The Natives of New England - 1675

   At the time of the first European settlements of North America, the Algonquian tribes occupied New England, New Jersey, southeastern New York, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, parts of Kentucky, and a large swath of Canada. Their largest concentration, however, was in New England. There were hundreds of tribes and a number of Algonquian dialects. The origin of the Algonquians is unknown and at the time of the the European settlement, the Algonquians were at war with the formidable Iroquois Federation.
   The Algonquians subsisted on hunting and fishing as well as agriculture; harvesting primarily corn, beans and squash. The streams and forests of New England were abundant with fish and game and the ocean provided mussells, scallops, clams, and oysters. In essence, the Algonquians practiced a seasonal economy. But the Algonquians were not nomads. They lived for most of the year in regular, settled communities; one in summer and another in winter. In summer, families gathered to live in villages near fertile agricultural land; in winter, they moved closer to hunting grounds, returning to the same places for as many years as the land could sustain them. Algonquian settlements were mostly small and consisted of a group of wigwams - sturdy buildings constructed of woven mats that could be easily disassembled and transported. By the middle of the seventeenth century, some wigwam construction included English hardware for door frames and windows.
   During a bad year, Algonquian communities moved more often and, during war they moved a great deal. Swamps proved to be an ideal and favorite hiding place for whole villages during time of war. Villages tended to be composed of several hundred people with strong family ties. Labor was divided by sex with women involved in agriculture and the men in hunting and fishing.

Ninigret - sachem of the Niantic - painted in 1681

   During the first years after the first European settlements in Massachusetts, New England was a land wracked by change and dislocations. The Southern Algonquian- speaking Indian tribes had been so wracked by diseases imported into their lands by European settlers that, by best estimate, only 20,000 Algonquians remained of a population that had once numbered perhaps three or four times that number. Along New England's eastern coast where contact with Europeans had being going on since the early 1500s, and the impact of European microbes the longest, the impact was the most profound. The Europeans found cleared fields, abandoned villages, and a demoralized Indian population willing to make any kind of treaty with the Europeans that would give them peace and protection.

Native Indian Tribes in New England in the early 17th century

     When the Pilgrims moved from their first landing place at Provincetown to Plymouth, they were amazed to find a home for the taking with cleared forest and fields ready to to till. Only when they questioned a sachem named Samoset did the Pilgrims learned that the native name for the place they now settled was Patuxet (Little Bay or Little Falls) and was so empty because of a massive plague that had struck in 1617, most likely introduced by European fisherman on the coast. Governor John Winthrop,who arrived in 1630, quickly noted the docility of the natives, and the open condition of the land ready for anyone who would claim it and improve it. He wrote that the plagues must have been divinely inspired and, not for a moment, did he or any other English commentator express appreciation or wonder at the natives' methods of clearing the land and managing their agriculture. But a foothold had been established and more and more European settlers arrived and more and more of them moved into the interior of New England. Yet the two sides managed to live in relative harmony and peace.
   By the mid 1600s New England started to change; an increasingly powerful and expansionist Puritan community was matched by a newly invigorated Indian population, rebounding from the diseases that had decimated it in the previous decades. The old balance between needy settlers and plague ravaged natives had been replaced by what some historians have characterized as a "golden age" of mutual prosperity. Yet this short-lived era was also a time of corruption. Many of the old agreements, such as the treaty between the Pilgrims and Massasoit of the Pokanokett had been set aside for more pragmatic relationships. The Puritans and their Pilgrim neighbors (between whom cross-denominational marriages began to occur in the mid-1600s) began to focus on trade, turning away from Utopian innocence and towards commercial profit. But this was economic necessity. New England had been part of the international trade world since the 1630s and commercial, rather than religious life, had become an integral part of their existence.
    It was the beaver that changed everything.

    The beaver trade was stimulated by the need of the European colonies to find a commodity that would repay the debts they owed to European merchants. European settlers and traders were quite aware that they were not as efficient as native hunters in capturing beaver, so often they hired natives  to hunt for them. Traditionally, northern Algonquins had traded with their southern brethren on the southern coast of New England, exchanging pelts for corn. Europeans inserted themselves into the traditional network, initially using "wampum" (shell beads) as currency. Although the beaver trade began in New England, similar trade networks existed later in all areas of North America where beaver were found, from New England to the Pacific Coast. The trade in furs in the seventeenth century revolutionized  American Indian trading economies, building on the old forms of gift-giving and kinship networks. European traders created a regional economy from what had once been a local network as they shuttled between corn-growing Algonquians and settlers of southern New England, wampum producers along Long Island Sound, and Indians of the rural north who hunted. European trade goods such as metal kettles also figured in the trade. Trade linked these groups with an abstract set of values measured in pelts, bushels of corn, fathoms of wampum, and price movements in sterling on the London Market.
   The term "wampum" may be derived from the Wamponoag word, Wampumpeag, which means white shell beads and refers to the white and purple sacred shell beads of  the Algonquian.  Wampum was woven into belts and was used by all of the Indian tribes to mark exchanges for personal social engagements such as betrothal and marriages, to commemorate treaties or other historical events, and for other ceremonial purposes. The introduction of European tools revolutionized the production of wampum and by the mid seventeenth century  it measured in the millions of beads. It was the Dutch who first realized the importance of wampum to the Natives and their colonists were soon mass producing wampum belts. While the Indians did not use wampum as money, the New England colonies used it as a medium of exchange. Soon, they were trading with the Indians of New England and New York using wampum.

Algonquian Wampum Belt

   To become trading partners in northern New England, the Algonquian tribes needed to alter very little in their way of life since they lived in beaver rich woodlands. But the Southern Algonquians had to turn to the production of wampum to become engaged in an international trade system that was so much more profitable than subsistence agriculture, hunting and fishing. The production of wampum meant a radical shift in how they lived and how the labor of men and women was directed. Increasingly, the lives of the southern Algonquian revolved around the trading post - a seemingly natural development in this increasingly commercial society. Initially, the change seemed quite beneficial. Some of the benefits included the development of a confident and wealthy class of Algonquian leaders; an improvement in the daily lives of their people with the acquisition of iron hoes, warm blankets, and copper kettles, as well as the myriad items available from a developed European economy. There were, of course, many negative aspects to this change - dishonest traders, alcohol, and the inequalities of the English justice system.
   Whereas the southern Algonquian had previously shifted their village sites and houses with the season, now they tended to stay by their "wampum factories." The men gathered the shellfish and the women made the belts and headbands and stoles of the strung and woven wampum. Time was also found for farming - some villages having cornfields as large as two hundred acres. But corn had long lost its trading power in the market place. Now the price offered for the beaver pelts and the translation of that into wampum and the value of a fathom of wampum at a trading post was all that mattered.
   The suddenly, the whole situation changed. The beaver market in Europe collapsed. A fathom of wampum (six feet) which had once been worth nine or ten shillings was now worth about five shillings. The Indians did not understand this and felt cheated. The golden age of fur and wampum prosperity was over. Now, the only resource the Algonquians of New England had was their land - a limited exhaustible commodity much in demand by the European settlers already living in New England and by the immigrants still arriving.

To be continued

Colonel Benjamin Church

  I am currently working on a series of posts on Dr Benjamin Church, Jr.'s great-grandfather ( not grandfather as has been believed), Colonel Benjamin Church, and King Philip's War, one of the most devastating wars ever fought in North America, but now largely forgotten. It was the single greatest calamity to have occurred in seventeenth century New England. Church, not Robert Rogers of Rogers' Rangers, should be considered the father of the American military tradition of the Rangers. Below is a Paul Revere engraving of a likeness of Colonel Church that appeared in a a 1772 reprint of Colonel Church's history of King Philip's War, compiled by his son Thomas, and originally printed in 1716.

The Ropewalks of Boston

   In early March 1770, the city of Boston seethed with frustration, anger, and resentment at the manner in which the British Government had treated it through seventeen months of military occupation and a decade of economic hardships. The Bostonians view of themselves as British citizens equal to the citizens of the motherland was being shattered as they came to realize that the British authorities saw them as subordinates rather than as equal members of the empire. The colony's acting governor and his allies fretted that power had shifted to the Whigs and, as they saw it, their mobs. Isolated, these commissioners feared, with good reason, for their personal safety and property, but were still eager to zealously prosecute infractions of the onerous trade laws imposed on the colonists, no matter how trivial. In the midst of this cauldron, were approximately 2,000 British troops quartered in the midst of the townspeople. But often overlooked is that the British troops were accompanied by wives, children and the "hangers-on" that accompanied any mid eighteenth century European army. Add to this the officers and crews of the British naval ships that were constantly in and out of Boston harbor and you have an overwhelming British presence in a city of 15,500. Historians have calculated that, at this time, one-third of the male population of Boston were soldiers.
   The British military presence was not a discreet one. Redcoats, on and off-duty, were everywhere; in the streets, in the taverns and coffee house, in the shops, at various checkpoints, and on the Common, day and night. This in a Boston very much different from the Boston of today. A person, walking briskly, could see all of 1770's Boston in about an hour.

   The events that would lead to and trigger the event  that occurred on Monday, March 5th, 1770 and known today as "The Boston Massacre" started on Friday, March 2nd, 1770 at a ropewalk in Boston's South End. John Gray owned a ropewalk which consisted of a ropewalk, a warehouse, a residence and several buildings, located a few hundred yards from a British barracks. Gray employed a regular crew of journeymen and apprentices but often hired temporary workers as well. That morning a British soldier ambled by the ropeworks and a journeymen shouted to him asking him if he wanted to work. The poorly paid British soldiers were always trying to supplement their incomes with off duty work and the Boston ropeworks provided  a splendid opportunity. This particular British soldier from the 29th Regiment, however, was being setup. When the soldier eagerly answered yes, the journeyman responded gleefully - "Then go and clean my shithouse!" The soldier, humiliated and furious, answered that he would "seek satisfaction" and that he was not afraid of any rope worker. While the soldier tried to restore his dignity, a day worker at the ropeworks stealthily approached the soldier and pulled his feet out from under him. As the soldier fell, his coat flew open, revealing an unsheathed cutlass. Another ropeworker spotted the cutlass, grabbed it, and took it inside. Without his weapon and badly outnumbered, the soldier retreated.

   Twenty minutes later, the soldier returned with eight or nine of his fellow soldiers armed with clubs. The group entered Gray's warehouse and challenged the three or four men there to explain the treatment received by their fellow soldier. Recognizing that these soldiers would not be mollified with soothing words, the besieged warehouse men called for help. Approximately 15 workers responded to this plea and the assembled force drove off the soldiers. Undaunted, the soldiers of the 29th rallied 30 or 40 more soldiers and, armed with clubs and cutlasses, they set off for revenge. An elderly justice of the peace saw what was about to happen and attempted to intervene. The soldiers paid him absolutely no attention  but when the soldiers knocked down a ropeworker and began to beat him with their clubs, the justice of the peace started to intervene, only narrowly escaping a blow himself. Although outnumbered they may have been, the ropeworkers manged to fend off the soldiers who then retreated to their barracks. Both sides, however, swore to continue the battle over the weekend.

   Over the weekend there was at least one other minor skirmish and numerous rumors of an impending fight between soldiers and ropeworkers; one that threatened to escalate into wide spread violence. As three apprentices were spinning at McNeil's ropewalk, located right next to Gray's establishment, late Saturday afternoon, three grenadiers carrying bludgeons accosted them. "You damned dogs," they cried,"don't you deserve to be killed? Are you fit to die?" The apprentices caught unawares and unarmed, remained silent. A passerby, overhearing what was said, approached one of the grenadiers and taunted him by saying, "Damn it, I know what a soldier is." That prompted the grenadier to swing his club at the passerby and then at one of the apprentices. A nearby journeyman went to a tan house and brought out two bats. With the help of another bystander, he chased the soldiers from the site.

This  cutout from the above map clearly shows the location of "MacNeal's" rope yard.  Gray's was next to it.

   We will end the story here but will note that the town was tense that entire weekend with rumors of impending clashes and small teams of workers and soldiers roaming the streets armed with clubs and other weapons. The town would explode on Monday and lead to the withdrawal of British troops from the streets of Boston.

  

  But, what is a ropewalk and how important were they to Boston and its industry?

ropewalkers and the 700-900 foot shed where they worked was called a ropewalk. The twisting of the fiber was accomplished by a man who walked backward down the "walk"spinning from the hemp which was strung around his waist. The twist was imparted to the rope by a wheel turned by a boy. These men worked long hours, sheltered from the rain and snow, but not the heat and cold, their clothes impregnated with the smell of tar. By one account, there were fourteen ropewalks in Boston spinning for at least sixty years.

An image from Stark's "Antique Views of Boston" shows a ropewalk running through Beacon Hill.

   The first ropewalk appeared in Boston in 1642, just 12 years after the town was founded, and its first proprietor was a man by the name of John Harrison. Harrison was invited into Boston by the town selectmen after the town started to build bigger ships and it recognized the advantage of making its own rope. In fact, Harrison was enticed to move to Boston from Salisbury by being given a monopoly for 21 years. Harrison managed to extend that monopoly well beyond the 21 years and it lasted until his death. After his death, the number of ropewalks in Boston grew exponentially. It's difficult to state precisely how many ropewalks were actively in business in Boston in the 1770s, fire being a real hazard to them as we shall see shortly, but this 1722 map of Boston shows ropewalks located in both the north and south ends of Boston. The location of the Gray ropewalks shows several ropewalks in this location in 1722 and, as best as I can determine, there probably were seven of them at this location at the time of the revolution.

Bonner's 1722 map of Boston. Ropewalk locations are in red.

   Before we go further, it should be noted that these ropewalks were supported by a number of New England farms as far west as the Connecticut River valley grew the hemp (non-THC strain) that was used to make the ropes. A large quantity of hemp was also imported.

   Ropewalks were built on the edge of Boston until the last days of the eighteenth century. The barren slopes located there were perfect locations not only as sites for the unusually long and narrow sheds, but also because rope making was a highly combustible (In 1794 seven ropewalks burned down in Boston) and smelly operation that no one wanted for a neighbor. After the coils of rope were spun they were dipped in heated tar as a preservative against seawater rot. These tar kettles created quite a stench and could make the air virtually unbreathable on a hot day. Even worse were the fires that started when sparks from the kettle fire lit the dry supplies of hemp. And fires were an enormous threat in colonial Boston.

   Rope walking continued well after the revolution and the Charlestown Naval Yard has preserved an example of a 19th century ropewalk on its grounds.