICERS, IN CHARLES-TOWN....

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March 19, Wednesday: Daniel Gookin died so poor that the Reverend John Eliot would solicit from Robert Boyle a gift of £10 for the relief of his widow (the 3d wife, with whom he had gotten married only seven months before) Mrs. Hannah Tyng Savage Gookin.

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The body would be interred at the Old Cambridge Burying Ground, the town’s main burial site opposite Harvard College’s Johnson gate. His table tomb, on which you can still read the epitaph, is topped with a heart- shaped inset (which is so similar to the one cut for major Thomas Savage in King’s Chapel Burying Ground in Boston in 1682 that we think probably it was done by the “Old Boston Stone Cutter”).

In addition to having written the texts we have available today, he had authored a history of New England which, unfortunately, has mostly been destroyed in manuscript.

CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

READ GOOKIN TEXT

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Here lyeth intered ye body of Major Genel DANIEL GOOKINS aged 75 years, who departed this life ye 19 of March 1687

1688

The Indian Library of the Reverend John Eliot printed off another batch of a volume in the Nipmuc language which it had issued in 1664, BAXTER’S CALL (TO THE UNCONVERTED).

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1689

The Indian Library of the Reverend John Eliot issued its final volume, SHEPARD’S CONVERTS.

1690

May 21, Sunday: John Eliot died in Roxbury outside Boston.

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1835

September 12, Saturday: It was the 2d centennial of the founding of the town of Concord and Waldo Emerson stood before its assembled citizenry in the old church to deliver the 2d Centennial Anniversary Address. The structure was packed so full that it was felt appropriate to place props under the galleries. Still “one of them settled alarmingly with the weight,” and when it “cracked ominously” some members of the audience made a rush to save themselves. Emerson, however, read for an hour and three-quarters: “A Historical Discourse, Delivered before the Citizens of Concord, 12th September 1835.” (See Rusk, Volume I, pages 451-453.) Good people, they sat still to hear about themselves. The paper told them how fine New Englanders were and what a grand institution the New England town meeting was:

It is the consequence of this institution that not a school-house, a public pew, a bridge, a pound, a mill- dam, hath been set up, or pulled down, or altered, or bought, or sold, without the whole population of this town having a voice in the affair. A general contentment is the result. And the people truly feel that they are lords of the soil. In every winding road, in every stone fence, in the smokes of the poor-house chimney, in the clock on the church, they read their own power, and consider, at leisure, the wisdom and error of their judgments.

Waldo, in his wisdom, specifically called for the compensated emancipation of all American slaves (no compensation whatever to the slaves for their stolen labor, of course, and no provisions whatever for their illness or old age), followed of course by a total black repatriation to the coast of Africa. He supposed this could be accomplished at the ridiculously low cost of one week’s wages, which is to say approximately $6, per white citizen worker: “It is said, it will cost a thousand millions of dollars to buy the slaves, — which sounds like a fabulous price. But if a price were named in good faith, — with the other elements of a practicable treaty in readiness, and with the convictions of mankind on this mischief once well awake and conspiring, I do not think that any amount that figures could tell, founded on an estimate, would be quite unmanageable. Every man in the world might give a week’s work to sweep this mountain of calamities out of the earth.”

As part of the oration, Emerson pointed out that after the Reverend “John Eliot’s praying Indians” had requested permission to establish a “praying village” near Concord, and had been granted such permission,

It is the misfortune of Concord to have permitted a disgraceful outrage upon the friendly Indians settled within its limits, in February, 1676, which ended in their forcible expulsion from the town.

That’s all. Nothing about racial mass murder, or the violation of the innocent woman and child. JOHN ELIOT

John Shepard Keyes liked this one heck of a lot — self-congratulation being right up his alley: At any rate I had never enjoyed so much in a day before and I keep the manuscript of Emersons oration to this day as my

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greatest literary treasure, and I mean never to part with it. J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY O C R the 64 pages of: Waldo Emerson’s “A Historical Discourse, Delivered before the Citizens of Concord, 12th September 1835”

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A quotation from page 36 of Dr. Edward Jarvis’s TRADITIONS AND REMINISCENCES OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS 1779-1878, in regard to the elaborate mechanics of this celebration, is to be found on the following screen: [next screen]

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The dinner tent was in the field where now (1875) stands the dwelling of Judge Brooks. Mr. Shepherd, the excellent keeper of the hotel, was professionally ambitious and unwilling to set out a cheap dinner to which the multitude should come. He would get one that would be honorable to his hotel and to the town. The majority and the leading influences in the committee agreed with him and accepted his proposition to have a dinner at the cost of a $1.50 for each person. There was not then nor has there since been any doubt that Mr. Shepherd’s dinner was worth that sum or that as a matter of entertainment it was an honor to his skill and good taste and honorable dealing with customs. But although about 400 ate at this table and enjoyed the intellectual feast that followed, there was yet very many to whom it was an impossibility and these were kept away, who otherwise might have joined in the festivity and contributed by their presence to swell the gathering of Concord and her children and children’s children at their family homes.... They remembered and brought up the scene on the Common when Lafayette was entertained in 1825 and said that this, like that, was for the glorification of the rich and [that it was] framed [planned] with the necessary consequence of the mortification of the mass of the people. Means were taken and influences used to persuade people not to accept this hospitality as alluded to in the article opposite then printed in the Concord paper. [The article referred is a letter dated September 12, 1835, signed “The wife of a Middlesex farmer,” and describes the events of the centennial celebration: “I notice those who in independence might leisurely recline on a hair-cloth sofa with a volume of the ILIAD, or ride in a splendid carriage to variegate the scene; here were those, who in the humbler walks of life ply their needles or tend their dairies for a livelihood -- all, all seemed happy without any inequality or distinction.... Most of us have the means of educating our children, as well as those who count their thousands; let us do it, and ever impress on their minds that true greatness and superiority consists more in wisdom and merit than in splendid equipages and fine houses.”]... When the committee had finished their work and paid all the bills for expenses incurred under their direction, they found that they had exceeded the town’s appropriation by about one hundred dollars. At first view, seeing that all this town’s money had been expended in carrying out the purposes of the town, it would seem that this excess should be reported to the town and an additional appropriation asked for the payment. But the committee remembered the dissatisfaction that had been manifested by some and the undercurrent of censure that had been stirred by the leading malcontents and thought it more wise to ask no more grant of the town and avoid any opportunity of public complaint or unkind taunting at the gathering of the people. They therefore unanimously agreed to pay this deficiency out of their own private funds, each paying an equal proportion of the whole.

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Meanwhile, on the opposite coast of the continent, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. was getting involved again in the port business of carrying hides, ferrying passengers, etc., in San Pedro harbor just as in San Diego harbor, the biggest difference between the two anchorages being that the ship was now farther offshore.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: The next morning, according to the orders of the agent, the Pilgrim set sail for the windward, to be gone three or four months. She got under weigh with very little fuss, and came so near us as to throw a letter on board, Captain Faucon standing at the tiller himself, and steering her as he would a mackerel smack. When Captain T______was in command of the Pilgrim, there was as much preparation and ceremony as there would be in getting a seventy-four under weigh. Captain Faucon was a sailor, every inch of him; he knew what a ship was, and was as much at home in one, as a cobbler in his stall. I wanted no better proof of this than the opinion of the ship’s crew, for they had been six months under his command, and knew what he was; and if sailors allow their captain to be a good seaman, you may be sure he is one, for that is a thing they are not always ready to say. After the Pilgrim left us, we lay three weeks at San Pedro, from the 11th of September until the 2nd of October, engaged in the usual port duties of landing cargo, taking off hides, etc., etc. These duties were much easier, and went on much more agreeably, than on board the Pilgrim. “The more, the merrier,” is the sailor’s maxim; and a boat’s crew of a dozen could take off all the hides brought down in a day, without much trouble, by division of labor; and on shore, as well as on board, a good will, and no discontent or grumbling, make everything go well. The officer, too, who usually went with us, the third mate, was a fine young fellow, and made no unnecessary trouble; so that we generally had quite a sociable time, and were glad to be relieved from the restraint of the ship. While here, I often thought of the miserable, gloomy weeks we had spent in this dull place, in the brig; discontent and hard usage on board, and four hands to do all the work on shore. Give me a big ship. There is more room, more hands, better outfit, better regulation, more life, and more company. Another thing was better arranged here: we had a regular gig’s crew. A light whale-boat, handsomely painted, and fitted out with stern seats, yoke, tiller-ropes, etc., hung on the starboard quarter, and was used as the gig. The youngest lad in the ship, a Boston boy about thirteen years old, was coxswain of this boat, and had the entire charge of her, to keep her clean, and have her in readiness to go and come at any hour. Four light hands, of about the same size and age, of whom I was one, formed the crew. Each had his oar and seat numbered, and we were obliged to be in our places, have our oars scraped white, our tholepins in, and the fenders over the side. The bow-man had charge of the boat-hook and painter, and the coxswain of the rudder, yoke, and stern-sheets. Our duty was to carry the captain and agent about, and passengers off and on; which last was no trifling duty, as the people on shore have no boats, and every purchaser, from the boy who buys his pair of shoes, to the trader who buys his casks and bales, were to be taken off and on, in our boat. Some days, when people were coming

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and going fast, we were in the boat, pulling off and on, all day long, with hardly time for our meals; making, as we lay nearly three miles from shore, from forty to fifty miles rowing in a day. Still, we thought it the best berth in the ship; for when the gig was employed, we had nothing to do with the cargo, except small bundles which the passengers carried with them, and no hides to carry, besides the opportunity of seeing everybody, making acquaintances, hearing the news, etc. Unless the captain or agent were in the boat, we had no officer with us, and often had fine times with the passengers, who were always willing to talk and joke with us. Frequently, too, we were obliged to wait several hours on shore; when we would haul the boat up on the beach, and leaving one to watch her, go up to the nearest house, or spend the time in strolling about the beach, picking up shells, or playing hopscotch, and other games, on the hard sand. The rest of the crew never left the ship, except for bringing heavy goods and taking off hides; and though we were always in the water, the surf hardly leaving us a dry thread from morning till night, yet we were young, and the climate was good, and we thought it much better than the quiet, hum-drum drag and pull on board ship. We made the acquaintance of nearly half of California; for, besides carrying everybody in our boat,– men, women, and children,– all the messages, letters, and light packages went by us, and being known by our dress, we found a ready reception everywhere. At San Pedro, we had none of this amusement, for, there being but one house in the place, we, of course, had but little company. All the variety that I had, was riding, once a week, to the nearest rancho, to order a bullock down for the ship. The brig Catalina came in from San Diego, and being bound up to windward, we both got under weigh at the same time, for a trial of speed up to Santa Barbara, a distance of about eighty miles. We hove up and got under sail about eleven o’clock at night, with a light land-breeze, which died away toward morning, leaving us becalmed only a few miles from our anchoring-place. The Catalina, being a small vessel, of less than half our size, put out sweeps and got a boat ahead, and pulled out to sea, during the night, so that she had the sea-breeze earlier and stronger than we did, and we had the mortification of seeing her standing up the coast, with a fine breeze, the sea all ruffled about her, while we were becalmed, in-shore. When the sea-breeze died away, she was nearly out of sight; and, toward the latter part of the afternoon, the regular north-west wind set in fresh, we braced sharp upon it, took a pull at every sheet, tack, and halyard, and stood after her, in fine style, our ship being very good upon a taughtened bowline. We had nearly five hours of fine sailing, beating up to windward, by long stretches in and off shore, and evidently gaining upon the Catalina at every tack. When this breeze left us, we were so near as to count the painted ports on her side. Fortunately, the wind died away when we were on our inward tack, and she on her outward, so we were in-shore, and caught the land-breeze first, which came off upon our quarter, about the middle of the first watch. All hands were turned-up, and we set all sail, to the skysails and the royal studding-sails; and with these, we glided quietly through the

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water, leaving the Catalina, which could not spread so much canvas as we, gradually astern, and, by daylight, were off St. Buenaventura, and our antagonist nearly out of sight. The sea- breeze, however, favored her again, while we were becalmed under the headland, and laboring slowly along, she was abreast of us by noon. Thus we continued, ahead, astern, and abreast of one another, alternately; now, far out at sea, and again, close in under the shore. On the third morning, we came into the great bay of Santa Barbara, two hours behind the brig, and thus lost the bet; though, if the race had been to the point, we should have beaten her by five or six hours. This, however, settled the relative sailing of the vessels, for it was admitted that although she, being small and light, could gain upon us in very light winds, yet whenever there was breeze enough to set us agoing, we walked away from her like hauling in a line; and in beating to windward, which is the best trial of a vessel, we had much the advantage of her.

Wilhelm Wieprecht, director of the Berlin Gardes du Corps-Musik, received a patent for a bass tuba.

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 12th of 9th M 1835 / I dreamed a dream last night which I have often thought of thro’ the day. I was at the School in Providence where I saw a scene, which I shall not describe - It was among the classical Schollars & my mind was so wrought upon by it, that I fell to preaching to them with a powerful voice & with such regularity & connection as made me wonder at my self as when ever I have offered any thing among them my expressions have been few & under a degree of embarrassment - Well I have greatly desired & laboured much for the welfare of that Institution, but if things remain as they were when I was last there, & if they should prove as I saw them in my dream last night - it is Certainly time there was some change in its condition. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

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1836

In this year a volume of Harvard College records was published. As you might imagine, they had to do it up in Latin: HARVARD RECORDS

A group of undergraduates had begun to publish a magazine of their own writings in September 1835 and would continue this practice until June 1838. The undergraduate David Greene Haskins would publish several articles anonymously during his Junior and Senior years, but David Henry Thoreau would take no part in such activity.28 At this point the group reissued the accumulating materials as a 2d book volume:29 HARVARDIANA, VOL. II

Harvard French and Spanish instructor Francis Sales in this year put out a revised, emended, improved, and enlarged 7th American edition of Augutin Louis Josse (1763-1841)’s A GRAMMAR OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE, WITH PRACTICAL EXERCISES (1827; Boston: Munroe and Francis, 128 Washington-Street, corner of Water-Street. 1836, 7th American Edition; Boston: Munroe and Francis, etc. 1842, 10th American Edition: Boston: James Munroe and Company). This 1836 edition would be found in Henry Thoreau’s personal library and is now, with a front free endpaper bearing the notation “D H. Thoreau,” in the special collections of the Concord Free Public Library (having been donated by Sophia E. Thoreau in 1874). GRAMMAR OF SPANISH

Since William Whiting had graduated from Harvard College with the degree of Bachelor of Arts with the Class of 1833, in this year in the normal course of events he would receive in addition the customary degree of Master of Arts.

The publication of volumes V and VI of the Reverend Professor Jared Sparks of Harvard’s THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY. LIBRARY OF AM. BIOG. V LIBRARY OF AM. BIOG. VI

These volumes encompassed four contributions:

•LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT by the Reverend Convers Francis. LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT

28. In later life the Reverend Haskins, a relative of Waldo Emerson on his mother’s side, would denigrate his classmate Thoreau for having neglected to contribute to this undergraduate literary effort. He would aver that Thoreau had neither been a good scholar nor a convivial classmate — in addition, he would cast Thoreau as a mere imitator of his cousin the Sage of Concord. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 91 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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•LIFE OF WILLIAM PINKNEY by Henry Wheaton LIFE OF WILLIAM PINKNEY

•LIFE OF WILLIAM ELLERY by Edward T. Channing LIFE OF WILLIAM ELLERY

•LIFE OF COTTON MATHER by William B.O. Peabody LIFE OF COTTON MATHER

29. There would be three such volumes, labeled Volume I, Volume II, and Volume IV. There does not seem to have been a Volume III published in this book form (apparently it was produced only in monthly magazine form) and no electronic text as yet exists, for the Volume I that had been published. The initial editorial group for his magazine consisted of Charles Hayward, Samuel Tenney Hildreth, Charles Stearns Wheeler, and perhaps for a time Horatio Hale, and their editorial office was a small room on what has become Holyoke Street. Thoreau had volumes II and IV in his personal library, and would give them to F.H. Bigelow. The illustration used on the cover of the magazine represented University Hall:

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After November 17, Thursday: David Henry Thoreau supplemented his borrowings from the Harvard Library by checking out, from the library of the “Institute of 1770,” Volume 92 of the North American Review — the volume which contains Harvard Professor Charles Beck (1798-1866)’s “Heine’s Letters on German Literature,” a review of LETTERS AUXILIARY, a review “Travellers in America” of the just-published first part of Alexis de Tocqueville’s ONTHE DEMOCRACY OF AMERICA, and critical notices of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s LETTERS, CONVERSATIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS, the Reverend Convers Francis’s LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT, THE APOSTLE TO THE INDIANS (in the 5th of the ten volumes of the 1st Series of the Reverend Jared Sparks’s THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY), LIBRARY OF AM. BIOG. V

and Thomas K. Fessenden’s TERRIBLE TRACTORATION!! A POETICAL PETITION AGAINST GALVANISING TRUMPERY, AND THE PERKINISTIC INSTITUTION. IN FOUR CANTOS (BY CHRISTOPHER CAUSTIC) (London: Printed for T. Hurst, 1803).

1850

Fall: Native Americans camped along the Concord River, and Henry Thoreau made notes on materials and techniques.30

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: June 29, 2013

30. So what band would this have been, of what tribe, and where were they based? (Subsequent to the Vietnam-style “free fire zone” ordinance of 1675, and subsequent to their release from the Deer Island and Clarke’s Island concentration camps in Boston harbor in 1676, Native Americans, alone or in groups, had not been at liberty to just wander around anywhere in New England they pleased — even if they were descendants of the Reverend John Eliot’s “Praying Indians,” longtime converts to Christianity.) “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 95 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request we have pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining. To respond to such a request for information, we merely push a button.

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Commonly, the first output of the program has obvious deficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and do a recompile of the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place your requests with . Arrgh.

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