New York (State) -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Sources
All travellers who stop over night come to the Sackima, if they have no
acquaintances there, and are entertained by the expenditure of as much
sewan as is allowed for that purpose; therefore the Sackimas generally
have three or four wives, each of whom has to furnish her own seed-corn.
The Sackima has his fixed fine of sewan for fighting and causing blood
to flow. When any are--[here four pages, at least, are missing in the
original manuscript].
Coming out of the river Nassau, you sail east-and-by-north about
fourteen leagues, along the coast, a half miles from the shore, and you
then come to "Frenchman's Point" at a small river where those of
Patucxet have a house made of hewn oak planks, called Aptucxet, where
they keep two men, winter and summer, in order to maintain the trade
and possession. Here also they have built a shallop, in order to go
and look after the trade in sewan, in Sloup's Bay and thereabouts,
because they are afraid to pass Cape Mallabaer, and in order to avoid
the length of the way; which I have prevented for this year by selling
them fifty fathoms of sewan, because the seeking after sewan by them is
prejudicial to us, inasmuch as they would, by so doing, discover the
trade in furs; which if they were to find out, it would be a great
trouble for us to maintain, for they already dare to threaten that if
we will not leave off dealing with that people, they will be obliged to
use other means; if they do that now, while they are yet ignorant how
the case stands, what will they do when they do get a notion of it?
From Aptucxet the English can come in six hours, through the woods,
passing several little rivulets of fresh water, to New Plymouth, the
principal place in the district Patucxet, so called in their patent
from his Majesty in England.
New Plymouth lies in a large bay to the north of Cape Cod, or
Mallabaer, east and west from the said [north] point of the cape, which
can be easily seen in clear weather. Directly before the commenced
town lies a sand-bank, about twenty paces broad, whereon the sea breaks
violently with an easterly and east-north-easterly wind. On the north
side there lies a small island where one must run close along, in order
to come before the town; then the ships run behind that bank and lie in
a very good roadstead. The bay is very full of fish, [chiefly] of cod,
so that the governor before named has told me that when the people have
a desire for fish they send out two or three persons in a sloop, whom
they remunerate for their trouble, and who bring them in three or four
hours' time as much fish as the whole community require for a whole
day--and they muster about fifty families.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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