Genealogical notes of Barnstable families - citizen hylbom blog

88 GENEALOGIOAL NOTES OF BARNSTABLE FAMILIES.
study incidentally affords. This is a sufficient answer to the first
inquiry. But there is another use. An English, French, or German
savan would be ashamed to confess that he was ignorant of
the history and analogies of the words that he has daily occasion
to use. Why should not Americans ? It is not so. Goto Harvard
College, inquire of the learned President "What is the mean-
of the word Massachusetts ?"—of the professors, of the
ing '
tutors, and of the students—if you find two that can give you an
answer, and the reasons for their opinions, you will find two more
than there is any reason to expect. Ought this to be so. Men
wUl spend hundreds of dollars to have their sons instructed in the
barbarious idioms of the middle ages ; but not to instruct them in
homespun words, which they daily delight to repeat.
yet they are conclusive.
These are mercenary considerations ;
In deciding such questions, utility is paramount yet, if to the
;
useful, we can conjoin the true or the beautiful, why should we
seek to separate them. If a name is barbarous, diflScult of enun-
ciation, or has unpleasant associations, we ought to reject it—it
should be doomed to oblivion. To such names as Mos-que-tuck-et,
Mys-tic, San-tu-it and We-qua-quett, neither objection attaches,
and no mercantile consideration has power to banish them from
memory.
In Drake's History of the Indians there is an exquisite picture
of the last of the Wam-pa-no-ags. A beautiful girl is seated
in the shade, on the banks of the We-qua-qutt. Her pensive eye
rests on the water—sorrow is depicted in her every lineament, she
exclaims: "And will the white man still pursue ?" Yes, he has
pursued her race till all are gone—he claims her fields, her hunting
grounds and her streams, he "still pursues," endeavoring to
wrest from the Indian the. names which he loved, to break the silver
cord of affection which bound the red man to the home of his
fathers, and our fathers to the country that opened its bosom to
receive them.
The Indian demands our sympathy. In his character there
are pleasant aspects. His erect form, his manly bearing, his
courage, his fortitude, and his faithfulness in the performance of
his vows, are the ennobling traits in his character. Inferior in
the arts of civilized life, by the inexorable law of nature, he was
destined to perish when he came in contact with a superior race.
Indian names of places are the connecting links between the
present and the past—all that remains to remind us that another
race once cultivated our fields, once roamed in our forests. Why
ruthlessly sever those links? To save the barbarous, the uncouth,
or those around which unpleasant associations are entwined,
no one will plead. In other parts of our country, among
our chief men, among those who have imperiled their lives in the
defence of liberty and the right, a love for these old names and a