Under these circumstances it is unnecessary to say that Morton’s statements as to the red cap and the Sachem’s privilege are pure fiction, and what Parkman says of the Hurons is probably true of the Massachusetts,—their women were wantons before marriage and household drudges after it. (Jesuits in North America, p. xxxv).
[249] To the same effect Roger Williams says: “Most of them count it a shame for a woman in travell to make complaint, and many of them are scarcely heard to groane. I have often known in one quarter of an hour a woman merry in the house, and delivered and merry again: and within two dayes abroad, and after foure or five dayes at worke.” (Key, ch. xxiii.). See also Josselyn’s Two Voyages, p. 127. Wood’s account is almost as comprehensive, though not quite so detailed and graphic as Josselyn’s: “They likewise sew their husband’s shooes, and weave mats of Turkie feathers; besides all their ordinary household drudgery which dayly lies upon them, so that a bigge belly hinders no businesse nor a childbirth takes much time, but the young infant being greased and footed, wrapped in a Beaver skin, bound to his goode behaviour with his feete up to his bumme, upon a board two foot long and one foot broade, his face exposed to all nipping weather, this little Pappouse travels about with his bare-footed mother, to paddle in the Icie Clammbanks after three or four daies of age have sealed his passe-board and his mother’s recovery.” (Prospect, p. 82). See also Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 358.
[250] The idea that the Indian was born white was very commonly entertained in the first half of the seventeenth century. Lechford, in his Plaine Dealing, says (p. 50): “They are of complexion swarthy and tawny; their children are borne white, but they bedaube them with oyle, and colours, presently.” Josselyn also speaks of the Indians “dying [their children] with a liquor of boiled Hemlock-Bark” (Two Voyages, p. 128). Speaking of the Virginia women, Smith says: “To make [their children] hardie, in the coldest mornings they them wash in the rivers, and by paynting and oyntments so tanne their skinnes, that after a year or two, no weather will hurt them.” (True Travels, vol. i. p. 131). Strachey gives a more particular account of the supposed process: The Indians “are generally of a cullour browne or rather tawny, which they cast themselves into with a kind of arsenick stone, ... and of the same hue are their women; howbeit, yt is supposed neither of them naturally borne so discouloured; for Captain Smith (lyving somtymes amongst them) affirmeth how they are from the womb indifferent white, but as the men, so doe the women, dye and disguise themselves into this tawny cowler, esteeming yt the best beauty to be neerest such a kynd of murrey as a sodden quince is of (to liken yt to the neerest coulor I can), for which they daily anoint both face and bodyes all over with such a kind of fucus or unguent as can cast them into that stayne.” (Historie, p. 63).
[251] “If there was noticed a remarkable exemption from physical deformities, this was probably not the effect of any peculiar congenital force or completeness, but of circumstances which forbade the prolongation of any imperfect life. The deaf, blind or lame child was too burdensome to be reared, and according to a savage estimate of usefulness and enjoyment, its prolonged life would not requite its nurture.” Palfrey, vol. i. p. 23.
[252] Mr. Trumbull writes: “Morton’s nan weeteo stands for Eliot’s nanwetee (nanwetue, Cotton), ‘a bastard.’ Titta should be tatta, a word common among Indians, which is well enough translated by Morton. Eliot renders it ‘I know not,’ and R. Williams adds to this meaning, ‘I cannot tell; it may be so.’
“Cheshetue is unknown to me, but I am inclined to believe that Morton heard something like it, in the connection and substantially with the meaning he gives it,—some adjective of dispraise, qualifying squaa, or, as we write it, squaw.”
[253] [likenesse.] See supra, [111], note 1.
[254] The observations of Roger Williams led him to a different conclusion: “Their affections, especially to their children, are very strong.... This extreme affection, together with want of learning, makes their children saucie, bold and undutifull. I once came into a house, and requested some water to drink; the father bid his sonne (of some 8 yeeres of age) to fetch some water: the boy refused, and would not stir; I told the father, that I would correct my child, if he should so disobey me &c. Upon this the father took up a sticke, the boy another, and flew at his father: upon my persuasion, the poore father made him smart a little, throw down his stick, and run for water, and the father confessed the benefits of correction, and the evill of their too indulgent affections.” (Key, ch. v.)
To the same effect Champlain wrote (Voyages, vol. iii. p. 170): “The children have great freedom among these tribes. The fathers and mothers indulge them too much, and never punish them. Accordingly they are so bad and of so vicious a nature, that they often strike their mothers and others. The most vicious, when they have acquired the strength and power, strike their fathers. They do this whenever the father or mother does anything that does not please them. This is a sort of curse that God inflicts upon them.” Winslow, on the other hand, in his Good News, lends some support to Morton’s statement in the text. He says: “The younger sort reverence the elder, and do all mean offices, whilst they are together, although they be strangers.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 363.)
[255] This Sachem, “the most noted powow and sorcerer of all the country,” is better known by the name of Passaconaway. There is quite an account of him in Drake’s Book of the Indians (B. III. ch. vii). He is the Pissacannawa mentioned by Wood in his Prospect (p. 70), of whom the savages reported that he could “make the water burn, the rocks move, the trees dance, metamorphize himself into a flaming man.” Morton says of the Indian conjurers, “some correspondency they have with the Devil out of all doubt;” Wood, to the same effect, remarks that “by God’s permission, through the Devil’s helpe, their charmes are of force to produce effects of wonderment;” Smith declares of the Indians, “their chiefe God they worship is the Devil” (True Travels, vol. i. p. 138); Mather intimates that it was the devil who seduced the first inhabitants of America into it (Magnalia, B. I. ch. i. § 3), and Winthrop, describing the great freshet of 1638, records that the Indians “being pawawing in this tempest, the Devil came and fetched away five of them” (vol. i. p. *293).