|
|
THE HISTORY OF
STRATFORD
Golden Hill Indians THE HISTORY OF
STRATFORD
Wm. Howard Wilcoxson Establishing
Title to the Land FORREST MORGAN
Lifestyles, Government, Religion and WarIndian Titles and Mohegan Land TroublesSowheag, Uncas, and MiantonomoOwenoco, the Son of Uncas
THEHOUSATONIC CHARD POWERS SMITH The
Promised Land ALEXANDER JOHNSTON
|
PATRIARCH
TO THE INDIANS (1593 -1682) Thomas
Mayhew The Life of the Worshipful Governor and Chief Magistrate of the Island
of Martha's Vineyard; Proprietary of Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and the
Elizabeth Islands, and Lord of the Manor of Tisbury in North America By LLOYD C. M. HARE ILLUSTRATED AMS
PRESS NEW YORK PREFACE THIS
life of Thomas Mayhew brings into focus the little known and scarcely ever recounted
story of the aristocratic social and political tendencies of the English
colonists who settled America's first frontier. The early fathers of our
country lived in a transitional stage between Old World feudalism and New
World democracy, and this fact is exemplified in the history of the colony of
Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and the Elizabeth Islands. The
peculiar institution of the town proprietary, its similarity to the English
manor, and its conflicting interests with the town as a political unit, the
author has endeavored to clarify against the social and the legal backgrounds
of the seventeenth century. Attempt has been made to revisualize the oft
pictured story of the Nantucket Insurrection, heretofore described as a
purely local event rather than a localized phase of a general clash of
interests, largely economic. Historians
of New England have given emphasis to political struggles between the
colonists and the mother country and devoted little attention to the
relations of the settlers with the Indians. The belief is widespread that the
only successful efforts made to civilize the Indians of North America were
made by the French in Canada and the Spanish in California. This is not true,
and the author hopes that this book will somewhat rectify the tradition of
English disregard of Indian welfare. For
source material the author has drawn largely from the Records of Plymouth
Colony in New England, the Records of the Governor and Company of
Massachusetts Bay, and the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical
Society. The Minutes of the Executive Council of New York, Hough's Papers
Relating to the island of Nantucket, New York Colonial Manuscripts, the
several histories of Nantucket Island, the "History of Martha's
Vineyard" by Charles Edward Banks, M. D., and diaries, narrations and histories by colonial writers, have been among sources
consulted. The author is indebted to the "History of Martha's
Vineyard" for most of his facts concerning Governor Mayhew's English
ancestry, and much information concerning the social and political history
of Martha's Vineyard Island. The author takes this means to express appreciation
to Walter F. and George F. Starbuck, sons of Alexander Starbuck, for the use
of illustrations used in their father's exhaustive history of Nantucket; also
to L. & J. G. Stickley, Inc., of Fayetteville, New York, reproducers of
early American furniture, for the illustration of the Mayhew Family Tree; and
Mr. Marshall Shepard, president of the Dukes County Historical Society (of
Massachusetts) for numerous plates originally appearing in Bank's
"History of Martha's Vineyard." LLOYD
C. M. HARE. Berkeley,
California. Thomas Mayhew, Patriarch to the Indians THOMAS
MAYHEW. . . . deserves to be ranked with Bradford, Winthrop, and the other worthies, who established
or governed the first English colonies in North America. The little band of
adventurers, whom he boldly placed
on an island, amidst numerous bodies of savages, have
not become a large and nourishing people; his fame consequently is less; but
his toils, his zeal, his courage were equally great. In prudence and
benevolence he stands preeminent. Whilst on his 'part he abstained from all
acts of violence and fraud against the Indians, he gained such an ascendancy
over their minds, that they on their part never
did him or his people the least injury, or joined in any of the wars, which
their countrymen on the main land waged against the English. He seemed to
come among them, not like a robber to dis.possess them of their lands, not
like a conqueror to reduce them to slavery, but like a father, to impart to
them the comforts of civilized life, and the blessings of the gospel of
peace.-James Freeman, in "Collections of the Massachusetts Historical
Society, 1815." CHAPTER
I THE
PRELUDE OF EMPIRE In 1588 the Spanish
Armada was destroyed by the grace of God and the sea dogs of England. On the
bleak coasts of Ireland and Scotland lay the bones of Philip's ships.
Britannia had become mistress of the seas. . The
sun of empire had broken on Elizabethan England. It was the morning of the
seaman, the middle class, and the merchant prince. Feudal barons no longer
ruled supreme in councils of state with visions proscribed by the bounds of
ancient manors. In this day commerce reached its peak, unconfined to the
counting of pennies and the dickering of traders. England
sloughed provincialism; turned from broad acres to the swelling sea and took
root beyond the ocean, ambitious to be something other than a mere island
outpost of Europe. Merchant
adventurers and mariners went forth to vex distant seas in strange corners of
the globe. Ships sailed the oceans laden with cannon and spices and furs. 1 THOMAS
MAYHEW, PATRIARCH TO INDIANS Great
commercial companies were formed to trade in all the parts of the earth.
Under the seals of state a stream of charters passed, granting new domains
in savage untrammeled wildernesses. Vast tracts of land, mighty unexplored
territories reaching from the Atlantic to the fabled South Sea, passed to
favorites of the royal hand. Pioneers of empire dreamt of power. In
home ports all was hustle. Wooden ships creaked at wharves piled high with
merchandise from strange lands. The music of lapping waters, the clank of
chains, grating blocks, and straining hawsers lulled the air like gentle
zephrys and belied the dangers of foreign enterprise in barbaric lands. Hulls
that had sailed uncharted waters pounded gently against their mother piers.
In the counting houses merchants and masters planned new voyages. Royal
captains, explorers, and grizzled sea dogs ventured out of the harbors of
England in cockelshell boats to explore the shores of North America. The
prelude to the empire was being brilliantly dramatized. To
the stern forbidding shores of America were transplanted names ancient in the
United Kingdom. Where the Indian roved in snow and forest, maps pictured New
Scotland, New Dartmouth, New Somersetshire, the Colony of New Plymouth, and
a host of home loved names, many of which took no root in the barren soil of
the New World, but passed from all but the memory of man and the pages of
history. Others flourished for a time or were merged in greater units. Governors
to strange lands were appointed, admirals of new seas commissioned, trading
posts were settled, forts erected, and the foundations of empire laid. In
this hurly-burly of colonization and commerce were established close to the
middle of the seventeenth century the colonies of Martha's Vineyard and
Nantucket, the private proprietary of an English merchant from the seaport
town of old Southampton-the Worshipful Thomas Mayhew, Esquire, father of a
colony, governor of an island, feudal lord in the nobility of the New World,
judge, educator, patriarch and missionary to the Indians of New England. 2 |
ALEXANDER JOHNSTON
SOUTHPORT Colonial History of Pequot Swamp COLONIAL INDIAN ARCHIVES Hon. Ralph D.
Smith David D. Fields Sarah Day Woodward Winthrops Journal |