A NOTE ON SPELLING, TERMINOLOGY, AND DATES

I have modernized the spelling and punctuation of quotations from seventeenth-century sources to make it easier for readers to focus on the meaning of the words instead of on their unfamiliar forms. I have also standardized Indian proper names and place names rather than replicate the various phonetic spellings that appear in colonial documents. Despite these measures, readers will still have to confront a wide array of unfamiliar Indian personal and place-names. After all, this is a history about Indian people and places. Grappling with those names, including trying to sound them out and track them through the story, is part of the challenge of writing and reading Native American history. I have included a glossary of the Indian (and some English) names that appear in this book to help readers stay on course.

Stylistically, writing about indigenous people in a manner that is respectful and accessible poses a number of challenges. One of them has to do with whether to use the singular or plural when referring to a group, for example, “the Wampanoag” versus “the Wampanoags.” Some modern Native people prefer the singular both out of convention and because it conveys a message of unity. My usual default in such stylistic matters is to defer to the descendant communities, but in this case I have decided to stick with the plural because it is consistent with how I refer to other groups of people and it captures the often-contested, fluid nature of many tribal entities during the seventeenth century.

Some mostly non-Native readers will find my use of “Indian” a bit jarring because some educators teach that it is racially insensitive. In this case, I’m deferring to the common practice of Native New Englanders and many other indigenous people in the United States, who over the generations have appropriated and come to take pride in the designation “Indian.” Wherever possible, however, I refer to specific groups.

In cases where English-language terms are ideologically problematic and an equivalent from the Wôpanâak (or Wampanoag) language or a closely related Algonquian language family is known to me, I have used it after consulting with modern Wampanoag people. For instance, I sometimes use matawaûog instead of warriors because warriors can mistakenly connote a lack of discipline and even savagery, when in fact Wampanoag fighters were highly trained and organized.

England and its colonies used the Julian calendar until the year 1752, under which the new year started on March 25. (By this system, September was indeed the seventh month, October the eighth, and December the tenth.) Yet, because other European states had adopted the Gregorian calendar, which we use today, English colonists typically gave two years for dates between January 1 and March 25. I have eliminated the double dating and used the Julian year for dates. For example, a date that Plymouth colonists might have rendered as February 1, 1675/76, will appear here as February 1, 1676. By the colonial era, the Julian calendar also ran eleven days behind the Gregorian. I have not corrected that gap in my rendering of dates.