THE "QUONAHASSir'' PIONEERS. 97 



Thus Ouona-hassi-t meant a " long-rocky-place," and 

 was the natural descriptive which the natives must have 

 used from the beginning. How far back into the pre- 

 historic centuries the name might be traced depends 

 upon the length of habitation assigned to the Algonquin 

 race ; but it is not impossible that our name is much older 

 than Rome.* 



But John Smith did more than writing our name for 

 the first time in the world's literature ; he shed the first 

 blood that is laid to the charge of white men in this place. 

 For some reason Smith and his men enraged several of 

 our Indians at the Cove. Whether by some insult or 

 rascality which the sailors were not above doing, no one 

 can ever tell ; but Smith remembered the fury of these 

 Indians. "For," he says, "upon a quarrell we had with 

 one of them, hee only with three others, crossed the 

 harbor of Quonahassit to certain rocks whereby wee must 

 passe ; and there let flie their arrowes for our shot, till we 

 were out of danger." In telling the same incident at 

 another place in his book he adds, "yet one of them was 

 slaine, and another shot through his thigh." 



It would satisfy some curiosity to know the exact place 

 of rocks from which the Indians "let flie their arrowes." 

 Hominy Point, f near by the channel which separates it 

 from Bassing Beach, seems the most probable place of am- 

 bush for this first Indian revenge against the white intrud- 

 ers. A clump of granite rocks in the marsh on Hominy 

 Point, near by the channel at the end of Bassing Beach, 

 has been named Smith's Rock by the Committee on Town 

 History, because it is supposed to be the ambush from 

 which the Indians shot at Captain John Smith. 



Smith's remarks about the appearance of the rocky 

 shore bring his observing mind vividly before us after 



* For authorities on Indian names see S.G.Boyd's Indian Loeal Names, and 

 ArcliKologia Americana, Vol. II, p. 2°7ff- 

 t Now the property of Dr. John Bryant. 



