custody in New Town, and soon sent round his long-boat, paid all costs
and charges, and brought him once more on board his ship. The captain
received him with a great deal of malicious satisfaction in his
countenance, telling him in a taunting manner, that, though he had
promised Sir William Courtney to be at home before him, he should find
himself damnably mistaken; and then with a tyrannic tone bade him strip,
calling the boatswain to bring up a cat-o'-nine-tails, and tie him fast
up to the main geers; accordingly our hero was obliged to undergo a cruel
and shameful punishment. Here, gentle reader, if thou hast not a heart
made of something harder than adamant, thou canst not choose but melt at
the sufferings of our hero; he, who but just before, did what would have
immortalised the name of Caesar or Alexander, is now rewarded for it with
cruel and ignominious stripes, far from his native country, wife,
children, or any friends, and still doomed to undergo severe hardships.
As soon as the captain had satisfied his revenge, he ordered Mr. Carew on
shore, taking him to a blacksmith, whom he desired to make a heavy iron
collar for him, which in Maryland they call a pot-hook, and is usually
put about the necks of runaway slaves. When it was fastened on, the
captain jeeringly cried, Now run away if you can; I will make you help to
load this vessel, and then I'll take care of you, and send you to the
ironworks of Susky Hadlam.
Captain Froade soon after left the vessel, and went up to a storehouse at
Tuckhoe, and the first mate to Kent island, whilst the second mate and
boatswain kept the ship; in the mean time our hero was employed in
loading the vessel, and doing all manner of drudgery. Galled with a
heavy yoke and narrowly watched, he began to lose all hopes of escape;
his spirits now began to fail him, and he almost gave himself up to
despair, little thinking his deliverance so near at hand, as he found it
soon to be.
One day, as he was employed in his usual drudgery, reflecting within
himself upon his unhappy condition, he unexpectedly saw his good friends,
Captains Hervey and Hopkins, two of the Biddeford captains, who, as has
been before related, had offered to redeem him from the prison at New
Town; he was overjoyed at the sight of them, not that he expected any
deliverance from them, but only as they were friends he had been so much
obliged to.
The captains came up and inquired very kindly how it fared with him, and
how he bore the drudgery they saw him employed in; adding, that he had
better have accepted the offer they made him at New Town. Our hero
gallantly replied, that however severe the hardships he underwent, and
were they still more so, he would rather choose to suffer them, than
purchase liberty at their cost. The captains, charmed with his
magnanimity, were resolved to make one attempt more to get him his
liberty. They soon after sounded the boatswain and mate; and finding
them not greatly averse to give him an opportunity to escape, they took
him aside, and thus addressed him:--Friend Carew, the offer we made you
at New Town may convince you of the regard we have for you; we therefore
cannot think of leaving the country before we have, by some means or
other, procured your liberty; we have already sounded the boatswain and
mate, and find we can bring them to wink at your escape; but the greatest
obstacle is, that there is forty pounds penalty and half a year's
imprisonment, for any one that takes off your iron collar, so that you
must be obliged to travel with it, till you come among the friendly
Indians, many miles distant from hence, who will assist you to take it
off, for they are great friends with the English, and trade with us for
lattens, kettles, frying-pans, gunpowder and shot; giving us in exchange
buffalo and deer skins, with other sorts of furs. But there are other
sorts of Indians, one of which are distinguished by a very flat forehead,
who use cross-bows in fighting; the other of a very small stature, who
are great enemies, and very cruel to the whites; these you must endeavour
by all means to avoid, for if you fall into their hands, they will
certainly murder you.
And here the reader will, we make no doubt, be pleased to see some
account of the Indians, among whom our hero was treated with so much
kindness and civility, as we shall relate in its proper place.
At the first settling of Maryland, there were several nations of them
governed by petty kings. Mr. Calvert, Lord Baltimore's brother having
been sent by him to make the first settlement in Maryland, landed at
Potowmac town; during the infancy of Werowance, Archibau, his uncle, who
governed his territories in his minority, received the English in a
friendly manner. From Potowmac the governor proceeded to Piscataqua,
about 20 leagues higher, where he found many Indians assembled, and among
them an Englishman, Captain Henry Fleet, who had lived there several
years in great esteem with the natives. Captain Fleet brought the prince
on board the governor's pinnace to treat with him. Mr. Calvert asked
him, whether he was agreeable that he and his people should settle in his
country. The prince replied, I will not bid you go, neither will I bid
you stay, but you may use your own discretion. The Indians, finding
their prince stay longer on board than they expected, crowded down to the
water-side to look after him, fearing the English had killed him, and
they were not satisfied till he showed himself to them, to please them.
The natives, who fled from St. Clement's isle, when they saw the English
come as friends, returned to their habitations; and the governor, not
thinking it advisable to settle so high up the river in the infancy of
the colony, sent his pinnaces down the river, and went with Captain Fleet
to a river on the north side of the Potowmac, within four or five
leagues, in his long-boat, and came to the town of Yoamaco, from which
the Indians of that neighbourhood are called Yoamacoes. The governor
landed, and treating with the prince there, acquainted him with the
occasion of his coming, to whom the Indian said little, but invited him
to his house, entertained him kindly, and gave him his own bed to lie on.
The next day he showed him the country, and the governor determining to
make the first settlement there, ordered all his ships and pinnaces to
come thither to him.
To make his entry the more safe and peaceable, he presented the Werowance
and Wilsos, and principal men of the place, with some English cloth,
axes, hoes and knives, which they accepted very kindly, and freely
consented that he and his company should dwell in one part of the town,
and reserving the other for themselves. Those Indians who inhabited that
part which was assigned to the English, readily abandoned their houses to
them; and Mr. Calvert immediately set hands to work to plant corn. The
natives agreed further to leave the whole town to the English as soon as
their harvest was in; which they did accordingly, and both English and
Indians promised to live friendly together. If any injury was done on
either part, the nation offending was to make satisfaction. Thus, on the
27th March, 1634, the governor took possession of the town, and named it
St. Mary's.
There happened an event which much facilitated this with the Indians.
The Susquehanocks, a warlike people, dwelling between Chesapeak Bay and
Delaware Bay, were wont to make incursions on their neighbours, partly
for dominion and partly for booty, of which the women were most desired
by them. The Yoamacoes, fearing these Susquehanocks, had a year before
the English arrived, resolved to desert their habitations, and remove
higher into the country; many of them were actually gone, and the rest
prepared to follow them. The ships and pinnaces arriving at the town,
the Indians were amazed and terrified at the sight of them, especially at
hearing their cannon thunder, when they came to anchor.
The first thing that Mr. Calvert did was to fix a court of guard, and
erect a storehouse; and he had not been there many days before Sir John
Harvey, governor of Virginia, came there to visit him, as did several of
the Indian Werowances, and many other Indians, from several parts of the
continent; among others, came the king of Patuxent, and, being carried
aboard the ship, then at anchor in the river, was placed between the
governor of Virginia and the governor of Maryland, at an entertainment
made for him and others. A Patuxent Indian coming aboard, and seeing his
king thus seated, started back; thinking he was surprised, he would have
fain leaped overboard, and could not be persuaded to enter the cabin,
till the Werowance came himself, and satisfied him he was in no danger.
This king had formerly been taken prisoner by the English of Virginia.
After the storehouse was finished and the ship unladen, Mr. Calvert
ordered the colours to be brought ashore, which was done with great
solemnity, the gentlemen and their servants attending in arms: several
volleys were fired on board and on shore, as also the cannon, at which
the natives were struck with admiration, such at least as had not heard
the firing of pieces of ordnance before, to whom it could not be
dreadful.
The kings of Patuxent and Yoamaco were present at this ceremony, with
many other Indians of Yoamaco; and the Werowance of Patuxent took that
occasion to advise the Indians of Yoamaco to be careful to keep the
league that had been made with the English. He staid in town several
days, and was full of his Indian compliments; when he went away he made
this speech to the governor: "I love the English so well, that, should
they go about to kill me, if I had so much breath as to speak, I would
command my people not to revenge my death, for I know they would not do
such a thing, except it were through my own fault."
This infant colony supplied themselves with Indian corn at Barbadoes,
which, at their first arrival, they began to use to save their French
store of flour and oatmeal. The Indian women, perceiving that their
servants did not know how to dress it, made their bread for them, and
taught them to do it themselves. There was Indian corn enough in the
country, and these new adventurers soon after shipped off 10,000 bushels
for New England, to purchase salt fish and other provisions. While the
English and Indians lived at St. Mary's together, the natives went every
day to hunt with the new comers for deer and turkeys, which, when they
had caught, they gave to the English, or sold for knives, beads, and such
like trifles. They also brought them good store of fish, and behaved
themselves very kindly, suffering their women and children to come among
them, which was a certain sign of their confidence in them.
Most of the Indians still follow the religion and customs of their
ancestors; and are not become either more pious or more polite by the
company of the English.
As to their religion, they have all of them some dark notions about God;
but some of them have brighter ones, if a person may be believed who had
this confession from the mouth of an Indian: "That they believed God was
universally beneficent; that his dwelling was in heaven above, and the
influence of his goodness reached to the earth beneath; that he was
incomprehensible in his excellence, and enjoyed all possible felicity;
that his duration was eternal, his perfection boundless, and that he
possessed everlasting happiness." So far the savage talked as rationally
of the existence of a God as a Christian divine or philosopher could have
done; but when he came to justify their worshipping of the Devil, whom
they call Okee, his notions were very heterodox. He said, "It is true
God is the giver of all good things, but they flow naturally and
promiscuously from him; that they are showered down upon all men without
distinction; that God does not trouble himself with the impertinent
affairs of men, nor is concerned at what they do, but leaves them to make
the most of their free will, and to secure as many as they can of the
good things that flow from him; that therefore it was to no purpose
either to fear or worship him; but, on the contrary, if they did not
pacify the evil spirit, he would ruin their health, peace, and plenty, he
being always visiting them in the air, thunders, storms, &c."
As to the idol which they all worship, and is kept in a temple called
Quiocasan, he seemed to have a very different opinion of its divinity,
and cried out against the juggling of the priests.--This man did not talk
like a common savage, and therefore we may suppose he had studied the
matter more than his countrymen, who, for the generality, paid a great
deal of devotion to the idol, and worshipped him as their chief deity.
Their priests and conjurors are highly reverenced by them. They are
given extremely to pawning or conjuring; and one of them very lately
conjured a shower of rain for a gentleman's plantation, in a time of
drought, for two bottles of rum. We are not apt to give credit to such
supernatural events; and, had we not found this in an author who was on
the spot, we should have rejected it as a fable.
Their priests promise fine women, eternal spring, and every pleasure in
perfection in the other world, which charmed them in this; and threaten
them with lakes of fire, and torments by a fairy in the shape of an old
woman. They are often bloody in their sacrifices, and offer up young
children to the devil. They have a superstitious ceremony among them,
which they call _Huskanawing_, and is performed thus: they shut up ten or
twelve young men, the most deserving among them, about twenty years of
age, in a strong inclosure, made on purpose, like a sugar loaf, and every
way open like a lattice, for the air to pass through; they are kept for
several months, and are allowed to have no sustenance but the infusion or
decoction of poisonous intoxicating roots, which turn their brains, and
they run stark mad.
By this it is pretended they lose the remembrance of all former things,
even of their parents, treasure, and language, as if they had drunk of
the water of oblivion, drawn out of the lake of Lethe. When they have
been in this condition as long as their custom directs, they lessen this
intoxicating potion; and, by degrees, the young men recover the use of
their senses; but before they are quite well, they are shown in their
towns; and the youths who have been _huskanawed_ are afraid to discover
the least sign of their remembering any thing of their past lives; for,
in such a case, they must be huskanawed again, and they are disciplined
so severely the second time, that it generally kills them.
After the young men have passed this trial, they are Coucarouses, or men
of quality in their nations; and the Indians say they do it to take away
from youth all childish impressions, and that strong partiality to
persons and things which is contracted before reason takes place.
The Indian priests, to command the respect of the people, make themselves
look as ugly and as terrible as they can; the conjurors always share with
them in their deceit, and they gain by it; the Indians consult both of
them before they go on any enterprise. There are no priestesses or
witches among them. They erect altars on every remarkable occasion, and
have temples built like their common cabins, in which their idol stands,
and the corpses of their kings and rulers are preserved.
They have no sort of literature among them; and their way of
communicating things from one to another is by hieroglyphics. They make
their accounts by units, tens, hundreds, &c., as the English do; but they
reckon their years by cohonks, or winters, and divide every year into
five seasons; the budding time, the earing of the corn, the summer, the
harvest, and the winter.
Their months they count by moons. They divide the day into three parts,
the rise, power, and lowering, of the sun; and keep their accounts by
knots on a string, or notches on a stick, of which Captain Smith relates
a very pleasant story; that, when the princess Pocahonta went for
England, a Coucarouse, or lord of her own nation, attended her; his name
was Uttamaccomack: and king Powhatan, Pocahonta's father, commanded him,
when he arrived in England, to count the people, and give him an account
of their number. Uttamaccomock, when he came ashore, got a stick,
intending to count them by notches; but he soon found that his arithmetic
would be to no purpose, and threw away his stick. At his return, the
king asked him how many people there were? and he replied, count the
stars of the sky, the leaves upon the trees, and the sand upon the
seashore, and you will know how many are the people in England.
They esteem the marriage-vow as the most sacred of all engagements, and
abhor divorces; adultery is the most unpardonable of all crimes amongst
them, and seldom occurs without exemplary punishment.
Their maidens are very chaste; and if any one of them happen to have a
child before marriage, her fortune is spoiled. They are very sprightly
and good humoured, and the women generally handsome. Their manner of
handling infants is very rough: as soon as the child is born, they plunge
it over head and ears in cold water, and they bind it naked to a board,
making a hole in the proper place for evacuation. Between the child and
the board they put some cotton, wool, or fur, and let it lie in this
posture till the bones begin to harden, the joints to knit, and the limbs
to grow strong; they then loosen it from the board, and let it crawl
about where it pleases. From this custom, it is said, the Indians derive
the neatness and exactness of their limbs, which are the most perfect in
the world. Some of them are of a gigantic stature, live to a great age,
and are stronger than others; but there is not a crooked, bandy-legged,
or ill-shaped, Indian to be seen. Some nations of them are very tall and
large limbed, but others are short and small; their complexion is a dark
brown and tawny. They paint themselves with a pecone root, which stains
them a reddish colour. They are clear when they are young, but greasing
and sunning make their skin turn hard and black. Their hair, for the
most part, is coal black; so are their eyes; they wear their hair cut
after several whimsical modes, the persons of note always keep a long
lock behind; the women wearing it very long, hanging at their backs, or
twisted up with beads; and all the better sort adorn their heads with a
kind of coronet. The men have no beards, and, to prevent their having
any, use certain devices, which they will not communicate to the English.
Their clothes are a mantle girt close in the middle, and underneath a
piece of cloth tied round their waist, and reaching down to the middle of
the thigh. The common sort only tie a piece of cloth or skin round the
middle. As for their food they boil, broil, or roast, all the meat they
eat; honomy is the standing dish, and consists of Indian corn soaked,
broken in a mortar, and then boiled in water over a gentle fire ten or
twelve hours together. They draw and pluck their fowls, skin and paunch
their quadrupeds, but dress their fish with the scales on, and without
gutting; they leave the scales, entrails, and bones, till they eat the
fish, when they throw the offal away. Their food is chiefly beeves,
turtle, several species of snakes, broth made of deer's humbles, peas,
beans, &c. They have no set meals: they eat when they are hungry, and
drink nothing but water. Their bread is made of Indian corn, wild oats,
or the seed of the sun-flower; they eat it alone, and not with meat.
They travel always on foot with a gun or bow. They live upon the game
they kill, and lie under a tree upon a little high grass. The English
prohibit them to keep corn, sheep, or hogs, lest they should steal their
neighbour's.
When they come to rivers, they presently patch up a canoe of birch bark,
cross over in it, and leave it on the river's bank, if they think they
shall not want it; otherwise they carry it along with them.
Their way of receiving strangers is by the pipe, or calumet of peace. Of
this Pere Henepin has given a long account in his voyage, and the pipe is
as follows: they fill a pipe of tobacco, larger and bigger than any
common pipe, light it, and then the chief of them takes a whiff, gives it
to the stranger, and if he smoke of it, it is peace; if not, war; if
peace, the pipe is handed all round the company.
The diseases of the Indians are very few, and easy to be cured: they for
the most part arise from excessive heats and colds, which they get rid of
by sweating. As for aches, and settled pains in the joints or limbs,
they use caustics and scarifying. The priests are their physicians, and
from their childhood are taught the nature and use of simples, in which
their knowledge is excellent; but they will not communicate it,
pretending it is a gift of God; and by this mystery they make it the more
valuable.
Their riches consist of furs, peak, roenocke, and pearl. Their peak and
roenocke are made of shells; the peak is an English bugle, but the
roenocke is a piece of cockle, drilled through like a bead. Before the
English came among them, the peak and the roenocke were all their
treasure; but now they set a value on their fur and pearl, and are greedy
of keeping quantities of them together. The pearl is good, and formerly
was not so rare as it is at this time.
They had no iron tools till the English brought them over: their knives
were sharpened reeds or shells, their axes sharp stones. They rubbed
fire, by turning the end of a hard piece of wood upon the side of one
that is soft and dry, which at last would burn. They felled great trees
by burning them down at the root, having ways of keeping the fire from
ascending. They hollowed them with a gentle fire, and scraped the trunk
clean, and this made their canoes, of which some were thirty feet long.
They are very good handicraft men, and what they do is generally neat and
convenient.
Their kingdoms descended to the next heir, male or female, and they were
exact in preserving the succession in the right line. If, as it often
happened, one great prince subjected the other, those conquests commonly
were lost at his death, and the nation returned again to the obedience of
their natural princes. They have no written laws, neither can they have
any, having no letters.
Their lands are in common, and their Werowances, or judges, are all
lord-chancellors, deciding causes and inflicting punishments according as
they think fit. These Werowances and the Coucarouses are their terms to
distinguish the men of quality; the former are their war-captains, and
the latter such as have passed the trial of huskanawing. Their priests
and conjurors have great authority among them. They have servants whom
they call black boys, and are very exact in requiring the respect that is
due to their several qualities.
Most of the Indians live on the eastern shore, where they have two or
three little towns; some of them go over to the other side, in winter
time, to hunt for deer, being generally employed by the English. They
take delight in nothing else, and it is very rare that any of them will
embrace the Christian way of living and worship. There are about 500
fighting Indians in all the province; the cause of their diminution
proceeded not from wars with the English, for they have none with them
worth speaking of, but from the perpetual discords and wars among
themselves. The female sex have always swept away a great many.
One thing is observed in them, though they are a people very timorous and
cowardly in fight, yet when taken prisoners and condemned, they will die
like heroes, braving the most exquisite tortures that can be invented,
and singing all the time they are upon the rack.
We find several of the Indians doing actions which would do honour to the
greatest heroes of antiquity: thus captain Smith, who was one of the
first adventurers in planting the colony of Virginia, being taken
prisoner, while he was making discoveries, by king Oppecamcanough, he not
only spared Mr. Smith's life, but carried him to his town and feasted
him; and afterwards presented him to Powhaton, the chief king of the
savages, who would have beheaded him, had he not been saved by the
intercession and generosity of his daughter, Pocahonto, who, when Mr.
Smith's head was on the block, and she could not prevail with her father
to give him his life, put her own head upon his, and ventured receiving
the blow to save him, though she was scarce then sixteen years of age.
Some time after, Sir Thomas Dale sent captain Argall to Patowmac to buy
corn, where he met with Pocahonta. He invited her to come aboard his
ship, which with some difficulty she consented to, being betrayed by the
king of Postcany, brother to the king of Patowmac, with whom she then
resided.