ing of the day, August the fifth" and Philip did not visit them until the next day, Friday, the sixth of August. It seems to me not very probable that they remained in their known dwelling-place more than twenty-four hours, awaiting an attack by the English cavalry; on the contrary, it does seem probable that, according to their usual custom, they speedily sought concealment and safety elsewhere. Such was their conduct, six months later, when, having destroyed Lancaster and retired to this same Winnimisset, Mrs. Rowlandson tells us that, apprehending an attack by an armed force, then gathering at Brookfield, they suddenly left that place, and "went as if they had gone for their lives for some considerable way;" and, after a short rest, "like Jehu, they marched on furiously," until they had put Miller's River between them and their pursuers. So in this case: fleeing from Brookfield before day-light on Thursday morning, there is a violent presumption that before Friday evening they were at least "six miles from the swamp where they killed our men," leaving Ware River behind them, as an obstacle against pursuit. And as a matter of fact, it is understood that, two days later, "on Sunday the 8th, a force marched northward to the Menameset country, but found no Indians."3 That there was an Indian village about "six miles" from Winnimisset, we are informed by Mrs. Rowlandson, who tells us that when she was visited at Winnimisset by her son Joseph, he said that he was among a smaller parcel of Indians, whose place was about six miles off."4 I know not precisely where that "place" was; it may have been on the border of Pottapaug Pond, in Dana, which bears traces of Indian occupancy, is about six miles from Winnimisset, and near the track by which the Indians would naturally retreat if, as many suppose, they "fled northerly 1 Narrative, p. 20. 2 Indian Captivities, p. 30. 3 Narrative, p. 102. See also Judd's History of Hadley, p. 140. 4 Indian Captivities, p. 27. to Paquayag, now Athol, and other places in that neighborhood." Or it may have been at Nichewaug (Petersham), which is on the same route, and at not much greater distance. According to the well-known custom of the Indians, it seems altogether more probable that Philip visited them at this "place," wherever it was, than that he and they should have ventured to remain, two whole days, at their known dwelling-place, or not more than one mile from it, within easy reach of an armed force by whom they had been already repulsed and might confidently expect to be pursued. On the whole, in consideration of the ascertained facts and reasonable probabilities in the case, I still adhere to the opinion which I publicly expressed, half a century ago, that Captain Wheeler suffered his disastrous defeat on the easterly side of the Winnimisset meadows, at some point within the distance of one mile southerly from the homestead on what was formerly known as the Fay Farm, in New Braintree. 1 Judd's History of Hadley, p. 140. 2 Centennial Address at Hardwick, 1838, p. 6. THE EARLY AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE IN NEW ENGLAND. BY WILLIAM B. WEEden. THE deportation of African negroes-commonly called the slave-trade-was a movement of importance in the commerce of the latter seventeenth and of the eighteenth century. Perhaps the most momentous and effective change instituted in the minds of men, by this nineteenth century, is in the general conception and treatment of human slavery. The seventeenth century organized the new western countries. and created an immense opportunity for labor. The eighteenth coolly and deliberately set Europe at the task of depopulating whole districts of western Africa, and of transporting the captives by a necessarily brutal, vicious and horrible traffic to the new civilizations of America. The awakened conscience of the nineteenth century checked the horrid stream of forced migrations; but an enormous social structure had been reared on servitude and enforced labor; its overthrow imperilling one of the fairest civilizations of the earth convulsed the great territory and the greater society of the United States of America. North American slavery fell, and with it a vast structure of ideas, political, social and philanthropic, proceeding from the economic force of slavery on the one hand, and the humanitarian, ameliorating passion of mankind for freedom, on the other. Looking backward one and a half or two and a half centuries, we are amazed and humiliated, when we consider how little people knew what they were doing. When the old and enlightened countries sought eagerly for slaves and taught their colonial offshoots to depend upon them, they dug a deep pit for their own children. New England entered upon this long path of twisted social development-this wanton destruction of barbaric life. in the hope of new civilized life, this perversion of the force of the individual barbarian into an opportunity for social mischief-with no more and no less consciousness than prevailed elsewhere at that time. The Winthrops and other Puritan colonists asked and received Indian captives for slaves as freely as any partisan went for loot or plunder. Indians were enslaved on all sides, as long as the local tribes lasted; then Maine, then the Carolinas and other districts3 furnished captives for a never ceasing demand for labor. Cotton Mather employed his negro servant, showing as little regard for the rights of man, as the Boston merchant or Narragansett planter. Sewall's was about the earliest and almost the only voice, raised in behalf of a large humanity. Fortunately for the moral development of our beloved colonies, the climate was too harsh, the social system too simple to engender a good economic employment of black labor. The simple industrial methods of each New England homestead, made a natural barrier against an alien social system, including either black or copper-colored dependents. The blacks soon dwindled in numbers or dropped out, from a life too severe for any but the hardiest and firmest fibred races. The mother country knew no humanity, but only an economic opportunity, in the enslavement of the negro. The Royal African Company in their Declaration, as early as 1662, indicate the sentiment of England in this business. Other nations were invading the African trade, and there was danger that America "be rendered useless in their 1 Freeman, Cape Cod, p. 72. 2 Col. Rec. Conn., 1715, p. 516. 3 Coflin, Newbury, p. 337; Col. Rec. Conn., 1711, p. 233; Essex Inst., VII., 73. 4 Proc., M. H. S., 1812, p. 352. 5 Declaration, Carter Brown Library, p. 1. growing Plantations, through want of that usual supply of Servants, which they have hitherto had from Africa." To forward the affairs of this slave-dealing corporation, which included the King, Duke of York and many leading persons, was made a constant care for colonial governors.1 In 1695 the traffic in negroes was considered the best and most profitable branch of British Commerce. It was a melancholy omen of the immense significance of the slave-trade in that commerce that, the gold coin used even more than the sovereign as a unit of common prices, was named for Guinea whence gold and negroes were taken together. 2 Slavery was a small factor in New England, because economic laws forbade its growth. It was managed as humanely perhaps, as such a system could be conducted. It was not absolute constraint, nor a permanent confinement. A negro man and woman on Rhode Island in 1735, by "Industry & Frugality scrap'd together £200, or £300." They sailed from Newport to their own country, Guinea, where their savings gave them an independent fortune. 3 The slave-trade was likewise, a small constituent in itself, but it exercised a great influence in the whole commerce of the first half of the eighteenth century. Any active element in trade, anything much needed at the moment, affects the general movement of commerce, much more than its actual amount and more particular value would indicate. Massachusetts writers have always been especially sore, at the point where the trade in African negroes is touched. If they had admitted that in fact; none knew at the time the enormity of the offence and that Massachusetts partook of the common public sentiment which trafficked in Indians or Negroes as carelessly as in cattle, their argument would be more consistent. Massachusetts attained enough in her 1 Doc. N. York, III., 241, 261. 2 Cary's British Trade, pp. 74, 76. Bos. Eveg. Post, 1735. |