T H E N A UMK E A G S .
The Naumkeags constituted one of the many subordinate tribes of the
Lenap6 nation in Massachusetts. They were governed by the Sagamore of
Pawtucket, and their villages occupied the site of the present town of Salem, in
Massachusetts. All the New England tribes are said to have been very much
alike. “ They were tall, straight, of a red complexion, with black eyes, and
of a vacant look when unimpassioned.” The same author adds, what is more
apocryphal, that they “ possessed a natural understanding, sagacity and wit, equal
to the same attributes in other men.”* Had this been the fact they would not
have been so easily duped, nor so speedily annihilated, by the Europeans.
PLATE XXXIII.
NAUMKEAG.
I received this head from Dr. A. L. Pearson, of Salem, Mass., near whose
residence it was exhumed, together with thirty other skulls and the corresponding
skeletons. They were all placed in the sitting posture a short distance below the
surface of the ground, but were, for the most part, in a state of decomposition.
MEASUREMENTS.
Longitudinal d iam e te r,....................................... 6.9 inches.
Parietal diameter, . . . . . . 5. inches.
* Dwight, Trav. in New England and New York, I, p. 113.