American History told by
Contemporaries

PART I

PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION

FOR TEACHERS, PUPILS, STUDENTS AND LIBRARIES

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IN

CHAPTER I-THE SOURCES

I. What are Sources?

N the current discussions on the teaching and study of history, one of the most frequent expressions is "the sources," or "original mate rial." What do these words mean? As history is an account of the past actions of men, every historical statement must go back to the memory of those who saw the events, or to some record made at the time. Tradition is the handing down of memories from one person to another; and one of the most famous of the pieces in this volume - the Norse Sagas on the discovery of America (No. 16) · were thus transmitted for three centuries before they were finally put into writing. Such transmissions are likely to get away from the first form as years go on, and may change into legends. The more exact form of transmitting earlier memories is by autobiography, and by reminiscence written out in later life; and even they are apt to be twisted by the lapse of the years between the event and the making of the record. Hence in preparing this volume such works have been rarely used. Perhaps Edward Johnson's book (No. 105) is the nearest approach to an example.

Much more important are the records and memoranda made at or very near the time of the event. Sometimes silent monuments may be all that is left; the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio is a striking contem

porary record, if anybody could interpret it; and the house of Governor Cradock in Medford, Massachusetts, still stands to tell us that its builder was a man of taste and substance.

Laws, proclamations, and other public documents are sources of a high order, because they not only describe, but constitute the event; they bear the signatures, the affixing of which gives them validity; they are drawn up before the event takes place. An example is the Bull of Alexander VI (No. 18) and the Connecticut laws (No. 144). Of greater literary interest are the narratives of explorers, travellers, and visitors, in which American history is rich; an instance is De Vries' trading voyages (No. 151). As travellers have, however, a lively sense of the importance of their own impressions, a more valuable kind of source is the contemporary journal, written from day to day during the events described. When written by men who were the helmsmen of a Commonwealth, like John Winthrop (No. 107), they have the highest historical value; for they are forged fresh from the mint, and reveal what even the official records may conceal. Even when written without any expectation of publication, they furnish valuable evidence; no better example can be found than the Diary of Samuel Sewall, "The Puritan Pepys" (No. 149). The letters of public men, or even of private men, have the same double value of an unvarnished tale, written at the moment; and they also reveal the writer's character. Such are the familiar letters of Colonel Fitzhugh (No. 87). More elaborate are the arguments or controversial pamphlets intended for circulation at the time, such as Butler's attack on the Virginia government (No. 66), and the accounts of the Andros Revolution (No. 136). Narratives composed immediately after events have passed, like Quentin Stockwell's account of his Indian captivity (No. 147) have a sober value.

Historical sources, then, are nothing less nor more than records made at or near the time of the events, described by men who took part in them, and are, therefore, qualified to speak.

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2. Educative Value of Sources

IKE other literature, the office of history is to record, to instruct, and to please. It is a subject which has natural claims on the interest of a student or reader, for it deals with stirring events, with

human character, and with the welfare of the race. There must be in history something to arouse the minds of young and old, and to develop them when aroused. The training element of history as a school subject has been discussed in many places, and a list of references to such discussions appears in Channing and Hart's Guide to the Study of American History, 15. The value of sources, as a part of that study, has long been in the minds of the scholars and antiquarians who have painfully preserved and reprinted the old narratives; but they are less appreciated by the reading or teaching public.

As a record, sources are the basis of history, but not mere raw material like the herbaria of the botanist, or the chemicals of a laboratory, stuffs to be destroyed in discovering their nature; as utterances of men living when they were made, they have in them the breath of human life; history is the biology of human conduct. Nobody can settle any historical question without an appeal to the sources, or without taking into account the character of the actors in history.

Nobody remembers all the history he reads; the bold and striking events seize hold of his mind, and around them he associates the rest. But a source gives that bold and striking event in its most durable form. Volumes about the Iroquois will not tell us so much that we shall remember as Father Jogues' account of their cruelty to him (No. 40).

Hence the instructing power of history goes back in considerable part to the sources. They do not tell all their own story; they need to be arranged and set in order by the historian, who on the solid piers of their assurances spans his continuous bridge of narrative. But there are two sides to history: the outward events in their succession, with which secondary historians alone can deal; and the inner spirit, which is revealed only by the sources. If we could not know both things, it would be better to know how Mary Dyer justified herself for being a Quakeress (No. 140), than how her trial was carried on. The source, therefore, throws an inner light on events; secondary writers may go over them, collate them, compare them, sometimes supplement them; but can never supersede them.

As for entertainment, the narratives of discovery are the Arabian Nights of History for their marvels and adventures. The quiet unassuming tale of the Conquest of the great country of Peru by a handful of Spanish adventurers (No. 22), the story of Pocahontas (No. 64), are part of the world's library of romantic literature. Other pieces please by their quaintness, such as Harrison's account of England in 1586 (No.

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44), and John Josselyn's malicious account of New England (No. 145). Others of these selections are milestones in the growth of a national litall the way from Bradford's beautiful account of the Puritan exiles from England (No. 149) through the Bay Psalm Book's rugged measures (No. 138) to Cotton Mather's sounding brass and tinkling cymbal (No. 148). As an account of bold spirits engaged in desperate adventures, of the planting of a civilization in the wilderness, of the growth of free government, the sources of American history are a contribution to the world's literature.

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3. Classification of Sources on Colonization

SSUMING that the use of sources needs no further argument, the next important question is, What sort of material is available on the period covered by this volume?

Among the monuments are the Pueblos of the southwest, and the mounds of the Mississippi Valley. But the most important unwritten records stand along the seacoast. These consist of old forts, such as that at St. Augustine, Florida; of public buildings, of which very few date from the seventeenth century; of churches, as the little Roger Williams building (1634) in Salem, Massachusetts, and St. Luke's in Smithfield, Virginia (1632); and of dwelling houses, of which the Fairbanks House in Dedham, Massachusetts, and the Whitefields' in Guilford, Connecticut, are good examples. Such remains can be used by visiting them, or by showing photographs of them. In several parts of the country, as the National Museum at Washington, the Field Museum in Chicago, and the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, there are collections of the implements and arts of the aborigines of North and South America.

Manuscript records ordinarily appeal only to the investigator, for whose benefit are the suggestions in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, VIII, 413 et seq.; and in Channing and Hart, Guide to American History, § 35. Two classes of written records may, however, sometimes be used by beginners: family papers and local records. From the unpublished town records of Brookline, Massachusetts, pupils in the high schools have drawn some interesting material. It is worth while to make pupils acquainted with the handwriting of the sixteenth and seven

teenth centuries, and many facsimiles are to be found in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History and in many other places.

Official public records have been little used in this volume, because they seldom give a résumé of the previous history; examples have, however, been introduced of governors' reports (Nos. 70, 116, 156); of minutes of a colonial council (No. 74), and of colonial legislatures (Nos. 65, 104, 121, 131, 160); of colonial statutes (Nos. 84, 144); of a colonial constitution (No. 120); of colonizing corporations' proceedings (Nos. 50, 128); of royal proclamations (Nos. 53, 83); of a charter (No. 158), and instructions (No. 54); of the proceedings of a colonial federation (Nos. 129, 170); of an Indian deed (No. 123), and an Indian treaty (No. 92); of a colonial court (No. 141), and a county court (No. 143); and of a papal bull (No. 18).

Such records have been printed in elaborate collections for nearly all the twelve colonies formed before 1700. Sets of the charters are printed in Ben: Perley Poore, Federal and State Constitutions; in H. W. Preston, Documents relative to American History; in many numbers of the American History Leaflets and Old South Leaflets; and in other collections. Lists of these collections, with exact titles, may be found in Channing and Hart, Guide to American History, § 29.

In the same place may be found a list of the printed colonial laws, of which hardly any state has made up a full set; the best collections are Hening's Statutes for Virginia and various editions of Massachusetts laws. Many early laws are printed as appendices to histories of the colonies (enumerated in Channing and Hart, Guide to American History, § 23). The printed records of the colonial councils and assemblies are also enumerated in Channing and Hart, § 29. Part of the earliest of these records Virginia, 1619 is reprinted below (No. 65). The best printed records are those of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut (and New Haven), Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina.

Narratives of the explorers and discoverers are among the most fascinating sources for American history, and they have been freely drawn upon for this volume. Among the writers thus cited are the Icelandic Sagas (No. 16), Columbus (Nos. 17, 19), Gómara (No. 21), Hernando Pizarro (No. 22), a Gentleman of Elvas (No. 23), Jarimillo (No. 24), Philips (No. 25), Hawkins (No. 29), Pretty (No. 30), Drake (No. 31), Barlowe (No. 32), Ralegh (No. 33), Verrazano (No. 34), Cartier (No. 35), Laudonnière (No. 36), Lescarbot (No. 37), Juet (No. 38), Champlain (No. 39), Jogues (No. 40), Le Clercq (No. 41), Marquette (No.