886 PAPER8 RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



and distress produced among the Indians by many diseases not usually 

 fatal to whites. On the sixteenth page of Barber's Historical Collec- 

 tions is given a very interesting account, first published in "Good News 

 from New England," of a visit made by Edward Winslow to Massasoit, 

 whom the Plymouth colonists had heard was lying very ill at Matta- 

 puyst. The sachem's condition is graphically described, and the primi- 

 tive means employed by the Indians to cure him. Cue passage of the 

 description is as follows: "When we came thither (Puckanokick) we 

 found the house so full of men, as we could scarcely get in, though they 

 used their best diligence to make way for us. There were they in the 

 midst of their charms for him making such a hellish noise as it distem- 

 pered us that were well, and therefore unlike to ease him that was sick, 

 etc." The simple but sensible methods used by Mr. Winslow for his 

 recovery, and their success, show what might often have been accom- 

 plished for others in a similar condition. According to early writers, 

 the most general and fatal diseases among these Indians before the 

 whites came were yellow fever, and a hectic fever ending in quick con- 

 sumption. The traditional method for "laying" the yellow fever upon 

 Martha's Vineyard would be most likely to spread the disease. Small- 

 pox and even measles were very fatal in the Indian towns after the com- 

 ing of the whites, if not before. Intemperance soon increased the nat- 

 ural improvidence of the Indians, undermined their constitutions, and 

 provoked quarrels among them which often ended in a fatal drunken 

 fray. The following description of a portion of the Wampanoag tribe 

 living at Middleborough, preserved in one of the earlier volumes of the 

 Massachusetts Historical Society's collections, gives a fair description 

 of their methods of living, and of the prevalence of hectic complaints 

 among all this tribe of Indians: 



"Before the town (Middleborough) was incorporated this place went 

 by the name of Namaskett, which was an ancient Indian name, and was 

 formerly plentifully inhabited by the Indian natives, who were gov- 

 erned by the noted sachem Tispacan. But when the town was incor- 

 porated and began to be settled by the English, the natives began to 

 scatter and decrease ; but there is now a settlement of them which de- 

 scended from the ancients of Namaskett, which inhabit a part of said 

 town known by the name of Betty's Neck (which place took its name 

 from an ancient Indian woman by the name of Betty Sesemore, Avho 

 owned that neck), where there are now eight Indian houses and eight 

 families. (About the year 1794.) The general number of Indians, old 

 and young, that live there is between thirty and forty. Their houses 

 are poor; they own some land ; they live imprudent ; are very fond of 

 liquor. They till their land, which produces good crops of corn and 

 rye, which they trade off for spirituous liquors with any retailer that is 

 so destitute of principles as to trade with them, so that by the middle 

 of the winter their corn and grain is generally gone. Thou, by their 

 baskets and brooms (which they make) they purchase it to supply 



