For the aborigines of Canada, we easily revert to the older writers, like Champlain, Sagard, Creuxius, Boucher, Leclercq, Lafitau; the Voyage curieux et nouveau parmi les sauvages of Le Beau (Amsterdam, 1738); the Nouvelle France of Charlevoix; the Histoire de l’Amérique Septentrionale (Paris, 1753) of Bacqueville de la Potherie;[1407] and to the later historians, like Fernald (ch. 7, 8), Garneau (2d book), and Warburton’s Conquest of Canada (ch. 6, 7, 8). The Abenaki, which lay between the northeastern settlements of the English and the French, are specially treated by Bacqueville (vol. iv.), in the Maine Hist. Soc. Collections, vol. vi., and in Maurault’s Histoire des Abenakis (1866).[1408]
The rich descriptive literature of the early days of New England gives us much help in understanding the aboriginal life. We begin with John Smith, and come down through a long series of writers like Governor Bradford and Edward Winslow for Plymouth; Gorges, Morton, Winthrop, Higginson, Dudley, Johnson, Wood, Lechford, and Roger Williams for other parts. These are all characterized in another place.[1409] The authorities on the early wars with the Pequots and with Philip, the accounts of Daniel Gookin, who knew them so well,[1410] and chance visits like those of Rawson and Danforth,[1411] furnish the concomitants needful to the recital. The story of the labors of Eliot, Mayhew, and others in urging the conversion of the natives is based upon another large range of material, in which much that is merely exhortative does not wholly conceal the material for the historian.[1412] Here too the chief actors in this work help us in their records. We have letters of Eliot, and we have the tracts which he was instrumental in publishing.[1413] There is also a letter of Increase Mather to Leusden on the Indian missions (1688).[1414] Gookin tells us of the sufferings of the Christian Indians during the war of 1675,[1415] and he gives also reports of the speeches of the Indian converts.[1416] The Mayhews of Martha’s Vineyard, Thomas, Matthew, and Experience, have left us records equally useful.[1417]
The principal student of the literature, mainly religious, produced in the tongue of the natives, has been Dr. James Hammond Trumbull, of Hartford, and he has given us the leading accounts of its creation and influence.[1418] It was this propagandist movement that led Eleazer Wheelock into establishing (1754) an Indian Charity School at Lebanon, Connecticut, which finally removed to Hanover, in New Hampshire, and became (1769) Dartmouth College.[1419]
The New England tribes have produced a considerable local illustrative literature. The Kennebecs and Penobscots in Maine are noticed in the histories of that State, and in many of the local monographs.[1420] For New Hampshire, beside the state histories,[1421] the Pemigewassets are described in Wm. Little’s Warren (Concord, 1854), and the Pemicooks in the N. H. Hist. Collections, i.; Bouton’s Concord, Moore’s Concord, and Potter’s Manchester.
The Archives of Massachusetts yield a large amount of material respecting the relations of the tribes to the government, particularly at the eastward, while Maine was a part of the colony;[1422] and the large mass of its local histories, as well as those of the State,[1423] supply even better than the other New England States material for the historian.[1424]
The Indians of Rhode Island are noted by Arnold in his Rhode Island (ch. 3), and some special treatment is given to the Narragansetts and the Nyantics.[1425] Those of Connecticut have a monographic record in De Forest’s Indians of Connecticut, as well as treatment otherwise.[1426]
Palfrey (Hist. New England, i. ch. 1, 2), in his general survey of the Indians of New England, delineates their character with much plainness and discrimination, and it is perhaps as true a piece of characterization as any we have.[1427]
The Iroquois of New York have probably been the subject of a more sustained historical treatment than any other tribes. We have the advantage, in studying them, of the observations of the Dutch,[1428] as well as of the French and English. The French priests give us the earliest accounts, particularly the relations of Jogues and Milet.[1429]
The story of the French missions in New York is told elsewhere;[1430] those of the Protestant English yield us less.[1431]
We have another source in the local histories of New York.[1432] The earliest of the general histories of the Iroquois is that of Cadwallader Colden, and the best edition is The history of the five Indian nations depending on the province of New-York. Reprinted exactly from Bradford’s New York edition, 1727; with an introduction and notes by J. G. Shea (New York, 1866).[1433] The London reprints of 1747, and later, unfortunately added to the title Five Indian Nations [of Canada] the words in brackets. This was the very point denied by the English, who claimed that the French had no territorial rights south of the lakes. Otherwise his title conveys two significant facts: first, that the English had come to regard the Five Nations as their “dependants”; and second, that these Indians actually were a barrier between them and the French. There was something farcical in the formula used by Sir Wm. Johnson in a letter to the ministry: “The combined tribes have taken arms against his Britannic Majesty.” The Mohawks had been induced to ask that the Duke of York’s arms should be attached to their castles. This had been assented to, and allowed as a security against the inroads of the French—a sort of talismanic charm which might be respected by European usage. But those ducal bearings did not have their full meaning to the Iroquois as binding their own allegiance, nor were the Six Nations ever the gainers by being thus constructively protected.