[25]Pory was wrong; it is north of 41°.
[26]“Conahassit,” an old form, in the manuscript.
[27]Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag or Pocanocket Indians, who lived in the territory around present-day Bristol, R. I., which was then called Pocanocket.
[28]Pamet is present-day Truro, Nauset is the area from Eastham to the Denises, both on Cape Cod. Capawack is the island, Martha’s Vineyard.
[29]Capt. Thomas Hunt took two dozen Indians captive in 1614, some at Plymouth, some on Cape Cod, and sold several as slaves at Málaga. While Hunt’s deeds were not excusable, they were merely the worst of several such incidents. Capt. John Smith pointed out that Hunt could not be responsible for the special hostility of the Capawack Indians toward the English. Rather, their ill will may be traced to the kidnaping of Epenow and Coneconam by Capt. Harlow, in 1614 or earlier; the series of degrading experiences which Epenow underwent at the hands of English captors; his influence on his countrymen after his return to Capawack; and the somewhat mysterious friction between him and Capt. Dermer in 1620, in which the latter was mortally wounded. The Capawack Indians probably feared reprisal for this and related incidents. Capt. John Smith, Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1632), 204-205; Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625), IV, 1778, 1828, 1841, 1849; James P. Baxter, Sir Ferdinando Gorges and His Province of Maine (Prince Society, 1890), I, 104n-106n; W. F. Gookin, Capawack alias Martha’s Vineyard (1947), 8-17.
[30]Canonicus, the Narragansett sachem.
[31]Netherlanders who traded around the mouth of the Hudson River before the actual founding of New Amsterdam in 1626.
[32]Whenever the king might come.
[33]“Combotant” in the manuscript.
[34]Squanto, the Pilgrims’ friend and sole survivor of the Patuxet natives, had been one of the Indians gathered by Sir Ferdinando to get information about New England. Gorges sent him back to America in 1618 or 1619 as guide to Capt. Dermer.