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DECENNIUM LUCTUOSUM
"Every Reasonable man will readily allow that it is a Duty to God, and a Service to the World, for to preserve the Memory of such matters, as have been the more Memorable Occurrences in the War, that ha's for Ten Years together, been multiplying Changes and Sorrows upon us. And the Author, in whose Historical Writings, the most Inquisive Envy, ha's never to this Hour detected, so much as one Voluntary and Material Mistake, or one arting paid unto the Readers in the Co of Candia, ha's now chosen to preserve the Memory of ese matters, while they are Fresh & New, and one hath not Fifty years, which is the Channel of the River of Oblivion, to pass over unto them. This Expedition is used in the publication of our
254 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
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May 17, 2016
I write as a descendent of Mary Easty, owner of a farm in Danvers, whom Mather's fear of witchcraft killed, as the last Salem"witch." On everything except witchcraft, Mather writes judiciously. I read Decennium in "Narratives of the Indian Wars", ed CH Lincoln(1913: rpnt, Barnes and Noble, 1966). Charles II (raised in FR, crowned 1660) granted from Kennebec River to the St Croix, calling it Cornwall County, to his brother James, Duke of York (who married Chancellor/ Historian Clarendon's daughter Anne Hyde). Crowned King James II in 1685, he was displaced for his Catholic religion (the Monarch heading the Church of England) by the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The MA and Maine Governor Andros* displaced the French in Spring, 1688, from Castine (named for Jean Vincent, Baron de St Castin), but returned to Boston on the news of the English Revolution--one rumor, if an uprising in MA supporting William and Mary, Gov Andros should turn New England over to the French. On April 18, 1689, exactly such MA support occurred, and Wm and Mary "happily Seated on the British Throne, kindly Accepted and Approved."(Lincoln, 195).
Mather on the causes of the Saco Indian wars: No English corn tribute, cattle in the corn, Saco fisheries intruded on, common trade abuses like drunkenness & cheating, but the main cause, surveying and "Patenting their lands to some English"; the Saco threatened to knock the Surveyor in the Head if he came to lay out their lands.
Gov Andros's Pemaquid stockade, built of stone in 1692, which remnants I saw as a 12 year old kid summering, haying in Norway, Maine.
CM's earnest, outspoken, and contradictory polemical style, viz: "there has been little Doubt that our Northern Indians are Originally Scythians; and it is become less a Doubt, since it appears from later Discoveries, that the pretended Straits of Asian [Bering] are a Sham; for Asia and America are there contiguous [acc to Hennepin map]." My friend, Harvard Prof of Indian Languages Karl Teeter wrote his Ph.D. on the identical language of one remaining speaker in the Northwest (WA?), and Malasete-Pasamaquoddy in Maine. Mather also cites Julius Caesar on the Scythians of Asia, like the Indians: "'Difficilius invenire quam interficere'--harder to find them than to foil them"(CM trans.)
Mather calls the King Phillip's War, "the Prodigious War, made by the Spirits of the Invisible World upon the People of New-England in the year 1692" and finds the Sagamores partly to blame, for they have been, according to our captives, "horrid Sorcerers, hellish Conjurors, and such as Convers'd with Daemons" (vide "Life of Sir Wm Phips" and Hale's new book on witchcraft). Mary Easty, whose farm was desired by neighbors (see Nissenbaum), was double-jeopardy tried twice (failed 2nd time to say the Lord's Prayer spotlessly), and executed, the last one. Her "humble petition" resulted in no more use of spectral evidence, and in deposing witnesses separately, as well as no double jeopardy. (Also, her grand-daughter married her judge's --Deacon Cummings' grandson.)
And Mather cites the Quakers as equal opponents: 1699, "For the present, then, we have done with the Indians. But while the Indians have been thus molesting us, we have suffered Molestations of another sort.
* Did Androscoggin derive from the governor, or from the Native tribe, Ammonoscoggin?
Mather on the causes of the Saco Indian wars: No English corn tribute, cattle in the corn, Saco fisheries intruded on, common trade abuses like drunkenness & cheating, but the main cause, surveying and "Patenting their lands to some English"; the Saco threatened to knock the Surveyor in the Head if he came to lay out their lands.
Gov Andros's Pemaquid stockade, built of stone in 1692, which remnants I saw as a 12 year old kid summering, haying in Norway, Maine.
CM's earnest, outspoken, and contradictory polemical style, viz: "there has been little Doubt that our Northern Indians are Originally Scythians; and it is become less a Doubt, since it appears from later Discoveries, that the pretended Straits of Asian [Bering] are a Sham; for Asia and America are there contiguous [acc to Hennepin map]." My friend, Harvard Prof of Indian Languages Karl Teeter wrote his Ph.D. on the identical language of one remaining speaker in the Northwest (WA?), and Malasete-Pasamaquoddy in Maine. Mather also cites Julius Caesar on the Scythians of Asia, like the Indians: "'Difficilius invenire quam interficere'--harder to find them than to foil them"(CM trans.)
Mather calls the King Phillip's War, "the Prodigious War, made by the Spirits of the Invisible World upon the People of New-England in the year 1692" and finds the Sagamores partly to blame, for they have been, according to our captives, "horrid Sorcerers, hellish Conjurors, and such as Convers'd with Daemons" (vide "Life of Sir Wm Phips" and Hale's new book on witchcraft). Mary Easty, whose farm was desired by neighbors (see Nissenbaum), was double-jeopardy tried twice (failed 2nd time to say the Lord's Prayer spotlessly), and executed, the last one. Her "humble petition" resulted in no more use of spectral evidence, and in deposing witnesses separately, as well as no double jeopardy. (Also, her grand-daughter married her judge's --Deacon Cummings' grandson.)
And Mather cites the Quakers as equal opponents: 1699, "For the present, then, we have done with the Indians. But while the Indians have been thus molesting us, we have suffered Molestations of another sort.
* Did Androscoggin derive from the governor, or from the Native tribe, Ammonoscoggin?
April 4, 2020
The most comprehensive contemporary account of the disaster of King William's War in New England. It almost goes without saying Mather's bias as an Englishman and Protestant are glaring throughout, but still it is an invaluable resource today.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews