Note 248 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN.

Speaking of a ceremony common to the Algonquins and the Hurons, of propitiating their fishing-nets by formally marrying them every year to two young girls, Parkman says: “As it was indispensable that the brides should be virgins, mere children were chosen” (The Jesuits in North America, p. lxix. note). The subject of female chastity among the Indians has already been referred to (supra, p. 17), and it is extremely questionable whether they had any conception of it. Winslow, in his Good News (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 364) says:—“When a maid is taken in marriage, she first cutteth her hair, and after weareth a covering on her head, till her hair be grown out. Their women are diversely disposed; some as modest, as they will scarce talk one with another in the company of men, being very chaste also; yet others seem light, lascivious, and wanton.... Some common strumpets there are, as well as in other places; but they are such as either never married, or widows, or put away for adultery; for no man will keep such an one to wife.” Strachey (Historie, p. 65), says of the Virginians: “Their younger women goe not shadowed [clothed] amongst their owne companie, until they be nigh eleaven or twelve returnes of the leafe old, nor are they much ashamed thereof, and therefore would the before remembered Pochahuntas, a well featured, but wanton yong girle, Powhatan’s daughter, sometymes resorting to our fort, of the age then of eleven or twelve yeares, get the boyes forth with her into the markett place, and make them wheele, falling on their hands, turning up their heeles upwards, whome she would followe, and wheele so her self, naked as she was, all the fort over; but being over twelve yeares, they put on a kind of semecinctum lethern apron (as doe our artificers or handycrafts men) before their bellies, and are very shamefac’t to be seen bare.” Ellis, in his Red Man and White Man (p. 185), remarks on this point: “The obscenity of the savages is unchecked in its revolting and disgusting exhibitions. Sensuality seeks no covert.”

Under these circumstances it is unnecessary to say that Morton’s statements as to the red cap and the Sachem’s privilege are pure fiction, and what Parkman says of the Hurons is probably true of the Massachusetts,—their women were wantons before marriage and household drudges after it. (Jesuits in North America, p. xxxv).