DISTRIBUTION OF AMERICAN INDIANS ABOUT 1500 BY LINGUISTIC STOCKS [(FULL SIZE)]

The disposition to cheat and defraud the Indians has been much exaggerated, at least as regards the English settlers. The early Spanish invaders made no pretence of buying one foot of land from the Indians, whereas the English often went through the form of purchase, and very commonly put in practice the reality. The Pilgrims, at the very beginning, took baskets of corn from an Indian grave to be used as seed, and paid for it afterward. The year after the Massachusetts colony was founded the court decreed: “It is ordered that Josias Plastowe shall (for stealing four baskets of corne from the Indians) returne them eight baskets againe, be fined five pounds, and hereafter called by the name of Josias, and not Mr., as formerly he used to be.” As a mere matter of policy, it was the general disposition of the English settlers to obtain lands by honest purchase; indeed, Governor Josiah Winslow, of Plymouth, declared, in reference to King Philip’s War, that “before these present troubles broke out the English did not possess one foot of land in this colony but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors.” This policy was quite general. Captain West, in 1610, bought the site of what is now Richmond, Virginia, for some copper. The Dutch Governor Minuit bought the island of Manhattan, in 1626, for sixty gilders. Lord Baltimore’s company purchased land for cloth, tools, and trinkets; the Swedes obtained the site of Christiania for a kettle; Roger Williams bought the island of Rhode Island for forty fathoms of white beads; and New Haven was sold to the whites, in 1638, for “twelve coats of English cloth, twelve alchemy spoons, twelve hoes, twelve hatchets, twelve porringers, twenty-four knives, and twenty-four cases of French knives and spoons.” Many other such purchases will be found recorded by Doctor Ellis. And though the price paid might often seem ludicrously small, yet we must remember that a knife or a hatchet was really worth more to an Indian than many square miles of wild land; while even the beads were a substitute for wampum, or wompom, which was their circulating medium in dealing with each other and with the whites, and was worth, in 1660, five shillings a fathom.

So far as the mere bargaining went, the Indians were not individually the sufferers in the early days; but we must remember that behind all these transactions there often lay a theory which was as merciless as that of the Spanish “Requisition,”[20] and which would, if logically carried out, have made all these bargainings quite superfluous. Increase Mather begins his history of King Philip’s War with this phrase, “That the Heathen People amongst whom we live, and whose Land the Lord God of our Fathers hath given to us for a rightful Possession”; and it was this attitude of hostile superiority that gave the sting to all the relations of the two races. If a quarrel rose, it was apt to be the white man’s fault; and after it had arisen, even the humaner Englishmen usually sided with their race, as when the peaceful Plymouth men went to war in defence of the Weymouth reprobates. This fact, and the vague feeling that an irresistible pressure was displacing them, caused most of the early Indian outbreaks. And when hostilities had once arisen, it was very rare for a white man of English birth to be found fighting against his own people, although it grew more and more common to find Indians on both sides.

As time went on each party learned from the other. In the early explorations, as of Champlain and Smith, we see the Indians terrified by their first sight of firearms, but soon becoming skilled in the use of them. “The King, with fortie Bowmen to guard me,” says Capt. John Smith, in 1608, “entreated me to discharge my Pistoll, which they there presented to me, with a mark at six-score to strike therewith; but to spoil the practise I broke the cocke, whereat they were much discontented.” But writing more than twenty years later, in 1631, he says of the Virginia settlers, “The loving Salvages their kinde friends they trained up so well to shoot in a Peace [fowling-piece] to hunt and kill them fowle, they became more expert than our own countrymen.” La Hontan, writing in 1703, says of the successors of those against whom Champlain had first used firearms, “The Strength of the Iroquese lies in engaging with Fire Arms in a Forrest, for they shoot very dexterously.” They learned also to make more skilful fortifications, and to keep a regular watch at night, which in the time of the early explorers they had omitted. The same La Hontan says of the Iroquois, “They are as negligent in the night-time as they are vigilant in the day.”

But it is equally true that the English colonists learned much in the way of forest warfare from the Indians. The French carried their imitation so far that they often disguised themselves to resemble their allies, with paint, feathers, and all; it was sometimes impossible to tell in an attacking party which warriors were French and which were Indians. Without often going so far as this, the English colonists still modified their tactics. At first they seemed almost irresistible because of their armor and weapons. In the very first year of the Plymouth settlement, when report was brought that their friend Massasoit had been attacked by the Narrangansets, and a friendly Indian had been killed, the colony sent ten armed men, including Miles Standish, to the Indian town of Namasket (now Middleborough) to rescue or revenge their friend; and they succeeded in their enterprise, surrounding the chief’s house and frightening every one in a large Indian village by two discharges of their muskets.

But the heavy armor gradually proved a doubtful advantage against a stealthy and light-footed foe. In spite of the superior physical strength of the Englishman, he could not travel long distances through the woods or along the sands without lightening his weight. He learned also to fight from behind a tree, to follow a trail, to cover his body with hemlock boughs for disguise when scouting. Captain Church states in his own narrative that he learned from his Indian soldiers to march his men “thin and scattering” through the woods; that the English had previously, according to the Indians, “kept in a heap together, so that it was as easy to hit them as to hit a house.” Even the advantage of firearms involved the risk of being without ammunition, so that the Rhode Island colony, by the code of laws adopted in 1647, required that every man between seventeen and seventy should have a bow with four arrows, and exercise with them; and that each father should furnish every son from seven to seventeen years old with a bow, two arrows, and shafts, and should bring them up to shooting. If this statute was violated a fine was imposed, which the father must pay for the son, the master for the servant, deducting it in the latter case from his wages.

Less satisfactory was the change by which the taking of scalps came to be a recognized part of colonial warfare. Hannah Dustin, who escaped from Indian captivity in 1698, took ten scalps with her own hand, and was paid for them. Captain Church, undertaking his expedition against the eastern Indians, in 1705, after the Deerfield massacre, announced that he had not hitherto permitted the scalping of “Canada men,” but should thenceforth allow it. In 1722, when the Massachusetts colony sent an expedition against the village of “praying Indians,” founded by Father Rasle, they offered for each scalp a bounty of £15, afterward increased to £100; and this inhumanity was so far carried out that the French priest himself was one of the victims. Jeremiah Bumstead, of Boston, made this entry in his almanac in the same year: “Aug. 22, 28 Indian scalps brought to Boston, one of which was Bombazen’s [an Indian chief] and one fryer Raile’s.” Two years after, the celebrated but inappropriately named Captain Lovewell, the foremost Indian fighter of his region, came upon ten Indians asleep round a pond. He and his men killed and scalped them all, and entered Dover, New Hampshire, bearing the ten scalps stretched on hoops and elevated on poles. After receiving an ovation in Dover they went by water to Boston, and were paid a thousand pounds for their scalps. Yet Lovewell’s party was always accompanied by a chaplain, and had prayers every morning and evening.