A few months ago, we had a research request about the indigenous history of the area around Brooksby Farm and our historic Nathaniel Felton Jr. and Sr. houses. The Pawtucket are the Indigenous people who lived in present-day Essex County and who had relations with the early settlers of Salem in the 1620s. Today, we would like to share one object in our collection that helps us better understand Pawtucket history: a map!
The land around Felton Street has gone by many names: Hog Hill, Mount Pleasant, Felton Hill, and Brooksby. What is this history of this hill before English settlement?
Indigenous history through sources:
There are numerous sources that give clues about the Pawtucket people of this area. Historians use diaries, legal records, and land exchange deals to trace Indigenous-settler relationships. These sources come with their biases but they can still reveal much about Indigenous history.
For example, John Higginson, son of Salem’s first minister recounted in a report to the that when he arrived to North America as a boy:
“then about thirteen years old, there was in these parts a widow woman, called Squaw Sachem, who had three sons, Sagamore John kept at Mistick, Sagamore James at Saugust, and Sagamore George, here at Naumkeke. Whether he was actual Sachem here, I cannot say, for he was young then about my age and I think there was an elder man yet was at least his guardian, But ye Indian Towne of wigwams was on ye north side of ye north river… and ye both ye north and ye south side of that river was together called Naumkeke.” (Sidney Perley, The History of Salem, Massachusetts, 1626-[1716] (Salem, Mass.: S. Perley, 1924), 44, 90-95, 135-41.)
Sidney Perley, Map of Indian Lands and Localities in Essex County, Massachusetts.
Naumkeke refers to Naumkeag, the name of the village and the region that the Pawtucket people inhabited around Peabody. As you can see from his testimony, the Naumkeag Pawtucket people had a village, likely where present-day Beverly exists. Even so, the lands around the North River, including Peabody, were given the same name. Higginson gave this testimony half a century later, in a quit claim deed negotiation between Salem and descendants of the original Naumkeag proprietors, attesting to Indigenous tenure, authority and political leadership structure, under Squaw Sachem.
Peabody Historical Society Source
On November 11, 1795, Gideon Foster surveyed a piece of land in West Peabody for Captain Thomas Whittridge. The land covered the south side of Felton Street and spanned eastward to Proctor Street. In 1903, Daniel H. Felton copied the map and donated it to the Peabody Historical Society.
Plan of “Old Indian Pound”, Surveyed by Gideon Foster 1795, copied by Daniel H. Felton, 1903. Peabody Historical Society and Museum Collections.
The map is titled “Plan of the Old Indian Pound”, PHS#2037. Outlined on the map, running parallel to Felton Street, is a huge acute triangle. The map suggests that the triangle outline, whose “diverging lines extended for more than ¾ of a mile each in a straight line” spanned around seventy acres.
On January 24, 1677, this land was leased by the town of Salem for one thousand years for the purpose of common grazing lands. The map indicates that this is where “the whole of Salem Town’s swine were fed on acorns from 1636 to 1666”. The notes on the margins of the map indicate that on March 16, 1732, this land was conveyed by a deed by the town of Salem to Thorndike Proctor and a number of other land owners in the area. After this point, tracing this triangle plot through land deeds, records show that it would get portioned off and in the 1950s sold to a developer who constructed the Pierce Acres housing subdivision that exists today.
But what was this “Indian Pound”?
Detail from a sketch by Samuel de Champlain. National Archives of Canada / C-113066
“Pound” likely refers to a technique for hunting deer in the forest. While few concrete examples of this in New England have been researched, Robert Bolton, Jr. published “History of the County of Westchester” in 1848 with an account of “an indian pound”. Bolton suggests that an “indian pound, which formerly stood at the foot of a high ridge, a little south of the present village… was particularly adapted for the favorite Indian practice of entrapping wild game.” (Robert Bolton, A History of the County of Westchester, vol. 2, (1848): 2. Bolton describes a technique that combined natural barriers with a “extensive fikes with palisades, which are narrow at the terminating angles, wherein they drive multitudes of animals and take great numbers”.
Thus, it is possible that this outlined triangle of land, positioned on the east side of present day Felton Hill, would have been used as a hunting site by the Pawtucket before the arrival of English settlers.
What might this map suggest about Pawtucket history?
By the 1630s, this plot of land was no longer being used by the Pawtucket people for hunting. In 1626, Roger Conant and the first English settlers arrived in Salem. Within a decade, Nathaniel Felton and John Proctor, two English settlers, received land grants from the King around this hill. The map also suggests that around the pound, the town of Salem was leasing the land as common grazing pasture. While the map doesn’t confirm this, these likely former hunting grounds were possibly granted to English settlers by the Pawtucket in the early 1630s in an effort to promote “mutual coexistence”.
Map of Salem Village, 1692.
Salem historian Sidney Perley suggested that by the time English settlers arrived on these shores, both they and the Pawtucket people were experiencing a range of vulnerabilities. For this reason, during the early years of settlement, the English depended heavily of the Pawtucket of agricultural aid, allowing them to grow “new world” crops and farm on Native land. (Sidney Perley, The Indian Land Titles of Essex County, Massachusetts (Salem, Mass: Essex Book and Print Club, 1912).
Historian Kristine Malpica, in her phd dissertation, further explores Pawtucket agricultural practices at the time of English settlement. She highlights that Salem minister Francis Higginson noted of Native agricultural practices:
“there is much ground cleared by the Indians, and especially about the plantation… They doe generally profess to like well of our coming and planting here: partly because there is abundance of ground, that they cannot possesse nor make use of, and partly because of our being here will bee a means both of relief to them when they want, and also a defense from their enemies.” (George Francis Dow, and Topsfield Historical Society, Two Centuries of Travel in Essex County, Massachusetts: A Collection of Narratives and Observations Made by Travelers, 1605-1799 (Topsfield Historical Society, 1921): 10.)
While we cannot know exactly why the Pawtucket gave up the land around Felton St., it is possible that it was out of an effort to promote mutual co-existence, given the period. Giving up hunting grounds for common fenced grazing lands could suggest an example of early cross-cultural agricultural techniques. Fencing in grazing lands was an English land use practice and there is evidence of Native people pushing settlers to fence in their animals to protect Native crops. There is evidence of Pawtucket people continuing to live in the region of Naumkeag through the 1680s. Thus, they may have mutually benefited from substituting their hunting land for grazing land.
Alternatively, it is possible that the Pawtucket did not mutually benefit from giving up these hunting grounds. Environmental historians of Native New England, including William Cronon, describe a basic different between English and Pawtucket land use: fixity versus mobility. The Pawtucket people migrated north and south according to the seasons and thus hunting grounds would have been important to supporting their ability to feed themselves across a region. Meanwhile, the English wanted to plant and settle in one location, governed by private property. If the Pawtucket didn’t adopt the same fixed land use lifestyle, giving up this hunting ground might suggest that they lost access to a means of feeding themselves in this region.