164 ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



ship and partition of these valuable prizes soon made it necessary to enact laws for the pre- 

 vention of such disputes. The Indians, who seem to have been well treated by the Nantucket 

 colonists, cooperated with them in their efforts to discover and utilize 'drift' whales. The 

 records have it that in 1668, the English of Nantucket made "a bargaine with ye Indians 

 concerning all whales" that should drift to the shores of the island. Subsequently the shores 

 were divided into sections, over which Indian sachems were appointed to oversee the cutting 

 up of stranded whales and to divide the shares. That this method did not always give satis- 

 faction to the rival claimants appears from the record of appeals to the island Courts. So we 

 find in one case, "the Court do order that the Rack or drift Wliale in the bounds of the bech 

 upon the playnes shall be divided into eight shares," and that "no Rack Whale that com ashore 

 in any sachems bounds shall be cut up until all the masters of the shares that belong to that 

 Wliale do com together" implying that even the sachems were not beyond temptation. Some- 

 times the Court went into particulars,^ as when it ordered. ' ' that Washaman is to have the 

 head of the drift Whale for his share and Desper is to have halfe along with him." Again, 

 a jury of six men tried a complaint of the Indian "Massaquat against Eleaser Foulger for 

 steahng his Whale." The defendant confessed that he "did dispose of the Wliale in con- 

 troversie," and the Court sentenced him "to pay for the Whale the summe of four pounds 

 in goods at the usual price of trading." No doubt the Court in its decisions between Indians 

 and Englishmen, may have been somewhat over lenient towards the latter, but one is hardly 

 prepared to find that a Nantucket Indian, for stealing eighteen slabs of whalebone, was con- 

 demned to serve Thomas Macy for seven years ! - 



At about 1672 Nantucket undertook its first whaling enterprise. According to Macy, 

 the local tradition had it that a Right Whale of the sort called 'scrag' (i. e. runt), came into 

 the harbor and continued there three days. This proved too much for the hunting instinct of 

 the settlers, who wrought a harpoon and with it succeeded in killing the whale. Whales appear 

 to have then been common at certain seasons, especially ofT the seaward side of the island. 

 The Nantucketers very wisely decided to call to their aid one James Lopar of Long Island, 

 who was granted certain privileges in return for his undertaking to manage a whaling indas- 

 try. The original agreement is given verbatim by Macy ' as follows: 



"5th 4th mo. 1672 James Lopar doth Ingage to carry on a design of Wliale Citching on 

 the Island of Nantucket, that is the said James Ingage to be a third in all respeekes, and som 

 of the Town Ingage Also to Carrey on the other two thirds with him in like manner, the Town 

 doth also Consent, that first one Company shal begin and afterward the rest of the freeholders 

 or any of them, have liberty to set up an other Company Provided that they make a tender 



» Bliss, W. R. Quaint Nantucket, 1896, pp. 11, 12. 



' Ibid., p. 70. 



' Macy, O. History of Nantucket, 1835, p. 28. 



