Losing the Language: The Decline of Algonquian Tongues and the Challenge of Indian Identity in Southern New England DA YID J. SIL VERMAN Princeton University In the late nineteenth century, a botanist named Edward S. Burgess visited the Indian community of Gay Head, Martha's Vineyard to interview native elders about their memories and thus "to preserve such traditions in relation to their locality." Among many colorful stories he recorded, several were about august Indians who on rare, long -since passed occasions would whisper to one another in the Massachusett language, a tongue that younger people could not interpret. Most poignant were accounts about the last minister to use Massachusett in the Gay Head Baptist Church. "While he went on preaching in Indian," Burgess was told, "there were but few of them could know what he meant. Sometimes he would preach in English. Then if he wanted to say something that was not for all to hear, he would talk to them very solemnly in the Indian tongue, and they would cry and he would cry." That so few understood what the minister said was reason enough for the tears. "He was asked why he preached in the Indian language, and he replied: 'Why to keep up my nation.' " 1 Clearly New England natives felt the decline of their ancestral lan­ guages intensely, and yet Burgess never asked how they became solely English speakers. Nor have modem scholars addressed this problem at any length. Nevertheless, investigating the process and impact of Algonquian language loss is essential for a fuller understanding Indian life during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and even beyond. For as the above story illustrates, a distinct language heritage was an essential component of the way Indians defined themselves, and the way outsiders defined them, as Indians. Algonquian language loss effectively began with the spread of debt­ driven Indian indentured servitude. By the turn of the seventeenth century, the spread of English farms, the related decline of the Indians' mixed 1 Edward S. Burgess, "The Old South Road of Gay Head," Dukes County Intelligencer 12 (1970), 22. LOSING THE LANGUAGE 347 subsistence base, and the natives' susceptibility to debilitating illness, had rendered Indians dependent upon store-bought food and clothing. Thereafter, while skirting along poverty's edge, it took only an ill-timed disease or costly brush with the law, to push the natives into "desperate debtor" status, and pull them into court to answer their creditors. Thus a cycle began that enveloped entire Indian families, and eventually entire communities, at a time: a father indentured himself for a year of so; with his labor and wages unavailable, his family charged more food and clothing at local stores; creditors inevitably came calling again, and so the mother and/or eldest siblings either bound out themselves out in order to maintain their credit lines, or else were forced into service by local authorities. Sometimes younger children accompanied their mothers into colonial homes, but at other times were bound out until adulthood by their parents, who sought some guarantee of food, shelter, clothing, and, they hoped, formal education, for their offspring.2 No individual so thoroughly detailed this process as Mashpee's mis­ sionary Gideon Hawley. In 1760 he surveyed the natives' social landscape and noted: There is scarcely an Indian Boy among us not indetted to an English Master... their neighbors find means to involve the Indians so deeply in debt as they are obliged to make over i" boys, if they have any, for security till payment. The case is thus, an Indian having got in debt (he hardly knows how) obliges himself to go a whaling till he answers it: and because life is uncertain, his master obliges him in his Covenant or Indenture to include his Boy, who is bound to serve in case he should die or should not take up the Indenture by such a term or should get farther in debt to him. The Indian faithfully serves his master, every season for whaling as long as he is fit for such a service (for the longer he serves, the more he is embarassed) till finally being worn out he is turned off and becomes an object of charity. As for the boy, he is forfeited, because his father, tho' he has earned his master thousands, never was out of debt. 3 Despite Hawley's silence on the indenture of Indian girls, it is clear 2 David Silverman, "The costs of debt," Paper presented at the American Society for Ethnohistory, Mashantucket, Conn., October 1999; Ruth Walhs Hem don, "Racia­ lization and feminization of poverty in early America." Empire and others, ed. by Martin Daunton and Rick Halpem (London: UCL Press, 1999), 186-203. 3 "Gideon Hawley to Andrew Oliver, 9 Dec. 1760," Gideon Hawley Journal and Letters, Congregational Library, Boston, Mass. See also "Hawley to Anonymous, I June 1794" Hawley Letters, Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS), Boston, Mass.; "Cotton Mather to William Ashhurst, 5 Jan. 1716," Cotton and Increase Mather Letters, MHS. 348 DA YID J. SIL VERMAN that they also served as collateral. For example, Elizabeth Pattompan of Christiantown, Martha's Vineyard, was bound out in 1704 when her father, Josias, found himself saddled with court fees. 4 Similarly, Vineyarder Thomas West's 1728 estate listed "an Indian girl servant 7 years service due" among an inventory ofhorses, cows, sheep and swine.5 The problem of bound-out children was so vast and complicated that when the Mashpees petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for assistance, they admitted, "we can[']t at present think of any other method to prevent it."6 Nor could the government. Laws that required the signature of two appointed guardians or magistrates to validate an indenture never took into account how easy those signatures were to come by. 7 And so the system churned out one child servant after another. Hearkening back to his life in Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard during the 1790s and early 1800s, James Athearn Jones wrote "it was my grandfather's custom, and had been that of his ancestors ... to take Indian boys at the age of four or five years until they had attained their majority ... During my minority we had three of these little foresters in our house. "8 Yet the work was not over for Jones' s childhood companions once they reached adulthood, for then "they usually left us to be sailors," both willingly and by court order. 9 This line of employment took Indian boys and men even farther afield from their home villages. Indians working the coastwise trade during the 1730s traveled back and forth between Boston and Carolina, while whalers typically hunted the waters off Cape Breton, Newfoundland, and Labrador. After the Revolution, whaling voyages extended to the Brazilian coast, Falkland Islands, and later the Pacific. As 4 Experience Mayhew, Indian converts, (London, 1727), 238. See also 202,203, 261; Dukes County Court Records (DCCR), 1:126, 145, Dukes County Superior Court, Edgartown, Mass. 5 Dukes County Courthouse. Probate Records (DCP), 2:53-54, 66-67, Dukes County Registry of Probate. See also Hemdon, "Racialization and feminization of poverty," 197. 6 "Mashpee Indians to a Committee Appointed to Hear Indian Grievances, 13 August 1761 ," Haw1ey Letters, MHS. 7 "Haw1ey to Anonymous, 1 June 1794," Hawley Letters, MHS; "Hawley to Anonymous, 29 August 1801," "Hawley to Anonymous, 22 Dec. 1801," and "Hawley to Ephraim Spooner, 2 Dec. 1801 ," Hawley Letters and Journal. 8 James Atheam Jones, Traditions of the North American Indians. (London, 1830), 1 :x. 9 Jones, Traditions of the North American Indians, 1 :x. LOSING THE LANGUAGE 349 for the coastal trade, in 1782, J. Hector St. John de Crevecour wrote of the r, Indians of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, "go where you will from ~r Nova Scotia to the Mississippi, you will find almost every where some :e. natives of these two islands employed in seafaring occupations."10 Naturally, regular at-sea employment, forced or otherwise, led natives to 11 lt migrate to port towns such as Nantucket, New Bedford, and Providence. These towns also drew native women who found employment as domestic ~, lt servants and thereby managed remained close to their men, at least while 12 0 they were in port. 0 It proved difficult for Indians to break out of the cycle of servitude. For n instance, in 1725, Abigail J oel of Gay Head contracted to work one year for n Mary Clifton of Portsmouth New Hampshire. Yet during her service, s clothing that Joel had purchased from Clifton put her in debt over £30. lt Then she twice became pregnant, prompting Clifton to dock her for lost [1 time and the cost of maintaining the children. Soon thereafter Joel charged e more clothing, including a pricey wedding dress, and then was fined for attempting to run away. 13 Unless they remained shoddily dressed, sexually y inactive, and resigned to meet the full terms of their service, the chances h for female servants to win their freedom were slim indeed. s Men obviously did not bear the burden ofpregnancy during their terms, e but they faced their own obstacles to freedom. Among the English, [} 10 J. Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American farmer, (New l, York, 1967 [London, 1782]), 167. See also Paul Cuffee, Narrative of the life ofPaul s Cuffee, a Pequot Indian, during thirty years spent at sea, and in travelling in foreign lands (Vernon, Conn., 1839), 3-6; Daniel F. Vickers, "The first whalemen of s Nantucket," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series 40 (1983), 568. 11 Crevecoeur, Letters from an American farmer, "148.