Entire heads were often: Ron Williamson, “‘Otinontsiskiaj ondaon’ (‘The House of Cut-Off Heads’): The History and Archaeology of Northern Iroquoian Trophy Taking,” in The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians, ed. Richard J. Chacon and David H. Dye (New York: Springer-Verlag, 2007).
“scalping [became] as Anglo-American”: James Axtell, “Scalping: The Ethnohistory of a Moral Question,” in The European and the Indian (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 232.
“the skins of five”: Quoted and translated in Axtell and Sturtevant 1980, 456. This translation, which the authors believe is more accurate, differs from the traditional translation of “five scalps” in H. P. Biggar, The Voyages of Jacques Cartier (Ottawa: King’s Printer, 1924), 177.
repartimiento: The repartimiento system partially replaced an earlier approach, the encomienda, the abuses of which horrified many Spaniards, most notably Bartolomé de Las Casas, a priest who went from being one of the encomenderos who benefited from the system to its fiercest critic.
[>] “We set ourselves”: Jean Ribault (1562), “Jean Ribault’s First Voyage to Florida,” in Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida, ed. B. F. French (New York: J. Sabin & Sons, 1869), 184.
“fragrant odor”: Ibid.
“during his lifetime served”: J. Leitch Wright Jr., “Sixteenth Century English-Spanish Rivalry in La Florida,” Florida Historical Quarterly 38 (April 1960): 267.
[>] “the rakehell”: William Cecil (1583), quoted in Richard Simpson, ed., The School of Shakespeare (London: Chatto & Windus, 1878), 1:41. Simpson’s volume remains the best source on Stucley’s checkered career.
[>] captured and clapped in irons: That was hardly the end of Thomas Stucley, who had more lives than a cat. Tried but acquitted, he became embroiled in Irish revolt plots, was imprisoned again, escaped to Spain, and in 1578 led, with a papal blessing, what was to be a Catholic invasion force aimed at Ireland. Instead, he became involved in a misbegotten Portuguese offensive against the Moors in North Africa, where he fought despite his belief that the odds were against them. He was killed in the Battle of Alcazar. The life and death of “lusty Stucley” provided ample fodder for Elizabethan poets and playwrights.
[>] “some of our companie”: Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, introduction by Luther S. Livingston (1588; facs. ed., New York: Dodd, Mead, 1903), F2r.
[>] “Some would likewise”: Ibid., F2v.
“plant [the colony]”: “Instructions Given by Way of Advice” (1606), quoted in Haile 1998, 21.
“poore Gentlemen”: John Smith, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England & the Summer Isles (1624; repr., Glasgow: James MacLehose & Sons, 1907), 1:196.
“Ten good workemen”: Ibid.
“have great care”: “Instructions Given,” 21.
[>] “halfe rotten”: Smith, Generall Historie, 1:180. Smith wrote of himself in the third person.
[>] “snatched the King”: Ibid., 1:166.
“neare dead with feare”: Ibid.
“You promised to fraught”: Ibid., 167.
“Men may thinke”: Ibid., 1:170–71.
[>] “Some doubt I have”: Ibid., 1:157.
“the poorer sort”: Ibid., 1:204.
“did kill his wife”: Ibid., 1:204–5.
“Now whether shee”: Ibid., 1:205. Smith had, of course, already left Virginia in October 1610, before the worst of “the starving time,” but his Generall Historie of Virginia continues through 1623, based on reports and conversations with those who remained in the colony.
[>] so now had the English: Ironically, a second, smaller English fort thirty miles downriver at the mouth of the James, near present-day Hampton, Virginia, was essentially ignored by the Indians, and its thirty-man garrison survived the winter in relative comfort, eating hogs and crabs. It, too, was to be abandoned during the planned pullout.
“Of all the foure”: Smith, Generall Historie, 2:14.
“high craggy clifty”: Ibid., 2:24.
“well inhabited with many people”: Ibid., 2:23.
“well inhabited with a goodly”: Ibid., 2:14.
“country of the Massachusits”: Ibid., 2:25.
“Paradice of all those”: Ibid.
“not much inferior”: Ibid. Emphasis added.
[>] as few as 900,000: After Smithsonian ethnographer James Mooney made his first estimate of pre-contact Indian populations in 1928, his figure of 1.5 million in North America was revised down to 900,000 by anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber, who calculated that the entire hemisphere was home to 8.4 million Natives, mostly in Mesoamerica and the Andean highlands.
[>] numbered between 300,000: Las Casas and other early Spanish accounts estimated the pre-contact population at up to 4 million, while some modern scholars believe the island held many more. Livi-Bacci 2003 concluded the total was closer to 300,000 or 400,000 based on agricultural carrying capacity, Taino social structure, and other clues.
[>] the greatest loss: W. George Lovell, “‘Heavy Shadows and Black Night’: Disease and Depopulation in Colonial Spanish America,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82 (September 1992): 426–43.
[>] the Black Death: Not all specialists have agreed that the Black Death was a rat-borne human plague caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, with some arguing that it was a different disease, possibly a viral hemorrhagic fever. In 2010, however, DNA analysis of the remains of Black Death victims confirmed that Y. pestis was the cause. See Haensch, Bianucci, and Signoli et al., 2010.
[>] no evidence that they spread: See Dobyns 1993 for a contrary view suggesting that sixteenth-century epidemics ranged as far north as Canada.
“rare and strange accident”: Thomas Hariot, “A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia,” in Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (Edinburgh: E. & G. Goldsmid, 1889), 13:352.
“Within a few dayes”: Ibid.
“This happened”: Ibid.
“all that space”: Ibid., 8:381.
“subtile devise”: Ibid., 8:380.
[>] the relative scarcity: Not everyone is convinced that epidemics were rare or unknown north of Mexico in the sixteenth century. Dobyns 1993 and others have postulated that Native-to-Native transmission fanned smallpox outbreaks that reached as far north as Canada long before Europeans were present to chronicle the event, although evidence for this is scant.
along the St. Lawrence River: The culture affinities of the groups Jacques Cartier and other French explorers encountered in the upper St. Lawrence Valley from 1535 to 1543 are unclear and controversial. Usually referred to as St. Lawrence (or Laurentian) Iroquois, because of perceived similarities in language, they apparently shared no common heritage with the Five Nations Iroquois to the south. By the time Champlain arrived in 1603, they had vanished, perhaps scattered to the south and west.
“the strangest sort”: “A Short and Briefe Narration (Cartier’s Second Voyage 1535–1536),” in Henry S. Burrage, ed., Early English and French Voyages, Chiefly from Hakluyt, 1534–1608 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), 73.
“ripped”—crudely dissected—“to see”: Ibid., 74.
[>] “God of his infinite”: Ibid.
bark and needles: Cartier assumed he’d found a magic potion and dubbed the plant “tree of life.” Although no one knows what species was used, it is commonly assumed to have been eastern white cedar, to this day known as arborvitae (literally, “tree of life”). It also could have been white pine, eastern hemlock, balsam fir, or spruce, all of which contain vitamin C and can cure scurvy.
“That Cartier was blind”: Cook 1993, xxxvii.
“their bloudy deede”: Thomas Morton, quoted in Charles F. Adams Jr., ed., The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton (Boston: Prince Society, 1883), 131.
“The Salvages”: Ibid., 132.
[>] “Contrary wise”: Ibid., 132. Morton, a s
ometime lawyer, avid poet, hard-drinking Anglican, and Indian trader, was a thorn in the side of both the Pilgrims in Plymouth and the Puritans in Boston, who later burned his home in outrage at his wanton ways.
“By this meanes”: Ibid., 133–34.
[>] “some antient Plantations”: Thomas Dermer (1619), “To His Worshipfull Friend M. Samuel Purchas, Preacher of the Word, at the Church a Little Within Ludgate, London,” in George Parker Winship, Sailors Narratives of Voyages Along the New England Coast, 1524–1624 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905), 251.
“good ground”: Christopher Levett (1624), quoted in Charles H. Levermore, ed., Forerunners and Competitors of the Pilgrims and Puritans (New York: New England Society of Brooklyn, 1912), 2:612.
[>] “Betsabés”: Pierre Biard (1611), in Thwaites 1896, 2:49.
“are astonished”: Biard (1616), in Thwaites 1897, 3:105.
“a remnant remaines”: Dermer, “To His Worshipfull Friend,” 251.
[>] “Our ship had [not]”: Peter Lindeström, Geographia Americae with an Account of the Delaware Indians Based on Surveys and Notes Made in 1654–1656, trans. Amandas Johnson (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1925), 127–28.
“they were ten times”: Adriaen van der Donck (1653), “Description of the New Netherlands,” in Collections of the New-York Historical Society, ed. George Folsom, 2nd ser. (New York: H. Ludwig, 1841), 1:183.
“In my grandfather’s time”: Quoted in John W. Barber and Henry Howe, Historical Collections of New Jersey, Past and Present (New Haven, CT: John W. Barber, 1868), 23.
[>] “a sort of measles”: Paul Le Jeune (1634), in Thwaites 1897, 7:221.
“The people of the countries”: Ibid.
[>] “attribute to the Faith”: Le Jeune (1656–57), in Thwaites 1899, 43:291.
“they assert”: Ibid.
[>] “Generally covetous”: Smith, Generall Historie, 1:62.
məntu’: For a discussion of the difficulty in translating the concept of məntu’ (manitou) in Algonquian languages and the way supernatural associations clung to European objects well into the early twentieth century, see Frank G. Speck, Naskapi: The Savage Hunters of Labrador (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1935).
[>] Martin’s Hundred: The remains of Martin’s Hundred were discovered in 1971, and the excavation, which revealed in astonishing detail the life and death of a frontier community, is detailed in Hume 1982.
[>] “settled in such”: Smith, Generall Historie, 1:279.
“The poore weake Salvages”: Ibid., 1:279–80.
“he held the peace”: Ibid., 1:280.
“They came unarmed”: Edward Waterhouse (1622), quoted in Edward D. Neill, History of the Virginia Company of London (Albany, NY: Joel Munsell, 1869), 318.
“Yea in some places”: Ibid., 318–19.
[>] “Antonio the Negro”: Anthony Johnson’s fascinating story is told in great detail in Breen and Innes 2005, “Myne Owne Ground,” the groundbreaking exploration of the rise and subsequent disappearance of free black communities on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
“proper, civill”: Smith, Generall Historie, 1:291.
both sides grew fatigued: Modern historians suspect that one invisible force working against the Indians may have been the accidental introduction by the colonists of malaria, which drains a person’s—and even an entire culture’s—energy.
[>] probably in his late nineties: Nothing definitive is known about Opechancanough’s birth, but English contemporaries guessed he was nearly one hundred at his death. See Fausz, “Opechancanough.”
Chapter 4: “Why Should You Be So Furious?”
[>] “In consideration of Gods”: Francis Wyatt, quoted in Hume 1982.
“the archetype”: Fausz, “Opechancanough.”
[>] “ceded, transported”: “Affidavit of four men from the Key of Calmar, 1638,” in Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey and Delaware, 1630–1707, ed. Albert Cook Myers (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1912), 88.
“paid and fully”: Ibid.
[>] “What warrant have we”: John Winthrop (1629), “Generall Considerations for the Plantation in New England, with an Answer to Several Objections,” in A Collection of Original Papers Relative to the History of the Colony of Massachusetts (Boston: Thomas & John Fleet, 1769), 30.
“That which is common”: Ibid.
all such land deals: For a look at the relative honesty of Maine’s Indian deeds, see Baker 1989.
[>] “Nothing in this Deed”: Warumbo deed granting lands to Richard Wharton, 1684, www.mainememory.net/media/pdf/20270.pdf.
“made a generall alarm”: Leonard Calvert to Richard Letchford, May 30, 1634, in The Calvert Papers, no. 2, Fund Publication no. 34 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1894), 20.
[>] the powerful Massawomeck: The identity and homeland of this enigmatic tribe have been debated since at least Thomas Jefferson’s day (he thought they were the ancestors of the Iroquois). For a detailed analysis, see Pendergast 1991.
Indian corn: The English used the word “corn” to describe a variety of cereal crops, including barley, wheat, and oats. When I refer to “corn” in this book, I mean Indian corn, or maize.
held on to their identity: This overview of Piscataway history and resilience is drawn largely from James H. Merrell, “Cultural Continuity Among the Piscataway Indians of Colonial Maryland,” William and Mary Quarterly 36 (October 1979): 548–70.
[>] the astringent Puritanism: Pilgrims were “Puritans with a vengeance” (Philbrick 2006, 4), unwilling to remain within the existing Church of England. They had taken the then illegal step of withdrawing from the church to Holland, from which they emigrated to New England.
[>] “there mayne end”: Winthrop, “Generall Considerations,” 31.
“used too unfitt”: Ibid.
[>] “wall of separation”: Roger Williams warned of “a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world” (“Mr. Cotton’s Letter Lately Printed, Examined and Answered, 1644,” quoted in Perry Miller, Roger Williams: His Contribution to the American Tradition [1953; repr., New York: Atheneum, 1970], 98).
[>] “the source and the mother”: Peter Stuyvesant (1660), quoted in Documents Relative to the Colonial History of New York, ed. B. Fernow (Albany, NY: Weed, Parson, 1883), 16:470.
[>] “Without wampum”: Ibid.
[>] “close together as they can”: Philip Vincent (1638), quoted in History of the Pequot War, ed. Charles Orr (Cleveland: Helman-Taylor, 1897), 105.
the Mohegan into tributary: The exact relationship between the Mohegan and Pequot has been debated for years. The issue is complicated by a lack of recognition for how complex political identity could be among Native groups and villages. “We cannot understand Mohegan-Pequot relations by applying a model that presumes long-term ‘tribal’ stability and continuity or that imagines hard-and-fast national boundaries dividing Pequots from Mohegans, Niantics, and Narragansetts. The loyalties and alliances of the Algonquian villages of this region were rather fluid. The barriers between ‘tribes’ were far more permeable than those that separated European states” (Cave 1996, 66).
[>] “clapt up”: Edward Winslow (1634), quoted in William Bradford, Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation, 1606–1646, ed. William T. Davis (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), 301–2.
killed a group of Narragansetts: Or Indians tributary to the Narragansett. Their identity is unclear, but there was nothing subtle about Narragansett outrage.
[>] “might fight seven years”: John Underhill (1638), “Newes from America,” in History of the Pequot War, ed. Charles Orr (Cleveland: Helman-Taylor, 1897), 82.
[>] “a just ass”: John Stone, quoted in Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, 1630–1692, ed. John Noble (Boston: County of Suffolk, 1904), 2:35. Here the insult is politely altered to “just as*.”
witnessed by other Natives: Accounts vary; the Indians involved m
ay have been Pequots or western Niantics, a tributary group living on the east side of the river, or both. The Pequot, however, consistently took responsibility for Stone’s death, and claims by some historians, notably Francis Jennings (The Invasion of America [New York: W. W. Norton, 1976]), suggesting that others were responsible do not appear to hold water. The accounts of exactly what transpired that night are also contradictory. We have three conflicting Pequot narratives related secondhand by the Puritans. For these narratives, see John Mason, “A Brief History of the Pequot War,” in History of the Pequot War, ed. Charles Orr (Cleveland: Helman-Taylor, 1897), 17; Underhill, “Newes from America,” in History of the Pequot War, 57–58; William Bradford, in Bradford’s History, 311–12; and John Winthrop, in Winthrop’s Journal, ed. James K. Hosmer (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 139, and quoted in Bradford’s History, 333.
“Captain Stone, having drunk”: Underhill, “Newes from America,” in History of the Pequot War, 57.
[>] “as friends to trade”: Winthrop, in Winthrop’s Journal, 140.
[>] “If you make war”: Lion Gardener, “Leift Lion Gardener His Relation of the Pequot Warres,” in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd ser. (Cambridge, MA: E. W. Metcalf, 1833), 3:138. Although later editions of Gardener’s account altered his name to “Gardiner,” a form the family had adopted, the original spelling is used here.
“Capt. Hunger”: Ibid.
“do their utmost”: Ibid., 3:139.
“indiscreet speaches”: Jonathan Brewster to John Winthrop Jr., June 18, 1636, in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, ed. Robert C. Winthrop, 4th ser. (Boston: John Wilson & Son, 1865), 7:68.
“whom I have found”: Ibid.
“If they should not”: Henry Vane and John Winthrop to John Winthrop Jr., July 4, 1636, in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd ser., 3:131.
[>] riding at anchor: In some accounts, the ship was under sail but badly handled.
The First Frontier Page 47
