which appears to have been converted by the Jesuits, and to have ultimately withdrawn to Canada.[1]
Eastern or Atlantic.
Under this head will be included the New England Indians, meaning thereby those between the Abenakis and Hudson River; the Long Island Indians; the Delaware and Minsi of Pennsylvania and New Jersey; the Nanticockes of the eastern shore of Maryland; the Susquehannocks; the Powhatans of Virginia; and the Pamlicos of North Carolina.
Gookin, who wrote in 1674, enumerates as the five principal nations of New England, 1. The Pequods, who may be considered as making but one people with the Mohegans, and who occupied the eastern part of the State of Connecticut; 2. The Narragansets in the State of Rhode Island; 3. The Pawkunnawkuts or Wampanoags, chiefly within the jurisdiction of the Plymouth Colony; 3. The Massachusetts, in the Bay of that name and the adjacent parts. 5. The Pawtuckets, north and northeast of the Massachusetts. Under the designation of Pawtuckets he includes the Penacooks of New Hampshire, and probably all the more eastern tribes as far as the Abenakis, or Tarrateens, as they seem to have been called by the New England Indians. The Nipmucks are mentioned as living north of the Mohegans, and west of the Massachusetts, occupying the central parts of that State as far west as the Connecticut River, and acknowledging, to a certain extent, the supremacy of the Massachusetts, of the Narrangansets, or of the Mohegans. Those several nations appear, however, to have been divided into a number of tribes, each having its own Sachem, and in a great degree independent of each other.
The great similarity if not the identity of the languages from the Connecticut River eastwardly to the Piscataqua, seems to be admitted by all the early writers. Gookin states that the New England Indians, especially upon the seacoasts, use the same sort of speech and language, only with some difference in the expressions, as they differ in several counties in England, yet so as they can well understand each other. Roger Williams, speaking of his Key, as he calls his vocabulary, says that "he has entered into the secrets of those countries wherever
- ↑ Relations, and Charlevoix, A. D. 1646, &c.
