NOTES

CHAPTER I

As is explained in the Notes to Chapter II, if such a headland as Webb’s Island ever existed, it had vanished before 1606. In fact, however, it must have disappeared centuries earlier. It is a geographical monstrosity for two points to exist close together and at right angles to each other on a coast like Chatham’s. The forces that create one would demolish the other. The alleged Webb’s Island Point was nearly at right angles to Monomoy Point, and close to it. The two, therefore, could never have been in existence at the same time; Webb’s Island Point must have been demolished before Monomoy was made. Monomoy was there in 1606; we can only guess how old it was then; perhaps a thousand years. But its age, whatever it was, must be subtracted from 1606 in order to get back to the date when Webb’s Island Point existed.

We are now confronted by the question whether or not, though the rest of this headland vanished at a very remote period, the extreme easterly end of it, Webb’s Island, was still above water in colonial times. An article in the ‘Massachusetts Magazine’ (III, 1791, page 151) says that such an island existed about 1700. This statement is said to be corroborated in Morse’s ‘Universal Geography,’ I, 357, ed. 1793 (Amos Otis, ‘Discovery of an Ancient Ship,’ page 10, note). To offset this testimony we have only the negative evidence that Champlain failed to mention such an island or to show it in his map. This oversight, however, is not very significant. The chances are, then, that Webb’s Island was visible when the first settlers arrived in Chatham, though there had been blue water between it and the mainland for centuries.

CHAPTER II

Few authorities doubt that Gosnold’s Tucker’s Terror and Point Care were parts of a point of land that formerly projected from the Eastham shore. Captain John Smith, though he never saw this point, had been told of its existence by the Indians, and named it Île Nauset. What Gosnold called Tucker’s Terror was the surf on the north side of this point, and Point Care was its eastern extremity.

As to identification of Point Gilbert, authorities differ. It has been argued that this point was the end of another peninsula about nine miles long, something like Île Nauset, that is said to have stretched easterly from Chatham and terminated in Webb’s Island. It is possible that such a peninsula existed at a very remote period, but certainly it had vanished before 1604, when Gosnold arrived, for no trace of it appears on the excellent map of the Chatham region that Champlain made in 1606 (Champlain’s ‘Voyages,’ II, opposite page 122), only two years later, and not even the most careless cartographer could have missed such an important feature. The exponents of the Webb’s Island theory for Point Gilbert cannot have seen this map, for they go on to say that Monomoy Point had not been formed in Gosnold’s time. Champlain, however, shows it on his map substantially as it is to-day. These considerations eliminate Webb’s Island and its peninsula as a possible identification for Point Gilbert.

There remains Monomoy, which answers all the requirements save one. Archer, who accompanied Gosnold and wrote an account of the voyage, estimated the distance from Point Care to Point Gilbert as six miles. If he meant from headland to headland, this is too short. But none of the distances recorded by early navigators are to be trusted. Furthermore, it should be remembered that breakers do not confine their attentions to the end of Monomoy Beach; they break indiscriminately along its whole length; and breakers were what occupied Gosnold’s mind in connection with Point Gilbert. Six miles is near enough for a guess at the distance between Île Nauset and the nearest part of Monomoy Beach—which being white with breakers, like the rest of its length, was from Gosnold’s point of view as much a part of Point Gilbert as the southern end of it was. The actual distance is about eight miles.

Some authorities, disturbed by another discrepancy in distance, push the whole scene of Gosnold’s activities farther west and make Tucker’s Terror and Point Care, Monomoy instead of Île Nauset, and contend that Point Gilbert was the southeastern corner of Great Island, off Hyannis Harbor, now called Point Gammon. One statement supports this theory; Archer says that the distance from Cape Cod to Point Care was twelve leagues; and that is about the right distance from the outer Beach at Provincetown to Monomoy. But, as has been suggested, we must be very cautious in accepting any mileage mentioned by early mariners. It is well known that distances are deceptive when men are navigating unfamiliar waters and are constantly watching for something ahead. Even so accurate a cartographer as Champlain calls the distance from Nauset to Chatham eighteen miles, whereas in fact it is about six. If Archer’s guess of twelve leagues was right, it is the only instance of its kind in the history of early Cape Cod navigation.

Point Gammon, too, is high and rocky, and Archer mentions no rocks until the expedition reached the Elizabeth Islands. Furthermore, he writes as follows of Point Gilbert: ‘We sent forth the boat to sound over a Breach (that in our course lay) of another Point, by us called Gilbert’s Point.... The nineteenth we passed over the breach of Gilbert’s Point in foure or five fadome.’ The phrase ‘the breach of the Point’ means the breakers rolling in over shoals that lay off the point. Such shoals, as every seaman knows, lie off Monomoy, and Gosnold sent his ship’s boat to try the depth of the water on them. If it had been blowing, this would have been a suicidal maneuver. But Archer tells us that the day was ‘faire.’ There are no such shoals off Point Gammon.

CHAPTER III

It is impossible to do much more than guess at these figures because our ancestors, with tantalizing piety, regarded Praying Indians as the only ones worth counting, and they did not begin to count even these until late in the seventeenth century. Various estimates follow:

Date Authority No. of Praying Indians Reference

1674 Richard Bourne, in letter to Major Gookin About 500 (old and young) 1 M.H.S. Coll., I, 196 ff.

1685 Governor Hinckley’s Report to Stoughton and Dudley 944 (plus three times as many children) 4 M.H.S. Coll., V, 132 f.

1698 Rawson and Danforth’s Report 1100 (approximately—exclusive of children) 1 M.H.S. Coll., X, 129 ff.

In 1763, the census of Indians of all conditions and ages shows a total of 515.

The most useful of these figures are Hinckley’s for 1685, and Rawson and Danforth’s for 1698, because they agree pretty well. It is safe to say that by 1698 (the date of Rawson and Danforth’s Report) nearly all the Cape Indians were at least nominally praying Indians, for John Freeman, in a letter to Hinckley, dated Eastham, 1685, says that most Eastham Indians do ‘frequent their meetings on the Sabbath, except aged and decrepit persons and infants and some extravagant fellows that run from one place to another.’ (4 M.H.S. Coll., V, 131 ff.) So if the number of praying Indians was about 1000 at this time, the total number, including praying and non-praying, could not have been much greater. War, civilization, rum, and most of all pestilence, had been at work reducing them to this number for the past eighty years or so. I hazard the guess that during these eighty years their number had been decreased by half, and therefore give 2000 as the pre-pestilence population. Only adults are included in these figures. If children are included, this number may be multiplied by four.

CHAPTER IV

1. Frequently warning out of town was a purely nominal performance, issued with no expectation or desire that it would be obeyed. Its purpose in such cases was to protect the town against the possibility of having the warned citizen ever become a town charge. ‘Admitted’ men, if they fell on evil days, were entitled to support by the town; but those who had been warned out had no such rights, though they might continue to live as respected members of the community. The town fathers were sometimes indiscriminate and warned out all newcomers; sometimes they warned only those whom they judged likely to become paupers. (See J. H. Benton, Warning Out in New England, Boston, 1911.)

2. Mashpee is an exception. This district was held as a sort of Reservation for the Indians and was not therefore comparable to the other towns. It had five thousand acres of Common Land as late as 1869. (Hearing before Committee on Indians at Mashpee, 1869, House No. 502, page 13.)

CHAPTER IX

This was the opinion of less austere persons than Her Majesty. A certain William Clap, of Provincetown, in a letter to Governor Dudley in 1705, expressed the same conviction. He wrote in part as follows:

Cape Cod, July 13th, 1705

Squire Dudley.

Sir:—After all due sarvis and Respects to your honnor wishing you all hapynes boath hear and hear after I mack bould to inform your honnor that i have liveed at the Cap this 4 year and I have often every year sien that her maiesty has been very much wronged of har dues by these coutry peple and other whall men as coms hear a whallen every year which tacks up drift whales which was never killed by any man which fish i understand belongest to har majesty and had i had power i could have seased several every year....

Your hombled and unworthy sarvant Wm. Clap

The Governor gave Clap a commission as water bailiff and a warrant to prize drift whales. Thus do tale-bearers prosper when they carry their tidings to the high places.

CHAPTER XI

There was some justice in this rejoinder, for though throughout its entire colonial history, the Cape had not a single lighthouse to bless itself with, and though for fourteen years after we became independent, sailors had to steer by the stars alone in skirting Monomoy and Peaked Hill Bars, yet once they began, our Congressmen kept on voting money for lighthouses until the coast was adequately illuminated.

The first to be built on the Cape was Highland Light. Its foundations were laid in 1797 on what the Reverend Levi Whitman of Wellfleet called ‘a mountain which is of solid clay in Truro.’ It stood unchanged while two generations of sailors kept a safe offing on even the darkest nights. Then in 1857 it was re-built into one of the foremost lighthouses of the world, a position which it has held ever since. Its 182,000 candle-power lantern is unequalled by any other oil burner on this continent.

It was soon evident that the varied maritime activities of New England were a source of great profit to the country. Everything that aided navigation was therefore encouraged in Congress, and another lighthouse was put up in 1816 at Race Point, back of Provincetown. The fact that the next to appear (1822) was on Billingsgate Island, at the entrance to Wellfleet Harbor, shows clearly what the Government thought of the Bay shore fisheries. This light and its nearest neighbor on the Bay, built at Sandy Neck, Barnstable, four years later, guided the destinies of fishermen and packet captains through the busy decades that followed. To-day, though weeks pass without a single sail to relieve the monotonous blue of the waters of the Bay, these two lights still blink reminiscently, cheered by the chance of guiding an occasional lobsterman or yachtsman to port.

In 1823, the Government took a grant to a piece of beach grass and sand on Monomoy Point and later erected a lighthouse which showed Chatham fishermen the way home and which, with the Great Point Light on Nantucket, gave coastwise vessels a cross-bearing through the dangerous water of the Sound. Georges Bankers were guided in safety around the very tip of the Cape by the Long Point Light, which made its appearance in 1826. A dozen years later—thanks largely to the exertions of the same Mr. Collins who gave Emerson the information about wreckers—three lighthouses were put up on Nauset Beach about a mile north of the entrance to the Harbor. These, with the twin lights of Chatham, and a smaller one at Hyannis, handed vessels on from lighthouse to lighthouse all the way from the Nobsque Point Beacon at Falmouth (built in 1828) to deep water beyond Peaked Hill Bars and the Race. The old stone tower on Point Gammon went out of business when Bishop and Clark’s was put up three miles south of it on a ledge in the Sound. Two others were erected somewhat gratuitously, one at Pamet Harbor, Truro, in 1849 and the other at Wood End, Provincetown, in 1873. The former was discontinued after six years, when the harbor silted up to a mere creek; but Wood End still fills the gap between the Race and Long Point.