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DECEMBER 7, 1620 (December 17, new style) found the
Mayflower lying inside of Cape Cod. This locality, and particularly "the
place that on Captain John Smith's map is called Plimoth," had been highly
recommended to them as a
suitable location for the establishment of a permanent settlement. They
had been on shipboard for a long time, the life was becoming irksome, and
they were desirous of effecting a landing before the Sabbath which was
approaching, and on which, in their religious zeal, there could be no
question of work. So they sent their shallop ashore in search of a
suitable spot. The shallop made a landing at Nauset, now Eastham, a place
which derived its name from that of the tribe of Indians located there,
which we find mentioned frequently in the writings of the early
chroniclers. The boat's crew spent the
night there, and in the early morning they were alarmed by the sentry whom
they had posted, and who announced the presence of Indians. This alarm was
followed by a demonstration against the camp. The natives were soon driven
off by the discharge of the muskets of the English, who then
returned to their ship. After this, their first encounter with the
aboriginal inhabitants of the land, they were not further annoyed by them
until the following February, when they began to show themselves from time
to time about the settlement at Plymouth, always holding themselves aloof,
however, until the sixteenth of March, when Samoset made his memorable
visit with the details of which every reader of American history is
familiar.
Colonel Robert B. Caverly in his account of the early
Indian wars speaks of Aspinet, who was sachem of Nauset at that time, as a
Mohandsick. The people of this name were located on Long Island and the
question naturally arises, how came this detached tribe of Mohandsicks,
whose war strength in 1621 was said to be one hundred warriors, to be so
separated from the rest of their kindred? The Mohandsicks, like the
Manhattans of lower drew York, probably were Mohicans, or at least more
closely related to the latter than to any other of the numerous branches
of the Algonquin family; and, while it does not appear that there had been
any hostility between the Mohicans and the Wampanoags, perhaps because of
the fact that their hunting grounds were separated by those of the
Narragansett, it seems rather out of the ordinary course that we would
expect migrations to take for this tribe to separate itself from the
remainder of its people and isolate itself down on the end of Cape Cod in
Wampanoag territory. There would be but two ways for them to have reached
that point, one by water, which with their limited facilities for making
such long journeys seems impracticable, though not impossible, and the other by crossing
Narragansett and Wampanoag territory, which could be done only if they
were on friendly terms; unless, indeed, they were a detached body of Mohandsicks, who had settled on the mainland very early in the period of
migration and had been swept down to the extreme end of the Cape by
succeeding waves, and had there been able to maintain themselves, or had
been allowed to remain unmolested.
None of these theories is impossible, as we have seen
the
Tuscarora separating themselves from the other nations of the
Iroquois and, either crossing leagues of
Algonquin territory, or following
the coast in their frail canoes, settling on the coast of the Carolinas.
Whatever may have been the most intimate racial
connection of the
Nauset, there can be no doubt that at the time of which
I am writing, they were subjects of the Great Sachem of the Wampanoags,
although, as we shall see hereafter, they did not hesitate at times to
engage in conspiracies against the whites without the sanction of their
great chief. It may be that other tribes in the eastern part of the
Wampanoag domain, such as the Manomet, Monamoyick, Paomet,
Sawkattucket, Matake, Nobsquosset, and Sokone, and perhaps the Nantucket and the Capawack, were more closely related to the
Nausets
than to the western tribes of the Wampanoag federation, which seem to have
centered about the Pokanoket. They were all Algonquin, and probably,
originally all of the Totem of the Wolf, the various subdivisions
resulting from the spreading out process by which a group became separated
from the parent stock, thus forming a nation within the family, and
eventually acquiring a distinct dialect; and no doubt, in many instances,
absorbing tribes that had originally formed a part of some other wave of
migration, and so belonged to some other nation.
In any event, the Nausets, with all the other tribes on
the cape and the islands, were, to all intents and purposes, Wampanoags at
the time of their demonstration against the crew of the shallop on
December 8, 1620; and so it was the Wampanoags who first greeted the
Pilgrims, though the greeting was far from being a welcome, the actual
welcome being extended nearly three months later by a sagamore of Monhigan
"two days' sail with a strong wind" to the northeast.
If our conclusion as to the reasonable inferences to be
drawn from the writings of early historians is correct, this would place
him in the group designated by Gookin, Drake, and Schoolcraft as Abenaki.
Reference has already been made in general terms to the
location of the Wampanoags as described by Gookin and Drake, but some
doubt exists as to the exact extent of their territory. All are agreed
that they held sway from the Islands and Cape Cad to Narragansett Bay and
Providence River, and from the Atlantic Ocean north to the southern
boundary of the Massachusetts, who as we have seen lived around the bay
that bears their name. Just where that boundary ran is not clear, but it
is certain that the counties of Nantucket, Dukes, Nantucket, Dukes, Barnstable, Plymouth, Bristol, and a
considerable part of Norfolk, in Massachusetts, together with all of
Bristol and Newport counties and the town of East Providence in Rhode
Island have been carved out of the ancient hunting grounds of the
Wampanoags.
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Massasoit of the Wampanoags
Massasoit of the Wampanoags
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