CHAPTER VII. Continued Intercourse with the Cape. - Trading House established at Manomet. Patent. Great Storm.- Troublous Times. Declaration of Rights. FROM this time the Cape Indians appear to have had but little intercourse with the English for some time. Indeed, the trade with the natives in every direction fell off; partly owing, no doubt, to the diminution of their numbers by the havoc of death, and to the surviving being disheartened, or finding channels of commerce more to their interest, and less repugnant to their feelings; so that, before the close of 1623, Governor Bradford is heard complaining that; although the pinnace sent, September 10, around the Cape to trade, got some corn and beaver, yet it made a poor voyage. The chief cause, however, is doubtless to be found in the general distrust the Indians now felt of their neighbors. In the December of 1626, a ship, with many passengers, bound from London to Virginia, was stranded upon a flat at Monamoyick, and those on board barely but we will here venture the remark, that had they followed the example of Roger Williams, — the victim of their persecution and outlawry,or of William Penn, - that noble representative of the abused Quakers, in their treatment of the Indians, our duty of recording these painful facts might have been alleviated, and they might have saved an immense amount of treasure and blood. 1 "The Dutch furnish cloth and better commodities; whereas the pinnace had only beads and knives, which are not esteemed." Bradford. escaped with their lives and goods. The master being sick, they had lost their way, and had neither wood, nor water, nor beer left. Through fear of starving, they had "steered towards the coast to find land, and had run over the dangerous shoals of Cape Cod in the night, they knew not how. They came directly before a small, obscure harbor about the middle of Monamoyick Bay; at high water, touched the bar; and towards night, beat over into the harbor, and run on a flat within, close to the beach, not knowing where they were. As the savages came towards them in canoes, they stood on their guard." But the Indians assuaged their fears, asking them "if they were the governor of Plymouth's men," and offering to assist them, and, if they desired, to carry letters for them to Plymouth. The Indians, according to their best ability, supplied the strangers with all that they needed.' The governor men. 1 From the hospitality and kindness so often and so invariably exhibited by the Indians, whenever their humanity was addressed under circumstances which did not preclude them, one can hardly help adverting to the case of LOGAN, the eloquent Cayuga chief. Logan was the friend of the white people; he admired their ingenuity, and wished to be a neighbor to them. But in 1774, when Logan's residence was on the Ohio, his family were murdered by a party of white War was the immediate result, and great was the amount of blood drunk by the tomahawk and scalping knife of the infuriated natives, before peace could be restored. When at last a treaty of peace was about being effected, Logan gave in his adhesion in the following terms, addressed to Lord Dunmore, then governor of Virginia: "I appeal to any white man, if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry, and I gave him no meat; if ever he came cold and naked, and I did not shelter and clothe him. I had thought to live with you the friend of the white man. But, in cold blood and in peace unprovoked, the white man murdered all the spared not even my women and children. Logan's blood in the veins of any living. revenge. I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully of Plymouth, having received the intelligence, came, with others, to their aid, and brought all the materials written for. "It being no season to go around the Cape, he landed at the bottom of the bay, at a creek called Naumskaket, from whence it was not much above two miles across the Cape to the bay where the ship lay. The Indians carried the things he brought, over land to the ship. "The governor bought of the natives as much corn as was wanted for the ship, and returned to his boat. He then went into the adjacent harbors, and loaded with corn, and returned home." Not many days after his return, he again received a message from the ship, saying that the vessel having been repaired, a great storm arose and drove her on shore, by which catastrophe she is so badly shattered as to be wholly unfit for sea. The result was, they all came to Plymouth, whither also their goods were transported.1 In 1627, the Plymouth colonists had already established a trading house at Manomet, (Sandwich,) and now built a pinnace there, for their better accommodation, to avoid the then dangerous navigation around the Cape. By transporting their goods up the creek, from Scusset harbor, to within four or five miles of the trading house, and then taking them a short distance by land, until they reached the boatable waters of the river on the opposite side, they were enabled to make glutted my vengeance. For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan knows no fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one!" 1 The beach where this ship was stranded was thenceforward called the Old Ship. The remains of the wreck were visible many years. 2 their voyages southward in less time, and without hazard. They not only erected a house here, and kept up a trading establishment, but planted, and raised swine; and "the establishment became one of much importance,” not simply as affording facilities for trading on the south side of the Cape, but for commercial intercourse with the Narraganset country and the entire coast of Long Island Sound. The first communication between the Plymouth colonists and the Dutch at Fort Amsterdam was through this channel. De Razier, secretary to the Dutch government, arrived at the trading house at Manomet in September of this year, in a vessel "laden with sugar, linen, stuffs, &c.," and Governor Bradford sent a boat to Scusset harbor to convey him thence to Plymouth. This Isaac de Razier was a noted merchant, as well as the secretary 1 This was a mode of communicating with the ports south of the Cape, resorted to by very many of the enterprising seamen of the lower Cape towns, during the war of 1812-15, to avoid capture; with this difference only — that the Town-harbor was preferred to Scussetharbor, and both boats and cargo were carted over in either direction, as the case required. 2 Governor Bradford's account of this arrangement is, "For our greater convenience of trade, to discharge our engagements, and to maintain ourselves, we have built a small pinnace at Manomet, a place on the sea, twenty miles to the south, to which, by another creek on this side, we transport our goods by water within four or five miles, and then carry them over land to the vessel; thereby avoiding the compassing of Cape Cod, with those dangerous shoals, and make our voyage to the southward with far less time and hazard. For the safety of our vessel and goods, we there also build a house, and keep some servants, who plant corn, rear swine, and are always ready to go out with the bark, which takes good effect, and turns to advantage." The location of this trading establishment was not far from what is now called Monument Bridge— the Indian Manomet being corrupted to Monument. at Manhattan; and the people of Plymouth, having some of them accompanied him to his vessel at Manomet, on his return, to buy goods, purchased also some wampum, or wampum-peack, which was now first known to them as an article of trade. "After this, the Dutch came often. The first intercourse between these two settlements of neighboring Europeans was conducted here." In the year 1630, Richard Garratt and others, from Boston, were shipwrecked on Cape Cod, and some died in consequence of their hardships and exposure. The Indians buried the dead with great propriety, to save the bodies from being eaten by beasts, although the ground was deeply frozen, requiring great labor in digging the graves. The survivors, by most assiduous attention on the part of the Indians, were "literally nursed back to life," so nearly perished were they; and when recovered and endowed with sufficient strength, the Indians kindly conducted them some fifty miles through the woods, to Plymouth. Such was the friendly and humane feeling that then prevailed among "barbarians." The Cape seems to have been a very frequent resort for the procurement of corn, both by the Plymouth colonists and those now settled in the Massachusetts Colony; but in 1631,"great misunderstandings existed," we are told, between the Plymouth and Massachusetts settlements, and "rash measures" were threatened respecting the traffic for corn which was carried on by the Massachusetts people with the Indians on the Cape, the Plymouth Colony demanding the exclusive privilege. The early settlers in the Massachusetts seem, indeed, to have been as much exposed to the dangers of |