Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/73

 SECT. II.] ALGONKIN-LENAPE AND "iROQJJOlS NATIONS. 37 and children. This great diminution, he and all the other ancient writers ascribed to a most fatal epidemical sickness, which, a few years before the first arrival of the English, had made dreadful ravages amongst those two nations and the Wampanoags. But, after making every reasonable allowance for exaggera- tions derived from Indian reports, there can be no doubt, from the concurrent accounts of contemporary writers, that the Indian population, principally along the seacoast between the Old Plymouth Colony and the Hudson River, was much greater in proportion to the extent of territory than was found anywhere else on the shores of the Atlantic, or, with the exception per- haps of the Hurons, in the interior parts of the United States. This opinion is corroborated by the enumerations subsequent to Philip's War, after the greater part of the hostile Indians had removed to Canada or its vicinity. In an account laid before the Assembly of Connecticut in 1680, the warriors of the sev- eral tribes in the State are reckoned at five hundred.* In 1698, the converted Indians in Massachusetts were computed to amount to nearly three thousand souls.f In 1774, by an actual census there were still thirteen hundred and sixty-three Indians in Connecticut, and fourteen hundred and eighty-two in Rhode Island.J Those several numbers greatly exceed those found elsewhere, under similar circumstances, so long after the date of the first European settlements. I think that the Indian population, within the present boundaries of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, must have been from thirty to forty thousand souls, before the epidemic disease which preceded the landing of the Pilgrims. For this greater accumulated population, two causes may be assigned. A greater and more uniform supply of food is af- forded by fisheries than by hunting ; and we find accordingly, that the Narragansets of Rhode Island were, in proportion to their territory, the most populous tribe of New England. It appears also probable, that the Indians along the seacoast had been driven away from the interior and compelled to concen- trate themselves, in order to be able to resist the attacks of the more warlike Indians of the Five Nations. Even near the seashore, from the Piscataqua to the vicinity of the Hudson, Ibid. Vol. X. pp. 117-119.
 * Holmes's Report. f 1 Mass. Hist. Coll. Vol. X. p. 129.