8o HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



they make a kind of couch or mattresses, firm and strong, raised 

 about a foot high from the earth ; first covered with boards that 

 they split out of trees ; and upon the boards they spread mats 

 generally, and sometimes bear skins and deer skins.* 



For several reasons as deep as nature the Indians at 

 Cohasset probably had the meaner sort of houses that 

 Gookin speaks of. The rocks were too plentiful in this 

 region to support the best vegetation for animal life or to 

 raise the best corn for human life. 



Hunting was probably never so good upon this corner 

 of land, because it lies outside of any highway which 

 animals like deer and moose and bear may have taken. 



The Indian life was consequently much thinner here 

 than it was in southern Massachusetts or about Boston 

 Bay. The Conohasset tribe of Indians were unimportant, 

 living upon the boundary between the Massachusetts 

 tribes and those to the south under Massasoit. 



The approach by sea was dangerous, and by land a side 

 track, while not much was to be had here besides the 

 scenery and the sea. The domestic habits of the Cono- 

 hasset Indians were probably the same as other tribes, and 

 Gookin's description is as authentic and as quaint as 

 any : — 



Their food is generally boiled maize, or Indian corn, mixed 

 with kidney-beans, or sometimes without. Also they frequently 

 boil in this pottage fish and flesh of all sorts, either new taken or 

 dried, as shads, eels, alewives or a kind of herring, or any other 

 sort of fish. But they dry mostly those sorts before mentioned. 

 These they cut in pieces, bones and all, and boil them in the 

 aforesaid pottage. I have wondered many, times that they were 

 not in danger of being choaked with fish bones ; but they are so 

 dexterous to separate the bones from the fish in the eating 

 thereof, that they are in no hazard. Also they boil in this fur- 

 menty all sorts of flesh, they take in hunting : as venison, beaver, 

 bear's flesh, moose, otter's, rackoons, or any kind that they take 



*See Mass. Hist. Col., Vol. I, p. 14S. 



