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Such were the neighbors on the west of the Indians of New
England in whom we are more particularly interested in connection with
this work, but whose history is such a mixture of wars among themselves
resulting from what appear to be successive waves of migration,
constantly driven down to the New England coast through their inability
to plant their feet on the lands preempted by the Iroquois; and wars
with the Mohawks themselves, who crowded them so close on the west that
no sketch of the eastern Algonquin is quite complete without considering
briefly these neighbors who had succeeded in some way in planting
themselves upon or within the Algonquin territory, where they remained,
a pestilential thorn in the flesh of the tribes surrounding them.
Of the three eastern groups or families, the Algonquin
were undoubtedly the most numerous and extended over the largest expanse
of territory. Their dominion, excepting the region south of Lakes Erie and
Ontario, and the peninsula between these lakes and Lake Huron, which was
occupied by the Iroquois, extended from Hudson's Bay to the Carolinas and
from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and Lake Winnipeg. To quote again
from Parkman: "They were Algonquin who greeted Jacques Cartier, as his
ships ascended the St. Lawrence. The first British Colonists found savages
of the same race hunting and fishing along the coasts and inlets of
Virginia, and it was the daughter of an Algonquin chief who interceded
with her father for the life of the adventuresome Englishman. They were
Algonquin, who, under Sassacus the Pequot and Philip of Mt. Hope, waged
deadly war against the Puritans of New England, who dwelt at Pennacock
under the rule of the great magician, Passaconaway, and trembled before
the evil spirits of the Crystal Hills; and who sang Aves and told their
beads in the forest chapel of Father Rasles, by the banks of the Kennebec.
They were Algonquin, who under the great tree at Kensington, made the
covenant of peace with William Penn."
In the year 1000 when Thorvald with his viking crew
sought to establish a colony at Vinland, this group of the American
Indians was limited to much narrower confines. The skroellings whom he
encountered and at whose hands he met his fate, during the five centuries
that elapsed between his adventurous attempt and the next recorded visits
of Europeans, had been driven north by advancing waves of Algonquin
migration; and their descendants are still occupying the frozen regions of
the far north. Esquimau, we call them, signifying in the Algonquin tongue,
"Eaters of Raw Fish." What took place during those five centuries is
matter of conjecture; but there are certain historical facts that make it
possible to draw inferences supported by reason.
The Leni Lenapee, in their own tongue, the Loups of the
French, the Delawares of the English, call themselves the parent stock of
the Algonquin group, and their claim seems to be admitted by the other
branches. The name by which they designate themselves means "original men," and in
speaking of or to the members of other tribes of the family, they used the
terms, little brothers, children, grandchildren or nephews, and the other
tribes referred to them as father or grandfather.
So it is likely that the Algonquin group had its
origin, or at some remote time had established itself, in the vicinity of
New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and eastern Pennsylvania, and as its
original limits became too narrow it spread out to the North, the East,
the South and the West in successive waves of migration, each driving the
preceding one further and further away from the home of its fathers.
Schoolcraft believes that the Wolf Totem, or Mohicans,
were the first of the three clans of the Lenapee to migrate, locating near
Albany, whence they were driven over the Hoosic and Pekonet ranges into
the valley of the Housatonic; and Gallatin says this was the only one of
the subdivisions to leave their ancient hunting grounds. Neither expresses
any opinion whether they were forced eastward from the Hudson by other
migratory bands of Algonquin from the parent stock or by the Iroquois;
and there appears to be nothing in the works of early historians that
furnishes any evidence, gathered by men who have made a study of Indian
lore and traditions at their sources, whether the Iroquois were there
before the Algonquin in such strength that they could not be forced back,
but allowed the latter to sweep around them, or came down from the west or
north and met the advancing movement of the Algonquin migration and drove
a wedge in it which could not be dislodged.
Schoolcraft thinks it probable that the
Pequot, who,
in the beginning of the seventeenth century were in the ascendancy in the
Mohican federation, were true Mohicans, and that the wars waged between
Sassacus the Pequot and Uncas the Mohican were family rows for the
sovereignty of the federation. In speaking of the Pequot war in which that
tribe, with its six or seven hundred fighting men, was wiped out he says,
"By this defeat the Mohicans, a minor branch of the federation, under the
government of Uncas gained the ascendancy in Connecticut." The whole
matter of tribal relations is so much in doubt that speculation is almost
useless, and yet it has a fascination that makes it difficult to leave.
Major Daniel Gookin, who commanded the Middlesex
regiment in King Philip's war, writing in 1674, which would be just before
that war broke out, enumerates as the five principal "nations" of New
England, the "Pequot, including the Mohicans, and occupying the eastern
part of the state of Connecticut; the
Narragansett, occupying nearly all
of Rhode Island; the Pawkunnawkut or
Wampanoags, chiefly within the
jurisdiction of Plymouth Colony; the Massachusetts, in the bay of that
name and adjacent parts; and the Pawtuckets north and east of the
Massachusetts, including the
Pennacooks of New Hampshire, and probably all
the northeastern tribes as far as the
Abenakis or Tarrateens, as they seem
to have been called by the New England Indians." The
Nipmucks he mentions as living north of the Mohicans and west of
the Massachusetts, occupying the central part of that state, and
acknowledging to a certain extent, the supremacy of the Massachusetts, the
Narragansetts or the Mohicans. Other writers also assert that some of
their tribes were tributary to the Wampanoags, and there is very good
reason for believing this to be true.
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Massasoit of the Wampanoags
Massasoit of the Wampanoags
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