hawks. At Turkey hill, in the north-west part of Milford, there was another large settlement.

In Derby, there were two large clans. There was one at Paugusset. This clan erected a strong fort against the Mohawks, situated on the bank of the river, nearly a mile above Derby ferry. At the falls of Naugatuck river, four or five miles above, was another tribe.

At Stratford, the Indians were equally, if not more numerous. In that part of the town only, which is comprised within the limits of Huntington, their warriors, after the English had knowledge of them, were estimated at three hundred; and, before this time, they had been much wasted by the Mohawks.

The Indians at Stamford and Greenwich, and in that vicinity, probably, were not inferior in numbers to those at Stratford. There were two or three tribes of Indians in Stamford, when the English began the settlement of the town. In Norwalk were two petty sachemdoms; so that within these towns, there was a large and dangerous body of savages. These, with the natives between them and Hudson's river, gave extreme trouble to the Dutch. The Norwalk and Stamford Indians gave great alarm, and occasioned much expense to the English, after they made settlements in that part of the colony.

In the town of Woodbury, there were also great numbers of Indians. The most numerous body of them was in that part of the town, since named South-Britain.

It would doubtless be a moderate computation, to reckon all these different clans at a thousand warriors, or four or five thousand people. There must therefore have been sixteen, and it may be, twenty thousand Indians in Connecticut, when the settlement of it commenced.

East of Connecticut were the Narraganset Indians: these were a numerous and powerful body. When the English settled Plymouth, their fighting men were reckoned at three or four thousand. Fifty years after this time, they were estimated at two thousand. The Pequots and Narragansets maintained perpetual war, and kept up an implacable animosity between them. The Narragansets were the only Indians in the vicinity of the Pequots, which they had not conquered. To these their very name was dreadful. They said Sassacus was "all one God; no man could kill him." 2

On the northeasterly and northern part of the colony, were the Nipmuck Indians. Their principal seat was about the great ponds in Oxford, in Massachusetts, but their territory extended southward into Connecticut, more than twenty miles. This was called the Wabbequasset and Whetstone country; and some'Prince's Chron. p. 116.

9 Major Mason's history of the Pequot war,

times, the Moheagan conquered country, as Uncas had conquered and added it to his sachemdom.1

2

The Connecticut, and indeed all the New-England Indians, were large, straight, well proportioned men. Their bodies were firm and active, capable of enduring the greatest fatigues and hardships. Their passive courage was almost incredible. When tortured in the most cruel manner; though flayed alive, though burnt with fire, cut or torn limb from limb, they would not groan, nor show any signs of distress. Nay, in some instances they would glory over their tormentors, saying that their hearts would never be soft until they were cold, and representing their torments as sweet as Englishmen's sugar. When travelling in summer, or winter, they regarded neither heat nor cold. They were exceedingly light of foot, and would travel or run a very great distance in a day. Mr. Williams says, "I have known them run between eighty and a hundred miles in a summer's day and back again within two days." As they were accustomed to the woods, they ran in them nearly as well as on plain ground. They were exceedingly quick sighted, to discover their enemy, or their game, and equally artful to conceal themselves. Their features were tolerably regular. Their faces are generally full as broad as those of the English, but flatter; they have a small, dark coloured good eye, coarse black hair, and a fine white set of teeth. The Indian children, when born, are nearly as white as the English children; but as they grow up their skin grows darker and becomes nearly of a copper colour. The shapes both of the men and women, especially the latter, are excellent. A crooked Indian is rarely if ever to be seen.

The Indians in general were quick of apprehension, ingenious, and when pleased, nothing could exceed their courtesy and friendship. Gravity and eloquence distinguished them in council, address and bravery in war. They were not more easily provoked than the English; but when once they had received an injury, it was never forgotten. In anger they were not, like the English, talkative and boisterous, but sullen and revengeful. Indeed, when they were exasperated, nothing could exceed their revenge and cruelty. When they have fallen into the power of an enemy, they have not been known to beg for life, nor even to accept it when offered them. They have seemed rather to court death.3 They were exceedingly improvident. If they had a supply for the present, they gave themselves no trouble for the future. The men declined all labor, and spent their time in hunting, fishing, shooting, and warlike exercises. They were excellent marksmen, and rarely missed their game, whether running or flying.

1 President Clap's manuscripts, and Chandler's map of the Moheagan country. ? Hubbard's Narrative, p. 130 and 172.

Jefferson's notes, p. 108, 109, and Hubbard's Narrative, p. 130, 172.

They imposed all the drudgery upon their women. They gathered and brought home their wood, planted, dressed and gathered in their corn. They carried home the venison, fish and fowl, which the men took in hunting. When they travelled, the women carried the children, packs and provisions. The Indian women submitted patiently to such treatment, considering it as the hard lot of the woman. This ungenerous usage of their haughty lords, they repaid with smiles and good humour.

It has been common among all heathen nations, to treat their women as slaves, and their children, in infancy, with little tenderness. The Indian men cared little for their children when young, and were supposed at certain times, to sacrifice them to the devil. Christianity only provides for that tender and honorable treatment of the woman, which is due to the sex formed of man. This alone provides for the tender care, nursing and education of her offspring, and is most favorable to domestic happiness, to the life and dignity of man.

The Indian women were strong and masculine; and as they were more inured to exercise and hardship than the men, were even more firm and capable of fatigue and suffering than they. They endured the pains of child-bearing without a groan. It was not uncommon for them, soon after labor, to take their children upon their backs and travel as they had done before.1

The clothing of the Indians in New-England, was the skins of wild beasts. The men threw a light mantle of skins over them, and wore a small flap which was called Indian breeches. They were not very careful, however, to conceal their nakedness. The women were much more modest. They wore a coat of skins, girt about their loins, which reached down to their hams.-They never put this off in company. If the husband chose to sell his wife's beaver petticoat, she could not be persuaded to part with it, until he had provided another of some sort.

In the winter, their blanket of skins, which hung loose in the summer, was tied or wrapped more closely about them. The old men in the severe seasons also wore a sort of trowsers made of skins and fastened to their girdles. They wore shoes without heels, which they called mockasins. These were made generally of moose hide, but sometimes of buck skin. They were shaped entirely to the foot, gathered at the toes and round the ankles, and made fast with strings.

Their ornaments were pendants in their ears and nose, carved of bone, shells and stone. These were in the form of birds, beasts and fishes. They also wore belts of wampompeag upon their arms, over their shoulders and about their loins. They cut their hair into various antic forms and stuck them with feathers. They

Wood's prospect of New-England, Neal and Hutchinson, Neal's Hist. N. E. vol. i. p. 45. Hutchinson, vol. i. p. 462 to 467.

also, by incisions into which they conveyed a black or blue, unchangeable ink, made on their cheeks, arms, and other parts of their bodies, the figures of moose, deer, bears, wolves, hawks, eagles and all such living creatures as were most agreeable to their fancies. These pictures were indelible, and lasted during life. The sachems, on great days, when they designed to show themselves in the full splendor of majesty, not only covered themselves with mantles of moose, or deer skins, with various embroideries of white beads, and with paintings of different kinds; but they wore the skin of a bear, wild cat or some terrible creature upon their shoulders and arms. They had also necklaces of fish bones, and painting themselves in a frightful manner, made a most ferocious and horrible appearance. The warriors who, on public occasions, dressed themselves in the most wild and terrific forms, were considered as the best men.

The Indian houses or wigwams, were, at best, but poor smoky cells. They were constructed generally like arbours, of small young trees, bent and twisted together, and so curiously covered with mats or bark, that they were tolerably dry and warm. The Indians made their fire in the centre of the house, and there was an opening at the top, which emitted the smoke. For the convenience of wood and water, these huts were commonly erected in groves, near some river, brook or living spring. When the wood failed, the family removed to another place.

They lived in a poor low manner: their food was coarse and simple, without any kind of seasoning: they had neither spice, salt, nor bread: they had neither butter, cheese, nor milk: they drank nothing better than the water which ran in the brook, or spouted from the spring: they fed on the flesh and entrails of moose, deer, bears, and all kinds of wild beasts and fowls; on fish, eels, and creeping things: they had good stomachs, and nothing came amiss. In the hunting and fishing seasons, they had venison, moose, fat bears, racoons, geese, turkeys, ducks, and fish of all kinds. In the summer, they had green corn, beans, squashes, and the various fruits which the country naturally produced. In the winter they subsisted on corn, beans, fish, nuts, groundnuts, acorns, and the very gleanings of the grove.

They had no set meals, but like other wild creatures, ate when they were hungry, and could find any thing to satisfy the cravings of nature. Some times they had little or nothing for several days; but when they had provisions, they feasted. If they fasted for some time, they were sure at the next meal to make up for all they had lost before. They had but little food from the earth, except what it spontaneously produced. Indian corn, beans and squashes, were the only eatables for which the natives in NewEngland labored. The earth was both their seat and their table. With trenchers, knives, and napkins, they had no acquaintance.

Their household furniture was of small value. Their best bed was a mat or skin: they had neither chair nor stool. They ever sat upon the ground, commonly with their elbows upon their knees: this is the manner in which their great warriors and councillors now sit, even in the most public treaties with the English. A few wooden and stone vessels and instruments, serve all the purposes of domestic life. They had no steel nor iron instrument. Their knife was a sharp stone, shell, or kind of reed, which they sharpened in such a manner, as to cut their hair, make their bows and arrows, and served for all the purposes of a knife. They made them axes of stone: these they shaped somewhat similar to our axes; but with this difference, that they were made with a neck, instead of an eye, and fastened with a withe, like a blacksmith's chisel. They had mortars, and stone pestles, and chisels: great numbers of these have been found in the country, and kept by the people, as curiosities. They dressed their corn with a clamshell, or with a stick, made flat and sharp at one end. These were all the utensils which they had, either for domestic use, or for husbandry.

Their arts and manufactures were confined to a very narrow compass. Their only weapons were bows and arrows, the tomahawk and the wooden sword or spear. Their bows were of the common construction: their bowstrings were made of the sinews of deer, or of the Indian hemp. Their arrows were constructed of young elder sticks, or of other straight sticks and reeds: these were headed with a sharp flinty stone, or with bones. The arrow was cleft at one end, and the stone or bone was put in and fastened with a small cord. The tomahawk was a stick of two or three feet in length, with a knob at one end. Some times it was a stone hatchet, or a stick, with a piece of deer's horn at one end, in the form of a pick axe. Their spear was a straight piece of wood, sharpened at one end, and hardened in the fire, or headed with bone or stone.

With respect to navigation, they had made no improvements beyond the construction and management of the hollow trough or canoe. They made their canoes of the chestnut, whitewood, and pine trees. As these grew straight to a great length, and were exceedingly large as well as tall, they constructed some, which would carry sixty or eighty men: these were first rates; but commonly they were not more than twenty feet in length, and two in breadth. The Pequots had many of these, in which they passed over to the Islands, and warred against, and plundered the Islanders. The Indians upon Long-Island had a great number of canoes, of the largest kind.

The construction of these, with such miserable tools as the Indians possessed, was a great curiosity. The manner was this:

1 Winthrop's Journal, p. 54.