Massasoit of The

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OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER” — THE MASSASOIT OF THE

1 WAMPANOAG (THOSE OF THE DAWN)

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

1. Massasoit is not a personal name but a title, translating roughly as “The Shahanshah.” Like most native American men of the period, he had a number of personal names. Among these were Ousamequin or “Yellow Feather,” and Wasamegin. He was not only the sachem of the Pokanoket of the Mount Hope peninsula of Narragansett Bay, now Bristol and nearby Warren, Rhode Island, but also the grand sachem or Massasoit of the entire Wampanoag people. The other seven Wampanoag sagamores had all made their submissions to him, so that his influence extended to all the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay, all of Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and the Elizabeth islands. His subordinates led the peoples of what is now Middleboro (the Nemasket), the peoples of what is now Tiverton (the Pocasset), and the peoples of what is now Little Compton (the Sakonnet). The other side of the Narragansett Bay was controlled by Narragansett sachems. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1565

It would have been at about this point that Canonicus would have been born, the 1st son of the union of the son and daughter of the Narragansett headman Tashtassuck. Such a birth in that culture was considered auspicious, so we may anticipate that this infant will grow up to be a Very Important Person.

Canonicus’s principle place of residence was on an island near the present Cocumcussoc of Jamestown and Wickford, Rhode Island. The island would receive the name Conanicut (Quononicut) in his honor. He had three younger brothers. Eventually, Canonicus would share rule with his brother Mascus, with Canonicus providing leadership in counsel and Mascus serving as war leader. During this time the Massachusett, Wampanoag, Nipmuc, Sakonnet, Nauset, Shawomet, Niantic, and Coweset peoples came to be subject to Narragansett rule. At the height of their influence, the Narragansett ruled about 30,000 people. Mascus died before the arrival of the English. However, shortly after his death, in about 1618, Ousamequin Yellow Feather (the Massasoit) of Pokanoket and 10 of his sagamores (subordinate sachems) would be obligated to attend a council held by Canonicus and Mascus’s son and successor, Miantonomi, and formally acknowledge himself and his lands as vassals of the Narragansett. –Politics as usual.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The Massasoit HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1590

Ousamequin Yellow Feather, who would become the Massasoit of his people the Wampanoag, was born in the village of Pokanoket near present-day Bristol, Rhode Island.2 This group of people were considered to be “Those of the Dawn” because –living as they were along the seaboard– they had gone the farthest in the direction of the sunrise.

2. Massasoit is not a personal name but a title, translating roughly as “Sachem of the Sachems,” as in “The Shahanshah.” Like most native American men of the period, he had a number of personal names. Among these were Ousamequin or “Yellow Feather,” and Wasamegin. The above may arguably be –and may forever remain– the only statue erected by Massachusetts in honor of a politician from Rhode Island! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The Massasoit HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1606

Among the Wampanoag tribespeoples, the Nauset and Mashpee bands, due to their exposed position on Cape Cod, had contact with the expedition of Captain Samuel de Champlain.

(At this point their Massasoit, known to them as Ousamequin “Yellow Feather,” was only a teenager.)

Meanwhile, up the coast at the French trading post at Port Royal (Annapolis) in Nova Scotia, a carpenter was HDT WHAT? INDEX

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being buried:

CAPE COD: The very gravestones of those Frenchmen are probably PEOPLE OF older than the oldest English monument in New England north of CAPE COD the Elizabeth Islands, or perhaps anywhere in New England, for if there are any traces of Gosnold’s storehouse left, his strong works are gone. Bancroft says, advisedly, in 1834, “It requires BANCROFT a believing eye to discern the ruins of the fort”; and that there were no ruins of a fort in 1837. Dr. Charles T. Jackson tells me JACKSON that, in the course of a geological survey in 1827, he discovered a gravestone, a slab of trap rock, on Goat Island, opposite Annapolis (Port Royal), in Nova Scotia, bearing a Masonic coat- of-arms and the date 1606, which is fourteen years earlier than the landing of the Pilgrims. This was left in the possession of HALIBURTON Judge Haliburton, of Nova Scotia.

What, a “carpenter,” rather than a “Mason”? Yes indeed, the Masonic Order has decided that whatever Charles T. Jackson might have supposed when he found the grave marker in 1827 –whatever Jackson might have offered to Henry Thoreau– this buried guy could not have been of them: The Masonic Stone of 1606 By R.W. Bro. REGINALD V. HARRIS, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Grand Historian, Grand Lodge of Nova Scotia3

It will be good to read this article in conjunction with Bro. Harris’ article on “Freemasonry in Nova Scotia” published in The Builder of August last; and with the Study Club article of last month. Bro. Harris’ critical analysis of the claims of the Nova Scotia stone to be the monument of the earliest known appearance of Freemasonry on this continent was published in Transactions of Nova Scotia Lodge of Research, Jan. 31, 1916; as here given he has altered it somewhat. WHAT some Masonic students and historians regard as the earliest trace of the existence of Freemasons or Freemasonry on this continent so far as we are now aware, is afforded by the inscriptions on a stone found in 1827 upon the shores of Annapolis Basin, Nova Scotia. There are two accounts of the finding of this stone. The first, from the pen of Judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton (known to us as the author of “Sam Slick”), was written in the year of the finding of the stone or very shortly afterward, and is to be found in his HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF NOVA SCOTIA, published in 1829 (Vol. II., pp. 155-157), as follows: About six miles below the ferry is situated Goat Island, which separates the Annapolis Basin from that of Digby, and forms two entrances to the former. The western channel, though narrow, is deep and generally preferred to others. A small peninsula, extending from the Granville shore, forms one of its sides. On this point of land the first piece of ground was cleared for cultivation in Nova Scotia by the French. They were induced to make this selection on account of the beauty of its situation, the good anchorage opposite it the command which it gave them of the channel, and the facility it afforded of giving the earliest notice to the garrison at Port Royal of the entrance of an enemy into the Lower Basin. In the year 1827 the stone was 3. As published in The Builder Magazine for October 1924 (Volume X, Number 10). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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discovered upon which they had engraved the date of their first cultivation of the soil, in memorial of their formal possession of the country. It is about two feet and a half long and two feet broad, and of the same kind as that which forms the substratum of Granville Mountain. On the upper part are engraved the square and compass of the Free Mason, and in the centre, in large and deep Arable figures the date 1606. It does not appear to have been dressed by a mason, but the inscription has been cut on its natural surface. The stone itself has yielded to the power of the climate, and both the external front and the interior parts of the letters alike suffered from exposure to the weather: the seams on the back of it have opened, and, from their capacity to hold water and the operation of frost on it when thus confined, it is probable in a few years it would have crumbled to pieces. The date is distinctly visible, and although the figure 0 is worn down to one-half of its original depth and the upper part of the figure 6 nearly as much, yet no part of them is obliterated — they are plainly discernible to the eye and easily traced by the finger. At a subsequent period, when the country was conquered by the English, some Scotch emigrants were sent out by Sir William Alexander, who erected a fort on the site of the French cornfields, previous to the Treaty of St. Germain’s. The remains of this fort may be traced with great ease, the old parade, the embankment and ditch, have not been disturbed, and preserve their original form. It was occupied by the French for many years after the peace of 1632. * * * * The other account of the finding of the stone is contained in a letter written nearly thirty years after the event, and now in the possession of the New England Historic-Genealogical Society from the pen of Dr. Charles T. Jackson of Boston, the celebrated chemist and geologist. It is in the following words: June 2, 1856. Dear Sir: When Francis Alger and myself made a mineralogical survey of Nova Scotia in 1827 we discovered upon the shore of Goat Island, in Annapolis Basin, a grave-stone partly covered with sand and lying on the shore. It bore the Masonic emblems, square and compass, and had the figures 1606 cut in it. The rock was a flat slab of trap rock, common in the vicinity. At the ferry from Annapolis to Granville we saw a large rounded rock with this inscription ‘La Belle 1649.’ These inscriptions were undoubtedly intended to commemorate the place of burial of French soldiers who came to Nova Scotia, “Annapolis Royal, Acadia,” in 1603. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Coins, buttons and other articles originally belonging to these early French settlers, are found in the soil of Goat Island in Annapolis Basin. The slab bearing date 1606, I had brought over by the Ferryman to Annapolis, and ordered it to be packed in a box to be sent to the Old Colony Pilgrim Society (of Plymouth, Mass.), but Judge Haliburton, then Thomas Haliburton, Esq., prevailed on me to abandon it to him, and he now has it carefully preserved. On a late visit to Nova Scotia I found that the Judge had forgotten how he came by it, and so I told him all about it. * * * * * * * Yours truly, C. T. Jackson. (Addressed)

J.W. Thornton (Present.) This letter is accompanied by a photograph of the stone made some thirty years later showing the square and compasses and the figures 1606, rudely cut and much worn by time and weather, but still quite distinct.

We shall later refer more particularly to the stone itself and the two accounts of its finding, but wish first to refer to the subsequent history of the stone which is most singularly unfortunate. About 1887 it was given by Robert Grant Haliburton (son of Judge T.C. Haliburton) to the Canadian Institute of Toronto with the understanding that the stone should be inserted in the wall of the building then being erected for the Institute. It was to be placed in the wall, the inscription facing inside in one of the principal rooms. Sir Sanford Fleming wrote that he received the stone from Mr. R.G. Haliburton for the purpose of being placed in the museum of the Canadian Institute, Toronto, in order that it might be properly cared for. There is an entry respecting it in the minutes of the Institute, acknowledging its arrival and receipt. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Sir Daniel Wilson was then President, and on March 21, 1888, read a paper on “Traces of European Immigration in the 17th Century,” and exhibited the stone found at Port Royal bearing date 1606. Sir Sanford Fleming further adds: I have myself seen it more than once since its being placed in the Canadian Institute. When the building was erected on the northwest corner of Richmond and Berti Streets, Toronto instructions were given by Dr. Scadding to build it into the wall with the inscription exposed; but, very stupidly, it is said the plasterer covered it over with plaster, and even the spot cannot now be traced, although the plaster has been removed at several places to look for it. Before these facts were made known to me, or any trace could be had of the stone, I had a long correspondence with the Institute authorities, and I further offered a reward of $1,000 for the stone if it could be found but it was all to no purpose. I regret extremely that I can throw so little light on it at this day. If ever the present building be taken down diligent search should be made for the historic stone, perhaps, the oldest inscription stone in America. It is a most regrettable fact that this priceless stone should have ever gone out of Nova Scotia. The necessity for a Masonic museum in this Province needs no argument when such things as this happen.

HALIBURTON’S ACCOUNT IS PROBABLY MORE CORRECT To return to the two accounts of the finding of the stone itself, there can be little or no doubt that Judge Haliburton’s account written at the time of the discovery and on the spot, by one who had made a study of the locality and of its history, is correct; and that Dr. Jackson’s account, written from recollection thirty years after he found the stone, cannot be relied upon as to the place of discovery. Moreover, the historical facts stated by Judge Haliburton as to the place of the first settlement by the French establish beyond any doubt that the stone marked with the date 1606 was found on the peninsula extending from the Granville shore opposite Goat Island, Annapolis Basin. As to the inscription on the stone, although the stone is not now to be found for inspection, there can be little or no doubt as to the particulars of that inscription. Judge Haliburton undoubtedly wrote his description of the stone with it immediately before him. Dr. Jackson’s account made after he had seen it a second time, confirms it and the photograph made before the stone was sent to Toronto further establishes the fact that the stone bore the date 1606 and the “square and compasses” of the Mason, though these emblems would seem to be too much worn HDT WHAT? INDEX

OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER”THE MASSASOIT

away to admit of a good photographic reproduction, a condition not to be wondered at after an exposure to the weather for over two hundred years. On the other hand, some who have examined only the photograph have doubted whether the marks on the stone (other than the date 1606) were really the square and compasses of the Freemason. The fact that these marks appear not to have been cut so deeply and well has suggested to them that they are surface scratches such as might have been made accidentally in digging with a pick or spade. An examination of the photograph, however, clearly shows that the marks are more than mere scratches — deeper, clearer and more lasting, as they must have been to survive the attacks of the elements for more than two centuries. Judge Haliburton in describing the stone says: “It does not appear to have been dressed by a mason but the inscription has been cut on its natural surface.” It is quite impossible today to decide whether the inscription was the work of a skilled or unskilled workman. Turning now to the explanations and theories respecting the inscription. Judge Haliburton describes it as a stone “upon which they (the French) had engraved the date of their cultivation of the soil, in memorial of their formal possession of the country.” Against this theory may be urged the fact that the first cultivation of the soil by these French settlers was in 1605 and not 1606; Champlain’s map showing gardens is dated 1605; also that they had taken possession of the country in 1604; and the probability that a national emblem, such as the fleur-de-lis, would be used rather than a Masonic emblem for such purposes. That this is exactly what they did is evident from the record of Argall’s capture of Port Royal. In Murdoch’s HISTORY OF NOVA SCOTIA he states that in 1614 “Argall destroyed the fort and all monuments and marks of French national power. It is recorded that he even caused the names of Demonts and other captains and the fleur-de-lis to be effaced with pick and chisel from a massive stone on which they had been engraved.” This account not only shows what emblems the French used to commemorate their occupation of the country, but also that if this stone was visible it does not commemorate a national event.

IT DID NOT COMMEMORATE FOUNDING OF A MASONIC LODGE The theory that the stone might commemorate the establishment of a lodge of Freemasons has virtually nothing to support it, though it is perhaps more than a matter of interest that during the winter of 1606-7 the French colonists, under the leadership of Champlain, established a sort of club or society styled the “Ordre de Bon Temps,” consisting of fifteen members. Each member in turn became the caterer to his brethren, a plan which excited so much emulation among them that each endeavored to excel his predecessor in office, in the variety, profusion and quality of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the viands procured for the table during his term of office. Lescarbot, a member of the society and the historian of these early events, says that on each such occasion the host wore the collar “of the order and a napkin and carried a staff.” At dinner, he marshalled the way to the table at the head of the procession of guests. After supper he resigned the insignia of office to his successor, with the ceremony of drinking to him in a cup of wine. The little company included several distinguished names: Poutrincourt, the real founder of Port Royal; Champlain, the founder of Quebec, two years later, and the historian of many events at Port Royal; Biencourt, Poutrincourt’s son; Lescarbot, advocate, poet and historian of this early period; Louis Hebert, one of the first settlers of Quebec; Robert Grave, Champdore, and Daniel Hay, a surgeon. That this social club was Speculative Freemasonry is highly improbable. The colony was a French settlement, and Speculative Freemasonry was not known in France for more than a hundred years afterward, namely in 1718. The corporations and gilds of stonemasons and architects, we are told in Rebold’s GENERAL H ISTORY OF FREEMASONRY, were suppressed in 1539 by Francis I., although a sort of trade unionism seems to have existed from about 1650, and a correspondence with each other is believed to have taken place between the unions at Marseilles, Paris, Lyons, and certain cities in Belgium. These were undoubtedly operative bodies and consisted of not only masons and stone cutters, but of members of other trades, carpenters, architects, decorators, etc. That a union of these workmen may have existed at Port Royal is not of course impossible, but that it contained any speculative members is exceedingly improbable. In England evidence is lacking of the admission of Speculative Masons into Masonic lodges prior to 1646, and in Scotland prior to 1634. If such a speculative lodge existed at Port Royal in 1606 or if the Ordre de Bon Temps was even in a remote way connected with any trade, either Champlain or Lescarbot in their very detailed accounts of these early days would have mentioned other facts which would establish beyond any doubt such relationship. The entire absence of any such facts must be taken as conclusive in this matter. There remains for consideration one other theory respecting the stone, that of Dr. Jackson; that it was “undoubtedly intended to commemorate the place of burial of French soldiers.” This expression of opinion by Dr. Jackson in 1856 may have been founded on information given him by Judge Haliburton on his “recent” visit to Nova Scotia, and may indicate that the judge had also changed his mind. Whatever the facts, the gravestone theory would seem to have more to support it than any other. First, as to the stone itself. As described by Judge Haliburton who had possession of the stone from 1827 until his removal to England in 1859, it evidently measured two by two and a half feet; undoubtedly monumental size and shape. Secondly, as to the place where it was found. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Champlain in his VOYAGES gives a plan of the fort erected by him in 1605. This plan shows a burying ground and a garden outside the eastern parapet or palisade. Judge Haliburton’s theory that the stone commemorated the first cultivation of the soil may have been based on the fact that it was found on the site of the garden but it is equally clear that it might also be a gravestone, although Dr. Jackson says in his letter of 1856 that it was found “upon the shore” “partly covered with sand and lying on the shore.” Assuming that the stone is a gravestone, two questions present themselves: 1st. Why are the square and compasses on the stone? 2nd. Whose gravestone is it? It will be convenient to answer these two queries together. Champlain in his history tells us that during the winter of 1605- 1606 six members of the little colony died. While Champlain does not give the names of those who departed this life nor whether they died’ before or after Jan. 1, 1606, yet from his context and Lescarbot’s account it would not be difficult to draw a very strong inference that all died before the New Year dawned. I think we may safely assume that the stone is not the gravestone of any of these six settlers.

LESCARBOT DESCRIBES THEIR ACTIVITIES In the spring of that year (1606) Poutrincourt, who had gone home with DeMonts in the autumn of 1605, induced Mare Lescarbot, an advocate of Paris, to join the colony. They reached Port Royal on July 27, where they remained until Aug. 28, when Poutrincourt started on an exploratory voyage down the American coast, as far as Cape Cod, leaving Lescarbot behind in charge of the colony. Lescarbot, in his New France, has this to say about the work done while the rest were away: Meanwhile I set about making ready the soil, setting off and enclosing gardens wherein to sow wheat and kitchen herbs. We also had a ditch dug all around the fort which was a matter of necessity to receive the dampness and the water which previously had oozed underneath our dwellings, amid the roots of the trees which had been cut down and which had very likely been the cause of the unhealthiness of the place. I have no time to stop here to describe in detail the several labours of our other workmen. Suffice it to say that we had numerous joiners, carpenters, masons, stone cutters, locksmiths workers in iron, tailors, wood sawyers, sailors, etc., who worked at their trades, and in doing so were very kindly used, for after three hours work a day they were free. * * * But while each of our said workmen had his special trade, they had also to set to work at whatever turned HDT WHAT? INDEX

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up, as many of them did. Certain masons and stone cutters turned their hands to baking and made as good bread as that of Paris. Let us note in passing the use by Lescarbot of the two words “masons” and “stone cutters.” The original French words in Lescarbot’s history are “masson” (mason) and “tailleur la Pierre,” the former being a word of wider significance than the other, including any operative on the construction of a building, using either stones, bricks, plaster or cement, the latter word denoting greater skill including not only the work of cutting inscriptions, but approaching the work of the sculptor. Poutrincourt’s party meanwhile spent some weeks exploring and when near Cape Cod a party of five young men landed in defiance of orders and were attacked by Indians. Three were killed and buried on the spot by their comrades; the other two were severely wounded; one of them, Duval, a locksmith, lived to take part in a revolt at Quebec two years later; the other was so pierced with arrows that he died on reaching Port Royal on Nov. 14, 1606, where he was buried. During the winter of 1606-1607 there were four deaths but these occurred in February and March, 1607, and not during the year 1606, according to both Champlain and Lescarbot. If, therefore, the stone was erected to mark the grave of one of the colonists who died during the year 1606, it must have been the grave of the man who died on Nov. 14, 1606, or shortly afterward of wounds received at Cape Cod. What was his profession or trade? We know Duval was a locksmith, and though this is very scant light for us to be guided by, it is probable that his companions on their wild episode on shore with the Indians were members of the various trades which Lescarbot says were at Port Royal at this time. This is merely assumption, and not conclusive. If he had been a man of standing either Champlain or Lescarbot would have named him. They name none of those who died at Port Royal. CARPENTERS HAD THEIR OWN MYSTERY We must not forget that at that time the carpenters of France had their own mystery or trade gild, worked on lines somewhat akin to Operative Masonry, and using the square and compasses as their emblem. This may be well illustrated by a short quotation from Felix Gras, the eminent Provencal poet and novelist, whose works were so highly esteemed by the late W.E. Gladstone. In his Les Rouges du Midi, a book dealing with the French Revolution (written in 1792), he describes a visit paid by Vauclair, a carpenter from Marseilles, to Planctot, a carpenter residing and working in Paris. As we stood outside the door we could hear the smooth “hush hush” of a big plane as it threw off the long shavings, but the planing stopped short at our loud HDT WHAT? INDEX

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knock, and then the door flew open and there was Planctot himself. It was plain that he knew Vauclair on the instant, but instead of shaking hands with him, he turned his back and rushed off like a crazy man.... In a few minutes we heard the clatter of old Planctot’s wooden shoes on the stair. He had come to greet Vauclair according to the rite and ceremonial of their craft. He had put on his Sunday hat and his best wig; and before he said a word he laid a compass and a square down on the floor between himself and Vauelair. At once Vauelair made the correct motions of hand and foot, to which Planetot replied properly and then, under their raised hands, they embraced over the ... compass and square. Old Planctot is several times called “le maitre,” “the master,” which I take to denote his standing in the Craft. I think there can be no historical doubt of the existence of such a craft gild among French carpenters at the beginning of the 17th century; that is, about 1606. Let us summarize our theories: First, the stone was a gravestone; secondly, it marked the last resting place of a French settler who died in 1606; thirdly, this settler was probably a workman and may have been an operative mason or stone cutter; fourthly, speculative Masonry, unknown in France in 1606, was not practiced by the French colonists; lastly, the emblem of square and compasses would seem to be a trade-mark or emblem undoubtedly used by operative masons as their emblem, and possibly by carpenters as well. In a word, the stone marked the grave of either a mason or stone cutter or possibly a carpenter who died Nov. 14, 1606, and not that of a Speculative Freemason. ----o---- “A king may make a noble knight, And breathe away another; But he in all his power and might, Cannot make a brother.” ----o----

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

1614

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The Massasoit HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Nauset and Mashpee bands of Wampanoag, living as they did on Cape Cod, had a fresh contact with the pale strangers from the ocean, this time with the expedition of Captain Thomas Hunt. At this point, while 27 of his tribespeople were being kidnapped to be sold into slavery in Malága, Massasoit, also known as Ousamequin “Yellow Feather,” was a young adult. Among the captives was a young man named Squanto or Tisquantum of Patuxet (the native village which afterward would be renamed as the “Plymouth” of the English people), who after being sold as a slave in Spain would escape to England. Most of the other victims of this slave raid eventually would also be redeemed (but by Spanish friars rather than, as the Walt Disney movie had it, by monks near Plymouth, England).

INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Since their villages along the Merrimack River were all well inland from the coast, Pennacook indigenes would have little direct contact with European intrusives before 1620. At about this point, nevertheless, there began among the Pennacook, already devastated by epidemic, another catastrophic epidemic. To the north, pre-existing hostilities between Abenaki (Penobscot) and Micmac were being aggravated by competition for the fur trade with the new French trading posts in Acadia, and these hostilities had finally exploded into what is known as the Tarrateen War (1607-1615). The Micmac were emerging from this eight-year struggle victorious, and soon their war parties would be sweeping down the coast of Maine into Pennacook territory. By 1617 the warfare would have reached into eastern Massachusetts, but there the Micmac would encounter a new and more terrible enemy, for in 1614 as the English slavers had been raiding Wampanoag villages, they had infected the population with a new and extremely deadly sickness to which there had been built up no local immunological resistance — the dreaded small pox.

MASSACHUSETTS BAY

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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1617

The Wampanoag of Cape Cod, perhaps owing to their relative isolation along the coastline, escaped the devastating epidemics of what is likely to have been measles or scarlet fever among the Massachusett.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

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1618

The epidemic of what most likely was either measles or scarlet fever reached Wampanoag country, causing mass depopulation. The war with the Narragansett was put on hold. At about this period Ousamequin Yellow Feather (Massasoit) of Pokanoket submitted to Canonicus of Narragansett.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The Massasoit HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1621

March 16, Tuesday (March 7, 1620 or 1620/1621 old style):

[A] certain Indian came boldly among them and spoke to them in broken English.... His name was Samoset. He told them also of another Indian whose name was Squanto.... HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Samoset came down to the Plymouth shore shouting “Welcome, Englishmen! Welcome, Englishmen!”

Samoset was a sagamore of an Algonquian tribe that resided at the time in southeast Maine. He had been visiting headman Massasoit. He had picked up his English words from white fishermen near Monhegan Island off the coast of southeast Maine. He was described by the Brownists and “Old Comers” in this manner: “He was a man free in speech, so far as he could express his mind, and of a seemly carriage.... He was a tall straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind, only short before, none on his face at all.” He HDT WHAT? INDEX

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was the first indigenous American “real estate man” to “sell” a piece of “New England” to a group of European intrusives.

WALDEN: I had more cheering visitors that the last. Children come PEOPLE OF a-berrying, railroad men taking a Sunday morning walk in clean WALDEN shirts, fishermen and hunters, poets and philosophers, in short, all honest pilgrims, who came out to the woods for freedom’s sake, and really left the village behind, I was ready to greet with, –“Welcome, Englishmen! welcome, Englishmen!” for I had had communication with that race.

SAMOSET

We trust that he had clear title to the land he sold, as clear title as the cheerful people who came out to Walden Pond to visit with Henry Thoreau as recorded above, and that the local escrow agency and title company had done a full title search and certification prior to the closing.4

This visitor informed the English-speakers of the presence in the general area of yet another English-speaking native, name of Squanto or Tisquantum.

In the evening their native informant seemed reluctant to depart, though his presence was making the whites decidedly nervous. When they tried to put him aboard the Mayflower for the night, they found that the surf was too high to get their rowboat off the beach, so he wound up lodged in the home of Stephen Hopkins, and of course under a most careful watch.

4. Squanto, the Patuxent hero of the official Thanksgiving story taught in our government’s “public schools,” had already several years before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth been considering himself to be more or less the adopted red son of the explorer John Weymouth [not George Weymouth??]. When these new whites arrived, he welcomed them as Weymouth’s people. However, the Pilgrim racism proved to be far stronger than Squanto’s lack of it. As the only educated and baptized Christian among the Wampanoag, he would be seen by the Pilgrims merely as a serviceable instrument of God set in the wilderness to provide for their survival as His chosen people, and a dispensable red man. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 21, Sunday (March 11, 1620/21 Old Style): At Plymouth, the white intrusives observed their Sabbath. MAYFLOWER

Their native American guests departed from Plymouth.

March 22, Monday (March 12, 1620 or 1620/1621 old style): At about noon, Samoset returned to Plymouth, bringing Squanto. Later, across a creek, the Massasoit and 60 men appeared. For a time, neither side was willing to approach the other. They did, however, manage to exchange presents, and words of good will were translated by Squanto and Samoset. Then Edward Winslow of the Brownists crossed the creek and allowed himself to be taken as hostage, and then Massasoit and twenty warriors crossed the creek without weapons and allowed Captain Myles Standish to take six or seven of them as hostages. After these preliminaries, the peace negotiations would be continued over food and drink in a house then under construction, on a green rug on which three or four cushions had been placed. One of the things that were agreed upon was that, in any future visits by one race to the other, all weapons would be cached prior to the approach to a settlement. For security, all such approachers were to be defenseless. (All the while, an observer noted, Massasoit “trembled for fear.” The natives had been through all this before with the white people; they were well aware of the ever-present possibilities of kidnap and being taken aboard ship to be sold elsewhere as slaves.) That night Samoset and HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE MASSASOIT OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER”

Squanto remained, under careful guard again of course, and the next day at noon Squanto showed the settlers how they could tread out eels with their feet and catch them with their hands. He caught as many “as he could well lift in one hand,” perhaps 40 or 50 pounds of sustenance.

The “Brownists” and affiliated “New Comers” made use of the available interpreters to enter into the necessary agreement with the natives of the shore “that neither he nor any of his should injure or do hurt to any of their people.” When the sachem departed to his village Sowams, some 40 miles away, this interpreter remained with the intrusives to become the hero of the official Thanksgiving story taught in our government’s “public schools.” Few schoolchildren learn that he had already several years before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth been to Spain once and England twice. Even those who see the Walt Disney movie of his life and watch him apparently jump a horse from a dock onto a sailing ship only learn of one of those adventures. When these new whites arrived, he welcomed them as the people of his “white father” John Weymouth, but white racism would HDT WHAT? INDEX

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prove far more pervasive than red lack of it. As the only educated and baptized Christian among the Wampanoag, he would never be seen by the Pilgrims as anything more than as “a special instrument sent of God” (this phrase is from Governor William Bradford’s diary) — a serviceable tool, red and dispensable, which had been positioned in that wilderness merely to provide for their own survival as His chosen people.

Mr. Bradford, headman of the intrusives, parties with Mr. Massasoit, headman of the indigenes:

To supplant the above partying in our national imagination, TIME Magazine used the following image from the Granger Collection to illustrate their Columbus-Day special issue, which was all about how certain strange and divisive people are presently insisting on the celebration of American diversity. The image they selected is one of those pious representations of a pious event that almost certainly never happened, done in a manner HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE MASSASOIT OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER”

that makes this fictional event into an important part of our national heritage, something for our boys to die for: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The “First” Thanks Giving Story

All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion.

TURKEYS

There is every reason to believe that the Pilgrim Thanksgiving was culturally inspired by a Wampanoag harvest tradition. Here Edward Winslow describes a Wampanoag ceremony: “The Wampanoag would meet together and cry unto him [the Creator] ... sing, dance, feast, give thanks.” As part of the celebration, headman Massasoit of the Wampanoag tribe put his mark upon a peace treaty with the First Comers. According to MOURT’S RELATION, the agreement with Massasoit was as follows: • That neither he (Massasoit) nor any of his people should injure or do hurt to any of our people. • That if any of our tools were taken away, when our people were at work, he should cause them to be restored; and if ours did any harm to any of his, we would do like to them. • If any did unjustly war against him, we would aid him; if any did war against us, he should aid us. • He should [tell] his neighbors confederates of this, that they might not wrong us. • That when their men came to us, they should leave their bows and arrows behind them, as we should do our [weapons] when we came to them. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE MASSASOIT OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER”

March 23, Tuesday (1620, Old Style): Ousamequin Yellow Feather (Massasoit) and Quadequina made a treaty with Plymouth. Hobomok moved with his family to Plymouth.

April 1, Thursday (March 22, 1621 old style): This was yet another fine day, and the intrusives were making yet another attempt to conduct their public business when they were again interrupted by visitors, Samoset and Squanto, announcing the arrival of the Massasoit on a formal call along with his warrior brother and suit. The intrusives and the indigenes concluded a treaty more or less pledging to try to stay out of one another’s hair (an agreement which the whites, being in possession of magic powder and firearms, would almost immediately violate). MAYFLOWER HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 12, Monday (July 2, Old Style)-July 17, Saturday (July 7, Old Style): Edward Winslow, Stephen Hopkins, and Squanto went from Plymouth to visit the indigenous settlement of Pokanoket, getting as far as Namasket and the weir which the natives had constructed on the Titicut River. At Sowams (present-day Warren, Rhode Island), they offered presents to the Massasoit (Samoset had gone back to Maine). Ignoring the treaty they had

only recently made, the white men took with them into the village their firearms, and, once in the village, they discharged them, terrifying everyone. (It seems already to have been implicitly recognized that the whites, being so vastly superior in power on account of their command of firearms, did not need to remember their promises.)

“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 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At the time it seems there was nothing in the village for them to eat:

WALDEN: When Winslow, afterward governor of the Plymouth Colony, PEOPLE OF went with a companion on a visit of ceremony to Massasoit on foot WALDEN through the woods, and arrived tired and hungry at his lodge, they were well received by the king, but nothing was said about eating that day. When the night arrived, to quote their own words,– “He laid us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end and we at the other, it being only plank, laid a foot from the ground, and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us; so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our journey.” At one o’clock the next day Massasoit “brought two fishes that he had shot,” about thrice as big as a bream; “these being boiled, there were at least forty looked for a share in them. The most ate of them. This meal only we had in two nights and a day; and had not one of us bought a partridge, we had taken our journey fasting.” Fearing that they would be light-headed for want of food and also sleep, owing to “the savages’ barbarous singing, (for they used to sing themselves asleep,)” and that they might get home while they had strength to travel, they departed. As for lodging, it is true they were but poorly entertained, though what they found an inconvenience was no doubt intended for an honor; but as far as eating was concerned, I do not see how the Indians could have done better. They had nothing to eat themselves, and they were wiser than to think that apologies could supply the place of food to their guests; so they drew their belts tighter and said nothing about it. Another time when Winslow visited them, it being a season of plenty with them, there was no deficiency in this respect.

EDWARD WINSLOW Our historians seem never to have made any linkage between this unavailability of food, and the fact that the white visitors had just been guilty of ignoring the agreement into which they had only recently entered, to wit: • That when their men came to us, they should leave their bows and arrows behind them, as we should do our [weapons] when we came to them.

July 13, Tuesday (July 3, Old Style): Stephen Hopkins and Edward Winslow crossed the Titicut River at the native settlement of Squabetty and proceeded on to Matepyst, or what would become known to them as Gardner’s Neck. Thence they made their way to Sowams, which would eventually be known as Warren, Rhode Island, and were welcomed there by the headman Massasoit. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August: The Nauset returned John Billington, Jr. to the English colonists. Ousamequin Yellow Feather (the Massasoit) was attacked by the Narragansett; Conbatant tried to incite the Americans against the English but failed when the English supported the Massasoit. The Narragansett sent peace offers to Plymouth. Epenow made peace with Plymouth.

After the First Comers made peace with Massasoit, another Wampanoag named Hobomok, who could speak some English, had come to live just outside of the walls of Plymouth. At this point William Bradford described him as follows: And there was another Indian called Hobomok, a proper lusty man, and a man of account for his valour and parts amongst the Indians, and continued very faithfully and constant to the English till he died.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The Massasoit HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1622

In London, G. Movrt. (George Morton) issued “MOURT’S RELATION”, or A RELATION OR IOURNALL OF THE BEGINNING AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE ENGLIFH PLANTATION FETTLED AT PLIMOTH, IN NEW-ENGLAND, BY CERTAINE …, describing the initial experiences of the “Old Comers” at their Massachusetts Bay settlement of Plymouth.5 Especially Part II “A Journey to Packanokik” would provide Henry Thoreau with much insight into early English contact with the New England aboriginals. Thoreau would copy the following materials into his Indian Notebook:

“He laid us on the bed with himself, and his wife, they at the one end, and we at the other, it being only plank laid a foot from the ground, and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us; so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our journey.” At one o’clock next day Massasoit “brought two fishes that he had shot” about thrice as big as a bream. “These being boiled, there were at least forty looked for a share in them. The most ate of them. This meal only we had in two nights & a day; and had not one of us brought a partridge we had taken our journey fasting.” Fearing they should be light headed for want of sleep on account of “the savages’ barbarous singing (for they used to sing themselves asleep,)” that they may get home while they had strength, they departed — than being grieved at their entertainment.

CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

5. This is available and makes fascinating reading. It has been reprinted by J.K. Wiggin at the press of George C. Rand & Avery in Boston in 1865, and reissued in a facsimile edition by Garrett Press of New York in 1969. The chronology from this volume has been incorporated into our electronic textbase: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The following materials would appear in WALDEN:

EDWARD WINSLOW HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 22, Friday (1621, Old Style): During an Indian onslaught in Virginia (out of a total of about 4,000 white men, 347 were massacred), Daniel Gookin and his son Daniel Gookin, with barely 35 men, were able to hold out at their plantation: “Only Master Gookins at Nuport’s-news would not obey the Commissioners’ command in that, though he scarce had five and thirty of all sorts with him, yet he thought himself sufficient against what would happen, and so did, to his great credit, and the content of his Adventurers.”

Tisquantum (Squanto) plotted against Ousamequin Yellow Feather (the Massasoit) and the plot was exposed by Hobomok.6

The English arrived at Wessaguscusset (Weymouth) but soon after settling there, they antagonized the local Massachuseuck by stealing their maize. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April: The First Comers decide to revisit their friends, the Massachuset. But Squanto (Tisquantum) informed them that the Massachuset had made a secret alliance with the Narragansett and were become enemies preparing to sack Plymouth as soon as the Pilgrims left it unguarded. Squanto claimed that Ousamequin Yellow Feather (the Massasoit) was secretly plotting against them with Corbitant and the Massachuset. It was Hobomok that stood up for the Massasoit’s honesty, and soon exposed Squanto, who was gaining personal power and prestige among the natives by threatening to turn the First Comers against them. Hobomok’s squaw was sent on a spying mission to determine whether or not Massasoit was still faithful, or whether he was plotting against the First Comers as Squanto claimed. She found Massasoit still faithful and friendly to the First Comers.

6. According to Charles C. Mann’s 1491: NEW REVELATIONS OF THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS, “Tisquantum was to the Pilgrims [Brownists and Old Comers] what Ahmad Chalabi was to the Americans in Iraq. At a time when the Pilgrims [Brownists and Old Comers] were really clueless, he introduced them to his society and provided valuable information, but he definitely had his own agenda.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1623

March (1622/23 Old Style): Word reached Plymouth that Ousamequin Yellow Feather (Massasoit) was seriously ill, and Edward Winslow and Hobomok (Hobbamock) travelled to Pokanoket to visit him. Winslow was able to relieve the sachem’s ailment, and he revealed to Hobomok that there was a plot against the English. Hobomok relayed this information to the colonists, and Captain Myles Standish took a detail of soldiers with Hobomok to Wessaguscusset and there killed Wituwamet, Peksuot, and five others. The English at Wessaguscusset then dispersed.

August: Ousamequin Yellow Feather (the Massasoit), 4 other such sachems, and 120 other Americans were invited to Governor William Bradford’s wedding. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1632

The Narragansett attacked the Massasoit (Ousamequin Yellow Feather), who took refuge with the English at their trading post near his town. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE MASSASOIT OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER”

1637

Birth of a 2nd son to Ousamequin Yellow Feather the Massasoit, whom he named Metacom, the brother who would be nicknamed “Phillip” by the amused whites.7

Att the ernest request of Wamsitta, desiring that in regard his father is lately deceased, and hee being desirouse, according to the custome of the natives, to change his name, that the Court would confer an English name upon him, which accordingly they did, and therefore ordered, that for the future hee shalbee called by the name of Allexander Pokanokett; and desireing the same in the behalfe of his brother, they have named him Phillip.

In this year of Metacom’s birth there was a major battle between two groups of Nipmuc at Louisquisset (Loquasuck), which possibly indicates the fork of the Branch River and the Pawtucket or Blackstone River in what is now Rhode Island, or may indicate the vicinity of the villages of Albion and Manville, or may indicate some area farther to the west. Ownership of the territory in question was also in dispute between the Nipmuc and the Narragansett.

7. The brothers Wamsutta and Metacom were nicknamed Allexander (sic) and Phillip (sic) because the whites were into supplying Native American leaders with offensively grandiloquent and therefore implicitly derogatory names, more or less in the mode in which they were in the habit of condescending to their black slaves: such ostentatious names (in the case of black men, names such as “Pompey” or “Caesar”) implicitly gestured toward their low standing in the eyes of the whites, marking them as pretenders, as con artists, warning whites not to take them seriously as human beings or as leaders.

Actually, as might be expected, Wamsutta and Metacom had a number of brothers and sisters. One sister, called by the English name “Amie,” was the wife of Tuspaquin, headman of the Namaskets. Mention is also made of another son, and also another daughter, of Ousamequin Yellow Feather. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1639

Philip Taber (1605-1672) became a freeman of Plymouth.

Ousamequin Yellow Feather (the Massasoit) and his son Sachem Mooanam (Wamsutta) reaffirmed their treaty relations with Plymouth, agreeing not to cause any “unjust” wars and also not to sell any more land without the prior consent of that colony’s government. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE MASSASOIT OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER”

1652

Joseph Russell, in starting up an offshore whaling enterprise, effectively founded the town of New Bedford.

What happened was that 36 whites joined together in the purchase of a parcel of land –encompassing what is now New Bedford, Acushnet, Fairhaven, Dartmouth and Westport– from Ousamequin Yellow Feather (the Massasoit) and his son Sachem Mooanam (Wamsutta). They agreed to remove the native inhabitants within one year. That entire area would be incorporated as “Dartmouth” in 1654. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1660

Ousamequin Yellow Feather (the Massasoit) died early in the year, and his eldest son Wamsutta received the name Allexander (sic) Pokanokett (sic) from the whites of the Plymouth colony. His younger brother Metacom was designated Phillip (sic) by the whites of the Plymouth colony. (The implication of this joke naming system was “See, here’s a colored man with bad attitude: he acts with dignity and poise and obviously supposes he’s going to conquer the world, or dominate us or something, like the famous historical white man Alexander the Great — but he’s not nothing but a woods savage and he isn’t ever going to get any respect from us.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1661

Massasoit died and was succeeded by his 1st son, Wamsutta, the one who had been nicknamed “Allexander” (sic) by the whites.8

Allexander Wamsutta was married to Squaw Sachem Weetamoo of Pocasset. He sold Attleboro lands to the Plymouth colony. This sachem would be signing the land sale documents presented to him by the English sometimes with anA sometimes with aW and sometimes with aM (these things are complex, for in fact he had in addition another name beginning with the letter M) as his younger brother Metacom, when he would in his turn become the sachem of the Wampanoag, would be signing these ubiquitous documents with a big inkyP HDT WHAT? INDEX

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(it all was made to seem so legitimate and respectful and congenial).

This was the year of the property transaction known as the “Northern Purchase.” The English of Rehoboth

8. When the seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony depicted an American native with a cartoon bubble coming out of his mouth, going “Come over and help us,” the reference of course was to the Book of the Acts of the Apostles in the Christian Bible, which has the Apostle Paul dreaming of a Macedonian who is pleading that he “Come over into Macedonia, and help us.”

On that basis, for the whites to have assigned to two Native American sachems the names “Phillip” (sic) and “Allexander” (sic) two well-known kings of ancient Macedonia, would seem rather innocent. However, bear in mind that it was the naming convention of the period, to refer to persons of color by the deployment of offensively grandiloquent and therefore implicitly derogatory nicknames. The dusky brothers Wamsutta and Metacom were therefore nicknamed Allexander and Phillip more or less in the mode in which masterly whites were in the habit of condescending magisterially to their black slaves: such ostentatious names (in the case of black slaves, master-assigned names such as those which Dr. LeBaron of Plymouth tried to enforce upon his house slaves, such as Pompey and Julius Caesar — starving one of his slaves, Quasho Quando, as punishment when the man absolutely refused to respond to such a name) implicitly gestured toward their low standing in the eyes of the righteous, marking them as pretenders, as con artists, implicitly warning fellow whites not to take them seriously as human beings or as leaders. In what significant manner does this differ from the period in Central Europe during which Jews were being required to register and to receive family names and were being assigned names, by a sympathetic constabulary, which translate into the ordinary English as “gold-grubber” and as “money-bags”? HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE MASSASOIT OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER”

(chartered in 1643 by the Plymouth Colony, and the birthplace of public education in North America) hired

Thomas Willett to negotiate for them with Wampanoag sachems for what is now Attleboro and North Attleboro. This 1661 deed still exists and very clearly is signed by Willett and by Wamsutta.9 The land in question has clearly belonged to the white man since way back. One of the terms and conditions of this deed document, however, is that part of the property in question had been set aside for perpetual use by the natives. Since there aren’t any natives there any longer, and since continuous occupancy is normally taken by our courts to be the signal of native title, this clause would seem to be ancient history — but as of the Year of Our Lord 2003 there is a case pending in the Rhode Island courts which alleges that legal title to the land district that had been set aside, that seems to amount to Cumberland and east Woonsocket, is open to challenge.

The bite in this antique document comes from the fact that since the early 1660s, colonial law, and the federal law that followed after this colonial law upon our national independence, has consistently held that no native tribal land could be validly conveyed to another unless that conveyance had the blessing of a federal court, or 9. Metacom had such a high regard for Captain Thomas Willett that during the race war he ordered that the Willett family not be harmed. When someone who had not heard of this brought the head of Hezekiah Willett to Metacom, thinking that he would be pleased, Metacom did what he could: he adorned the head of Willett’s son with wampum, and combed its hair. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of the US Congress. Since there exists no federal legislative or judicial record whatever, that these lands which had been formally set aside for native use in this Wamsutta/Willett title document have subsequently legitimately been conveyed to anyone else, and since the tribe in question, the Seaconke Wampanoag, happens to be still in existence, it is abundantly clear that the land in question –whatever that land amounts to and whoever now resides upon it– still belongs to them and to them alone. (After the natives lost in this race war known as “King Phillip’s War”, we understand that very naturally the victorious white colonists simply moved in and took over by eminent domain, selling the red survivors of the war into slavery or packing them off to other lands. However, that makes the situation of these native inheritors similar to, say, the situation of an Israeli Jew who is holding a WWII-era title document to a family home in the Polish town of Oswicum, the German form of the name being “Auschwitz” — a family home now inhabited and defended by non-Jewish Poles who definitely have some sort of piece of paper asserting their invalid title. It seems clear that the legal implications of World War II for its survivors, and the implications of King Phillip’s War for its survivors, have yet to be fully worked out.)

But you can’t please everybody all the time. Soon Wamsutta fell under suspicion of not favoring one English colony over another, but instead, of the evil practice of selling merely to the highest bidder, favoring his own interest and the interest of his band over the interest of others. He was therefore taken captive by an indignant Major Josiah Winslow and marched rapidly to Duxbury at gunpoint, as part of a strategy to put the arm on him and to induce him to favor the Plymouth colony over the Rhode Island colony. They needed for him to pledge to sell no more native American territory to settlers out of the Rhode Island group, even if those white people were to offer his people a better deal.

Did he not understand who his real friends were? However, while being held under guard in Duxbury, Allexander Wamsutta became seriously ill, so ill that the guards feared to be blamed for his death and released him to hike home — and in his fever he didn’t make it all the way back.

Metacom, the second son of the Massasoit, the one who had been nicknamed “Phillip” by the whites, was at that time 24 years of age, and suspected or professed to suspect that the whites had poisoned his brother, or had caused his illness because of the overexertion of being force-marched at gunpoint, or at the very least had sadly neglected his brother during his fever. That suspicion, well or poorly grounded, was going to cause one hell of a lot of trouble.

Weetamoo, a Pocasset, had been the consort of Metacom’s older brother Wamsutta. With his death, as his younger brother became Sachem, she became not merely a widow but the Squaw Sachem.

The Reverend Roger Williams, William Field, the Reverend Thomas Olney, Jr., Joseph Torrey, Philip Taber (1605-1672), and John Anthony were associated together in Providence, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE MASSASOIT OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER”

Inauthentic representation of Metacom by Paul Revere, for whom an Indian was an Indian was an Indian, at the Library of Congress. Done in 1772. HDT WHAT? INDEX

OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER”THE MASSASOIT

1662

July: Sachem Wamsutta of the Wampanoag, known to the English as “Allexander,” the older son of Ousamequin Yellow Feather the Massasoit, had hired the Harvard-educated Reverend John Sassamon to interface with the English –and with their written word– on his behalf. Major Josiah Winslow with a body of eight or ten well- armed colonial soldiers arrested the sachem and the colonists required him to appear before them at Duxbury to answer charges concerning his supposed plot to attack them. After dealing with these accusations and eating a meal, the sachem was visiting Josiah Winslow at Marshfield when he was taken suddenly ill and was treated by a Dr. Fuller by the administration of a “working physic,” or what today we would describe as a strong laxative. Some, including his wife Weetamoo, believed him to have been poisoned, but there is no great amount of evidence to indicate this and the accounts indicated that he had been well received by the Winslows. It was not uncommon in this era for people to die of sudden illness, and it is hard to imagine what advantage a poisoner might have hoped for. If what was causing Allexander’s stomach pain was appendicitis, then it would have been this “working physic” that would have ruptured his appendix, filled his body cavity with toxins, and killed him while on his journey back home. (On the other hand there are records of the Plymouth Council having taken note of an expense at the time for poison “to rid ourselves of a pest,” although it is possible that these records were entirely innocent and routine and dealt merely with agriculture or sanitation.) He would be succeeded during the following year by his brother Metacom (or Pometacom, or Tasomacon, or Wewesawanit), known to the English as Phillip. Phillip would reaffirm all previous agreements with the Plymouth colony, but joined in the general suspicion that the white people had caused his brother’s death.

This plaque is mounted on a boulder near the shore of Monponsett Lakes, inland from Cape Cod.

NEAR THIS SPOT WAMSUTTA WAS TAKEN PRISONER BY MAJ. JOSIAS WINSLOW. AN INCIDENT SAID TO HAVE PRECIPITATED KING PHILLIP’S WAR. PLACED BY THE HALIFAX HISTORICAL SOCIETY HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE MASSASOIT OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER”

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. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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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].

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. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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

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THE MASSASOIT OUSAMEQUIN “YELLOW FEATHER”

1677

July: Metacom’s head had been rotting atop a pole in Plymouth for almost a year. His teenage son, the next in line to be sachem of the Wampanoag, this grandson of Ousamequin Yellow Feather (the Massasoit), had been sold and transported into overseas slavery.10 “King Phillip’s War” was a matter of memory. At this point two native Americans were led into the town of Marblehead, and there, according to the deposition we have from Robert Roules, they were stomped by a group of Christian women until “their heads [were] off and gone, and their flesh in a manner pulled from their bones.”

10. In all likelihood the teenager had been disposed of in the West Indies for approximately £3. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Reverend William Apess would observe, in 1836, that “Every white that knows their own history, knows there was not a whit difference between them and the Indians of their days.”

By this point, for obvious reasons, the sole function of Harvard’s “Indian College” building had become the housing of the Cambridge Press.

“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 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1681

King Phillip’s head had been rotting atop a pole in Plymouth for about five years (and would remain there for approximately another fifteen). His teenage son, the next in line to be sachem of the Wampanoag –this grandson of the Massasoit Ousamequin Yellow Feather11 whose name we seldom even bother to record– was serving the duration of his life in overseas slavery.12 “King Phillip’s War” was a matter of memory. At this point the paths of two persons of differing race and culture passed in the forest of Rhode Island, and one discharged his weapon at the other.

In her THE NAME OF WAR: KING PHILIP’S WAR AND THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN IDENTITY (NY: Knopf, 1998, pages 182-3), Jill Lepore takes most seriously the warning issued by the Reverend Cotton Mather in 1692, “...Our Indian wars are not over yet,” and is willing to deal at length with materials that for instance contemporary Quakers may use in their ruminations on 20th-Century renditions of their Peace Testimony: THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY

11. Massasoit is not a name, but a hereditary title, like sachem. Its meaning is approximately equivalent to Shahanshah. 12. In all likelihood the teenager had been sold in the West Indies for approximately £3. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In 1681, five years after King Philip’s War had ended, two men met in the woods outside Providence. One was English, the other Indian. Both carried guns. When the Englishman, Benjamin Henden, saw the Indian (whose name was never mentioned), he ordered him to halt, but the Indian “would not obey his word, and stand at his Command.” Furious, Henden raised his gun and fired, “with an Intent to have killed him.” Luckily for the Indian, Henden was a lousy shot and missed his target entirely. And luckily for Henden, the Indian was not a vengeful man. “Notwithstanding the said violence to him offered did not seek to revenge himselfe by the like return ; although he alsoe had a gunn and might have shott at Henden againe if he had been minded soe to have done.” Instead of shooting Henden, the Indian man “went peaceably away,” stopping only long enough to use “some words by way of Reproof ; unto the said Hernden [sic] blaming him for that his Violence and Cruelty, and wondering that English men should offer soe to shoot at him and such as he was without cause.” Had these same two men met in the same woods five or six years earlier, when King Philip’s War was still raging, it is unlikely that both would have survived the encounter unharmed. Henden, if he had traveled at all in Massachusetts, was probably familiar with the law passed in that colony in 1675 dictating that “it shall be lawful for any person, whether English or Indian, that shall finde any Indian travelling or skulking in any of our Towns or Woods ... to command them under their Guard and Examination, or to kill and destroy them as they best may or can.” But that law was, of course, no longer in effect (and never was in Rhode Island), and for his anachronistic and misplaced aggression, Henden landed himself in court, condemned for his “late rash turbulent and violent behavior.” The case even led the Rhode Island General Assembly to pass “an act to prevent outrages against the Indians, precipitated by a rhode islander shooting an indian in the woods.” In the first place, as the Assembly declared, agreeing with Henden’s intended victim, Henden had “noe Authority nor just cause” to command the Indian to halt. “Noe person,” the Assembly proclaimed, “shall presume to doe any such unlawfull acts of violence against the Indians upon their perills.” And more importantly, Henden and others like him must learn to “behave themselves peaceably towards the Indians, in like maner as before the ware.” PROVIDENCE

I very much appreciate this because it so well illustrates the influence of testimony. One person’s moderation, one person’s individual lived example –to wit, the unnamed native’s declining to return fire after an aggressor had discharged his firearm (and thus effectively for a period of about a minute disarmed himself), this anonymous person’s having contented himself with a verbal reproach after his life had been so unnecessarily endangered– became magnified in Rhode Island into a movement toward de-escalation of the race violence.

A model for us all! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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During this same year, at Mount Hope one day, a man was held down and the brand burned into his forehead. This was not the mark of P Phillip the sachem Metacom of Mount Hope, but stood instead, curiously, for the term of art Pollution13 — because this white man, named Thomas Saddeler, had been observed to have been taking his mare to “a certaine obscure and woodey place, on Mount Hope,” and to have there been engaging in sexual intercourse with her.14

“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

13. Bear in mind in regard to this term pollution that the concept perversion would not formally enter out medical terminology until 1842, when it would be defined in Dunglison’s MEDICAL LEXICON as one of the four modifications of function in disease, the other three modifications of function being augmentation, diminution, and abolition. 14. Although we don’t have a record of what happened to the mare, in such cases we know the abused animal was always offed. No way would they have left the mare to the mercy of this Tommy and, also, no way would any other white man have been willing to take charge of it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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As the Reverend Cotton Mather would put the matter in 1692,

We have shamefully Indianized in all these abominable things.... Our Indian wars are not over yet.

As Jill Lepore has more recently phrased the matter, relying upon a heightened level of sarcasm and self- awareness,

After fourteen months of bloodshed, followed by three years of intermittent fighting, the colonists were right back where they started, as “Heathenish,” as Indian, as ever. Philip’s death was only a hollow victory. Depravity still soiled New England.... Tempted by the devil, corrupted by the Indian wilderness, Englishmen were still degenerating into beasts.

What was a poor white man to do?

Here, then, was the solution to the colonists’ dilemma ... wage the war, and win it, by whatever means necessary, and then write about it, to win it again. The first would be a victory of wounds, the second a victory of words. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1855

The name of Ousamequin Yellow Feather the Massasoit, “Protector and Preserver of the Pilgrims,” very much like the name of the faithful Indian sidekick Squanto, “a special instrument sent by God,” has always been something with which to conjure.15 Thus in this year, when the Boston authorities rejected a petition for a charter for a black militia company, the group formed itself up anyway 300 strong, and equipped itself with arms and with uniforms — and denominated itself the Massasoit Guard. (After the Dred Scott decision in November 1857, this guard would fall in and parade its black faces and its weapons through the streets of Boston.) In considering this black militia, here is what H-OIEAHC, the early American history and culture list moderated by John Saillant, has had to offer on the topic of black participation in colonial militias. Terry Gruber had inquired: “Just one question concerning colonial era militias---did any militia laws in any colonies and states (to 1800) specifically exclude free blacks (I assume enslaved blacks were exempted) from the muster rolls? If so, which states/colonies excluded?” Clayton Cramer responded: “I would not assume that slaves were exempted.... Virginia finally excluded blacks from the militia in 1639/40. Remembering that the institution of slavery was still in a formative stage, the ambiguity of whether this meant only slaves or free blacks as well is unsurprising. It would appear that if free blacks were excluded by this law, something changed thereafter, because a 1680 law prohibited ‘any negroe or other slave’ from possessing weapons, but the 1723 law allowed free blacks who were householders or members of the militia to have one gun. The 1738 law required them to muster, but to appear unarmed. Delaware’s 1742 law prohibited servants and slaves from bearing arms, or mustering in the militia. The language is a little ambiguous as to whether free blacks were still members of the militia. Maryland’s 1715 law prohibiting any ‘Negro or other slave’ from bearing arms off his master’s land would seem to preclude free blacks from militia duty.

Norman Heath made a comment on what Clayton Cramer had written above: “Unarmed militia might seem a curious phenomenon, but according to John Hope Franklin, when North Carolina finally excluded blacks from the militia in 1812 they made an exception for black musicians (drums and horns were essential military communications equipment). When studying the question of black militia participation it would be well to ascertain exactly what duties were expected in the given time and place.”

Professor Emeritus Jerome J. Nadelhaft responded: “I looked at the issue in South Carolina in connection with the Continental Congress’s recommendation in 1778 that the state arm 3,000 slaves. The easiest thing for me to do is to copy out two paragraphs of my book on SOUTH CAROLINA IN THE REVOLUTION (from page 52)”: To arm 3,000 slaves as Congress suggested would have been a break with the past only in terms of numbers. In all of the state’s numerous eighteenth-century wars slaves had fought or been ready to. Even after the Stono Rebellion of 1739 dampened the enthusiasm to arm slaves, necessity often dictated that slaves fight. A 1742 expedition to Georgia included armed blacks. During the French and Indian War slaves were used to garrison the post at Ninety Six. In all, of course, relatively few blacks were veterans of battles, even though in 1757 more than 3,000 were enrolled in the colonial militia. One colonial proposal to 15. For instance, today, in addition to that monument to Myles Standish and sidekick, from atop a hill that overlooks Plymouth Rock, a statue of the great Wampanoag sachem surveys the harbor in which the Pilgrim Fathers landed over 375 years ago. Holding a long peace pipe, the chief is dignified and confident, nothing about his figure causing trepidation to the tourist. The inscription identifying the native politician as “Protector and Preserver of the Pilgrims” dutifully elides the complexion of his constituency. Today there are, situated in the Aquinnah section of Martha’s Vineyard, but 700 tribal descendants. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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arm a large number, 500, was defeated during the French and Indian War by the deciding vote of the speaker of the lower house. To encourage those blacks who did fight, the government gave freedom in exchange for killing or capturing one of the enemy or for taking any of his colors. In 1779, however, Congress’s proposal “much disgusted” Carolinians. They thought it “a very dangerous and impolitic Step.” In February 1780 the lower house determined not to arm blacks but to allow them to work as pioneers, fatigue men, oarsmen, and mariners. At the same time it defeated a proposal to free slaves who behaved well while in the “said service.” No bill embodying any of these proposals was passed by the full legislature. South Carolina’s slaves, accustomed to hard use, still found themselves in the strange and unenviable position of being “volunteered” for potentially dangerous service which brought money to their masters, while being denied what they had often enjoyed, the opportunity to fight for their freedom in a time of emergency, the emergency this time ironically being a war for freedom and self-government. ... the information in that first paragraph comes from a 1971 dissertation: John David Duncan, SERVITUDE AND SLAVERY IN COLONIAL SOUTH CAROLINA, 1670-1776 (Emory University). In a note to the second paragraph I point out that slaves were not alone in being ‘volunteered.’ In 1778 the state provided for the enlistment of beggars, straggling persons, and lewd, idle, disorderly men.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1857

November: The name of Massasoit, “Protector and Preserver of the Pilgrims,” has always been something with which to conjure.16 When in 1855 the Boston authorities had rejected a petition for a charter for a black militia company, the group had formed itself up anyway, and equipped itself with arms and with uniforms — and denominated itself the Massasoit Guard. In this month, after the Dred Scott decision was announced in the press, this guard fell in and paraded its black faces and its weapons 300 strong through the streets of Boston.

16. For instance, today, from atop a hill that overlooks Plymouth Rock, a statue of the great Wampanoag sachem surveys the harbor in which the Pilgrim Fathers landed over 375 years ago. Holding a long peace pipe, the chief is dignified and confident (vide above), nothing about his figure causing trepidation to the tourist. The inscription identifying the native politician as “Protector and Preserver of the Pilgrims” dutifully elides the complexion of his constituency. This may arguably be the only statue ever erected in Massachusetts in honor of a man from Rhode Island. Today there are, situated in the Gay Head section of Martha’s Vineyard, but 700 tribal descendants. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1919

In England in 1916 Fry’s and Cadbury’s had merged their manufacturing operations, and at this point they merged also their financial interests. Two formerly Quaker firms had coalesced into one formerly Quaker firm.

At the combined factory Saturday ceased to be a full day of work and the hours of workers thereby fell, to 44/week.

CHOCOLATE

The Moses Brown School of the Religious Society of Friends on the East Side of Providence, Rhode Island celebrated the centenary of its initiation in 1819.

Publication, by the school, of Professor Rayner Wickersham Kelsey’s A CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MOSES HDT WHAT? INDEX

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BROWN SCHOOL, 1819-1919.

(Associate Professor Kelsey was at the Department of History of Haverford College.) VIEW THE PAGE IMAGES

Enrollment at the school, which had been 172 in 1904, had doubled to 345. It is clear that by this point in the curricular trajectory of the Friends’ School the practice of informing the charges of the Peace Testimony of the Friends had been entirely discontinued, for the educational content being offered had come to differ not one whit from what would have been being offered in any lay academy intended for the socialization of the well- endowed. The influence of the Quaker founder Moses Brown had been entirely superseded by the influence of his Baptist brother of the Gaspee incident, John Brown: The social side of student life was natural and enjoyable, far removed from the stern repression of the ancient regime. The social occasions were manifold and multi-named: the introductory sociable in the fall and the farewell sociable in the spring were interspersed with the Hallowe’en, the Thanksgiving, and the Valentine sociables and other similar events. There were skating parties at Cat Swamp, and holiday excursions to Sakonnet Point and Newport. Above and before all there was the Mount Hope HDT WHAT? INDEX

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excursion. On this gala day the teachers and pupils not only

enjoyed the view of water and country green, but lived again the heroic scenes of earlier times. As they passed down the harbor the earthworks on opposite sides, at Fort Hill and Fields Point, were pointed out to them as the places where the bristling cannon of the Revolutionary patriots bade defiance to the ships of King George. A few miles farther down the bay appeared Gaspee Point, where Captain Ben Lindsay swung his packet around the point in 1772 and lured the Gaspee to her tightening berth on the sand- bar where the patriots of Providence seized and destroyed her. Then at Mount Hope, with the gracious view of wooded hills and far-flung bay, came those other visions of the good chief Massasoit, friend and protector of the Pilgrim Fathers, and then the mighty struggle and tragic death of his son, King Philip. Amid such scenes, with Walter Meader to point out the historical landmarks, and Thomas Battey to reveal the hidden wonders of nature in brook and inlet, field and forest, the picnic parties from Friends’ School spent some of the happiest and most profitable days of the epoch. The life of the period was new life. The tendency of the preceding epoch to break through the ancient Quaker exclusiveness was accentuated. Old forms were laid aside. Innovations were welcomed if they gave promise of usefulness. The happy social life, the rapid growth of student organizations and activities, and the more intimate association with other schools and with outside interests in general, these were the sure signs that the ancient and medieval days were done, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the renaissance accomplished, and the modern age at hand.

However, in this year the school discontinued the “principal” system of incentive compensation which had been in effect for well over half a century, and which had led to the desires of their founder, Friend Moses Brown, being so utterly ignored! –Would that mean that the school was going to go back to being what it had been chartered to be, a guarded environment for the imparting of a Quaker education to Quaker youth? Stay tuned. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1927

Hart, Albert Bushness, ed. COMMONWEALTH HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS: COLONY, PROVINCE, AND STATE. Volume I: 1605-1689 (NY: States History Company, 1927-28)

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The Massasoit HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”

White men first reached the area of North America later named Massachusetts between 1498 and 1602, as Dutch, Basque and Breton fishermen, and British and French fur traders found means of livelihood in the waters, woods, and rivers of the area. (32-33) In 1602 Gosnold & Gilbert-Englishmen-sailed along the coast. (16) Several times between 1603 and 1620 attempts were made to settle the region, including the 1614 voyage of Capt. John Smith during which he named both Massachusetts and the region of New England. (16) The 1620 establishment of Plymouth Colony marked the beginning of permanent white settlement. The native Americans which the whites encountered at various times in the state’s history were all members of tribes belonging to the Algonquian language family; had primarily agricultural bases of living (146), used barter exchange, and also had excellent abilities as hunters, trappers, and fishermen. (151) Gookin estimated that the pre-1616 Indian population of the area of Massachusetts was relatively stable at at least thirty thousand men, women, and children. (128) The major tribes were the Penacooks (extreme NC and NE areas), Massachusetts (NE coast and inland quarter of the state)-whose major chief Wannalancet is mentioned in A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS, Wampanoag (SE coast)- whose chief Massasoit helped the Pilgrims, and the Nauset (Cape Cod and the SE islands).(130-1) Minor tribes included the Nipmuc (central & SC), Pocumtuck (WC quarter, centered on the Connecticut River), Mohicans (W quarter), and the Pequot (along Conn. R., evidently either co-existed or competed with Pocumtuck). (131-3,246-7) Indian hierarchy of government units was confederacy; tribe or clan; fort; village or communal house. (132-3,134) Leadership levels in each tribe or clan were sachem, sagamore, and shaman (medicine man). (133) A plague in 1616-17 reduced total Indian population, so Gookin estimates, by twenty-three thousand, to a 1620 estimate of only seven thousand. This level was relatively constant until 1660.(128-9) The Massachuset tribe, the major tribe in numbers and power in 1616, was reduced to 500 by 1631. The tribe was relocated into the first Indian reservations in the New World: Christian enclaves. Those who did not relocate moved away. (130-1) In 1636, English “extreme bloodthirstiness” and “panicky terror,” triggering provocatory acts in the Connecticut river valley, drove the Pequot to war with the English. (534-5) After the English victory, they decided that since the tribe “nearly destroyed the English in New England, (the Pequot) must never again be a distinct people.” The tribe was split: many were deported to Bermuda and the West Indies as slaves; others were scattered among various traditional enemy tribes, where they were forced to pay annual tribute to “adopting” tribes as war reparation. The tribe ceased to exist. (246-7) The Penacooks, led by Wannalancet, kept peace with the whites until 1676 when, during troubles with the French, the English took over 200 tribesmen prisoner and killed Wannalancet. The remainder of the tribe moved to Canada permanently.(130) The population of the remaining Indians in the colony grew to 10,000 by 1678, when Pometacom (a.k.a Metacomet and King Phillip), son of Massasoit of the Wampanoag, saw the growing threat of white settlement, religious conversion, enforced system of justice, and military technological monopoly. The Wampanoag went to war, along with Nipmuck and Pocumtuck allies. (542-3) Mohicans remained allied to the Brits. Wampanoag were virtually exterminated, the few survivors joined the Sakonnet tribe in Rhode Island. The Nipmuck and Pocumtuck survivors fled to Canada. The Mohican tribe was decimated during the war, and some survivors allowed themselves to be enslaved in Stockbridge, the remainder emigrated to PA.(130-1) CONTEMPORARY NOTE: the 1976 (sic) Mass. Commission on Indian Affairs Native American Census reported that 27.2 percent of the state’s Native American population (which totaled 3497 in all) were members of “indigenous tribes,” those two tribes being the Wampanoag (sic) and Nipmuck. No other members of the original tribes were identified. (Jim Stout, January 23, 1986) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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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 2014. 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: July 2, 2014 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, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process 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 requests with . Arrgh.