from those three sources, with the addition of some words supplied by the mutilated remnant of a comparative vocabulary compiled by Mr. Jefferson, in the library of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. The vocabulary of the Massachusetts Indians is taken from Eliot's Grammar, (including the words extracted by M. Duponceau from Elliot's translation of the Bible,) and from Josiah Cotton's valuable vocabulary. A specimen from Wood's "Prospect of New England" has been added. The words not found in Roger Williams's Key of the Narraganset Language, have been supplied from a recent vocabulary, taken by General Treat, and communicated by the late Enoch Lincoln. There is no doubt respecting the great similarity of those three dialects; and that the Indians from Saco River to the Hudson, spoke, though with many varieties, what may be considered as the same language, and one of the most extensively spoken amongst those of the AlgonkinLenape Family. There may have been some exaggeration in the accounts of the Indian population of New England. In proportion as they are separated from us by time or distance, the Indians are uniformly represented as more numerous than they appear when better known. Gookin, who wrote in 1674, states that the Pequods were said to have been able in former times to raise four thousand warriors, reduced in his time to three hundred men. These had indeed been conquered and partly destroyed or dispersed in the war of 1637. But, according to the accounts of that war, the number of their warriors could not at that time have amounted to one thousand.* The Narragansets, who were reckoned in former times, as ancient Indians said, to amount to five thousand warriors, did not in his time amount to one thousand. As the only wars in which they had been engaged before the year 1674, from the first European settlement in New England, were the usual ones with other Indians, such a great diminution within that period appears highly improbable. With respect to the other three great nations, to wit, the Wampanoags, the Massachusetts, and the Pawtuckets, Gookin estimates their former number to have been in the aggregate nine thousand warriors. He states the population of the two last in his own time, at five hundred and fifty men, besides women * Seven hundred, on the arrival of the British. 1 Mass. Hist. Coll. Vol. IX. pp. 75-99. Holmes's Memoir, and children. This great diminution, he and all the other ancient writers ascribed to a most fatal epidemical sickness, which, a few years before the first arrival of the English, had made dreadful ravages amongst those two nations and the Wampanoags. But, after making every reasonable allowance for exaggerations derived from Indian reports, there can be no doubt, from the concurrent accounts of contemporary writers, that the Indian population, principally along the seacoast between the Old Plymouth Colony and the Hudson River, was much greater in proportion to the extent of territory than was found anywhere else on the shores of the Atlantic, or, with the exception perhaps of the Hurons, in the interior parts of the United States. This opinion is corroborated by the enumerations subsequent to Philip's War, after the greater part of the hostile Indians had removed to Canada or its vicinity. In an account laid before the Assembly of Connecticut in 1680, the warriors of the several tribes in the State are reckoned at five hundred.* In 1698, the converted Indians in Massachusetts were computed to amount to nearly three thousand souls. In 1774, by an actual census there were still thirteen hundred and sixty-three Indians in Connecticut, and fourteen hundred and eighty-two in Rhode Island. Those several numbers greatly exceed those found elsewhere, under similar circumstances, so long after the date of the first European settlements. I think that the Indian population, within the present boundaries of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, must have been from thirty to forty thousand souls, before the epidemic disease which preceded the landing of the Pilgrims. For this greater accumulated population, two causes may be assigned. A greater and more uniform supply of food is afforded by fisheries than by hunting; and we find accordingly, that the Narragansets of Rhode Island were, in proportion to their territory, the most populous tribe of New England. It appears also probable, 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. Even near the seashore, from the Piscataqua to the vicinity of the Hudson, *Holmes's Report. Ibid. Vol. X. pp. 117-119. 1 Mass. Hist. Coll. Vol. X. p. 129. the New England Indians were perpetually harassed by the attacks of the Maquas. They were, Gookin says, in time of war, so great a terror to all the Indians before nained, that the appearance of four or five Maquas in the woods would frighten them from their habitations and induce many of them to get together in forts. Wood and other contemporary writers confirm this account; and the Mohawks were wont, in Connecticut, to pursue the native Indians and kill them even in the houses of the English settlers.* We find accordingly the population to have been chiefly concentrated along the seashore and the banks of the Connecticut River below its falls. That of the Nipmuck and generally of the inland country, north of the State of Connecticut, was much less in proportion to the territory; and there do not appear to have been any tribes of any consequence in the northern parts of New Hampshire, or in the State of Vermont. The Indians east of the Connecticut River never were, however, actually subjugated by the Five Nations. In the year 1669, the Indians of Massachusetts carried on even offensive operations against the Maquas, marched with about six hundred men into the Mohawk country, and attacked one of their forts. They were repulsed with considerable loss; but, in 1671, peace was made between them, through the interference of the English and Dutch at Albany; and the subsequent alliance between the Five Nations and the British, after they had become permanently possessed of New York, appears to have preserved the New England Indians from further attacks. The first emigrants to New England were kindly received by the Indians; and their progress was facilitated by the calamitous disease which had recently swept off great numbers of the natives, in the quarter where the first settlements were made. The peace was disturbed by the colonization of Connecticut River. The native chiefs had been driven away by Sassacus, Sachem of the Pequods. From them the Massachusetts emigrants purchased the lands, and commenced the settlement in the year 1635. Sassacus immediately committed hostilities. The Pequod war, as it is called, terminated (1637) in the total subjugation of the Pequods, and was followed by forty years of comparative peace. The principal event during that period was a war between Uncas, Sachem of the Mohe Trumbull, passim. gans and of the conquered Pequods, who appears to have been a constant though subordinate ally of the British, and Miantonimo, Sachem of the Narragansets, who had indeed assisted them against the Pequods, but seems to have afterwards entertained hostile designs against them. He brought nine hundred warriors into the field against Uncas, who could oppose him with only five hundred. Miantonimo was nevertheless defeated, made prisoner and delivered by Uncas to the English. After due deliberation, the Commissioners of the United Colonies of New England determined, that he might be justly, and ought to be, put to death, but that this should be done out of the English jurisdiction, and without any act of cruelty. He was accordingly delivered again to Uncas and killed. The act at this day appears unjustifiable. The English had not taken an active part in the contest. They might have refused to receive him from Uncas. But, this having been done, he was under their protection, and, however dangerous to them, ought to have been either released altogether, or kept a prisoner. The Narragansets from that time kept the colonies in a state of perpetual uneasiness. Yet the war which broke out in 1675, commonly called King Philip's war, can hardly be ascribed to this or to any other particular circumstance, and appears to have been the unavoidable result of the relative situation in which the Indians and the whites were placed. Collisions had during the preceding period often occurred; but no actual hostilities of any importance had taken place; and Massachusetts particularly, though exposed to obloquy on that account, always interposed to prevent a war. If the Indians were not always kindly, at least it cannot be said that they were in general unjustly, treated. With the exception of the conquered Pequods, no lands were ever forcibly taken from them. They were all gradually purchased from those Sachems respectively in whose possession they were. But there, as everywhere else, the Indians, after a certain length of time, found that, in selling their lands they had lost their usual means of subsistence, that they were daily diminishing, that the gradual progress of the whites was irresistible; and, as a last effort, though too late, they attempted to get rid of the intruders. The history of the Indians in the other British colonies is everywhere substantially the same. The massacre of the whites in Virginia, in the years 1622 and 1644, the Tuscarora war of North Carolina in 1712, that with the Yemassees of South Carolina in 1715, were natural results flowing from the same cause. And in the year 1755, after a peace of seventy years, notwithstanding all the efforts made to avert it, the storm burst even in Pennsylvania. Metacom, or King Philip, as he is generally called, was Sachem of the Wampanoags, and son of Massassoit, the first and faithful friend of the first settlers of the New Plymouth Colony. His most powerful and active ally was Conanchet, son of Miantonimo, and principal Sachem of the Narragansets. A portion of the Indians of that nation, under another chief, named Ninigret, the Mohegans and the Pequods, fought on the English side. The other tribes of Connecticut, with the exception of some in the northern parts of the colony, appear to have remained neutral. The converted Indians of Massachusetts were friendly. All the other New England Indians, assisted by the Abenaki tribes, joined in the war. Its events are well known, and that, after a most bloody contest of two years, during which the two colonies of Massachusetts and Plymouth experienced great losses, it terminated in the complete destruction or dispersion of the hostile Indians. Philip, after the most desperate efforts, was killed in the field of battle. Canonchet shared the fate of his father, having been, like him, taken prisoner in an engagement, and afterwards shot. A small number only of the Indians who had taken arms, accepted terms of submission. The greater part of the survivors joined the eastern tribes or those of Canada. Some took refuge amongst the Mohicans of Hudson River. Amongst those, who did not at that time join the Indians in the French interest, were those afterwards known by the name of Shotacooks, from the place of their new residence on the Hudson, some distance above Albany. They, however, at a subsequent epoch, became hostile, and removed to Canada at the commencement of the seven years' war. From the termination of Philip's war, till the conquest of Canada, the eastern and northern frontiers of New England continued exposed to the predatory and desolating attacks of the Eastern and Canada Indians. But they had no longer any internal enemies to combat. It appears, from the statements already made, that from eight to ten thousand must, about the year 1680, have remained within the settled parts of those colonies. They have ever since been perfectly peaceable, have had lands reserved for them, and have been treated kindly and protected by the Colonial and State Governments. They are said to amount now to only a few hundred in all the four States. The language, |