This booklet focuses on the land's ability to support livestock. It also shows interest in livestock grew in part from their English experience.
1. King Philip's Herds: Indians, Colonists, and the Problem of Livestock in Early New England Author(s): Virginia DeJohn Anderson Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Oct., 1994), pp. 601-624 Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2946921 . Accessed: 08/03/2011 12:04 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=omohundro. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. 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 protected]. Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The William and Mary Quarterly.
2. King Philip'sHerds: Indians, Colonists, and the Problem of Livestock in Early New England Virginia DeJohn Anderson O N a late spring day in i669, the ambitious younger son of a promi- nent Rhode Island family received a letter from the town clerk of Portsmouth. Like many of his neighbors, the young man raised livestock and followed the common practice of placing his pigs on a nearby island where they could forage safe from predators. But that was what brought him to the attention of Portsmouth's inhabitants, who ordered the clerk to reprimand him for "intrudeinge on" the-town's rights when he fer- ried his beasts to "hog-Island." The townsmen insisted that he remove "Such Swine or other Catle" as he had put there, on pain of legal action. They took the unusual step of instructing the clerk to make two copies of the letter and retain the duplicate-in effect preparing their legal case even before the recipient contested their action.1 It was by no means unusual for seventeenth-century New Englanders to find themselves in trouble with local officials, particularly when their search for gain conflicted with the rights of the community. But this case was different. We can only wonder what Metacom, whom the English called King Philip, made of the peremptory directive from the Portsmouth town clerk-for indeed it was to him, son of Massasoit and now sachem of the Wampanoags himself, that the letter was addressed. Because the records (which directed no comparable order to any English swine owner) do not mention the outcome of the dispute, we may suppose that Philip complied with the town's demand. The episode was thus brief, but it was no less Ms. Anderson is a member of the Department of History, University of Colorado, Boulder. She thanks Fred Anderson, James Axtell, Bernard Bailyn, Barbara DeWolfe, Ruth Helm, Stephen Innes, Karen Kupperman, Gloria Main, Daniel Mandell, George Phillips, Neal Salisbury,RichardWhite, and Anne Yentsch for their helpful comments. She also thanks partic- ipants at seminars held at the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society for their responses to earlier drafts of this essay. Generous support was received from a Charles Warren Center fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, and a grant-in-aid from the University of Colorado Council on Researchand CreativeWork. 1 Clarence S. Brigham, ed., The Early Recordsof the Town of Portsmouth(Providence, R. I., 1901), I49-I50. On the use of islands for grazing see Carl Bridenbaugh,Fat Mutton and Liberty of Conscience:Societyin RhodeIsland, i636-i690 (Providence, R. I., I974), i6-17. The Williamand Mary Quarterly,3d Series, Vol. LI, No. 4, October I994
3. 602 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY important for that, because it involved the man whose name would soon be associated with what was, in proportion to the populations involved, the most destructive war in American history.2 For three centuries, historians have depicted Philip in many ways-as a savage chieftain, an implacable foe of innocent Christian settlers, and a doomed victim of European aggressors-but never as a keeper of swine. Although the Hog Island episode may seem unrelated to the subsequent horrors of King Philip's War, the two events were in fact linked. Philip resorted to violence in i675 because of mounting frustrations with colonists, and no problem vexed relations between settlers and Indians more frequently in the years before the war than the control of livestock.3 English colonists imported thousands of cattle, swine, sheep, and horses (none of which is native to North America) because they considered live- stock essential to their survival, never supposing that the beasts would become objectionable to the Indians. But the animals exacerbateda host of problems related to subsistence practices, land use, property rights and, ultimately, political authority. Throughout the i66os, Philip found himself caught in the middle, trying to defend Indian rights even as he adapted to the English presence. The snub delivered by Portsmouth's inhabitants showed him the limits of English flexibility, indicating that the colonists ultimately valued their livestock more than good relations with his people. When Philip recognized that fact, he took a critical step on the path that led him from livestock keeper to war leader. Successful colonization of New England depended heavily on domestic animals. Nowhere is this better seen than in the early history of Plymouth Colony. Not until i624-four years after the Mayflower's arrival-did Edward Winslow bring from England "three heifers and a bull, the first beginning of any cattle of that kind in the land." This date, not coinciden- tally, marked the end of the Pilgrims' "starving times" as dairy products and meat began to supplement their diet. By i627, natural increase and fur- ther importations brought the Plymouth herd to at least fifteen animals, whose muscle power increased agricultural productivity.4 The leaders of Massachusetts Bay Colony, perhaps learning from Plymouth's experience, 2 Douglas Edward Leach, Flintlockand Tomahawk:New England in King Philip's War (New York,I958), 243-244; fora detailedaccountof the impactof thewaron one townsee RichardI. Melvoin, New EnglandOutpost:Warand Societyin ColonialDeerfield(New York, i989), 92-I28. 3 Historians, when they have investigated livestock at all, have generally done so from an ecological perspective; see, for instance, William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists,and the Ecologyof New England (New York, i983), and Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism:TheBiologicalExpansionof Europe,900-i900 (New York, i986). 4 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, i620-i647, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York, I952), I4I; Nathaniel Shurtleff and David Pulsifer, eds., Recordsof the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, I2 vols. (Boston, i855-i86i), XII, 9-I3. See also Darrett B. Rutman, Husbandmenof Plymouth:Farms and Villagesin the Old Colony,i620-i692 (Boston, i967), 6, I4-I5.
4. LIVESTOCK IN EARLYNEW ENGLAND 603 brought animals from the start. John Winthrop regularly noted the arrival of settlers and livestock during the i630s, often recording levels of ship- board mortality among animals as well as people. Edward Johnson esti- mated that participants in the Great Migration spent ?12,000 to transport livestock across the ocean, not counting the original cost of the animals.5 Early descriptions often focused on the land's ability to support live- stock. John Smith noted that in New England there was "grasse plenty, though very long and thicke stalked, which being neither mowne nor eaten, is very ranke, yet all their cattell like and prosper well therewith." Francis Higginson informed English friends that the "fertility of the soil is to be admiredat, as appearethin the abundanceof grassthat groweth everywhere." "It is scarce to be believed," he added, "how our kine and goats, horses, and hogs do thrive and prosper here and like well of this country." Colonists preferredto settle in areaswith ample natural forage. Salt marshes attracted settlers to Hampton, New Hampshire, and Sudbury's founders valued their town's riverside fresh meadow. Haverhill's settlers negotiated with the colony government for a large tract for their town in order to satisfy their "over-weaning desire . . . after Medow land."-Most inland clearings bore mute witness to recent habitation by Indians, whose periodic burnings kept the areasfrom reverting to forest.6 The size of a town's herds soon became an important measure of its pros- perity. As early as i634, William Wood noted that Dorchester, Roxbury, and Cambridge were particularly"well stored" with cattle. Other commen- tators added to the list of towns with burgeoning herds. In i651, Edward Johnson tallied the human and livestock populations for several communi- ties as a measure of divine favor. His enumeration revealed that towns with three or four dozen families also contained several hundred head of live- stock.7 Like Old Testament patriarchs,New England farmerscounted their blessings as they surveyed their herds. 5 John Winthrop, The History of New Englandfrom i630 to i649, ed. James Savage, 2 vols. (Boston, i825-i826), I, passim;EdwardJohnson,Johnson'sWonder-Working Providence,i628-i65i, ed. J. FranklinJameson, Original Narrativesof EarlyAmericanHistory (New York, I910), 54. 6 John Smith, "Advertisements for the unexperienced Planters of New-England, or any where . . ." (i63i), in Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 3d Ser., III (i833), 37; Higginson to His Friends at Leicester, Sept. i629, in Everett Emerson, ed., Lettersfrom New England: TheMassachusettsBay Colony,i629-i638 (Amherst, Mass., I976), 3i; Johnson'sWonder- WorkingProvidence,ed. Jameson, i88-i89, I95-I96, quotations on 234-235. See also William Wood, New England'sProspect,ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Amherst, Mass., I977; orig. pub. i634), 33-34. For the choice of Indian clearingsfor English settlement, see Howard S. Russell, A Long, Deep Furrow:ThreeCenturiesof Farmingin New England(Hanover, N. H., I976), 22. 7 Wood, New England'sProspect,ed. Vaughan, 58-6o; Samuel Maverick,A BriefeDiscription of New England and the Severall Townes Therein Togetherwith the Present GovernmentThereof (i66o), (Boston, i885), 8-IS; Paul J. Lindholdt, ed., John Josselyn,Colonial Traveler:A Critical Edition of "Two Voyagesto New-England"(Hanover, N. H., i988), IIO-II9, I38-141; Johnson's Wonder-Working Providence,ed. Jameson, 68-69, 72, IIO, i88-i89, I95-I97. In Cape Cod towns during the i7th century, a majority of householders owned cattle and swine; see Anne E. Yentsch, "Farming, Fishing, Whaling, Trading: Land and Sea as Resource on Eighteenth- Century Cape Cod," in Mary C. Beaudry,ed., DocumentaryArchaeologyin the New World(New York, i988), Table I3.8, I49.
5. 604 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY Their interest in livestock grew in part from their English experience. Many settlers came from England's wood-pasture region, where they had engaged in a mixed husbandryof cattle and grain. In New England, the bal- ance in that agrarianequation tipped toward livestock because the region's chronic labor shortage made raising cattle a particularly efficient use of resources. Selectmen usually hired one or two town herdsmen, freeing other livestock owners to clear fields, till crops, and construct buildings and fences. Until settlers managed to plant English hay, livestock foraged on the abundant, though less nutritious, native grasses,converting otherwise worth- less herbageinto milk and meat for consumption and sale. Livestockwere so important to survival that New Englandersreversedthe usual English fenc- ing practices. English law required farmersto protect their crops by confin- ing livestock within fenced or hedged pastures, but New England farmers were enjoined to construct and maintain sufficiently sturdy fences around cornfields to keep their peripateticbeasts out.8 Raising livestock had cultural as well as economic ramifications. For colonists, the absence of indigenous domestic animals underscored the region's essential wildness. "The country is yet raw,"wrote Robert Cushman in i621, "the land untilled; the cities not builded; the cattle not settled." The English saw a disturbing symmetry between the savageryof the land and its human and animal inhabitants. America, noted Cushman, "is spacious and void," and the Indians "do but run over the grass, as do also the foxes and wild beasts."9Such evaluationsultimately fueled colonists' own claims to the land. The "savagepeople," argued John Winthrop, held no legitimate title "for they inclose no ground, neither have they cattell to maintayne it, but remove their dwellings as they have occasion." Winthrop's objection to the Indians' seminomadic habits stemmed from a cultural assumption that equated civilization with sedentarism, a way of life that he linked to the keeping of domesticated animals. Drawing on biblical history, Winthrop argued that a "civil" right to the earth resulted when, "as men and cattell increased, they appropriatedsome parcells of ground by enclosing and pecu- liar manurance." Subduing-indeed, domesticating-the wilderness with English people and English beasts thus became a cultural imperative. New England could become a new Canaan, a land of milk and honey, only if, Thomas Morton wryly observed, "the Milke came by the industry"of its civ- ilizing immigrantsand their imported livestock.'0 Accordingly, only those Indians who submitted to "domestication"could live in the -New England Canaan. They had to accept Christianity, of 8 Virginia DeJohn Anderson, New England's Generation: The Great Migration and the Formationof Societyand Culture in the SeventeenthCentury(New York, I991), 30-3I, I5I-I52, I54-I56; Russell, Long, Deep Furrow,chap. 4; Cronon, Changesin the Land, I4I-I42; Rutman, Husbandmen of Plymouth, I7-I9; David Thomas Konig, Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts: EssexCounty,i629-I692 (Chapel Hill, N. C., I979), ii8-ii9. 9 Cushman, "Reasons and Considerations Touching the Lawfulness of Removing Out of England into the Parts of America"and "Of the State of the Colony, and the Need of Public Spirit in the Colonists," in AlexanderYoung, ed., Chroniclesof the Pilgrim Fathersof the Colony of Plymouth,FromI602 to I625, 2d ed. (Boston, i844), 265, 243. 10 Allyn B. Forbes et al., eds., WinthropPapers,I498-i654, 6 vols. (Boston, I929-I992), II,
6. LIVESTOCK IN EARLYNEW ENGLAND 605 course; in addition, colonists insisted that they adopt English ways entirely, including the keeping of domestic animals. Roger Williams urged natives to move "from Barbarism to Civilitie, in forsaking their filthy nakednes, in keeping some kind of Cattell.""1 John Eliot offered livestock, among other material incentives, to entice Indians to become civilized. He admonished one native audience: "if you were more wise to know God, and obey his Commands, you would work more then [sic] you do." Labor six days a week, as God commanded and the English did, and, Eliot promised, "you should have cloths, houses, cattle, riches as they have, God would give you To assist Indians in making this transformation, Puritan officials estab- lished fourteen "praying towns" where they could proceed toward conver- sion as they earned the material rewards Providence would bestow. The inhabitants of these communities not only would learn to worship God as the English did but also would wear English clothes, live in English framed houses, and farm with English animals. Among the goods sent from England to support this civilizing program were seven bells for oxen, to be distributed to Indian farmers who exchanged their traditional hoe agricul- ture for the plow.13 Soon the increase in livestock became as much a hall- mark of the success of the praying towns as it was of English communities. Daniel Gookin reported in i674 that the praying town of Hassanamesitt (Grafton) was "an apt place for keeping of cattle and swine; in which respect this people are the best stored of any Indian town of their size." He went on to observe, however, that though these natives "do as well, or rather better, than any other Indians" in raising crops and animals, they "are very far short of the English both in diligence and providence."'14 Praying Indians raised livestock as participants in what may be called an experiment in acculturation. By moving to places such as Natick or I20; Thomas Morton, New English Canaan or New Canaan . . . (i637), ed. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Publicationsof the Prince Society,XIV (Boston, i883), 230. The honey for the New England Canaan would also be an import, since honeybees are not native to America; see Crosby, EcologicalImperialism,i88-i89. English concern about sedentarismand the connection to property rights is addressed in Cronon, Changes in the Land, I30, and Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence:Indians, Europeans,and the Making of New England, I500-1643 (New York, i982), 176-I77. 11 Glenn W. LaFantasie,ed., The Correspondence of RogerWilliams,2 vols. (Hanover, N. H., and London, i988), II, 4I3. 12 Letter from Eliot in Thomas Shepard, "The Clear Sun-shine of the Gospel BreakingForth upon the Indians in New-England . . ." (i648), MHS, Coils.,3d Ser., IV (i834), 57-58. 13 William Kellaway, The New England Company, i649-I776: Missionary Society to the AmericanIndians (New York, i96i), 69. 14 Gookin, "Historical Collections of the Indians in New England" (i674), MHS, Colls., ist Ser., I (I792), i85; see also i84, i89, and Lindholdt, ed., JohnJosselyn,Colonial Traveler,IO5. On the establishment of the praying towns see James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contestof Culturesin ColonialNorth America(New York, i985), chap. 7; FrancisJennings, TheInvasionof America:Indians, Colonialism,and the Cant of Conquest(Chapel Hill, N. C., I975), chap. I4; Salisbury,"Red Puritans:The 'Praying Indians' of MassachusettsBay and John Eliot," William
7. 6o6 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY Hassanamesitt, they announced their intention to follow English ways- including animal husbandry-in hopes of finding favor with the Christian God.15 But the praying towns never contained more than a tiny minority of the native population; most Indians rejected the invitation to exchange their ways for English ones. For the vast majority, the cattle and swine that served as emblems of the praying Indians' transformationhad a very differ- ent meaning. They became instead a source of friction, revealing profound differences between Indians and colonists. As Indians encountered these unfamiliar animals, they had to decide what to call them. Williams reported that the Narragansettsfirst looked for similarities in appearanceand behavior between an indigenous animal and one of the new beasts and simply used the name of the known beast for both animals. Thus ockqutchaun-nug,the name of a "wild beast of a reddish haire about the bignesse of a Pig, and rooting like a Pig," was used for English swine. Finding no suitable parallels for most domestic animals, however, the Narragansetts resorted to neologisms such as "cowsnuck," "goatesuck," and eventually "hogsuck" or "pigsuck." The "termination suck, is common in their language," Williams explained, "and therefore they adde it to our English Cattell, not else knowing what names to give Giving these animals Indian names in no way implied that most Indians wanted to own livestock. In fact, contact with domestic animals initially produced the opposite reaction, because livestock husbandry did not fit easily with native practices. Indians could hardly undertake winter hunting expeditions accompanied by herds of cattle that required shelter and fodder to survive the cold weather. Swine would compete with their owners for nuts, berries, and roots, and the presence of livestock of any kind tended to drive away deer.17Moreover, the Indians, for whom most beasts were liter- ally fair game, struggled with the very notion of property in animals. They assumed that one could own only dead animals, which hunters shared with their families.18 and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., XXXI (I974), 27-54; and James P. Ronda, "Generationsof Faith: The Christian Indians of Martha'sVineyard,"ibid., XXXVIII (i98i), 369-394. 15 The praying Indians never fully adopted the English program for their cultural tran-for- mation; see Harold W. Van Lonkhuyzen, "A Reappraisal of the Praying Indians: Acculturation, Conversion, and Identity at Natick, Massachusetts, i646-I730," New England Quarterly, LXIII (I990), 396-428, and Kathleen J. Bragdon, "The Material Culture of the Christian Indians of New England, i650-I775," in Beaudry, ed., DocumentaryArchaeology, I26-I3I. Their attempts to balance English prescriptionswith native preferencessuffered heav- ily after King Philip's War; see Daniel Mandell, "'To Live More Like My Christian English Neighbors': Natick Indians in the Eighteenth Century," WMQ, 3d Ser., XLVIII (iggi), 16 Williams, A Key into the Languageof America, ed. John J. Teunissen and Evelyn J. Hinz (Detroit, Mich., I973), I73-I75. An "ockqutchaun" was a woodchuck; I am grateful to James Bakerof Plimoth Plantation for this information. 17 Cronon, Changesin the Land, ioi, io8; M. K. Bennett, "The Food Economy of the New England Indians, i605-75," Journal of Political Economy, LXIII (I9SS),369-397. 18 Cronon, Changesin the Land, I29-I30.
8. LIVESTOCK IN EARLYNEW ENGLAND 607 Further, the adoption of livestock would alter women's lives in crucial ways by affecting the traditional gender-based division of labor. Would women, who were mainly responsible for agricultural production, assume new duties of animal husbandry? If not, how would men's involvement with livestock rearing alter women's powerful role as the primary suppliers of food? Who would protect women's crops from the animals?How would the very different temporal cycle of livestock reproduction and care be rec- onciled with an Indian calendar that identified the months according to stages in the planting cycle?19 Animal husbandry also challenged native spiritual beliefs and practices. Because their mental universe assumed no rigid distinction between human and animal beings, the Indians' hunting rituals aimed to appease the spirits of creatures that were not so much inferior to, as different from, their human killers. Such beliefs helped to make sense of a world in which ani- mals were deemed equally rightful occupants of the forest and whose killing required an intimate knowledge of their habits. Would Indians be able to apply these ideas about animals as manitous, or other-than-human persons, to domestic beasts as well? Or would those beasts' English prove- nance and dependence on human owners prohibit their incorporation into the spiritual world with bears, deer, and beaver?20 Finally, a decision to keep livestock ran counter to a powerful hostility toward domestic animals that dated from the earliest years of English set- tlement. Because colonists often established towns on the sites of former Indian villages depopulated by the epidemics that preceded their arrival,no line of demarcation separated English from Indian habitation. Native vil- lages and colonial towns could be quite close together, and the accident of propinquity made for tense relations. At least at first, friction between these unlikely neighbors grew less from the very different ideas that informed Indian and English concepts of property than from the behavior of livestock. Let loose to forage in the woods, the animals wandered away from English towns into Indian cornfields, ate their fill, and moved on. Indians, who had never had to build fences to protect their fields, were unpreparedfor the onslaught. Even their underground storage pits proved vulnerable, as swine "found a way to unhinge their barn doors and rob 19 Van Lonkhuyzen, "Reappraisalof the Praying Indians,"4I2-4I3; Joan M. Jensen, "Native American Women and Agriculture:A Seneca Case Study," Sex Roles:A Journal of Research,III (I977), 423-44I; Salisbury,Manitou and Providence,36. For an example of the way in which the adoption of domesticated animals-in this case, the horse-disturbed the gender-baseddivision of labor in an Indian society see Richard White, "The Cultural Landscape of the Pawnees," GreatPlains Quarterly,11(i982), 31-40. I thank George Phillips for this reference. 20 Kenneth M. Morrison, The EmbattledNortheast:The Elusive Ideal of Alliance in Abenaki- Euramerican Relations (Berkeley, Calif., i984), chap. 2; Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance:The North AmericanIndian StruggleFor Unity, i745-i8i5 (Baltimore, I992), chap. I; Salisbury, Manitou and Providence, 35-36; Elisabeth Tooker, ed., Native North American Spiritualityof the Eastern Woodlands:SacredMyths, Dreams, Visions,Speeches,Healing Formulas, Rituals,and Ceremonials(New York, I979), II-29.
9. 6o8 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY their garners,"prompting native women to "implore their husbands' help to roll the bodies of trees" over the pits to prevent further damage.21Hogs attacked another important food source when they "watch[ed] the low water (as the Indian women do)" along the shoreline and rooted for clams, making themselves "most hatefull to all Natives," who called them "filthy cut throats, &c."22 In Plymouth Colony, settlers in Rehoboth and their Indian neighbors engaged in a long-running dispute over damages from trespassing animals. At first, in i653, the colonists claimed to "know noth- ing of' the Indian complaints. By i656, settlers had erected a fence along the town boundary, but because a stream-across which livestock were "apte to swime"-also separated English and native lands, the animals still made their way into Indian cornfields. Four years later, Philip's older brother Wamsutta, known to the English as Alexander, was still bringing the Indians' complaints to the attention of Plymouth authorities.23 English livestock also proved to be a nuisance as they roamed through the woods. Cattle and swine walked into deer traps, and the English held the Indians liable for any injuries they sustained.24Similarly, in i638, when William Hathorne of Salem found one of his cows stuck with an arrow, he insisted on restitution. Salem officials demanded the exorbitant sum of ?ioo from local Indians at a time when a cow was generallyvalued at about ?20. Roger Williams pleaded the natives' case with John Winthrop, explaining that the colonists had charged the wrong Indians and that the sachems were outraged because the English held them personally responsi- ble for the fine levied for their subjects' purported offense. "Nor doe they believe that the English Magistrates doe so practice," Williams reported, "and therefore they hope that what is Righteous amongst our Selves we will accept of from them."25 Williams went on to observe that "the Busines is ravelld and needes a patient and gentle hand to rectifie Misunderstanding of Each other and misprisions." He foresaw that endless recriminations would flow from colonists' attempts to raise livestock in the same space where Indians hunted. Native leaders, finding Williams a sympathetic listener, informed him of the "fearesof their Men in hunting or travelling,"for they had rea- son to believe they would be held responsible for every domestic animal found hurt or dead in the woods. Williams urged Winthrop to work with 21 Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Recordsof the Governor and Companyof the Massachusetts Bay in New England,5 vols. (Boston, i853-i854), I, I02, I2I, I33; John Noble, ed., Recordsof the Courtof Assistantsof the Colonyof the MassachusettsBay, i630-i692, 3 vols. (Boston, i9oi-I928), II, 46, 49; quotation from Wood, New England'sProspect,ed. Vaughan, II3. 22 Williams, Keyinto the LanguageofAmerica,ed. Teunissen and Hinz, i82. 23 Shurtleff and Pulsifer, eds., Plym. Col. Recs.,III, 2I, io6, iI9-12, i67, I92. 24 See, for instance, Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Bay Recs.,I, I43; Charles J. Hoadly, ed., Recordsof the Colonyand Plantation of New Haven, 2 vols. (Hartford, Conn., i857-i858), I, Iso. For a description of Indian hunting techniques see Williams, Key into the Languageof America, ed. Teunissen and Hinz, 224-225. 25 LaFantasie,ed., Correspondence of Williams,I, I92.
10. LIVESTOCK IN EARLYNEW ENGLAND 609 the Indians to contrive an equitable procedure to be followed in similar cases so that Indian hunters would not feel so much at risk from the rigors of a judicial system that appearedbiased against them.26 Instead of recognizing the fundamental incompatibility of English and Indian subsistence regimes, colonial authorities repeatedly permitted joint use of land.27 In so doing, they assumed that Indians would agree that the colonists' livestock had, in effect, use rights to the woods and fields too. Indians could hunt on lands claimed by the English only if they accepted certain restrictions on their activities. Indians who set traps within the town of Barnstable, for instance, had "fully and dilligenttly" to visit their traps daily to check for ensnared livestock and, if any were found, "thaye shall speedyli lett them out."28 The Connecticut government imposed stricter limits on Indian hunters when the town of Pequot was founded in i649. Uncas, the Mohegan sachem, was instructed "that no trapps [should] bee sett by him or any of his men" within the town, although colonial offi- cials saw no reason completely "to prohibitt and restraine Uncus and his men from hunting and fishing" unless they did so on the Sabbath. Connecticut authorities acquired meadow land from the Tunxis Indians in i65o and similarly recognized native rights of hunting, fishing, and fowling on the property so long as such activities "be not dun to the breach of any orders in the country to hurt cattle."29As late as i676, in the aftermath of King Philip's War, Connecticut officials allowed "friendly" Indians "to hunt in the conquered lands in the Narrogancett Country, provided they sett not traps to prejudice English cattell."30 Joint use was doomed to failure, not by Indian unwillingness to comply with English conditions, but by the insurmountable problems that arose from grazing livestock on hunting lands. Accidental injuries were bound to occur and to disturb colonists, while Indians resented the damage done by domestic animals wandering out of the woods and into their cornfields. The behavior of livestock-creatures as indispensable to the English as they were obnoxious to the Indians-undermined the efforts of each group to get along with the other. Attempts to resolve disputes stemming from tres- passing livestock led only to mutual frustration. 26 Ibid., I, I93, quotations on I92. 27On the problems of joint use see Peter A. Thomas, "Contrastive Subsistence Strategies and Land Use as Factors for Understanding Indian-White Relations in New England," Ethnohistory,XXIII (I976), i-i8. 28 Shurtleff and Pulsifer, eds., Plym. Col. Recs.,II, I30-I3I. 29 Quotation in Kenneth L. Feder, "'The Avaricious Humour of Designing Englishmen': The Ethnohistory of Land Transactions in the Farmington Valley," Bulletin of the ArchaeologicalSocietyof Connecticut,No. 45 (i982), 36. 30 J. Hammond Trumbull et al., eds., ThePublic Recordsof the Colonyof Connecticut.... I vols. (Hartford, Conn., i85o-i8go), II, 289. Colonial officials eventually prohibited Indians from firing the woods in the autumn-a procedure that killed undergrowth and thus facili- tated hunting-because of danger to the colonists' haystacks;Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Bay Recs.,V,
11. 6io WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY The Indians were doubtless the first to recognize the difficulties inherent in the joint use of land and the unrestricted foraging of colonists' animals. One Connecticut sachem actually attempted to restrict the settlers'use of land that he was willing to grant them outright. When Pyamikee, who lived near Stamford, negotiated with town officials, he tried to make the English agree not to put their livestock on the tract, for he knew that "the English hoggs would be ready to spoyle their [the Indians'] corne" in an adjacent field, "and that the cattell, in case they came over the said five mile river," would do likewise. But the colonists would only assure Pyamikee that live- stock would always travel under the supervision of a keeper.31 In another case, in i648 in Rhode Island, an unfortunate Shawomet Indian spent five days chasing swine from his cornfields, only to be con- fronted by an Englishman, armed with a cudgel, who "asked the Indian in a rage whie he drove out the Swine." When he replied, "because they dide eate the Corne," the Englishman "ran upon the Indian," and a melee ensued among the disputants' companions. An attempt to adjudicate the case led to further complications, for the Englishmen involved were Rhode Islanders whereas the land where the incident occurred was claimed by Plymouth. Skeptical of his chances for a fair hearing in the Plymouth court, Pumham, a Shawomet sachem acting on behalf of the aggrieved Indians, asked to have the case tried in Massachusetts.32 It might seem remarkablethat Pumham trusted the English judicial sys- tem at all. Yet like Pumham, many Indians used colonial courts to seek redress for damage caused by trespassing livestock. English authorities, in turn, often recognized the legitimacy of such complaints and granted resti- tution, as in i632 when the Massachusetts General Court ordered Sir Richard Saltonstall to "give Saggamore John a hogshead of corne for the hurt his cattell did him in his corne."33Trespass complaints were so fre- quent, however, that colonial governments instructed individual towns to establish procedures for local arbitration lest the courts be overwhelmed. In Plymouth Colony, the task of reviewing such cases fell either to town selectmen or to ad hoc committees. If the livestock owner ignored their orders to pay damages, the aggrieved Indian could "repaire to some Majestrate for a warrant to recover such award by distraint."34 Massachusettsand Connecticut adopted similar measures.35 31 Hoadly, ed. New Haven Recs.,II, I04-I07. 32 Forbes et al., eds., WinthropPapers,V, 246-247. Pumham had established connections with the Bay Colony 6 years earlier, when he sold land to settlers from Massachusetts; Salisbury,Manitou and Providence,230. 33 Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Bay Recs.,I, I02. For similar instances of town and colony authorities granting restitution to Indians see ibid., I, i2I, I33; Trumbull et al., eds., Public Recs.of Conn., II, i65; III, 8i; Shurtleff and Pulsifer, eds., Plym. Col. Recs.,III, I32; IV, 68; Howard M. Chapin, ed., TheEarly Recordsof the Town of Warwick(Providence, R. I., I926), 89; and Leonard Bliss, Jr., The History of Rehoboth,Bristol County, Massachusetts. . . (Boston, i836), 44. See also Yasuhide Kawashima, Puritan Justice and the Indian: White Man's Law in Massachusetts, i630-i763 (Middletown, Conn., i986), chap. 7. 34 Shurtleff and Pulsifer, eds., Plym. Col. Recs.,V, 62; IX, I43 (quotation), 2I9. 35 Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Bay Recs., I, 293-294; Trumbull et al., eds., Public Recs. of
12. LIVESTOCK IN EARLYNEW ENGLAND 6ii But the colonists were less accommodating than they seemed. They insisted that Indians resort to an English court system that was foreign to them, the proceedings of which were conducted in an incomprehensible language necessitating the use of not-always reliable translators.(In the case described above, one of Pumham's objections to using the Plymouth court was his mistrust of the court interpreters.) Moreover, the English soon required Indians to fence their cornfields before they could seek repara- tions. As early as i632, SagamoreJohn, who received the award of damages from Saltonstall, had to promise "against the next yeare, & soe ever after" to fence his fields.36 In i640 Massachusetts law required settlers to help their Indian neighbors "in felling of Trees, Ryving & sharpning railes, and holing of posts" for fences, but this friendly gesture was coupled with stern provisos. Any Indian who refused to fence his fields after such help was offered forfeited his right to sue for damages. In addition, Indian com- plainants had to identify which beasts had trampled their corn-an impos- sible task if the animals had come and gone before the damage was discovered.37Beginning in the i650s, Plymouth magistratesallowed Indians to impound offending beasts, but this meant either that they had to drive the animals to the nearest English pound or construct one on their own land and walk to the nearest town to give "speedynotice" of any animals so Even if they complied with English conditions, Indians could not depend on the equitable enforcement of animal trespass laws. The coercive power of colonial governments was limited-magistrates could hardly march off to view every downed fence and ruined field-and reliance on local adjudication meant that townsmen had to police themselves. New England colonists were notoriously litigious, but it was one thing to defend against the charges of an English neighbor and quite another to judge impartially an Indian's accusations of trespass. When problems arose near the centers of colonial government, Indians could generally get a fair hear- ing, as did Sagamore John near Boston. But the enforcement of animal trespass laws became more haphazard toward the edges of settlement. Indians in the praying town of Okommakamesit (Marlborough)-thirty miles from Boston-abandoned a 15o-acretract with an apple orchard for "it brings little or no profit to them, nor is ever like to do; because the Englishmen's cattle, &c. devour all in it, because it lies open and unfenced," and they clearly expected no redress.39Along the disputed bor- Conn., III, 42-43. 36 Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Bay Recs.,I, 99. 37 William H. Whitmore, ed., The ColonialLaws of Massachusetts, Reprintedfrom the Edition of i66o, with the supplementsto i672, ContainingAlso, the Bodyof Libertiesof i64i (Boston, i889), i62. In i662 Plymouth Colony law required settlers to help Indians build fences; see Shurtleff and Pulsifer, eds., Plym. Col. Recs.,XI, I37-I38. 38 Trumbull et al., eds., Public Recs.of Conn., III, 42-43; Shurtleff and Pulsifer, eds., Plym. Col. Recs.,III, io6, I92, XI, I23, I37-I38. 39 Gookin, "HistoricalCollections of the Indians in New England,"220.
13. 612 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY der between Rhode Island and Plymouth, settlers could scarcely agree among themselves who was in charge. Under such circumstances, as Pumham and his fellow Shawomets discovered, cudgel-wielding Englishmen all too easily took the law into their own hands. Farther away-in Maine, for example-even the pretense of due process could van- ish. In i636, Saco commissioners empowered one of their number to "exce- cut any Indians that ar proved to have killed any swyne of the Inglishe" and ordered all settlers summarily to "apprehend,execut or kill any Indian that hath binne known to murder any English, kill ther Cattell or any waie spoyle ther goods or doe them violence."40 Given the deficiencies of the colonial legal system, it is not surprising that many Indians dealt with intrusive livestock according to their own notions of justice. Indians who stole or killed livestock probably committed such deeds less as acts of wanton mischief, as the English assumed, than in retribution for damages suffered. In their loosely knit village bands, Indians placed a premium on loyalty to kin rather than to the larger social group. The strength of these kinship bonds at once limited the authority of sachems (a point lost on the magistrates who had ordered sachems to pay for Hathorne's cow) and sanctioned acts of violence undertaken in revenge for wrongs done to family members.41English authorities did not bother to inquire into Indian motives for theft and violence toward animals. But when, for instance, Pumham and other Shawomets-who had previously encountered irascible colonists and ineffective courts-were later charged with "killing cattle, and forceable entry" on settlers' lands, it takes little imagination to suspect that they were exacting their own retributive Once they took matters into their own hands, Indians could be charged with theft and destruction of property with the full force of English law turned against them. The penalties for such offenses further corroded rela- tions between the groups. Unable to pay the requisite fines-often levied in English money-Indians found themselves imprisoned or sentenced to cor- poral punishment.43 Thus their options shrank even as livestock popula- tions grew. Retaliation against the animals brought severe sanctions from the English, while efforts to accommodate the beasts on English terms required unacceptable alterations in Indian agriculture and the virtual 40 Charles Thornton Libby et al., eds., Provinceand CourtRecordsof Maine, 5 vols. (Portland, Me., I928- i960), I, 2-4. 41 Salisbury, Manitou and Providence,4I-42; Kawashima, Puritan Justice and the Indian, chap. I. 42 John Russell Bartlett, ed., Recordsof the Colonyof RhodeIsland and ProvidencePlantations, in New England,io vols. (New York, i968; orig. pub. i856-i865), I, 39I. 43 For instances of Indian depredations against livestock see Trumbull et al., eds., Public Recs.of Conn., I, 226; Hoadly, ed., New Haven Recs.,II, 36i; Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Bay Recs.,I, 87, 88; IV, Pt. 2, 54, 36i; Shurtleff and Pulsifer, eds., Plym. Col. Recs., IV, 92-93, I90-I9I, V, 8o, IX, III, 209; and Samuel Eliot Morison, ed., Recordsof the Suffolk County Court, i67i-i680, Colonial Society of Massachusetts,Publications(Boston, I933), XXIX,404.
14. LIVESTOCK IN EARLYNEW ENGLAND 6I3 abandonment of hunting. By the middle of the seventeenth century it was clear to the Indians that the English and their troublesome animals would not go away. The English, for their part, assumed that the solution was for Indians to abandon their ways and become livestock keepers themselves. Some Indians-most notably King Philip-adopted livestock husbandry, though not in capitulation to English example and exhortation. Their adaptation was not a step, either intentional or inadvertent, toward accul- turation, for they refused to make the complete transformation advocated by Englishmen who linked animal husbandry to the acquisition of civilized ways. The natives' decision instead fit into a broader pattern of intercul- tural borrowing that formed an important theme in Anglo-Indian relations during the first decades of contact. Much as settlers incorporated native crops and farming techniques into their agricultural system, Indians selected from an array of English manufactures such items as guns, cloth, and iron pots that were more efficient substitutes for bows and arrows, ani- mal skins, and earthenware.Neither group forfeited its cultural identity in so doing, and when some Indians began to raise livestock-again largely for practical considerations-they deliberately selected the English beast that would least disrupt their accustomed routines. Indians who raised livestock overwhelmingly preferredhogs.44 More than any other imported creatures, swine resembled dogs, the one domesticated animal that Indians already had. Both species scavenged for food and ate scraps from their owners' meals. Although hogs also competed with humans for wild plants and shellfish and could damage native cornfields, these disadvantageswere offset by the meat they supplied and the fact that Indians could deal with their own swine however they wished. Like dogs, swine aggressively fended off predators, such as wolves. Roger Williams recorded an instance of "two English Swine, big with Pig," driving a wolf fom a freshly killed deer and devouring the prey themselves. Hogs could also be trained like dogs to come when called, a useful trait in an animal that foraged for itself in the woods.45 Swine keeping required relatively few adjustments to native subsistence routines-far fewer than cattle rearing would have involved. It made mini- mal demands on labor, rendering moot the issue of who-men or women-would bear primary responsibility for their care. Keeping cattle would have either dramatically increased women's work loads or involved 44 Virtually all references to Indian ownership of livestock specify hogs; see Chapin, ed., EarlyRecs.of Warwick,Io2; Shurtleff and Pulsifer, eds., Plym. Col. Recs.,IV, 66; V, 6, II-I2, 22, 85; Bartlett, ed., R. I. Col. Recs., II, I72-I73; Brigham, ed., Early Recs. of Portsmouth,I49-I50; and Trumbull et al., ed., Public Recs.of Conn., III, 55. See also Robert R. Gradie, "New England Indians and Colonizing Pigs," in William Cowan, ed., Papers of the Fifteenth Algonquian Conference(Ottawa, i984), I47-i69; I thank BarbaraDeWolfe for this reference. 45 Juliet Clutton-Brock, DomesticatedAnimalsfrom Early Times(Austin, Tex., i98i), 73, 74; Williams, Keyinto the LanguageofAmerica,ed. Teunissen and Hinz, 226.
15. 614 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY men in new types of labor tying them more closely to the village site. Cattle needed nightly feeding, and cows had to be milked daily. Most male calves would have had to be castrated, and the few bulls required careful han- dling. Since cattle needed fodder and shelter during the winter, Indians would have had to gather and dry hay and build and clean barns-activities that infringed on their mobility during the hunting season. Some members of each village would have had to become herdsmen. Losing a cow in the woods was a more serious matter than losing a pig, for pigs had a far higher rate of reproduction.46 In return for a limited investment in labor, native hog keepers acquired a year-round supply of protein that replaced the meat they could no longer get from a dwindling deer population. These Indians may in fact have enjoyed an improved diet, avoiding the seasonal malnutrition resulting from their former dependence on corn and game.47 Swine also provided products that replaced items formerly obtained from wild animals. Gookin noted in i674 that Indians "used to oil their skins and hair with bear's grease heretofore, but now with swine's fat." And in at least one instance, Indians fashioned moccasins from "green hogs skinns" in place of deerskin. Settlers, in contrast, valued cattle for reasons that had little appeal for Indians. They plowed with oxen, but Indians who farmed with hoes did not need them. Colonists also prized the meat and dairy products supplied by their herds; although Indians would eat beef, most native adults were physiologically unable to digest lactose except in tiny amounts and would have learned to avoid milk products.48 Settlers raised hogs and ate pork, but they did not share the Indians' preference for swine over cattle. Cattle were docile and, to the English mind, superior beasts. Swine, on the contrary, were slovenly creatures that wallowed in mud, gobbled up garbage, and were rumored to kill unwary children. Colonists named their cows Brindle and Sparke and Velvet; no one named pigs. The English kept swine as if on sufferance, tolerating their obnoxious behavior in order to eat salt pork, ham, and bacon. Most of all, swine keeping did not promote hard work and regular habits so well as cat- tle rearing did. Writers who extolled the civilizing benefits of livestock hus- 46 Clutton-Brock, DomesticatedAnimals, 68, 73; Russell, Long, Deep Furrow, 35, 88; Percy Wells Bidwell and John I. Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, i620-i860 (Washington, D. C., I925; repr. New York, I94I), 25, 31-32. 47 The evidence is sketchy but suggestive. One archaeologicalstudy of a Narragansettceme- tery dating from the mid-I7th century (roughly the time and location correspondingto histori- cal evidence of Indian swine keeping) finds that the Indian skeletons show a surprisinglack of iron deficiency anemia as well as little evidence of seasonal malnutrition. Such characteristics resulted from an improved diet, and although the specific content of that diet cannot be recov- ered, it is possible that the consumption of pork was an important factor. See Marc A. Kelley, Paul S. Sledzik, and Sean P. Murphy, "Health, Demographics, and Physical Constitution in Seventeenth-CenturyRhode Island Indians,"Man in the Northeast,No. 34 (i987), I-25. 48 Gookin, "HistoricalCollections of the Indians in New England,"I53; Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Bay Recs.,IV, Pt. 2, 360. On Indians' lactose intolerance see Crosby, EcologicalImperialism,27.
16. LIVESTOCK IN EARLYNEW ENGLAND 6I5 bandry-doubtless envisioned sedentary Indian farmers peacefully gathering hay and tending herds of cattle alongside their English neighbors, but the reality was hardly so bucolic.49 Settlers instead encountered Indians who lived much as they always had, but who now had swine wandering across their lands-and occasionally into English cornfields.50 The colonists recognized only grudgingly the Indians' property in animals and usually assumed that the natives' hogs were stolen. In i672, Bay Colony officials insisted that Indians pilfered swine although they acknowledged that "it be very difficult to proove" that they had done so. Other explanations-that the Indians had captured feral animals or had purchased hogs from settlers-were seldom advanced. The fact that "the English, especially in the inland plantations, . . . loose many swine" and that Indians had hogs invited suspicion.51 To discourage the theft of animals among themselves and to identify strays, settlers used earmarks. Each owner had a distinctive mark that was entered in the town records, to be checked when an animal was reported stolen or a stray was found. The proliferation of town and colony orders requiring earmarks, as well as the increasing intricacy of the marks them- selves-a mixture of crops, slits, "forks," "half-pennies," and so on-pro- vides as good a measure as any of the growing livestock population. The earmark itself became a form of property handed down from one genera- tion to the next.52 Instead of assigning earmarks to native owners, however, magistrates ordered that "no Indians shall give any ear mark to their Swine, upon the penalty of the forfeiture" of the animal. An Indian who wished to sell a hog had to bring it with its ears intact; if he sold pork, he had to pro- duce the unmarked ears from the carcass. This practice made native pur- chases of English hogs problematic, for the animals would already have marked ears. Should the Indian subsequently desire to sell such an animal, he could be required to "bring good Testimonies that he honestly obtained such Swine so marked, of some English." Moreover, Indian owners were at 49 For contemporaryEnglish attitudes toward domestic animals see Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World:A Historyof the Modern Sensibility(New York, i983), 54, 64, 95, 96. These attitudes persisted into the i9th century; see Harriet Ritvo, TheAnimal Estate: The Englishand Other Creaturesin the VictorianAge (Cambridge, Mass., i987), 2I. Colonists concurredwith the assessment of the danger of swine to children; see City of Boston, SecondReportof the Record Commissioners(Boston Town Records, i634-i660), (Boston, i877), I45. For naming of cattle see, for instance, George Francis Dow, ed., Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, 9 vols. (Salem, Mass., I9WI-I975), III, 36i, 428. 50 Trumbull et al., eds., Public Recs. of Conn., III, 55n. 51 Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Bay Recs., IV, Pt. 2, 5I2. 52 For ordinances requiring earmarks see, for example, Trumbull et al., eds., Public Recs. of Conn., I, ii8, 5I7; Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Bay Recs., IV, Pt. 2, 5I2-5I3; and Brigham, ed., Early Recs. of Portsmouth, 72-73, and for descriptions of earmarks see, for instance, ibid., 26I-286, 288-295, 320-322. Cattle and horses were usually branded, and owners often entered complete descrip- tions of the animals in town books; see Whitmore, ed., Col. Laws of Mass., I58, 258, and City of (Dorchester Town Records), 2d ed. (Boston, Boston, FourthReportof the RecordCommissioners i883), 35-36.
17. 6i6 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY the-mercy of unscrupulous settlers who might steal their animals and mark them as their own. Colonists did not prohibit Indian ownership of swine, but they denied Indians the acknowledged symbol of legitimate The Indians' selective involvement with animal husbandry scarcely improved relations between natives and colonists. To the previous list of problems new and equally vexing issues were added, including trespassesby Indian animals, theft, and difficulties with proving ownership of animal property. For settlers, probably the least welcome change appeared when enterprising Indians started selling swine and pork in competition with English producers of the same commodities. Many orders pertaining to ear- marks begin with a preamble that assumes that native competition went hand in hand with native dishonesty. In the Bay Colony, there was "ground to suspect that some of the Indians doe steale & sell the English mens swine;" in Plymouth, settlers complained "of Indians stealing of live Hogs from the English, and selling them." Thus magistratesurged colonists to mark their animals to protect their property from native thieves. In fact, the charges of theft were not substantiated; the real problem was commer- cial, not criminal. Earmark regulations aimed at least as much to make Indian sales difficult as to make Indians honest.54 Competition with Indians was more than colonists had bargained for. In i669-just six years before the start of King Philip's War-the Plymouth General Court proposed to license certain colonists "to trade powder, shott, guns, and mony (now under prohibition) with the Indians" as a means of discouraging the local Indians' pork trade. The magistrates com- plained that "a greate parte of the porke that is now carryedby the Indians to Boston" was "sold there at an under rate," hurting Plymouth pork sell- ers. The court felt no need to make explicit connections between its pro- posal to sell arms and its complaint about competition, but the likeliest explanation is that Plymouth Indians were using the proceeds of their Boston pork sales to purchase guns from licensed Bay Colony sellers, tap- ping into an arms trade that the Massachusetts General Court had estab- lished in the previous year. If the Indians could obtain arms from Plymouth suppliers, they presumably would cede the Boston pork trade to Old Colony producers. The court expressed no particular interest in help- ing out Boston consumers who spurned the wares of their fellow Englishmen in order to buy cheaper meat; its explicit aim was to ensure that the pork trade would "fall into the hands of some of our people, and soe the prise may be kept up."55 53 John D. Cushing, ed., The Laws of the Pilgrims:A FacsimileEdition of "TheBook of the GeneralLaws of the Inhabitantsof the Jurisdictionof New-Plimouth,i672 & i685" (Wilmington, Del., I977), 44; see also Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Bay Recs.,IV, Pt. 2, 5I2-5I3. 54 Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Bay Recs.,IV, Pt. 2, 5I2; Cushing, ed., Lawsof the Pilgrims,44. 55 Shurtleff and Pulsifer, eds., Plym. Col. Recs., V, II-I2. On the colonial arms trade see
18. LIVESTOCK IN EARLYNEW ENGLAND 6I7 The Plymouth government's concern in this instance testifies to a remarkableset of native adaptations. If the Indians indeed brought pork and not live animals to the Bay Colony, they had learned to preserve meat in a way that appealed to English consumers. Some colonists, noting native ignorance of salting techniques, had assumed that Indians did not know how to preserve food.56 We do not know whether Plymouth Indians had learned to salt as well as to sell pork, but there is no doubt that they had identified Boston as New England's most lucrative food market. Almost from the start, Boston merchants and shopkeepers vied with farmers over the relatively scarce amount of land on the small peninsula occupied by the town. As early as i636, officials prohibited families from grazing more than two cows on the peninsula itself, and in i647, the town herd was fixed at seventy beasts.57 By i658, swine had become such a public nuisance that Boston officials required owners to keep them "in their owne ground," effectively limiting the number of hogs each family could maintain.58 Given these restrictions, many Bostonians apparently gave up raising ani- mals and bought meat from livestock producers in nearby towns, who were also raising stock for the West Indies market.59Did the Plymouth Indians know this when they went to Boston? Their business acumen should not be underestimated. Although he did not refer specifically to the meat trade, Williams noticed that Indian traders "will beate all markets and try all places, and runne twenty thirty, yea forty mile, and more, and lodge in the Woods, to save six pence." Ironically, native enterprise met with suspicion rather than approbation from colonists who liked the Indians less the more like the English they became.60 The extent of native livestock husbandry is difficult to measure because colonial records mainly preserve instances in which animals became a source of conflict. The evidence does suggest that Indians residing near English settlements had a greater tendency to raise domestic animals than did those farther away. The Wampanoags, living in the Mount Hope area between Plymouth Colony and Rhode Island, apparently began to raise hogs by the middle of the seventeenth century, after some thirty years of Patrick M. Malone, The Skulking Wayof War: Technologyand TacticsAmong the New England Indians (Lanham,Md., I99i), 49. 56 Morton, New EnglishCanaan,ed. Adams, i6i. 57 Darrett B. Rutman, Winthrop'sBoston:A Portrait of a Puritan Town, i630-i649 (Chapel Hill, N. C., i965), 2o6. 58 City of Boston, Second Report of the Record Commissioners, I45. 59 A partial Boston tax valuation for i676 indicates that fewer than half of household heads owned cattle or swine; see City of Boston, First Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston (Boston, i876), 60-67. On the development of a domestic and foreign market in live- stock and meat see Karen J. Friedmann, "Victualling Colonial Boston," Agricultural History, XLVII (i973), i89-205, and Darrett B. Rutman, "Governor Winthrop's Garden Crop: The Significance of Agriculture in the Early Commerce of Massachusetts Bay," WMQ, 3d Ser., XX (i963), 396-4I5. 60 Williams, Key into the Language ofAmerica, ed. Teunissen and Hinz, 2i8.
19. 6i8 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY contact with English settlers.61 The location and timing of their adaptation were scarcely accidental. The Wampanoags had close contact with settlers and, accordingly, a greater need for livestock than did native peoples living elsewhere. The eco- logical changes caused by English settlers steadily converting woodland into fenced fields and open meadows around Mount Hope reduced the deer population on which the Wampanoags depended; their swine keeping sub- stituted one form of protein for another. Their trade in hogs and pork may also have been intended to offer a new commodity to settlers as other trade items disappeared or diminished in value. By the i66os, the New England fur trade had ended with the virtual extinction of beaver. At the same time, English demand for wampum sharply declined as an improving overseas trade brought in more hard currency and colonies ceased accepting wampum as legal tender.62 But hogs and pork failed as substitutes for furs and wampum. Most colonists owned swine themselves and-as the response of the Plymouth magistrates in i669 suggests-evidently preferred to limit the market in animals to English producers. Wampanoag swine keeping also contributed to growing tensions with colonists over land, creating disputes that were even harder to resolve than those concerning trade. Land that diminished in usefulness to Indians as it ceased to support familiar subsistence activities regained value for raising hogs; indeed, such places as offshore islands held a special attraction to keepers of swine. The Wampanoags' desire to retain their land awakened precisely when settlers evinced an interest in acquiring it. By the i66os, a younger generation of settlers had reached maturity and needed farms. In Plymouth Colony, bounded on the north by the more powerful Bay Colony and on the west by an obstreperous Rhode Island, aggressive set- tlers eyed the lands of their Wampanoag neighbors. During the i66os, new villages were formed at Dartmouth, Swansea, and Middleborough, while established towns such as Rehoboth and Taunton enlarged their holdings- and in effect blockaded the Wampanoags on Mount Hope peninsula.63 No man was harder pressed by these developments than King Philip. As sachem of the Wampanoags since i662, he had tried to protect his people and preserve their independence in the face of English intrusion. Over time, his tasks became far more difficult. The number of occasions when 61 Montauk Indians living on the easternend of Long Island also raisedhogs in the I7th cen- tury. Like the Wampanoags on the mainland, the Montauks lived in an area surrounded by English settlement and had been in contact with settlers for decades. See Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter, "Journal of a Voyage to New York in i679-80," Memoirs of the Long Island HistoricalSociety,I (i867), I26. 62 Cronon, Changesin the Land, ioi; Salisbury, "Indians and Colonists in Southern New England after the Pequot War: An Uneasy Balance," in Laurence M. Hauptman and James D. Wherry, eds., The Pequots in Southern New England: The Fall and Rise of an AmericanIndianNation (Norman, Okla., I990), 90-9I. 63 On the expansion of Plymouth settlement see Rutman, Husbandmen of Plymouth,
20. LIVESTOCK IN EARLYNEW ENGLAND 6i9 the interests of Indians and settlers came into conflict grew as his ability to mediate diminished. Since Wampanoag land bordered on Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Plymouth, Philip had to contend at various times with three, often competing, colonial governments. Even more problematic were his relations with neighboring towns, whose inhabitants pursued their eco- nomic advantage with little fear of intervention from any colony govern- ment and no regardfor how their actions would affect Indian welfare. Philip confronted the implications of New England localism most directly in cases of trespass. Colonial governments ordered towns to address Indian grievances but could not or would not enforce compliance. For six years, beginning in the mid-i65os, Rehoboth's inhabitants virtually ignored complaints from nearby Indians about damage from livestock, despite orders from the Plymouth court to solve the problem. In i664, more than a decade after the issue first arose, Philip himself appeared at court-this time to complain about Rehoboth men trespassing on Wampanoag land to cut timber-and even then he may have hoped for a favorable outcome.64 But if he did, the court soon compounded his problems by deciding to refer trespass cases to the selectmen of the towns involved. From then on, Philip and his people would have to seek justice at the hands of the very people who might well own the offending beasts.65 The Wampanoag leader's problems in dealing with townsmen whose atti- tudes ranged from unsympathetic to hostile worsened after the colony gov- ernment declared its hands-off policy on trespass and reached a low point in i67I, when Plymouth officials charged Philip with stockpiling arms and conspiring with other Indian groups to attack the colonists. He denied the charges and appealed to Bay Colony magistrates to confirm his innocence. But Plymouth threatened coercion if he did not submit to its authority, and Philip signed a compact that further eroded his ability to safeguard Wampanoag interests. This agreement compelled him to seek Plymouth's approval before he disposed of any native territory, but colony officials were not similarly constrained by the need for Philip's permission before they approached Indians to purchase land. He also agreed that differences between natives and settlers would be referred to the colony government for resolution, although the magistrates' record in dealing even with straightforwardcases of trespassgave little cause for optimism.66 The Plymouth court intended to subvert Philip's authority over his peo- ple in order to facilitate the acquisition of Wampanoag land by a new gen- eration of colonists who would, in turn, raise new generations of livestock. As early as i632, William Bradford recognized that settlers who owned ani- mals required a lot of land to support their beasts. He complained when families abandoned Plymouth to form new towns where meadow was avail- 64 Shurtleff and Pulsifer, eds., Plym. CoLRecs.,III, 2I, i67, IV, 54. 65 The law requiring town selectmen to decide trespass cases was passed in the mid-i66os; the record contains no specific date. See Shurtleff and Pulsifer, eds., Plym. Col. Recs.,XI, I43. 66 Ibid., V, 79.
21. 620 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY able, but he could not stop them. Instead, he could only lament that "no man now thought he could live except he had cattle and a great deal of ground to keep them."67Expansion accelerated during the i66os and early i670s, once again fueled by a burgeoning livestock population. During the two decades before King Philip's War, Plymouth officials approached local Indians at least twenty-three times to purchase land, often mentioning a specific need for pasture. Sometimes they only wanted "some small par- cells"; on other occasions they desired "all such lands as the Indians can well spare."68 The need to sustain their herds drove the English to seek Indian land, and their expansionarymoves collided with an urgent Wampanoag need to preserve what remained of their territory. Joint use of land, although fraught with problems, at least recognized mutual subsistence needs; by the i66os, however, the practice had greatly diminished. Now the English not only wanted more land but demanded exclusive use of it. They asserted their property rights even in situations when accommodating Indian inter- ests would have presented little threat. Allowing Philip to put his swine on Hog Island probably would not have harmed Portsmouth's inhabitants and might have improved relations between Indians and settlers. But what was Philip to think of the townsmen's summary refusal to share land, even when he proposed to use it for precisely the same purpose as they did? In that spring of i669, Philip personally experienced the same English intran- sigence that he encountered as the representative of his people. After the Hog Island episode, and even more after his forced submission to Plymouth in i67I, he could not fail to see that while the colonists insisted that he yield to them, they would not yield in any way to him. In an atmosphere of increasing tension, trespass assumed new signifi- cance. As colonists moved closer to native villages, the chances that live- stock would stray onto Indian lands multiplied. With both groups competing for a limited supply of land, colonists did not restrain their ani- mals from grazing wherever they could, while Indians grew ever more sensi- tive to such intrusions. Whenever livestock were concerned, the English ignored the Indians' property rights, while demanding that the natives rec- ognize English rights. Indians resented encroachment by beasts that usually presaged the approach of Englishmen requesting formal ownership of land that their animals had already informally appropriated. Faced with the manifest inability-or unwillingness-of New England towns to solve the problem of trespass, and discouraged from seeking help from colony gov- ernments, Indians often resorted to their own means of animal control; they killed the offending beasts. This response would once have landed Indians in court, but by i67I they faced far more serious consequences. 67 Bradford,Of PlymouthPlantation,ed. Morison, 253. 68 Shurtleff and Pulsifer, eds., Plym. Col. Recs.,III, 84, I04, I23, I42, 2i6-2I7, IV, i8, 20, 45, 70, 82, 97, I09, i67, V, 20, 24, 24-25, 95, 96, 97-98, 98-99, i09, I26, I5I.
22. LIVESTOCK IN EARLYNEW ENGLAND 62I In -that year, a group of angry colonists living near Natick very nearly attacked the Wampanoags of Mount Hope for killing livestock that had trespassed on Indian land. Interceding on behalf of the Indians, the Bay Colony's Indian commissioner, Daniel Gookin, begged for forbearance from the settlers, arguing that it was not worth "fightingwith Indians about horsesand hogs, as matters too low to shed blood." He urged the settlers to keep their animals on their own land; if any strayed into native territory and were killed, the owners should make a record of the fact, presumably to facilitate legal recovery.69War was averted, but this incident nonetheless showed that tension over livestock had reached dangerouslyhigh levels. Both sides now understood that disputes over trespassing animals epito- mized differences so profound as to defy peaceful solution. Whenever Indians killed livestock that had damaged their cornfields, colonists denounced such acts as willful violations of English property rights-rights that some settlers wanted to defend by force of arms. For Indians, trespass- ing animals constituted an intolerable violation of their sovereign rights over their land. The problem intensified by the early i67os, for the English were determined to deprive Philip of all means of ensuring the integrity of the shrinking tracts of Wampanoag land, even as they refused effectively to control their beasts. The issue of trespassing livestock generated such ten- sion precisely because it could not be separated from fundamental ques- tions of property rights and authority. When war broke out in i675, the Indians attacked first, but the underly- ing causes resembled those that had provoked English belligerence four years earlier. John Easton, a Rhode Island Quaker, sought out Philip early in the conflict to ask why he fought the colonists; Philip's response indi- cated that intermingled concerns about sovereignty, land, and animals had made war inevitable. He supplied Easton with a litany of grievances that recalled past confrontations with the English and particularly stressed intractable problems over land and animals. He complained that when Indian leaders agreed to sell land, "the English wold say it was more than thay agred to and a writing must be prove [proof] against all them." If any sachem opposed such sales, the English would "make a nother king that wold give or seell them there land, that now thay had no hopes left to kepe ani land." Even after they sold land, Indians suffered from English encroachments, for "the English Catell and horses still incresed that when thay removed 30 mill from wher English had anithing to do"-impossible for the native inhabitants of Mount Hope-"thay Could not kepe ther coren from being spoyled." The Indians had expected that "when the English boft [bought] land of them that thay wold have kept ther Catell upone ther owne land."70 69 Gookin's comments were paraphrasedin a letter to him from Gov. Thomas Prince of Plymouth. Gookin had heard a rumor that he was accused of inciting Philip to fight against the English; Prince's letter aimed to reassurehim that that was not the case: see MHS, Colls., 1st Ser., VI (I799; repr. i846), 200-20I. 70 "A Relacion of the Indyan Warre, by John Easton, i675," in Charles H. Lincoln, ed.,
23. 622 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY Because livestock had come to symbolize the relentless advance of English settlement, the animals were special targets of native enmity during the war. Colonel Benjamin Church, who led colonial forces in several cam- paigns, reported that Indians "began their hostilities with plundering and destroying cattle."71In an attack near Brookfield, Indians burned dwellings and "made great spoyle of the cattel belonging to the inhabitants." At Rehoboth "they drove away many cattell & h[ors]es"; at Providence they "killd neer an hundered cattell"; in the Narragansett country they took away "at the least a thousand horses & it is like two thousan Cattell And many Sheep."72As the human toll also mounted in the summer of i675, English forces failed to stop Philip from slipping away from Mount Hope and only managed to capture "six, eight, or ten young Pigs of King Philip's The livestock on which colonists depended exposed them to ambush. Early in the war, Indians attacked "five Men coming from Road-Island, to look up their Cattel upon Pocasset Neck." Settlers sought refuge in garri- son houses and secured their cattle in palisaded yards but could not provide enough hay to sustain them for long. Sooner or later they had to drive the creatures out to pasture or bring in more hay. Philip and his forces-who had a keen understanding of the voraciousness of English livestock-would be waiting. Near Groton in March i676 "a Parcel of Indians . . . laid an Ambush for two Carts, which went from the Garison to fetch in some Hay." At about the same time at Concord, "two men going for Hay, one of them was killed." Settlers counted themselves lucky when they escaped, even if their animals fell victim. When Hatfield inhabitants let their live- stock out to graze in May i676, they lost the entire herd of seventy cattle and horses to Indians who had anticipated the move.74 Narrativesof the Indian Wars,i675-i699, Original Narratives of Early American History (New York, I9I3), II. 71 Church, Diary of King Philip's War, i675-i676, ed. Alan and Mary Simpson (Chester, Conn., I975), 75; see also William Hubbard, TheHistoryof the Indian Warsin New Englandfrom the First Settlementto the Terminationof the War with King Philip, in 1677, ed. Samuel G. Drake (New York, i969; orig. pub. i865), 64. 72 "Capt. Thomas Wheeler's Narrativeof an Expedition with Capt. EdwardHutchinson into the Nipmuck Country, and to Quaboag, now Brookfield, Mass., first published i675," Collectionsof the New-HampshireHistoricalSociety,11 (i827), 2I; Douglas Edward Leach, ed., A Rhode IslanderReportson King Philip's War: The Second William Harris Letter of August, i676 (Providence, R. I., i963), 44, 46, 58. For other descriptions of attacks on livestock see Church, Diary of King Philip's War, ed. Simpson and Simpson, I72; Samuel G. Drake, The Old Indian Chronicle;Being a Collectionof ExceedingRare Tracts,Writtenand Publishedin the Time of King P2hilip'sWar. ... Boston, IW34), I3, 35, 58; and 'Hubbard,Historyof the Indian Wars,i64, I92, 234, 242. Drake, Old Indian Chronicle,IO; the anonymous author of this account subsequentlyrefers 73 to the capture of Philip's "Cattel and Hogs," although there is no corroboratingevidence that Philip owned cattle; see p. ii. He did own a horse, given to him by the Plymouth General Court in i665; see Shurtleff and Pulsifer, eds., Plym. Col. Recs.,IV, 93. 74 Quotations from Hubbard, Historyof the Indian Wars,83, I95-I96, 222; for the Hatfield
24. LIVESTOCK IN EARLYNEW ENGLAND 623 The Indians seized and killed cattle mainly to deprive the colonists of food, but some of their depredations also suggest an intense animosity toward the animals themselves. One contemporary reported that "what cat- tle they took they seldom killed outright: or if they did, would eat but little of the flesh, but rather cut their bellies, and letting them go several days, trailing their guts after them, putting out their eyes, or cutting off one leg, &c."75 Increase Mather described an incident near Chelmsford when Indians "took a Cow, knocked off one of her horns, cut out her tongue, and so left the poor creature in great misery."76Such mutilations recalled the tortures more often inflicted on human victims and perhaps similarly served a ritual purpose.77 Certainly when Indians-who found a use for nearly every scrap of dead game animals-killed cattle "& let them ly & did neither eat them nor carry them away," they did so deliberately to send a message of terror to their enemies.78 Symbolic expressions of enmity, however, were a luxury that the Indians generally could not afford. As the war progressed, with cornfields ruined and hunting interrupted, Indians often needed captured livestock for food. When Church and his troops came upon an abandoned Indian encamp- ment in an orchard, they found the apples gone and evidence of "the flesh of swine, which they had killed that day." At another site, colonial forces "found some of the English Beef boiling" in Indian kettles. In Maine, where fighting dragged on for months after Philip's death in August i676, the "English took much Plunder from- the Indians, about a thousand Weight of dried Beef, with other Things."79 Edward Randolph, sent by the crown to investigate New England affairs in the summer of i676, reported to the Council of Trade on the devastation caused by the war. He esti- mated that the settlers had lost "eight thousand head of Cattle great and small"-a tremendous reduction in the livestock population but not enough to starve the colonists into defeat or sustain the Indians to The presence of livestock in New England was not the sole cause of the deterioration in relations between Indians and settlers. But because of their raid see George W. Ellis and John E. Morris, KingPhilip's War,Basedon theArchivesand Records of Massachusetts,Plymouth,RhodeIsland and Connecticut,and Contemporary Lettersand Accounts (New York, i906), 227-228, and Melvoin, New EnglandOutpost,ioi, I07. 75 Quotation from an anonymous narrative of the war reprinted in Drake, Old Indian 76 Increase Mather, A Brief Historyof the War with the Indians in New-England. .. (i676), ed. Samuel G. Drake (Boston, i862), I32. 77 On Indian use of torture see Jennings, InvasionofAmerica,i60-i64. 78 Leach, ed., A RhodeIslanderReportson King Philip's War,46. 79 Church, Diary of King Philip's War, ed. Simpson and Simpson, I33; Hubbard, Historyof the Indian Wars,276, pt. 2, 223. 80 Randolph's report is in Nathaniel Bouton et al., eds., Provincial Papers:Documentsand RecordsRelatingto the Provinceof New-Hampshire,vol. I (Concord, N. H., i867), 344. Christian Indians also suffered losses to their livestock during the war; see Gookin, "An Historical
25. 624 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY ubiquity and steady increase, domestic animals played a critical role in the larger, tragic human drama. The settlers had never been able to live with- out livestock, but as the animal population grew, Indians found it increas- ingly difficult to live with them. Both sides threatened violence over the issue of livestock-the English in i67i and the Indians, who made good on the threat, in i675. The cultural divide separating Indians and colonists would have existed without the importation to America of domestic ani- mals. But the presence of livestock brought differences into focus, created innumerable occasions for friction, tested the limits of cooperation-and led, in the end, to war. Account of . . .the Christian Indians in New England . . . ," American Antiquarian Society, ArchaeologiaAmericana,11 (i836), 45I, 504, 5I2.
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