Reference Documents — File 23-0360

"The Best Title That Indians Can Claime": Native Agency and Consent in the Transferal of Penacook-Pawtucket Land in the Seventeenth Century Author(s): Peter S. Leavenworth Source: The New England Quarterly , Jun., 1999, Vol. 72, No. 2 (Jun., 1999), pp. 275-300 Published by: The New England Quarterly, Inc. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/366874 REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/366874?seq=1&cid=pdf- reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email removed]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms The New England Quarterly, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The New England Quarterly This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

"The Best Title That Indians Can Claime": Native Agency and Consent in the Transferal of Penacook-Pawtucket Land in the Seventeenth Century PETER S. LEAVENWORTH ON an early September morning in 1675, a mately one hundred Massachusetts vol order of Captain Samuel Mosely approache winter village of Wonalancet, sachem of th At the outbreak of King Philip's War in south earlier that year, Wonalancet and his follow from their summer habitation on the Merrim Falls (near Lowell, Massachusetts), to Pena the present location of Concord, New Hamp maintain a precarious neutrality in the conflic envoys from the warring Nipmucs of central tempted to persuade the Penacooks to join in uprising of southern New England. When Ind cated in times of tension, the English genera move as a prelude to hostilities, and so Mas thorities sent messengers to entreat the Pena their homes on the lower Merrimack. When W to heed the Bay magistrates, Moseley's force Indian scouts had alerted the village to M and the Penacooks withdrew to the surrou hills, where they watched the English set fir and destroy their winter stocks of corn an alancet barely restrained his warriors from a rauding soldiers, but having done so, he th in maintaining peaceful relations with the En the war. Mosely's unauthorized attack was 275 This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

276 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY sured by Massachusetts authorities, and apologies were Wonalancet with the hope that he would return the Pena to Massachusetts. Instead, they moved further north to among the headwaters of the Connecticut River, where h averted famine.I This incident represented the first forcible, armed inc into the northern Penacook heartland. After fifty years but unrelenting encroachment onto lands of the lower mack family bands, the English accelerated their efforts King Philip's War and its aftermath. When Wonalan turned to his corn fields near Pawtucket in the spring o he found them already planted by English farmers, desp war that raged around them. Within ten years of Mosely Wonalancet and other Penacook-Pawtucket leaders would sell the entire Merrimack Valley to English speculators. The violence and desolation visited on both sides in the cause of the war created dislocation and social turmoil for years to fol- low. However, the loss of territory was permanent for Indians and had been accomplished much more often at the point of a pen than of a sword. The fifty years prior to Mosely's raid had witnessed a complex evolution in land transferal, an intercul- tural Gordian's knot that the abrupt confiscations of war had brutally severed. The movement of Indian land to English ownership in seven- teenth-century New England has often been referred to as dis- possession. The term is accurate insofar as it identifies the process by which natives were inexorably displaced from their customary uses of the land, rights many English contempo- raries acknowledged only as they purchased them. Disposses- sion, however, carries connotations of passivity; it grants the ex- ercise of will and free choice only to the dispossessor. If we depict Indians simply as victims, though, we fail to take account of those instances when they successfully maintained their livelihood and self-identity in the face of cultural assault. One such instance centers on the Penacook-Pawtucket Indians as 'Daniel Gookin, "An Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Chris- tian Indians in New England" (1677), in Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. 2 (1836; reprinted, New York: Arno Press, 1972), PP. 462-65. This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET LAND 277 observed through the deeds of their land transactions 1630os to the 169os.2 The Penacook-Pawtuckets were a culturally homogen ship network centered on the Merrimack and P Rivers. Their principal sachem in the seventeenth cen Passaconaway, until approximately 1665, when he ceeded by his son Wonalancet, who held the position late 1670s. Their group intermarried with bands around Chelmsford and Salem, Massachusetts. Pass and Wonalancet's authority in family band territor knowledged not only in the upper Merrimack Val modem Nashua) but in the lower valley and seacoa Evidence in deeds confirms the familial interconnecte these bands and their territories deep on either s Merrimack River, from its mouth to Lake Winnipesau cultural and political cohesiveness disintegrated by the seventeenth century.3 2My research draws on a database of over 1 o deeds culled from prov and county deed registries in northeastern Massachusetts, southern New and southeastern Maine. 3Passaconaway was a tribal shaman, or powwah, as well as a sachem who com- manded great respect among a loosely allied group of Western Abenaki bands in north- eastern Massachusetts, southeastern New Hampshire and southwestern Maine. The Penacooks were both a western Abenaki band located at Penacook (Concord, N.H.) and Namoskeag (Manchester, N.H.) and an informal confederation of neighboring groups. The band's tributary to the Penacooks included groups at Agawam (Ipswich, Mass.), Pawtucket (later Wamesit, at Lowell), Nashua (Tyngsboro, Mass.-Nashua, N.H.), Souhegonock (Merrimack-Amherst, N.H.), and Winnipesauke (Laconia, N.H.). In addition, bands at Squamscott (Exeter, N.H.), the Piscataqua (Dover, N.H.), and Agamintes (York, Me.) paid allegiance to the Penacooks. The larger Penacook confederation is usually divided between the lower Merrimack Pawtuckets (approximately to the Nashua River) and the upper Merrimack Penacooks. The upper Merrimack Indians were culturally tied to other Western Abenakis who in- cluded the Sokoki and Cowasucks of the Connecticut River Valley, the Missisquois on the eastern shore of Lake Champlain, the Pigwackets on the upper Saco River, and the Ossipees near Ossipee Lake in New Hampshire. The Western Abenakis were usually on good terms with the Eastern Abenakis of central and eastern Maine-the Canibas (Kennebec Valley), the Penobscots, and the Passamaquoddys. The Abenakis were hereditary enemies of the Maquas or Mohawks in New York and the Tarratines or Mic- macs in New Brunswick. The Penacooks in particular were generally friendly with the southern New England Algonquins with whom they shared linguistic understanding This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

278 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY English legal precedent and common law remained a influence in the Puritans' errand into the wilderness eve they deviated from, or reacted against, its specific form old country. English buyers of land, especially later in t enteenth century, craved legitimacy for their peculiarly can practices, and developments in New England jur dence that addressed Indian land ownership were responses to evolving circumstances within the Engli munity. Even as the settlers plainly viewed Indian pr rights as in a distinct category, they made efforts to ex the natives the full range of legal options connected t pean property ownership. These included lines of inhe widows' dower, rights of trespass for hunting on un land, and usufruct limited to specific uses such as f gathering, crop planting, timber harvesting, or fishin though the English recognized these rights only to secur own protection from conflicting claims, the act of enteri deeds with the Indians had the effect of honoring their c Many of the rights had similar forms in traditional India not the least of which was inheritability, and natives easi the transition to realizing their entitlements within the system. Legal imperatives thus provided two closely related reasons for seeking Indian consent: social custom and protection from challenges to one's title. A third motivation, especially in the crucial decade between King Philip's War and King William's War, initiated in 1689, was fear of violent retaliation. Ignoring Indian consent could have serious repercussions. During King Philip's and King William's War, Indians often had territorial associations with the settlements they attacked, associations most whites overlooked. For example, in 1686, Indian trader Peter Coffin of Dover, New Hampshire, purchased a large tract and a larger horticultural dimension to their hunter-gatherer diet than other Abenakis. For the Penacook as a transitional group between southern New England Algonquins and the northeastern Abenakis, see Bert Salwen, "Indians of Southern New England and Long Island: Early Period," and Gordon M. Day, "Western Abenaki," in The Hand- book of North American Indians, vol. 15, ed. Bruce Trigger (Washington, D.C.: Smith- sonian Institute Press, 1978), pp. 160-76, 148-59. This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET LAND 279 for ?7 from the noted warrior Hoophood, or Wah years later, after the outbreak of King William's W hood, whom Cotton Mather called "that bloody ty turned repeatedly to his lands in the Piscataqua region ing Salmon Falls and farms in the Newington-Greenla In the earliest period of contact, Indians believed th share usufruct privileges with the scattered whit Sachems living close to English settlements signed documents placing huge tracts of northern New En under nominal English control. In 1644, Passaconaw convinced that he should subject himself to Massach thority, as other tribal leaders living much closer to En tlements had done earlier the same year. The Pawtucket leaders clearly did not perceive these trans the same terms as their English originators, and so th lations" should not be seen as definitive. The upper continued their migratory habits, maintained or c forts for defense, and often presented the English wi tance just short of open defiance. The lower Pawtuckets' and Massachusetts' circumstances were somewhat different from those of the upper Penacook. After having their populations decimated by as much as 90 to 95 percent in the unidentified coastal plague of 1616-2o and the smallpox pandemic of 1633-34, the lower Merrimack bands were in no position to assert themselves in the face of the 1630os massive English immigrations into the Bay Colony. The natives' tribal lands were largely unoccupied, and the survivors became "settlement" Indians within a decade.s Passaconaway's Pena- 4Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), ed. Kenneth B. Murdock (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), book 7, p. 73; Jeremy Belknap, History of New Hampshire (1831; reprinted, Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1992), p. 133. sFor detailed information on early Northeastern Indian epidemiology, see Salwen, "Indians of Southern New England," p. 169, and Dean R. Snow and Kim M. Lam- phear, "European Contact and Indian Depopulation in the Northeast: The Timing of the First Epidemics," Ethnohistory 35 (1988): 15-33. For a tentative identification of the early contact period plague as hepatitis virus, see Arthur and Bruce Spiess, "New England Pandemic of 1616-1622: Cause and Archeological Implication," Man in the Northeast 34 (1987): 71-83; and S. F. Cook, "The Significance of Disease in the Extinc- tion of the New England Indians," Human Biology 45 (1973): 485-508. For a viewpoint that emphasizes native reactions to epidemic sickness as opposed to purely genetic fac- This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

280 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY cooks weathered the later smallpox epidemic of 1634 a able to maintain physical distance and relative cultura omy for several decades. This distance proved crucia number of tribes as they struggled to recover demograp from these initial epidemics.6 Because the recent epidemics had depopulated large of Penacook-Pawtucket territory, particularly on th Merrimack, developing powerful new friendships wa dent policy. Under those conditions, the English wer times welcomed as neighbors. Micmac raids from th Brunswick area on coastal areas of Maine and northern M chusetts coincided with the 1616-20o plague, a conver external forces that may have convinced interior ban English-inhabited coastal lands served as ideal buffe Soon after Micmacs attacked villages in the seacoast Narragansetts briefly occupied Massachusett hunting ter Tribes decimated by disease were prey to unaffected nei and so English firepower became a valuable tool to be lated for self-protection in times of need. Massachusett Chickatawbut cleverly orchestrated one such defensive m ver in the 1620os. When a large group of Narragansetts into his hunting territory, Chickatawbut informed the outpost at Wessagusset that they intended mischief Englishmen armed themselves, posted guards, and d armor, the Machiavellian sachem confided to the Narrag that the English were about to attack them. The Narraga soon departed.7 The benefits Indians realized from land sales were g more tangible in the initial period, with the earli veyances usually paid in trade goods and cloth. Depo tors, see A. W. Crosby, "Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aborigina tion in America," William and Mary Quarterly 23 (1976): 289-99. For a cont observation of the post-plague condition of Massachusetts tribes, see Thoma New English Canaan (1639; reprinted, New York: American Library Associat pp. 18-19. 6Peter Thomas, "The Fur Trade, Indian Land, and the Need to Define Adequate 'Environmental' Parameters," Ethnohistory 28 (1981): 375. 7Morton, New English Canaan, pp. 43-47. This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET LAND 281 taken in 1684 from four aged men, two In glishmen, recalled the circumstances of th Massachusetts, in 1636. The Indians, hea sachem Tohattowan, received hatchets, ho cloth, shirts, and a parcel of wompumpeag powwow and second husband to Tohattow cotton suit, linen band, hat, shoes, stockin The white deponents testified simply that th occurred. Jethro, a Christian Indian of Na that "after the sd bargaine was concluded [In Willard, poynting to the four quarters of that they had bought three miles from th North and South." Jehojakin, the other na that at the ceremony's conclusion, the Indi selves satisfied and told the Englishmen they The recorded observations convey two very standings of what had transpired. The white believed they had purchased thirty-six sq even though no deed had been executed an Indians almost certainly lacked any concept o The sellers' response is significant: after r goods, which they undoubtedly considered ritual of greeting, the Indians announced on were cordially received. They did not fully u sent to, Willard's impromptu surveying met In the period of initial contact, Indians ac tion of having no fixed habitation and no co ership. This erroneous view persisted amo cause it served the interests of legal-minded Winthrop and John Cotton in codifying an ab territorial rights.9 The original miscommuni lasted no more than a few years, however. St 8Deposition, Northern Middlesex County Registry of D p. 74, Lawrence, Mass. 9For example, when the heirs of George No-Nose were sel Merrimack, his former living situation was referred to as "som & Sometimes at or about Chelmsford ... Sometimes here & So ceased" (Southern Essex County Registry of Deeds, book 1, This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

282 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY tives understood that English purchase did not accom cooperative occupation, chroniclers continued to depi as naive. The misrepresentation was perhaps also perpetuated by a failure of imagination on the part of the English. Because Indi- ans privileged usufruct rights over habitation, the English as- sumed that they did not understand the concept of private property. A careful reading of provisions reserving Indians' rights to fishing, fowling, hunting, and planting, however, demonstrates that Indians realized that they could no longer occupy the tracts they had sold (and perhaps never had) even though they still could use certain areas for specific purposes, especially food procurement, a right recognized and, moreover, accepted by whites. Indeed, some unscrupulous English buyers used their understanding of how Indians valued their land to convince Indian proprietors of how little they had to lose by selling it. The continuation of usufruct rights was, therefore, a critical condition of Indian dispossession.'o Limitations to deeds were taken seriously by both parties. In 1646, the sagamore of Berwick, Maine, Mr. Rowls, sold to Humphrey Chadbourne land and the rights to a fishing weir in the Piscataqua River except "so much small Alewives to Fish Ground as I ... shall have occasion to make use of for Planting ... and likewise Fish for to Eat.... from Time to Time for- ever."" Deeds from the 1680s reveal an interesting shift in usufruct clauses from securing traditional subsistence activities to experimenting with English modes of food production. For instance, in 1681 Sarah Onnamug (Ossamug in other deeds) sold William Auger sixty-five acres for ?60 in her original terri- tory of '"Whipsuffrage" (near Marlborough) after she had re- moved to the Indian town at Wamesit. Twenty pounds of the 10John Winthrop's doctrine of vacuum domicilium stated that New England's natives had "natural" rights only to land which they cultivated. The deeds bear witness that this was precisely the land English settlers most prized. See David Grayson Allen, "Vacuum Domicilium: The Social and Cultural Landscape of Seventeenth-Century New En- gland," in New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1982), p. 1. I"York County Registry of Deeds, book i, p. 6, York, Maine. This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET LAND 283 payment was to be made in corn figured at 2s. bushel (approximately 165 bushels). By 1685, S moved to the Indian town of Natick where, with Joshua, Samuel, and Amos, she was given permissio General Court to alienate up to fifty acres of "upland to house carpenter Thomas Sawin "for his Encourag build a Corn Mill ... in our Towne." Sarah and her only five acres to Sawin, but other Natick leaders forty acres for ?1o to ensure that a mill would be bui nient for them.'"12 The Indians also adjusted the usufruct rights of th for their own advantage. In 1655, Thomas Henchman, collector of Indian lands, purchased deeded rights t wood, timber, and free feed for his cattle throughout town of Wamesit. By 1686, the Indians wanted to these infringements. In exchange for a "slip" of la outright, Henchman was required to quit-claim his rights. Indians could easily engage in this formal quid and deeded exceptional uses were not necessarily a confusion to either Indians or settlers at the time of th tion.13 Similar descriptions of specific uses were often emp tween whites to assure continuation of rights.14 Precis ing acceptable use in large tracts of land held in com not an unfamiliar practice for the English. English com traditionally allowed access to certain unfenced land f ing and other public uses. Thus, when Indian-white ag reserved hunting and fowling rights in forests outs closed land, the deeds were connecting Indian subsis terns with English precedent. By categorizing India glish land in terms of "waste ground" and "inclosures, '2Southern Middlesex County Registry, book 8, pp. 69 and 321, and bo Cambridge, Mass. 13Middlesex County Registry of Deeds, book to, p. 402, Cambridge, M 14See, for example, a 1652 petition from Valentine Hill and Richard W leaders from Dover, New Hampshire, to the Massachusetts General C Hampshire Provincial Papers, vol. 1, ed. Nathaniel Bouton (Concord, p. 202. This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

284 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY England proprietors were self-consciously drawing par with the English estates and forests they hoped to replicate themselves in New England.'s Deeded reservation of usuf clauses, which was not exclusively confined to Indian land u represented the permeability of seventeenth-century conce of trespass. The boundaries between cultures were consciously porous and became increasingly so with conti contact. Cultural adaptation progressed each time natives initiated an appropriation of things European for their own perceived ben- efit. Some coastal bands launched this process as soon as Euro pean fishing fleets landed in the New World, well before th turn of the seventeenth century, and so New England tribe had long known about the trade goods Europeans had to offer. Of course, sustained settlement intensified the transformative potential for both cultures. This new era marked a process o Penacook-Pawtucket reappraisal of English association and re vision of their resources, including the land itself. Especiall after the devastating epidemics of the early seventeenth cen tury, both Indians and whites in New England demonstrated willingness to alter cultural norms to achieve a mutually benefi cial accommodation. Place names offer one telling example. The 1664 deed of James Paquamehood of Tollend in Dove to James Rawlings of Long Reach on the Piscataqua River representative. It describes a tract of land bounded by thre ponds and three hills, all referenced by their Indian names. The name of the third hill was written one way, crossed out, then re written, which conjures images of a dutiful scribe phonetically committing James Paquamehood's designation to English. Th English were willing to have land described in native terms and 15Moors and wasteland in England offered customary public rights to fishing, pas turage, peat digging, and firewood collecting since the Middle Ages. These common law traditions had legal designations such as "husbote and haybote" for the privilege o collecting firewood (see Michael Williams, The Draining of the Somerset Levels [Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970], pp. 26-34). Richard Wharton, an ambitiou speculator in huge tracts in Maine and Rhode Island, repeatedly petitioned the Lord of Trade for manorial rights and privileges in the 168os (see Theodore Lewis, "Land Speculation and the Dudley Council of 1686," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser. 2 (1974): 262. This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET LAND 285 to have Indians thus define the extent of the sale so tha tual understanding of the agreement could be assur words of Thomas Morton, "[T]his is commonly seen nations traffique together, the one indevouring to un the others meaning makes the both many times speak language, as is approoved by the Natives of New through the coveteous desire they have, to commerce nation, and wee with them."'6 Such accommodatio have been particularly useful among more remo bands, like the Penacooks. Later, when English sur more common, both natural features and Indian c frameworks were largely ignored.17 Indians' proprietary interests in specific pieces of la course, understood in all deeds, but occasionally they explicit. A number of deeds refer to the grantor's land amoreship," and many have attached depositions from or band members testifying that the land in question associated with the grantor's family "time out of min identification of certain areas with specific family ba 16Deed of John Paquamehood, Rockingham County Registry of De p. iiia (1665), Brentwood, N.H.; Morton, New English Canaan, p. 17. 17David Grayson Allen's contention that Indian names were used " served merely as boundary points" ('Vacuum Domicilium," pp. 1-2) criti states the value of a mutual understanding of boundaries as well as a com dian system of toponomy bequeathed to the English. For example, the In Okonnokomesit, also known as Agogausit or Wixsuffrag, retained the En cization "Whipsuffrage" for decades. In wilderness areas, if the English have named a region on their own, it was often connected in legal documen dian nomenclature. As late as 1701, a tract was sold in present day Wilm "Nenasaawa attawattocke commonly called by the English the Land of N of Nod was the wilderness to which Cain was banished. See Northern M istry of Deeds, book 9, P. 83. I8For example, the 1683 deed of Bagesson, alias Joseph Trask, transfers half by ten-mile tract on the lower Souhegan River (near modem Amh trader Jonathan Tyng of Dunstable. The document identifies Bagesson a of Metacompoyde sachem or sagamore, who was the ancient inhabitant of the said tract." Some of the bounds of this tract are pine trees marked w See Southern Middlesex County Registry of Deeds, book 9, pp. 23, 25. W map "The South part of New-England, as it is Planted this yeare, 1634," in his New England's Prospect, shows a "Sagamore Mattacomen" located (modem Concord, N.H.) while "Passaconowa Sagamore" is located furt the Merrimack at Amoskeag (modem Manchester, N.H.). This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

286 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY sents trap lines or hunting territories that were specifica cated by sachems out of tribal lands.19 Some Indians were careful about reserving contingent to property considered expendable at the time of sale. In deed of Wadononamin, the sagamore retained use of " (if Need be) of convenient planting land for & during m ural life." Clearly Wadononamin would not have sacrifice valuable land-previously cleared alluvial plains or int the customary growing areas of the riverine Abnakis-un had had other planting grounds, habitations, and huntin tory available to him elsewhere. The privileges of huntin fishing are noticeably absent from the deed. As with Paq hood's deed, the bounds of the conveyed tract are pri conceived in the mutually understandable terms of natur tures, for example, "being a Neck of Land." European miles are loosely superimposed, but without survey refe they have far less meaning to either party than the river aries. The phrase "for & during my natural life" may that Wadononamin had few, if any, family member whom to endow a continuation of use.20 By the 165os Indians were no longer willing to acce ment in trade goods. With few exceptions, most land sal mention price thereafter cite cash in hand. Payment in c an economy where hard currency was prized, offered fl '9There has been some disagreement among anthropologists about the which the family hunting band as the basic unit of Abenaki social organiza dated European contact. The general consensus is that its previously less fo struction may have been crystallized by the accelerated trapping brought ab European fur trade. The sedentary beaver had long been a dietary staple of ern hunting tribes. Family hunting bands established proprietary trap l marked by family totems on trees near beaver habitations. Larger hunting rounding the trap lines were similarly recognized as belonging to extended fam "time out of mind" for procuring deer, moose, bear, and other animal food excellent survey of the debate among anthropologists is found in Dean Sno banaki 'Family Hunting Territories,'" American Anthropologist 70 (1968): 11 20As Emerson Baker has noted in Indian deed activity on the Maine coast same period, similar phrasing was used by Indians known to be the last of th band ("'A Scratch with a Bear's Paw': Anglo-Indian Land Deeds in Early Main nohistory 36 [1989]: 242-43). For Wadononamin's deed, see Rockingham Cou istry of Deeds, book 3, p. 12a. This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET LAND 287 for further negotiation with whites. The English had content using inexpensive trade goods as currency, bu Indians grew adept at the practice of trading. Thom Maine proprietor Sir Ferdinando Gorges's kinsman sentative at York in the early 1640s, lamented that tr the Indians was "utterly lost, the Indians understa value of things as well as the English."21 This underst value included real estate. The fur trade introduced bargaining strategies t emerged in land deals. Leading the way into Indian ter the Merrimack Valley, fur traders often became large ers and proprietors in multiple townships. In 165 Willard, William Brenton, and Thomas Henchman p purchase a license issued by the Massachusetts Gen for a fur-trading franchise on the Merrimack River. men knew something of the native language, acknowl customs of the Indians, and sometimes befriended 1683, Peter Jethro gave land to trader Jonathan Tyng stable, "with whom I do now inhabitt & to whom I ack myself very much obliged, having often times satisfy my wants & paid many of my debts." Peter also ment neither he nor his sister was likely to have children ( gests they were elderly and/or single), a contributing his decision to give Tyng thirty-six square miles. Tyng vided Wonalancet with food and shelter when, in 169os, the aged sachem returned from Canada to h lands, where he wanted to die. Tradition asserts t alancet was buried in the Tyng family plot, which im friendship and regard were mutual.22 21Quoted by Emerson Baker, in "The World of Thomas Gorges," in A ginnings, ed. Baker et al. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 22For Massachusetts truckhouse licensing, see Ronald Oliver MacF Massachusetts Bay Truck-House in Diplomacy with the Indians," New En terly 9 (1938): 48-65. For Peter Jethro's deed, see Southern Middlese Deeds, book 8, p. 400. For Wonalancet's death and Tyng's petition for r of expenses, see Massachusetts Archives 30:426. This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

288 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY In a 166o New Hampshire deed, Wadononamin, "Saga Wahsucke and Piscataqua," gave trader Edward Hilton, of one of New Hampshire's earliest traders, approxima miles square in consideration "for the love I beare to men & especially unto Edward Hilton of Piscataqua." " love I bear" is boilerplate language in the seventeenth for establishing the terms of inheritability or sale in tran real estate within families, particularly from parents to c While our own jaded inclinations might suggest that Hilt hoodwinked the sachem, the noteworthy phrase was not among extra-familial, inter-racial deeds. Moreover, W namin appeared in court nine years later to confirm t and had there been any problems with the original agree they would surely have surfaced then.23 On the other hand, John Cromwell's trading post b Merrimack, New Hampshire, in 1665 was later burned owner banished when Indians decided he had cheated them. The trading post established at Penacook sometime before 1668 by Richard Waldron, Sr., of Dover, New Hampshire, in partnership with Peter Coffin, was plagued by problems.24 An intrusive profiteer, Waldron became a focal point for Indian dissatisfaction, and at the outbreak of King William's War, he was singled out to die in the 1689 raid on Dover. Tradition as- serts that the Penacook raiders "crossed out" their accounts on Major Waldron's body.25 European trade goods, some of which replaced traditional native implements, were part of the fabric of everyday native life. At first Indians considered non-essential land an acceptable 23 "For the love I bear .. ." was used in Peter Jethro's deed to Tyng and in 1712 by Simon Negro of Billerica, who left his real and personal estate to the children of his master (Northern Middlesex Registry of Deeds, book 1, p. 509). 24For John Cromwell, see Charles J. Fox, History of the Old Township of Dunstable (Nashua, N.H., 1846), p. 18. In 1668, the sale of a large quantity of illegal rum to the Penacooks was followed by the murder of an Englishman at the truckhouse, resulting in an official inquest from Boston. For Waldron's petition and the murder investigation, see Penacook Papers, New Hampshire Historical Society Collections, vol. 3 (Concord, N.H., 1827), pp. 212-13. 25John Frederick Martin, Profits in the Wilderness (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 19-20o, 74-75. For the circumstances of Waldron's death, see Belknap, History of New Hampshire, p. 127. This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET LAND 289 variation on customary exchange. The Penacook-Pa along the lower Merrimack eventually turned to lan maintain their consumption levels of European goods values declined in the late 1650s. This consumer act largely supported by traders offering liberal credit, a common among the English.26 While Francis Jennings cites indebtedness as one of tactics of whites to obtain Indian land, Penacook-P deeds betray little of the subterfuge Jennings fo where.27 Until the fur trade declined late in the 1650 creditors preferred to be paid in furs, not land Peckanamquit, or Ned Indian, mortgaged all his Andover "between ye lands of his Unkle William & his Humphreys" for ?30 to Henry Bartholmew of Salem dition of the indenture was as follows: if Peckanamqu shall pay ... in Merchantable beaver unto ye sd Henery B ... ye full sum of thirty pounds at or before ye tenth of ye next ensueing ... then this obligation to be void or else to s power force and vertue and ye land to be valued for payme much of ye said sume as it shall be valued at.28 26Daniel Vickers has observed the same process at work during the sa riod in native land sales on Nantucket. "Because their numbers had b since the first European contacts at the beginning of the century, they were willing enough by 166o to sell the rights to settle on what they saw a surplus land" ("The First Whalemen of Nantucket," in After King Phili ence and Persistence in Indian New England, ed. Colin G. Calloway [H University Press of New England, 19971, p. 99). Peter Thomas's analys western Massachusetts along the Connecticut River reveals that inter-tr the 166os as well as overtrapping depressed the fur trade. Indians there Penacook-Pawtuckets along the lower Merrimack and the Penobscots in M ally turned to land sales to maintain consumption levels of European go Trade, Indian Land and 'Environmental' Parameters," pp. 364-77). 27Jennings lists several methods used by early settlers to obtain Indian l some show of legality. These include allowing livestock to forage into I forcing the Indians either to move or illegally kill the livestock; getting cated and having them agree to and sign deeds they could not read anyway; from an individual without the approval of recognized tribal authority; i for infractions of English law with lands forfeit if unpaid; and, finally, sim ing violence (The Invasion of America [New York: W. W. Norton pp. 144-46). 2SEmphasis added; Peckanamquit evidently did not meet the deadline a gage was enforced (Southern Essex County Registry of Deeds, book io, p This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

290 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Since Ned's land was an eight-mile square, it appea Bartholmew did not believe that sixty-four square m worth the full ?30. "Wilderness" land held lower value fo tlers, who preferred improved and demarcated tracts clo established villages. If the merchant Bartholmew was ult hoping to obtain Peckanamquit's land, he would not have him such ample opportunity to repay him in furs, partic a period when the fur trade was at its peak and pelts we able.29 Alienation of land through debt is rarely mentioned sp cally in the extant records of this area, although indebte may well have played a role that remains unrecorded. indebtedness was the motivating factor in one of the land transactions in the Merrimack Valley. In the lat Nanamocomuck, older brother of Wonalancet, was imp in Boston for a debt of ?45 due an Englishman. To ob brother's release, Wonalancet sold his summer habita the lower Merrimack near Lowell, an island called Wic Nanamocomuck fled to the safety of the upper Androsco where he apparently died soon after. Meanwhile, Won received a grant from the Massachusetts General Co Chelmsford but continued to plant on the island with pe sion of the new owner. In 1665, he successfully petitio General Court to grant the white owner of Wickasa acres nearby so that he might regain title to his land. It usual for an Indian to be able to buy back his land, bu alancet was making an offer the white owner couldn't 500 acres for 6o--an offer that once again illustrates willingness to take extraordinary measures to maintain c tions to particular tracts of land.30 The medieval English practice of transferring land " 29David T. Konig, Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts: Essex Count 1692 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), chap. 2, "Real Litigation," esp. p. 60, where Konig observes that the most valuable land in mid Massachusetts was "the largest, choicest, and already cleared tracts," where probate records indicate that 'wilderness' land ... was of relatively low value. 30Fox, History of Dunstable, p. 21; Kimball Webster, History of Hudson ter, N.H., 1913), PP. 36-38. This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET LAND 291 and twig," as it is represented in seventeenth-centu chusetts deeds, reflects another effort by two cultures for common ground. By the terms of this vernac agreement, the interested parties met for a brief cerem ing which the seller handed the buyer a clump of stick from the land being sold. Both the simplicity of of land conveyance and its ritualistic predication on must have appealed to English and Indian alike. In the agreement also required a great deal of trust. Turf was certainly used more frequently than we can d since the written record became a competing and c method of transfer only by the late 1650s. Dispensing with the native "encumbrance" to land one element in this unique construction of legitim Thomas Konig has demonstrated that "[i]n reality, use was characterized by inexactness in distribution, i to recording, and neglect of the most basic statutor ments of occupancy and fencing."31 In the imperfectl tored free-for-all that took place in the coastal tow early decades of colonization, dissatisfaction with or c over granted lands was often settled by simply granti plots nearby. Frequently, the original lots were not ac linquished in writing, and deeds went unrecorded f In fact, many deeds were drawn up years after a trans only when the tract was to be resold. In the period 1630 and 1650, many New England farmers held l used rarely, if at all. Joint usufruct of outlying tracts mon, and squatting was not only accepted but sanc law. According to a Massachusetts statute of 1657, could be confirmed by an undisputed five-year term o tion. In 1672, this ruling was extended to include la granted by a town or the General Court to someone ot 31David T. Konig, "Community Custom and the Common Law: Socia the Development of Land Law in Seventeenth-Century Massachusett Journal of Legal History 18 (1974): 137-38. Charles Hilkey had comment nial conceptions of property rights were largely English, but when it came land there were wide departures from the custom and law of the mo (Legal Development in Colonial Massachusetts, 163o-1686 [New York: 1967], p. 123). This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

292 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY the occupier. Some deeds contain clauses that simply any previous grant without even specifying its location. stance, in 1657 the Court confirmed an earlier gran acres "in any place not previously granted by this Co Cambridge printer Stephen Day to discharge a debt Another debt was cleared by granting Day 20 acres of m from the sagamore of Nashoway "where he can find it f former graunts." In 1664, Day purchased a parcel nea apall measuring two miles square from sachems Ato yake, Muttahanitt, and David Sagamore. No one, in th records at least, seemed to notice that Day's land me over eight times what had been granted him.32 Not only did aspects of early New England land use dict basic tenets of English common law, but the county systems were organized to enforce settlements honor variations. Essex, Middlesex, and old Norfolk country cour quently made ad hoc decisions based on equity rather tha mon law in areas concerning division of commons, leg fencing, and determinations of title without deeds. In 16 ward Colcord of Hampton, New Hampshire, brought against Nathaniel Boulter and Francis Page. The defendan been cutting grass on a meadow of Colcord's for twelve teen years. When Colcord attempted to press his rights, was rejected. The absence of any proof of title or grant f ther plaintiff or defendants forced the courts to im Straying into areas of jurisprudence unusual in Englan found for the defendants based on uncontested occupatio Vague delineations of Indian purchases and prices an hazard recording thus reflects customary English-Am practice and does not necessarily denote a discriminatory directed against natives. While Indians did occasionall the same tract to different white purchasers, either thro norance of prior sale or overlapping zones of perceived p 32Hilkey, Legal Development in Massachusetts, pp. 123-27; Isaiah Thomas tory of Printing in America, ed. Marcus A. McCorison (Barre, Mass.: Impri 1970), p. 52; deed from Southern Middlesex County Registry of Deeds, book For the series of other Massachusetts grants in Dunstable and along the So Amherst, see Fox, History of Dunstable, pp. 10-12. 33Konig, "Community Custom and the Common Law," pp. 155, 165-67, 1 This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET LAND 293 TABLE 1 CHANGE IN DELAY BETWEEN SIGNING AND RECORDING PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET DEEDS 30 22 o -- 111 10 1630 1640 1650 166o 1670 168o 16go 1700 1710 1720 Decade *All tables are compiled from a database of deeds culled from provincial records and county deed registries in northeastern Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and southeastern Maine. sion, they were not unaware of English significations of tenure. Moreover, white settlers frequently indulged in similar habits among themselves, through accident or design. After 166o, important shifts in Massachusetts' political and economic context drew increased attention to uniformly obtain- ing and promptly recording all land transactions, Indian deeds in particular (see table 1). Since the mid-1650s, the availability of good, tillable land was becoming more scarce in the established towns of northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. The former habit of resolving land disputes by simply granting nearby tracts to the aggrieved was no longer an option, and com- mons were being subdivided and fenced by original proprietors or their heirs. By the early 1670s, not only were more transac- tions being recorded, but litigation mounted over disputed titles. Old deeds retrieved from household strongboxes, when they ex- isted at all, joined recently fabricated forgeries in a stream of This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

294 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY documentary proof flowing into local courts.34 The 1672 Edward Colcord described above is significant for its tim well as the legal opinion concluding it. The increasingly formalized and extended use of the w word in land deals was a significant source of the Indian isfaction that led to King Philip's War. Indeed, confli tribal land between Plymouth and Metacom (King Ph at the heart of his warriors' decision to make war. In th third of the seventeenth century, many of the avenues o ation between white and Indian culture started to coll dians throughout New England were beginning to rea English intolerance of native ways had become near The Penacook-Pawtuckets' initial exposure to English may have been as magical as James Axtell depicts it amo Indians living along the St. Lawrence River. There priests reported natives were initially as mesmerized ability to communicate by writing as they were by othe pean technologies. Whatever their attitude, however, knew they were complicating English title to their lands they confiscated the book of records from the town of Maine, sometime before 1700.35 An invisible, but very r that demarcated cultural toleration had been crossed English, and Indian political integrity fractured as di bands and individuals pursued separate strategies in resp Even for those not inclined to attack the English, land feral was a lens through which the Indian future co glimpsed. The will of Mr. Rowls, sachem of Newiche (Berwick, Maine) is indicative of changing sensibilitie early 1670s. He had previously signed deeds in the recording the sale of a portion of fields along the Great River and half the fishing rights to weirs at Great Falls requested that the town sell or give a tract of land to hi dren so that they would not be destitute after his de asked that the transaction be recorded as a public act 34Konig, "Community Custom and the Common Law," pp. 155, 165-67. 3asJames Axtell, "The Power of Print in the Eastern Woodlands," William Quarterly, 3d ser. 49 (1987): 300-309. Petition to the Massachusetts Gene Nathan Nelsene [sic] vs. Sheppard, 7 June 1706, Massachusetts Archives 40: This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET LAND 295 predicted that after the war, which he saw as immine would no longer be permitted the hunting, fishing, and rights reserved in so many Indian conveyances.36 Rowls's will reveals a clear understanding of the terms of intercultural accommodation in the perio 1670 and 1690. It portrays a firm native grasp of the certain white legal procedures, specifically the transce thority of the publicly recorded act, at the same time trays a deep distrust of the enforceability of routine rights that recognized Indian patterns of land use. Rowls almost surely had good cause to be suspiciou teenth-century records are largely silent about the with which Indians' usufruct rights were honored, bu cident on the Piscataqua River in the early 1670os The Associate Court of Norfolk County, which in towns between the Merrimack and the Piscataqu records the Compl[ain]t of Wahanamanet Sachem of Piscataqua mollested by Summe Englishmen in his Lawfull employmen ing in the Rivers, Coves & other places & his Cannooes t him & his people contrary to the lawes & Liberties allow Inhabitant. ... It is therefore ordered by this Court that itant ever shall mollest the sd. sachem or any of his peo lawful employment and if any shall due contrary hereunto complaint to the Associates, they are desirous to give him cording to Justice. Although the court's language appears to support I rogatives, the lack of specifics does not speak to a vig forcement of Wahanamanet's entitlements. It is po Indian fishing with traps and weirs was viewed by wh effective. The complaint was recorded before Kin War, and although the court does not appear to ha the names of Wahanamanet's persecutors, the In doubtedly remembered who they were.37 36William Hubbard, "A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in from Piscataqua to Pemiquid," cited by Baker, in "Scratch with a Bear's C 37Rockingham County (N.H.) Court Records, vol. 2, p. 9gib. This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

296 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY TABLE 2 NUMBER OF PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET DEEDS BY DECADE 70 60- 50 - 40- 30- 20- 0 1630 1640 1650 166o 1670 168o 1690 1700 1710 1720 Date of Signing A very large percentage of the entire area of the P Pawtuckets moved into English hands in the ten years King Philip's War (1675-76) and the decades of conf ated by King William's War and Queen Ann (1689-1713) (see tables 2 and 3). During the latter p war, many remote villages in Maine and western Massa were abandoned, and English settlement entered a retrenchment, not to resume until after the Peace of U 1713.38 Yet even as opportunities for peaceful adaptati coming to an end, traces of Indian prerogative can cerned, even though most of these choices involve abandoning their traditional homelands, if not their wa In the early period, Indians sold tracts they believed t 38See, for example, "Account of People Dispossessed by the War in Ma Colony," Collections of the New Hampshire Historical Society, vol. 3 (Co 1824; reprinted 1871), p. 101; Yasuhide Kawashima, Puritan Justice an (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1986), p. 87; Belknap, His Hampshire, p. 133. This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET LAND 297 TABLE 3 PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET LAND TRANSFERRED IN ACRES BY DECADE 200,000 158,162 128,276 100,00o - 82,414 69,800 54,332 28,920 1640 1650 1660 1670 1680 16go 1700 1710 1720 Date of Signing do without, and they retained well-defined areas for planting, fishing, and hunting as needed. After the defeat of King Philip's insurgents, whole villages and surrounding regions were aban- doned as Indians were forced into Indian towns organized b the English.39 Many of the transactions that appear in the reg- istries of this period as simple land transfers were actually clear ance sales as refugees sought to gain whatever they could be fore choosing among options that did not necessarily includ living in the midst of English settlers.40 390rder of the General Court, October 12, 1681: "it is ordered by this Court ... tha all Indians that belong to this jurisdiction, except prentises or covenant servants ... ar to live among . . . the goverment of the Indian rulers of Naticke, Punkapauge, o Wamesit which are places allowed by this Courte & appropriated for the Indians to liv in, where there is land sufficient to improove for many families more then are of them and if any shall refuse to comply with this order, it is refered to the selectmen of ever toune ... to send such Indian or Indians to the house of correction or prison untill h or they engage to comply with this order" (Records of the Governor and Company o the Massachusetts Bay in New England, vol. 5: 1674-86 [Boston, 1853], pp. 327-29). 40Jean O'Brien examines the continuation of Indian assertiveness in retaining con- trol of their land after King Philip's War in Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land an Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, z650-179o0, esp. chap. 3, pp. 65-go, but most of th legal maneuvering was confined to lands within these designated Indian towns. This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

298 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Teleologic assessments of historical processes can be ingrained and represent the greatest challenge to appr the contingency of events in the past. Our perspectiv loss of Indian territories in the first century of coloniza tended to collapse the development into its eventual r accurate as this overall assessment of dispossession may b perspective of the native participants over the course was an extended process must be considered. There is tion that English traders, magistrates, and speculators in ingly dictated the tenor of intercultural dialogue. H when the circumstances and context of many Penaco tucket land transactions are understood in their own more complicated picture emerges. By the mid-16oo Indian had known for years how the English used the lan acquired and how slim were the chances of whites sharin use. Most Indians well comprehended the implications land sales, but they saw their transactions as beneficial f future as well as compellingly expedient. A framework o lective defeat has been applied by historians only with t efit of hindsight.41 Appeasing Indians was a vital concern for all Englishme ing in Massachusetts who valued their investments an lives, and so the theory and ethics of formulating land p with the natives was a pressing issue of the day. Note sympathizer Roger Williams was critical of Puritans lieved they had a right to native lands, and Puritan tradit John Cotton responded with a disclaimer in his tract The Tenant, Washed and Made White in the Blood of the Lam 41Recent historiography in Native American studies has begun to emphasi finer examination of inter-societal exchange in very specific contexts. Close at legal, religious, and goverment documents has frequently revealed initial p varying duration, where Europeans and Indians coexisted on much more eve power. See, e.g., Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and in the Great Lakes Region, z65o-1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr Daniel Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Econom Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); and Colin Calloway, Daw counters: Indians and Europeans in Northern New England (Hanover, N.H.: Press of New England, 1991). This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

PENACOOK-PAWTUCKET LAND 299 [I]t was neither the Kings intendment, nor the English take possession of the Countrey by murther of the Natives, bery: but either to take possession of the voyd places of th ... or if we tooke any Lands from the Natives, it was by wa chase, and free consent.42 Cotton's appraisal of New England was binary-some owned by the natives and some land was not. But e thinly veiled declaration of manifest destiny and his zation of natives as violent, subordinate, and unchr Cotton nonetheless stresses the doctrine of native consen Indians' sale of their traditional territories constitut disease, the most crucial aspect of their contact wit settlers. Alienation of native lands was more permane vasive than any other adaptation such as converting tianity or learning English artisan skills. The variou the Penacook-Pawtuckets experienced this disruption a ent times. In general, the bands of the lower Merrima into sustained contact with settlers before the bands of the upper Merrimack, resulting in a lesser degree of autonomy and different tactics of adaptation. During the first half-century of English occupation, these Indians exercised their option to sell land they thought expendable at the time and for which they se- cured certain rights of ongoing importance. Thus, Indian land conveyances, which at the time Indians considered self-inter- ested attempts at stabilization and survival, in later years ap- peared to be signposts of eventual dispossession. As the ensuing decades of the seventeenth century brought new European im- migrants, new generations, and widespread racial tensions, the legal acknowledgment of Indian rights grew increasingly super- ficial. In the final analysis, the question of how the Penacook- Pawtuckets understood the new relationship to the land forced 42John Cotton, The Bloody Tenant, Washed and Made White in the Blood of the Lambe (London, 1647), in Roger Williams and the Massachusetts Magistrates, ed. Theodore P. Greene (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1964), pp. 8-9. Roger Williams dissented from Cotton's opinions by publishing The Bloody Tenant Yet More Bloody by Mr. Cot- ton's Efforts to Wash it in the Blood of the Lambe (see The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, vol. 2 [New York: Russell and Russell, 19631). This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

300 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY upon them resolves into a question of to what degree faced with rampant violations of previous agreement were surprised. Peter S. Leavenworth is currently working on his Ph.D. American history at the University of New Hampsh Durham and continuing research in New England American studies. This content downloaded from 192.80.65.116 on Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:16:22 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms