144 MONEY OF THE INDIANS. [BOOK III. dians, made several excursions into their country, and massacred all such as they could surprise. Upon this, the chiefs demanded aid of M. de Vaudreuil, and he sent them during the winter 250 men under the command of the Sieur Hertel de Rouville, a reformed lieutenant, who took the place of his already renowned father, whose age and infirmities prevented his undertaking such great expeditions. Four others of his children accompanied Rouville, who in their tour surprised the English, killed many of them, and made 140 of them prisoners. The French lost but three soldiers, and some savages, but Rouville was himself wounded.* 10000 CHAPTER XIL Various incidents in the history of the New England Indians, embracing several important events, with a sequel to some previous memoirs. He felt his life's blood freezing fast; He grasped his bow, his lance, and steel; To die were easy not to yield. His eyes were fixed upon the sky; He gasped as on the ground he fell; None but his foes his death to tell. THE performances of one Cornelius, "the Dutchman," in Philip's war, are very obscurely noticed in the histories of the times, none of them giving us even his surname; and we have, in a former chapter, given the amount of what has before been published. I am now able to add concerning him, that his name was Cornelius Consert; that the last time he went out against the Indians, he served about six weeks; was captain of the forlorn hope in the Quabaog expedition, in the autumn of the first year of Philip's war; marched also to Groton and Chelmsford, and was discharged from service, "being ready to depart the country," October 13, 1675. It was probably in his Quabaog expedition that be committed the barbarous exploit upon "an old Indian," the account of which has been given; it was doubtless during the same expedition, which appears to have terminated in September, that "he brought round five Indians to Boston," who, being cast into prison, were afterwards "delivered to Mr. Samuel Shrimpton, to be under his employ on Noddle's Island," subject "to the order of the council." I shall here pass to some further account of the money of the Indians. We have quoted the comical account of the money of the Indians of New England, by John Josselyn, and will now quote the graphic and sensible one given by the unfortunate John Lawson, in his account of Carolina, of the money in use among the southern Indians. "Their money," he says, "is of different sorts, but all made of shells, which are found on the coast of Carolina, being very large and hard, and difficult to cut. Some English smiths have tried to drill this sort of shell money, and thereby thought to get an advantage, but it proved so hard that nothing could be gained;" and Morton, in his New English Canaan, says that, although some of the English in New England have tried "by example to make the like, yet none hath ever attained to any perfection in the composure of them, so but that the salvages have found a great difference to be in the one and the other; and have known the counterfeit beads from those of their own making; and have, and doe slight them." Hence the conclusion of Josselyn, before extracted, namely, that "neither Jew nor devil could counterfeit the money of the Indians." Mr. Lawson continues: "The Indians often make, of the same kind of shells as those of which their money is made, a sort of gorget, which they wear about * Histoire Generale de la Nouv. France, ii. 290. CHAP. XII.] CORMAN.-NANUNTENOO. 145 their necks in a string; so it hangs on their collar, whereon sometimes is engraven a cross, or some odd sort of figure which comes next in their fancy. There are other sorts valued at a doeskin, yet the gorgets will sometimes sell for three or four buckskins ready dressed. There be others, that eight of them go readily for a doeskin; but the general and current species of all the Indians in Carolina, and I believe, all over the continent, as far as the bay of Mexico, is that which we call Peak, and Ronoak, but Peak more especially. This is that which at New York they call Wampum, and have used it as current money amongst the inhabitants for a great many years. Five cubits of this purchase a dressed doeskin, and seven or eight buy a dressed buckskin. To make this Peak it cost the English five or ten times as much as they could get for it, whereas it cost the Indians nothing, because they set no value upon their time, and therefore have no competition to fear, or that others will take its manufacture out of their hands. It is made by grinding the pieces of shell upon stone, and is smaller than the small end of a tobaccopipe, or large wheat-straw. Four or five of these make an inch, and every one is to be drilled through and made as smooth as glass, and so strung, as beads are. A cubit, of the Indian measure, contains as much in length as will reach from the elbow to the end of the little finger. They never stand to question, whether it be a tall man or a short one that measures it. If this wampum-peak be black or purple, as some part of that shell is, then it is twice the value. The drilling is the most difficult and tedious part of the manufacture. It is done by sticking a nail in a cane or reed, which they roll upon their thighs with their right hand, while with their left they apply the bit of shell to the iron point. But especially in making their ronoak, four of which will scarce make one length of wampum. Such is the money of the Indians, with which you may buy all they have. It is their mammon, (as our money is to us,) that entices and persuades them to do any thing, part with their captives or slaves, and, sometimes, even their wives' and daughters' chastity. With it they buy off murderers; and whatever a man can do that is ill, this wampum will quit him of, and make him, in their opinion, good and virtuous, though never so black before." To return to the chiefs. Of the Narraganset Indian Corman very little had been found when he was noticed before, and it is but little that we can now add concerning the "cheiffe counceller" of the "old crafty sachem" of Niantik. It appears that in the month of September, 1675, Corman was in Boston, whither he had been sent as an ambassador by the Narraganset sachems, and especially by Ninigret; and although Ninigret was a peace-maker, and had not been any how implicated in the war then going on, yet, such was the rage of the populace against all Indians, that it was not deemed safe for even a friend from among them to walk alone in the streets of the town. On the evening of the 28th of September, as Corman, now an old man, was walking through one of the streets, guarded by persons on each side of him, a certain miscreant, named William Smith, ran furiously against him, and thus separating him from those about him, did, by another motion, strike his feet from under him in such a manner that his head and shoulders came in violent contact with the ground, very seriously injuring him. Complaint having been made to the governor and council, they had both Smith and Corman brought before them the next day, and the charge against the former being established by the evidence of Mrs. Sarah Pickering, who saw the fact committed, "the court, in hearing of the case, judged it meet to bear due testimony against such abuse, and sentence the said Smith to pay, as a fine to the country, the sum of forty shillings, or be whipt with ten stripes; also to pay the said Corman for his damage the sum of ten shillings in money." It is very difficult to understand the grounds of the decision of the honorable court, unless they seriously thought that the ground on whieh poor old Corman fell was hurt four times as much as he was! If this was not its reason, why should forty shillings be paid to the country and only ten to CORMAN? As new local and other histories appear, and the decaying manuscripts are put in a situation and condition to be conveniently consulted, new lights are daily reflected on the dark passages of our history. The presence of Nanuntenoo at the battle of Pawtucket, or, as it is more commonly called, Peirse's 146 COLONEL CHURCH.-INDIAN LETTERS. [BOOK III. fight, has been questioned by a very excellent local historian, Mr. Bliss, in his history of Rehoboth, but, as I apprehend, from a misconstruction of some passages in Hubbard's Narrative, especially from that passage where it is said that Nanuntenoo, when surprised by Denison's men, "was divertising himself with the recital of Captain Peirse's slaughter, surprised by his men a few days before." It is true that this sentence will admit of two constructions, either that the chief was diverting himself by recounting to his men his particular acts in that tragedy, or by a general account of its progress, or that they were diverting him; the former would be by no means improbable, especially if some of those about him had not been in the action, which would not be at all strange, as numbers of them were, doubtless, strolling upon hunting and other expeditions when the battle was fought. That Nanuntenoo did not leave the Connecticut River until the "first week in April" cannot be true, nor by that loosely stated date does Hubbard refer to his leaving the Connecticut, but to "about the time" of his capture. If he refers to the time of his leaving the river, he refers to his men also, who, he says, did not leave until after he did; but it was his men that defeated Peirse. These are all the lights we are able to throw on that great event, and must here leave it in the same doubt we found it, and which is ever, most likely, to shroud it. It would be highly gratifying to be able to give sketches of some of the prominent English captains, or others, who were conspicuous in Indian history, but our design and limits both preclude such digressions, and we cannot indulge in but a few. In a recent ramble in the Hill burying-ground, in Middleborough, I discovered the grave of a Lieutenant Nathaniel Southworth, upon the head-stone of which it is inscribed that he died January 14, 1710, in his 62d year; he was therefore about 28 in the time of Philip's war, and is, very probably, the same who distinguished himself on many occasions under Captain Church. He lies among a group of graves of his family connections. We did not intentionally omit to notice the death of his commander in another chapter. Colonel Church died on the 17 of January, 1718, in the 78th year of his age, and lies buried at Compton in Massachusetts. He was born at Plymouth in 1639, and not long after removed to Duxbury with his father. He was a housewright by trade, as were his father and one or two of his brothers. How many he had I am not sure, but Caleb and Joseph are mentioned, and a sister who married an Irish, and lived in Compton. In 1674 he bought land of the government and removed to Sogkonate, the then Indian name of the tract of country since Compton. Here he was prosperously making a farm when Philip's war broke out, and was obliged to quit his improvements. Possessing a remarkably active mind, vigorous body, and glowing patriotism, he was not long an idle spectator of the war, engaging in it without reward as a volunteer; and our previous pages have shown that he raised himself to the chief military place in the country, and several civil offices of honor. After Philip's war Colonel Church resided at Bristol, then at Fall River, and, lastly, again at Sogkonate; in each of which places he left a good estate. In his latter years he had become very corpulent, and burdensome to himself. The morning before his death he visited his sister, Mrs. Irish, about two miles from his residence, on horseback; returning home, his horse stumbled, and threw him with such force upon the ground that a blood-vessel was broken, and he died in about 12 hours after. He married Mrs. Alice Southworth, by whom he had five sons and one daughter. One of his sons, Thomas, published "The Entertaining History of Philip's War," which has been published in 4to., 8vo, 12mo., and is authority in all matters where Church was himself concerned. We have next to recur to the subject of the Indian letters, pending the redemption of Mrs. Rowlandson. Those given in the third chapter of this book were copied from a transcript made at the time they were received from the Indians, but a recurrence to the originals has supplied the following additions. Nepanet, when sent out on the 3 April, 1676, as noted on page 90, had with him the following letter from Governor Leverett: * His biographers have said that he was born at Duxbury; but Judge Davis informed me that he was born at Plymouth, and that some records he had seen there were his authority. |