212 History of Hingham. 



These disasters were probably in 1617 or thereabouts. Only a 

 little earlier, in 1614, Smith says : " The sea-coast as you pass 

 shows you all along large corn-fields and great troupes of well 

 proportioned people." Others computed the number of warriors 

 at from eight thousand to twenty-five thousand. They were 

 divided into a number of nations, and these again into tribes. Of 

 the former, some of the principal were the Wampanoags, ruled over 

 by Massasoit, a life-long friend of the English, and whose domin- 

 ion lay between Cape Cod and Narragansett Bay ; the Narragan- 

 setts, who lived in Rhode Island upon the western coast of the bay 

 of that name, and whose chiefs were Canonicus and Miantonomo ; 

 the Pequods, under Sassacus, whose territory lay between the Mys- 

 tic and the Thames, then the Pequod River, in Connecticut ; and 

 the Massachusetts, under Chickatabut, who occupied the territory 

 to the south of Boston and extending as far as Duxbury. In 1633 

 Chickatabut was succeeded by Josiah Wompatuck. In addition to 

 the above there were the Pawtuckets north of the Charles River, 

 and the Chur-Churs and Tarantines in Maine. All played a part 

 more or less important in the history of the New England settle- 

 ments. Hingham, it will have been noted, lay within the land 

 ruled, until just about the time the first settlements were made 

 here, by Chickatabut ; and it was his son and successor, Wompa- 

 tuck, together with Squmuck and Ahahden, who joined in 1668 

 in conveying to the English the territory now comprised in the 

 towns of Hingham and Cohasset. For many years the intercourse 

 between our forefathers and their red neighbors seems to have 

 been peaceable and agreeable. 



The earliest known settlement of Hingham was made sometime 

 in the year 1633, and the first houses were probably located upon 

 what is now North Street, and near the bay which the erection of 

 tide gates has converted into the Mill Pond. This little arm of 

 the sea although fordable at low tide was still of sufficient depth to 

 float craft of a size considered respectable in those days ; and many 

 a fishing smack has ridden out in safety the gales of winter 

 under the lee of the protecting hills which surrounded it, and 

 upon whose sunny southern slopes were perhaps the first cleared 

 lands in the town. 



Up it, too, sailed one day in the summer or early autumn of 

 1635, the Rev. Peter Hobart and his company ; they landed, as 

 we are told, on the northerly shore about opposite to where Ship 

 and North streets intersect, and here in the open air, the first 

 public religious services were held. Not far from this spot, and 

 but a few rods in front of where Derby Academy now stands, and 

 upon a part of the hill long since removed, was erected the first 

 meeting-house. This was a plain square building, low and small 

 as compared with modern churches, but constructed of hewn logs 

 and undoubtedly very substantial. It was surmounted by a 

 belfry containing a bell, and around was a palisade for defence 

 against the Indians. 



