880 PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



ons and implements of stone plowed under or picked up and removed. 

 On Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard it was easier to get information 

 on our subject, probably partly -from the fact that Indian names have 

 been more easily preserved on islands, where may still be found many 

 descendants of the first white settlers, and partly, in the case of Nan- 

 tucket, through the publication by the Old Colony Line of a historical 

 map of that island, surveyed and drawn a few years ago by the Rev. 

 E. C. Ewer, D. D. To give the reader a general idea of the tribes in- 

 habiting New England, and the relative strength and country possessed 

 by the tribe to which the Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket 

 Indians belonged, a few quotations will be made from the writings of 

 Mr. Daniel Gookin, one of the magistrates of Massachusetts colony, 

 and for many years, commencing with 1056, "betrusted and employed 

 for the civil government and conduct of the Indians in Massachusetts 

 colony by order of the general court there." 



"OF THE PRINCIPAL INDIANS THAT INHABIT NEW ENGLAND. 



" 1. The principal nations of the Indians that did or do inhabit within 

 the confines of New England, are five: 1, Pequots; 2, Narragansitts ; 

 3, Pawkunuawkuts ; 4, Massachusetts, and 5, Pawtucketts. 



k '2. The Pequots or Pequods were a people seated in the most south- 

 erly bounds of New England, whose country the English of Connecticut 

 jurisdiction doth now, for the most part, possess. This nation were a 

 very warlike and potent people about forty years since ; at which time 

 they were in their meridian. Their chief sachem held dominion over 

 divers petty sagamores, as over part of Long Island, over the Mohe- 

 gans, and over the sagamores of Quinapeake, yea, over all the people 

 that dwelt upon Connecticut River, and over some of the most southerly 

 inhabitants of the Nipmuck country, about Quinabaag. The principal 

 sachem lived at or about Pequot, now called New London, These Pe- 

 quots, as old Indians relate, could in former times raise four thousand 

 men fit for war, and held hostility with their neighbors that lived bor- 

 dering upon them to the east and north, called the Narragansitts, or 

 Nechegansitts 5 but now they are few, not above tbreo hundred men, 

 being made subject unto the English, who conquered and destroyed 

 most of them upon their insolent deportment and just provocation, 

 anno 1G38, of which we shall have occasion to speak more particularly 

 in the sequel of our history. 



" 3. The Narragansitts were a great people heretofore, and the terri- 

 tory of their sachem extended about thirty or forty miles from Sekunk 

 River and Narragansitt Bay, including Rhode Island and other islands 

 in that bay, being their east and north bounds or border, and so run- 

 ning westerly and southerly unto a place called Wekapage, four or five 

 miles to the eastward of Pawcutuk River, which was reckoned for their 

 south and west border, and the easternmost limits of the Pequots. This 

 sachem held dominion over divers petty governors, as part of Long 



