Tashtassuck

Tashtassuck
Sachem of the Narragansett
Personal details
RelativesCanonicus (descendant)
Known for
Earliest remembered sachem in Narragansett tradition
Sachemship
Narragansett, Niantic and Coweset peoples, in what is now southern Rhode Island

Tashtassuck or Tashtassuc is an early sachem in Narragansett tradition, remembered as a ruler of the Narragansett, Niantic and Coweset peoples in what is now southern Rhode Island. According to a genealogy recorded in 1703, he married his son and daughter to each other because he could find no partners of equal rank for them. The account names Canonicus, the Narragansett chief sachem when the English arrived, as one of the couple's children, making him Tashtassuck's grandson. Later accounts differ on the number of generations of descent.

The tradition

Eighteenth-century accounts

Printed page showing a bracketed family tree of Narragansett sachems
The 1703 genealogy as printed from Stiles's copy in 1916. The tree below gives it as text.

Two 18th-century accounts record Tashtassuck, his realm and his family. The earliest is a paper enclosed with a letter from "E. Hutchinson" to Nathaniel Coddington of Newport in August 1703, headed "A Genealogy of the Sachems of Narraganset, Niantic, Coweeset, and the parts adjacent, Canonicus being Chief Sachem when the English first came into the country". Its text is known through a copy made on 10 July 1762 by Ezra Stiles, then a minister in Newport, from "a loose Manuscript" of the Newport minister John Callender; Stiles's copy was published in 1916. It begins:

The antient Indians reported that in those Countries of Narraganset, Niantic, Coweesit & parts adjacent there was one great Sachem which had all the parts under him and ruling over all; his Name was Tashtasick. He had only a Son and a Daughter; and he, esteeming none of Degree for them to marry with, married them together.

— Account of 1703, as copied by Ezra Stiles in 1762

The second is a footnote in Thomas Hutchinson's History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay (1764), which cites an unnamed manuscript:

The ancient Indians among the Naragansets reported, when the English first arrived, that they had in former times a sachem called Tashtassuck, incomparably greater than any in the whole land in power and state, that he had only two children, a son and a daughter, and not being able to match them according to their dignity, he joined them together in matrimony, and that they had four sons, of whom Canonicus, who was sachem when the English came, was the eldest.

— Thomas Hutchinson, 1764

Hutchinson called it "the only piece of Indian history, or tradition, of any sort from the ancestors of our first Indians, I have ever met with". The two accounts agree on the marriage of Tashtassuck's son and daughter, but differ on his realm and on their children.

The 18th-century accounts compared
1703 paper (Stiles's copy)Hutchinson (1764)
Name TashtasickTashtassuck
Informants "The antient Indians""The ancient Indians among the Naragansets", when the English first arrived
Realm "Countries of Narraganset, Niantic, Coweesit & parts adjacent""the whole land"
Reason for the marriage "esteeming none of Degree for them to marry with""not being able to match them according to their dignity"
Children of the marriage Two sons (Canonicus and the father of Miantonomi and Pessicus) and a daughter (grandmother of Ninigret)Four sons, Canonicus the eldest

Nineteenth-century writers repeated the tradition, mostly from Hutchinson and often in their own words. The antiquarian Samuel Gardner Drake, who retold it in 1836, wrote that the Narragansett praised Tashtassuck's "wisdom and valor" much as the Delaware (Lenape) praised their "great chief" Tamany, but added that "we do not give implicit credit to it, as, at best, it is tradition".

Sachemship

The 1703 account describes Tashtassuck as "one great Sachem" who had "all the parts under him" in "the Countries of Narraganset, Niantic, Coweesit & parts adjacent". Hutchinson called him "incomparably greater than any in the whole land in power and state". Glenn W. LaFantasie (1988) described him as "a powerful ruler who controlled a vast empire centered in the southern part of present-day Rhode Island".

Nineteenth-century writers presented his rule as the result of expansion. William R. Staples, in a note to his 1835 edition of Samuel Gorton's Simplicity's Defence against Seven-Headed Policy, wrote that under Tashtassuck the Narragansett "had extended its dominion over many of the neighboring tribes". Samuel G. Arnold (1859) went further, writing that under "his warlike ancestor, Tashtassuck, the tribe had become a nation, and successive conquests had swelled the nation into an empire".

Howard M. Chapin (1931) placed the expansion two or more generations after Tashtassuck, judging it "probable that the extension of the authority of the Narragansetts over these neighboring tribes took place under the leadership of Mascus", the younger brother of Canonicus.

Marriage of his son and daughter

According to the 1703 account, Tashtassuck, "esteeming none of Degree for them to marry with", married his son and daughter to each other. Hutchinson gave the reason as his "not being able to match them according to their dignity".

Later writers have read the story as a statement about rank. The anthropologist William S. Simmons (1986) wrote that the tradition "attributes their sovereignty to the sachem Tashtasick, whose lineage was said to be more noble than all others". Steven F. Johnson (1995) cited it as an example of tribal traditions that "glorified" a sachem's lineage. Julie A. Fisher and David J. Silverman (2014) called Tashtassuck "the people's first sachem" and read the story as "the moral of a Narragansett tradition" about the importance sachem families placed on marrying partners of equal status.

Two writers connected the story to the marriage practices of sachem families. Nathan E. Truman (1922), working from Hutchinson's version, cautioned that "it is usually futile to attempt to rationalize a tradition", but suggested that this one "might easily be a reminiscence of the time that the ruling family of the tribe ceased the practice of exogamy", the rule of marrying outside one's own clan. On that reading, the daughter's husband may have been "her clan brother, i.e., to some warrior within the totemic group", a fellow member of her clan rather than a brother by birth. Fisher and Silverman wrote that later sachem families married across peoples, so that by the 17th century the sachems of the Narragansett, Pequot, Mohegan and other groups formed "an extended cousinage".

Descent of Canonicus

The 1703 account says the brother and sister had "two Sons and a Daughter": Canonicus "the Great", a younger son who was the father of Miantonomi and Pessicus, and a daughter whose grandson was the Niantic sachem Ninigret. In Hutchinson's version the couple had four sons, "of whom Canonicus, who was sachem when the English came, was the eldest". Simmons followed the 1703 account in calling Tashtasick the "grandfather of Canonicus".

Genealogy in the 1703 paper (Stiles's copy)

  • Tashtasick
    • Son and daughter, married to each other
      • Canonicus "the Great" (Canonicus, d. 1647, sachem when the English arrived)
        • Mecksa, m. Matautuck
          • Scuttap
          • Quequackanuett
      • Canonicus's younger brother
        • Miantonomy (Miantonomi)
          • Miantinute, also Quenónset
        • Quescuckquenen, "Canonicus the Second", also Pesicus and Mossup (Pessicus)
        • Cojonaquane
          • Quanapin
      • Canonicus's sister
        • Webitameck
          • Tomtoco
        • Wariconchat, also Nineglad
        • Matautuck, m. Mecksa
Accounts of Canonicus's descent
SourceDateLine of descentRelation of Canonicus to Tashtassuck
Staples1835Tashtassuck → Canonicus (d. 1647)Son
1703 account1703Tashtassuck → son and daughter → Canonicus (d. 1647), with a brother and a sisterGrandson
Hutchinson1764Tashtassuck → son and daughter → Canonicus (d. 1647), eldest of four sonsGrandson
Bayles1888Tashtassuck → son and daughter → "the first Canonicus" → Canonicus (d. 1647), "or Quananone"Great-grandson

Chapin's reconstruction

In Sachems of the Narragansetts (1931), published by the Rhode Island Historical Society, Chapin proposed a longer line of descent that draws on evidence outside the 1703 account. He judged it "nevertheless probable that there was an early Narragansett sachem named Tashtassuck", whose name survived in oral legend while those of his successors were forgotten. He noted that "similar traditions are common" in accounts of royal genealogies, and that such traditions tend "to omit generations" and to make a renowned ancestor "a much nearer ancestor than was actually the case".

Chapin's evidence was a claim by the Mohegan sachem Uncas that his grandmother's father was a Narragansett chief sachem named Weesoum. Neither the 1703 account nor Hutchinson names Weesoum. Chapin thought that Weesoum probably had a son who was the father of Canonicus (d. 1647), and gave that son the four sons of Hutchinson's account in place of Tashtassuck's children. He counted Tashtassuck as the first Narragansett sachem whose name has come down, Weesoum as the second, and Canonicus as the third. On this account Canonicus was at least Tashtassuck's great-great-grandson, and more distant if generations were missing between Tashtassuck's children and Weesoum.

Chapin's "conjectural pedigree" of the early Narragansett and Pequot sachems links Tashtassuck's children to Weesoum only by a question mark. Through Weesoum's daughter, who married Woipequand, it also descends to the Pequot sachem Sassacus and to Uncas. The pedigree therefore shows Narragansett, Niantic, Pequot and Mohegan sachems of the 17th century as possible descendants of Tashtassuck.

Chapin's conjectural pedigree (1931)

In his 1988 edition of The Correspondence of Roger Williams, LaFantasie cited Chapin's pedigree in describing Canonicus as "probably the great-grandson of the legendary sachem, Tashtassuck (or Tashtapack)".

Later remembrance

In 1928 the Niantic/Narragansett writer Fred V. Brown wrote the poem "The Last of the Sachems", which opens with the story:

Tashassuck was a mighty chief,
With son and daughter fair,
No worthy peers 'twas said with grief,
Were found to wed the pair.

It was published in May 1935 in the first issue of The Narragansett Dawn, a monthly edited by Princess Red Wing "in the interest of the Narragansett Tribe of Indians".

At the 1883 dedication of a monument at Fort Ninigret in Charlestown by the state's Commission on the Affairs of the Narragansett Indians, the Baptist minister Frederic Denison called Canonicus's father "the famed Tashtassuck, distinguished alike for his wisdom and his valor". A month later, at the dedication of a boulder to Canonicus in Providence's North Burial Ground by the Rhode Island Historical Society, Horatio Rogers recalled "Tashtassuck, a mighty chief".

In Jamestown, on Conanicut Island, a steam fire engine bought in 1894 was named Tashtassuck No. 1 after the sachem; it is preserved in the town's fire department museum. Tashtassuc Road runs alongside Route 138 on the island.

Notes

  1. ↑ Also spelled Tashtasick, Tashassuck, Tashtsuck and Tashtapack.
  2. ↑ The editor of the 1916 edition notes that Nathaniel Coddington, son of Governor William Coddington, was born in 1653 and married Susanna, sister of Elisha Hutchinson.
  3. ↑ Later Rhode Island histories, including Richard M. Bayles's History of Newport County (1888) and Wilkins Updike's A History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island (1907), quoted Drake's wording, including the comparison with Tamany, as Hutchinson's.
  4. ↑ Canonicus here is the sachem who died in 1647, called "Canonicus the Great" in the 1703 account; his name was also written Caunaunacus, Qunnoune and Quananone. The same account calls his nephew Pessicus "Canonicus the Second".

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Stiles 1916, p. 28.
  2. ↑ Brown 1935, p. 20.
  3. ↑ Douglas-Lithgow 1909, p. 354.
  4. 1 2 3 LaFantasie 1988, p. 75 n. 4.
  5. ↑ Stiles 1916, p. 27 n. 2.
  6. ↑ Stiles 1916, pp. 27–28.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Hutchinson 1765, p. 458.
  8. ↑ Drake 1836, bk. II, pp. 53–54; Drake 1841, bk. II, p. 54 n..
  9. ↑ Bayles 1888, p. 186; Updike 1907, pp. 9–10.
  10. 1 2 Staples 1835, p. 154 n..
  11. ↑ Arnold 1859, p. 212.
  12. ↑ Chapin 1931, p. 8.
  13. ↑ Simmons 1986, p. 14.
  14. ↑ Johnson 1995, p. 54.
  15. 1 2 Fisher & Silverman 2014, p. 7.
  16. ↑ Truman 1922, p. 327.
  17. ↑ Stiles 1916, p. 28; Drake 1841, bk. II, p. 54 n.; North American Review 1837, p. 318.
  18. ↑ Simmons 1978, p. 190.
  19. ↑ Bayles 1888, p. 224.
  20. ↑ Chapin 1931, p. 5.
  21. 1 2 Chapin 1931, pp. 5–6.
  22. ↑ Stiles 1916, p. 28; Hutchinson 1765, p. 458.
  23. ↑ Chapin 1931, p. 6.
  24. ↑ Chapin 1931, pp. 6, 109.
  25. 1 2 Chapin 1931, p. 109.
  26. ↑ Dawnland Voices.
  27. ↑ Brown 1935, pp. 20–21.
  28. ↑ Evening Bulletin 1883, p. 3.
  29. ↑ Rhode Island Historical Society 1883, p. 12.
  30. ↑ Conanicut's Best Cookery 2001, pp. 64–65; Elsworth 2014.
  31. ↑ RIHPHC 1995, p. 95.

Sources