AN UNSETTLED LAND

New England was a haunted land before the first European settlers arrived in the early 1600s. Native American trading relations with visitors from the northernmost reaches of the continent along the Charles and Taunton Rivers, as well as Mount Hope Bay, had occurred as far back as the fourteenth century. Trading with the Dutch, French and the English along Narragansett and Massachusetts Bay had occurred for nearly a century before those religious refugees from England rowed ashore. Some early traders had stayed, integrated themselves and even married into the Algonquian tribes that lived along the New England coastlines and inland along the rivers.

By the time of the Pilgrims' arrival in 1620, many tribes were already acquainted with household wares, the pots and pans and utensils brought by European traders, along with tools and even clothing. These goods were exchanged for beaver and, to a lesser extent, other animal pelts, as well as pottery in the form of dishes and bowls and clay pipes of easy manufacture by Narragansett, Massachusetts and Wampanoag craftswomen. In the course of trade, New England's tribes adapted European goods into their own culture for both practical and spiritual purposes.

On a coasting journey in the dead of winter, a band of Pilgrims hoping to trade for provisions from whatever Indians they found walked inland some distance and circled back again, to come upon "a place like a grave, but it was much bigger and longer than any we had yet seen. It was also covered with boards, so we mused what it should be, and resolved to dig it up."

The men, in their slow dismantling of the grave, found "bowls, trays, dishes, and such like trinkets" between the mats placed above the body found inside. Roger Williams would write of the Narragansett ritual of Nickommo, a great feast and dance where "they give I say a great quantity of money, and all sort of their goods ... to one person: and that person that receives this Gift, upon the receiving of it goes out, and hollowes thrice for the health and prosperity of the Party that gave it."

Edward Winslow would write in astonishment of the ceremony he witnessed, where a great fire was lit, and those in the gathering, including visitors from neighboring tribes, would come forward and throw pots, bowls, dishes and silverware into the cauldron. During the early attacks on white settlements in what is now Maine and Vermont during King George's War, almost all of the English goods that filled the great houses the marauding natives burned were left for archaeologists to unearth three hundred and some years later.

What Europeans brought most to the Native Americans on New England's shores were diseases unfathomable to the native healers. Narragansett oral historians speak of a great plague among their people in the late sixteenth century. The first recorded incident of what seventeenth- century historians have called a plague occurred between 1616 and 1619. Elderly survivors described the symptom of yellowed skin and the remaining scars to the Reverend Daniel Gookin. While the cause of the plague has long been debated, there is no doubt about the toll it took on the Native American population. As historian Karen Bragdon would write, "This terrible epidemic reduced populations among the Ninnimissinuok of the northern and central Massachusetts Bay by as much as 90 percent."

Indeed, when the pilgrims came to realize the full measure of the tragedy that had befallen the Wampanoag, they were astonished that there were but sixty men under Massasoit's command.

William Bradford would write of the "sad spectacle" of bones left above ground and unburied. The pilgrims found in their coasting journeys abandoned fields and villages along the Massachusetts shore. Edward Winslow pondered the empty fields and thought of the "thousands of men ... which died in a great plague not long since, and pity it was, and is, to see so many goodly fields, and so well seated, without men to dress and manure the same." Roger Conant would write some years later, as he reached Cape Ann, "Though all the countrey bee as it were a thicke wood for the generall, yet in divers places there is much ground cleared by the Indians ... I am told that about three miles from us a man may stand on a little hilly place and see divers thousands of acres of ground as good as need to be, and not a Tree in the same."

What Native Americans the Pilgrims did meet were remnants of once- thriving communities or transitional Native Americans like Squanto, who vacillated between the remnants of his own tribe on the Weir River and the larger Pokanoket (Wampanoag) tribe.

Conant would write of his native American neighbors in 1628, saying, "Upon the River of Mistick is seated sagamore John, and upon the River Saugus sagamore James ... The elder brother, John, is a handsome young man ... conversant with us, affecting English apparel and houses, and speaking well of our God. His brother James is of a far worse disposition, yet repaireth often to us. Both these brothers command not above thirty to forty men."

By 1630, the sachem Chickataubot, living near what became Quincy, Massachusetts, was said to have only fifty to sixty subjects, and the great empire of Nanepashmet, which extended from Chelsea to Marblehead, was now controlled by his sons, Wonouaham and Montowomsate, who between them "commanded not above thirty or forty men." In 1633–34, smallpox ravaged the tribes along the Rhode Island and Connecticut coastlines, as well as the riverside communities inland.

Samuel Drake would write that illness began that year, among Native Americans in Plymouth: "During the autumn of this year the small pox destroyed great numbers of the Indians ... about Pascataqua River nearly all perish ... About Plymouth too, many are carried off by a malignant distemper; with which about twenty of the pilgrims die also ... In January of 1634 it was reported that the small pox had swept over the Narragansett country, destroying in its course seven hundred of that nation, and that it was extending among the westward of them."

Indeed, some native communities along the lower and middle Connecticut River were wiped out entirely. It was a plague that the sachem Canonicus never forgot. Years later, in rebuking the overtures of John Winthrop, he would complain to Roger Williams that the English had brought the disease to his people and that the Narragansett had mistrusted the English from the beginning.

This mistrust began to grow among neighboring tribes, a fact not lost on Tisquantum, better known as Squanto, who, to frighten Massasoit and his leaders, told them that the English at Plymouth harbored a great plague that they could unleash with a volley of their cannon upon the natives. The suspicion that white settlers were capable of poisoning the native populations did not deter trade, but neither was it ever discounted, and it was ultimately at the heart of events that led to the outbreak of King Philip's War.

BUT DISEASE WAS NOT all that came with the Europeans. The vices of greed and the consumption of alcohol, while certainly not unknown to the Native Americans, reached a new level once settlements sprang up along the coast. As early as 1626, Conant had recorded the incident of a Native American found frozen to death on Cape Ann, "reared up against a tree and his bottle ... at his head." Often, to native leaders' alarm, the two vices were bound together, and the resultant mix of drunkenness and violence in cases presented before colonial courts is succinctly summarized by Samuel Drake and bears reprinting here:

Although from 1623–1675 there was no general War with the Indians in New England, yet there were often and frequent Disturbances ... There were also frequent Quarrels and Murders among the Indians themselves, with which the white People had Nothing to do; though after such Occurrences, they sometimes espoused the Cause of the Party they considered injured, and used their Endeavors to bring the Offender to Punishment. So when any Wrong was done to an Indian by any of the Settlers, Justice was speedily extended to the injured Party. Of course Cases would often arise wherein, from conflicting Evidence, the Ends of Justice were frustrated. This was oftenest the Case when the English interfered with the Indians' private Quarrels, or Quarrels among themselves.

Native Americans scarcely understood the English protocols of law. While they often presented their arguments in an elegant and persuasive manner, they resented the delays and further inquiries by the court.

Drake went on to say, "Hence the Party suffering by it often determined on taking the first Opportunity to be revenged; or as it used to be said, 'to right themselves.' In this way Feuds and Jelousies were perpetuated."

In numerous cases, both native and new Americans took the law into their own hands. There were attacks on white settlers in Massachusetts, as well as fighting brought to Ipswich by hostile Taratine warriors. These were the Abenaki, whose lands stretched into the territory now known as Maine.

Long hated among the Algonquian tribes, the Abenaki were not an agricultural or manufacturing people. Almost all they owned came from plunder, as they raided storehouses along the coast of Massachusetts and randomly attacked villages in the course of their travels.

In the fall of 1631, trader Walter Bagnal was murdered at his trading post on the Saco River. As Bagnal was known to overcharge the natives for goods and had engaged in many an argument in trade, it was believed that had been his undoing.

According to Drake's Old Indian Chronicles, in the winter of 1631–32, Taratine warriors came upon Henry Way's boat in the waters off Dorchester. Way, three friends and his son were all murdered, and the boat sunk with stones to "hide the Evidence of their Barbarity."

In the aftermath of the hunt for these Indians and subsequent hanging of at least some of the perpetrators, soldiers were sent to Ipswich and, from shore the next spring, watched as "twenty canoes full of them" paddled past Ipswich, though "they did not dare to land."

Fighting also broke out between the Narragansett and the Pequot. Canonicus, the Narragansett sachem, enlisted the help of Massachusetts tribes in Neponset and Winnisemmet. Though the skirmishes were largely confined to the swamps and woodlands of Rhode Island and Connecticut, some of the Massachusetts warriors attacked homes in Dorchester in August and were soon "set in the Bilboes at Boston." This method of shackling the perpetrator to a heavy iron bar by the wrists or feet was likely the first English-style punishment encountered by Native Americans. In September, another trader from Dorchester was killed, and the sachem Passaconay reportedly "pursued and captured the Murderer," as well as meted out a punishment that satisfied the authorities. At the same time, courts in Boston came down hard on those convicted of selling gunpowder and shot to the Native Americans. The court even considered the death penalty for this offense and was equally harsh with those settlers who committed acts that might provoke neighboring tribes. For example, one Nicholas Frost was branded and banished from the colony after "stealing from the Indians at Damerill's Cove."

In January 1633, a group of Englishmen seized the former Nahant sachem Poquanam at his home on Richmond's Island. Known as "Black Will" among the white settlers, he had long been suspected in the murder of the trader Bagnel. The whites lynched him and left in pursuit of pirates. There is no record to indicate that these men ever met justice for their crime.

Such was not the case in 1638 for one Arthur Peach and two unfortunate men he enticed into his murderous scheme. Peach was described as "a young desperado, who had been a Soldier in the Pequot War, and done notable Service." It seems that after his time as a soldier, he sought a life of adventure and headed to the Dutch settlement on the Hudson River, where he met Thomas Jackson and Richard Slinnings. He soon enticed the men in the settlement to leave their masters and join with him in traveling the eastern seaboard. Three men joined Peach, Jackson and Slinnings and traveled south through the woods. At some point, they met up with Penowanyanquis, a Narragansett courier who was traveling with a significant amount of wampum. After proposing the deed to his fellow travelers, Peach invited Penowanyanquis to sit and smoke with them, an invitation that was accepted.

When the opportunity came, Peach ran through the Narragansett courier with his sword, and the men robbed him of his wampum, leaving the Indian for dead. Though mortally wounded, Penowanyanquis managed to make it back to his homeland and give details to the Narragansett about the men who had robbed him before he died. Narragansett sachems immediately sent men in pursuit of Peach and the others. They captured Peach, as well as Jackson and Slinnings, who were marched to Rhode Island, where the three were thrown into prison.

With the Narragansett sachems demanding justice over the incident, the authorities of Plymouth County, where the murder had taken place, took hold of the matter, and the three men were executed in Plymouth on September 4, 1638.

Ironically, during the same years that this tension and resultant events were taking place, those logging journals and writing books to be consumed back home in Great Britain were portraying Native Americans in a positive light.

In the chapter of Mourt's Relation entitled "A Journey to Pokanoket: The Habitation of the Great King Massasoit," Edward Winslow recounts the days in June 1621 when a band of the Pilgrims spent several days in the company of the sachem:

He lighted tobacco for us and fell to discoursing of England, and of the King's Majesty, marveling that he would live without a wife. Also he talked of the Frenchmen, bidding us not to suffer them to come to Narraganset, for it was King James his country, and he also was King James his man. Late it grew ... So we desired to go to rest. He laid us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at one end and we at the other.

In his New England's Prospect (1634), William Wood wrote of the tribes that populated southern New England:

The Pequots be a stately, warlike people, of whom I never heard of any misdemeanor, but that they were just and equal in their dealings, not treacherous either to their countrymen or English, requiters of courtesies, affable towards the English. Their next neighbors, The Narragansets, be at this present the most numerous people in those parts, the most rich also, and the most industrious, being the storehouse of all such kind of wild merchandise as is among them.

The Narragansett fished, hunted and trapped beavers, muskrats and otters for the English and traded them for commodities, which they sold to inland tribes at a profit. They also manufactured "great stone pipes, which will hold a quarter ounce of tobacco," as well as bowls and utensils for trade. The tribe is estimated to have numbered about four thousand during this period, but as Wood wrote, "Although these be populous, yet I never heard they were desirous to take in hand any martial enterprise or expose themselves to the uncertain events of war ... they rest secure under the conceit of their popularity and seek rather to grow rich by industry than famous by deeds of chivalry."

Puritan minister and trader Roger Williams came to know the Narragansett better than any European visitor. He would remark, in his A Key into the Language of America (1643), "I have acknowledged amongst them an heart sensible of kindnesses, and have reaped kindnesses against from many, seven yeares after, when I myselfe had forgotten."

Yet while these visitors were writing warmly of their interactions with Native Americans, many settlers arrived with a predestined sense of conquest and a vision of New England as a God-given gift of resources, nearly rid of savages that would impede the steady growth of profits such resources would provide.

In Edward Johnson's Wonder-Working Providence of Sions Savior in New England (1654), the first general history published of the region, the Puritan justification of establishing a "new eden" in the wake of these devastating plagues is articulated for the first time. Writing of the smallpox epidemic of 1619, Johnson says, "As the ancient Indians report, there befell a great mortality among them, the greatest that ever the memory of Father to Sonne took notice of, chiefly desolating those places where the English afterward planted ... by this means Christ ... not only made room for his people to plant; but also tamed the hard and cruell hearts of these barbarous Indians."

Johnson may have known that the diminished numbers of Native Americans may have led their leaders to sign an alliance with Plymouth that led to a relative — if at times uneasy — peace for close to fifty years. The Massachusetts Bay Colony summoned native leaders repeatedly to Boston, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. The Narragansett in Rhode Island kept the colonists at arms length, using Roger Williams as an intermediary with John Winthrop and, later, his son and namesake in Connecticut, but they were always mistrustful of English intentions. Colonial authorities were also mistrustful of the Indians, especially as carefully laid out English-style court systems had failed to corral tensions between settlers and Native Americans.