CONTRIBUTIONS 



TO THE 



HISTORY OF DERRYFIELD, 



BY WILLIAM E. MOORE. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 



The historian who attempts to draw aside the veil which has 

 for centuries hidden the annals of an obscure people, scant in 

 numbers, low in civilization, destitute even of a written tongue, 

 has before him no easy task, and one rendered still more difficult 

 from the fact that in his first contact with civilization the Indian 

 was surrounded with white men who were themselves illiterate. 

 Only after the passing of the tribe was the effort made to put 

 into some sort of order the scattered records and traditions con- 

 cerning them, and this was so scantily done that a single para- 

 graph might set forth the story, as who should say : There 

 were Indians ; there are no Indians. 



THE NIPMUCKS. 



There appears to be a general agreement that one or more 

 tribes of Indians inhabited a belt of inland country in Massa- 

 chusetts and southern New Hampshire, more or less removed 

 from the sea, and that these were known as Nipmucks, signify- 

 ing by a license of free translation, freshwater Indians. They 

 seem to have been neither numerous nor warlike and probably 



