Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People, 1602-1890

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Information concerning Isaac Coleman’s parentage comes from The Coleman Family (Detroit, 1898). The reference to Isaac and the dog committee is in MR (February 15, 1667). The canoe incident is recounted in Macy’s “Anecdotes”; references to the circumstances of the deaths of Coleman and the Barnards is in “Births, Marriages, Deaths, 1662–1835,” Nantucket Town Clerk’s Office.

  4. Tristram Coffin, Country Squire

  The passage from the Newbury Town Records describing the incident involving the Coffins and their beer-making is quoted in Will Gardner’s introduction to The Coffin Family, ed. Louis Coffin (Nantucket, 1962). Why Tristram Coffin decided to migrate to America is uncertain. Although there is no direct evidence, Will Gardner hypothesizes that he was a Royalist who had become dissatisfied with inroads made by the Puritans in England. (Why then was one of his descendants named Cromwell Coffin?) For an account of the dissatisfaction settlers from the West Country of England commonly experienced in Puritan New England, see Byers’s Nation of Nantucket and DavidHackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed (New York, 1989). Byers compares the Nantucket proprietary to its counterparts in New England while providing a detailed analysis (to which I am indebted) of its development throughout the seventeenth century.

  Tristram’s eldest son Peter Coffin was what we could call today a leading “player” in colonial New England. In 1668, on behalf of the General Court of Massachusetts, he presented a shipload of masts to the King, for which he received close to 250 acres of land in what is now Mendon, Massachusetts; see Elizabeth Little and Margaret Morrison, “The Mendon-Nantucket Connection, 1708–1737” (NHA, 1986). Peter Coffin’s trade agreement with the town did have one qualification, however, in that it allowed “Nat Davis [who had a house near the harbor in the vicinity of present-day Federal Street] to trade 100 bushels of corn when he comes or sends together his Debts” (MR, October 13, 1664). The original assignment of lots is in MR (May 10, 1661); as early arrivals, Thomas Macy and Edward Starbuck also received their pick of land, with Macy settling to the east of Capaum and Starbuck building his house near the English-Indian border at Waqutaquaib Pond. Coffin’s land deed is in MR (June 15, 1677). Byers compares the settlement pattern on Nantucket with that of a typical New England village.

  Hummock Pond was still horseshoe shaped until 1978 when a winter storm cut what was once a single pond into two separate entities. The deed describing the feeding rights is in MR (May 10, 1660). The half-share accommodations can be traced throughout MR; by 1670 the proprietary consisted of twenty-seven shares upon which all subsequent land titles were based.

  For an analysis of stinting rights on Nantucket and their relationship to English-Indian relations, see Little’s “Grass Contest.” In 1672 the town made the decision to move from cattle to sheep, and throughout these early years measures were passed to keep not only horses and cattle but also pigs and goats from interfering with the growing flock. As mentioned in Chapter 1, dogs were a persistent problem. In 1672 it was ordered that “all dogs more than four months old shall wear a sufficient muzzle” to keep them from killing lambs (MR). Coffin’s earmark as well as those of all proprietors are listed in the Proprietors’ Book I, Registry of Deeds. The description of the sheep pound appears in MR (1669). Florence Bennett Anderson’s A Grandfather for Benjamin Franklin (Boston, 1940) describes how Coffin consciously attempted to evoke his native Devon on Nantucket. References to the mill on Wesco Pond appear throughout MR: June 10, 1667; March, 1668; October 28, 1672. The early population records are in “Births, Deaths, and Marriages,” Nantucket Town Clerk’s Office. The number of Coffin descendants comes from Gardner’s introduction in The Coffin Family. Z. Macy’s reference to old Tristram appears in NP.

  The 1680 law against Sunday vagrancy appears in Franklin B. Hough’s Papers Relating to the Island of Nantucket (New York, 1856). See William F. Macy’s The Nantucket Scrap Basket (Boston, 1930) for a discussion of the term “rantom scoot.” The reference to Mrs. Folger’s walking with a chair comes from an undated and unsigned scrap in NHA Collection 118, Folder 34.

  Sarah Neeffeld is mentioned in MR (November 10, 1679). Nantucketers remained jealously protective of their island community throughout the eighteenth century as the town selectmen issued a regular series of warrants demanding the eviction of specific individuals who “may be of bad consequence to the town if not removed.” For example, in May of 1763 a warrant was issued for the removal of a goldsmith by the name of Samuel Barros “of Boston,” the reason being that “we are not in want of any such tradesman.” The community that Crèvecoeur described in the 1770s as a well-ordered “beehive”—where the men filled up their idle hours by obsessively whittling while the women spun their wool—was achieved only through constant and careful vigilance.

  The tribute of codfish to New York appears in MR (1671); the half-share accommodation to J. Gardner is in MR (August 5, 1672), as is mention of his home site (MR, 1673). The reference to Mrs. Cottle appears in MR (September 5, 1673).

  5. “An Island Full of Indians”: King Philip, John Gibbs, and Peter Folger

  Governor Winthrop made the statement “Nantucket is an island full of Indians” in 1634; cited by Little in “Indian Horse Commons at Nantucket Island, 1660–1760,” Nantucket Algonquian Studies #9 (NHA, 1990). Through deed records (see Little’s “Sachem Nickanoose of Nantucket and the Grass Contest”) and tradition (much of it coming from Zaccheus Macy in NP), it is possible to reconstruct at least partially who lived where on the western end of the island before the arrival of the English. Wesco (where today’s town now stands) was divided among Tequamomamy, Mekowakima, and Francis, a sachem from Cape Cod. The Hoites lived in the area that Thomas Macy would call home between Washing and Reed Ponds (known as Wannacomet or “the pond field”) while the Jafets preceded the Coffins at Capaum. In and around Hummock Pond lived Nanahuma, Jonas Harry, and Lemmo, with today’s Ram Pasture being claimed by a Martha’s Vineyard sachem by the name of Pakepenessa. Then there were Peteson, Mr. Larry Akeramo, and Obadiah, who claimed that the Khauds had no right to sell their land.

  That at least some of these western “Taumkhods” did not go willingly is indicated by a law (in MR) stating that any Indians remaining “after the 14 day of October, 1662, shall pay to the English 5 shillings per week. . . .” Worth speaks of the Native Americans’ concept of ownership in Nantucket Land and Land Owners HN (1901). Zaccheus Macy claims that Attapehat was a warrior in NP. The request for setting up a court on Nantucket was made in June, 1671 (in MR) and prefaced by the statement, “seeing the Indians are numerous among us. . . .”

  The joint Indian-English trench/weir proposal is in MR (1665). Throughout the 1660s and ’70s committees were organized on a virtually annual basis to “go among the Indians and see what stray there is done in their corn by the English cattle and to agree with them in point of satisfaction . . .” (MR, August 16, 1671).

  Gookin left his account of Nantucket’s Indians in Historical Collections of the Indians in New England (Towtaid, 1970). The fears both English and Indian Nantucketers felt over the murders on Coatue must have been exacerbated by the knowledge that thirty years earlier a similar event (the murder of a white man by an Indian) on Block Island had initiated the Pequot War. Worth’s account of Nickanoose’s response to the murders appears in MR (June 11, 1709); the reference to Indian hangings in 1665 also appears in MR. Little’s “Indian Politics on Nantucket” places these references in the context of Indian-English relations throughout this period. My account of King Philip’s appearance on the island is based primarily on Macy’s History.

  Zaccheus Macy records a somewhat different version of the King Philip incident: “In about the year 1669 King Philip came to the island to kill an Indian whose name was John Gibbs for speaking or naming the name of the dead which we suppose was one of his nigh connections, for it was a sort of a law they had then that no one was to speak the name of the dead, and when the said Philip came he landed at the west end of the island intending to travel alon
g shore under the bank to the east part of the island where said John lived so as not to be discovered. But an Indian happened to know his business and ran and told said John the plans, and John ran to town and went to Thomas Macy and got him to hide him. The English held a parley with said Philip and it took all the money they could muster to satisfy the said King. The above story we have handed down to us from our fathers so that we do not doubt the truth of it and so the said Philip went off satisfied” (NHA Collection 96, Folder 44).

  Josselyn’s description of Philip appears in Russell Bourne’s The Red King’s Rebellion (New York, 1990). Robert F. Mooney and Andre R. Sigourney in The Nantucket Way (New York, 1980) touch on Indian versus English law in their account of Philip’s visit. According to Macy’s “Anecdotes,” Gibbs was found by Philip’s men in the swamps surrounding Gibbs Pond. The reference to Attapehat and the Taumkhods vowing their allegiance to the English is in MR.

  Peter Folger describes his role as Indian interpreter in his March 27, 1677, letter to Governor Andros in Franklin B. Hough’s Papers Relating to the Island of Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and Other Islands Adjacent, Known as Dukes County While under the Colony of New York (Albany, 1856). Some details about Peter Folger: At the age of twenty he sailed for America on board the Abigail and during the voyage he fell in love with Mary Morrill, the servant of the famous preacher Hugh Peters. Not until nine years later would they be married, when Folger was finally able to save up the twenty pounds required to free Mary from her indentures. According to tradition, he later referred to it as “the best money” he had ever spent. After living in Dedham and Watertown, Peter moved to Martha’s Vineyard, where he was referred to as the “English schoolmaster that teacheth the Indians and instructs them on Lord’s Day.” But Folger did not move directly from Martha’s Vineyard to Nantucket. Soon after asserting his Baptist beliefs, he relocated to the more tolerant town of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, then in 1663 accepted the offer of a half-share grant on Nantucket. As the “scholar” of the island, Folger would remain a leading religious figure. The strength of his beliefs is suggested by a passage from a letter to his son-in-law: “The world can willingly part with you, and it is high time for us to be more willing to part with it.”

  While Macy’s History contains parts of Peter Folger’s “A Looking Glass for the Times,” the most complete and accessible version of it is in Anderson’s A Grandfather for Benjamin Franklin. Folger’s poem was not published until 1725 and then again in 1763; the 1763 version was reprinted in 1883 by Sidney S. Ryder as No. 16 of Rhode Island Historical Tracts; the NHA also has a very early holograph manuscript of the poem. Benjamin Franklin (whose mother was Folger’s youngest daughter Abiah) quotes extensively from the poem in his Autobiography, ed. Leonard W. Labaree et al. (New Haven, 1964).

  Francis Jennings provides a moving and often horrifying account of Indian-English relations in seventeenth-century New England in The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (New York, 1975). The 1675 Indian loyalty oath to the English is in MR (August 5, 1675).

  The biblical account of Jonathan and Saul is in 1 Samuel 14; during the seventeenth century it was common for the English—particularly the Puritans—to find parallels between their contemporary situation and events from the Bible: “a private typology of current affairs” according to the literary critic Sacvan Bercovitch in The Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven, 1975). Little speaks of the Indians’ use of “dramatic landscape features” (such as rocks and hills) in “Indian Politics.” Although Edouard Stackpole insisted that the name “Altar Rock” was invented by “a ’Sconseter” in the twentieth century (stated in a private conversation; October, 1991), F. C. Ewer’s famous map of the island (published in 1869) indicates Altar Rock. According to an article about Altar Rock in NI (August 19, 1922), “When war raged between the tribes, and prisoners were taken, they were brought to this rock, which was supposed to be holy, and their lives sacrificed. The rock has a large cross upon it.” Although Saul’s Hills may have been named for “old Saul, a very stern looking old man” in Wanackmamack’s bounds mentioned in Zaccheus Macy’s list of notable Indians (in NP), this reference was made in 1792, more than 100 years after Peter Folger. Also, Ewer’s map includes a Saul’s Pond in the old section of town (across Madaket Road from where Peter Folger’s house was located)—nowhere near Wanackmamack’s bounds. Was this pond also named for Philip? Both Obed and Zaccheus Macy’s accounts have Philip coming to the English settlement, and we do know for a fact that he attended a town meeting.

  Philip’s Run would later be used in the spring to drain the cranberry bogs that had been flooded in the winter with water from Gibbs Pond. According to J. Franklin Chase (and communicated to me by Helen Winslow Chase), the Commonwealth of Massachusetts installed a marker at sea level in Gibbs Pond as a warning not to pump it out below that level.

  The first to deal with the subject of Indian debt servitude (or peonage) on Nantucket with genuine sympathy for the Indians’ plight was William Root Bliss in his deceptively named Quaint Nantucket (Boston, 1897); Bliss relied heavily on town and court records, from which the examples of debt servitude are taken. Daniel Vickers in “The First Whalemen of Nantucket,” William and Mary Quarterly (1983), offers a detailed analysis of the workings of Indian debt servitude in the following century once whaling had emerged as the driving force behind the island’s economy; also see Byers.

  Zaccheus Macy speaks of Corduda in NP. Mayhew’s statement concerning the lack of justice for Nantucket Indians is in Starbuck. The law against taking Indian servants off the island is in MR (July 8, 1670). The reference to Tuckernuck Island as an Indian refuge is from a request to have the island placed under the jurisdiction of Nantucket so that these Indians could be brought to justice; the petition also claims that “Indians from Rhode Island and the mainland carry over liquors and strong drink to them [on Tuckernuck], when they get drunk and fight and make great disorder” (in Bliss).

  The account of the French privateer raid and the help that the Indians provided was written by le Sieur de Villebon, Governor of Acadia, on September 10, 1695, and is in the Archives Nationales of Paris (Colonies C11d2); I thank Gasser Jacques for bringing the account to my attention and Thomas L. Philbrick for translating the passage. On May 3, 1695, John Gardner wrote officials in Boston: “This night the French landed on our island[;] plundered [a] house and carried away four men and are now about the island of what for I know not. It is but a small vessel, they said at the house. There was two more of which we know not” (in Starbuck). Corroborating the French governor’s statements concerning the Indians’ questionable loyalties during the raid (also see Chapter 8), James Coffin petitioned the Massachusetts General Assembly concerning the island’s status as “being on the frontier of this province” and spoke of “the necessity of liberality to the Indians in drink and provision” during times of threatened attack. By this stage in the game, the only way the English could count on the loyalty of the Indians was to provide them with rum.

  Z. Macy speaks of the “good fashion” of many Indians in NP. Crèvecoeur in his Letters describes the Nantucketers’ shouting “Awaite Pawana” when first sighting a whale. William Comstock in A Voyage to the Pacific, Descriptive of the Customs, Usages, and Sufferings on board of Nantucket Whale-Ships (Boston, 1838) compares Nantucket’s Indians to snow melting in the sun. In his “Anecdotes,” Obed Macy describes a meeting house “near the east end of Gibbs swamp” and gives the following account of the structure: “The meeting house was built of wood, according to the common practice of building at that time. But at what time it was built, or by whom, is not known. . . . About the year 1770, Peleg Swain removed it to town and occupied it as a dwelling house, for which purpose it has been used till the year 1838 when it was taken down.” John Cotton’s reference to Nantucket Indians and the Baptists is in Gookin. Z. Macy’s description of Indian worship is in NP. Gardner’s description of the state of Indian affairs in 1694 appeare
d in Cotton Mather’s Magnalia and is cited in Starbuck.

  6. Gardner versus Coffin: The Revolt

  The circumstances surrounding Peter Folger’s imprisonment are described in his letter to Governor Andros, dated March 27, 1677, in Hough’s Papers Relating to the Island of Nantucket; this useful collection of correspondence and court records from the New York archives in Albany is probably the best source of information concerning the Half-Share Revolt. References to town meetings come from MR; Henry Barnard Worth’s Nantucket Land and Land Owners also serves as an excellent source of information concerning this controversial period in Nantucket’s history. The best blow-by-blow account of the Revolt is in Byers. Interestingly, Macy and Crèvecoeur make no mention of this early period of conflict.

  What happened to Folger’s court book remains a mystery. Since Folger does not explain why he went to Gardner’s house in his letter to the governor (in Hough), I think it a reasonable explanation that he did so to make sure the court book did not fall into “enemy” hands. Although the court book’s fate has been the subject of some rather romanticized speculation, the town records that do exist for the years prior to 1677 (in MR) suggest that if it was not eventually “found” after the Half-Share Revolt, large portions of the book were copied down elsewhere prior to its disappearance. Indeed, when one compares the state of Nantucket’s town records from the seventeenth century with those of Edgartown, the two are remarkably similar in their general state of incompleteness and disorder.