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June 13, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hobbamock

“a proper lustie man, and a man of accounte for his vallour & parts amongst ye Indeans” (Bradford)

Hobbamock (referred to in a variety of spelling derivations)  was a Native American who served as a guide, interpreter, and aide to the Pilgrims of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Like Tisquantom (Squanto), Hobbamock was essential to the survival and diplomatic success of the English in New England.

Hobbamock actually played a much larger role in relations with the English than Squanto, although Squanto tends to get most of the attention in history books.

Hobbamock was a pneise (a warrior of great courage and wisdom) who served as the sachem’s counselor, collected the annual tribute from subject tribes, and advised him on decisions about going to war.  The pniese among the Wampanoag equate to the European concept of a noble knight. Winslow describes this class of warrior:

In 1621 a peace treaty was negotiated between John Carver, first governor of Plymouth Colony and Wampanoag sachem Ousamequin of Pokanoket, better known as Massasoit. The chief sent his trusted councilor, Hobbamock, who could speak some English, to move his large family to just outside Plymouth’s palisade.

Hobbamock was part of the Wampanoag tribe, which, in the Algonquian language, means “People of the Dawn.” Other Indians feared Hobbamock so much that when they saw him in a battle, they would immediately leave

Hobbamock was specifically asked by Massasoit (the leader of the Wampanoag) to help the Pilgrims. Hobbamock became the chief interpreter because Massasoit mistrusted Squanto.

Hobbamock converted to Christianity.  He once exclaimed, “Now I see that the Englishman’s God is a good God, for he has heard you, and sent you rain, and that without storms and tempests, which we usually have with our rain, which breaks down our corn; but yours stands whole and good still; surely your God is a good God.”  (Henry White in The Early History of New England)

Native Americans

Native Americans were an important part of the success of the Plymouth Colony, for it was Samoset who first paid the Pilgrims a friendly visit in the year of 1621. Massasoit, a great chief, was also a friend of the Colonists and signed a treaty with them which lasted for many years.

Hobbamock and Squanto were Indians who acted as guides for the Pilgrims and helped them in their hunting and planting. (Al Vermeer, Hoosier State Chronicles)

They not only served as interpreters and intermediaries with the other Indians, but taught the colonists how to plant and manure the native corn and where to catch fish, acted as guides about the country, and made themselves generally invaluable.

These services were not regarded wholly with favor by some of the Indians who were opposed to the whites, and the settlers had to teach the sachem (chief) Corbitant a sharp lesson, to make them leave their two Indian friends alone. (Adams, The Founding of New England, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1921)

Captain Standish led his triumphant little band back, accompanied by Squanto, and many other friendly Indians. The heroic achievement taught the friendly Indians that they could rely upon the protection of the white men, and was a loud warning to those who were disposed to be hostile. The enterprise occupied but two days.

As the result of this adventure, many Sachems sent in the expression of their desire to enter into a friendly alliance with the Pilgrims. Corbitant himself was frightened by such an exhibition of energy, and by his own narrow escape. He sought reconciliation through the intercession of Massasoit, and subsequently signed a treaty of submission and friendship.  (Abbott)

Rose, the first wife of Myles Standish, died at Plymouth, January 29, 1621, about a month after the landing. She was among the first to succumb to the privations of that terrible first winter. He married a second wife (Barbara), who survived him.

After his second marriage, Standish moved to his house on Captain’s Hill in Duxbury, and here he drew around him a devoted class of friends, among whom were the elder Brewster, George Partridge, John Alden, Mr. Howland, Francis Eaton, Peter Brown, George Soule, Nicholas Byrom, Moses Simmons, and other settlers of Duxbury.

The Indians also loved as well as feared him, and the faithful Hobbamock ever kept near to minister to his wants and was the faithful guide in his travels.

This devoted Indian died in 1642, having faithfully served with Standish for twenty years.  He is supposedly buried on the south side of Captain’s Hill, near the great rock called ‘The Captain’s chair.’ Tradition fixes his wigwam between two shell mounds on the shore near the Standish place, till taken home to the house of Standish, where he became a resident until his death.  (Abbott)

Click the following link to a general summary about Hobbamock:

https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/wp-content/uploads/Hobbamock.pdf

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: Mayflower Summaries Tagged With: Mayflower, Plymouth, Pilgrims, Wampanoag, Hobbamock

March 14, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Corn

Growing, gathering and hunting for food was very important to both the Wampanoag and Pilgrims. For both cultures, good or bad harvests could mean the difference between comfort and hardship.

There were four ways the Wampanoag gathered food during the 1600s and before. These were hunting, fishing, harvesting wild plants and the planting of crops. The Wampanoag have been planting crops for about 1,200 years. 

Corn (what the Wampanoag called ewáchim-neash) was the most important staple food grown by the Wampanoag.

Winthrop wrote: “Nature hath delighted itself to beautify this Corne with a great variety of colours.” The chief variety of native corn (they sometimes called it ‘Indean Corne’) in the Cape Cod area was the northern flint variety usually in either white or yellow colors.

In the northern flint each plant only bore two, relatively short ears with only about eight rows of kernels and 30 to 40 kernels in a row. As Winthrop noted, there was “a great variety of colors including white corn, black corn, cherry red corn, yellow, blue, straw-colored, greenish and speckled.”

These were added to soups and other dishes such as nasaump, a thick and filling food made of corn. Some of the nuts and berries were eaten fresh, while others were dried and stored for future use.

Corn

Archaeologists and botanists long puzzled over the origins of corn domestication, and there were lively debates throughout the early 20th century. Now, the evidence seems clear that corn derives from a wild grass, teosinte.

Around 9,000 years ago, indigenous people in Central America (Mexico and Guatemala) figured out how to modify the wild grass to get it to produce larger seed kernels, finally producing an edible version of the plant. 

Fairly rapidly (in evolutionary terms), the first domesticators shared seeds along their trade routes and corn traveled both north and south. Archeologists have dated the first evidence of corn in the Southwestern United States at about 4,000 years ago. It is thought to have reached the Northeastern United States about 2,100 years ago. 

So by the time the Pilgrims arrived from England on the Mayflower, the Native Americans they met had long been engaged in extensive trade networks that spanned the entire continent.

But the remarkable fact is that the first humans to settle the Americas not only domesticated native plants like corn, squash, beans, tomatoes and more, but they also shared their knowledge of these plants with each other across vast distances.

For the most part, foods were eaten when they were available. Some foods, however, were preserved by drying or smoking. At harvest time, beans would be picked and eaten fresh, or dried and saved for winter food or for seeds. 

All corn would be dried on the cob. Some dried kernels would be removed to parch over a fire and then were pounded into nokehig, a fine corn flour used for a traveling food as well as thickening for soups.  Seeds were saved from all the best plants for planting the following year.

Corn has always been a versatile crop. Easily stored and preserved, it was an essential crop for the Native Americans.

Every part of it could be used, generating no waste at all. The corn itself could be ground into cornmeal for cornbread, corn syrup, and corn pudding. It could be dried out and used to make hominy, where the dried kernels are soaked in a wood ash lye and water solution until they split open, then drained and cooked over a fire.

The husks could be woven into mats or baskets or used to create dolls and other figures. Even the cobs found a use as fuel to burn, as ceremonial rattling sticks, or carved to create darts. Across the Americas, Native peoples bred different varieties and invented literally hundreds of recipes and ways to use corn. Today, corn cultivation is global, and the US is the single largest producer.

The Pilgrims Arrive at Plymouth

When the Wampanoag watched the Mayflower’s passengers come ashore at Patuxet, they did not see them as a threat.

“The Wampanoag had seen many ships before,” explained Tim Turner, Cherokee, manager of Plimoth Plantation’s Wampanoag Homesite and co-owner of Native Plymouth Tours.

“They had seen traders and fishermen, but they had not seen women and children before. In the Wampanoag ways, they never would have brought their women and children into harm. So, they saw them as a peaceful people for that reason.”

But they did not greet them right away either.

Squanto Saved the Pilgrims by Teaching them to Farm and Fish

The first direct contact was made by Samoset, a Monhegan from Maine, who came to the village on March 16, 1621.

Samoset told the Pilgrims that he knew of a Patuxet who could speak better English than he and that he would bring him and others to them.

The next day, he returned with Tisquantum (Squanto), a Wampanoag who befriended and helped the English that spring, showing them how to plant corn, fish and gather berries and nuts.

In the next few days the colonists were visited by several representatives of the Wampanoag, the main Native people in the area.

Squanto was the sole survivor of the Patuxet people, having been abducted by Hunt in 1614 to be sold into slavery in Spain. He had jumped ship and gone to England where he found employment on a trip to Newfoundland and other parts, before returning home in 1618, only to find all his people dead.

Without Squanto’s help and guidance, the Plymouth Colony would not have survived.

The Pilgrims Formed a Plantation

The colonists at Plymouth called their town a “plantation,” a word that comes from the word “plant.”

Farming was a major part of the Pilgrims’ lives.

They grew crops in large open fields. Women planted and tended vegetables and herbs in small gardens behind their houses. Because many of them had come from cities or towns in England with markets, many of the colonists had never farmed or gardened before coming to Plymouth. They were learning to feed themselves.

In Plymouth Colony the colonists’ diet was more varied. In New England, supplies of fish and shellfish were plentiful. Without hunting restrictions, deer, wild fowl, rabbits and other small animals were available to anyone who wanted to hunt them.

The Pilgrims also brought farm animals with them, including pigs, chickens, goats, and later, sheep and cows. These animals provided meat, eggs and dairy products for the colonists.

Families in Plymouth planted enough in their fields to feed themselves. Their main crop was a kind of corn they had never seen before.

The combination of available meat and shellfish, Indian corn and other field crops and garden plants made the Pilgrims’ diet a rich and varied one through most seasons of the year. Like the Wampanoag, however, the colonists experienced seasonal variations. Not all foods were available at every season of the year.

The Pilgrims tried to extend the life of their foods through preservation. Salting, the most common method of preservation, worked well for pork (meat from pigs) and fish. This method was sometimes combined with smoking for meats. Drying was also common. Vinegar pickles and sugar were also occasionally used to preserve foods.

Their lives depended on a good harvest.

Corn Used as Barter

As the years passed, the Pilgrims began to grow more food than they needed to eat.  Farming was not just a way to eat, then, but also a way to get goods that they could trade for sugar, spices, oil, vinegar, clothes, shoes, baskets and gunpowder.

The colonists also traded their extra Indian corn with Native People to get furs. The furs were then sent back to England to be sold. The money they made from selling furs was used to buy many of the goods they imported from England.

Later Construction of Grist Mill

“As also how they did pound their corne in morters, as these people were forcte to doe many years before  they could get a mille.”  (Bradford)

After more than a decade of laboriously grinding corn by hand in wooden mortars, the colony authorized the construction of a water-powered corn grinding mill on Town Brook in 1636.

Colonist John Jenney (who came in on the Little James in 1623) was given permission to run the mill and to take a portion of the corn that was brought for grinding as a payment or “toll.” After his death in 1644 John Jenney left the mill to his wife Sarah. Sarah, and later their son Samuel, ran the mill until 1683.

Nestled alongside Town Brook, and just a short walk from the waterfront and Mayflower II, the Plimoth Grist Mill (aka the Jenney Mill) tells the story of the grist (corn grinding) mill built by the Pilgrims in Plymouth Colony.  (The Mill burned down in 1837 and was rebuilt on its original site in 1970.)

Click the following link to a general summary about Corn:

https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/wp-content/uploads/Corn.pdf

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: Mayflower Summaries Tagged With: Pilgrims, Wampanoag, Cornwall, Mayflower

February 7, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Arrows and Snake Skin

At the period when the Mayflower came to anchor in Plymouth harbor, Massasoit exercised dominion over nearly all the south-eastern part of Massachusetts from Cape Cod to Narragansett Bay.

The south-western section of his kingdom was known as Pokanoket, Sowams, or Sowamsett. It included what now comprises the towns of Bristol, Warren, Barrington, and East Providence in Rhode Island, with portions of Seekonk, Swansea, and Rehoboth in Massachusetts.

The Indians were always particular to locate their permanent villages in the vicinity of springs of running water. Its soil is generally fertile and its climate agreeable and healthy, as, owing to its somewhat inland position, it escapes the full rigor of the fierce winds, that, during the winter months, sweep the unsheltered shores of Bristol.

Wampanoag

In the days when the Wampanoags inhabited its territory, it was well timbered, and grapes, cherries, huckleberries, and other wild fruits grew abundantly in field and swamp. Its rivers teemed with fish of many varieties, and also yielded a plentiful supply of lobsters, crabs, oysters, clams, quahaugs, and mussels.

Flocks of wild fowl haunted its marshes; deer and smaller game frequented its woods. Even in those seasons when food became generally scarce, the dwellers at Sowams probably suffered little from hunger in comparison with the inhabitants of many sections of New England less favored by nature. (History of Swansea, Wright)

In the spring of 1621, Ousamequin, the Massasoit (a title meaning head chief) of the Wampanoag Indians, made a treaty with the Pilgrims who settled at Patuxet (in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts).

Massasoit, who led the Wampanoags for about a half-century, is best remembered for this diplomatic skill and for his successful policy of peaceful co-existence with the English settlers.

The Pilgrim-Wampanoag Peace Treaty is the document drafted and signed on March 22, 1621 CE between governor John Carver (l. 1584-1621 CE) of the Plymouth Colony and the sachem (chief) Ousamequin (better known by his title Massasoit, l. c. 1581-1661 CE) of the Wampanoag Confederacy.

The treaty established peaceful relations between the two parties and would be honored by both sides from the day of its signage until after the death of Massasoit in 1661 CE.

Although the treaty reads as though it favors the settlers, the provisions were understood as applying to both sides even when not specified.  The treaty and peace lasted for more than 50 years.

Narragansett

The Narragansett Indians are the descendants of the aboriginal people of the State of Rhode Island. Archaeological evidence and the oral history of the Narragansett People establish their existence in this region more than 30,000 years ago.

Certain Nipmuck bands, the Niantics, Wampanoag, and Manisseans all paid tribute to the Narragansett tribe. These tribes all resided in areas of Rhode Island at the time of the first European settlement.

Historically, tribal members had two homes; a winter home and a summer home.  The winter home would be called a long house in which up to 20 families would live in over the cold winter months.

Governor Bradford states that the Narragansetts and Pequots grew “rich and potent” by the manufacture of wampum and, presumably, wealth contributed in no small degree towards establishing the prestige of the Wampanoags.

This tribe, properly speaking was a confederation of clans each clan having its own headman who was, however, subservient to a chief sachem.

Canonicus, Leader of the Narragansett Challenges the Pilgrims

One of the most renowned sachems among the New England tribes was Canonicus, the head of the Narragansets when the Pilgrims founded New Plymouth.

He regarded the advent of the white men with a jealous  fear; feeling strong, with about five thousand fighting men around him, he sent a challenge to Governor Bradford, of the Plymouth colony.

This was not-withstanding that Massasoit (the chief sachem of the Wampanoags) was the friend of the Pilgrims.

Bradford noted (in November 1621):

“After ye departure of [the Fortune in 1621] (which stayed not above 14. days,) the Gover & his assistante having disposed these late comers into severall families, as yey best could, tooke an exacte accounte of all their provissions in store, and proportioned ye same to ye number of persons, and found that it would not hould out above 6. months at halfe alowance, and hardly that.”

“And they could not well give less this winter time till fish came in againe. So they were presently put to half alowance, one as well as an other, which begane to be hard, but they bore it patiently under hope of supply.”

“Sone after this ships departure, ye great people of ye Narigansets, in a braving maner, sente a messenger unto them with a bundl of arrows tyed aboute with a great sneak-skine; which their interpretours tould them was a threatening & a chaleng.”

The next morning when Squanto returned, the snake skin of arrows was shown to him. “What do you understand these arrows to mean?” asked Captain Standish.

Squanto’s eyes flashed with anger. “Arrows say, ‘Come out and fight.’ Soon many arrows fly in this village. Many white men die.”

“Our bullets fly farther than arrows. not afraid,” answered Bradford. He threw the arrows upon the ground and filled the snake skin with powder and shot. Handing it to Squanto, he said, “Take that to the chief. Tell him we have done him no harm, but we are ready to fight if he comes.”  (Stories of the Pilgrims, Pumphrey)

“Upon which ye Govr, with ye advice of others, sente them a round answere, that if they had rather have warre then peace, they might begine when they would; they had done them no wrong, neither did yey fear them, or should they find them unprovided.”  (Bradford)

The Narragansett chief had never seen the like before, and he regarded these substances with superstitious awe. They were sent from village to village, and excited so much alarm, that the sachem sued for peace, and made a treaty of friendship, which he never violated …

… notwithstanding, he often received provocations that would have justified him in scattering all compacts to the winds.

The Indians had heard of the deadly weapon of the white man. A few of them had even heard its thunder, but none of them had ever touched a gun or seen powder and shot.

The Indians crowded around to see the strange bundle, but not one of them would touch it. The chief would not have it in his wigwam a minute. He ordered Squanto to take it back to Plymouth, but he would not. “There is plenty more there,’ said Squanto. “When you come you shall have it.” Then he turned and left the village. (Stories of the Pilgrims, Pumphrey)

“And by another messenger sente ye sneake-skine back with bulits in it; but they would not receive it, but sent it back againe. But these things I doe but mention, because they are more at large allready put forth in printe, by Mr. Winslow, at ye requeste of some freinds.”

The chief then called another messenger and told him to take the hated bundle away, anywhere out of his country. So the messenger carried it to another tribe, but they would have none of it. It was passed from one Indian village to another, leaving terror in its path. At last, after many weeks, the snake skin of powder returned unopened to Plymouth.

That was all the Pilgrims ever heard of war with those Indians. But they thought it wise to protect their town better, so a high fence of pointed posts was built all about the town. For many weeks a watchman was kept at the gate night and day. (Stories of the Pilgrims, Pumphrey)

Click the following link to a general summary about Arrows and Snake Skin:

https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/wp-content/uploads/Arrows-and-Snake-Skin.pdf

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Filed Under: Mayflower Summaries Tagged With: Mayflower, Pilgrims, Canonicus, Narragansett, Wampanoag, Massasoit, Squanto

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