[80] the General Court in early times passed a law that any Indian convicted of crime, or taken in war, should be sold as a slave. The law of 1646 gave them some trouble. It ran thus: “It is ordered and decreed that no Indian shall, at any time, powwow, or perform outward worship of their false gods, or to the devil, in any part of our jurisdiction.” Penalty £ 5. In 1698, there were four thousand one hundred and sixty-eight Indians in Massachusetts; and there were enough in this neighborhood to keep our fathers wide awake. It was common to go armed to the ploughing field; and Mac Fingal, in his way, gives us the following history of those times :--
For once, for fear of Indian beating,Wood describes the Indians of this region thus:--
Our grandsires bore their guns to meeting;
Each man equipped, on Sunday morn,
With psalm-book, shot, and powder-horn;
And looked in form, as all must grant,
Like the ancient true church-militant;
Or fierce, like modern deep divines,
Who fight with quills, like porcupines.
First, of their stature; most of them being between five and six feet high, straight-bodied, strongly composed, smooth-skinned, merry-countenanced, of complexion somewhat more swarthy than Spaniards, black-haired, high-foreheaded, black-eyed, out-nosed, broad-shouldered, brawny-armed, long and slender-handed, out-breasted, small-waisted, lank-bellied, well-thighed, flat-kneed, handsome grown legs, and small feet. In a word, take them when the blood brisks in their veins, when the flesh is on their backs, and marrow in their bones, when they frolic in their antique deportments and Indian postures, and they are more amiable to behold (though only in Adam's livery) than many a compounded fantastic in the newest fashion. It may puzzle belief to conceive how such lusty bodies should have their rise and daily supportment from so lender a fostering; their houses being mean, their lodging as homely, commons scant, their drink water, and nature their best clothing.Remnants of the Indian tribes were common till the beginning of the present century. In Medford they lived in “Turkey Swamp.” So late even as our day, farmers in Medford have ploughed up stone arrow-heads, stone drills, and other Indian weapons and tools. No Indian necropolis has yet been discovered, though one probably exists on the borders of our pond. The last Indian here was “Hannah shiner,” a full blood, who lived with “Old Toney,” a noble-souled
