892 PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 



of pure Indians and of the mixed race about 440 persons, 75 of whom 

 live on Chappaquiddiek [not more than one-third pure]; about 25 at 

 Sanchecantacket [not more than one-fifth pure]; about 40 at Christian- 

 town, in the north part of Tisbury, toward the Sound [about one half 

 pure]; about 24 at Nashonohkamuek |about three-quarters pure]; and 

 about 270 at Gay Head [of which about one-quarter are pure]. In this 

 account unmixed negroes are not reckoned. [Information of Captain 

 Jerningham and Benjamin Bassett, esq.] 



Barber states in his Historical Collections that at the time of the 

 settlement by the English of Nantucket, in 1000, there were nearly 

 3,000 Indians on the Island. Upon what authority he makes this 

 statement I cannot discover; but another authority, probably much 

 better than that on which he made the statement, places the number 

 of Indians on the island, in the year 1G59, at about 700. In the year 

 1694 the Indians on Nantucket were about 500 adults. There were five 

 assemblies of praying - Indians, and three churches ; two Congregational, 

 and one of Baptist. [Gardner's Let. in Mather's Magn., book vi, p. 5G.] 



Three hundred and fifty eight Indians were remaining the IGth of the 

 eighth month, 1703, when a fever began among them, and lasted till the 

 16th of the second month, 1764. Of this distemper 222 died. [See 

 Hutch. Hist., vol. i, p. 35.] The Indians on the island are now [1792] 

 reduced to 4 males and 16 females. [MS. of Friend Zaccheus Macy.] 



On Cape Cod, at present [1883], there is not a pure-blooded Indian, so 

 far as I can learn. The notes accompanying the Kev. E. C. Ewer's His- 

 torical Map of Nantucket state that the last Indian on that island died 

 in 1822, and the last man with Indian blood in him, Abram Quary, died 

 in 1855. While near Shimmo, on Nantucket, last summer, this man, 

 Abram Quary, was described to me by a white man who once knew 

 him and evidently regarded him as a curiosity. While walking with 

 my brother through the graveyard at Vineyard Haven, on Martha's 

 Vineyard, in the summer of 1882, studying the inscriptions on the 

 stones, we came suddenly on an old grave digger, busily at work pre- 

 paring a grave. We asked him a few questions about the most common 

 Vineyard names, and also about the Indians on the island. He told us, 

 beside a few other interesting facts, that he knew that the last pure- 

 blooded Indian, a woman, had been buried on the island only a very 

 few years before. In about 260 years, then, from the landing of the 

 Pilgrims at Plymouth, a race of men, then occupying eastern Massa- 

 chusetts, has practically become extinct. 



Alas, for them, their clay is o'er, 

 Their fires are not from shore to shore ; 

 No more for them the wild deer bounds, 

 The plongh is on their hunting-grounds ; 

 The pale man's axe rings through their woods, 

 The pale man's sail skims o'er their floods, 

 Their pleasant springs are dry. 



(Charles Sprayue , 8 Centennial Ode, 1830.) 



