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However that may have been, we cannot doubt the testimony
of Bradford who writes that on March 16, 1621, Samoset, after welcoming
the English to Patuxet, and being entertained by them over night, told
them of a Great Sachem, "Massasoyt," who had sixty warriors
under him, and left them saying he would bring him to them. On March 22,
the Great Chief appeared with the exact number mentioned by Samoset.
In the June following, when Window and Hopkins visited
him at Sowams for the purpose of renewing and strengthening the ties of
friendship between him and the colonists and to secure corn for planting,
Massasoit, speaking to an assembly of his own people, said, "Am not I
Massasoit commander of the country round you? Is not such a town mine, and
such a town, and will you not bring your skins to the English?" In this
way naming more than thirty villages, according to Window.
We have already seen that on December 8, 1620, the
Nausets attacked the crew of the Mayflower's shallop, and, while the
numbers of the attacking party are not mentioned, there can be no doubt,
from Bradford's description, that they were in sufficient force to make a
considerable demonstration and cause great alarm and uneasiness, and
Samosa is said to have told the English that Aspinet had one hundred
warriors. In addition to the inhabitants of the Pokanoket country and the
Nausets, both of which we have briefly discussed, there is abundant
evidence that there were tribes of no mean proportions at Capawack
(Martha's Vineyard), Manomet and Monamoyick, Sawkattucket, Nobsquosset and
Matakes, besides that on Nantucket Island, in the eastern part of
Massasoit's domain; at Assawamsett, and Nemasket, at Sakonnet at the mouth
of the river of the same name, and at Pocasset, or perhaps it would be
more accurate to say in the Sakonnet territory and the Pocasset territory,
for the former extended over the southern part of Tiverton and all of
Little Compton, Rhode Island, and the latter, lying immediately east of
the Pokanoket territory, extended from Coles River in Swansea eastward at
least four miles beyond the Taunton River, and from the narrows in the
Sakonnet River, where the Tiverton Stone Bridge now stands, northward to
the northern boundary of Freetown, including part of Tiverton, Rhode
Island, all of Fall River, most of Freetown, and parts of Berkley,
Dighton, Somerset and Swansea, Massachusetts. The Chief of this tribe was
Corbitant, of whom we shall see more later, who resided at "Mettapuyst" (Mettapoissett)
now Gardner's Neck in Swansea. All of these were probably included in
Massasoit's enumeration of "more than thirty villages," and particular
attention is called to them at this time, because there is reason for
believing that they were fairly powerful tribes, and all within the
Wampanoag federation. I have not directed particular attention to the
Massachusetts, because there may be some questions of their relation to the Wampanoags, whether they were of them
or only allied with them, the weight of the evidence pointing rather to
the latter idea than to the former; and I have disregarded entirely
Colonel Caverly's statement concerning Passaconaway as previously adverted
to; nor have I made any reference to the tribes of the Nipmucks who were
subject to the Great Chief of the Wampanoags.
A careful consideration of what has been said is
sufficient to lead to the conclusion that the three hundred mentioned by
some writers as all that remained of the thirty thousand Wampanoags that
escaped the plague must have referred to the warriors of Pokanoket alone,
or the inhabitants of Massasoit's village of Sowams. It is hardly possible
to have mustered the sixty warriors who accompanied him to Plymouth from a
total tribal membership scattered from the Cape and Islands to the
Providence River, as must have been done if the entire population was only
three hundred; and it is not probable that Massasoit would leave his women
and children totally unguarded in the presence of the none too friendly
Narragansetts across the river, who according to some historians had in
comparatively recent years taken advantage of his reduced power to wage
war upon him, and had wrested from him his beautiful island of Aquidnick.
The distance from Sowams to Plymouth by the old Indian trail is said by
early writers to have been forty miles, and the three days, at least,
required for the journey out and back, and for the conference,
would be a long time to leave his village unguarded if the Narragansetts
had happened to make a raid at that time. What probably happened was this.
Starting out on an expedition the outcome of which was problematical,
Massasoit most likely took the "panieses," or men of valor, of the three
villages already mentioned. These would undoubtedly be the most vigorous
and active of the men who formed the war council, and, at the same time,
were the warriors who followed him and were under his immediate command
when on the war path, the warriors of the other tribes of the federation
being under the immediate command of their sachems. If this theory is
correct, it lends color to the inference that the three hundred comprised
simply the population of Sowams, or the warriors of Pokanoket; and it may
well be that the writers who have placed this estimate on the numerical
strength of the Wampanoags, taking into account the well known fact that
every place of considerable importance had its sub-sachem or sagamore, may
have looked upon the people of Sowams, or possibly of Sowams and the
territory immediately surrounding it, as all there was of the true
Wampanoags; but I am inclined to believe that this name is simply the
appelation of a confederacy of which the Pokanokets was the dominant
tribe, and which was held together in part by the strength of that tribe,
and in part by the necessity of combining to prevent the inroads of
invading enemies. There undoubtedly also existed some closer bond of
relationship, closer family ties perhaps, among most of the federated
tribes than between them and other branches of the great Algonquin
family, or in other words a true Wampanoag Nation with subject tribes.
There is no evidence of a single tribe of this name, unless it was another
name for the Pokanokets. There is another possibility that should not be
overlooked in this connection, and that is that Massasoit may have started
out with less than the sixty with whom he arrived at Plymouth and
augmented his force on the way, although it is almost certain that he did
not draw from the Pocassets, because there is very good reason for
supposing that Corbitant, their sachem, was not in sympathy with
Massasoit's design to cultivate the friendship of the English, and it is
equally certain that Corbitant was a chief of such importance that his
presence would have been noted, had he been of the party. This suggestion
is advanced as a remote possibility, but that it is hardly more than that
is evidenced by the fact that Samoset spoke of Massasoit as having sixty
warriors under him and that was the number that appeared with him.
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Massasoit of the Wampanoags
Massasoit of the Wampanoags
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