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THE FOUNDING OF
NEW ENGLAND
[Illustration: New England in 1640. (Insert shows Labrador Current)]
THE FOUNDING OF
NEW ENGLAND
BY
JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS
_Illustrated_
[Illustration]
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
BOSTON
COPYRIGHT, 1921
BY JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS
First Impression, May, 1921
Second Impression, Nov, 1922
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_To_
A. L. A.
One duty that was always incumbent on the historian has now become a
duty of deeper significance and stronger obligation. Truth, and Truth
only, is our aim. We are bound as historians to examine and record facts
without favor or affection to our own nation or to any other.
LORD BRYCE,
Presidential Address, at the
International Congress of Historical Studies, 1913
PREFACE
The following account of the founding of New England is intended to
serve as an introduction to the later history of that section, and to
the study of its relations with other portions of the Empire and with
the mother-country, as well as of the section's influence upon the
nation formed from such of the colonies as subsequently revolted. The
book thus necessarily deals mainly with origins, discussing the
discovery and first settlement of the region; the genesis of the
religious and political ideas which there took root and flourished; the
geographic and other factors which shaped its economic development; the
beginnings of that English overseas empire, of which it formed a part;
and the early formulation of thought—on both sides of the
Atlantic—regarding imperial problems.
There is no lack of detailed narratives, both of the entire period
covered by the present volume and, on an even larger scale, of certain
of its more important or dramatic episodes. New material brought to
light within the past decade or two, however, has necessitated a
revaluation of many former judgments, as well as changes in selection
and emphasis. Moreover, our general accounts do not, for the most part,
adequately treat of those economic and imperial relations which are of
fundamental importance; for the one outstanding fact concerning any
American colony in the colonial period is that it was a dependency, and
formed merely a part of a larger and more comprehensive imperial and
economic organization. Consequently, the evolution of such a colony can
be viewed correctly only when it is seen against the background of the
economic and imperial conditions and theories of the time.
While the author, accordingly, has endeavored to place the local story
in its proper imperial setting, he has endeavored also to distinguish
between its various elements, and to display the conflicting forces at
work in the colonies themselves. The old conception of New England
history, according to which that section was considered to have been
settled by persecuted religious refugees, devoted to liberty of
conscience, who, in the disputes with the mother-country, formed a
united mass of liberty-loving patriots unanimously opposed to an
unmitigated tyranny, has, happily, for many years, been passing. In his
own narrative of the facts, based upon a fresh study of the sources, the
author has tried to indicate that economic as well as religious factors
played a very considerable part in the great migration during the early
settlement period, in the course of which over sixty-five thousand
Englishmen left their homes for various parts of the New World, of which
number approximately only four thousand were to join the New England
churches. He has also endeavored to exhibit the workings of the
theocracy, and to show how, in the period treated, the domestic struggle
against the tyranny exercised by the more bigoted members of the
theocratic party was of greater importance in the history of liberty
than the more dramatic contest with the mother-country.
While the local narrative is based wholly upon original records, much
use has been made also of the rapidly increasing number of scholarly
monographs upon particular topics, the indebtedness to which will be
found more particularly set forth in the footnotes. It is true that many
points—such as land-tenure, in spite of all that has been written upon
it—yet remain to be cleared up before we can be quite sure that we
understand a number of matters connected with colonial institutions.
Nevertheless, so much work of this character has already been done,
which has only in part found its way into popular accounts, that it
seems as if the time had come for a serious attempt to recast the story
of early New England, and to combine these results of recent research
with the more modern spirit, in a new presentation of the period.
To those who first encouraged him to undertake the work,—interrupted by
the war,—and who, in one way and another, have assisted him in his
enterprise, the author takes this opportunity to offer his most sincere
and grateful thanks.
J. T. A.
BRIDGEHAMPTON, NEW YORK,
_November 9, 1920_.
CONTENTS
I. THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND 1
II. STAKING OUT CLAIMS 26
III. THE RACE FOR EMPIRE 41
IV. SOME ASPECTS OF PURITANISM 64
V. THE FIRST PERMANENT SETTLEMENT 86
VI. NEW ENGLAND AND THE GREAT MIGRATION 118
VII. AN ENGLISH OPPOSITION BECOMES A NEW ENGLAND OLIGARCHY 146
VIII. THE GROWTH OF A FRONTIER 175
IX. ATTEMPTS TO UNIFY NEW ENGLAND 206
X. CROSS-CURRENTS IN THE CONFEDERACY 231
XI. THE DEFEAT OF THE THEOCRACY 253
XII. THE THEORY OF EMPIRE 278
XIII. THE REASSERTION OF IMPERIAL CONTROL 310
XIV. THE INEVITABLE CONFLICT 338
XV. LOSS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CHARTER 364
XVI. AN EXPERIMENT IN ADMINISTRATION 398
XVII. THE NEW ORDER 431
INDEX 457
ILLUSTRATIONS
New England in 1640 _Frontispiece_
Manuscript Map of the New England Coast, 1607-8 40
(believed to have been drawn by Champlain)
Page from Bradford's _History_, on which is the 98
Mayflower Compact
Streams of Emigration from England, 1620 to 1642 120
An Original Share in the Massachusetts Bay Company 128
Document signed by Uncas and his Squaw 204
Page from John Winthrop's Journal 232
Letter from the Earl of Clarendon to the Governor of 332
Connecticut
Warrant signed by Governor Winslow of Plymouth for the 360
Sale of Indian Captives as Slaves
Reverend John Cotton's opinion that Philip's Son 362
should be put to Death
Demand for Surrender of Sir Edmund Andros 430
Original Draft of Indented Bills of 1690 442
Testimonial to the good character of Rebecca Nourse, 454
executed as a Witch
THE FOUNDING OF
NEW ENGLAND
CHAPTER I
THE AMERICAN BACKGROUND
In the name of the country which to-day occupies the major part of the
inhabitable portion of North America is indicated the twofold nature of
its history; for the story of the United States may evidently be
approached, either from the standpoint of a federal nation, or from that
of its component political units. These units, although in themselves
separate states, are geographically divided from one another, for the
most part, by boundaries which are purely artificial. Natural frontiers
consist of the sea, deserts, mountains, rivers, and the now almost
obsolete ones of forests and swamps. A glance at the map shows that such
natural barriers are only a negligible part of the boundaries between
our various states and territories. Rivers alone form an exception, and
these, for several reasons, are the least satisfactory for the
purpose.[1] Were the federal tie dissolved, and these now united
commonwealths to become completely independent, and possibly hostile,
the artificial character of their limits would at once become obvious.
Footnote 1:
_Cf._ C. B. Fawcett, _Frontiers_ (Oxford, 1918), pp. 50 _ff._ Also,
Lord Curzon, _Frontiers_ (Oxford, 1908), pp. 13 _ff._
From this it has followed, as settlement has gradually spread over the
continent, bringing innumerable communities into existence, that these
have tended to group themselves into sections, united by common modes of
thought, ways of life, and economic needs. Histories of the individual
states are almost as arbitrarily localized as the histories of the
counties within them; but the story of any of the sections into which
the country has divided from time to time possesses an organic unity
created by the forces of life itself.
Some of these divisions have tended to remain permanent, while others
have passed with the development of the country. During the colonial
period, when the English inhabited only the comparatively narrow strip
of land between the sea and the mountain-barrier of the Appalachian
system, the colonists fell into three natural groups,—the New England,
the Middle, and the Southern,—determined by climatic, economic, and
cultural conditions. These factors, operating with others somewhat more
fortuitous, made the distinctions both lasting and marked, the extreme
northern and southern groups exhibiting their differences more clearly
than the intermediate one lying between them.
When the frontier was extended west of the mountain-barrier,—and,
indeed, on a smaller scale, even earlier,—another grouping came into
existence, that of East and West, or old settlement and frontier. This
division was also to persist, with an ever-enlarging East and an
ever-retreating West. If the economic and political ideas of these new
sections were to remain somewhat sharply contrasted, the distinctions
between the original extreme eastern groups were also continued, like
lengthening shadows across the mountain ridges, and the whole country
was to find itself aligned in two hostile groupings in the most tragic
division that it has yet had to face—that between the North and the
South.
In the New England group we have one which, in spite of minor
differences, is unusually homogeneous. Not only are the boundaries
between the six states which now form it negligible, but the section, as
a whole, is a geographical unit, within which a common life, based upon
generally similar economic, political, and religious foundations, has
constituted a distinct cultural strain in the life of the nation. The
“New England idea” and the “New England type” have been as sharply
defined as they have been persistent; and, if, in our own day, they
seem, to some extent, to be passing, their influence may be no less
living because spread broadcast throughout the whole land, and absorbed
into the common national life.
Effective natural boundaries, defining a limited area, are of
determining influence in fostering the life of primitive peoples or of
civilized colonies. Diffusion over an unlimited space, in the one case,
tends to weaken the hold on the land and the growth of the state, while,
in the other, it greatly retards the development of those elements that
make for civilized life. Aside from other factors, the possession by the
English, in the settlement period, of a limited and protected area,
naturally restricted by the sea and the mountains, resulted, speaking
broadly, in the building up of thickly settled, compact colonies as
contrasted with the boundless empire of the French, opened to them by
their control of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence rivers. It is
noteworthy that, of the great river-highways leading to the interior of
the continent,—the St. Lawrence, the Hudson-Mohawk, and the
Mississippi,—none was at first possessed by the English, who had
everywhere, unwittingly but fortunately, selected portions of the coast
where their natural tendency to expand was temporarily held in check.
The Appalachian barrier, which thus served to protect and to concentrate
the efforts of the English, may be said to extend from the Gulf of St.
Lawrence to Alabama, coming nearest to the coast in passing across New
York. In the northern part of Maine, where the mountains descend to a
low water-shed, enormous forests, with no easy river-route facilitating
peaceful or warlike travel, formed almost as effective a barrier; while
passage southward, along the coast, was impeded during the early period
by the presence of a foreign nation, the Dutch. There were, indeed,
certain narrow entrances to this enclosed territory from the north, as
the larger streams, flowing southward from the water-shed along the
Canadian boundary, could be utilized, in connection with those flowing
northward from its other slope to the St. Lawrence. The many falls along
their courses, entailing laborious carries in the dense forest, together
with the necessary longer ones across the height of land, made these
routes more suitable, however, for the military needs of savages than
for the movement of troops in large bodies, or for the purposes of
trade.[2] The main passage for travel and transport from Canada to the
south lay wholly to the west of New England, by way of the Richelieu
River and Lake Champlain, which latter well deserved its Indian name of
“key to the country.”
Footnote 2:
The three most important of these routes were: 1, from the headwaters
of the St. John to a branch of the Chaudière; 2, from the head of the
Kennebec to the Chaudière proper (the route of Col. Arnold in 1775);
and 3, from a branch of the Connecticut to a stream entering Lake
Memphremagog, and so down the St. Francis. _Cf._ A. B. Hulbert,
_Portage Paths_; Cleveland, 1903. Many of the early maps also show the
more important portages and carrying-places.
Within the boundaries thus roughly defined and the sea, lies a land said
to contain a greater diversity of natural features than any other of
equal area in the United States. To the west and north are the Berkshire
Hills of Massachusetts, the Green Mountains of Vermont, the White
Mountains of New Hampshire, and the scattered peaks of Maine. From a
height of fifteen hundred to two thousand feet at the base of the
mountains, a gently sloping upland descends gradually to Long Island
Sound and the Atlantic. Although, at first glance, its surface seems to
present only a confused mass of low-lying hills, their tops are seen to
show a marked uniformity of level as they gradually slope downward
toward the south and east; and geological evidence makes it almost
certain that, at one time, this region was a plain, resulting from the
wearing down, by denudation, of an earlier mountain range. Subsequent
alterations in its surface, due to erosion and other factors, gave rise
to the present uplands and lowlands, which have been of determining
influence in the peopling of the section, the rugged uplands offering so
hard a subsistence that they were nowhere willingly chosen for
settlement so long as land might still be had in the lowlands.
Although, largely in the eighteenth century, economic pressure in the
happier valleys forced many farmers to move to the hills, the opening of
the West drew many of them to the prairies during the following century,
and the population, like water which had been forced above its level,
slowly drained off the uplands again, through the sluiceway of the
Mohawk Valley. To-day, dying hill-towns, abandoned farms, and the yet
unpeopled wilderness of northern Maine, tell the story of this struggle
against geographical conditions.[3]
Footnote 3:
W. M. Davis, _The Physical Geography of Southern New England_ (New
York, 1896), pp. 26 _ff._
This formation of upland and valley extends to the shore-line of Sound
and ocean, the broad coastal plain, which is so marked a feature from
New Jersey southward, being almost wholly absent in New England. This is
probably due to a subsidence of the shore, which allowed the ocean to
flow back over part of the land, and which also explains the many
hundred islands off the coast of Maine, and the drowned river valleys
along the Sound. So numerous are the islands, bays, and headlands of the
rugged coast north of the Isles of Shoals, that they expand the two
hundred and thirty miles of shore to nearly three thousand, if all are
included in the measurement. In this section, also, there are many good
harbors, particularly that of Portland, but the coast is so greatly
dissected as to make land communication along it very difficult; while
the small boats, which partially served the needs of commerce and travel
in early days, were seriously interfered with by the great rise and fall
of the tides. Both these conditions tended to isolate the colonial
settlements and hinder their development. The upland country, with its
poorer soil and more difficult conditions of life, also approaches
nearer to the sea in Maine and New Hampshire than farther south, so
that, although Portsmouth, too, has a fine harbor, those states have
always been more thinly settled than the others.
The coast of Massachusetts is less rugged, but more varied. South of the
granite headland of Cape Ann, the shores of Boston Bay are still rocky
and irregular; but both shores of the great sandy curve of the Cape Cod
peninsula, which, with Cape Ann, encloses the waters of Massachusetts
Bay, are smooth and moulded by wind and wave. The coast again becomes
rough around Buzzard's Bay, while the almost land-locked waters of Rhode
Island have drowned the old river-system of that state. Opposite
Connecticut lies Long Island, the only island of any considerable size
along the entire Atlantic coast; so that the Sound, or inland sea, thus
formed between it and the mainland, gives to Connecticut the advantage
of a quiet, protected waterway for all its ports.
The value of a coast-line, however, depends not alone upon its own
features, but upon its relations with the interior, both as to means of
communication, and as to the soil and products of the back-country.
During the colonial period, the lines of communication were naturally
along waterways. With the small tonnage of the vessels then employed,
even the sea-going ones, by utilizing rivers, could pass far inland; and
we find Henry Hudson penetrating to Albany in the same ship in which he
had crossed the ocean. The almost interminable length of the St.
Lawrence and the Mississippi lured the French ever deeper into the
wilderness in quest of the retreating fur-trade, so that their empire
became hardly more than a series of far-flung forts and trading-posts.
The rivers of New England, on the other hand, having their rise in the
Appalachian barrier, and interrupted by many falls in their short
courses, led to no vast domain beyond, and offered little temptation to
the settler to leave their fertile valleys and tide-swept mouths. This
lack of inland navigation not only tended to concentrate settlement near
the coast, or on the lower navigable reaches of such streams as the
Connecticut, but, also, in a later period, hastened the progress of
turnpikes and railroads more quickly in New England than anywhere else
in the country.[4]
Footnote 4:
E. C. Semple, _Influences of Geographic Environment_ (New York, 1911),
p. 354.
At first, however, rivers were the only means of communication with the
interior, and settlements along the coast of Massachusetts, and on
Buzzard's and Narragansett bays, tended to remain maritime in character,
extending inland but slowly; whereas those located on such streams as
the Kennebec and the Connecticut absorbed the rich fur-trade for which
they formed the main routes. This trade, it may be noted, was exhausted
earlier in New England than elsewhere, on account of the comparatively
limited drainage basins of the river-system, so that the people were
sooner forced to depend upon agriculture, fishing, commerce, and
manufactures.
Land travel continued both difficult and costly in all the colonies
throughout the whole of the earlier industrial period, and roads were so
poor, even a century after New England was settled, that not until 1722
was a team driven for the first time from Connecticut to Rhode Island.
To emphasize the effect of rivers, we may note that in New York, where
the Hudson was the highway, the average cost of carrying a bushel of
wheat one hundred miles was but two pence, compared with a shilling in
Pennsylvania, where forty wagons, one hundred and sixty horses, and
eighty men were required to transport the same amount of freight handled
by two or three men on a scow in New York. This high cost of land
carriage, which, added to the ocean freights, had the effect of
fostering home manufactures as against importations from England, also
restricted the areas of distribution, and tended to localize
industry.[5]
Footnote 5:
V. S. Clark, _History of Manufactures in the U. S., 1607-1860_
(Carnegie Institution, Washington, 1916), pp. 88 _ff._
It was not, however, merely the lack of an adequate system of river
transport that served to stimulate manufacturing in New England in
competition with the mother-country. The character of such rivers as she
possessed peculiarly adapted them for the purpose of supplying power,
for not only are falls and rapids numerous in all of them, but the
“fall-line” in New England is nearer tidewater than it is anywhere else
along the coast. In addition, the regularity of the rainfall, and the
great number of lakes, which form natural reservoirs, cause the flow of
the rivers to be more constant than in other parts of the country. From
all these causes, the little Merrimac, for example, which is otherwise
insignificant as an American river, is the most noted water-power stream
in the world.[6]
Footnote 6:
_Report on the Water-Power of the U. S_.; Census Report, 1885.
The soil of New England is of glacial origin, about three quarters of it
being of boulder-clay, stubborn in character and difficult to cultivate,
but of fair and lasting fertility, due to the steady decomposition of
the smaller pebbles. The remainder, largely in the southeast, is sandy
and of little or no use for agriculture, owing to the rapid draining
away of all moisture.[7] That on the uplands is thinner and poorer than
in the valleys, and the uplands predominate.
Footnote 7:
N. S. Shaler, _United States_, vol. 1, p. 54.
A hard living may be forced from such a soil; but the lazy or unskilled
fail to subsist, much less leave a surplus. Tests of white and colored
farmers in the north indicate that, if the efficiency of the former be
taken as 100, that of the latter is but 49,[8] from which fact the
economic impossibility of slavery would seem to be established for New
England, as that institution requires the production of a considerable
surplus over individual needs, even by inefficient labor. In Barbadoes,
on the other hand, a hundred acres planted in sugar were tended by fifty
slaves and seven white servants; a similar amount of land, if cotton
were raised, required forty-five blacks and five whites; while the
cultivation of ginger necessitated the labor of seven and a half persons
per acre.[9] The economic, social, and political results of such
utilization of the soil, as compared with the subsistence farming of New
England, are too obvious to need elaboration. As we shall see, the
Puritans were not wholly averse to owning slaves, and were often wont,
in ethical cases, to weigh both religious scruples and economic
considerations. In this case, the latter prevailed, without detriment to
the former, and the abolition sentiment of the nineteenth century was
rooted in the glacial soil of the seventeenth.
Footnote 8:
E. Huntington, _Civilization and Climate_ (Yale University Press,
1915), p. 22.
Footnote 9:
Dalby Thomas, _An historical account of the rise and growth of the W.
I. Collonies and of the great advantages they are to England in
respect to Trade_ (London, 1690), pp. 14, 21 _f._
The soil was one which did not foster large plantations, as in the
South, but small farms tilled by their owners, with little help from
slave or indented servant. There was, therefore, no economic factor at
work in New England tending to wide dispersal, as against the obvious
need of compact settlement for purposes of protection, mutual help, and
social intercourse. The early New Englander was a somewhat hesitating
believer in the injustice of slavery. He was a strong believer in a town
grouped about a church. The soil confirmed and strengthened him in both
convictions.
This compact form of settlement, in turn, however, caused the village
lands of New England to become exceedingly high-priced as compared with
the plantation lands of the southern colonies. In the seventeenth
century, New England farms very rarely contained over five hundred
acres, in contrast to the average Virginian plantation of five thousand;
but New England land was worth about fourteen times as much per acre as
that in Virginia, and a hundred-acre homestead in the north was equal in
value to a fair-sized plantation in the south.[10] All these factors,
operating with others, emphasized the characteristic nature of New
England expansion, which was almost invariably a migration, not of
individuals, but of churches and towns, or, at least, of small
neighborhood groups.
Footnote 10:
J. C. Ballagh, “The Land System in the South,” in _American Historical
Association Report_, 1897, p. 109.
When the land was first settled, it was everywhere covered by a dense
forest, except for meadows here and there, along the shore or in the
larger river-bottoms. Even to-day, of the thirty thousand square miles
of land-surface in Maine, the forest is said to extend over twenty-one
thousand, a district as large as New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and
Connecticut combined.[11] These forests, mainly of hard-wood, deciduous
trees, with an admixture of conifers in Maine, had been practically
untouched by the natives, except by burning the underbrush. In fact,
Whitney claims that more trees had been destroyed by the beavers than by
the Indians.[12] Although building stone is plentiful in New England,
this abundance of timber along the Atlantic coast determined the form of
the colonial architecture, and developed a type of wooden building
little used in England. It also provided the materials for
ship-building, the forests growing to the very edge of a shore indented
almost everywhere by suitable harbors; and, in the early period, this
industry is found scattered along the entire shore. But it tended to
concentrate at fewer points, as the lumber-supply near at hand became
exhausted, and the tonnage of vessels increased. “In reading the early
commercial history of New England,” however, as Miss Semple well says,
“one seems never to get away from the sound of the ship-builder's
hammer, and the rush of the launching vessel.”[13]
Footnote 11:
H. A. Pressey, _Water-Powers of the State of Maine_; U. S. Geological
Survey, 1902, p. 15.
Footnote 12:
J. D. Whitney, _The United States_ (Boston, 1889), p. 176.
Footnote 13:
E. C. Semple, _American History and its Geographic Conditions_
(Boston, 1903), p. 122.
The climate, though varying in intensity from northern Maine and New
Hampshire to southern Connecticut, and also from inland to the sea, is,
on the whole, a severe one. Snow falls to a considerable depth
everywhere, remaining in the mountains till late in the spring, the
lower mean temperature of the year, as compared with the coast farther
south, being due to the greater cold of winter rather than to a cooler
summer. The seasonal changes, indeed, are very marked, and the cultural
influence of “the harshness of contrasts and extremes of sensibility,”
of a “winter which was always the effort to live,” and a summer which
was “tropical license,” must formerly have been even greater than
to-day.[14] A noteworthy feature of our Atlantic coast, climatically, is
the crowding together of the isothermal lines, so that the frigid and
tropical zones are brought within twenty degrees of latitude, as
compared with forty in Europe. This bringing the products of so many
climatic regions comparatively near to one another greatly stimulated
intercolonial trade, which New England early claimed the largest share
in carrying.[15]
Footnote 14:
_The Education of Henry Adams_ (Boston, 1918), pp. 7 _ff._
Footnote 15:
Semple, _Influences of Geographic Environment_, p. 618. Both Miss
Semple and A. P. Brigham (_Geographic Influences in American History_,
New York, 1903) lay their main stress on land-forms. For climatic
influences, _vide_ W. N. Lacy, “Some Climatic Influences in American
History,” in _Monthly Weather Review_, vol. XXXVI, pp. 169 _ff._;
Huntington, _Civilization and Climate_, _ubi supra_; and _The Red
Man's Continent_ (Yale University Press, 1919).
We thus see how the mountain-barrier kept the New Englander within
bounds; how the lack of long navigable rivers prevented him from
advancing far inland, even within his narrow limits; how the bleak and
stony uplands held him along the coast and lower river valleys; how the
soil discouraged him from agriculture; and, on the other hand, how his
numerous harbors, the quantity of timber for ship-building, and his
central position for the carrying trade, all drew him out to sea.
There was another, and most important factor, however, luring him to
quit the land, for the banks and shoals, extending from Cape Cod to
Newfoundland, were the feeding grounds of enormous masses of cod,
herring, and other fish, which swarmed in the cold waters of the
Labrador current. If no precious metals rewarded search, if the beaver
retreated farther and farther into the wilderness, if the soil gave but
grudging yield, here, at least, was limitless wealth. The industry,
thanks to the combination of shoals and icy waters, became the
corner-stone of the prosperity of New England; and in the colonial
history of that section, commerce smells as strongly of fish as theology
does of brimstone. Together with lumber, fish became the staple of
exchange with old England and the rich West Indian settlements, and the
industry bred a hardy race of seamen, who manned New England's merchant
fleet, and, later, the American navy.[16]
Footnote 16:
For the influence of the sea on subsidiary industries, _vide_ M. Keir,
“Some Influences of the Sea upon the Industries of New England,”
_American Geographical Review_, vol. v, pp. 399 _ff._
In two other aspects the sea exerted marked influence upon both the
discovery and the settlement of the new lands, as well as upon their
later history. The fact that America and Europe are separated by three
thousand miles of water must be considered in relation to culture at
various periods; for geographic factors are relative, and not absolute,
in their historic connotations. Countries may be said to be habitable or
uninhabitable, distances to lengthen or shorten, heights to rise or
fall, according to the measure of man's control over nature at any given
time. As a distinguished French geographer has said: “Tout se transforme
autour de nous; tout diminue ou s'accroît. Rien n'est vraiment immobile
et invariable.”[17] Increase in speed of vessels, with increased storage
capacity for food and water, is equivalent to an actual reduction of the
distance in miles; and, measured by the standards of modern ships in
speed alone, without considering other factors, we may say that twenty
to thirty thousand miles of uncharted seas had kept America hidden from
European eyes.
Footnote 17:
Jean Brunhes, _La géographie humaine_ (Paris, 1912), p. 6.
Across this wide expanse, in the latitude of Europe, the currents of
both air and water set from America toward the Old World, and almost
precluded the possibility, under primitive conditions, of European
voyaging and discovery. North of this eastward track, however, lie not
only the stepping-stones of the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland,
but, once at Iceland, the prevailing wind carries the European mariner
to Greenland, whence the Labrador current leads him close inshore and
along the coasts of Canada and New England.[18] To the south of the
central eastward track, is the zone of the trade-winds and the great
westward flowing equatorial current; and there, again, we find island
stepping-stones. Thus nature clearly indicated the two ways by which
America might be found; and, for long, the routes followed were the
northerly one to the Newfoundland fisheries and New England, and the
southerly one to the Canaries, the West Indies, and, thence, to
Virginia. The earliest English efforts at colonization in North America
were at the two points lying nearest to England by wind and ocean
current.
Footnote 18:
In the Middle Ages there was apparently an additional volcanic island,
known as Gunnbiörn's Skerries, between Iceland and Greenland,
destroyed by eruption in 1456. R. H. Major, _Voyages of the Zeni_
(Hakluyt Society, 1873), pp. lxxiv _ff._
One other feature in the geographic control over the life of New England
may here be noted. The main imports of England were naturally those
commodities which she did not produce herself, and these were found in
the southern and West Indian colonies rather than in New England, whose
fish and cereals competed with similar products in the home market.
Destined, from her position and other geographic factors, to occupy the
leading place among the colonies in trade and commerce, New England was
thus forced to find outlets for her products in intercolonial and
foreign trade, rather than in that with England. In order to pay for the
manufactured and other articles imported from the old country, she
exported, in turn, not to that country, as, in the main, did the other
colonies, but to her sister colonies and to foreign ports. According to
the accepted economic theories of the colonizing period, this not only
made her less valuable to the mother-country, but would evidently give
her a considerable interest in breaking those laws for regulating
commerce that were the logical expression of the current imperial
theory. If we consider, therefore, the nature of the commodities she
produced, the competing character of her trade, the democratic ideas of
the groups of self-governing land-holders, such as the soil and climate
combined to develop, and the economic beliefs of the day, it becomes
evident that, when a heavy strain should be put upon the imperial
structure, the tendency to break would be likely to appear first in New
England.
In the foregoing sketch, an attempt has been made to trace, very
briefly, some of the influences of geography upon Puritan development in
New England. The early history of all peoples is largely to be found in
their struggle against their environment, and its effect upon them.
These effects are subtle and far-reaching, and, in connection with them,
it may not be wholly idle to speculate upon what might have been had
events followed a slightly different course. Had the Jamestown settlers
planted themselves upon the coast of Massachusetts, they would probably
have failed. On the other hand, had the Pilgrims and Puritans, as both
seriously thought of doing, settled in the tropics, where the nature of
the climate and the soil would have turned the scale for slavery, where
the conditions of life would have strongly combatted their notions of
town and church, and where luxury and easy living would have been
quickly attained by their inherent energy, what would then have become
of what we call the New England element in our national life? To carry
the speculation far would be futile, but it serves to bring out into
somewhat clearer relief the influences of the geographic environment
upon those colonists whose history it is our task to trace.
The distant land to which they came was not an uninhabited wilderness.
They found there, as occupants of the soil, an unknown race, in the
lower stage of barbarism, with whom they had to contend for its
possession. With a few notable exceptions, the relations of the whites
with the Indians were the same in all the colonies. The natives were
traded with, fought with, occasionally preached to, and then, as far as
possible, exterminated. “The precepts Christianity delivers,” wrote Lord
Bryce, of the relations between advanced and backward races, “might have
been expected to soften the feelings and tame the pride of the stronger
race. It must, however, be admitted that in all or nearly all the
countries ... Christianity ... has failed to impress the lessons of
human equality and brotherhood upon the whites.... Their sense of
scornful superiority resists its precepts.”[19]
Footnote 19:
Lord Bryce, _The Relations of the Advanced and Backward Races of
Mankind_ (Romanes Lecture; Oxford, 1902), p. 40. He contrasts the
failure of Christianity with the success of Islam in that regard.
This comment, which is only too true in the present day, was still more
true in the seventeenth century. Even in history, the Indian has usually
been treated as, at best, a picturesque element, to give color to the
somewhat drab homespun of the colonial story; while the Indian policy of
the several colonies, the history of the Indian trade, and the influence
of the Indian upon the settler, yet await adequate treatment.
The Indian's character and mental traits, which were frequently
misinterpreted, were those to be expected in a savage at his stage of
culture. If, on the one hand, he was not the noble being painted by
Cooper, on the other, he was not the demon often conceived. Indeed, in
scanning the list of epithets hurled at him by some of New England's
ministers of Christ, one is reminded of Professor Murray's comment on
the Greek story of Œdipus. “Unnatural affection, child-murder,
father-murder, incest, a great deal of hereditary cursing, a double
fratricide and a violation of the sanctity of dead bodies—when one
reads,” writes this scholar, “such a list of charges brought against any
tribe or people, either in ancient or in modern times, one can hardly
help concluding that somebody wanted to annex their land.”[20]
Footnote 20:
Gilbert Murray, _The Rise of the Greek Epic_ (Oxford, 1911), p. 54.
The nature of the life the Indian led inclined to render him improvident
and lazy, although capable at need of great exertion and endurance. He
was dirty in his person, and yet possessed of a childish vanity as to
his appearance. The popular idea of him as reserved, silent, and
dignified probably came from the fact that his etiquette demanded that
he thus appear on ceremonial occasions, social or religious, and it was
at such times, at first, that the whites usually saw him. In reality, in
his ordinary life, he was a sociable body, cheerful and chatty, with a
considerable sense of humor, fond of punning and joking.[21] Hysterical
in his nervous make-up, he was peculiarly liable to suggestion and
religious excitement. As he was passionate and quick to take offense,
like other savages and children, public opinion demanded that he seek
revenge; and when a crime was committed against any member of a clan,
the punishment of the guilty party became the duty of every other
member. Under the compelling influence of such a code, the individual
may often have had to appear more revengeful than he really was; and, as
a matter of fact, the old law of an eye for an eye had already become
softened by possibilities of compensation, through adoption or
otherwise, even in the case of murder. Although prisoners of war were
frequently tortured with fiendish ingenuity before being killed, in this
case, also, adoption offered a milder alternative, often exercised.
Scalping, as a sign of victory, was supposed to be performed only on the
dead, and, although this theory did not always hold good,[22] it must be
remembered that the whites, as well as the Indians, engaged in the
practice, with the difference that, while the natives did it for honor,
the settlers did it for money. New England men, and even New England
women, sold scalps to the authorities at so much a head; and, among the
Pennsylvanians, prices went as high as fifty dollars for a female scalp,
and one hundred and thirty for that of a boy under ten.[23] With the
Indian, it was merely a custom to which he had become inured; and it
should be noted that he wore his own hair accordingly, and carefully
refrained from shaving the scalp-lock, which it might be his enemy's
glory, some day, to remove.
Footnote 21:
F. W. Hodge, _Handbook of American Indians north of Mexico_ (Bureau of
American Ethnology, 1911), vol. 1, pp. 578, 88, 286; L. Farrand,
_Basis of American History_ (New York, 1904), p. 265.
Footnote 22:
G. Friederici, _Skalpieren u. ähnliche Kriegsgebräuche in Amerika_
(Braunschweig, 1906), p. 106.
Footnote 23:
G. E. Ellis, _The Red Man and the White Man in America_ (Boston,
1882), p. 123.
The influence of a formal code is seen also in his bearing of pain. In
public, he would suffer torture of the most excruciating sort with
complete stoicism, as required by the opinion of his fellows; whereas,
in private, when not thus sustained, he would be childish in his
self-abandon over the tooth-ache or other discomfort.[24] Hospitality
was a cardinal virtue, to such an extent that “in some languages there
was but one word both for generosity and bravery, and either was a sure
avenue to distinction.”[25] Fierce and bloodthirsty in war, in domestic
life he was affectionate to an extreme, especially toward children. His
code, though different from the white man's, was apparently adhered to
quite as strictly; but, when the two were brought into contact, the
vices inherent in each tended to develop, and it is natural that the
weaker came to be considered hopelessly lazy, cruel, drunken, and
untrustworthy.
Footnote 24:
Farrand, _Basis_, p. 265; Roger Williams, _A Key into the Languages of
America_ (_Narragansett Club Publications_, vol. 1), p. 138.
Footnote 25:
Hodge, _Handbook_, vol. 1, p. 572.
At the time of discovery, the natives encountered along the Atlantic
coast had advanced from savagery to the lower status of barbarism, and
were still in the Stone Age. Although agriculture was practised to a
considerable extent, the Indians, having no domestic animals, were still
dependent upon the chase for a material part of their diet, and so must
be considered as in the hunting stage, their advancement in culture
being limited by that condition.[26]
Footnote 26:
L. Carr, “The Food of certain American Indians and their Method of
preparing it”; _Proceedings American Antiquarian Society_, New Series,
vol. IV, p. 156.
Their political organization was much misunderstood by the whites, with
disastrous results. The settlers, utterly ignorant of savage life, tried
to interpret such things as they saw in terms of their own institutions;
whence came the kings, princes, and nobles, who parade the pages of our
early writers. It is needless to say that nothing in Indian society in
any way corresponded to these terms; and the failure of the whites to
apprehend that Indian institutions had almost nothing in common with
their own was the source of endless trouble and much needless bloodshed.
Among such Indians as had attained to some degree of social
organization, which included the majority on the continent and all of
those with whom the settlers came in contact, the primary unit was the
clan, or gens. Within a clan, or gens, everyone was, or was supposed to
be, descended from a common ancestor, and thus related to all the
others—in the former the line of descent being traced through the
female, and in the latter, through the male. Otherwise, the two
organizations were identical, and we shall, therefore, speak in terms of
the clan only. Clan members were absolutely forbidden to intermarry;
they had the right to elect and depose the sachem and chiefs, to bestow
names upon individuals, and to adopt strangers. They possessed common
religious observances, were buried in one place, had mutual rights of
inheritance in the property of deceased members, were under obligation
to defend one another, and participated in the council.[27] The latter
was essentially democratic, every man and woman in the clan having a
voice, the sachem and chiefs being elected and deposed at will. The
sachem was a civil officer having nothing to do with war, and the office
was hereditary within the clan, though the succeeding relative, usually
a brother or nephew, was elected. Chief was a very vague term, merely
indicating one who had been elected for some special fitness, the number
of chiefs being roughly proportioned to the size of the clan. Both
sachem and chiefs attended the larger council of the tribe.
Footnote 27:
L. H. Morgan, _Ancient Society_ (London, 1877), pp. 71 _ff._
While articles of personal property, such as clothes or weapons, were
owned by the individual, the title to all land was in the clan, and the
individual had the right of use only. Ownership in fee by the
individual, as practised by the whites, was not known at all to the
natives, nor was the native institution understood by the whites during
the first years, so that the so-called land sales by the Indians were
the cause of constant misunderstandings and ill-feeling.[28]
Footnote 28:
_Cf._ Ellis, _The Red Man_, pp. 207 _ff._
Generally, each clan possessed a totem, or animal, from which it derived
its name. These names, however, were not, as a rule, the common ones for
the animal or object, but denoted a characteristic feature or haunt, and
were less childish than they have been made to seem. Thus the Turtle
Clan did not use the common word, _ha'nowa_, but _hadiniaden_, “they
have upright necks.”[29] A curious importance was attached by the Indian
to the names of individuals, and that first given in infancy was usually
changed at puberty, and even at other times. Certain names were given
only in certain clans, and the individual had property rights in his own
name, which he could lend, sell, or even pawn.
Footnote 29:
Hodge, _Handbook_, vol. I, p. 304.
The clan was thus the Indian's little world. To its organization, and
his own position in it, he owed almost all that made life worth living
from the social standpoint—his name, to which a potent influence
attached, his ceremonial rights, his rights of inheritance, his property
rights in land, his obligation to defend and succor his fellow clansmen,
his right to be protected in return, and, finally, his political right
to elect and depose his sachem and chiefs. Notwithstanding the extremely
democratic and individualistic nature of Indian society, and the
looseness of its political organization, the influence of the clan
sentiment upon the individual must have had enormous weight.[30]
Footnote 30:
The phratry was a combination of two or more clans, forming a larger
exogamous group, and originating, perhaps, in the division of
overgrown clans. Although it frequently had the power of veto over the
election of clan sachems and chiefs, its functions were social rather
than political. In ball games, phratry played against phratry, while
at funerals and other ceremonies the organization appears clearly.
There was no chief or head.
Above the clan was the tribe, which is difficult to define, but clearly
marked, and which was the highest form of organization ordinarily
attained by the natives—confederacies, such as the Iroquois, being
exceptional. Tribal organization is more obvious to the untrained
observer than that of clans, and whenever the settlers found a body of
natives possessing an apparent degree of independence or territorial
isolation, they gave them a tribal designation, derived from the
dialect, locality, or name of the leader, though such designations are
of almost no value for scientific classification.[31] The tribe, which
was composed of several clans, may be said to have had a common
religious worship, a name, a definite territory, and the exclusive use
of a dialect, together with the right to invest and depose the sachems
and chiefs of the several clans.[32] These chiefs and sachems formed the
tribal council, which controlled the tribe's “foreign policy,” sent and
received ambassadors, made alliances, and declared war and peace,
although it was a weak organization for military purposes. The assumed
natural condition was war, not peace, and every tribe was theoretically
at war with every other, unless a specific treaty of peace had been
made. On the other hand, there was no forced military service, and
public opinion or personal inclination alone sent the warrior along the
war-path. Any person could organize an expedition at any time, and
service was voluntary, operations, as a rule, being conducted suddenly,
secretly, and on a small scale.
Footnote 31:
Clark Wissler, _The American Indian_ (New York, 1917), p. 152.
Footnote 32:
Morgan, _Ancient Society_, pp. 112 _ff._
As among all primitive peoples, the food-quest was one of the dominating
factors in the Indian's mode of life. This included hunting, both with
weapons and with traps, fishing, by net and line, and agriculture, with
primitive implements and manuring. Game was fairly abundant for a sparse
population, and the bays, rivers, and lakes swarmed with many sorts of
fish. Maize, the fundamental food-crop of all eastern North America, was
raised as far north as northern Maine; pumpkins, beans, and other native
vegetables were cultivated also, and tobacco was grown even beyond the
northern limits of maize. Not only these crops, but the whole complex of
cultivation which the Indians had developed, was of profound importance
to the settlers, who, it may be noted, also adopted in its entirety the
native method of making maple-sugar.
In many cases, the quest of these various foods gave rise to seasonal
migrations, from which was derived the false idea that the Indians were
nomadic. Although this was not true, they nearly always did have two,
and even three, places of residence—one in the summer, conveniently
located for their fields of corn; one in the winter, in some sheltered
valley; and, perhaps, one for the fall months, for the hunting.[33]
Moreover, as Williams tells us, “the abundance of fleas” in their homes
would occasionally make them “remove on a sudden” to a more exclusive
spot. Most communities had one or more fortified enclosures, consisting
of from one to a score of houses inside a stockade, which were resorted
to in time of danger, and frequently formed their winter dwellings.[34]
Footnote 33:
Williams, _Key_, p. 74.
Footnote 34:
C. C. Willoughby, “Houses and Gardens of the New England Indians,”
_American Anthropologist_, New Series, vol. VIII, p. 126.
In traveling, birch-bark or dugout canoes were used along the coasts and
water-courses, and, on the land, well-established trails extended, with
few breaks, across the length and breadth of the continent.[35] The most
noted of these in New England, and among the earliest used by the
settlers, were the Bay Path and Old Connecticut Path, the latter of
which ran from what are now Boston and Cambridge, through Marlborough,
Grafton, Oxford, and Springfield, to Albany, where it joined the great
Iroquois trail along the Mohawk Valley to Niagara.[36]
Footnote 35:
Rolle, for example, in 1697, followed one from Quebec to Illinois,
2400 miles. _Maine Historical Society Collections_, vol. V, p. 325.
Footnote 36:
The Bay Path went from Boston to Springfield along the same line,
except that it passed through South Framingham instead of Marlborough
and Worcester, joining the Connecticut Path at Oxford. See map, in L.
B. Chase, “Interpretation of Woodward's and Saffery's Map of 1642,” in
_New England Historical and Genealogical Register_ vol. IV. pp. 155
_ff._ For other early trails, see the same author's “Early Indian
Trails,” in _Worcester Society of Antiquity Collections_, vol. XIV.
pp. 105 _ff._, and A. B. Hulbert, _Indian Thoroughfares_; Cleveland,
1902.
In their travel, as in their domestic life, labor was more or less
equally divided between the sexes; and, although woman's position was
subordinate, it is a mistake to paint her as drudge, toiling for a lazy
master. In building the house, for example, the man cut and set the
poles, on which the woman arranged the covering of mats or bark. The
tillage of the soil in comparative safety was her share, while the man
undertook the more dangerous work of hunting. While she had the care of
the household, and the nurture of the children, he laboriously chipped
the stone implements used in war and the chase, built the boats, and, in
some cases, made the women's clothes as well as his own. The boys and
old men helped her about the crops; to the other males were intrusted
the duties of a warrior, and the conducting of public business and
ceremonials, including the memorizing of the tribal records, treaties,
and rituals.[37] In the production of household goods, the women made
baskets and mats; the men, dishes and pots and spoons.[38]
Footnote 37:
Hodge, _Handbook_, vol. II, p. 284.
Footnote 38:
D. Gookin, “Historical Collections of the Indians in New England,
1674”; _Massachusetts Historical Society Collections_, Series I, vol.
I, p. 151.
Such a division of labor was calculated to provide the community, under
the conditions of its savage and war-like life, with the largest
possible measure of food and protection, and did not indicate a degraded
position for woman. On the contrary, descent was usually traced through
her, and the titles of the chiefs of the clans belonged to her, as did
the family lodge and all its furnishings. She had ownership rights in
the tribal lands; possessed the children exclusively; had the right of
selecting from her sons candidates for the chieftaincy, of preventing
them from going on the war-path, and of adopting strangers into the
clan. She also had other powers, including that of life and death over
alien prisoners, and was not seldom elected a chief or sachem herself.
Among the Iroquois, the penalty for killing a woman was twice that
exacted for a man; and it is noteworthy that no attempt against the
chastity of a white woman prisoner has been charged against the savage—a
record distinctly better than that of the white settlers. Although
polygamy was not forbidden, it was rare except in the case of chiefs,
priests, and shamans (or medicine-men), and monogamic unions were the
rule. The tie, however, was loose, and could readily be dissolved by
either party, the children, in any case, remaining with the mother.
Constancy was expected, and its breach, particularly in the case of the
woman, was severely punished. Chastity was not expected before marriage,
but, as Wissler points out, it was essential in certain religious
ceremonies, and so may have been an ideal.[39]
Footnote 39:
Wissler, _The American Indian_, p. 176.
In their relations with their children, we find some of the highest
traits in the character of the natives. Both parents were, as a rule,
excessively fond of their offspring, and boys and girls were carefully
instructed. In general, moral suasion alone was used; force but rarely.
The girls, from an early age, were taught sewing, weaving, cooking, and
the other household arts; the boys were initiated into the methods of
hunting, fishing, war, and government. Etiquette was carefully observed
by all, in such matters as sitting, standing, precedence in walking,
interrupting a speaker, respect to elders, passing between a person and
the fire, and the other niceties of life according to native standards.
The New England Indians had made but slight progress in the arts. The
character of the native music is even yet not well understood, and much
preliminary work remains to be done before any generalizations can be
made.[40] We know, however, that in the same song the instrumental and
vocal rhythms were different, and that there was a characteristic one
for every ceremony. Music, indeed, was an important element in life, all
ceremonies, public and private, being accompanied by songs, which were
the property of clans, societies, or individuals, and were bought and
sold. In design, both in pottery and weaving, the patterns used were
geometrical only, and simple; but the later New England native pottery
showed the influence of the superior art of the Iroquois, in form as
well as decoration.[41]
Footnote 40:
_Ibid._, p. 146.
Footnote 41:
C. C. Willoughby, “Pottery of the New England Indians,” in _Putnam
Anniversary Volume of Anthropological Essays_ (New York, 1909), pp. 83
_ff._
In their economic life, the most interesting feature was the use of
wampum, or shell-beads, as a primitive medium of exchange. These little
black or white cylinders, of which the former were worth twice as much
as the latter, were made with great care from certain shells found along
the coast. Besides their use as currency, they were prized by the
Indians as ornament, and were strung into belts, to perform their
well-known symbolic and historical functions.[42]
Footnote 42:
W. B. Weeden, _Indian Money as a Factor in New England Civilization_,
Johns Hopkins University Studies, 1884; A. C. Parker, _The
Constitution of the Five Nations_, N. Y. State Museum Bulletin, 1916.
One of the most popular misconceptions of the Indian is that of his
belief in a “Great Spirit.” Nowhere in American aboriginal life do we
find anything approaching such a conception. The Indian was in the
animistic stage of religious belief. The _manitou_ of the Algonquins,
like the _orenda_ of the Iroquois, was merely the magic power which
might exist in objects, forces, animals, and even men, superior to man's
natural qualities; and the Indian's religious beliefs centred about his
relations to some embodied form of this power. He believed in good
spirits and bad, which could be controlled or invoked by prayer,
offerings, charms, or incantations, and had developed a large body of
myths to explain the universe and his relation to it. No moral concept
attached to any of his deities, nor had he developed any idea of future
rewards and punishments, although there was a belief in some vague form
of life after bodily death. The rites of their primitive religion were
in the hands of priests, whose power and influence increase as we
proceed southward toward the highly developed ritualism of the Incas and
their neighboring civilizations. The priest, acting for the tribe, must
not be confused with the “medicine-man,” who depended solely upon his
personal ability to establish relations with the magic powers, which he
won by extraordinary experiences derived from fasting, prayer, and
nervous excitement.
The exact classification of the Indians by cultural, archæological,
linguistic, and other tests, is a matter of considerable difficulty, but
the linguistic, on the whole, is the best. Judged by all of them,
however, the aborigines of New England possessed a high degree of
unity.[43] At the time of settlement, the entire country along the
coast, from Maryland to Hudson Strait, was occupied by natives of the
widely distributed Algonquin stock, except for a small number of
Beothuks in Newfoundland, and the Esquimaux along the Labrador
shore.[44] The Algonquins also extended westward to the Mississippi, and
two-thirds of the way across Canada. Imbedded in this otherwise
homogeneous mass, the great body of the Iroquois dwelt on both sides of
the St. Lawrence, surrounded Lake Erie, and covered all central
Pennsylvania and the state of New York, except the lower Hudson.
Although not included in the confines of New England, the influence of
this highly organized and warlike confederacy was felt far beyond their
bounds in every direction.[45] It is impossible to state the numbers
which composed the New England tribes at the coming of the whites.
Perhaps the original settlers faced in all, throughout New England, five
thousand warriors, although this may be too high a figure, and all
estimates can be only guesses.[46]
Footnote 43:
See maps, in Wissler, _The American Indian_, pp. 205, 246, 282.
Footnote 44:
In recent years, evidences of a pre-historic culture in the Penobscot
valley, wholly different from that of the Algonquin or Beothuks, have
been found. _Vide_ W. K. Moorehead, “Prehistoric Cultures in the State
of Maine,” _Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of
Americanists_ (Washington, 1917), pp. 48 _ff._ Also his “Red-Paint
People,” in _American Anthropologist_, New Series, vol. XV.
Footnote 45:
L. H. Morgan, THE LEAGUE OF THE IROQUOIS; New York, 1901, _passim_.
Though considered a different stock from the Algonquin, they seem to
have been identical physically. A. Hrdlĭcka, _Physical Anthropology of
the Lenape_; Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 62, 1916, p. 127.
Footnote 46:
Gookin, _Historical Collection_, pp. 145 _ff._ Another writer, in
1629, says: “The greatest Saggamores about us cannot make above three
hundred men, and other lesser Saggamores have not above fifteen
subjects, and others neere about us but two.” [Higginson] “New
England's Plantation, 1630,” in _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series I,
vol. I, p. 122.
Such, in outline, was the Indian when he met the astonished and anxious
gaze of the first settlers. Enough has been said to show that in the
contact of the races an irrepressible conflict was bound to develop.
Even had the savage never received any but kind and just treatment from
his white neighbor, it is improbable that he could have readjusted his
entire life so as to compete with, or to accept, civilization. That
test, however, was never made. To say that his lands were bought, and
that, therefore, he was justly treated, is a mockery. To have expected
sympathy, understanding, and justice in the situation as it developed in
the seventeenth century is asking too much, both of human nature and of
the period. Indeed, it is questionable whether, in the competition
between races of higher and lower civilizations, when the former intrude
upon the lands of the latter, justice, in its strictest sense, is ever
possible. One cannot believe that the world would have been either
better or happier had the land which to-day supports a hundred million
self-governing people been left to the half-million barbarians who
barely gained a subsistence from it four centuries ago. Man, in the
individual treatment of his fellow, is, indeed, bound by the laws of
justice and of right; but in the larger processes of history we are
confronted by problems that the ethics of the individual fail to solve.
The Indian in the American forest, and the Polynesian in his sunny isle,
share, in the moral enigma of their passing, the mystery of the vanished
races of man and brute, which have gone down in the struggle for
existence in geological or historic ages, in what, one would fain
believe, is a universe governed by moral law.