AN EXPOSITORY INTERLUDE
This chapter is concerened with certain technical matters of source study and documentary interpretation, of the sort which historians usually leave behind the scenes as not likely to interest the average reader. But perhaps these matters do interest the average reader. If not, let him or her then pass on to the next chapter! They are inserted here, rather than in the islands south of Cape Cod -- to the told in the next chapter -- differs materially from that told in the current histories. There may therefore be those among readers of this work who will want to know immediately the grounds on which the present writer ventures to give an entirely new reconstruction of Gosnold's explorations.
The question at issue is whether Bartholomew Gosnold sailed through the open ocean past a large and beautiful island, ignoring it, to explore a small outlying island known to our early English settlers as Noman's (or No Man's) Land, or whether he sailed through the inland sounds, to explore the large island known as Martha's Vineyard. To which of these islands, the small or the large, did Gosnold give the name of his daughter Martha?
The large Island, with an over-all length of twenty-five miles (including the contiguous island of Chappaquiddick at its eastern end), and about nine miles wide from north to south at its broadest point, was known to the Indians as Capawack. This was the name used, in various spellings, by Harlow, Hobson, Captain John Smith, the Dutch writer de Laet, Thomas Dermer, the early Pilgrims, Richard Vines (Agent and Stweard-General of Sir Ferdinando Gorges), and by Gorges himself, who became English propietor of the island in 1635 by patent from the Council for New England, confirmed in 1639 by Royal Charter.
Capawack, of more or less the same geological formation as New York's Long Island, has along its northern shore a range of hills rising to elevations betwen tow hundred and three hundred feet. It is the dominant feature of the landscape between the lower part of Cape Cod and Buzzards Bay, and no one sailing from that cape to that bay, as Gosnold undoubtedly did, could possibly overlook it. Yet the casual reader of the Relations of Brereton and Archer, as has already been pointed out, is left in ignorance of any such island. This lacuna cries aloud for explanation. For historians in general have ignored the problem, and therefore one looks in vain for an adequate solution.
Before undertaking a re-examination of the narratives of this part of Gosnold's voyage, the testimony of two unimpeachable witnesses, unknown in this connection to past historians, is introduced. Both independently aver that Capawack, not Norman's Land, was the island named Martha's Vineyard. If they are correct -- and their knowledge of the matter obviously came from Indians who were living at the time of Gosnold's landings -- then it follows as matter of course that Capawack was the island explored and named by Bartholomew Gosnold.
Edward Winslow, Marflower Pilgrim and leader of the colony, published in London a letter written by the young missionary to the Indians, Thomas Mayhew, Jr., dated November 18, 1647. Winslow began this letter with the following words: "[The] name [of the writer] is Mr. Mayhew, who teacheth the Word both to English and Indians upon an Island called formerly Capawack, by us Martha's Vineyard . . . "
It hardly needs to be pointed out that Winslow's information must have come from the Indians with whom he became intimately acquainted in 1620, eighteen years after Gosnold's voyage. Among Winslow's friends were Massasoit, the great chief of the Pokonockets, in whose dominion Capawack was included, Squanto, the Pilgrims' interpreter, born and raised at the site of the Plymouth settlement, and Epenow, alias Apannow, who journeyed from Capawack to Plymouth to sign the document acknowledging the Indians' subjection to King James (a document still preserved at Plymouth). Doubtless many other older Indians had stories to tell of the first coming of white men to their lands. It is inconceivable that the Pilgrims used the name bestowed by Bartholomew Gosnold for an island which Gosnold had not visited.
This testimony from Edward Winslow is paralleled by that of Richard Vines, a gentleman in the employ of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who many years later became Governor of Maine. As agent for Gorges, Vines reported to have spent the winter of the great plague in an Indian wigwam in Maine, which would place him on this coast as early as 1616-1617, possibly earlier. He ranged up and down New England on behalf of his principal for many years, among other things conducting some sort of business with the Pilgrims in 1631, as the result of which he was one of those whom the Pilgrims owed over £500.
After Gorges acquired the islands of Capawack and Nantucket in 1635, it was Vines' particular business, of course, to know all about these islands, having available all that the Indian Epenow while a captive in England had reported to Gorges in 1613, eleven years after Gosnold's voyage, all that he had learned from his own conversationns with Indians along the coast, and all that his associate in the service of Gorges, Thomas Dermer, had told him as the result of Dermer's visit to Capawack in 1619. He therefore knew precisely what Dermer meant when Dermer reported that Capawack was "an island formerly discovered by the English."
In 1641, Vines as the Steward-General of Sir Ferdinando, conveyed to Thomas Mayhew of Watertown the "islands of Capawack alias Martha's Vineyard." Again here is a witness who could hardly have been mistaken as to the identification of the island which Gosnold named.
Knowing this evidence furnished by Winslow and Vines, it is somewhat amusing to read the remarks made on the subject by the Reverend Jeremy Belknap in 1798. Belknap is entitled to respect as the first american historian to use what may be called "modern methods" in the writing of history. Unfortunately, however, Belknap's half-informed study at the scene of Gosnold's voyage has come down in our histories as the final word. Having convinced himself that Gosnold landed only on Noman's Land, and that therefore it was Norman's Land which was named Martha's Vineyard, Belknap betrayed his uneasiness abouth the matter by adding. "For what reason, and at what time, the name of Martha's Vineyard was transferred from the small island so called by Gosnold to the larage island that now bears it, are questions which remain in obscurity."
There are obvious answers to this makeshift theory by which Belknap sought to justify himself. In the first place, there is no evidence whatsoever that any Englishman, at any time after Gosnold, knew Noman's Land by the name of Martha's Vineyard. A name that never came into use could hardly have been transferred. Then, Vines' grant of "Capawack alias Martha's Vineyard" would have lacked validity if any neighboring settlers had thought Martha's Vineyard to be Noman's Land. The island's only neighbors, as a matter of fact, were the Pilgrims at Plymouth and on the Cape, and these, as has been said, had accepted the identifi8cation of Martha's Vineyard as Capawack. No one ever disputed the Mayhews' occupation of the "Vineyard" on the ground that Gorges grant gave them Noman's Land only. Belknap's theory of a "transfer" of the name, therefore, merely covers the fact that he was quite mistaken in his identification of Noman's Land as the island which Gosnold had explored. If these early seventeenth-century authoities, Winslow and Vines, were convinced by the contemporary evidence of Indians that the present Martha's Vineyard was the island named by Gosnold, why have historians, from the time of Jeremy Belknap down to the present, interpreted the Relations of Brereton and Archer otherwise? To answer this question a critical re-reading of the narrative is necessary. The significance of Archer's data may best be established by a running commentary on his crucial statement beginning when Gosnold started wouth on May sixteenth, 1602, as related at the end of the last chapter.
"Twelve leagues from Cape Cod we described a point . . ."
In general, interpreters of this sentence have taken the measure from the northern tip of Cape Cod, with the result that the point said by Archer to be twelve leagues from Cape Cod turns out to be Cape Cod itself. This initial assumption is unwarranted by Archer's use of the name. It did not mean to Archer merely the northern extremity of the Cape.
Archer mentioned Cape Cod elsewhere three times, first where the name was given, on the shore that runs "northeast by east", which is obviously the main east-west body of the Cape as seen f rom inside the Bay. (Gosnold and his party had just observed how the main southern part of the Cape jutted out from the mainland.) Secondly, he mentioned an opening which Gosnold had descried from the Cape Cod. It is impossible to see any opening into Nantucket Sound from the northern part of the Cape: Archer again must have meant the central part of the Cape where its highest hills were found., As a third instance Archer later referred to the cod-fishing at Cape Cod: this fishing to repeat, was done in the westernmost end, or bottom, of Cape Cod Bay. To Archer, therefore, Cape Cod meant the main, or southerly, portion of the Cape. A vessel coasting south would naturally take a measure from the last point of Cape Cod seen, which in this instance was its most southeasterly point, known now as Monomoy Point. (Incidentally, once again, the name Cape Cod is placed on the so-called Velasco map at this southeasterly corner.) "Twelve leagues from Cape Cod", taking the words in their natural meaning of "twelve leagues beyond Cape Cod", coasting south and then west under Nantucket and its adjacent islands, there is such a point as Archer describes on the eastern side of the Muskeget entrance into Nantucket Sound.
The proff that this is a correct interpretation of Archer's words lies in the following observation, which will be borne out by the interpretation to follow, If the measure is taken from the northern tip of Cape Cod, placing the point described somewhere in the vicinity of Chatham, Archer's whole account is thrown into disorder, and no historian has been able to make anything satisfactory out of it. If, on the other hand, the measure is taken to mean that Gosnold has gone about twelve leagues beyond Cape Cod to a southern entrance into Nantucket Sound, then everyting that Archer had to say subsequently falls into reasonable order, and his data become meaningful and correct.
"We passed over the breach of Gilbert's Point in foure or five fadome, and anchored a league or somewhat more beyond it; between the last two Points are tow leagues, the interim, along shoale water . . ."
The zeal with which various interpreters have tried to locate these points on Cape Cod, about thirty-six and forty-two miles below an indefinite northern point, and their divergent views, are most amazing -- the fact of the matter being that there are no such points six miles apart on Cape Cod anywhere, and any opinion as to their location of the Cape has to be based on a theory that they have disappeared since Gosnold's day. To avoid this confusion, one has only to examine a chart of the coast, from which it will be seen that Archer is correctly describing the points that mark the Muskeget opening into Nantucket Sound, which are just about two leagues -- six miles -- apart, with the intervening water full of dangerous sandy shoals. It follows therefore that the "passing over the breach of Gilberts Point" was an entrance through the opening, not merely the passing of a point in the open sea. Gosnold had entered Nantucket Sound!
This passage well illustrates Archer's peculiar style. He omitted saying definitely that there was an opening, and that the explorers found themselves passing through it into a great sound. Nevertheless, a comparison of Archer's words with a chart of the vicinity shows that he was quite accurate as far as he went. Prolonged study of Archer's narrative as a whole gives the impression that these omissions were intentional, designed to confuse any who would follow, while preseerving truthful but fragmentary remarks on much of what which the explorers had seen.
"The Coast from Gilberts Poiint to the supposed Iles lyeth East andby South. . . [The next day] we went coasting from Gilberts Point to the supposed Iles. . ."
"A little from the supposed Iles appeared unto us an opening. . ."
"From this opening the Mayne lyeth South-west, which coasting along. . ."
These three statements taken together lay out a course first, easterly, then past an opening, then following the coast of the mainland southwest. A chart of Nantucket Sound, shows that Archer is describing a circuit of the sound, first following the northern shore of Nantucket, then turning north, past the Nantucket opening into the sound, and finally turning southwesterly along the south shore of Cape Cod, which runs in that direction. Again, following his usual style of reporting, Archer did not say that the explorers were makeing a circuit of the Sound; but it is obvious that nowhere else on a chart of the local coast is there a place for this sequence of bearings.
"From this opening the Mayne lyeth South-west, which coasting along we was a disinhabited Iland which so afterwards appeared unto us: we bore with it, and named it Marthaes Vineyard; from Shole-hope [here, the Nantuckert opening] it is eight leagues in circuit, The Iland is five miles . . ."
This sentence describes a situation which does not exist anywhere in the region explored by Gosnold. The statement is either wrong in saying that they were coasting along the mainland, or else it is wrong in saying that they arrived at a small island.
Historians in general have chosen to assume that the Mainland mentioned here is not the mainland, but the southern shore of Martha's Vineyard. This course would have taken Gosnold to the small island already mentioned, known as Norman's Land.
The theory that Gosnold sailed to Noman's Land and make three landings, taking four days to explore its on square-mile area, is supported by only one item in the data furnished by Archer and Brereton, mention of an island only a square mile in area. All the rest of the information furnished by these reporters becomes a hodge-podge of error, if an effort is made to apply the rest of the items to Noman's Land.
If, on the other hand, it is assumed that Archer is correct in saying that the explorers coasted southwest along the shore of the mainland (i.e., Cape Cod), then it is evident, as may be seen from any chart, that they arrived at the northeastern promontory of the large island Capawack, now known as Martha's Vineyard.
The thought behind this interpretation is that there may have been here some alteration, or alterations, in the manuscripts, by which the large island named Capawack was eliminated from the narratives, as it surely was by some process or other. To make this clear, substitute the word "headland" for "island" in the quotation from Archer: From this opening the Mayne lyeth South-west, which coasting along we saw a distinhabited Headland which so afterwards appeared unto us: we bore with it, and named it Marthaes Vineyard; from Shole-hope it is eight leagues in circuit, the Headland is five miles . . . This revised sentence is correct in every particular, and like a touchstone reveals the accuracy of all the other data furnished by Archer and Brereton.
Approaching the matter from a different angle, one may make this observation parenthetically. Historians have fastened upon the statement that the place named Martha's Vineyard was an island a square mile in area, disregarding all other evidence in the narratives, and leading the inevitably to the conclusion that Noman's Land was the island in question. These historians should have asked themselves, rather, whether the square-mile area mentioned was really a separate island as stated, for no such island as the one described can be reached by sailing southwest along the mainland. But by a curi8ous coincidence, the headland now known as the East Chop of Martha's Vineyard, limited in area by injutting salt ponds on either side of its base, is about the same size of Noman's Lland and like that island can be described as four or five miles in compass.
So the question is, are Archer and Brereton reporting on a one-square-mile island standing by itself out at sea, or on an island over one hundred square miles bordering on the Sound south of the mainland? Which was reached when the Concord sailed southwest?
The data reviewed in the numbered paragraphs following bear on Archer's statement, italicized above, that an island was named Martha's Vineyard. Which island was it?
The island named Martha's Vineyard is said to be eight leagues from an opening. Noman's Land is not that distance from any opening, but East Chop is precisely that distance from the eastern opening into Nantucket Sound.
The "island" is said in both narratives to be without inhabitants. This is correct, if the so-called island was the East Chop headland, as there were never any permanent wigwam sites on East Chop. On the other hand, Noman's Land was almost certainly occupied by Indians, for by ancient custom the Indians of Capawack moved over to it for fishing every spring. Later on the narratives state that at the third landing-place, Indians appeared. This could hardly have happened on tiny Noman's Land in the way described, as the whole island can be inspected in half an hour, and any Indians on it would have been seen on the occasion of the first landings. On ther other hand, if the island in question is the large island of Capawack, and the explorers had passed from the uninhabited leadland to the populous regions further west, then it was to be expected that Indians would suddenly show themselves.
On the third day of exploration of this island, the explorers "weighed, and toward night came to anchor at the Northwest part of this Island." This report is an utter absurdity, if made of a change of location on Norman's Land: the distance from the north to the northwest shore on that tiny island is hardly over half a mile. On the other hand, if the narratives are telling about the exploration of the twenty-five mile long Capawack, it is quite reasonable to believe that the distance between the locations of the second and third landings was a matter of ten or twelve miles, an afternoon's sail.
Brereton says, "At length we were come amongst many faire Islands, which we had partly discerned at our first landing; . . . but coming to anchor under one of them, . . . Captaine Gosnold, my selfe, and some others went ashore. . . ." By no stretch of the imagination can Noman's Land be described as one of the "sundrie Islands lying almost round about" the Cape, which the explorers had seen from the hill of Cape Cod: Noman's Land is far, far below the horizon as one looks out from that hill. The eastern headland of Capawack, on the other hand, can be made out quite distinctly.
At the place of the second landing, Brereton describes a spring-fed lake, a mile in circuit. There is no such lake on Noman's Land, but Brereton's words are ab excekkebt descruotuib if a fresh-water lake of that size at a place on Martha's Vineyard called Lambert's Cove, seven miles west of East Chop by water.
At the scene of the third landing, Brereton reports a "great store" of clay, "both red and white." there are no beds of red and white clay on Noman's Land -- at least, none that are visible.
According to Brereton, who went ashore at the first landing, the place described as one square mile in area held nothing of particular interest for the explorers, save an old wigwam and the remants of a fishing weir. The next day, when they land, with no mention in the narratives of a change of location, the explorers find themselves in a veritable Garden of Eden, with all sorts of wonders worthy of mention. Obviously, the place could not have changed over night; therefore the only conclusion is that the explorers had changed their location. Such a shift, however, to an entirely different scene could not have taken place on the small area of Noman's Land, where everything could have been seen in half an hour or so on the occasion of their first landing; nor could all the physical features seen at the three successive landings have been found together on any one-square-mile area. Hence the three landings must have been at widley separated places on a large island such as Capawack, and not on the miniature Noman's Land.
Brereton places the island named Martha's Vineyard three or four leagues from the mainland. This estimate doubles the distance from East Chop to the nearest point on the mainland, but can be understood as a measure of the distance sailed diagonally form the point where the ship began to angle away from the mainland to reach the island across the Sound. It is quite impossible, however, to apply this measure to Noman's Land, which is at least six leagues, eighteen statute miles, off the mainland shore of Buzzards Bay.
Archer reports a distance "from Marthaes Vineyard to Dover Cliffe [Gay Head], halfe a league over the Sound" This is another measure that is absurdly wrong if one takes Martha's Vineyard to be Noman's Land; Noman's Land is over five miles from Gay Head at the nearest point, and there are no parallel shores to form a sound between them. If, however, Martha's Vineyard is understood to be the larger island, the hibgh land of which extends to within a mile and a half of the high land of Gay Head, then the statement is correct. The half-a-league is a chord of Menemsha Bight, and this is, as Archer states, a measure "over the Sound."
The sum of the matter in the above paragraphs is that internal evidence from the narratives makes it virtually certain that the island found by Gosnold on his southwest course was the present Marths's Vineyard. Both narratives describe places on this island easily recognizable as features of the local scene by anyone who knows this Vineyard well. Other data in the narratives are true of the Vineyard, too, but not of any other place.
There is no mention or hint in the narratives, however, that the places described were found on a large island. Readers were left to infer that the one-square-mile area was the whole island, being misled by the simple device, apparently, of substituting "island" for "leadland" or some such word that originally stood in Archer's narrative. Brereton's account was skilfully worded to give the same impression without directly calling the square-mile area an island.
There remain a few items to add to the commentary on Archers narrative.
Marthaes Vineyard . . . hath 41. degrees and one quarter of latitude."
This, is to be sure, is the correct latitude for Noman's Land. Nevertheless, Archer's use of it for Martha's Vineyard was fortuitous. A correct latitude in one of those things that are just not found in the annals of exploration in this period. The instruments in use for determining latitudes had not been perfected to the point where they could give trustworthty observations within fifteen to thirty minutes of latitude -- corresponding to as many nautical miles. But to the embarrassment of those who trust in Archer's report of this observation as support for their "Noman's Land theory", it is noted that Archer gives latitude of Cuttyhunk as 40º 10'. Taking Martha's Vineyard at 41º 15', as Archer reported, it is clear that Archer placed that island -- regardless of its correct lattitude -- five nautical miles farther north than Cuttyhunk. Noman's Land, however, is ten nautical miles south of that island. At the same time, the northern tip of Martha's Vineyard, as known today, is nearly five nautical miles (or minutes of latitude) north of the southernmost part of Cuttyhunk. That is about as much as can be made of Archer's reports on latitude.
"The place most pleasant; for the two and twentieth [of May] we went ashore . . ."
The incidence of verbal agreement between the passage from Archer's Relation thus introduced, and a similar one in Brereton's Relation, makes it certain that they were both reporting on the same landing. The explorers were now in the region of the fresh-water lake at Lambert's Cove, seven miles west of the headland which the explorers first encountered. Therefore, here is another typical omission: Archer should have explained this shift of location by stating that the Concord had passed from one sound to another. Archer in particular was willing to tell about the great sound called Cape Cod Bay, and that other great sound, Buzzards Bay. But he withheld explicit informatin about Nantucket and Vineyard Sounds, features of the landscape, ore rather seascape, which the ordinary explorer would have described in full. Archer, however, is betrayed by two clauses which evidently escaped the eye of the editor of his manuscript. In one of these, he speaks of Elizabeth's Isle as lying between two sounds. This is quite correct, as may readily be seen by consuylting a chart; but Archer failed to describe Vineyard Sound previously, as lying between the Elizabeth Islands and Martha's Vineyard, and therefore the reader is left to wonder what he meant by "two sounds".
"The foure and twentieth, we set saile and doubled the Cape of another Iland next unto it, which we called Dover Cliffe . . ."
The name Dover Cliffe suggests that the Gay Head cliffs at the western end of Martha's Vineyard three and a half centuries ago had much more white clay than at present. This is easily accounted for by erosion, and the removal of thousands of tons of white clay for commerical purposes.
The peninsula at the western end of the Vineyard, where Gay Head cliffs are located, was thought to be an island because the explorers had sight of a creek, and of the great pond, called Menemsha by the Indians, which almost separates Gay Head from the rest of the island. On the other hand, if the explorers had been sailing along the south shore of the island on their way to Noman's Land, they would have seen the broad sandy beach with no break in it which connects Gay Head to the main part of Martha's Vineyard. They would have had no reason to think of Dover Cliffe (Gay Head) as a detached island.
The subject is disputatious. But no matter what interpretation is put upon the data of the two Relations, the omission of any plain account of the large island Capawack, which Gosnold unique and surprising problem. It is much as though a tourist, sailing about New York Harbor on a sight-seing craft, were to pass by lower Manhattan and its sky-scrapers, thinking them not worthy of notice or mention.
And now the story of Bartholomew Gosnold amongs the islands may be told as it ought to be told.
