and to several important works, connected with the history of the country, by Mr Jared Sparks.*

With a view to promote the original objects of the institution, and in the hope of doing something to gratify the prevailing taste for the study of our local history, the society has undertaken the experiment of a course of lectures, to be delivered by its members the ensuing season. The nature of the case excludes any attempt at unity of plan, except that the lectures will have for a common object the history and antiquities of the country. We make the attempt from a sense of duty, as members of a society consecrated by its institution to the preservation and transmission of the memory of the past. We do it in the feeling that the fondness for this kind of knowledge rests in some of the best and deepest of our moral sentiments. There is no man of any cultivation who does not take some interest in what was done by his forefathers; who does not desire to obtain some knowledge of what took place in former times, on the spot where he was born; and to trace the fortunes of the race to which he belongs, and of the races which preceded it, and with which his own is in any way connected. This feeling is not the exclusive growth of civilized life. The aboriginal tribes of our continent, who have no monuments to guide their minds in looking back to the history of the past, to give precision and life to their recollections, manifest a strong attachment to the spot where they and their ancestors have for generations been seated, though it is but an opening in the woods, or a carrying place round the falls of a river. All their rude learning, if it can claim that title, consists of vague traditions of the tribe; and where some progress has been made towards a written record, as in the historical paintings of the Aztecs, similar traditions are almost the only thing attempted to be thus embodied in a sensible form.

This interest in the lives, characters, and exploits of our ancestors forms no small part of the sentiment of patriotism. It is natural, generous, and unselfish. It is not only pardon

* See note at the end.

able, but it is our duty to indulge it. We should defraud the good men of other times of the best part of their reward, and we should thus take away one of the strongest incentives to good conduct, if we did not, on every suitable occasion, take a pride and a pleasure in commemorating them. If we neglect this duty, we war against the strong instinct of our nature, to which I have alluded, and which is the great moral compensation for contemporary prejudice and injustice. Horace has but enunciated a law of human societies, when he tells us that the legendary heroes of Rome and of Greece "Ploravere suis non respondere favorem Speratum meritis."

Ex

But time and a dutiful posterity redress the wrong. tinctus amabitur. There is no jealousy nor envy in death. In fact, nothing but time can fully develop all the value of great deeds, and unfold the strength of great characters. The interest of events which have come to pass in any quarter, in one generation, depends much upon the consequences that may flow from them on the same spot in after times. An illustrious posterity throws its light backward upon small beginnings, and makes them significant and honorable. The sea-beaten rock of 1620 becomes, in two centuries, an altar of patriotic worship.

This attachment and veneration for the past is a very important element in the life and fortunes of a people. The last few years have witnessed a most striking example of its practical influence in the world. We behold even now, in progress, the organization of a civilized and Christian government in Greece. This part of Europe had been, for four centuries, surrendered to the yoke of a semi-barbarous despotism; a political slavery of the most degrading and intolerable character. Within the last ten years that yoke has been broken. The Greeks, by the simple force of this patriotic enthusiasm, encouraged and sustained by the sympathy of the civilized nations of the world, a sympathy resting itself on no other foundation than the recollections of the glorious past, raised up a more successful opposition to the

Ottoman power than the colossal empire of Russia had done for a century; and has succeeded at last in compelling the great powers of Europe, somewhat against their own will, and notwithstanding the most deplorable misconduct and imprudences on the part of the Greeks themselves, to establish a constitutional government in Greece, under a Christian prince.

But it would take me far from the object of this address to extend these remarks into a dissertation on the importance and reasonableness of what may be called the historical sentiment. My only wish in making them is to throw out a passing justification of the zeal with which our local history has been cultivated for the last generation; and to intimate an apology beforehand for what I fear you will think the somewhat insignificant character of some of the topics of the present lecture, the remainder of which will be devoted to some miscellaneous anecdotes of our early history.

The name given to our native state by the founders of the colony- Massachusetts Bay-is worthy a few moments' consideration. The first company of emigrants to New England the founders of Plymouth-landed, it is true, in what we should call Massachusetts Bay; but the name at that time was taken in a narrower, though rather indefinite, application. Captain John Smith, whose romantic adventures form so interesting a chapter in the early history of the country, had passed along the north-eastern coast in 1614, and learned the names given by the Indians to some important tracts of country and conspicuous objects along the shore. But in preparing maps of the coast for the published account of his voyage, as far as New England is concerned, he drew upon his own taste and fancy. Of Indian names I think there are none. Some of the names proposed by Smith were highly grotesque. Cape Ann received from him the rather unmusical name of Cape Tragabigsanda, in honor of a Turkish lady to whom the gallant captain, having been taken prisoner of war, had been sold, and under whom he half intimates his slavery passed into a captivity of a gentler 15

VOL. II.

kind. Prince Charles changed this uncouth name into Cape Anna, in honor of his mother.

Of that part of the coast which was occupied by the Indians, called the Massachusetts, Captain Smith thus speaks: "The country of the Massachusits, which is the paradice of all those parts, for here are many iles planted with corne, groues, mulberries, salvage gardens, and good harbors; the coast is, for the most part, high clayie sandy clifts; the seacoast, as you pass, shews you all a long, large corne fields, and great troupes of well-proportioned people."* In 1621, the company established the year before, at Plymouth, was alarmed at some reports of hostilities meditated against them by the Massachusetts Indians, and sent up a party to explore the bay. They came to anchor, it is supposed, at the foot of Copps' Hill, in Boston, and were so much pleased with the appearance of the country, that Governor Bradford closes his account of the expedition with the remark, "They came safely home before noon the day following, with a considerable quantity of beaver, and a good report of the place, wishing we had been seated there." In a year or two afterwards, a commencement was made of a settlement in this region; and when the next great effort took place for the establishment of a colony in this part of America, MASSACHUSETTS BAY was selected for its site.

This name was derived from the tribe of Indians which occupied the shores of the inner bay. They were one of the five principal tribes found by the English in that portion of the continent which lies east of Connecticut River, and south of the Merrimack. These five tribes were the Pequots, the Narragansetts, the Pokanokets, the Massachusetts, and the Pawtuckets. The ancient historian of the Indians, Gookin, describes the Massachusetts in the following terms:

* Smith's General History, Vol. II. p. 194, Richmond Ed. Prince's Chronology, Hale's edition, p. 198.

See, in the first volume of this collection, the Address delivered in commemoration of Governor Winthrop's landing, on the subject of the Massachusetts generally. See Drake's Book of the Indians, Book II. chapter ii. and iii.

"The Massachusetts being the next great people northward, inhabited principally about that place in Massachusetts Bay, where the body of the English now dwell. These were a numerous and great people. Their chief sachem held dominion over many other petty governors, as those of Wessa gussett, (Weymouth,) Neponset, (Quincy,) Punkapog, (Stoughton,) Nonantum, (Newton,) Nashua, (Lancaster,) and some of the Nipmuck people, as far as Pokomtacook, (Deerfield,) as the old men of Massachusetts affirmed. This people could in former times arm for war about three thousand men, as the old Indians declare. In anno 1612 and 1613, these people were also sorely smitten by the hand of God with the same disease before mentioned, which destroyed the most of them, and made room for the English people of Massachusetts colony, which people this country and the next, called Pawtucket. There are not of this people left this day above three hundred men besides women and children." *

The epidemic which proved so destructive to the Massachusetts Indians, and not less so to the Pokanokets and Pawtuckets, was naturally regarded by our pious forefathers as a providential preparation for their arrival. "Thereby," says the venerable historian of the Indians just cited, "divine Providence made way for the quiet and peaceable settlement of the English in these nations. What this disease was which so generally and mortally swept away not only these, but other Indians, their neighbors, I cannot well learn. Doubtless it was some pestilential disease. I have discoursed with some old Indians that were then youths, who say that the bodies all over were exceedingly yellow (describing it by a yellow garment they shewed me) both before they died and afterwards." This account may deserve consideration, in reference to the controverted question concerning the domestic or foreign origin of the yellow fever.

I do not know that it is precisely ascertained where the Massachusetts Indians had their principal station. Hubbard says, "Att or neare the mouth of Charles River, where used to be the general rendezvous of all the Indians, both on the south and north side of the country." According to Hutch

Gookin's Historical Collections of the Indians in New England, first published from the original manuscript in the first volume of Mass. Historical Collections, pp. 148, et seq. Gookin's dedicatory epistle to Charles II. bears date 7th December, 1674.

+ General History of New England, in Mass. Hist. Collections, Vol. V. p. 32, Second Series.