Sep 30, 2010 - Sale 2223

Sale 2223 - Lot 15

Price Realized: $ 4,800
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
(AMERICAN INDIANS.) Puttuspaquin. Manuscript deed of a Martha's Vineyard meadow, from a Wampanoag man to his half-English nieces. Single sheet, 8 1/2 x 7 1/4 inches; quite worn, with heavy folds, short tears, and 4 areas of paper loss with partial loss to several words, but generally legible and stable. [Martha's Vineyard, MA], 25 March 1685
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an important signed indian deed from early martha's vineyard. Puttuspaquin was the younger brother of the sachem of the Wampanoags at the Sengekontacket settlement on Martha's Vineyard near Edgartown. His sister had married an English settler, Joseph Daggett, the only recognized marriage between the settlers and the Wampanoags in Martha's Vineyard during the colonial period. Thus Puttuspaquin came to have two nieces, Esther and Alice, raised among the English. In this deed, he grants a tract of meadow land to "my cusans Hestar and Elles Dagit." He also describes them as "my near kinndred" and adds the stipulation that "if thay cannot injoy the said meddow by reasan of the inglish I claime that it shall return to me or my heires." The transfer of property was approved by Puttuspaquin's older brother, the sachem Wampamag.
The deed is signed with intersecting slashes, more a "V" than the traditional "X", which is noted as "The marck of Puttuspaqun." The text of the deed is written out in the hand of Thomas Mayhew III (1650-1715), son and grandson of the famous missionaries of the same name, and is signed by him as justice of the peace. The deed is witnessed with settler Samuel Tilton's signature and also by the sachem Samuel or Wampamag (Puttuspaquin's older brother). "Samuel :C:" and "Wapamauk" appear under Tilton's signature in different hands, but it is unclear whether either of these is the sachem's actual signature. It also bears a signed note by the town recorder Matthew Mayhew that it was transcribed into the town records on 22 April 1686. An undated note by Matthew Mayhew on the verso adds that "Mr. Sam alias Wabamuck sachim of Sanchakantacket acknowledged before me that the abovewritten was given by his knowledge & foreapprobation."
The recorded copy of this deed has long been an important source document to historians of early Martha's Vineyard and the Wampanoags. See Silverman, Faith and Boundaries: Colonies, Christianity and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha's Vineyard, 94, which discusses it at length. However, this original deed seems to have been largely unknown. It would have likely descended through one of the Daggett sisters; both Alice and Esther had descendants. The consignor acquired this deed in the West in the 1970s.