OF NEW ENGLAND INDIANS. 



habits of the Indians, the proximity to each other of the village sites ^ even of the differ- 

 ent tribes, and then consider how frail was the tie that bound the savage to his Sachem,^ 

 it will at once be seen that such a state of aifairs must have existed as would make it un- 

 safe to say of any particular cranium that it belonged to a member of this or that tribe. 



Table II. Ckakia of New England Indians. Females. 



Of course the presumption is in favor of some member of the tribe that formerly inhabited 

 the locality where it was found, and yet for reasons given above, this conclusion might be 

 far from correct. In view then of the impossibility of discriminating between the skulls 



^ Mr. Gallatin estimates the Indian population within the 

 present houndaries of the states of New Hampshire, Massa- 

 chusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut " to have been from 

 thirty to forty thousand souls, before the epidemic disease 

 which preceded the landing' of the Pilgrims." He thinks 

 that this population, " principally along the seacoast between 

 the old Plymouth Colony and the Hudson Elver, was much 

 greater in proportion to the extent of territory, than was 

 found any where else on the shores of the Atlantic, or, with 

 the exception perhaps of the Hurons, in the interior parts of 

 the United States"; and he ascribes "this greater accumu- 



lated population to the greater and more uniform supply of 

 food afforded by fisheries than by hunting", and to the fact 

 " that the Indians along the seacoast had been driven away 

 from the interior and compelled to concentrate themselves 

 in order to be able to resist the attacks of the more warlike 

 Indians of the Five Nations." Archaeologia Americana, 

 Vol. II, p. 37. 



2 "These Sachems have not their men in such subjection, 

 but that very frequently their men will leave them upon dis- 

 taste or harsh dealing and go and live under other Sa- 

 chems." Gookin, I. c, p. 154. 



