WAMPANOAG INDIANS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 903 



Was learned from Mrs. Crawford that such a breast-plate had been found, 

 but that it bad disappeared, she knew not where. She remembered few 

 particulars in regard to the position of the skeleton and any coverings 

 that might have been on it, but remembered well holes near the edges 

 of the breast-plate that had probably once been occupied by rivets or 

 strap buckles to fasten it to the body. She felt sure it was an Indian. 

 because all around the house on the sides of the little hill upon which 

 the house was built there was an abundance of stone drippings and 

 arrow-heads, and once a queer Indian pipe-bowl had been found. On 

 the rear side of the little hill a good number of quartz and porphyry 

 chips were then picked up, and at the house next door a fine leaf-shaped 

 implement, which had been picked up on this hill, was exchanged for 

 an old jack-knife. The first white explorers that visited New England 

 found considerable copper in the possession of the natives which was 

 used chiefly in the form of ornaments, but sometimes to head their ar- 

 rows. Very soon, even before Gosnold or the Pilgrims arrived, the In- 

 dians had in some way obtained brass of the traders and fishermen who 

 visited their shores. 



In " Mourt's Relation or Journal of a Plantation settled at Plymouth 

 in New England" we hear of arrows curiously " headed with brasse, 

 some with Hart's borne and others with Eagle's claws." Anotherwriter, 

 sending home to England an account of the settlement at New Ply- 

 mouth, says of the Indians: "For their weapons they have bowes and 

 arrowes, some of them headed with bone, and some with brasse : I have 

 sent you some of them for an example." 



The following account of some copper articles in the possession of the 

 Indians is taken from John Brereton's " Brief and True Relation of the 

 Discovery of the North Part of Virginia, being a most pleasant fruit- 

 ful and commodius soil." Brereton was with Gosnold when he dis- 

 covered Martha's Vineyard in 1002. Even then they found an European 

 rigged boat, the work of some Frenchmen, in the possession of the In- 

 dians of New England. From these Frenchmen, or other traders and 

 explorers, the articles of " paler colored metal " described by Brereton 

 as in the possession of the Indians that visited them while staying at 

 Cuttyhunk may have come. The Indian probably told Brereton the 

 truth in regard to the copper, which might have been dug up in some 

 places in Connecticut or New Jersey, for afterward in these places the 

 first white settlers sometimes found pieces of native copper, and even 

 mined it, at the junction of the trap and red sandstone. Brereton's 

 account of the metal found in the possession of the Indians is as fol- 

 lows : 



"They have also great store of copper, some very red and some of a 

 paler color, none of them but have chains, ear-rings, or collars of this 

 metal. They head some of their arrows herewith much like our broad 

 arrow-heads, very workmanly made. Their chains are many hollow 

 pieces cemented together, each piece of the bigness of one of our reeds, a 



