ging words, or complained of the hardness of her fortune. The company soon came to a halt, and Mr. Williams's old master resumed his former station, and ordered him into the van, and his wife was obliged to travel unaided. They had now arrived at Green River, as we have related. This they passed by wading, although the current was very rapid, (which was the cause, no doubt, of its not being frozen over,) and about two feet in depth. After passing this river, they had to ascend a steep mountain. "No sooner," says Mr. Williams, "had I overcome the difficulty of that ascent, but I was permitted to sit down, and be unburthened of my pack. I sat pitying those who were behind, and intreated my master to let me go down and help my wife; but he refused. I asked each of the prisoners, as they passed by me, after her, and heard, that passing through the above said river, she fell down and was plunged all over in the water; after which she travelled not far, for at the foot of that mountain, the cruel and bloodthirsty savage who took her slew her with his hatchet at one stroke." The historians have left us no record of the character of this lady, but from the account left us by her husband, she was a most amiable companion. She was the only daughter of Reverend Eleazer Mather, minister of Northampton, by his wife Esther, daughter of Reverend John Warham, who came from England in 1630. The second night was spent at an encampment in the northerly part of what is now Bernardstown, and in the course of the preceding day a young woman and child were killed and scalped. At this camp a council was held upon the propriety of putting Mr. Williams to death, but his master prevailed on the rest to save his life; for the reason, no doubt, that he should receive a high price for his ransom. The fourth day brought them to Connecticut River, about 30 miles above Deerfield. Here the wounded, children and baggage were put into a kind of sleigh, and passed with facility upon the river. Every day ended the suffering and captivity of one or more of the prisoners. The case of a young woman named Mary Brooks, was one to excite excessive pity, and it is believed, that had the Indians been the sole directors of the captives, such cases could hardly have occurred. This young woman, being enceinte, and walking upon the ice in the river, often fell down upon it, probably with a burthen upon her; which caused premature labor the following night. Being now unfitted for the journey, her master deliberately told her she must be put to death. With great composure she got liberty of him to go and take leave of her minister. She told him she was not afraid of death, and after some consoling conversation, she returned and was executed! This was March 8. At the mouth of a river since known as Williams's River, upon a Sunday, the captives were permitted to assemble around their minister, and he preached a sermon to them from Lam. i. 18. At the mouth of White River Rouville divided his force into several parties, and they took different routes to the St. Lawrence. In a few instances the captives were purchased of the Indians, by the French, and the others were at the different lodges of the Indians. During his captivity, Mr. Williams visited various places on the St. Lawrence. At Montreal he was humanely treated by Governor Vaudreuil. In his interviews with the French Jesuits he uniformly found them using every endeavor to convert him and others to their religion. However, most of the captives remained steady in the Protestant faith. And in 1706, fifty-seven of them were by a flag-ship conveyed to Boston. A considerable number remained in Canada, and never returned, among whom was Eunice Williams, daughter of the minister. She became a firm catholic, married an Indian, by whom she had several children, and spent her days in a wigwam. She visited Deerfield with her Indian husband, dressed in Indian style, and was kindly received by her friends. All attempts to regain her were ineffectual. Reverend Eleazer Williams, late a missionary to the Greenbay Indians, is a descendant. He was educated by the friends of missions in New England. In the History of Canada by Charlevoix, the incursions undertaken by the French and Indians are generally minutely recorded; but this against Deerfield he has unaccountably summed up in a dozen lines of his work. The following is the whole passage: In the end of autumn, 1703, the English, despairing of securing the In 144 MONEY OF THE INDIANS. [BOOK III. dians, made several excursions into their country, and massacred all such as they could surprise. Upon this, the chiefs demanded aid of M. de Vaudreuil, and he sent them during the winter 250 men under the command of the Sieur Hertel de Rouville, a reformed lieutenant, who took the place of his already renowned father, whose age and infirmities prevented his undertaking such great expeditions. Four others of his children accompanied Rouville, who in their tour surprised the English, killed many of them, and made 140 of them prisoners. The French lost but three soldiers, and some savages, but Rouville was himself wounded.* Various incidents in the history of the New England Indians, embracing several important events, with a sequel to some previous memoirs. He felt his life's blood freezing fast; He grasped his bow, his lance, and steel; He was of Wampanoag's last. To die were easy-not to yield. His eyes were fixed upon the sky; He gasped as on the ground he fell; None but his foes his death to tell. THE performances of one Cornelius, "the Dutchman," in Philip's war, are very obscurely noticed in the histories of the times, none of them giving us even his surname; and we have, in a former chapter, given the amount of what has before been published. I am now able to add concerning him, that his name was Cornelius Consert; that the last time he went out against the Indians, he served about six weeks; was captain of the forlorn hope in the Quabaog expedition, in the autumn of the first year of Philip's war; marched also to Groton and Chelmsford, and was discharged from service, "being ready to depart the country," October 13, 1675. It was probably in his Quabaog expedition that he committed the barbarous exploit upon “an old Indian," the account of which has been given; it was doubtless during the same expedition, which appears to have terminated in September, that “he brought round five Indians to Boston," who, being cast into prison, were afterwards "delivered to Mr. Samuel Shrimpton, to be under his employ on Noddle's Island," subject "to the order of the council." I shall here pass to some further account of the money of the Indians. We have quoted the comical account of the money of the Indians of New England, by John Josselyn, and will now quote the graphic and sensible one given by the unfortunate John Lawson, in his account of Carolina, of the money in use among the southern Indians. "Their money," he says, "is of different sorts, but all made of shells, which are found on the coast of Carolina, being very large and hard, and difficult to cut. Some English smiths have tried to drill this sort of shell money, and thereby thought to get an advantage, but it proved so hard that nothing could be gained;" and Morton, in his New English Canaan, says that, although some of the English in New England have tried "by example to make the like, yet none hath ever attained to any perfection in the composure of them, so but that the salvages have found a great difference to be in the one and the other; and have known the counterfeit beads from those of their own making; and have, and doe slight them." Hence the conclusion of Josselyn, before extracted, namely, that "neither Jew nor devil could counterfeit the money of the Indians." Mr. Lawson continues: "The Indians often make, of the same kind of shells as those of which their money is made, a sort of gorget, which they wear about * Histoire Generale de la Nouv. France, ii. 290. their necks in a string; so it hangs on their collar, whereon sometimes is engraven a cross, or some odd sort of figure which comes next in their fancy. There are other sorts valued at a doeskin, yet the gorgets will sometimes sell for three or four buckskins ready dressed. There be others, that eight of them go readily for a doeskin; but the general and current species of all the Indians in Carolina, and I believe, all over the continent, as far as the bay of Mexico, is that which we call Peak, and Ronoak, but Peak more especially. This is that which at New York they call Wampum, and have used it as current money amongst the inhabitants for a great many years. Five cubits of this purchase a dressed doeskin, and seven or eight buy a dressed buckskin. To make this Peak it cost the English five or ten times as much as they could get for it, whereas it cost the Indians nothing, because they set no value upon their time, and therefore have no competition to fear, or that others will take its manufacture out of their hands. It is made by grinding the pieces of shell upon stone, and is smaller than the small end of a tobaccopipe, or large wheat-straw. Four or five of these make an inch, and every one is to be drilled through and made as smooth as glass, and so strung, as beads are. A cubit, of the Indian measure, contains as much in length as will reach from the elbow to the end of the little finger. They never stand to question, whether it be a tall man or a short one that measures it. If this wampum-peak be black or purple, as some part of that shell is, then it is twice the value. The drilling is the most difficult and tedious part of the manufacture. It is done by sticking a nail in a cane or reed, which they roll upon their thighs with their right hand, while with their left they apply the bit of shell to the iron point. But especially in making their ronoak, four of which will scarce make one length of wampum. Such is the money of the Indians, with which you may buy all they have. It is their mammon, (as our money is to us,) that entices and persuades them to do any thing, part with their captives or slaves, and, sometimes, even their wives' and daughters' chastity. With it they buy off murderers; and whatever a man can do that is ill, this wampum will quit him of, and make him, in their opinion, good and virtuous, though never so black before." To return to the chiefs. Of the Narraganset Indian Corman very little had been found when he was noticed before, and it is but little that we can now add concerning the "cheiffe counceller" of the "old crafty sachem" of Niantik. It appears that in the month of September, 1675, Corman was in Boston, whither he had been sent as an ambassador by the Narraganset sachems, and especially by Ninigret; and although Ninigret was a peace-maker, and had not been any how implicated in the war then going on, yet, such was the rage of the popu lace against all Indians, that it was not deemed safe for even a friend from among them to walk alone in the streets of the town. On the evening of the 28th of September, as Corman, now an old man, was walking through one of the streets, guarded by persons on each side of him, a certain miscreant, named William Smith, ran furiously against him, and thus separating him from those about him, did, by another motion, strike his feet from under him in such a manner that his head and shoulders came in violent contact with the ground, very seriously injuring him. Complaint having been made to the governor and council, they had both Smith and Corman brought before them the next day, and the charge against the former being established by the evidence of Mrs. Sarah Pickering, who saw the fact committed, "the court, in hearing of the case, judged it meet to bear due testimony against such abuse, and sentence the said Smith to pay, as a fine to the country, the sum of forty shillings, or be whipt with ten stripes; also to pay the said Corman for his damage the sum of ten shillings in money." It is very difficult to understand the grounds of the decision of the honorable court, unless they seriously thought that the ground on which poor old Corman fell was hurt four times as much as he was! If this was not its reason, why should forty shillings be paid to the country and only ten to CORMAN? As new local and other histories appear, and the decaying manuscripts are put in a situation and condition to be conveniently consulted, new lights are daily reflected on the dark passages of our history. The presence of Nanuntenoo at the battle of Pawtucket, or, as it is more commonly called, Peirse's |