Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain
Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain By Harriet Manning Whitcomb Cambridge 1897 This sketch was prepared by request to be read before the Jamaica Plain Ladies' Tuesday Club. Subsequently a desire was expressed to have it put in a more permanent form and offered for sale at a Fair for the Jamaica Plain Indian Association. Although personally reluctant to appear before the public in this way, I have allowed my desire to aid a good cause and give pleasure to my friends who have kindly received my paper to influence me in its publication. I am indebted to "The Memorial History of Boston" to Drake's "Town of Roxbury," to Dr. Thomas Gray's "Half-Century Sermon," and to the memory of a few of the older residents for some dates and incidents given.
clambering up the rocks he found himself in the presence of
the dead chief, his family and relatives.
The cave smelt strongly of hot sulphurous vapors. With great
care the mummies were removed, and all the little trinkets
and ornaments scattered around were also taken away.
In all there are eleven packages of bodies. Only two or
three have as yet been opened. The body of the chief is
inclosed in a large basket-like structure, about four feet
in height. Outside the wrappings are finely wrought
sea-grass matting, exquisitely close in texture, and skins.
At the bottom is a broad hoop or basket of thinly cut wood,
and adjoining the center portions are pieces of body armor
composed of reeds bound together. The body is covered with
the fine skin of the sea-otter, always a mark of distinction
in the interments of the Aleuts, and round the whole package
are stretched the meshes of a fish-net, made of the sinews
of the sea lion; also those of a bird-net. There are
evidently some bulky articles inclosed with the chief's
body, and the whole package differs very much from the
others, which more resemble, in their brown-grass matting,
consignments of crude sugar from the Sandwich Islands than
the remains of human beings. The bodies of a pappoose and of
a very little child, which probably died at birth or soon
after it, have sea-otter skins around them. One of the feet
Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain By Harriet Manning Whitcomb Cambridge 1897 This sketch was prepared by request to be read before the Jamaica Plain Ladies' Tuesday Club. Subsequently a desire was expressed to have it put in a more permanent form and offered for sale at a Fair for the Jamaica Plain Indian Association. Although personally reluctant to appear before the public in this way, I have allowed my desire to aid a good cause and give pleasure to my friends who have kindly received my paper to influence me in its publication. I am indebted to "The Memorial History of Boston" to Drake's "Town of Roxbury," to Dr. Thomas Gray's "Half-Century Sermon," and to the memory of a few of the older residents for some dates and incidents given.