Bristol County, Massachusetts - Chapter 2: The Indian Story, 1924

Imbibing, as we do, the realism of our times, it follows that we must consider the Red Man's story as genuine as that of the age that ensued, although historians now and then have seen fit to invest much of their era with the glamour of romance. The Indians were real people; their troubles and sorrows were actual; and those of our Massachusetts shores possessed very little of comfort and enjoyment in life, whether from the white man's point of view or their own.

We are now nearly two hundred and fifty years away from King Philip's War, and weighing all causes, as we must, we know that while the colonists had good and sufficient reasons for the eventual retirement of the Indian from the scene, we grant that the natives often suffered at the hands of the newcomers, whose demands, like those of Winslow himself, upon King Philip, were frequently made in an offensive manner. In the formative period of the Old Colony, the transactions between the races were rather ideal, as a whole, but, as the years passed, in spite of the strict governmental rules for clemency of dealings with the Indians, individuals on both sides gradually undermined the fabric of friendship and of mutual help.

Massasoit was easy-going; King Philip was crafty; yet the reasons for rebellious outbreak on the part of the natives were not always fictitious ones. The real Indians hereabouts were a poor and needy type of humanity; but they bitterly resented and always remembered the enforced enslavement of certain of their kind by marauding Europeans before the "Mayflower" came. Naturally, they disliked being driven from pillar to post; they found fault when their gardens were destroyed and when members of their families were mistreated. Their methods of vengeance were terrible in result; but through the heavy mists of the blood that was shed, it was very hard for that generation of white people, or succeeding ones, to maintain any faith whatever in the ethnological value of the Indian.

The honor once accorded the writer in being granted an interview with Zerviah (Mitchell) Robinson, Indian princess by right, then ninety-three years of age, was augmented by the consciousness that she was a direct descendant of Massasoit, chief of the Pokanoket confederacy of the originally powerful tribe of Wampanoags, first recorded occupants of the present Bristol county region. That Indian woman, who in her early years had been a teacher in public schools, was in her nineties bright and active. Her eyes flashed with hereditary brilliance of the nomadic forbears; but her features were sharp and mummy-like, and drawn with advanced age. She was one of the few that remained of her race; yet, living in our times, as she was, she had made the best of her life. But Zerviah was a living reminder of all that had been known and verified of that wise and peaceperforming Massasoit who with his tribe and offspring were familiar to all this section before Taunton or Fall River or New Bedford were foreseen, and who for a half century, when the Europeans appeared and set up their homes here, generally fraternized with the strangers and allowed them the settlers' privileges. After nearly three hundred years, then, practically the last remnant of the people of the woods and barrens had disappeared, and the city and its builders had taken their place, race annihilating race in the ages-old way.

So far as the first settlement of the white people in the old bounds of this county is concerned, their combats with their Indian neighbors were nil - there was no menace, to speak of, on the part of the first dwellers here, no disastrous breaks - a condition not usual with the invasion of newcomers elsewhere. At Cape Cod and Plymouth the skirmishes were few and far between, and in early Bristol county the Indians peacefully conveyed lands and were satisfied with whatever was given in exchange.

The paucity and segregation of the branches of the tribes were the main causes for the easy foothold obtained here by Europeans. And the leading reason for the lack of anticipated wholesale warlike front on the part of the Indians is found in the declaration made by the Indians and the settlers, that a plague understood by many writers to have been like influenza had already swept thousands of the Red Men hereabouts out of existence, and that only a few years before the "Mayflower" arrived. Everywhere graves were abundant, and remains were found heaped together in pits. Those that survived of the nearby Wampanoags, therefore, were weak and generally unhostile. Hence, so far as the traditions have declared, the new homes of civilization increased, and the Red Men's tents were bound to retreat. The Indian occupancy in this region, however, had been and was to be for many years to follow, a real. possession. It is too actual a chapter that it should ever be dismissed from the whole story. Romance, poetry and song are not powerful enough realms to absorb the hard realities of the existence of the Indian.

The immediate newcomers landed practically unopposed, and, living up to their ideals of fair play, they sent their delegates a long way in order to find the nearest head man of any tribe, for good fellowship's sake. It was Samoset who welcomed the Englishmen; it was Squanto, who claimed that he was the last of the Patuxet tribe, that led the way to Massasoit.

The town of Bristol, now in Rhode Island, formerly in Massachusetts, and the head of the county, was founded upon the site of the Indian encampment of the Pokanokets, at Montaup (the Englishmen phonetically calling it Mt. Hope), and there lived Massasoit, who is accounted one of the wisest chiefs that ever ruled a savage race. In 1619 Captain Dermer, a transient visitor, had stopped at Nemasket, just outside this section, and had there met Massasoit and his brother Quadequin. But in July, 1621, was made the first record of white men traversing the Bristol county territory, when Edward Winslow and Stephen Hopkins, accompanied by Squanto, sought out Massasoit in order to make their treaty of friendship. Their visit was successful; so were all their dealings thereafter with that chief.

Yet there were displeasing episodes. One was that connected with the sub-chief Corbitant, whom Winslow pronounced a "hollow-hearted friend"; though his hospitableness afterwards was conceded. It is stated that Corbitant had been inimical towards Squanto, whose part being taken by Myles Standish and the Plymouth people, Corbitant himself, thereupon, was constrained to sign a treaty of peace at Plymouth. When Winslow made his second visit to Massasoit in 1623, while passing through Corbitant's dominions, at the present Swansea, he was alarmed at the report of the death of Massasoit, lest the latter be succeeded by Corbitant to the chieftaincy. But the report was negatived, and Corbitant proved a generous host to Winslow and his friends. Another episode concerned Awashunks, the squaw-sachem of Seaconnet, whose husband was the Indian Tolony, and who had sons, Peter and William. She nearly precipitated a war at Freetown, in August, 1671; and again, in 1675, she was almost persuaded, with her warriors, to cast in her lot with that of the English.

Massasoit, who was also known as Ossamequin, as has been pointed out, ruled the Wampanoags, whose sub-tribes and branches were included in thirty villages, at least, throughout the present Bristol and other counties.

The principal of the sub-tribes that have to do with this section were the Seaconnets, who lived where Little Compton, Rhode Island, now is, and they were ruled by the squaw-sachem Awashunks, to whom reference has been made. The tents of the Pocassets were pitched throughout the territory that is now Fall River, Tiverton, and a part of Swansea, and their rulers were Corbitant and Weetamoe. In succession also were the Tetiquets, who lived on the east side of the Tetiquet (now Taunton) river; and the Assawampsetts, their next door neighbors.

Massasoit was born in 1581. His wife was living in 1621; and besides the brothers of the chief, Quadequin and Akkampoin, there was a sister. Massasoit's two famous sons were: Wamsutta, afterwards known as Alexander; and Metacomet, better known as King Philip; and his daughter was Amie, who married Tispauquin, from whom Zerviah Mitchell was descended. Massasoit died in 1662. A monument to his memory was dedicated at Warren, Rhode Island, October 19, 1907, at the Massasoit Spring, there, by the Massasoit Monument Association. Charlotte and Alonzo Mitchell, direct descendants of the chief, were present, and unveiled the monument.

Many names for many occasions, the Red Men seemed to have. The English at first knew Wamsutta as Mooanam, but after 1656 he and King Philip were called by the Christian names they afterwards bore. Alexander, the chief who took Weetamoe, daughter of Corbitant, for his wife, had from the first held an unfriendly attitude. towards the whites, generous though his father had been with the new-comers. Yet Alexander was chief only a few months after the death of Massasoit, when he died, having "fretted himself to death," in all probability because he foresaw the powerlessness of his race and, as King Philip did, their extinction. It was Alexander who disposed of lands where Taunton and Attleboro now are. His squaw, Weetamoe, was one of the most noted Indian women of her times in the story of this region. When Corbitant, her father, died, she automatically became the ruler of the Pocassets. Known at first as Nunmampaum, and being called Weetamoe first in 1662, she married in 1675, just before King Philip's War, Petonowowet, or Peter Nunnuit, as the English phonetically styled him. Later, and before the close of that war, she married the Narragansett sagamore Quinnapin. The unique description that exists of this squaw leader is worth repeating: "She was dressed in a kersey coat covered with girdles of wampum, from the loins upwards. Her arms from the elbows to the hands were covered with bracelets; and besides a handful of necklaces about her neck, there were several sorts of jewels in her ears. She had fine red' stockings and white shoes; her hair was powdered, and her face painted red. She was a severe and proud dame, bestowing every day in dressing herself as much time as any of the gentry in the land; and when she was dressed her work was to make girdles of wampum and beads." Yet in spite of her finery while she was at her best, the lot of Weetamoe was an unenviable one. With the breaking out of the King Philip War, she had about three hundred armed Indians subject to her rule. Her second husband, "Peter Nunnuit", went over and aided the English, but she remained faithful to her race and shared their lot. Separating herself from Nunnuit, she became the wife of Quinnapin, both of them then being the followers of Philip. Quinnapin, being accused of plotting with Philip, was shot at Plymouth. His queen, Weetamoe, fled, but by means of the perfidy of a deserter from her camp, her hiding place was made known. In all probability she drowned herself, but her corpse drifted ashore, and, being seized by the white settlers, her head was cut off and exhibited upon a pole at Taunton.

Philip, whose Indian name was pronounced Pometacum, though at first the English called him Metacomet, is remembered by us of today, chiefly because of the fact that his name was connected with the Indian war of this section, as its leader, in 1675-6. He married a sister of Weetamoe, named Wotonekanuske; and one of the blots on the pages of our history, as we view it today, is the fact that she was sold into slavery with her son, at Bridgewater.

And so Philip, the plotter, and yet the fighting man for his race, came into view on the stage of the time - Philip, untutored, unlettered, vengeful - but whom we must credit with a great love for his people, and as having in his heart a great regret that a new race had come into possession of the lands of his ancestors. While the charge of the colonists was that King Philip and his followers, in a time of comparative peace, were plotting against the new government of the settlers, it should be conceded today, after weighing carefully much that has been recorded with regard to the arrogance and the trespassing of the whites upon the property and the rights of the Indians, that the latter were no more than rebels against what they believed to be a tyrannizing of the colonists. The following incident,

John Sassamon, a Massachusetts Indian, though attached to King Philip, had received his education at the Indian school at Natick, and became a home missionary to the Nemasket Indians (where Middleboro now is). He also received the favor of the chief Tuspaquin, who conveyed to him 27 acres of land at Assawampsett Neck, in the town of Lakeville. Sassamon had a daughter, Assowetough by name, called "Betty" by the English, who married the Indian Felix. To him Tuspaquin and his son William deeded 58% acres of land, and both conveyed to Assowetough ("Betty") a neck of land at Assawampsett that today is called Betty's Neck. But Sassamon, because of a treacherous communication to the English to the detriment of Philip, met his death at the hands of Philip's people. Thereupon the murderers, Tobias, Wampapaum and Mattushamama, were apprehended and shot by the English. Only fifteen days after this execution, or on June 23, 1675, an Englishman was shot at Swansea, and his wife was scalped. The following day, others were killed at the same place. It was about this time, too, that Edward Bobbitt, John Tisdale and others were killed at Taunton.

It was on April 10, 1671, five years before the war, that Philip, attended by his warriors, came to Taunton upon request of the colonists, * who had become alarmed at the warlike preparations of the Indian party. This council was held in the meeting house near the present Church Green, and after recriminations upon both sides, King Philip and his men signed a treaty and delivered up their arms, at the same time with the promise given that the tribe as a whole would surrender their arms at Plymouth. But the promise was not kept, and after a second one, made on September 26, 1671, the Indians were generally and forcibly disarmed, with the trouble that was bound to ensue.

Most of the so-called battles of this war, from our viewpoint, were little more than a few skirmishes, with a handful of people on either side contending - that is, as the present Bristol county bounds have to do with the trouble. Yet the results, so comparatively few were the white and Indian inhabitants here at the time, were looked upon either as terribly calamitous or as wonderful victories. The dispatching of the three Indians, the slaying of the Swansea family - both were events of the most serious kind, and they so affected both parties.

While our concern is with the greater affairs of the Indians and of this war, we shall refer to the main facts that featured the action of the war to its close, in this region. After the Swansea attack, a battle was fought at Punkateset, now the south part of Tiverton, by a small number of white men under command of Captain Benjamin Church, and three hundred Indians. The record has it that a Captain Golding, who approached the land in his sloop, was the means of saving the colonists from their predicament. Again, Philip and Weetamoe and some Indians were engaged in battle, July 18, 1675, in the Pocasset swamp, near the present Fall River. The English on this occasion lost sixteen of their men, and took possession of one hundred wigwams, while about one hundred Indians fell into their hands. Philip and Weetamoe and most of their party got away.

Infantry, volunteers and mounted men stationed at Swansea, the contingent furnished by Massachusetts Bay for this section, were in charge of

Captain Daniel Henchman, Samuel Moseley and Thomas Prentice; and Captain James Cudworth commanded a company from Plymouth Colony. He, as ranking officer, had charge of all, with headquarters at Barneyville. Besides skirmishes like that at Myles Bridge, where colonists were killed and wounded, Captain Moseley led in an open fight against the Indians, killing some, and on his way finding the decapitated heads of English, which he buried. When he arrived at Mount Hope, he found that King Philip and his followers had fled to Pocasset, where he was able to reenforce his outfit with the help of Weetamoe and Awashunks. Meantime, Major Thomas Savage having arrived at Swansea from Boston with one hundred and twenty men, Captain Prentice led a skirmish at Rehoboth June 30, with disastrous results to a number of Indians.

Philip continued to lay waste the white settlements. A battle was fought at Pawtucket, then within this county's bounds, when Captain Michael Pierce and nearly all his command were slain by Indians under Canonchet. Rehoboth was burned March 28, nearly seventy buildings being destroyed, and on April 9 the fighter Canonchet was captured. Swansea received its second attack June 19, and was burned flat. Taunton was attacked July 11, and houses burned; and it was about this time that the battle of Lockety Neck occurred, with Indian defeat. Twenty Taunton. men captured Weetamoe and the last of her followers, at Swansea, August 6, with the result referred to. King Philip himself was killed at Mount Hope, August 12, 1676, and on August 28 his leading captain, Anawan, was captured by Captain Benjamin Church at the place known as Anawan's Rock, at Rehoboth. Thereafter, peace prevailed between the races in this county. The place and power of the aboriginal régime were superseded by those of the newcomer. Henceforth the colonists availed. The wigwam perished and towns and cities appeared and flourished.

The piratical visitations of pre-Pilgrim times, and afterwards the inevitable intrusions of racial pride, preferment and greed for gain, as well as the cruelties practiced by individuals on both sides, were causes of all the trouble the later men of the Old Colony and of Bristol county had with the original holders of the land. The preponderance of statements of any who have written concerning the Indians (particularly of those remnants of the Algonquin tribes of the Massachusetts shores), and the conduct of the white men towards them, is, in effect, that humane treatment of them was a pre-determined factor of the Pilgrim methods. Had the precedent established by the first governors and their councillors with regard to popular treatment of the Indians been preserved and held sacred by all the townsmen of the settlements, there could have been no war.

An ideal basis, at least for all transactions with the Red Race, was that set forth by the Plymouth General Court in 1643, when it was enacted that "it shall be holden unlawful and of dangerous consequence, as it hath been our constant custom from the very first beginning, that no person should purchase, rent or hire any lands, herbage, wood or timber of the Indians but by the magistrates' consent." And even so far along as the year 1660 it was further enacted that the law should be so interpreted as to prevent any from taking land as a gift.

the history of property that the value of the latter is destined to vary according to its successive eras and possessors. Bristol county lands today, comprising the wealth of the townships, highways, railroads and bridges, have greatly amassed values over those of other ages. The impoverished province of 1640, for example, was worth to the nomad Indian, who cared but little for it, and to the white man, who gave all he could afford, only that wampum, those useful tools, and often the specie of circulation that were used as medium of exchange. Again and again we are told that the Wampanoags and the Narragansetts were satisfied with the bargains made. "That he do not too much straiten the Indians" was the proviso of Captain Thomas Willett, who was given liberty to make purchase of lands in this county. The Taunton deed of the early purchasers was well understood by the previous owners, and its equitable title, made in 1637, signed by Massasoit, was confirmed by Philip in 1663. And moreover, reservations of land for the Indians were made both by the white men and the Indians themselves.

A word genealogical, concerning recent generations of the Indian race in this county. At the time the writer interviewed Zerviah (Mitchell) Robinson, it was of more than passing interest to note these facts that had been gleaned by herself and the late General E. W. Pierce. Zerviah was one of the children of Thomas C. and Zerviah Gould Mitchell, most of - whom were born in North Abington, though Zerviah was born in Charlestown, June 17, 1828. She received her education at the Abington High School, graduated at Union Academy, and married Joseph Robinson, November 14, 1854. In her younger days Mrs. Robinson taught school, and later travelled with her husband in South America. Her sisters, Deloris B., Melinda, Emma J. and Charlotte J., received academic training; and a brother, Thomas C., prepared himself for the ministry, but was drowned at Elder's pond, at Lakeville, in 1859.

The record of the descent of Zerviah from Massasoit has been kept, and is as follows: Massasoit had five children, three sons and two daughters. Amie, one of the daughters, married Tuspaquin, who was known as the "Black Sachem" and was chief of the Assawampsett branch of the Wampanoags. Tuspaquin and Amie had sons, one of whom, Benjamin Tuspaquin, married Weecum, as she was known, and to them were born four children. One of their sons, Benjamin, married Mary Felix in Lakeville, Mary herself being a direct descendant of Chief John Sassamon. It was Mary's father, Felix, who first received from the Indian owners Chief Tuspaquin's deed of the lands at "Betty's Neck," which place was so called, as was shown, because, in the sixteenth century, the English called Assowetough, the daughter of Sassamon, who resided there, "Betty." There lived Charlotte, a sister of Zerviah. Benjamin and Mary had a daughter Lydia, who married "Wamsley," also an Indian. Lydia received a good education while residing with a family named Moore at Petersham, Massachusetts, but she spent her later days at "Betty's Neck,' where she became the chief amanuensis for her people.

"Wamsley" and Lydia had five children, two sons and three daughters. A daughter Phoebe married, for her first husband, Silas Rosten, an Indian soldier of the patriot army of the Revolution. She married (second) Brister Gould. Of the seven children by the second marriage (six daughters and one son), a daughter, Zerviah, married Thomas C. Mitchell, October 17, 1824. He died at Fall River, March 27, 1859. She received her education in Abington and Boston schools, and before her marriage she taught school. Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell were the parents of eleven children, of whom Zerviah (Mitchell) Robinson was one. This being one of the most unique genealogies in New England, and pertinent to the subject itself, it is offered as a vital part of this chapter.

The endeavor of this retrospect has been to present an impartial estimate of conditions that prevailed in these county limits at a time when one race of people must give way to another. There is a customary tendency to gloss over the faulty methods of the purchasers from overseas; there is another and a persistent poetic tendency to endow the Indians that were found here with an overplus of the mysticism of the "Children of the woods." 'The truth is that neither tribe of men ever quite understood one another. In a word, a period of unusual migration was on from the East. The West was uninformed and unprepared. The inevitable conflict soon ensued, and the new race won.