A Visit to Zerviah Gould Mitchell, 1891

Zerviah Gould Mitchell, photograph,

late 19th century

In the final years of her life, Zerviah Gould Mitchell was recognized for her contributions towards advancing the cause of Native peoples in Massachusetts.  Residing with her daughters Teweeleema and Wootonekanuske (Melinda and Charlotte Mitchell) at Betty's Neck in Lakeville, the elderly Mrs. Mitchell attracted numerous visits from journalists, authors, artists and photographers keen to document what they termed the "last of the Wampanoags".  Among them was Walter Gilman Page who arrived in Lakeville in 1890 to paint Mrs. Mitchell's portrait and who penned the following account which appeared the following year in New England Magazine.

Few people are aware that there dwells within the borders of the old Bay State a lineal descendant of the great and good Massasoit, and the last of the Wampanoags. Sharing the growing interest in all that pertains to the early history of Massachusetts, as well as being desirous to gratify my own curiosity, I was recently led to take a trip to Lakeville, Mass., the home of Mrs. Zerviah Gould Mitchell, the last of her race and family, in order that I might paint her portrait. I found Lakeville to be a quiet, staid township, with homesteads occupied by people descended from good old Puritan stock, still clinging to the abodes of their ancestors in spite of the temptations of the West, or the great cities of the East. The place is beautifully situated, and it abounds in Indian legends and Indian battle grounds. The road by the village skirts the shores of Lake Assawamsett, as picturesque as its name. At a distance of five miles or thereabouts from the village, one leaves the main road and turns off into a lovely winding woodland lane, by a rippling brook, and further on an old dilapidated sawmill. A mile or so, and a sudden bend brings you to the cottage door, where Mrs. Mitchell accords you a pleasant welcome. The rough habitation is most picturesquely situated; they seem to possess an intuitive sense for such things, these people, east or west. From the doorway you look out over a field of waving corn; beyond that the line of the woods; and if the trees did not grow so thickly, you might catch glimpses of the placid bosom of the lake. Nothing disturbs the profound stillness which reigns about, save the cry of the blue-jay or the distant tinkle of a cow bell. From time immemorial have the Wampanoag tribe dwelt here on the Assawamsett Neck, though but for an act of Governor Winslow they might have been wanderers on the face of the earth; for it was he who ordered that the Neck should be a reservation for the Wampanoags, they and their descendants, forever.

I had some doubts as to the success of my request, but Mrs. Mitchell granted a ready acquiescence; the fact of her having been photographed several times had doubtless somewhat paved the way for me. Hers is a strong face, somewhat masculine, but full of intelligence, lighting up in conversation, particularly if relating some of her wrongs at the hands of the pale-faces. I passed a half hour in agreeable that, taking mental notes the while of my surroundings. The room was evidently a place where one could eat, drink and be merry; since it was kitchen, dining-room, and containing a piano, which was certainly a surprise could, I suppose, be called a music-room. A door leads to an L containing the sleeping-rooms, one on the ground floor, in which I painted the portrait, and the other above, reached by means of a Jacobs ladder~ as Mrs. Mitchell facetiously termed it. All arrangements were happily made for sittings, and I was to begin the following morning, much to my gratification. The next day, instead of driving, I took a boat and rowed to the Indian shore, as the residents called the narrow strip of beach, from whence a path leads up to the Indian encampment. Not being familiar with the locality, I spent considerable time in seeking a landing-place, but my opportunities for enjoying the lovely panorama which the shores of the lake present were thereby increased. I was finally obliged to invade a camp of pale-faces, and inquire my way of a young and pretty girl. The Indian matron was awaiting my arrival, and the pose was soon selected and work commenced. As we grew better acquainted, many were the legends and tales of both Indians and whites, all of them most interesting, which she related to me, the while holding her position with remarkable steadiness.

Mrs. Mitchell was born July 24, 1807, and her parents were Brister Gould and Phebe Wamsley. Her mother was daughter of Wamsley and Lydia Tuspaquin; Lydia descended from Benjamin Tuspaquin, son of Benjamin Tuspaquin, or otherwise called the Black Sachem and one of King Philips most able generals. He married Amie, whose Indian name is lost to us, youngest daughter of Massasoit, chief of the powerful Wampanoags. Thus Mrs. Mitchell is the great-great-great grand-daughter of Massasoit. She is also descended from John Sassamon, the well known Christian Indian, who became a preacher to the Indians, under John Eliot. Having warned the Puritans of King Philips designs upon them, he was soon after murdered by his countrymen for his treachery to their cause.

Educated in the public schools of Abington, and afterwards at a private school in Boston, in which city she has also taught a private school, Mrs. Mitchell fully demonstrates in her own person the educational possibilities of the Indian. Her memory is remarkably clear upon This genealogy is carefully and fully traced in a work by Gen. E. W. Peirce, entitled, Indian History, Biography and Genealogy, pertaining to the Good Sachem Massasoit, of the Wampanoag Tribe, and his Descendants. This work was published by Mrs. Mitchell in 1878, at North Abington, Mass., and contains a preface written by her, the incidents of her schooldays; as in fact it is upon all the events of her life. At the age of seventeen she married Thomas C. Mitchell, by whom she had eleven children, five of whom are still living. Two of her daughters live with their mother, supporting themselves by selling their farm produce, making baskets, moccasins and so forth. Another daughter lives in Ipswich, Mass., and the only surviving son works in a shoe shop in Abington. Mr. Mitchell died in East Fall River in 1859. Mrs. Mitchells eyesight is more remarkable than her memory, for she reads and writes without the aid of her glasses, and I have in my possession her signature, written in a clear, legible hand.

I was sorry indeed to part from this romantic environment; for what could be more charming than this quiet spot in the midst of such natural surroundings, listening to the tales of bygone days when Puritan and Wampanoag struggled for supremacy? Before I left Lakeville, I visited the old Indian burying-ground; but it is now difficult to recognize it as such, since all the stones have suffered mutilation at vandal hands. Even the Indians graves are not respected, and she who remains is but a solitary figure amidst the rush of invasion, the only type of a race which has now almost vanished from New England.

Source:

Walter Gilman Page, New England Magazine, “A Descendant of Massasoit”.  January 1891, 642-644.

Zerviah Gould Mitchell

Zerviah Gould Mitchell, engraving, from

Ebenezer W. Peirce, Indian

History; Biography and Genealogy,

Pertaining to the Good Sachem Massasoit

of the Wampanoag Tribe, and His

Descendants (North Abington, MA: Zerviah

Gould Mitchell, 1878), frontispiece.

Native American Zerviah Gould Mitchell (1807-98), a direct descendant of the Great Sachem Massasoit who in the last years of her life resided at Betty’s Neck in Lakeville, deeply felt the injustice to which Native peoples in Massachusetts were subjected, and this resentment instilled within her a resolute, even defiant, attitude towards racial injustice and its perpetrators.

As an educated and intelligent woman, Mrs. Mitchell must have regarded with deep irony the circumstance of mid-19th century radical abolitionists agitating for an end to slavery and the enfranchisement of African-Americans nationwide, while Native Americans in the Commonwealth remained barred from equal citizenship because of their race.

Since the end of King Philip's War (1675-76), Massachusetts Natives had been treated as wards of the Commonwealth which appointed guardians to oversee Native affairs. Despite a somewhat nebulous paternalistic social welfare component to the state's guardianship, the system, nonetheless, effectively deprived Natives of the civil liberties freely enjoyed by the white populace.

Mrs. Mitchell first challenged the Commonwealth's system of institutionalized racism when, in 1857, she sought to have the guardianship removed from four lots of land she claimed in the Troy (Fall River) Indian Reservation, and payment for the timber removed by the guardian of the Fall River Indians, Benjamin F. Winslow.

Winslow was an opponent of Native equality, opining in 1848 that Natives "would receive no benefit from the privilege of citizenship, if conferred upon them." In Mrs. Mitchell, he found a formidable foe. The Commonwealth's Commissioner of Indians, John Milton Earle, apparently impressed by Mrs. Mitchell’s intelligence and determined demeanor, would write of her in 1861: "She is a capable energetic woman, a member in good standing of a Christian Church, and is represented to be entirely competent to the management of her own affairs. She neither desires nor needs the Guardianship under which the Indians are placed."

Between 1857 and 1861, Mrs. Mitchell sought to undermine the guardianship system, and while the Commonwealth early on recognized and upheld her claims to the Fall River property, it was more difficult to get Winslow to comply.

Many at that time (and some even as late as 1930) characterized Mrs. Mitchell's case as one motivated by purely pecuniary concerns. Fellow Natives on the Fall River Reservation resented her claim to a full eighth of the entire reservation, and were disturbed that she "had taken liberties not heretofore allowed or claimed by any other member of the tribe." The ensuing hostility which was directed towards her was probably not discouraged by Winslow. Little did the Fall River Natives recognize in her legal charges a critique of the Commonwealth's guardianship system, nor did they comprehend that it was to be part of the ultimate undoing of that system, an outcome which would be realized within a decade.

In 1869, the guardianship of the Massachusetts Natives was finally removed by "An Act to Enfranchise the Indians of the Commonwealth," by which the state's Natives were accorded the same rights and privileges as her white citizens.

But though, through this Act, Massachusetts Natives may have gained equality before the law, they did not gain equality in the eyes of all of the Commonwealth's citizens, a cause for which Mrs. Mitchell would continue to struggle for the remaining years of her life.

In 1878, she published her Indian History; Biography and Genealogy, Pertaining to the Good Sachem Massasoit of the Wampanoag Tribe, and His Descendants, authored by Ebenezer W. Peirce. With this work, Mrs. Mitchell was able to strike yet another blow in the cause of racial equality. Depicting her Native ancestors as men and women of dignity, honor and integrity, in sharp contrast to long-held negative stereotypes of Native peoples, Mrs. Mitchell was successful prompting a reconsideration of Wampanoag history and a thoughtful reevaluation by introspective whites of their previous conceptions of Native peoples and Native history.

Writing in the preface to the work, Mrs. Mitchell stated - "Before going to my grave I have thought it proper to be heard in behalf of my oppressed countrymen, and I now, through the medium of the printing press, and in book form, speak to the understanding and sense of justice of the reading public." To the end of her life, her nemesis would be social injustice and racial inequality.

The Last of the Nemaskets, 1786

One of the last of the Nemasket tribe was Alice Anthony who died in Middleborough on December 2, 1786 at the age of 80. Little is known of her other than the fact that she presumably resided in a wetu located in the vicinity of the area now bounded by High, Oak and Southwick Streets. On January 24, 1742, she along with seven others was admitted as a member of the First Church of Middleborough. The following item which refers to her as "Else Antony" (the same name as was used in the record of her church admission) was published in the Nemasket Gazette in 1857.

[Just to the west of Oak Street is] an old well now in good repair. It marks the spot where lived one of the last of the Nemasket Indians, by the name of Else Antony, who died about the year 1790. The tract of land lying between [South] Main street and the Depot [on Station Street], formerly belonged to Mr. Silas Wood, grandfather of Mr. Abial Wood. He dug this well by the side of Else's wigwam, and gave her the privilege of cutting broom and basket stuff on this land, as a compensation for her watering his herds, the water being poured into a long trough which he handhewn out for the purpose. Else was a member of the church on the Green, and appears to have been conscientious. In those days Dick Thompson, a slave of Clerk Jacob, went to pay his addresses to Else, but she refused him admission with the declaration, that her first lover was dead and that must be the end of it. A second was not to be entertained.

Source:
Namasket Gazette, "Local Antiquities", July 24, 1857.

Illustration:
"Indian Corn Hanging on a Post", photograph taken October 15, 2008, by Live♥Laugh♥Love. Reprinted under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Teweeleema

The following poem was written as a paean to Teweeleema (Melinda Mitchell) of Lakeville by Timothy Otis Paine (1824-95), Reverend of the Swedenborgian Church at Elmwood in East Bridgewater. In the poem, Paine, an avid local historian, makes note of several local features including the Satucket River in East Bridgewater, Nunckatesett (Town River) in Bridgewater and West Bridgewater, and closer to home Nahteawamett (Betty's Neck) in Lakeville. Wonnocooto was a location along the Satucket River in East Bridgewater. Ousamequin was one of the names of Massasoit. (Paine's spellings have been retained as written).

Tewelema

Princess Massasoit,
Daughter of the chieftain,
Long descended, hail I
Thee the lineal ruler
Of these natal wildwoods.

The Satucket River
And her bordering valleys
And the hills above them
Crowned by Wonnocooto
Claim their pristine monarch.

Spindles of the cornfield
Fingers multitudinous
To the Indian heavens,
Silent and unanimous,
Raise in attestation.

Every year the flowers,
With traditional memory
Of they great grandsire
And new childlike wonder,
Open to behold thee.

And the great-eyed squirrel
In the sinewy oak top,
Mindful of thy fathers,
Holds the acorn breathless
Watchful of thy fingers.

I, too, lore instructed,
See the awful moccason
On thy foot imperial,
And dread Metacomet
Rises up in vengeance.

In the flying car train
Sitting at a window
Looking on the woodland,
Thoughts of Ousamequin
Smooth thy troubled forehead.

Merciful and pitying
Was the mighty peace king
Sent to make it easy
For the band of pilgrims
Driven to thy forests.

In thy crown of feathers,
Lonely Tewelema,
Thou art going silent

To the Nahteawamett
On the Assowamsett;

To the Reservation
Held by old tradition;
Wootonekanuske
And thy aged mother
Looking from the cabin.

Gone to the Ponemah
We shall miss you absent.
When the sparrow twitters
Then we will remember
Thee, O Chic-chic-chewee.

And when fairs are crowded
On the Nunckatesett,
Then thou, Indian maiden,
Shalt appear in vision
From the isles of chieftains.

Illustration:

"Tee-we-lee-ma the Last Surviving Descendant of Massasoit", postcard, c. 1905

A number of postcards were published at the turn of the century depicting both Teweeleema and her sister Wootonekanuske. This view depicts Teweeleema in the modified Native dress she was accustomed to wearing. While the title on the front of the card labels Teweeleema as the last descendant of Massasoit, her sister survived her and Native tradition holds that there are in fact descendants of the great Wampanoag sachem living today.

.

Source:

Paine, Timothy Otis. Selections from the Poems of Timothy Otis Paine. New York, NY: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1897.

"An Heir to King Philip"

During the last quarter of the 19th and the first quarter of the 20th centuries, Teweeleema (1836-1919) and Wootonekanuske (1848-1930), perhaps better known by their English names of Melinda and Charlotte Mitchell, claimed themselves to be the last lineal descendants of Massasoit. While viewed with some skepticism today, the claim was little challenged at the time, and the women were regarded by the non-Native community with a mix of attitudes ranging from reverence to racism. Along with their mother, Zerviah Gould Mitchell (1807-98) who became an early spokeswoman for the rights of the Native peoples of Massachusetts, the sisters settled on Betty's Neck in Lakeville in the late 1800s following the comment of a judge who advised the ladies to go and take possession of the land they claimed for themselves. Increasingly in their struggle to acquire legal title to the land, their resistance to non-Native ways and their staunch vocalization of a Native perspective on history, the women garnered the attention of the press, both locally and nationally, and numerous reporters, writers, artists and photographers made the trek to document the family at Lakeville. Among the many pieces published as a result of this journalistic quest was the following article from an unidentified (though likely Boston newspaper) dated October, 1895, and written three years before the death of Mrs. Mitchell. In it, not only is a glimpse of the sisters' lives at Lakeville given, but also an indication of the non-Native attitudes prevailing at the time. Ironically, while the article was titled "An Heir to King Philip", the sisters were not descendants of the Wampanoag sachem, but of his sister who had married Watuspaquin (Tispaquin).

AN HEIR TO KING PHILIP.

Daughter of Long Line of Royalty.

Last Scion of Heroic Family Lives in Lakeville.

Of Majestic Height and Carriage and Proud of Her Descent.

A lineal descendant of kings, a claimant of the title of princess, lives near the quiet little city of Lakeville, on Lake Assawampsett, which is one of the most charming of those many small bodies of water that form what is known as the lake region of Massachusetts, says the New York herald. She, for it is a woman of whom I speak, is no renegade or exiled pretender. Her own people acknowledge her claim to the royal name and station. She lives on the soil that she and they look upon as hers in immemorial rights. In the very rooms which her ancestors have made famous in history and in legend, and in the midst of an alien race who have dispossessed her and hers. They are the parvenus, the usurpers, the false claimants, not she.

To those barbarians she is content to be known as Melinda Mitchell, condescending to acknowledge the dull, unromantic, commonplace conditions which have resulted from their coming. But to her own people she is the Princess Teweelema. In the same way her great kinsman, King Pometacom, consented in times gone by to drop that significant and euphonious name for the meaningless Philip, making the new name glorious among his own, and terrible to his foes. It as as the nearest heir of that regal and regnant character and the direct descendant of his father, the almost equally famous King Massasoit, chief Sagamore of the Wampanoags, that she has a birthright to her title and a right acknowledged even by the strangers’ lawless law to the very land on which she and hers reside. This is known as Betty’s Neck, named after one of its former owners, Assowetough, whom the English ignobly called Betty. It is a long high strip of land, situated on the south shore of lake Assawampsett. Here, under the shade of the primeval trees which sheltered their ancestors, live the last pitiful remnants of the opnce powerful tribe of the Wampanoags, and here, in their midst, in a small house sequestered and well nigh hidden by dense woodland, dwell the princess, her mother, Mrs. Mitchell, and her sister, Charlotte, whose Indian name is Wootonekanuske.

Proud of their descent and tenacious of the right of exclusiveness claimed by royalty and its heirs the world over, the members of this small family are averse to notoriety and unwilling to receive visits of mere curiosity from members of the race they have reason to distrust and fear. But through the genial influence of the firend who accompanied me, I have had the honor and pleasure of being received by them.

Our three gracious hostesses were Indians to the core, with rich brown skin, high cheek bones, flashing eyes, and straight, lithe and graceful figures, and possessed, moreover, of much natural and acquired refinement, both of speech and manner.

Shorter in stature than her daughter, Mrs. Mitchell has settled into the fleshy solidity of age. In spite of her 89 years she is hardly feeble in body, although her mind is somewhat blighted. She has a motherly, winning face, with kind eyes and a friendly mouth; but when we listened to her pleasant tones we realized that her greatest charm was her voice, so soft, so sweet, so mellow, and then so strong, so incisive and so indignant.

Melinda, or the Princess Teweelema, is something past 50. Of most majestic height and carriage, her picturesque appearance is much enhanced by her complete Indian attire and the crown of beads and feathers which she always wears upon her stately head.

When questioned concerning this insignia of royalty, she says in explanation, “I am the daughter of a king.” And as the words leave her lips there comes over her fine face a look of mingled sorrow and scorn that she is denied her birthright and forbidden her heritage. Her voice is resonant and under good control, her gestures are at all times well chosen and dramatic. She was educated at Abington, Mass., as was also her sister Charlotte, or Wootonekanuske.

Charlotte’s Indian name was given her in honor of the wife of King Philip, and she does no discredit to the “beloved wife of Philip of Pokanoket,” who was a sister of Weetamoe, the unfortunate squaw sachem of Pocassett.

While of less distinguished appearance than her sister Melinda, Charlotte Mitchell possesses in large degree the air of proud and pathetic resolution which so characterizes her mother and Teweelema, and although she was most cordial in her welcome, her domestic duties soon called her and we could hear her busy in the little lean-to kitchen, or flitting with light step through the dining room. Once or twice she stood for a moment in the curtained doorway and chatted with us.

Mrs. Mitchell responded most willingly to all our inquiries. Teweelema stood beside her, correcting now and then a date, with beautiful and charming deference. It was more than touching to watch the look of expectant recollection in the old woman’s face as she endeavored to recall, sometimes fruitlessly, the incidents of her past life, and we could tell whether the memory for which she was groping was glad or sad by the deepening lines in her expressive face.

She told of the evolution of their home on the Neck, which, starting as a canvas tent, has reached the culmination in a comfortable but small house. It was with a proud sweep of her arm that she called our attention to their present cosey [sic] surroundings; then, with scarcely a breath between, she reverted to her school teaching in Boston when she was a young woman. Suddenly her face grew hard and stern, as she spoke of cords and cords of wood cut upon her woodland by the agents of the state, for which the commonwealth still refuses to reimburse her. As her voice rose in the passion of remembered and existing wrong, her aged figure seemed to assume majestic proportions and her dull eyes blazed. It was then that Teweelema stepped forward, and placing a quieting hand upon her mother’s shoulder, brought her to tranquility and forgetfulness.
In reply to a question concerning their famous lineage, Teweelema, her hand still resting upon her mother’s shoulder, replied, with uplifted head, and slow distinct enunciation:

“My mother is the grandchild of Massasoit, seven generations removed, and the niece of King Philip, six generations removed. Her descent is through Amie, the daughter of Massasoit, who married Tuspaquin, the Great Black Sachem. My mother is also, through Assowetough, or Betty, the sixth generation in lineal descent from Sassacus, the earliest chief of the Pequot tribe.”

Being somewhat surprised at the number of pretty baskets piled in one corner of the dining room, we were told that they were made to sell at the harvest moon festival at Onset. This is well known as the summer rallying place of the Spiritualists of the United States, and is but a few miles from the home of the Mitchells and within sight of Gray Gables. It is presumably under Indian control, and spirits of departed chiefs and braves are said to appear on the streets on the night of the harvest festival, or, to give it its full title, the harvest moon festival and pow-wow of Indian spirits, so that the general Indian atmosphere especially permeating the place at that time makes the sale of Indian trinkets easy and lucrative.

Teweelema is the traveling salesman for the little family. When she goes upon a commercial trip she arrays herself in her bravest Indian finery, and makes a circuit of the nearby towns, in each of which she is a well known figure.

We were especially fortunate, a few days later, in seeing her at Onset, on the afternoon of the harvest festival, gorgeous in scarlet and yellow, and beads and wampum, her fur trimmed leggings reaching to her embroidered skirts, her long, black hair floating free beneath her crown of beads and feathers, and her bodice nearly covered by the many strands of large beads which formed her necklace.

In these days of intense realism, when one’s sensibilities are coerced into a forgetful apathy, a bit of romance is as warming to one’s heart as a blazing fire on a brisk December day, and what could be more romantic when the thought of this Indian princess living unwedded, because, as she says, “would the daughter of a king wed one of the race which robber her fathers?” – and there seems to be no fit mate for her – none unless, indeed, it be the materialized spirit of an Onset chief.

Illustrations:

Teweeleema (Melinda Mitchell) at Betty's Neck, Lakeville, MA, photograph, 1885

Typically for visits and photographs, Teweeleema dressed in a modified version of Native attire, including beads and a feathered head dress. In contrast, her sister Wootonekanuske generally dressed in less traditional garb.

Mitchell House, Betty's Neck, Lakeville, MA, by George Dorr of North Middleborough, photograph, c. 1901

Contrary to characterizations which termed the Mitchell House at Betty's Neck as little more than a hut, the house in which the family lived, though modest, was comfortable and well kept. The ell in the foreground of the picture was likely the earliest portion of the structure built.

Source:

Unidentified newspaper clipping, "An Heir to King Philip", October, 1895.

Hand Rock

One of Middleborough's genuine pieces of folklore centers about the Hand Rock, a granite rock which sits atop Indian Hill off East Main Street in Middleborough. Incised into the surface of the rock is the imprint of a hand, its fingers splayed wide. One of the best known Native petroglyphs (stone carvings) in the area of Middleborough and Lakeville, the impression of the hand upon the rock is held by local legend to have been created when a Native was shot and killed, his hand striking the rock and mystically leaving the depression.

A handwritten record in the possession in 1952 of Alice H. Cornish, a descendant of John Tomson, recounts the circumstances of the folk tale. At the outbreak of King Philip's War in the summer of 1675, most Middleborough residents had sought refuge in the relative safety of the garrison or fort located in the vicinity of the rear of the former Memorial Junior High School on North Main Street. The growing hostility of the Natives towards the garrison and their increasing boldness eventually became intolerable for the English sheltered inside.

The Indians would daily appear on the south side of the Nemasket river, opposite the fort, and taunt those in the garrison with insulting gestures. Lt. [John] Thompson ordered Isaac Howland, a distinguished marksman, to take the long gun and shoot one of the Indians. This he did while the savage was on the rock insulting them. The distance from the garrison to the rock was 155 rods, nearly half a mile.

Though neither this record, nor the numerous other historical accounts of the event make specific mention of the hand print in connection with the shooting, local folklore has always connected the two, the handprint being the consequence of the shooting.

In a recent more scientific study of the Hand Rock, Edward J. Lenik author of Picture Rocks: American Indian Rock Art in the Northeast Woodlands describes the rock in question:

The boulder is a glacial erratic composed of fine-to-medium grained granite. It measures 2 meters (6.8 feet) in length from north to south and 2.5 meters (8.5 feet) wide from east to west. On its north side, the boulder is 110 centimeters (42 inches) in height, but the rock slopes downward to a height of 80 centimeters (30 inches) at its south end. The hilltop on which this petroglyph rock sits is generally clear at the top, but the side slopes are wooded.

The handprint-and-wrist symbol has been pecked into the surface of the rock. The design is naturalistic and represents a right hand. It measures 26 centimeters (10 inches) in length from the tip of the middle finger to the bottom edge of the wrist. The fingers are extended and splayed and point to the north. The maximum width of the handprint is 21 centimeters (8 inches) when measured between the thumb and small finger. The depth of the pecked design ranges from 4 to 6 millimeters (0.2-0.25 inches).

When Lenik visited the site in 1978 to document the Hand Rock, he found that "the boulder and handprint carving have been considerably defaced. The rock has been splattered with paint, and intials have been carved into its surface. The handprint-wrist symbol was reportedly enhanced in the mid-1930s by local boys who "deepened it a bit" to make it more visible but did not change its outline".

The imprinted hand has long held a certain local fascination, mainly from the folk tale which describes its creation. While Lenik writes that "the existence of the petroglyph boulder has been known since at least 1906", certainly the Natives knew about it when they chipped the hand pattern into it. Similarly, non-Native knowledge of the petroglyph also predates 1906, though with no certainty can we ascertain as to who first became aware of the rock or when.

The Barden family may have been among the earliest to be familiar with the rock, owning much land in the vicinity if not the rock itself. Nehemiah Bennett left a description of Middleborough dated 1793 in which he mentions "a rock on a high hill a little to the eastward of the old stone fishing weir, where there is the print of a person's hand in said rock". [Massachusetts Historical Collections Vol. 3d 1810] It is likely that by that time the land atop the hill had been cleared, exposing the rock with its handprint to all who cared to look.

In 1853, the editor of the Namasket Gazette Samuel P. Brown visited the site and published a description of the rock in his newspaper, the account indicating that by the mid-19th century the Hand Rock was well known among local residents. Curiously, however, Brown makes no mention of the obvious handprint upon its surface.

It may not be new to most of our readers, that the rock on which the Indian was killed by the "long gun," away back in the "Old Colony times," is within about half a mile of the "Four Corners," and is within sight from many points in Main street. With a friend we went on Monday last week, to see it. It is not as large as our imagination had made it: but it is on the top of a pretty good sized hill, and was not so mean a prominence for the sharp shooting marksman, as it was unfortunate for the Indian who so impudently and imprudently mounted it to be shot down. The place where the aim was taken, we visited too, or what is said to be the place. It is on this side of the Namasket, and at nearly the same elevation from it, as the rock upon the other side. The gun is now the property of Captain Zadock Thompson, of Halifax, and is one of the old English guns, of the longest make. ["Indian Rock", Namasket Gazette, May 20, 1853, p. 2].

At the time, the incident of the shooting of the Native was one which was frequently commemorated. About 1820, "the performance of shooting the Indian was celebrated here in grand style, the English occupying this side of the river and the mock Indians the other side, the same gun being used for the occasion, and an Indian feinted the process of tumbling from the rock. An oration suitable for the occasion was delivered ...." ["Indian Rock", Namasket Gazette, May 20, 1853, p. 2]. Likewise, the centenary celebration of the town in 1869 once more witnessed the reappearance of the Tomson gun which was displayed with much reverence. The rationale behind these commemorations was largely one of historical identity as the episode was seen as "one link between the present and the past history of the town."

Increasingly, however, less attention was paid to the shooting incident than to the handprint itself, which was recognized as but one of several petroglyphs in the immediate area. Although Weston refers to the rock as the "hand rock", he makes no assertion regarding the imprint's origin. As awareness and appreciation for Native history accelerated in the 20th century, new perspectives, including that of Lenik, began questioning both the origins and meanings of these carvings.

Ultimately, the petroglyph is less supernatural in origin than local folklore would have it, having been chipped slowly into the boulder over a period of time. Lenik himself suggests that "the handprint is that of a shaman who has marked the area as a sacred site. The boulder, standing alone on the hilltop, may have been seen as a source of spiritual power. The carving of the handprint may have been a shaman's attempt to derive power from the site."

Lenik is likely right in his surmise that there was some enduring connection between the hill and the Native population. The English choice of the name "Indian Hill" for the location of the Hand Rock indicates that even they recognized (though perhaps did not understand) the deep connection between the Natives, the hill and the Hand Rock.

Illustrations:

Hand Rock, photograph, from Thomas Weston, History of the Town of Middleboro, Massachusetts (Middleborough, MA: Town of Middleborough, 1906), p. 77.

Louise Pratt and Rose Standish Pratt, with the Hand Rock in the background, photograph, c. 1910.

Louise Pratt and her brother, Ernest S. Pratt, grew up on the Pratt Farm on East Main Street (now the Pratt Farm Conservation Area) and were undoubtedly familiar with the Hand Rock as Indian Hill was a favorite coasting site for residents of the area.

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Tomson Long Gun, etching, from Thomas Weston, History of the Town of Middleboro, Massachusetts (Middleborough, MA: Town of Middleborough, 1906), p. 76.

The gun belonging to Lieutenant John Tomson was described in Weston's history as being "seven feet, four and a half inches long; the length of the barrel, six and one half feet; the size of the caliber twelve balls to the pound, and the length of the face of the lock ten inches. This gun, weighing twelve pounds, was probably brought from the old country." The gun remained in the Thompson family for a number of generations and is now part of the collections of the Old Colony Historical Society in Taunton, MA.

Sources:
"Data Shows Isaac Howland Responsible for Indian's Death", Brockton Enterprise, July 21, 1952

"Indian Rock", Namasket Gazette, May 20, 1853, p. 2.

Edward J. Lenik, "Sacred Places and Power Spots: Native American Rock Art at Middleborough, Massachusetts", 25-37, in Occasional Paper 2, Rock Art of the Eastern Woodland, Charles H. Faulkner, ed., American Rock Art Research Association, 1996.

Edward J. Lenik, Picture Rocks: American Indian Rock Art in the Northeast Woodlands (Hanover, NH: University of New England Press).

Massachusetts Historical Collections, Volume 3d, 1810.

Thomas Weston, History of the Town of Middleboro, Massachusetts (Middleborough, MA: Town of Middleborough, 1906).