relieve it from what would seem, under such disabilities, the misery of existence, or it would die prematurely from neglect, or from mere want of that skilful assiduity which parental affection in civilized society studies peculiarly to bestow upon peculiarly helpless offspring. Their demeanor, so grave when exposed to notice, was apt to be taken for an indication of self-respect, but was equally suscep tible of being interpreted as betokening a mere stolid vacuity of emotion and thought.

Their
dress.

- food,

Supplies for the essential wants of physical life — shelter, and clothing -were of the rudest kind. Undressed skins of deer or of other wild animals. furnished the winter's attire; in summer, the men wore about the middle only a piece of deer-skin, from which the fur had been removed by friction. Moccasons reaching above the ankle, of thin dressed deer-skin or of the moose's hide according to the season, afforded some protection and support to the foot.

The wigwam, or Indian house, of a circular or oval shape, was made of bark or mats laid over a framework of branches of trees stuck in the

Their

houses.

ground in such a manner as to converge at the top, where was a central aperture for the escape of smoke from the fire beneath. The better sort had also a lining of mats. For entrance and egress two low openings were left on opposite sides, one or the other of which was closed with bark or mats, according to the direction of the wind.

Their food.

For food the natives had fish and game; nuts, roots, and berries, (and, in the last resort, acorns,) which grew wild; and a few cultivated vegetables. In the winter, they shot, or snared, or caught in pitfalls, the moose, the bear, and the deer; in the summer, still less trouble procured for them a variety of birds; in both seasons, at favorable times, the sea and the rivers afforded some supplies.

Having no salt, they could not preserve

meat except by fumigation, or, for a short time, by bury ing in the snow. They had not the potato, but in the ground-nut, which they dug in the woods, nature had, to a limited extent, furnished a sort of substitute.1

Tobacco they cultivated for luxury, using it only in the

2

way of smoking. For food, they raised maize, Their horor Indian corn, the squash, the pumpkin," the ticulture. bean now called Seiva-bean, and a species of sun-flower, whose esculent tuberous root resembled the artichoke in taste. It has been asserted, but without probability, that they had cucumbers and watermelons. One tool sufficed for their wretched husbandry; a hoe, made of a clamshell, or a moose's shoulder-blade, fastened into a wooden handle. Their manure was fish, covered over in the hill along with the seed. When the corn was sufficiently advanced, earth was heaped about it to the height of some inches, for support as well as to extirpate weeds, while the bean-vines were held up by the corn-stalk around which they twined.

Fish were taken with lines or nets, the cordage of which was made of twisted fibres of the dogbane, Their or of sinews of the deer. Hooks were fashioned fishing. of sharpened bones of fishes and birds.

1 What commonly goes by this name at the present time (otherwise called pea-nut) is a kind of bean, not a native of New England. The ground-nut is a tuber, varying in size from that of a musket-ball to that of a hen's egg, and when boiled or roasted is mealy and not unpalatable.

2 Maize is not indigenous in New England, but somehow worked its way thither from its unascertained native country nearer the sun. According to Hutchinson (I. 420), there was a tradition that a bird brought it. Roger Williams (Key into the Language of America, Chap. XV.) reports the Indians as saying that "the crow brought them at first an Indian grain of corn in one ear, and an Indian or French bean

in another, from the great god Kautontowit's field in the southwest, from whence they held came all their corn and beans."

3 De Candolle (Géographie Botanique) denies both these vegetables to the New World. But the different testimony of Champlain as to Maine in 1604 (Voyage de la Nouvelle France, &c., pp. 73, 80, 84) appears decisive.

4 Higginson (New England's Plantation, in Mass. Hist. Coll., I. 118) gives them the former; Josselyn, the latter. "The watermelon is proper to the country." (Account of Two Voyages, 74, comp. 130.) L'Escarbot (II. 836) says that in the time of Cartier they were cultivated in Canada, not that they were indigenous.

Flesh and fish were cooked by roasting before a fire on the point of a stake, broiling on hot coals or Their stones, or boiling in vessels of stone, earth, or cookery. wood. Water was made to boil, either by hanging the vessel over a fire, or by the immersion in it of heated stones. The Indians had not the art of making bread. They boiled their corn either alone into hominy, or else mixed with beans, in which case the compound was called succotash ; or they ate the parched kernels whole; or with a stone pestle and a wooden mortar they broke them up into meal, which, moistened with water into a paste, they called nookhik.' With a little of this preparation carried in a bag at the girdle, and a similar frugal outfit of tobacco, they were provisioned for a journey. Corn was laid up for winter supply in holes dug in the earth, and lined on the sides, bottom, and top with bark. The Indian did not feed at regular hours, but whenever hunger prompted, or the state of his supplies allowed. He knew no drink but water, except when he could flavor it with the sweet juice for which in spring he tapped the rock-maple tree. After the cordage which has been mentioned, the best specimens of Indian skill in manufacture were factures. baskets, mats, and boats. The last were of two kinds. One, made of birch-bark fastened over a light wooden frame, with seams skilfully and not untastefully secured, was not only convenient from its lightness when taken out of the water to be launched in another stream, but equally safe and easy to manage in that element, as long as it was kept clear of the collisions for which its frail structure was unfit. The other sort was a log, shaped and hollowed by the application first of fire, and then of rude stone tools acting upon the charred surface. A single Indian, it was said, probably with some exaggeration, would finish a boat of this kind, twenty or thirty feet long, in three weeks from his choice of the

Their manu

1 Nookhik, meal, (Eliot's Indian Bible,) was corrupted by the English into nocake.

tree to the end of the alternate burnings and scrapings by which it was first felled and then wrought into form.

ments, and

His axe, hatchet, chisel, and gouge were of hard stone, brought to a sort of edge by friction upon an- Their tools, other stone. The helve of the axe or hatchet arms, ornawas attached either by a cord drawn tight around furniture. a groove in the stone, or by being cleft while still unsevered from the tree, and left to grow till it closed fast round the inserted tool. Bows were strung with the sinews and twisted entrails of the moose and the deer. Arrows were tipped with bone, with claws of the larger species of birds, or with those artificially shaped triangular pieces of flint, which are now often found in the fields. Spears were of similar contrivance. Besides the stone hatchet as a weapon of offence, was the tomahawk, which was merely a wooden club, two feet or more in length, terminating in a heavy knob. Mats served as hangings for houses, and, with or without skins according to the season, as couches for repose, for which latter use they were laid upon wooden supports a foot or two from the ground. Vessels of basket-work, of baked earth, or of hollowed wood or stone, completed the scanty inventory of household furniture. Personal ornaments consisted of greasy paint laid in streaks upon the skin; of mantles and head-gear made of feathers; of ear-rings, nose-rings, bracelets, and necklaces of bone, shells, or shining stones; and of pieces of native copper, sometimes in plates, sometimes strung together so as to make a kind of fringe. The pipe, with its bowl of soft stone set upon a stem of hard wood two feet long, and often elaborately carved and ornamented, was a personal object of special consideration. The precious metals were unknown, as well as the preparation of the ores of those employed in the useful arts.

The Indian of this region had taught no animal to re

Their want of domestic animals.

lieve his labor by its agility, cunning, or strength. Not only had he no working cattle; he had no flock nor herd, nor any poultry. The only animal he had attached to himself was a sort of native dog, resembling a cross between the fox and the wolf. It was probably only the lazy sharer of his cabin and playmate of his children, and not trained to be useful either as a sentinel or in the chase.3

Their do

tions.

Generally he had only one wife, though no rule or fixed custom forbade polygamy. If, after trial, mestic rela- the connection proved unsatisfactory, it might be dissolved at the will of either party; nor was there anything disreputable in a frequent repetition of this proceeding. But so long as she shared his cabin, the wife was the husband's drudge and slave. She covered and lined the wigwam, and carried away its materials when it was to be set up in another spot. She bore home the game he had taken; plaited the mats and baskets; planted, tended, and harvested the corn and vegetables; and cooked the food. In the frequent migrations, she conveyed, fastened to a board on her back, the child, which, in consequence of her hardy habits, or of a kind dispensation of nature, she had borne, perhaps within a week, with little pain. Her toils were relieved by no sympathy, and requited with no tenderness; the leavings of the feast,

wear.

1 Of course he had no fleeces to And of course he did not vary his diet with either milk or eggs, except the eggs of wild-fowl. It must have been of these that Waymouth saw the shells. (True Relation, in Mass. Hist. Coll., XXVIII. 133.)

2 So it is described by Josselyn, who was a naturalist. (Account of Two Voyages, &c., 94.)

3 Josselyn says (Ibid.) that the dogs were brought up to hunt, and he somewhere repeats the statement. But I have met with nothing of the kind else

where, and I think he was in error. When he was first here, in 1638, he had little time for observation, and before his second visit, in 1663, the settlers had largely introduced their own arts and customs. Nothing on the subject can be inferred from the alarm said to have been given by a dog at the attack on the Pequod fort. And such was the Indian's mode of warfare, that he would be more fearful of having his own approaches betrayed by his brute companions, than desirous to be secured by their vigilance against surprise.