Genealogical notes of Barnstable families - citizen hylbom blog

76 GEKEALOGIOAL NOTES OF BARHSTABLE FAMILIES.
perished ; for many years there has not been a pure blooded Indian
in the County—all have vanished—the last of the Massapeea
is dead. Their plantation and their lands remain, claimed by a
mingled race of negroes, Hessians and degraded English, in
whose veins course a few drops of Indian blood, by virtue whereof,
they claim the inheritance of the red men. AH are not degraded.
There are a few who are honest, industrious, temperate,
but they are the exceptions.* A little time since the Selectmen
of Massapee were in court. They managed their business carefully
and well, were courteous and gentlemanly in their bearing,
but the most casual observer would notice that the blood of the
negro preponderated. Everywhere the black race adopts the habits
and customs of civilization, more readily than the red. The
Indian in his native wilds is tall, erect, of fine pcoportions and
manly in his bearing, but when in proximity with the whites he
seems, by a fatal necessity, doomed to fall, to become degraded
and an outcast.
Hubbard, in the first edition of his history, made the remark,
that the Indian must be civilized before successful attempts could
be made to christianize him. All subsequent experience verifies
the truth of that remark, yet the over-much zealous missionaries
of that time caused the passage to be omitted in the subsequent
editions.
Language. Though the Bible was translated into the Indian
tongue, the number of primary or radical words in the language
was comparatively few. The words were made up of harsh consonant
sounds, very little modified by the vowel sounds. L and
R, which smooth the harsher consonant sounds, did not exist in
many dialects of the language. Beside the guttural and nasal
sounds, they had a peculiar whistling sound which cannot be represented
by any letters of the English alphabet, hence in words in
which it occurred, no two persons would probably spell them in
the same manner. To represent this sound Cotton used qu, or
two 0-0 connected. The same word was also used in different
senses. The accent affected the meaning, and so did the gesture.
The word qunni or quinne as written by Cotton, others wrote
cumma, cunne, cona, cono, &c. The primary meaning of this
word is long, but the speaker when he so intended moved his hand
horizontally-—if he meant high or tall he raised his hand, and if
deep he lowered it. A thing that is long is comparatively narrow,,
and therefore narrow things were qunni as well as long. A proud
or haughty man was called qunni because. he assumes a high position
in society. The Indian name of Sandy Neck was Cumma—
*This statement was in a degree correct at the time it was penned. But at this period
the Masbpee people have made a great adTancement in morals and intelligence^ and^ com
pare favorably in social order with the communities around them.