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King Philip

by John S. C. Abbott · English · Gutenberg #29494 · 487,773 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: King Philip

Author: John S. C. Abbott


        
Release date: July 22, 2009 [eBook #29494]

Language: English

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Makers of History

King Philip

BY JOHN S. C. ABBOTT

With Engravings







New York and London
Harper & Brothers Publishers
1901

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight
hundred and fifty-seven, by
Harper & Brothers,
in the Clerk's office of the District Court of the Southern District
of New York.

Copyright, 1885, by Susan Abbot Mead.




[Illustration: PLYMOUTH BAY, AS SEEN BY THE INDIANS.]




PREFACE.


Few, even of our most intelligent men, if we except those who are
devoted to literary pursuits, are acquainted with the adventures which
our forefathers encountered in the settlement of New England. The
claims of business are now so exacting, that those whose time is
engrossed by its cares have but little leisure for extensive reading,
and yet there is no American who does not desire to be familiar with
the early history of his own country. The writer, with great labor,
has collected from widely-spread materials, and condensed into this
narrative of the career of King Philip, those incidents in our early
history which he has supposed would be most interesting and
instructive to the general reader. He has spared no pains in the
endeavor to be accurate. In the rude annals of those early days there
is often obscurity, and sometimes contradiction, in the dates. Such
dates have been adopted as have appeared, after careful examination,
to be most reliable.

The writer can not refrain, in this connection, from acknowledging the
obligations he is under to his friend and neighbor, John M'Keen, Esq.,
to whose extensive and accurate acquaintance with the early history of
this country he is indebted for many of the materials which have aided
him in the preparation of this work.

               JOHN S. C. ABBOTT.

Brunswick, Maine, 1857.




CONTENTS.


 Chapter                                                    Page

    I. LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS                               13

   II. MASSASOIT                                             46

  III. CLOUDS OF WAR                                         80

   IV. THE PEQUOT WAR                                       110

    V. COMMENCEMENT OF THE REIGN OF KING PHILIP             156

   VI. COMMENCEMENT OF HOSTILITIES                          187

  VII. AUTUMN AND WINTER CAMPAIGNS                          220

 VIII. CAPTIVITY OF MRS. ROWLANDSON                         254

   IX. THE INDIANS VICTORIOUS                               292

    X. THE VICISSITUDES OF WAR                              321

   XI. DEATH OF KING PHILIP                                 353

  XII. CONCLUSION OF THE WAR                                385




ENGRAVINGS.


 Page

 PLYMOUTH BAY, AS SEEN BY THE PILGRIMS          _Frontispiece._

 THE FIRST ENCOUNTER                                         26

 SAMOSET, THE INDIAN VISITOR                                 48

 MASSASOIT AND HIS WARRIORS                                  57

 THE PALACE OF MASSASOIT                                     68

 THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER                                     169

 THE BATTLE IN TIVERTON                                     210

 CAPTURE OF THE INDIAN FORTRESS                             247

 CAPTIVITY OF MRS. ROWLANDSON                               270

 THE DESTRUCTION OF SUDBURY                                 311

 THE INDIAN AMBUSH                                          315

 THE DEATH OF PHILIP                                        360




KING PHILIP.




CHAPTER I.

LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS.

1620-1621

Arrival of the Mayflower.--Explorations.--Captain Weymouth.--Indian
captives.--Enticing the natives.--The seizure.--Trophies.--Necessity
for caution.--Discovery of a wigwam.--New enterprises.--The return of
the explorers.--New expedition.--Sight of some Indians.--Cheerless
encampment.--Discoveries.--Quaint description of the huts.--Interior
of the hut, and what was found.--Good intentions not realized.--Another
stormy night.--Morning preparations.--A fearful attack.--Protection of
the English.--Power of the Indians.--The chief shot.--Disappearance of
the Indians.--Sudden peace.--Devotions.--Departure.--A gale.--An
accident.--Approaching night.--Discovery of a shelter.--Preparations
for the night.--They resolve to spend the Sabbath at their
camp.--Plymouth Bay.--Sounding for the channel.--Sites for the
village.--Jealousy of the Dutch.--Arrival of the Mayflower.--Survey
of the country.--A location selected.--Interruptions by a storm.--The
birth-day of New England.--Friday, December 22.--Hopes and expectations
of the Pilgrims.--Leaving the ship.--Erection of the store house.--The
little village.--Alarm from the Indians.--Discomforts.--Watchfulness
of the Indians.--End of the year.--Attempts to meet the Indians.--Two
men missing.--Return of the lost.--Their adventures.--They discover
the harbor.--Their sufferings.--February.--Death among the
colonists.--Discovery of Indians.--Alarm.--Preparations for
defense.--Two savages appear.--Weakness of the colonists.


On the 11th of November, 1620, the storm-battered Mayflower, with its
band of one hundred and one Pilgrims, first caught sight of the barren
sand-hills of Cape Cod. The shore presented a cheerless scene even for
those weary of a more than four months voyage upon a cold and
tempestuous sea. But, dismal as the prospect was, after struggling for
a short time to make their way farther south, embarrassed by a leaky
ship and by perilous shoals appearing every where around them, they
were glad to make a harbor at the extremity of the unsheltered and
verdureless cape. Before landing, they chose Mr. John Carver, "a pious
and well-approved gentleman," as the governor of their little republic
for the first year. While the carpenter was fitting up the boat to
explore the interior bend of the land which forms Cape Cod Bay, in
search of a more attractive place of settlement, sixteen of their
number set out on foot on a short tour of discovery. They were all
well armed, to guard against any attack from the natives.

Cautiously the adventurers followed along the western shore of the
Cape toward the south, when suddenly they came in sight of five
Indians. The natives fled with the utmost precipitation. They had
heard of the white men, and had abundant cause to fear them. But a few
years before, in 1605, Captain Weymouth, on an exploring tour along
the coast of Maine, very treacherously kidnapped five of the natives,
and took them with him back to England. This act, which greatly
exasperated the natives, and which led to subsequent scenes of
hostility and blood, it may be well here to record. It explains the
reception which the Pilgrims first encountered.

Captain Weymouth had been trafficking with the natives for some time
in perfect friendship. One day six Indians came to the ship in two
canoes, three in each. Three were enticed on board the ship, and were
shut up in the cabin. The other three, a little suspicious of danger,
refused to leave their canoe, but, receiving a can of pease and
bread, paddled to the shore, where they built a fire, and sat down to
their entertainment. A boat strongly manned was then sent to the shore
from the ship with enticing presents, and a platter of food of which
the Indians were particularly fond. One of the natives, more cautious
than the rest, upon the approach of the boat, retired to the woods;
the other two met the party cordially. They all walked up to the fire
and sat down, in apparent friendship, to eat their food together.
There were six Englishmen and two naked, helpless natives. At a given
signal, while their unsuspecting victims were gazing at some
curiosities in a box, the English sprang upon them, three to each man.
The natives, young, vigorous, and lithe as eels, struggled with
Herculean energy. The kidnappers, finding it difficult to hold them by
their naked limbs, seized them by the long hair of their heads, and
thus the terrified creatures were dragged into the boats and conveyed
to the ship. Soon after this Captain Weymouth weighed anchor, and the
five captives were taken to England. He also took, as trophies of his
victory, the two canoes, and the bows and arrows of these Indians.
Sundry outrages of a similar character had been perpetrated by
European adventurers all along the New England coast. The Pilgrims
were well aware of these facts, and consequently they were not
surprised at the flight of the Indians, and felt, themselves, the
necessity of guarding against a hostile attack.

The English pursued the fugitives vigorously for many miles, but were
unable to overtake them. At last night came on. They built a camp,
kindled a fire, established a watch, and slept soundly until the next
morning. They then continued their course, following along in the
track of the Indians. After some time they came to the remains of an
Indian wigwam, surrounded by an old corn-field. Finding concealed here
several baskets filled with ears of corn, they took the grain, so
needful for them, intending, should they ever meet the Indians, to pay
them amply for it. With this as the only fruit of their expedition,
they returned to the ship.

Soon after their return preparations were completed for a more
important enterprise. The shallop was launched, and well provided with
arms and provisions, and thirty of the ship's company embarked for an
extensive survey of the coast. They slowly crept along the barren
shore, stopping at various points, but they could meet with no
natives, and could find no harbor for their ship, and no inviting
place for a settlement. Drifting sands and gloomy evergreens, through
which the autumnal winds ominously sighed, alone met the eye. They
discovered a few deserted dwellings of the Indians, but could catch no
sight of the terrified natives. After several days of painful search,
they returned disheartened to the ship.

It was now the 6th of December, and the cold winds of approaching
winter began to sweep over the water, which seemed almost to surround
them. Imagination can hardly conceive a more bleak and dreary spot
than the extremity of Cape Cod. It was manifest to all that it was no
place for the establishment of a colony, and that, late as it was in
the year, they must, at all hazards, continue their search for a more
inviting location. Previous explorers had entered Cape Cod Bay, and
had given a general idea of the sweep of the coast.

A new expedition was now energetically organized, to proceed with all
speed in a boat along the coast in search of a harbor. The wind, in
freezing blasts, swept across the bay as they spread their sail. Their
frail boat was small and entirely open, and the spray, which ever
dashed over these hardy pioneers, glazed their coats with ice. They
soon lost sight of the ship, and, skirting the coast, were driven
rapidly along by the fair but piercing wind. The sun went down, and
dark night was approaching. They had been looking in vain for some
sheltered cove into which to run to pass the night, when, in the
deepening twilight, they discerned twelve Indians standing upon the
shore. They immediately turned their boat toward the land, and the
Indians as immediately fled. The sandy beach upon which their boat
grounded was entirely exposed to the billows of the ocean. With
difficulty they drew their boat high upon the sand, that it might not
be broken by the waves, and prepared to make themselves as comfortable
as possible. It was, indeed, a cheerless encampment for a cold, windy
December night. Fortunately there was wood in abundance with which to
build a fire, and they also piled up for themselves a slight
protection against the wind and against a midnight attack. Then,
having commended themselves to God in prayer, they established a
watch, and sought such repose as fatigue and their cold, hard couch
could furnish.

The night passed away without any alarm. In the morning they divided
their numbers, one half taking the boat, and the others following
along upon foot on the shore. Thus they continued their explorations
another day, but could find no suitable place for a settlement. During
the day they saw many traces of inhabitants, but did not obtain sight
of a single native.

They found two houses, from which the occupants had evidently but
recently escaped. The following is the description which the
adventurers gave of these wigwams, in the quaint English of two
hundred years ago:

     "Whilest we were thus ranging and searching, two of the
     Saylers which were newly come on the shore by chance espied
     two houses which had beene lately dwelt in, but the people
     were gone. They having their peeces and hearing no body
     entred the houses and tooke out some things, and durst not
     stay but came again and told vs; so some seaven or eight of
     vs went with them, and found how we had gone within a slight
     shot of them before. The houses were made with long yong
     Sapling trees bended and both ends stucke into the ground;
     they were made round like unto an Arbour and covered down to
     the ground with thicke and well wrought matts, and the doors
     were not over a yard high made of a matt to open; the
     chimney was a wide open hole in the top, for which they had
     a matt to cover it close when they pleased. One might stand
     and go upright in them; in the midst of them were four
     little trunches knockt into the ground, and small stickes
     laid over on which they hung their Pots, and what they had
     to seeth. Round about the fire they lay on matts which are
     their beds. The houses were double matted, for as they were
     matted without so were they within, with newer and fairer
     matts. In the houses we found wooden Boules, Trayes &
     Dishes, Earthen Pots, Hand baskets made of Crab shells,
     wrought together; also an English Pail or Bucket; it wanted
     a bayle, but it had two iron eares. There was also Baskets
     of sundry sorts, bigger and some lesser, finer and some
     coarser. Some were curiously wrought with blacke and white
     in pretie workes, and sundry other of their houshold stuffe.
     We found also two or three Deeres heads, one whereof had
     been newly killed, for it was still fresh. There was also a
     company of Deeres feete stuck vp in the houses, Harts
     hornes, and Eagles clawes, and sundry such like things there
     was; also two or three baskets full of parched Acorns,
     peeces of fish and a peece of a broyled Hering. We found
     also a little silk grasse and a little Tobacco seed with
     some other seeds which wee knew not. Without was sundry
     bundles of Flags and Sedge, Bull-rushes and other stuffe to
     make matts. There was thrust into a hollow tree two or three
     pieces of venison, but we thought it fitter for the Dogs
     than for us. Some of the best things we took away with us,
     and left their houses standing still as they were. So it
     growing towards night, and the tyde almost spent we hastened
     with our things down to the shallop, and got aboard that
     night, intending to have brought some Beades and other
     things to have left in the houses in signe of Peace and that
     we meant to truk with them, but it was not done by means of
     our hasty comming away from Cape Cod; but so soon as we can
     meet conveniently with them we will give them full
     satisfaction."

As they returned to their boat the sun again went down, and another
gloomy December night darkened over the houseless wanderers. No cove,
no creek even, opened its friendly arms to receive them. They again
dragged their boat upon the beach. A dense forest was behind them, the
bleak ocean before them. As they feared no surprise from the side of
the water, they merely threw up a slight rampart of logs to protect
them from an attack from the side of the forest. They again united in
their evening devotions, established their night-watch, and, with a
warm fire blazing at their feet, fell soundly asleep. Through the long
night the wind sighed through the tree-tops and the waves broke upon
the shore. No other sounds disturbed their slumber.

The next morning they rose before the dawn of day and prepared
anxiously to continue their search. The morning was dark and stormy. A
drizzling rain, which had been falling nearly all night, had soaked
their blankets and their clothing; the ocean looked black and angry,
and sheets of mist were driven by the chill wind over earth and sea.
The Pilgrims bowed reverently together in their morning prayer,
partook of their frugal meal, and some of them had carried their guns,
wrapped in blankets, down to the boat, when suddenly a fearful yell
burst from the forest, and a shower of arrows fell upon their
encampment.

The English party consisted of but eighteen; but they were heroic men.
Carver, Bradford, Winslow, and Standish were of their number. Four
muskets only were left within their frail intrenchments. By the rapid
and well-directed discharge of these, they, however, kept the Indians
at bay until those who had carried their guns to the boat succeeded in
regaining them, notwithstanding the shower of arrows which fell so
thickly around. The thick clothing with which the English were
covered, to protect themselves from the cold and the rain, were almost
as coats of mail to ward off the comparatively feeble weapons of the
natives. A very fierce conflict now ensued. The English were almost
entirely unprotected, and were exposed to every arrow. The Indians
were each stationed behind some large forest-tree, which effectually
sheltered him from the bullets of his antagonists. Under these
circumstances, the advantage was probably, on the whole, with the
vastly outnumbering natives. They were widely scattered; their bows
were of great strength, and their arrows, pointed and barbed with
sharp flint and stone, when hitting fairly and in full force, would
pierce even the thickest clothing of the English; and, if striking any
unprotected portion of the body, would inflict a dreadful wound.

For some time this perilous conflict raged, the forest resounding with
the report of musketry, and with the hideous, deafening yell of the
savages. There was one Indian, of Herculean size and strength,
apparently more brave than the rest, who appeared to be the leader of
the band. He had proudly advanced beyond any of his companions, and
placed himself within half musket shot of the encampment. He stood
behind a large tree, and very energetically shot his arrows, and by
voice and gesture roused and animated his comrades. Watching an
opportunity when his arm was exposed, a sharpshooter succeeded in
striking it with a bullet. The shattered arm dropped helpless. The
savage, astounded at the calamity, gazed for a moment in silence upon
his mangled limb, and then uttering a peculiar cry, which was probably
the signal for retreat, dodged from tree to tree, and disappeared. His
fellow-warriors, following his example, disappeared with him in the
depths of the gloomy forest. Hardly a moment elapsed ere not a savage
was to be seen, and perfect silence and solitude reigned upon the spot
which, but a moment before, was the scene of almost demoniac clamor.
The waves broke sullenly upon the shore, and the wind, sweeping the
ocean, and moaning through the sombre firs and pines, drove the rain
in spectral sheets over sea and land. The sun had not yet risen,
and the gray twilight lent additional gloom to the stormy morning.
Both the attack and the retreat were more sudden than imagination can
well conceive. The perfect repose of the night had been instantly
followed by fiendlike uproar and peril, and as instantly succeeded by
perfect silence and solitude.

[Illustration: THE FIRST ENCOUNTER.]

The Pilgrims, as soon as they had recovered from their astonishment,
looked around to see how much they had been damaged. Arrows were
hanging by their clothes, and sticking in the logs by the fire, and
scattered every where around, but, to their surprise, they found that
not one had been wounded. Anxious to leave so dangerous a spot, they
immediately collected their effects and embarked in the boat. Before
embarking, however, they united in a prayer of thanksgiving to God for
their deliverance. They named this spot "_The First Encounter_." The
rain now changed to sleet of mist and snow, and the cold storm
descended pitilessly upon their unprotected heads. A day of suffering
and of peril was before them. As the day advanced, the wind increased
to almost a gale. The waves frequently broke into the boat, drenching
them to the skin, and glazing the boat, ropes, and clothing with a
coat of ice. The surf, dashing upon the shore, rendered landing
impossible, and they sought in vain for any creek or cove where they
could find shelter. The short afternoon was fast passing away, and a
terrible night was before them. A huge billow, which seemed to chase
them with gigantic speed and force, broke over the boat, nearly
filling it with water, and at the same time unshipping and sweeping
away their rudder. They immediately got out two oars, and, with much
difficulty, succeeded with them in steering their bark.

Night and the tempest were settling darkly over the angry sea. To add
to their calamities, a sudden flaw of wind struck the boat, and
instantly snapped the mast into three pieces. The boat was now, for a
few moments, entirely unmanageable, and, involved in the wreck of
mast, rigging, and sail, floated like a log upon the waves, in great
danger of being each moment ingulfed. The hardy adventurers, thus
disabled, seized their oars, and with great exertions succeeded in
keeping their boat before the wind. It was now night, and the rain,
driven violently by the gale, was falling in torrents.

The dark outline of the shore, upon which the surf was furiously
dashing, was dimly discernible. At last they perceived through the
gloom, directly before them, an island or a promontory pushing out at
right angles from the line of the beach. Rowing around the northern
headland, they found on the western side a small cove, where they
obtained a partial shelter from the storm. Here they dropped anchor.
The night was freezing cold. The rain still fell in torrents, and the
boat rolled and pitched incessantly upon the agitated sea. Though
drenched to the skin, knowing that they were in the vicinity of
hostile Indians, most of the company did not deem it prudent to
attempt a landing, but preferred to pass the night in their wet,
shelterless, wave-rocked bark. Some, however, benumbed and almost
dying from wet and cold, felt that they could not endure the exposure
of the wintry night. They were accordingly put on shore. After much
difficulty, they succeeded in building a fire. Its blaze illumined the
forest, and they piled upon it branches of trees and logs, until they
became somewhat warmed by the exercise and the genial heat. But they
knew full well that this flame was but a beacon to inform their savage
foes where they were and to enable them, with surer aim, to shoot the
poisoned arrow. The forest sheltered them partially from the wind.
They cut down trees, and constructed a rude rampart to protect them
from attack. Thus the explorers on the land and in the boat passed the
first part of this dismal night. At midnight, however, those in the
boat, unable longer to endure the cold, ventured to land, and, with
their shivering companions, huddled round the fire, the rain still
soaking them to the skin.

When the morning again dawned, they found that they were in the lee of
a small island. It was the morning of the Sabbath. Notwithstanding
their exposure to hostile Indians and to the storm, and
notwithstanding the unspeakable importance of every day, that they
might prepare for the severity of winter, now so rapidly approaching,
these extraordinary men resolved to remain as they were, that they
might "remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy." There was true
heroism and moral grandeur in this decision, even though it be
asserted that a more enlightened judgment would have taught that,
under the circumstances in which they were placed, it was a work of
"necessity and of mercy" to prosecute their tour without delay. But
these men believed it to be their duty to sanctify the Sabbath; and,
notwithstanding the strength of the temptation, they did what they
thought to be right, and this is always noble. To God, who looketh at
the heart, this must have been an acceptable sacrifice. For nearly two
hundred years all these men have now been in the world of spirits, and
it may very safely be affirmed that they have never regretted the
scrupulous reverence they manifested for the law of God in keeping the
Sabbath in the stormy wilderness.

With the early light of Monday morning they repaired their shattered
boat, and, spreading their sails before a favorable breeze, continued
their tour. Plymouth Bay opened before them, with a low sand-bar
shooting across the water, which served to break the violence of the
billows rolling in from the ocean, but which presented no obstacle to
the sweep of the wind. It was an unsheltered harbor, but it was not
only the best, but the only one which could be found. Cautiously they
sailed around the point of sand, dropping the lead every few moments
to find a channel for their vessel. They at length succeeded in
finding a passage, and a place where their vessel could ride in
comparative safety. They then landed to select a location for their
colonial village. Though it was the most dismal season of the year,
the region presented many attractions. It was pleasantly diversified
with hills and valleys, and the forest, of gigantic growth, swept
sublimely away in all directions. The remains of an Indian village was
found, and deserted corn-fields of considerable extent, where the
ground was in a state for easy and immediate cultivation.

The Pilgrims had left England with the intention of planting their
colony at the mouth of the Hudson River; but the Dutch, jealous of the
power of the English upon this continent, and wishing to appropriate
that very attractive region entirely to themselves, bribed the pilot
to pretend to lose his course, and to land them at a point much
farther to the north; hence the disappointment of the company in
finding themselves involved amid the shoals of Cape Cod. Though
Plymouth was by no means the home which the Pilgrims had originally
sought, and though neither the harbor nor the location presented the
advantages which they had desired, the season was too far advanced for
them to continue their voyage in search of a more genial home. With
this report the explorers returned to the ship.

On the 15th of December the Mayflower again weighed anchor from the
harbor of Cape Cod, and, crossing the Bay on the 16th, cautiously
worked its way into the shallow harbor of Plymouth, and cast anchor
about a mile and a half from the shore. The next day was the Sabbath,
and all remained on board the ship engaged in their Sabbath devotions.

Early Monday morning, a party well armed were sent on shore to make a
still more careful exploration of the region, and to select a spot for
their village. They marched along the coast eight miles, but saw no
natives or wigwams. They crossed several brooks of sweet, fresh water,
but were disappointed in finding no navigable river. They, however,
found many fields where the Indians had formerly cultivated corn.
These fields, thus ready for the seed, seemed very inviting. At night
they returned to the ship, not having decided upon any spot for their
settlement.

The next day, Tuesday, the 19th, they again sent out a party on a tour
of exploration. This party was divided into two companies, one to sail
along the coast in the shallop, hoping to find the mouth of some large
river; the other landed and traversed the shore. At night they all
returned again to the ship, not having as yet found such a location as
they desired.

Wednesday morning came, and with increasing fervor the Pilgrims, in
their morning prayer, implored God to guide them. The decision could
no longer be delayed. A party of twenty were sent on shore to mark out
the spot where they should rear their store-house and their dwellings.
On the side of a high hill, facing the rising sun and the beautiful
bay, they found an expanse, gently declining, where there were large
fields which, two or three years before, had been cultivated with
Indian corn. The summit of this hill commanded a wide view of the
ocean and of the land. Springs of sweet water gushed from the
hill-sides, and a beautiful brook, overshadowed by the lofty forest,
meandered at its base. Here they unanimously concluded to rear their
new homes.

As the whole party were rendezvoused upon this spot, the clouds began
to gather in the sky, the wind rose fiercely, and soon the rain began
to fall in torrents. Huge billows from the ocean rolled in upon the
poorly-sheltered harbor, so that it was impossible to return by their
small boat to the ship. They were entirely unsheltered, as they had
brought with them no preparations for such an emergency. Night, dark,
freezing, tempestuous, soon settled down upon these houseless
wanderers. In the dense forest they sought refuge from the icy gale
which swept over the ocean. They built a large fire, and, gathering
around it, passed the night and all the next day exposed to the fury
of the storm. But, toward the evening of the 21st, the gale so far
abated that they succeeded in returning over the rough waves to the
ship.

The next morning was the ever memorable Friday, December 22. It dawned
chill and lowering. A wintry gale still swept the bay, and pierced the
thin garments of the Pilgrims. The eventful hour had now come in which
they were to leave the ship, and commence their new life of privation
and hardship in the New World. It was the birth-day of New England. In
the early morning, the whole ship's company assembled upon the deck of
the Mayflower, men, women, and children, to offer their sacrifice of
thanksgiving, and to implore divine protection upon their lofty and
perilous enterprise.

     "The Mayflower on New England's coasts has furled her
        tattered sails,
     And through her chafed and mourning shrouds December's
        breezes wail.

     "There were men of hoary hair
       Amid that Pilgrim band;
     Why had they come to wither there,
       Away from their childhood's land?

     "There was woman's fearless eye,
       Lit by her deep love's truth;
     There was manhood's brow, serenely high,
       And the fiery heart of youth.

     "What sought they thus afar?
       Bright jewels of the mine?
     The wealth of seas--the spoils of war?
       They sought a faith's pure shrine.

     "Ay, call it holy ground,
       The soil where first they trod:
     They have left unstain'd what there they found--
       Freedom to worship God."

The Pilgrims, though inspired by impulses as pure and lofty as ever
glowed in human hearts, were still but feebly conscious of the scenes
which they were enacting. They were exiles upon whom their mother
country cruelly frowned, and though they hoped to establish a
prosperous colony, where their civil and religious liberty could be
enjoyed, which they had sought in vain under the government of Great
Britain, they were by no means aware that they were laying the
foundation stones of one of the most majestic nations upon which the
sun has ever shone. As they stood upon that slippery deck, swept by
the wintry wind, and reverently bowed their heads in prayer, they
dreamed not of the immortality which they were conferring upon
themselves and upon that day. Their frail vessel was now the only
material tie which seemed to bind them to their father-land. Their
parting hymn, swelling from gushing hearts and trembling lips, blended
in harmony with the moan of the wind and the wash of the wave, and
fell, we can not doubt, as accepted melody on the ear of God.

These affecting devotions being ended, boat-load after boat-load left
the ship, until the whole company, one hundred and one in number, men,
women and children, were rowed to the shore, and were landed upon a
rock around which the waves were dashing. As the ship, in the shallow
harbor, rode at anchor a mile from the beach, and the boats were small
and the sea rough, this operation was necessarily very slow.

They first erected a house of logs twenty feet square, which would
serve as a temporary shelter for them all, and which would also serve
as a general store-house for their effects. They then commenced
building a number of small huts for the several families. Every one
lent a willing hand to the work, and soon a little village of some
twenty dwellings sprang up beneath the brow of the forest-crowned hill
which protected them from the winds of the northwest. The Pilgrims
landed on Friday. The incessant labors of the rest of the day and of
Saturday enabled them to provide but a poor shelter for themselves
before the Sabbath came. But, notwithstanding the urgency of the case,
all labor was intermitted on that day, and the little congregation
gathered in their unfinished store-house to worship God. Aware,
however, that hostile Indians might be near, sentinels were stationed
to guard them from surprise. In the midst of their devotions, the
alarming cry rang upon their ears, "Indians! Indians!" A more fearful
cry could hardly reach the ears of husbands and fathers. The church
instantly became a fortress and the worshipers a garrison. A band of
hostile natives had been prowling around, but, instructed by the
valiant defense of the first encounter, and seeing that the Pilgrims
were prepared to repel an assault, they speedily retreated into the
wilderness.

The next day the colonists vigorously renewed their labors, having
parceled themselves into nineteen families. They measured out their
house lots and drew for them, clustering their huts together, for
mutual protection, in two rows, with a narrow street between. But the
storms of winter were already upon them. Monday night it again
commenced raining. All that night and all of Tuesday the rain fell in
floods, while the tempest swept the ocean and wailed dismally through
the forest. Thus they toiled along in the endurance of inconceivable
discomfort for the rest of the week. All were suffering from colds,
and many were seriously sick. Friday and Saturday it was again stormy
and very cold. To add to their anxiety, they saw in several
directions, at the distance of five or six miles from them, wreaths of
smoke rising from large fires in the forest, proving that the Indians
were lurking around them and watching their movements. It was evident,
from the caution which the Indians thus manifested, that they were by
no means friendly in their feelings.

The last day of the year was the Sabbath. It was observed with much
solemnity, their store-house, crowded with their effects, being the
only temple in which they could assemble to worship God.

     "Amid the storm they sang,
       And the stars heard and the sea;
     And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
       To the anthem of the free."

Monday morning of the new year the sun rose in a serene and cloudless
sky, and the Pilgrims, with alacrity, bowed themselves to their work.
Great fires of the Indians were seen in the woods. The valiant Miles
Standish, a man of the loftiest spirit of energy and intrepidity, took
five men with him, and boldly plunged into the forest to find the
Indians, and, if possible, to establish amicable relations with them.
He found their deserted wigwams and the embers of their fires, but
could not catch sight of a single native. A few days after this, two
of the pilgrims, who were abroad gathering thatch, did not return, and
great anxiety was felt for them. Four or five men the next day set out
in search for them. After wandering about all day unsuccessfully
through the pathless forest, they returned at night disheartened, and
the little settlement was plunged into the deepest sorrow. It was
greatly feared that they had been waylaid and captured by the savages.
Twelve men then, well armed, set out to explore the wilderness, to
find any traces of their lost companions. They also returned but to
deepen the dejection of their friends by the recital of their
unsuccessful search. But, as they were telling their story, a shout of
joy arose, and the two lost men, with tattered garments and emaciated
cheeks, emerged from the forest. They gave the following account of
their adventures:

As they were gathering thatch about a mile and a half from the
plantation, they saw a pond in the distance, and went to it, hoping to
catch some fish. On the margin of the pond they met a large deer. The
affrighted animal fled, pursued eagerly by the dog they had with them.
The men followed on, hoping to capture the rich prize. They were thus
lured so far that they became bewildered and lost in the pathless
forest. All the afternoon they wandered about, until black night
encompassed them. A dismal storm arose of wind and rain, mingled with
snow. They were drenched to the skin, and their garments froze around
them. In the darkness they could find no shelter. They had no weapons,
but each one a small sickle to cut thatch. They had no food whatever.
They heard the roar of the beasts of the forests. They supposed it to
be the roaring of lions, though it was probably the howling of wolves.
Their only safety appeared to be to climb into a tree; but the wind
and the cold were so intolerable that such an exposure they could not
endure. So each one stood at the root of a tree all the night long,
running around it to keep himself from freezing, drenched by the
storm, terrified by the cries which filled the forest, and ready, as
soon as they should hear the gnashing of teeth, to spring into the
branches.

The long winter night at length passed away, and a gloomy morning
dimly lighted the forest, and they resumed their search for home. They
waded through swamps, crossed streams, were arrested in their course
by large ponds of water, and tore their clothing and their flesh by
forcing their way through the tangled underbrush. At last they came to
a hill, and, climbing one of the highest trees, discerned in the
distance the harbor of Plymouth, which they recognized by the two
little islands, densely wooded, which seemed to float like ships upon
its surface. The cheerful sight invigorated them, and, though their
limbs tottered from exhaustion, they toiled on, and, just as night was
setting in, they reached their home, faint with travel, and almost
famished with hunger and cold. The limbs of one of these men, John
Goodman, were so swollen by exertion and the cold that they were
obliged to cut his shoes from his feet, and it was a long time before
he was again able to walk. Thus passed the month of January. Nearly
all of the colonists were sick, and eight of their number died.

February was ushered in with piercing cold and desolating storms.
Tempests of rain and snow were so frequent and violent that but little
work could be done. The huts of the colonists were but poorly prepared
for such inclement weather, and so many were sick that the utter
destruction of the colony seemed to be threatened. Though the company
which landed consisted of one hundred and one, but forty-one of these
were men; all the rest were women and children. Death had already
swept many of these men away, and several others were very dangerously
sick. It was evident that the savages were lurking about, watching
them with an eagle eye, and with most manifestly unfriendly feelings.
The colonists were in no condition to repel an attack, and the most
fearless were conscious that they had abundant cause for intense
solicitude.

On the 16th of this month, a man went to a creek about a mile and a
half from the settlement a gunning, and, concealing himself in the
midst of some shrubs and rashes, watched for water-fowl. While thus
concealed, twelve Indians, armed to the teeth, marched stealthily by
him, and he heard in the forest around the noise of many more. As
soon as the twelve had passed, he hastened home and gave the alarm.
All were called in from their work, the guns were loaded, and every
possible preparation was made to repel the anticipated assault. But
the day passed away in perfect quietness; not an Indian was seen; not
the voice or the footfall of a foe was heard. These prowling bands,
concealed in the dark forest, moved with a mystery which was
appalling. The Pilgrims had now been for nearly two months at
Plymouth, and not an Indian had they as yet caught sight of, except
the twelve whom the gunner from his ambush had discerned. Toward
evening, Miles Standish, who, upon the alarm, had returned to the
house, leaving his tools in the woods, took another man and went to
the place to get them, but they were no longer there. The Indians had
taken them away.

This state of things convinced the Pilgrims that it was necessary to
adopt very efficient measures that they might be prepared to repel any
attack. All the able-bodied men, some twenty-five in number, met and
formed themselves into a military company. Miles Standish was chosen
captain, and was invested with great powers in case of any emergency.
Rude fortifications were planned for the defense of the little hamlet,
and two small cannons, which had been lying useless beneath the snow,
were dug up and mounted so as to sweep the approaches to the houses.
While engaged in these operations, two savages suddenly appeared upon
the top of a hill about a quarter of a mile distant, gazing earnestly
upon their movements. Captain Standish immediately took one man with
him, and, without any weapons, that their friendly intentions might be
apparent, hastened to meet the Indians. But the savages, as the two
colonists drew near, fled precipitately, and when Captain Standish
arrived upon the top of the hill, he heard noises in the forest behind
as if it were filled with Indians.

This was the 17th of February. After this a month passed away, and not
a sign of Indians was seen. It was a month of sorrow, sickness, and
death. Seventeen of their little band died, and there was hardly
strength left with the survivors to dig their graves. Had the Indians
known their weakness, they might easily, in any hour, have utterly
destroyed the colony.




CHAPTER II.

MASSASOIT.

1621

Advance of spring.--Sudden appearance of an Indian.--Samoset.--Effects
of a plague.--Samoset is hospitably treated and likes his
quarters.--Stealing of Indians.--The chief of the Wampanoags.--Departure
of Samoset.--Return of the Indians.--Presents to the
Indians.--Appearance of savages.--Planting.--Squantum.--His
captivity.--His benefactors.--Approach of Massasoit.--Caution of the
Indians.--Conference with Massasoit.--The Pilgrims leave a
hostage.--Visit of Massasoit.--His reception.--Royal interview.--The
first glass of spirits.--Appearance of the warriors.--A friendly
alliance.--Death of Governor Carver.--Mission to Massasoit.--Trouble
from the Indians.--The journey.--Appearance of the country.--Hospitality
of the natives.--Poverty of the natives.--The fishing-party.--Opposition
to crossing the river.--Assistance from the Indians.--Scarcity of
food.--Character of the Indians.--Massasoit absent.--Mount
Hope.--Reflections on the past.--Reflections inspired by the
scene.--Character of our forefathers.--Return of Massasoit.--Royal
ceremonies.--Gifts to the king.--Want of food.--Night in a
palace.--Amusements.--Arrival of fish.--Motives for departure.--Graphic
narrative.--Stormy journey.--Result of the mission.--Child lost.--News
of the safety of the child.--Endeavors for his rescue.--Cummaquids.--An
aged Indian.--Iyanough.--Caution.--Recovery of the lost boy.--Presents
to Aspinet.--The Wampanoags.--Power of Massasoit.


March "came in like a lion," cold, wet, and stormy; but toward the
middle of the month the weather changed, and a warm sun and soft
southern breezes gave indication of an early spring. The 16th of the
month was a remarkably pleasant day, and the colonists who were able
to bear arms had assembled at their rendezvous to complete their
military organization for the working days of spring and summer. While
thus engaged they saw, to their great surprise, a solitary Indian
approaching. Boldly, and without the slightest appearance of
hesitancy, he strode along, entered the street of their little
village, and directed his steps toward the group at the rendezvous. He
was a man of majestic stature, and entirely naked, with the exception
of a leathern belt about his loins, to which there was suspended a
fringe about nine inches in length. In his hand he held a bow and two
arrows.

[Illustration: SAMOSET, THE INDIAN VISITOR.]

The Indian, with remarkable self-confidence and freedom of gait,
advanced toward the astonished group, and in perfectly intelligible
English addressed them with the words, "Welcome, Englishmen." From
this man the eager colonists soon learned the following facts. His
name was Samoset. He was one of the chiefs of a tribe residing near
the island of Monhegan, which is at the mouth of Penobscot Bay. With a
great wind, he said that it was but a day's sail from Plymouth, though
it required a journey of five days by land. Fishing vessels from
England had occasionally visited that region, and he had, by
intercourse with them, acquired sufficient broken English to be able
to communicate his ideas. He also informed the Pilgrims that, four
years before their arrival, a terrible plague had desolated the coast,
and that the tribe occupying the region upon which they were settled
had been utterly annihilated. The dead had been left unburied to be
devoured by wolves. Thus the way had been prepared for the Pilgrims to
settle upon land which no man claimed, and thus had Providence gone
before them to shield them from the attacks of a savage foe.

Samoset was disposed to make himself quite at home. He wished to enter
the houses, and called freely for beer and for food. To make him a
little more presentable to their families, the Pilgrims put a large
horseman's coat upon him, and then led him into their houses, and
treated him with great hospitality. The savage seemed well satisfied
with his new friends, and manifested no disposition to leave quarters
so comfortable and entertainment so abundant. Night came, and he still
remained, and would take no hints to go. The colonists could not
rudely turn him out of doors, and they were very apprehensive of
treachery, should they allow him to continue with them for the night.
But all their gentle efforts to get rid of him were in vain--he
_would_ stay. They therefore made arrangements for him in Stephen
Hopkins's house, and carefully, though concealing their movements from
him, watched him all night.

Samoset was quite an intelligent man, and professed to be well
acquainted with all the tribes who peopled the New England coasts. He
said that the tribe inhabiting the end of the peninsula of Cape Cod
were called Nausites, and that they were exceedingly exasperated
against the whites, because, a few years before, one Captain Hunt,
from England, while trading with the Indians on the Cape, had
inveigled twenty-seven men on board, and then had fastened them below
and set sail. These poor creatures, thus infamously kidnapped, were
carried to Spain, and sold as slaves for one hundred dollars each. It
was in consequence of this outrage that the Pilgrims were so fiercely
attacked at _The First Encounter_. Samoset had heard from his brethren
of the forest all the incidents of this conflict.

He also informed his eager listeners that at two days' journey from
them, upon the margin of waters now called Bristol Bay, there was a
very powerful tribe, the Wampanoags, who exerted a sort of supremacy
over all the other tribes of the region. Massasoit was the sovereign
of this dominant people, and by his intelligence and energy he kept
the adjacent tribes in a state of vassalage. Not far from his
territories there was another powerful tribe, the Narragansets, who,
in their strength, were sometimes disposed to question his authority.
All this information interested the colonists, and they were anxious,
if possible, to open friendly relations with Massasoit.

Early the next morning, which was Saturday, March 17th, Samoset left,
having received as a present a knife, a bracelet, and a ring. He
promised soon to return again, and to bring some other Indians with
him. The next morning was the Sabbath. It was warm, serene, and
beautiful. Dreary winter had passed, and genial spring was smiling
around them. As the colonists were assembling for their Sabbath
devotions, Samoset again presented himself, with five tall Indians in
his train. They were all dressed in skins, fitting closely to the
body, and most of them had a panther's skin and other furs for sale.
According to the arrangement which the Pilgrims had made with Samoset,
they all left their bows and arrows about a quarter of a mile distant
from the town, as the Pilgrims did not deem it safe to admit armed
savages into their dwellings. The tools which had been left in the
woods, and which the Indians had taken, were also all brought back by
these men. The colonists received these natives as kindly as possible,
and entertained them hospitably, but declined entering into any
traffic, as it was the Sabbath. They told the Indians, however, that
if they would come on any other day, they would purchase not only the
furs they now had with them, but any others which they might bring.

Upon this, all retired excepting Samoset. He, saying that he was sick,
insisted upon remaining. The rest soon disappeared in the forest,
having promised to return again the next day. Monday and Tuesday
passed, and the colonists looked in vain for the Indians. On Wednesday
morning, having made Samoset a present of a hat, a pair of shoes, some
stockings, and a piece of cloth to wind around his loins, they sent
him to search out his companions, and ascertain why they did not
return according to their promise. The Indians who first left had all,
upon their departure, received presents from the Pilgrims, so anxious
were our forefathers to establish friendly relations with the natives
of this New World.

During the first days of the week the colonists were very busy
breaking up their ground and planting their seed. On Wednesday
afternoon, Samoset having left, they again assembled to attend to
their military organization. While thus employed, several savages
appeared on the summit of a hill but a short distance opposite them,
twanging their bow-strings and exhibiting gestures of defiance.
Captain Standish took one man with him, and with two others following
at a distance as a re-enforcement in case of any difficulty, went to
meet them. The savages continued their hostile gesticulation until
Captain Standish drew quite near, and then they precipitately fled.

The next day it was again warm and beautiful, and the little village
of the colonists presented an aspect of industry, peace, and
prosperity. About noon Samoset returned, with one single stranger
accompanying him. This Indian's name was _Squantum_. He had been of
the party seized by Weymouth or by Hunt--the authorities are not clear
upon that point--and had been carried to Spain and there sold as a
slave. After some years of bondage he succeeded in escaping to
England. Mr. John Slaney, a merchant of London, chanced to meet the
poor fugitive, protected him, and treated him with the greatest
kindness, and finally secured him a passage back to his native land,
from whence he had been so ruthlessly stolen. This Indian, forgetting
the outrage of the knave who had kidnapped him, and remembering only
the great kindness which he had received from his benefactor and from
the people generally in London, in generous requital now attached
himself cordially to the Pilgrims, and became their firm friend. His
residence in England had rendered him quite familiar with the English
language, and he proved invaluable not only as an interpreter, but
also in instructing them respecting the modes of obtaining a support
in the wilderness.

Squantum brought the welcome intelligence that his sovereign chief,
the great Massasoit, had heard of the arrival of the Pilgrims, and was
approaching, with a retinue of sixty warriors, to pay them a friendly
visit. With characteristic dignity and caution, the Indian chief had
encamped upon a neighboring hill, and had sent Squantum as his
messenger to inform the white men of his arrival, and to conduct the
preliminaries for an interview. Massasoit was well acquainted with the
conduct of the unprincipled English seamen who had skirted the coast,
committing all manner of outrages, and he was too wary to place
himself in the power of strangers respecting whom he entertained such
well-grounded suspicions. He therefore established himself upon a
hill, where he could not be taken by surprise, and where, in case of
an attack, he could easily, if necessary, retreat.

The Pilgrims also, overawed by their lonely position, and by the
mysterious terrors of the wilderness and of the savage, deemed it
imprudent, when such a band of armed warriors were in their vicinity,
to send any of their feeble force from behind the intrenchments which
they had reared. After several messages, through their interpreter,
had passed to and fro, Massasoit, who, though unlettered, was a man of
reflection and of sagacity, proposed that the English should send one
of their number to his encampment to communicate to him their designs
in settling upon lands which had belonged to one of his vassal tribes.
One of the colonists, Edward Winslow, consented to go upon this
embassy. He took as a present for the barbarian monarch two knives and
a copper chain, with a jewel attached to it. Massasoit received him
with dignity, yet with courtesy. Mr. Winslow, through Squantum as his
interpreter, addressed the chieftain, surrounded by his warriors, in
the sincere words of peace and friendship. The Pilgrims of the
Mayflower were good men. They wished to do right, and to establish
amicable relations with the Indians.

[Illustration: MASSASOIT AND HIS WARRIORS.]

Massasoit listened in silence and very attentively to the speech of
Mr. Winslow. At its close he expressed his approval, and, after a
short conference with his councilors, decided to accept Governor
Carver's invitation to visit him, if Mr. Winslow would remain in
the Indian encampment as a hostage during his absence. This
arrangement being assented to, Massasoit set out, with twenty of his
warriors, for the settlement of the Pilgrims. In token of peace, they
left all their weapons behind. In Indian file, and in perfect silence,
the savages advanced until they reached a small brook near the log
huts of the colonists. Here they were met by Captain Miles Standish
with a military array of six men. A salute of six muskets was fired in
honor of the regal visit. Advancing a little farther, Governor Carver
met them with his reserve of military pomp, and the monarch of the
Wampanoags and his chieftains were escorted with the music of the drum
and fife to a log hut decorated with such embellishments as the
occasion could furnish. Two or three cushions, covered with a green
rug, were spread as a seat for the king and the governor in this
formal and most important interview. Governor Carver took the hand of
Massasoit and kissed it. The Indian chieftain immediately imitated his
example, and returned the salute. The governor then, in accordance
with mistaken views of hospitality, presented his guest with a goblet
of ardent spirits. The noble Indian, whose throat had never yet been
tainted by this curse, took a draught which caused his eyes almost to
burst from their sockets, and drove the sweat gushing from every pore.
With the instinctive imperturbability of his race, he soon recovered
from the shock, and a long, friendly, and very satisfactory conference
was held.

Massasoit was a man of mark, mild, genial, affectionate, yet bold,
cautious, and commanding. He was in the prime of life, of majestic
stature, and of great gravity of countenance and manners. His face was
painted red, after the manner of the warriors of his tribe. His glossy
raven hair, well oiled, was cut short in front, but hung thick and
long behind. He and his companions were picturesquely dressed in skins
and with plumes of brilliant colors.

As evening approached, Massasoit withdrew with his followers to his
encampment upon the hill. The treachery of Hunt and such men had made
him suspicious, and he was not willing to leave himself for the night
in the power of the white men. He accordingly arranged his encampment
to guard against surprise, and, sentinels being established, the rest
of the party threw themselves upon their hemlock boughs, with their
bows and arrows in their hands, and were soon fast asleep. The
Pilgrims also kept a vigilant watch that night, for neither party had
full confidence in the other. The next morning Captain Standish, with
another man, ventured into the camp of the Indians. They were received
with great kindness, and gradually confidence was strengthened between
the two parties, and the most friendly relations were established.
After entering into a formal alliance, offensive and defensive, the
conference terminated to the satisfaction of all parties, and the
tawny warriors again disappeared in the pathless wilderness. They
returned to Mount Hope, then called Pokanoket, the seat of Massasoit,
about forty miles from Plymouth.

The ravages of death had now dwindled the colony down to fifty men,
women, and children. But health was restored with the returning sun
and the cheering breezes of spring. Thirty acres of land were planted,
and Squantum proved himself a true and valuable friend, teaching them
how to cultivate Indian corn, and how to take the various kinds of
fish.

In June Governor Carver died, greatly beloved and revered by the
colony. Mr. William Bradford was chosen as his successor, and by
annual election was continued governor for many years. Early in July
Governor Bradford sent a deputation from Plymouth, with Squantum as
their interpreter, to return the visit of Massasoit. There were
several quite important objects to be obtained by this mission. It was
a matter of moment to ascertain the strength of Massasoit, the number
of his warriors, and the state in which he lived. They wished also, by
a formal visit, to pay him marked attention, and to renew their
friendly correspondence. There was another subject of delicacy and of
difficulty which it had become absolutely necessary to bring forward.
Lazy, vagabond Indians had for some time been increasingly in the
habit of crowding the little village of the colonists and eating out
their substance. They would come with their wives and their children,
and loiter around day after day, without any delicacy whatever,
clamoring for food, and devouring every thing which was set before
them like famished wolves. The Pilgrims, anxious to maintain friendly
relations with Massasoit, were reluctant to drive away his subjects by
violence, but the longer continuance of such hospitality could not be
endured.

The governor sent to the Indian king, as a present, a gaudy horseman's
coat. It was made of red cotton trimmed with showy lace. At 10
o'clock in the morning of the second of July, the two ambassadors, Mr.
Winslow and Mr. Hopkins, with Squantum as guide and interpreter, set
forward on their journey. It was a warm and sunny day, and with
cheerful spirits the party threaded the picturesque trails of the
Indians through the forest. These trails were paths through the
wilderness through which the Indians had passed for uncounted
centuries. They were distinctly marked, and almost as renowned as the
paved roads of the Old World, which once reverberated beneath the
tramp of the legions of the Cæsars. Here generation after generation
of the moccasined savage, with silent tread, threaded his way,
delighting in the gloom which no ray of the sun could penetrate, in
the silence interrupted only by the cry of the wild beast in his lair,
and awed by the marvelous beauty of lakes and streams, framed in
mountains and fringed with forests, where water-fowl of every variety
of note and plumage floated buoyant upon the wave, and pierced the air
with monotonous and melancholy song. Ten or twelve Indians--men,
women, and children--followed them, annoying them not a little with
their intrusiveness and their greedy grasp of food. The embassy
traveled about fifteen miles to a small Indian village upon a branch
of Taunton River. Here they arrived about three o'clock in the
afternoon. The natives called the place Namaschet. It was within the
limits of the present town of Middleborough. The Indians received the
colonists with great hospitality, offering them the richest viands
which they could furnish--heavy bread made of corn, and the spawn of
shad, which they ate from wooden spoons. These glimpses of poverty and
wretchedness sadly detract from the romantic ideas we have been wont
to cherish of the free life of the children of the forest. The savages
were exceedingly delighted with the skill which their guests displayed
in shooting crows in their corn-fields.

As Squantum told them that it was more than a day's travel from there
to Pokanoket or Mount Hope, they resumed their journey, and went about
eight miles farther, till they came, about sunset, to another stream,
where they found a party of natives fishing. They were here cheered
with the aspect of quite a fruitful region. The ground on both sides
of the river was cleared, and had formerly waved with corn-fields. The
place had evidently once been densely populated, but the plague of
which we have spoken swept, it is said, every individual into the
grave. A few wandering Indians had now come to the deserted fields to
fish, and were lazily sleeping in the open air, without constructing
for themselves any shelter. These miserable natives had no food but
fish and a few roasted acorns, and they devoured greedily the stores
which the colonists brought with them. The night was mild and serene,
and was passed without much discomfort in the unsheltered fields.

Early in the morning the journey was resumed, the colonists following
down the stream, now called Fall River, toward Narraganset Bay. Six of
the savages accompanied them a few miles, until they came to a shallow
place, where, by divesting themselves of their clothing, they were
able to wade through the river. Upon the opposite bank there were two
Indians who seemed, with valor which astonished the colonists, to
oppose their passage. They ran down to the margin of the stream,
brandished their weapons, and made all the threatening gestures in
their power. They were, however, appeased by friendly signs, and at
last permitted the passage of the river without resort to violence.

Here, after refreshing themselves, they continued their journey,
following down the western bank of the stream. The country on both
sides of the river had been cleared, and in former years had been
planted with corn-fields, but was now quite depopulated. Several
Indians still accompanied them, treating them with the most remarkable
kindness. It was a cloudless day, and intensely hot. The Indians
insisted upon carrying the superfluous clothing of their newly-found
friends. As they were continually coming to brooks, often quite wide
and deep, running into the river, the Indians eagerly took the
Pilgrims upon their shoulders and carried them through.

[Illustration: THE PALACE OF MASSASOIT.]

During the whole of the day, after crossing the river, they met with but
two Indians on their route, so effectually had the plague swept off the
inhabitants. But the evidence was abundant that the region had formerly
been quite populous with a people very poor and uncultivated. Their
living had been manifestly nothing but fish and corn pounded into coarse
meal. Game must have been so scarce in the woods, and with such
difficulty taken with bows and arrows, that they could very seldom have
been regaled with meat. A more wretched and monotonous existence than
theirs can hardly be conceived. Entirely devoid of mental culture, there
was no range for thought. Their huts were miserable abodes, barely
endurable in pleasant weather, but comfortless in the extreme when the
wind filled them with smoke, or the rain dripped through the branches.
Men, women, children, and dogs slept together at night in the one
littered room, devoured by fleas. The native Indian was a degraded,
joyless savage, occasionally developing kind feelings and noble
instincts, but generally vicious, treacherous, and cruel.

The latter part of the afternoon they arrived at Pokanoket. Much to
their disappointment, they found that Massasoit, uninformed of their
intended visit, was absent on a hunting excursion. As he was, however,
not far from home, runners were immediately dispatched to recall him.
The chieftain had selected his residence with that peculiar taste for
picturesque beauty which characterized the more noble of the Indians.
The hillock which the English subsequently named Mount Hope was a
graceful mound about two hundred feet high, commanding an extensive
and remarkably beautiful view of wide, sweeping forests and indented
bays.

This celebrated mound is about four miles from the city of Fall River.
From its summit the eye now ranges over Providence, Bristol, Warren,
Fall River, and many other minor towns. The whole wide-spread
landscape is embellished with gardens, orchards, cultivated fields,
and thriving villages. Gigantic steamers plow the waves, and the sails
of a commerce which girdles the globe whitens the beautiful bay.

But, as the tourist sits upon the solitary summit, he forgets the
present in memory of the past. Neither the pyramids of Egypt nor the
Coliseum of the Eternal City are draped with a more sublime antiquity.
Here, during generations which no man can number, the sons of the
forest gathered around their council-fires, and struggled, as human
hearts, whether savage or civilized, must ever struggle, against
"life's stormy doom."

Here, long centuries ago, were the joys of the bridal, and the anguish
which gathers around the freshly-opened grave. Beneath the moon, which
then, as now, silvered this mound, "the Indian lover wooed his dusky
maid." Upon the beach, barbaric childhood reveled, and their red limbs
were bathed in the crystal waves.

Here, in ages long since passed away, the war-whoop resounded through
the forest. The shriek of mothers and maidens pierced the skies as
they fell cleft by the tomahawk; and all the horrid clangor of war,
with "its terror, conflagration, tears, and blood," imbittered ten
thousand fold the ever bitter lot of humanity.

     "'Tis dangerous to rouse the lion;
       Deadly to cross the tiger's path;
     But the most terrible of terrors
       Is man himself in his wild wrath."

In the midst of this attractive scene, perhaps nothing is more
conspicuous than the spires of the churches--those churches of a pure
Christianity to which New England is indebted for all her intelligence
and prosperity. It was upon the Bible that our forefathers laid the
foundations of the institutions of this New World; and, though they
made some mistakes, for they were but mortal, still they were sincere,
conscientious Christian men, and their Christianity has been the
legacy from which their children have derived the greatest benefits.
Two hundred years ago, our fathers, from the summit of Mount Hope,
looked upon a dreary wilderness through which a few naked savages
roamed. How different the spectacle which now meets the eye of the
tourist!

Massasoit, informed by his runners of the guests who had so
unexpectedly arrived, immediately returned. Mr. Winslow and Mr.
Hopkins, wishing to honor the Indian king, fired a salute, each one
discharging his gun as Massasoit approached. The king, who had heard
the report of fire-arms before, was highly gratified; but the women
and children were struck with exceeding terror, and, like affrighted
deer, leaped from their wigwams and fled into the woods. Squantum
pursued them, and, by assurances that no harm was to be feared, at
length induced them cautiously to return.

There was then an interchange of sundry ceremonies of state to render
the occasion imposing. The scarlet coat, with its gaudy embroidery of
lace, was placed upon Massasoit, and a chain of copper beads was
thrown around his neck. He seemed much pleased with these showy
trappings, and his naked followers were exceedingly delighted in
seeing their chieftain thus decorated. A motley group now gathered
around the Indian king and the English embassy. Massasoit then made a
long speech, to which the natives seemed to listen with great
interest, occasionally responding with applause. It was now night. The
two envoys were weary with travel, and were hungry, for they had
consumed all their food, not doubting that they should find abundance
at the table of the sovereign of all these realms. But, to their
surprise, Massasoit was entirely destitute, not having even a mouthful
to offer them. Supperless they went to bed. In the following language
they describe their accommodations for the night:

    "Late it grew, but victuals he offered none, so we desired to
    go to rest. He laid us on the bed with himself and his wife,
    they at the one end and we at the other, it being only planks
    laid a foot from the ground, and a thin mat upon them. Two
    more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon
    us, so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our
    journey."

The next day there was gathered at Mount Hope quite a concourse of the
adjoining Indians, subordinate chiefs and common people. They engaged
in various games of strength and agility, with skins for prizes. The
English also fired at a mark, amazing the Indians with the accuracy of
their shot. It was now noon, and the English, who had slept without
supper, had as yet received no breakfast. At one o'clock two large
fishes were brought in, which had been speared in the bay. They were
hastily broiled upon coals, and forty hungry men eagerly devoured
them.

The afternoon passed slowly and tediously away, and again the Pilgrims
went supperless to bed. Again they passed a sleepless night, being
kept awake by vermin, hunger, and the noise of the savages. Friday
morning they rose before the sun, resolved immediately to commence
their journey home. Massasoit was very importunate to have them remain
longer with him.

    "But we determined," they write in their graphic narrative,
    "to keep the Sabbath at home, and feared that we should
    either be light-headed for want of sleep, for what with bad
    lodgings, the savages' barbarous singing (for they use to
    sing themselves asleep), lice, and fleas within doors, and
    musketoes without, we could hardly sleep all the time of our
    being there; we much fearing that if we should stay any
    longer we should not be able to recover home for want of
    strength; so that on the Friday morning before the sunrising
    we took our leave and departed, Massasoit being both grieved
    and ashamed that he could no better entertain us."

Their journey home was a very weary one. They would, perhaps, have
perished from hunger had they not obtained from the Indians whom they
met a little parched corn, which was considered a very great delicacy,
a squirrel, and a shad. Friday night, as they were asleep in the open
air, a tempest of thunder and lightning arose, with floods of rain.
Their fire was speedily extinguished, and they were soaked to the
skin. Saturday night, just as the twilight was passing away into
darkness, they reached their homes in a storm of rain, wet, weary,
hungry, and sore.

The result of this mission was, however, important. They renewed their
treaty of peace with Massasoit, and made arrangements that they were
to receive no Indians as guests unless Massasoit should send them with
a copper necklace, in token that they came from him.

In the autumn of this same year a boy from the colony got lost in the
woods. He wandered about for five days, living upon berries, and then
was found by some Indians in the forests of Cape Cod. Massasoit, as
soon as he heard of it, sent word that the boy was found. He was in
the hands of the same tribe who, in consequence of the villainies of
Hunt, had assailed the Pilgrims so fiercely at the First Encounter.
The savages treated the boy kindly, and had him at Nauset, which is
now the town of Eastham, near the extremity of the Cape. Governor
Bradford immediately sent ten men in a boat to rescue the boy.

They coasted along the first day very prosperously, notwithstanding a
thunder-shower in the afternoon, with violent wind and rain. At night
they put into Barnstable Bay, then called Cummaquid. Squantum and
another Indian were with them as friends and interpreters. They deemed
it prudent not to land, but anchored for the night in the middle of
the bay. The next morning they saw some savages gathering shell-fish
upon the shore. They sent their two interpreters with assurances of
friendship, and to inquire for the boy. The savages were very
courteous, informed them that the boy was farther down the Cape at
Nauset, and invited the whole party to come on shore and take some
refreshments. Six of the colonists ventured ashore, having first
received four of the natives to remain in their boat as hostages. The
chief of this small tribe, called the Cummaquids, was a young man of
about twenty-six years of age, and appeared to be a very remarkable
character. He was dignified and courteous in his demeanor, and
entertained his guests with a native politeness which surprised them
much.

While in this place an old Indian woman came to see them, whom they
judged to be a hundred years of age. As soon as she came into their
presence she was overwhelmed with emotion, and cried most
convulsively. Upon inquiring the reason, the Pilgrims were told that
her three sons were kidnapped by Captain Hunt. The young men had been
invited on board his ship to trade. He lured them below, seized and
bound them, and carried them to Spain, where he sold them as slaves.
The unhappy and desolate mother seemed quite heart-broken with grief.
The Pilgrims addressed to her words of sympathy, assured her that
Captain Hunt was a bad man, whom every good man in England condemned,
and gave her some presents.

They remained with this kind but deeply-wronged people until after
dinner. Then _Iyanough_ himself, the noble young chief of the tribe,
with two of his warriors, accompanied them on board the boat to assist
them in their search for the boy. A fair wind from the west filled
their sails, and late in the evening, when it was too dark to land,
they approached Nauset. Here was the hostile tribe whose prowess the
colonists had experienced in the First Encounter. The villain, Captain
Hunt, had stolen from them twenty men. It was consequently deemed
necessary to practice much caution. Iyanough and Squantum went on
shore there to conciliate the natives and to inform them of the object
of the mission. The next morning a great crowd of natives had
gathered, and were anxious to get into the boat. The English, however,
prudently, would allow but two to enter at a time. The day was passed
in parleying. About sunset a train of a hundred Indians appeared,
bringing the lost boy with them. One half remained at a little
distance, with their bows and arrows; the other half, unarmed, brought
the boy to the boat, and delivered him to his friends. The colonists
made valuable presents to _Aspinet_, the chief of the tribe, and also
paid abundantly for the corn which, it will be remembered, they took
from a deserted house when they were first coasting along the shore in
search of a place of settlement. They then spread their sails, and a
fair wind soon drove them fifty miles across the bay to their homes.

The Wampanoags do not appear to have constituted a very numerous
tribe, but, through the intellectual and military energy of their
chieftain, Massasoit, they had acquired great power. The present town
of Bristol, Rhode Island, was the region principally occupied by the
tribe; but Massasoit extended his sway over more than thirty tribes,
who inhabited Cape Cod and all the country extending between
Massachusetts and Narraganset Bays, reaching inland to where the head
branches of the Charles River and the Pawtucket River meet. It will be
seen at once, by reference to the map, how wide was the sway of this
Indian monarch, and how important it was for the infant colony to
cultivate friendly relations with a sovereign who could combine all
those tribes, and direct many thousand barbarian warriors to rush like
wolves upon the feeble settlement.




CHAPTER III.

CLOUDS OF WAR.

1621-1622

Canonicus.--His hostility toward the Puritans.--Corruption at
court.--A rebellion.--Flight of Massasoit.--Reported death of
Squantum.--Action of the Puritans.--The army.--Directions to the
men.--Approach to the wigwam.--The attack.--"I am a squaw!"--Escape of
Corbitant.--Appearance of the huts.--Squantum found.--Threats of Capt.
Standish.--The return.--Reconciliation of Corbitant.--Prosperous
summer.--Rumors of war.--New expedition.--Evidences of the
plague.--Justice of the Pilgrims.--Explorations.--Appearance of the
harbor.--Preparations for return.--The harbor.--Friendly
relations.--Arrival of emigrants from England.--Declaration of
war.--Canonicus.--Weakness of the Pilgrims.--Council
called.--Pickwickian challenge.--Preparations for defense.--Completion
of the fortification.--The challenge retracted.--An arrival.--Kind
reception.--Complaints from the Indians.--Relief wanted.--Death of
Squantum.--His prayer.--Governor Bradford's journey.--Theft
committed.--Return of the articles.--The Weymouth settlers implore
aid.--Disgraceful proceeding.--Injustice of Hudibras.--Sickness of
Massasoit.--Deputation from Plymouth.--The journey.--Reported death of
Massasoit.--Hobbomak.--Hospitality of Corbitant's wife.--Arrival at
Mount Hope.--Massasoit's welcome.--His recovery.--Kindness of the
Pilgrims.--Mr. Winslow as physician.--Alarming tidings.--The party
leave Mount Hope.--Conversation with Corbitant.--English
salutations.--Theological remarks.--Return to Plymouth.--The
army.--Captain Standish.--Insolence of the Indians.--The commencement
of hostilities.--The conflict and victory.--The Weymouth men go to
Monhegan.--Regrets of the English.--Letter from Rev. Mr. Robinson.


The Narraganset Indians occupied the region extending from the western
shores of Narraganset Bay to Pawcatuck River. They were estimated to
number about thirty thousand, and could bring five thousand warriors
into the field. Canonicus, the sovereign chief of this tribe, was a
man of great renown. War had occasionally raged between the
Narragansets and the Wampanoags, and the two tribes were bitterly
hostile to each other. Canonicus regarded the newly-arrived English
with great jealousy, and was particularly annoyed by the friendly
relations existing between them and the Wampanoags. Indeed, it is
quite evident that Massasoit was influenced to enter into his alliance
with the English mainly from his dread of the Narragansets.

Bribery and corruption are almost as common in barbarian as in
civilized courts. Canonicus had brought over to his cause one of the
minor chiefs of Massasoit, named Corbitant. This man, audacious and
reckless, began to rail bitterly at the peace existing between the
Indians and the English. Boldly he declared that Massasoit was a
traitor, and ought to be deposed. Sustained as Corbitant was by the
whole military power of the Narragansets, he soon gathered a party
about him sufficiently strong to bid defiance to Massasoit. The
sovereign of the Wampanoags was even compelled to take refuge from
arrest by flight.

The colonists heard these tidings with great solicitude, and learning
that Corbitant was within a few miles of them, at Namasket
(Middleborough), striving to rouse the natives to unite with the
Narragansets against them, they privately sent Squantum and another
friendly Indian, Hobbomak, to Namasket, to ascertain what had become
of Massasoit, and how serious was the peril with which they were
threatened.

The next day Hobbomak returned alone, breathless and terrified. He
reported that they had hardly arrived at Namasket when Corbitant beset
the wigwam into which they had entered with a band of armed men, and
seized them both as prisoners. He declared that they both should die,
saying that when Squantum was dead the English would have lost their
tongue. Brandishing a knife, the savage approached Squantum to stab
him. Hobbomak, being a very powerful man, at that moment broke from
the grasp of those who held him, and outrunning his pursuers,
succeeded in regaining Plymouth. He said that he had no doubt that
Squantum was killed.

These were melancholy and alarming tidings. Governor Bradford
immediately assembled the few men--about twenty in number--of the
feeble colony, to decide what should be done. After looking to God for
counsel, and after calm deliberation, it was resolved that, if they
should suffer their friends and messengers to be thus assailed and
murdered with impunity, the hostile Indians would be encouraged to
continued aggressions, and no Indians would dare to maintain friendly
relations with them. They therefore adopted the valiant determination
to send ten men, one half of their whole number, with Hobbomak as
their guide, to seize Corbitant and avenge the outrage.

The 14th of August, 1621, was a dark and stormy day, when this little
band set out on its bold adventure. All the day long, as they silently
threaded the paths of the forest, the rain dripped upon them. Late in
the afternoon they arrived within four miles of Namasket. They then
thought it best to conceal themselves until after dark, that they
might fall upon their foe by surprise. Captain Standish led the band.
To every man he gave minute directions as to the part he was to
perform. Night, wet and stormy, soon darkened around them in Egyptian
blackness. They could hardly see a hand's breadth before them. Groping
along, they soon lost their way, and became entangled in the thick
undergrowth. Wet, weary, and dejected, they toiled on, and at last
again happily hit the trail. It was after midnight when they arrived
within sight of the glimmering fires of the little Indian hamlet of
Namasket. They then sat down, and ate from their knapsacks a hearty
meal. The food which remained they threw away, that they might have
nothing to obstruct them in the conflict which might ensue.

They then cautiously approached a large wigwam where Hobbomak supposed
that Corbitant and his men were sleeping. Silently they surrounded the
hut, the gloom of the night and the wailings of the storm securing
them from being either seen or heard. At a signal, two muskets were
fired to terrify the savages, and Captain Standish, with three or
four men, rushed into the hut. The ground floor, dimly lighted by some
dying embers, was covered with sleeping savages--men, women, and
children. A scene of indescribable consternation and confusion ensued.
Through Hobbomak, Captain Standish ordered every one to remain,
assuring them that he had come for Corbitant, the murderer of
Squantum, and that, if he were not there, no one else should be
injured. But the savages, terrified by the midnight surprise and by
the report of the muskets, were bereft of reason. Many of them
endeavored to escape, and were severely wounded by the colonists in
their attempts to stop them. The Indian boys, seeing that the women
were not molested, ran around, frantically exclaiming, "I am a squaw!
I am a squaw!"

At last order was restored, and it was found that Corbitant was not
there, but that he had gone off with all his train, and that Squantum
was not killed. A bright fire was now kindled, that the hut might be
carefully searched. Its blaze illumined one of the wildest of
imaginable scenes. The wigwam, spacious and rudely constructed of
boughs, mats, and bark; the affrighted savages, men, women, and
children, in their picturesque dress and undress, a few with ghastly
wounds, faint and bleeding; the various weapons and utensils of
barbarian life hanging around; the bold colonists in their European
dress and arms; the fire blazing in the centre of the hut, all
combined to present a scene such as few eyes have ever witnessed.
Hobbomak now climbed to the top of the hut and shouted for Squantum.
He immediately came from another wigwam. Having disarmed the savages
of their bows and arrows, the colonists gathered around the fire to
dry their dripping clothes, and waited for the light of the morning.

With the early light, all who were friendly to the English gathered
around them, while the faction in favor of Corbitant fled into the
wilderness. A large group was soon assembled. Captain Standish, in
words of conciliation and of firmness, informed them that, though
Corbitant had escaped, yet, if he continued his hostility, no place of
retreat would secure him from punishment; and that, if any violence
were offered to Massasoit or to any of his subjects by the
Narragansets, or by any one else, the colonists would avenge it to the
utter overthrow of those thus offending. He expressed great regret
that any of the Indians had been wounded in consequence of their
endeavors to escape from the house, and offered to take the wounded
home, that they might be carefully healed.

After breakfasting with the Indians, this heroic band, accompanied by
Squantum, some of the wounded, and several other friendly Indians, set
out on their return. They arrived at home in safety the same evening.
This well-judged and decisive measure at once checked the progress of
Corbitant in exciting disaffection. He soon found it expedient to seek
reconciliation, and, through the intercession of Massasoit, signed a
treaty of submission and friendship; and even Canonicus, sovereign of
the Narragansets, sent a messenger, perhaps as a spy, but professedly
to treat for peace. Thus this cloud of war was dissipated.

On the whole, the Pilgrims had enjoyed a very prosperous summer. They
were eminently just and kind in their treatment of the Indians. In
trading with them they obtained furs and many other articles, which
contributed much to their comfort. Fish was abundant in the bay. Their
corn grew luxuriantly, and their fields waved with a rich and golden
harvest. With the autumnal weather came abundance of water-fowl,
supplying them with delicious meat. Thus were they blessed with peace
and plenty.

Various rumors had reached the colonists that several of the tribes of
the Massachusetts Indians, so called, inhabiting the islands and main
land at the northwestern extremity of Massachusetts Bay, were
threatening hostilities. It was consequently decided to send an
expedition to them, not to intimidate, but to conciliate with words of
sincerity and deeds of kindness.

At midnight, September the 18th, the tide then serving, a small party
set sail, and during the day, with a gentle wind, made about sixty
miles north. Not deeming it safe to land, they remained in their boat
during the night, and the next morning landed under a cliff. Here they
found some natives, who seemed to cower before them in terror. It
appeared afterward that Squantum had told the natives that the English
had a box in which they kept the plague, and that, if the Indians
offended them, they would let the awful scourge loose. Every where the
English saw evidences of the ravages of the pestilence to which we
have so often referred. There were desolate villages and deserted
corn-fields, and but a few hundred Indians wandering here and there
where formerly there had been thousands. The kindness with which they
treated the Indians, and the fairness with which they traded with
them, won confidence. Squantum at one time suggested that, by way of
punishment, and to teach the savages a lesson, they should by violence
take away their furs, which were almost their only treasures. Our
fathers nobly replied, "Were they ever so bad, we would not wrong
them, or give them any just occasion against us. We shall pay no
attention to their threatening words, but, if they attack us, we shall
then punish them severely."

The Pilgrims explored quite minutely this magnificent harbor, then
solitary and fringed with rayless forests, now alive with commerce,
and decorated with mansions of refinement and opulence. The long
promontory, now crowded with the busy streets and thronged dwellings
of Boston, was then a dense and silent wilderness, threaded with a few
Indian trails. Along the shore several rude wigwams were scattered,
the smoke curling from their fires from among the trees, with naked
children playing around the birch canoes upon the beach.

In the evening of a serene day the moon rose brilliant on the harbor,
illumining with almost celestial beauty the islands and the sea. Many
of the islands were then crowned with forests; others were cleared
smooth and verdant, but swept entirely clean of inhabitants by the
dreadful plague. The Pilgrims, rejoicing in the rays of the autumnal
moon, prepared to spread their sails. "Having well spent the day,"
they write, "we returned to the shallop, almost all the women
accompanying us to trucke, who sold their coats from their backes, and
tyed boughes about them, but with great shamefastness, for indeed they
are more modest than some of our English women are. We promised them
to come again to them, and they us to keep their skins.

"Within this bay the savages say there are two rivers, the one whereof
we saw having a fair entrance, but we had no time to discover it.
Better harbors for shipping can not be than here are. At the entrance
of the bay are many rocks, and, in all likelihood, very good fishing
ground. Having a light moon, we set sail at evening, and before next
day noon got home, with a considerable quantity of beaver, and a good
report of the place, wishing we had been seated there."

Thus, by kindness, the natives of this region were won to friendship,
and amicable relations were established. Before the close of this year
another vessel arrived from England, bringing thirty-five persons to
join the colony. Though these emigrants were poor, and, having
consumed nearly all their food on a long voyage, were nearly starved,
the lonely colonists received the acquisition with great joy. Houses
were immediately built for their accommodation, and they were fed from
the colony stores. Winter now again whitened the hills of Plymouth.

Early in January, 1622, Canonicus, sovereign chief of the
Narragansets, notwithstanding the alliance of the foregoing summer
into which he had entered, dreading the encroachments of the white
men, and particularly apprehensive of the strength which their
friendship gave to his hereditary enemies, the Mohegans, sent to
Governor Bradford a bundle of arrows tied up in the skin of a
rattlesnake. Squantum was called to interpret the significance of such
a gift. He said that it was the Indian mode of expressing hostility
and of sending a declaration of war. This act shows an instinctive
sense of honor in the barbarian chieftain which civilized men do not
always imitate. Even the savages cherished ideas of chivalry which led
them to scorn to strike an unsuspecting and defenseless foe. The
friendly Indians around Plymouth assured the colonists that Canonicus
was making great preparations for war; that he could bring five
thousand warriors into the field; that he had sent spies to ascertain
the condition of the English and their weakness; and that he had
boasted that he could eat them all up at a mouthful. It is pleasant to
record that our fathers had not provoked this hostility by any act of
aggression. They had been thus far most eminently just and benevolent
in all their intercourse with the natives. They were settled upon land
to which Canonicus pretended no claim, and were on terms of cordial
friendship with all the Indians around them. The Pilgrims at this time
had not more than twenty men capable of bearing arms, and five
thousand savages were clashing their weapons, and filling the forest
with their war-whoops, preparing to attack them. Their peril was
indeed great.

Governor Bradford called a council of his most judicious men, and it
was decided that, under these circumstances, any appearance of
timidity would but embolden their enemies. The rattlesnake skin was
accordingly returned filled with powder and bullets, and accompanied
by a defiant message that, if Canonicus preferred war to peace, the
colonists were ready at any moment to meet him, and that he would rue
the day in which he converted friends into enemies.

Barbarian as well as civilized blusterers can, when discretion
prompts, creep out of an exceedingly small hole. Canonicus had no wish
to meet a foe who was thus prompt for the encounter. He immediately
sent to Governor Bradford the assurance, in Narraganset phrase, of his
high consideration, and begged him to believe that the arrows and the
snake skin were sent purely in a Pickwickian sense.

The threatening aspect of affairs at this time led the colonists to
surround their whole little village, including also the top of the
hill, on the side of which it was situated, with a strong palisade,
consisting of posts some twelve feet high firmly planted in the ground
in contact with each other. It was an enormous labor to construct this
fortification in the dead of winter. There were three entrance gates
to the little town thus walled in, with bulwarks to defend them.
Behind this rampart, with loop-holes through which the defenders could
fire upon any approaching foe, the colonists felt quite secure. A
large cannon was also mounted upon the summit of the hill, which would
sweep all the approaches with ball and grape-shot. Sentinels were
posted night and day, to guard against surprise, and their whole
available force was divided into four companies, each with its
commander, and its appointed place of rendezvous in case of an attack.
The months of January and February were occupied in this work. Early
in March the fortification was completed.

The heroic defiance which was returned to Canonicus, and the vigorous
measures of defense adopted, alarmed the Narragansets. They
immediately ceased all hostile demonstrations, and Canonicus remained
after this, until his death, apparently a firm friend of the English.

In June, to the great annoyance of the Pilgrims, two vessels came into
the harbor of Plymouth, bringing sixty wild and rude adventurers, who,
neither fearing God nor regarding man, had come to the New World to
seek their fortunes. They were an idle and dissolute set, greedy for
gain, and ripe for any deeds of dishonesty or violence. They had made
but poor provision for their voyage, and were almost starved. The
Pilgrims received them kindly, and gave them shelter and food; and yet
the ungrateful wretches stole their corn, wasted their substance, and
secretly reviled their habits of sobriety and devotion. Nearly all
the summer these unprincipled adventurers intruded upon the
hospitality of the Pilgrims. In the autumn, these men, sixty in
number, went to a place which they had selected in Massachusetts Bay,
then called Wessagusset, now the town of Weymouth, which they had
selected for their residence. They left their sick behind them, to be
nursed by those Christian Pilgrims whose piety had excited their
ribald abuse.

Hardly had these men left ere the ears of the Pilgrims were filled
with the clamors which their injustice and violence raised from the
outraged Indians. The Weymouth miscreants stole their corn, insulted
their females, and treated them with every vile indignity. The Indians
at last became exasperated beyond endurance, and threatened the total
destruction of the dissolute crew. At last starvation stares them in
the face, and they send in October to Plymouth begging for food. The
Pilgrims have not more than enough to meet their own wants during the
winter. But, to save them from famishing by hunger, Governor Bradford
himself takes a small party in a boat and sails along the coast,
purchasing corn of the Indians, getting a few quarts here and a few
bushels there, until he had collected twenty-eight hogsheads of corn
and beans. While at Chatham, then called Manamoyk, Squantum was taken
sick of a fever and died. It is a touching tribute to the kindness of
our Pilgrim fathers that this poor Indian testified so much love for
them. In his dying hour he prayed fervently that God would take him to
the heaven of the Englishmen, that he might dwell with them forever.
As remembrances of his affection, he bequeathed all his little effects
to sundry of his English friends. Governor Bradford and his
companions, with tears, followed the remains of their faithful
interpreter to the grave, and then, with saddened hearts, continued
their voyage.

At Nauset, now Eastham, their shallop was unfortunately wrecked.
Governor Bradford stored the corn on shore, placed it under the care
of the friendly Indians there, and, taking a native for a guide, set
out on foot to travel fifty miles through the forest to Plymouth. The
natives all along the way received him with kindness, and did every
thing in their power to aid him. Having arrived at Plymouth, he
dispatched Captain Standish with another shallop to fetch the corn.
The bold captain had a prosperous though a very tempestuous voyage.
While at Nauset an Indian stole some trifle from the shallop as she
lay in a creek. Captain Standish immediately went to the sachem of the
tribe, and informed him that the lost goods must be restored, or he
should make reprisals. The next morning the sachem came and delivered
the goods, saying that he was very sorry the crime had been committed;
that the thief had been arrested and punished; and that he had ordered
his women to make some bread for Captain Standish, in token of his
desire to cultivate just and friendly relations. Captain Standish
having arrived at Plymouth, a supply of corn was delivered to help the
people at Weymouth.

But these lawless adventurers were as improvident as they were vicious
and idle. By the month of February they were again destitute and
starving. They had borrowed all they could, and had stolen all they
could, and were now in a state of extreme misery, many of them having
already perished from exposure and want. The Indians hated them and
despised them. Conspiracies were formed to kill them all, and many
Indians, scattered here and there, were in favor of destroying all the
white men. They foresaw that civilized and savage life could not abide
side by side. The latter part of February the Weymouth people sent a
letter to Plymouth by an Indian, stating their deplorable condition,
and imploring further aid. They had become so helpless and degraded
that the Indians seem actually to have made slaves of them, compelling
them to perform the most menial services. The letter contained the
following dolorous complaints:

     "The boldness of the Indians increases abundantly, insomuch
     that the victuals we get they will take out of our pots and
     eat it before our faces. If we try to prevent them, they
     will hold a knife at our breasts. To satisfy them, we have
     been compelled to hang one of our company. We have sold our
     clothes for corn, and are ready to starve, both with cold
     and hunger also, because we can not endure to get victuals
     by reason of our nakedness."

Under these circumstances, one of the Weymouth men, ranging the woods,
came to an Indian barn and stole some corn. The owner, finding by the
footprints that it was an Englishman who had committed the theft,
determined to have revenge. With insulting and defiant confederates,
he went to the plantation and demanded that the culprit should be
hung, threatening, if there were not prompt acquiescence in the
demand, the utter destruction of the colonists. The consternation at
Weymouth was great. Nearly all were sick and half famished, and they
could present no resistance. After very anxious deliberation, it was
decided that, since the man who committed the theft was young and
strong, and a skillful cobbler, whose services could not be dispensed
with, they would by stratagem save his life, and substitute for him a
poor old bedrid weaver, who was not only useless to them, but a
burden. This economical arrangement was unanimously adopted. The poor
old weaver, bound hand and foot, and dressed in the clothes of the
culprit, was dragged from his bed, and was soon seen dangling in the
air, to the great delight of the Indians.

Much has been written upon this disgraceful transaction, and various
versions of it have been given, with sundry details, but the facts, so
far as can now be ascertained, are as we have stated. The deed is in
perfect accordance with the whole course pursued by the miserable men
who perpetrated it. The author of Hudibras unjustly--we hope not
maliciously--in his witty doggerel, ascribes this transaction of the
miscreants at Weymouth to the Pilgrims at Plymouth. The mirth-loving
satirist seemed to rejoice at the chance of directing a shaft against
the Puritans.

Just at this time news came to Plymouth that Massasoit was very sick,
and at the point of death. Governor Bradford immediately dispatched
Mr. Edward Winslow and Mr. John Hampden[A] to the dying chieftain,
with such medical aid as the colony could furnish. Their friend
Hobbomak accompanied them as guide and interpreter. Massasoit had two
sons quite young, Wamsutta and Pometacom, the eldest of whom would,
according to Indian custom, inherit the chieftainship. It was,
however, greatly feared that the ambitious and energetic Corbitant,
who had manifested much hostility to the English, might avail himself
of the death of Massasoit, and grasp the reins of power. The
deputation from Plymouth traveled the first day through the woods as
far as Middleborough, then the little Indian hamlet of Namasket. There
they passed the night in the wigwam of an Indian. They, the next day,
continued their journey, and crossing in a canoe the arm of the bay,
which there runs far inland and three miles beyond, with much anxiety
approached the dwelling-place of Corbitant at Mattapoiset, in the
present town of Swanzey. They had been informed by the way that
Massasoit was dead, and they had great fears that Corbitant had
already taken steps as a usurper, and that they, two defenseless men,
might fall victims to his violence.

[Footnote A: There is much evidence that this was the celebrated John
Hampden, renowned in the time of Charles I, and to whom Gray, in his
Elegy, alludes:

     "The village _Hampden_, that with dauntless breast
       The little tyrant of his fields withstood."]

Hobbomak, who had embraced Christianity, and was apparently a
consistent Christian, was greatly beloved by Massasoit. The honest
Indian, when he heard the tidings of his chieftain's death, bitterly
deplored his loss.

"My loving sachem! my loving sachem!" he exclaimed; "many have I
known, but never any like thee."

Then turning to Mr. Winslow, he added, "While you live you will never
see his like among the Indians. He was no deceiver, nor bloody, nor
cruel, like the other Indians. He never cherished a spirit of revenge,
and was easily reconciled to those who had offended him. He was ever
ready to listen to the advice of others, and governed his people by
wisdom and without severity."

When they arrived at Corbitant's house they found the sachem not at
home. His wife, however, treated them with great kindness, and
informed them that Massasoit was still alive, though at the point of
death. They therefore hastened on to Mount Hope. Mr. Winslow gives the
following account of the scene witnessed at the bedside of the sick
monarch:

     "When we arrived thither, we found the house so full that we
     could scarce get in, though they used their best diligence
     to make way for us. They were in the midst of their charms
     for him, making such a fiendlike noise that it distempered
     us who were well, and therefore was unlike to ease him that
     was sick. About him were six or eight women, who chafed his
     arms, legs, and thighs, to keep heat in him. When they had
     made an end of their charming, one told him that his friends
     the English were come to see him. Having understanding left,
     but his sight was wholly gone, he asked _who was come_. They
     told him _Winsnow_, for they can not pronounce the letter
     _l_, but ordinarily _n_ in the place thereof. He desired to
     speak with me. When I came to him, and they told him of it,
     he put forth his hand to me, which I took. Then he said
     twice, though very inwardly, _Keen_ _Winsnow?_ which is to
     say, Art thou Winslow? I answered _Ahhe_, that is, _yes_.
     Then he doubled these words: _Matta neen wonckanet namen
     Winsnow;_ that is to say, _O Winslow, I shall never see thee
     again!_"

Mr. Winslow immediately prepared some refreshing broth for the sick
man, and, by careful nursing, to the astonishment of all, he
recovered. Massasoit appeared to be exceedingly grateful for this
kindness, and ever after attributed his recovery to the skill and
attentions of his English friends. His unquestionable sincerity won
the confidence of the English, and they became more fully convinced of
his real worth than ever before. Mr. Winslow wished for a chicken to
make some broth. An Indian immediately set out, at two o'clock at
night, for a run of forty miles through the wilderness to Plymouth. In
a surprisingly short time, he returned with two live chickens.
Massasoit was so much pleased with the fowls--animals which he had
never seen before--that he would not allow them to be killed, but kept
them as pets. The kind-hearted yet imperial old chieftain manifested
great solicitude for the welfare of his people. He entreated Mr.
Winslow to visit all his villages, that he might relieve the sick and
the suffering who were in them. Mr. Winslow remained several days,
and his fame as a physician spread so rapidly that great crowds
gathered in an encampment around Mount Hope to gain relief from a
thousand nameless ills. Some came from the distance of more than a
hundred miles.

While at Mount Hope, Massasoit informed Mr. Winslow that Wittuwamet, a
sachem of one of the Massachusetts tribes of Indians near Weymouth,
and several other Indian chiefs, had formed a plot for the purpose of
cutting off the two English colonies. Massasoit stated that he had
been often urged to join in the conspiracy, but had always refused to
do so, and that he had done every thing in his power to prevent it.
Mr. Winslow very anxiously inquired into all the particulars, and
ascertained that the Weymouth men had so thoroughly aroused the
contempt as well as the indignation of the neighboring Indians, that
their total massacre was resolved upon. The Indians, however, both
respected and feared the colonists at Plymouth; and, apprehensive that
they might avenge the slaughter of their countrymen, it was resolved,
by a sudden and treacherous assault, to overwhelm them also, so that
not a single Englishman should remain to tell the tale.

With these alarming tidings, Mr. Winslow, with Mr. Hampden and
Hobbomak, left Mount Hope on his return. Corbitant, their
outwardly-reconciled enemy, accompanied them as far as his house in
what is now Swanzey.

     "That night," writes Mr. Winslow, "through the earnest
     request of Corbitant, we lodged with him at Mattapoiset. On
     the way I had much conference with him, so likewise at his
     house, he being a notable politician, yet full of merry
     jests and squibs, and never better pleased than when the
     like are returned upon him. Among other things, he asked me
     that, if _he_ were thus dangerously sick, as Massasoit had
     been, and should send to Plymouth for medicine, whether the
     governor would send it; and if he would, whether I would
     come therewith to him. To both which I answered yes; whereat
     he gave me many joyful thanks."

"I am surprised," said Corbitant, after a moment's thought, "that two
Englishmen should dare to venture so far into our country alone. Are
you not afraid?"

"Where there is true love," Mr. Winslow replied, "there is no fear."

"But if your love be such," said the wily Indian, "and bear such
fruit, how happens it that when we come to Plymouth, you stand upon
your guard, with the mouth of your pieces pointed toward us?"

"This," replied Mr. Winslow, "is a mark of respect. It is our custom
to receive our best friends in this manner."

Corbitant shook his head, and said, "I do not like such salutations."

Observing that Mr. Winslow, before eating, implored a blessing,
Corbitant desired to know what it meant. Mr. Winslow endeavored to
explain to him some of the primary truths of revealed religion, and
repeated to him the Ten Commandments. Corbitant listened to them very
attentively, and said that he liked them all except the seventh. "It
must be very inconvenient," he said, "for a man to be tied all his
life to one woman, whether she pleases him or not."

As Mr. Winslow continued his remarks upon the goodness of God, and the
gratitude he should receive from us, Corbitant added, "I believe
almost as you do. The being whom you call God we call Kichtan."

Mr. Winslow and his companions passed a very pleasant night in the
Indian dwelling, receiving the most hospitable entertainment. The
next morning they hastened on their way to Plymouth. They immediately
informed the governor of the alarming tidings they had heard
respecting the conspiracy, and a council of all the men in the colony
was convened. It was unanimously decided that action, prompt,
vigorous, and decisive, was necessary.

The bold Captain Standish was immediately placed in command of an army
of _eight men_ to proceed to Weymouth. He embarked his force in a
squadron of _one boat_, to set sail for Massachusetts--for
Massachusetts and Plymouth were then distinct colonies. The captain
was an intrepid, impulsive man, who rarely took counsel of prudence.
He would wrong no man, and, let the consequences be what they might,
he would submit to wrong from no man. The Pilgrims valued him highly,
and yet so deeply regretted his fiery temperament that they were
unwilling to receive him to the communion of the Church.

When they arrived at Weymouth they found a large number of Indians
swaggering around the wretched settlement, and treating the humiliated
and starving colonists with the utmost insolence. The colonists dared
not exhibit the slightest spirit of retaliation. The Indians had been
so accustomed to treat the godless race at Weymouth with every
indignity, that they had almost forgotten that the Pilgrims were men
of different blood. As Captain Standish and his eight men landed, they
were met by a mob of Indians, who, by derision and insolence, seemed
to aim to provoke a quarrel. Wittuwamet, the head of the conspirators,
was there. He was a stout, brawny savage, vulgar, bold, and impudent,
almost beyond the conception of a civilized mind. Accompanied by a
gang of confederates, he approached Captain Standish, whetting his
knife, and threatening his death in phrase exceedingly contemptuous
and insulting. By the side of this chief was another Indian named
Peksuot, of gigantic stature and Herculean strength, who taunted the
captain with his inferior size, and assailed him with a volley of
barbarian blackguardism. All this it would be hard for a meek man to
bear. Captain Standish was not a meek man. The hot blood of the
Puritan Cavalier was soon at the boiling point. Disdaining to take
advantage even of such a foe, he threw aside his gun, and springing
upon the gigantic Peksuot, grasped at the knife which was suspended
from his neck, the blade of which was double-edged, and ground to a
point as sharp as a needle. There was a moment of terrific conflict,
and then the stout Indian fell dead upon the ground, with the blood
gushing from many mortal wounds. Another Englishman closed with
Wittuwamet, and there was instantly a general fray. Wittuwamet and
another Indian were killed; another was taken prisoner and hung upon
the spot, for conspiring to destroy the English; the rest fled.
Captain Standish followed up his victory, and pursued the fugitives. A
few more were killed. This unexpected development of courage and power
so overwhelmed the hostile Indians that they implored peace.

The Weymouth men, thus extricated from peril, were afraid to remain
there any longer, though Captain Standish told them that he should not
hesitate to stay with one half their number. Still they persisted in
leaving. Captain Standish then generously offered to take them with
him to Plymouth, where they should share in the now almost exhausted
stores of the Pilgrims. But they decided, since they had a small
vessel in which they could embark, to go to Monhegan, an island near
the mouth of the Kennebec River, where many English ships came
annually to fish. The captain helped them on board the vessel,
provided for them a supply of corn, and remained until their sail was
disappearing in the distant horizon of the sea. He then returned to
Plymouth, and all were rejoiced that the country was delivered from
such a set of vagabonds.

The Pilgrims regretted the hasty and violent measures adopted by
Captain Standish, and yet they could not, under the circumstances,
severely condemn him. The Rev. Mr. Robinson, father of the Plymouth
Church, wrote from Holland:

     "Due allowance must be made for the warm temper of Captain
     Standish. I hope that the Lord has sent him among you for
     good, if you will but use him as you ought. I fear, however,
     that there is wanting that tenderness for the life of man,
     made after God's own image, which we ought to cherish. It
     would have been happy if some had been converted before any
     had been killed."




CHAPTER IV.

THE PEQUOT WAR.

1630-1637

Prosperity of the colonies.--Massachusetts Colony.--Settlement of
Boston.--Motives actuating the settlers.--Correspondence with the
Dutch governor.--Dutch colonies.--Taking possession.--Opposition to
their settlement.--Beauty of Connecticut.--The Pequots.--Sassacus.--The
three powers.--Continual wars.--Power of Sassacus.--Trading
expedition.--Murder of the company.--Diplomatic skill.--Indians'
account of the affair.--Friendly alliance.--Planting new
colonies.--Indications of meditated hostility.--Roger Williams.--Mr.
Williams sent as embassador.--His mission.--His success.--Enmity of
the Pequots.--Acts of violence.--Discovery of the murder of Captain
Stone and his men.--Trading expedition to the Pequots.--John
Gallop.--Valiant behavior of Captain Gallop.--Victory over the
Indians.--The body of Captain Oldham.--Loss of the
pinnace.--Retribution.--The expedition.--The first attack.--The
English victorious.--The work of devastation.--Inefficiency of the
punishment.--Exultation of Sassacus.--Scenes of blood.--Energy of
Sassacus.--Vigilance of the enemy.--Siege of Saybrook.--Necessity
for energetic action.--Raising an army.--Uncas sachem of
the Mohegans.--Departure of the troops.--Torture of a
captive.--Fortresses.--Plan of attack.--Delight of
the Pequots.--Detentions.--Landing.--Cordial
reception.--Re-enforcements.--Determination to
proceed.--Boasting.--Continued re-enforcements.--Rapid
march.--Plan of attack changed.--Ardor of the Indians
cooled.--Desertions.--Repose.--Devotions of the English.--Address to
the Indians.--The fort.--Negligence of the enemy.--The attack.--The
conflict.--The wigwams burned.--Massacre.--Horrors of the
scene.--Extermination.--Number of those escaping.--Amazement of the
Indians.--Destitution of the English.--The vessels seen.--Attack from
the Indians.--Valor of the English.--Desertion of the
Narragansets.--Retreat of the English.--Grief of Sassacus.--Journey to
Saybrook.--Effects of the victory.--News of the victory dispatched to
Massachusetts.--New expedition.--Fugitives.--Pursuit.--Sachem's
Head.--Arrival at New Haven.--News of a camp in a swamp.--Surrender of
Indians.--Escape of the Pequots.--Death of Sassacus.--Children sold
into slavery.--Extermination of the tribe.--The motives for the
deed.--The sunshine of peace and plenty.


The energetic, yet just and conciliatory measures adopted by the
Pilgrims at Plymouth, in their intercourse with the Indians, were
productive of the happiest results. For several years there was a
period of peace and prosperity. The colony had now become firmly
established, and every year emigrants, arriving from the mother
country, extended along the coasts and into the interior the comforts
and the refinements of civilization.

In the year 1630, ten years after the landing of the Pilgrims, a
company of gentlemen of fortune and of social distinction organized a
colony, upon a much grander scale than the one at Plymouth, to
emigrate to Massachusetts Bay, under the name of the Massachusetts
Colony. The leaders in this enterprise were men of decidedly a higher
cast of character, intellectual and social, than their brethren at
Plymouth. On the 12th of June this company landed at Salem, and before
the close of the year their number amounted to seventeen hundred. The
tide of emigration now began to flow very rapidly, and eight or ten
towns were soon settled. Toward the close of this year a few families
moved to the end of the peninsula now called Boston. The dense
wilderness spread around them. They reared their log huts near the
beach, at the north end, and by fishing, hunting, and raising Indian
corn, obtained a frugal existence. In the five following years very
great accessions were made to this important colony. Thriving
settlements sprang up rapidly all along the coast. The colonists
appear to have been conscientious in their dealings with the natives,
purchasing their lands of them at a fair price. Nearly all these men
came to the wilderness of this new world inspired by as lofty motives
as can move the human heart. Many of them were wealthy and of high
rank. At an immense sacrifice, they abandoned the luxuries and
refinements to which they had been accustomed at home, that they might
enjoy in New England that civil and religious liberty which Old
England no longer afforded them.

The Dutch had now established a colony at the mouth of the Hudson
River, and were looking wistfully at the fertile meadows which their
traders had found upon the banks of the Connecticut. The English were
apprehensive that the Dutch might anticipate them in taking possession
of that important valley. In 1630 the Earl of Warwick had obtained
from Charles I. a patent, granting him all the land extending west
from Narraganset Bay one hundred and twenty miles. This grant
comprehended the whole of the present state of Connecticut and
considerable more, reaching west to the Dutch settlements on the
Hudson River. Preparations were immediately made for the establishment
of a small company on the Connecticut River. Governor Winthrop sent a
message to the Dutch governor at New Netherlands, as New York was then
called, informing him that the King of England had granted all the
region of the Connecticut River to his own subjects, and requesting
that the Dutch would not build there. Governor Van Twiller returned a
very polite answer, stating that the authorities in Holland had
granted the same country to a Dutch company, and he accordingly
requested the English not to settle there.

Governor Winthrop immediately dispatched some men through the
wilderness to explore the country, and several small vessels were
sent to ascend the river, and, by trade, to establish friendly
relations with the Indians. The Plymouth colony also sent a company of
men with a frame house and boards for covering. When William Holmes,
the leader of this company, had sailed up the Connecticut as far as
the present city of Hartford, he found that the Dutch were before him,
and had erected a fort there. The Dutch ordered him to go back, and
stood by their cannon with lighted torches, threatening to fire upon
him.

Mr. Holmes, an intrepid man, regardless of their threats, which they
did not venture to execute, pushed boldly by, and established himself
at the mouth of Little River, in the present town of Windsor. Here he
put up his house, surrounded it with palisades, and fortified it as
strongly as his means would allow. Governor Van Twiller, being
informed of this movement, sent a band of seventy men, under arms, to
tear down this house and drive away the occupants. But Holmes was
ready for battle, and the Dutch, finding him so well fortified that he
could not be displaced without a bloody conflict, retired.

The whole region of the State of Connecticut was at this time a
wilderness, covered with a dense and gloomy forest, which
overshadowed both mountain and valley. There were scattered here and
there a few spots where the trees had disappeared, and where the
Indians planted their corn. The Indians were exceedingly numerous in
this lovely valley. The picturesque beauty of the country, the genial
climate, the fertile soil, and the vast variety of fish and fowl which
abounded in its bays, ponds, and streams, rendered Connecticut quite
an elysium for savage life.

These Indians were divided into very many tribes or clans, more or
less independent, each with its sachem and its chief warriors. The
Pequots were by far the most powerful and warlike among them. Their
territory spread over the present towns of New London, Groton, and
Stonington. Just north of them was a branch of the same tribe, called
the Mohegans, under their distinguished sachem Uncas. The Pequots and
the Mohegans, thus united, were resistless. It is said that, a few
years before the arrival of the English in this country, the Pequots
had poured down like an inundation from the forests of the north,
sweeping all opposition before them, and had taken possession of the
sea-coast as a conquered country.

Sassacus was the sovereign chief of this nation. The present town of
Groton was his regal residence. Upon two commanding and beautiful
eminences in this town, from which the eye ranged over a very
extensive prospect of the Sound and the adjacent country, Sassacus had
erected, with much barbarian skill, his royal fortresses. The one was
on the banks of the Mystic; the other, a few miles west, on the banks
of the Pequot River, now called the Thames. His sway extended over all
the tribes on Long Island, and along the coast from the dominions of
Canonicus, on Narraganset Bay, to the Hudson River, and spreading into
the interior as far as the present county of Worcester in
Massachusetts. Thus there seem to have been, in the days of the
Pilgrims, three dominant nations, with their illustrious chieftains,
who held sway over all the petty tribes in the south and easterly
portions of New England. The Wampanoags, under Massasoit, held
Massachusetts generally. The Narragansets, under Canonicus, occupied
Rhode Island. The Pequots, under Sassacus, reigned over Connecticut.
These powerful tribes were jealous of each other, and were almost
incessantly engaged in wars.

Sassacus had twenty-six sachems under him, and could lead into the
field four thousand warriors. He was shrewd, wary, and treacherous,
and with great jealousy watched the increasing power of the English,
who were now spreading rapidly over the principal parts of New
England.

In the autumn of the year 1634, just after William Holmes had put up
his house at Windsor, two English traders, Captains Norton and Stone,
ascended the Connecticut River in a boat, with eight men, to purchase
furs of the Indians. They had a large assortment of those goods which
the natives prized, and for which they were eager to barter any thing
in their possession. The Indians one night, as the vessel was moored
near the shore, rushed from an ambush, overpowered the crew, murdered
every individual, and plundered and sunk the vessel. The Massachusetts
colony, which had then become far more powerful than the Plymouth,
demanded of Sassacus redress and the surrender of the murderers. The
Pequot chieftain, not being then prepared for hostilities, sent an
embassy to Massachusetts with a present of valuable furs, and with an
artfully contrived story in justification of the deed.

The barbarian embassadors, with diplomatic skill which Talleyrand or
Metternich might have envied, affirmed that the English had seized two
peaceable Indians, bound them hand and foot, and were carrying them
off in their vessel, no one knew where. As the vessel ascended the
river, the friends of the two captives followed cautiously through the
forest, along the banks, watching for an opportunity to rush to their
rescue. The Indians were well acquainted with the treachery of the
infamous Englishmen in stealing the natives, and transporting them to
perpetual slavery. One night the English adventurers, according to the
representation of the Indians, drew their vessel up to the shore, and
all landed to sleep. At midnight, the friends of the captives watched
their opportunity, and made a rush upon the English while they were
asleep, killed all, and released their friends. They also stated that
all the Indians engaged in the affray, except two, had since died of
the small-pox.

This was a plausible story. The magistrates of Massachusetts, men of
candor and justice, could not disprove it; and as, admitting this
statement to be true, but little blame could be attached to the
Indians, the governor of Massachusetts accepted the apology, and
entered into friendly alliance with the Pequots. In the treaty into
which he at this time entered with the Indian embassadors, the Pequots
conceded to the English the Connecticut River and its immediate
shores, if the English would establish settlements there and open
trade with them.

Accordingly, arrangements were immediately made for the planting of a
colony in the valley of the Connecticut. In the autumn of 1635, five
years after the establishment of the Massachusetts colony at Salem,
and fifteen years after the establishment of the Plymouth colony, a
company of sixty persons, men, women, and children, left the towns of
Dorchester, Roxbury, Watertown, and Cambridge, and commenced a journey
through the pathless wilderness in search of their future home. It was
the 12th of October when they left the shores of Massachusetts Bay.
For fourteen days they toiled along through the wilderness, driving
their cattle before them, and enduring incredible hardships as they
traversed mountains, forded streams, and waded through almost
impenetrable swamps. On the 9th of November they reached the
Connecticut at a point near the present city of Hartford. The same
journey can now be taken with ease in two and a half hours. In less
than a year three towns were settled, containing in all nearly eight
hundred inhabitants. A fort was also erected at the entrance of the
river, to exclude the Dutch, and it was garrisoned by twenty men.

The Indians now began to be seriously alarmed in view of the rapid
encroachments of the English. They became sullen, and annoyed the
colonists with many acts of petty hostility. There were soon many
indications that Sassacus was meditating hostilities, and that he was
probably laying his plans for a combination of all the tribes in a
resistless assault upon the infant settlements.

The Wampanoags, under Massasoit, were still firm in their friendship;
but it was greatly feared that the Narragansets, whose power was very
formidable, might be induced to yield to the solicitations of the
Pequots.

Roger Williams, who had taken refuge in Rhode Island to escape from
his enemies in Massachusetts, was greatly beloved by the Indians. He
had become quite a proficient in the Indian language, and by his
honesty, disinterestedness, and courtesy, had particularly won the
esteem of the Narragansets, in the midst of whom he resided. The
governor and council of Connecticut immediately wrote to Mr.
Williams, soliciting him to visit the Narragansets, and exert his
influence to dissuade them from entering into the coalition.

This great and good man promptly embarked in the humane enterprise.
Bidding a hurried farewell to his wife, he started alone in a
dilapidated canoe to sail along the shores of Narraganset Bay upon his
errand of mercy. A violent tempest arose, tumbling in such a surf upon
the shore that he could not land, while he was every moment threatened
with being swallowed up in the abysses which were yawning around him.
At length, after having encountered much hardship and surmounted many
perils, he arrived at the imperial residence of Canonicus. The
barbarian chieftain was at home, and it so happened that some Pequot
embassadors had but a short time before arrived, and were then
conferring with the Narragansets in reference to the coalition. All
the arts of diplomacy of civilized and of savage life, of the wily
Indian and of the sincere and honest Christian, were now brought into
requisition. With heroism which was the more signal in that it was
entirely unostentatious, this bold man remained three days and three
nights with the savages, encountering the threats of the Pequots, and
expecting every night that they would take his life before morning.
Grandeur of character always wins applause. The Indians marveled at
his calm, unboastful intrepidity, and Canonicus, who was also a man of
heroic mould, was so influenced by his arguments, that he finally not
only declined to enter into an alliance with the Pequots, but pledged
anew his friendship for the English, and engaged to co-operate with
them in repelling the threatened assault.

This was an achievement of immense moment. Other distant tribes, who
were on the eve of joining the coalition, intimidated by the
withdrawal of the Narragansets, and by their co-operation with the
English, also refused to take part in the war, and thus the Pequots
were left to fight the battle alone. But the Pequots, with their four
thousand merciless warriors, were a fearful foe to rush from their
inaccessible retreats, with torch and tomahawk, upon the sparse and
defenseless settlements scattered along the banks of the Connecticut
River.

Various acts of individual violence were perpetrated by the savages
before war broke out in all its horrors. The English were anxious to
avert hostilities, if possible, as they had nothing to gain from war
with the natives, and their helpless families would be exposed to
inconceivable misery from the barbarism of the foe.

The colonists now learned that the excuse which had been offered for
the assault upon Captains Norton and Stone was a fabrication, and
false in all its particulars. These men had engaged several Indians to
pilot them up the river. They often stopped to trade with the natives.
One night, as they were moored alongside of the shore, while many of
the men had gone upon the land, and the captain was asleep in the
cabin, a large number of Indians made a premeditated assault, and
murdered all on board. The rest, as they returned in the darkness and
unsuspicious of danger, were easily dispatched.

This new evidence of the treachery of the Pequots exasperated the
colonists. Still, they did not think it best to usher in a war with
such powerful foes by any retaliation. The Pequots, encouraged by this
forbearance, became more and more insolent. In July, 1635, John Oldham
ventured on a trading expedition to the Pequot country; for the
Pequots, notwithstanding all the appearances against them, still
pretended to friendship, and solicited trade. One object of sending
Captain Oldham upon this expedition was to ascertain more definitely
the real disposition of the savages.

A few days after his departure, a man by the name of John Gallop was
in a small vessel of about twenty tons, on his passage from
Connecticut to Massachusetts Bay. A strong northerly wind drove him
near Manisses, or Block Island. This island is about fourteen miles
from Point Judith. It is eight miles long, and from two to four wide.
To his surprise, he saw near the shore an English vessel, which he
immediately recognized as Captain Oldham's, filled with Indians, and
evidently in their possession. Sixteen savages, well armed with their
own weapons, and with the guns and swords which they had taken from
the English, crowded the boat.

Captain Gallop was a man of lion heart, inspirited by that Puritan
chivalry which ever displayed itself in the most amazing deeds of
daring, without the slightest apparent consciousness that there was
any thing extraordinary in the exploit. His little vessel was
considerably larger than the boat which the Indians had captured. His
crew, however, consisted of only one man and two boys. And yet,
without the slightest hesitancy, he immediately decided upon a naval
fight with the Indians. Loading his muskets and spreading all sail, he
bore down upon his foe. The wind was fair and strong, and, standing
firmly at the helm, while his crew were protected by the bulwarks from
the arrows and bullets of the Indians, and were ready with their
muskets to shoot any who attempted to board, he guided his vessel so
skillfully as to strike the smaller boat of the foe fairly upon the
quarter. The shock was so severe that the boat was nearly capsized,
and six of the Indians were knocked into the sea and drowned.

Captain Gallop immediately stood off and prepared for another similar
broadside. In the mean time, he lashed the anchor to the bows of the
vessel in such a way that the fluke should pierce the side of the
boat, and serve as a grappling iron. As there were now only ten
Indians to be attacked, he decided to board the boat in case it should
be grappled by the fluke of his anchor. Having made these
arrangements, he again came running down before a brisk gale, and,
striking the boat again, tore open her side with his anchor, while at
the same moment he poured in a heavy discharge of buckshot upon the
terrified savages. Most of them, however, had plunged into the hold of
the little pinnace, and the shot effected but little execution. A
third time he ran down upon the pinnace, and struck her with such
force that five more, in their turn, leaped overboard and were
drowned. There were now but five savages left, and the intrepid Gallop
immediately boarded the enemy. Three of the savages retreated to a
small cabin, where, with swords, they defended themselves. Two were
taken captive and bound. Having no place where he could keep these two
Indians apart, and fearing that they might get loose, and, in
co-operation with the three savages who had fortified themselves in
the cabin, rise successfully upon him, Captain Gallop threw one of the
Indians overboard, and he was drowned. This was rough usage; but the
savages, who had apparently rendered it necessary by their previous
act of robbery and murder, could not complain.

The pinnace was then stripped of her rigging and of all the goods
which remained. The body of Captain Oldham was found, awfully
mutilated, beneath a sail. The rest of the crew, but two or three in
number, had been carried as captives by the savages on the shore.
Captain Gallop buried the corpse as reverently as possible in the sea,
and then took the pinnace in tow, with the three savages barricaded in
the cabin. Night came on, dark and stormy; the wind increased to a
tempest, and it was necessary to cut the pinnace adrift. She was never
heard of more.

Block Island, where these scenes occurred, belonged to the
Narragansets; but many who were engaged in the murder, as if fearful
of the vengeance of Canonicus, their own chieftain, fled across the
Sound to the Pequot country, and were protected by them. The Pequots
thus became implicated in the crime. Canonicus, on the other hand,
rescued the captives taken from the boat, and restored them to their
friends. The English now decided that it was necessary for them so to
punish the Indians as to teach them that such outrages could no longer
be committed with impunity. It was a fearful vengeance which was
resolved upon. An army of one hundred men was raised, commissioned to
proceed to Block Island, burn every wigwam, destroy all the corn,
shoot every man, and take the women and children captive. Thus the
island was to be left a solitude and a desert.

On the 25th of August, 1636, the detachment sailed from Boston. The
Indians were aware of the punishment with which they were threatened,
and were prepared for resistance. Captain John Endicott, who was in
command of the expedition, anchored off the island, and seeing a
solitary Indian wandering upon the beach, who, it afterward appeared,
had been placed there as a decoy, took a boat and a dozen armed men,
and rowed toward the shore. When they reached within a few rods of the
beach, suddenly sixty warriors, picked men, tall, athletic, and of
established bravery, sprang up from behind the sand-hills, rushed to
the water's edge, and poured in upon the boat a volley of arrows.
Fortunately, the boat was so far from the land that not much injury
was done, though two were seriously wounded. As the water was shoal,
the colonists, musket in hand, sprang from the boat and waded toward
the shore, piercing their foes with a well-directed volley of bullets.
Had the Indians possessed any measure of the courage of the English,
the sixty savages might have closed upon the twelve colonists, and
easily have destroyed them all; but they had no disciplined courage
which would enable them to stand a charge. With awful yells of fury
and despair, they broke and fled into the forests and the swamps.

Captain Endicott now landed his force and commenced the work of
destruction. There were two Indian villages upon the island,
containing about sixty wigwams each. The torch was applied, and they
were all destroyed. Every canoe that could be found was staved. There
were also upon the island about two hundred acres of standing corn,
which the English trampled down. But not an Indian could be found. The
women and children had probably been removed from the island, and the
warriors who remained so effectually concealed themselves that the
English sought them in vain. After spending two days upon the island,
the expedition again embarked, and sailed across the Sound to the
mouth of the Thames, then called Pequot Harbor. As the vessel entered
the harbor, about three hundred warriors assembled upon the shore.
Captain Endicott sent an interpreter to inform them that he had come
to demand the murderers of the English, and to obtain compensation for
the injuries which the Indians had inflicted. To this the Pequots
defiantly replied with a shower of arrows. Captain Endicott landed on
both sides of the harbor where New London now stands. The Indians
sullenly retired before him to the adjacent rocks and fastnesses,
rendering it necessary for the English to keep in a compact body to
guard against assault. Two Indians were shot, and probably a few
others wounded. The wigwams along the shore were burned, and the
canoes destroyed, and then the expedition again spread its sails and
returned to Boston, having done infinitely more harm than good. They
had merely exasperated their haughty foes. They had but struck the
hornets' nest with a stick. The Connecticut people were in exceeding
terror, as they knew that savage vengeance would fall mercilessly upon
them.

Sassacus was a stern man of much native talent. He laughed to scorn
this impotent revenge. To burn an Indian wigwam was inflicting no
great calamity. The huts were reared anew before the expedition had
arrived in Boston. The Pequots now despised their foes, and, gathering
around their council fires, they clashed their weapons, shrieked their
war-whoop, and excited themselves into an intensity of rage. The
defenseless settlers along the banks of the Connecticut were now at
the mercy of the savages, who were roused to the commission of every
possible atrocity. No pen can describe the scenes of woe which, during
the autumn and winter of 1636 and 1637, transpired in the solitudes of
the wilderness. The Indians were every where in marauding bands. At
midnight, startled by the yell of the savage, the lonely settler
sprang to his door but to see his building in flames, to be pierced
with innumerable arrows, to fall upon his floor weltering in blood,
and to see, as death was stealing over him, his wife and his children
brained by the tomahawk. The tortures inflicted by the savages upon
their captives were too horrible to be narrated. Even the recital
almost causes the blood to chill in one's veins.

Sassacus was indefatigable in his endeavors to rouse all the tribes to
combine in a war of extermination.

"Now," said he, "is our time. If we do not now destroy the English,
they will soon prove too powerful for us, and they will obtain all our
lands. We need not meet them in open battle. We can shoot and poison
their cattle, burn their houses and barns, lay in ambush for them in
the fields and on the roads. They are now few. We are numerous. We can
thus soon destroy them all."

Why did they not succeed in this plan? The only answer is that God
willed otherwise. The Indians planned their campaign with great
skill, and prosecuted it with untiring vigor. Not a boat could pass up
or down the river in safety. The colonists were compelled to keep a
constant guard, to huddle together in block-houses, and could never
lie down at night without the fear of being murdered before morning.
Almost every night the flame of their burning dwellings reddened the
sky, and the shriek of the captives expiring under demoniac torture
blended with the hideous shout of the savages.

At the mouth of the Connecticut River the fort of Saybrook had been
erected. It was built strongly of timber, to resist the approaches of
the Dutch as well as of the Indians, and was garrisoned by about fifty
men. As this point commanded the entrance of the river, it was deemed
of essential importance that it should be effectually fortified. But
the Pequots were now so emboldened that they surrounded the fort, and
held the garrison in a state of siege. They burned every house in the
vicinity, razed all the out-houses of the fort, and burned every stack
of hay and every useful thing which was not within reach of the guns
of the fortress. The cattle were all killed, and no person could
venture outside of the fort. The Indians, keeping beyond the reach of
gun-shot, danced with insulting and defiant gestures, challenging the
English to come out, and mocking them with the groans and pious
invocations which they had extorted from their victims of torture.

This awful state of affairs rendered it necessary to prosecute the war
with a degree of energy which should insure decisive results. The
story of Indian atrocities caused every ear in the three colonies to
tingle, and all united to punish the common enemy. Plymouth furnished
a vessel, well armed and provisioned, and manned by fifty soldiers
under efficient officers. Massachusetts raised two hundred men to send
promptly to the theatre of conflict. Connecticut furnished ninety men
from the towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield. This was an
immense effort for the feeble colonists to make.

The Mohegans dwelt in the interior of the country, and were
consequently nearer the English settlements. Their sachem, Uncas, had
his royal residence in the present town of Norwich. He was a stern,
reckless man, and quite ambitious of claiming independence of
Sassacus, with his powerful section of the tribe. The Mohegans,
Pequots, and Narragansets all spoke the same language, with but a
slight diversity in dialect. The Mohegans, with apparent eagerness,
united with the English. The Narragansets also continued firm in their
pledged friendship to the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonists, and
promised a liberal supply of warriors to aid them in punishing the
haughty Pequots. Sassacus had now raised a storm which he well might
dread. The doom of his tribe was sealed.

On Wednesday, the 10th of May, 1637, the Connecticut troops,
consisting of ninety Englishmen and seventy Mohegans, embarked at
Hartford in three vessels, and sailed down the river to the fort at
Saybrook. The expedition was commanded by Captain John Mason. Uncas,
the Mohegan sachem, led the Indian warriors. When they arrived near
the mouth of the river, the Indians desired to be set on shore, that
they might advance by land to the fort, and attack the Pequots by
surprise. The English were very apprehensive that their unreliable
allies were about to prove treacherous, and to desert to the Pequots.
But, as it was desirable to test them before the hour of battle
arrived, they were permitted to land. The Mohegans, however, proved
faithful. On their way to the fort they fell in with forty Pequots,
whom they attacked fiercely and put to rout, after having killed seven
of their number, and taken one a captive. Their wretched prisoner they
bound to a stake, and put to death with every barbarity which demoniac
malice could suggest.

The two parties met at Fort Saybrook. Sassacus was strongly
intrenched, about twenty miles east of them, in two forts, or, rather,
fortified towns. These Pequot fortresses were about five miles distant
from each other, on commanding hills, one on the banks of the Thames,
and the other on the banks of the Mystic. It was the original plan to
sail directly into the mouth of the Thames, then called Pequot Harbor,
and attack the savage foe in his concentrated strength. But these
fortresses were so situated as to command an extensive view of the
ocean, as well as of the adjacent country. The vessels, consequently,
could not enter Pequot Harbor without being seen by the Indians, and
thus giving them several hours' warning.

After long and anxious deliberation, the chaplain of the expedition,
Rev. Mr. Stone, having been requested to pass the night in prayer for
Divine guidance, it was decided to sail directly by the mouths of
Pequot Harbor and the Mystic, and to continue along the shore to
Narraganset Bay. Here they hoped to meet with the troops dispatched
from Plymouth and Massachusetts. They could then march across the
country about forty miles, and, approaching the Pequot forts in the
night and through the forest, could attack them by surprise.

On Friday, the 19th of May, the expedition sailed from the mouth of
the Connecticut. The Pequots, through their runners, kept themselves
informed of every movement, and when they descried the vessels
approaching, they felt that the decisive hour had come, and prepared
for battle. But when they saw the vessels pass directly by without
entering the harbor, they were exceedingly elated, supposing the
English were afraid to attack them. They shouted, and danced, and
clashed their weapons, and assailed their foes with all the artillery
of barbarian derision. But the colonists, unconscious of the ridicule
to which they were exposed, continued their course, and came to anchor
in Narraganset Bay just as the twilight of Saturday evening was
darkening into night. It was too late then to land, and the next day
being the Sabbath, they all remained on board their vessels, in the
sacred observance of the day. All of Monday, and until late in the
afternoon of Tuesday, a fearful gale swept the ocean, so that no boat
could pass to the shore. Tuesday evening, however, Captain Mason
landed, and had an interview with Miantunnomah, a chief very high in
rank, who seems to have shared with his uncle Canonicus in the
government of the Narragansets.

    "Two mighty chiefs--one cautious, wise, and old;
      One young, and strong, and terrible in fight--
    All Narraganset and Coweset hold;
      One lodge they build, one council-fire they light."

The fiery-spirited young sachem, hating the Pequots, and eager for a
fight with them in conjunction with such powerful allies as the
English, cordially received Captain Mason, granted him a passage
through his country, and immediately called out a re-enforcement of
two hundred men to join the expedition. That night an Indian runner
arrived in the camp, and informed Captain Mason that Captain Patrick,
with forty men, who had been sent in advance of the Massachusetts and
Plymouth contingent, had reached Mr. Roger Williams's plantation in
Providence, and were hastening to meet him. Desirable as this
junction was deemed, after mature deliberation, it was decided not to
wait for Captain Patrick, as it was very important to strike a sudden
and unexpected blow. The Narragansets stood in great dread of the
Pequots, and it was feared that their zeal might grow cold. It was
also feared that if they did not proceed immediately, the Pequots
might receive tidings of their approach.

The little army, therefore, the very next morning, Wednesday, May
24th, commenced its march. The force consisted of seventy-seven
Englishmen, sixty Mohegans, and two hundred Narragansets. The
Narragansets were great braggarts. They made the forest resound with
their vainglorious boasts, and, with the most valiant gestures,
declared that they would now show the English how to fight. Guided by
Indians through the forest, they pressed along rapidly through the
day, and at night, having traversed about twenty miles, bivouacked
upon the banks of a small stream. The next morning they resumed their
march, and, crossing the stream, approached the territory of the
Pequots. As they had advanced, large numbers of Narraganset warriors
had flocked to join them, and they had now five hundred of these
boastful savages in the advance leading them on.

The day was intensely hot, and, in their rapid march, several of the
troops fainted by the way. But, conscious that much depended upon
taking the Pequots by surprise, Captain Mason urged his men forward,
and about noon reached the banks of the Pawcatuck River, about twelve
miles from the previous night's encampment. The Indians led them to a
point in the river where they could pass it by a ford. They halted
here for an hour, and refreshed themselves, and then moved on with
much caution, as they were now almost in the country of their foe. It
was but twelve miles from the ford to the first Pequot fort on the
banks of the Mystic.

It had been the intention to attack both the forts, the Mystic and the
Pequot, at once; but Wequash, a Pequot sachem, who had revolted from
Sassacus, and, treacherous to his tribe, acted as their guide, here
gave them such information respecting the situation and strength of
these fortresses as induced them to alter their resolution, and to
decide to make a united attack upon the fort at Mystic. When the
Narragansets found that Captain Mason was actually intending to march
directly up to the very palisades of the fort, and assail those
fierce and terrible warriors in their strongholds, they were filled
with amazement and consternation. Many deserted and returned to
Narraganset. All who remained lingered irresolutely in the rear. The
English now found that their Indian allies could render them but very
little service. Undaunted, however, by the great odds against which
they would have to contend, they pressed vigorously and silently on,
followed by a vagabond train of two or three hundred savages. The sun
had gone down, and the shades of night were descending upon the forest
when they reached the banks of the Mystic.

They were now within three miles of one of the great Pequot forts, on
what is still called Pequot Hill, in the present town of Groton.
Crossing the stream, here narrow and shallow, by a ford, they crept
cautiously along, in the deepening darkness, until they came to a
smooth and level plot of ground between two craggy bluffs now called
Porter's Rocks.

The troops, excessively fatigued by travel and the heat of the sultry
day, threw themselves upon the ground for a few hours' repose,
intending to advance and make the attack upon the fort just before the
break of day. The night was serene and cloudless, and a brilliant
moon illumined the couch of the weary soldiers. They were now so near
the fort that they could hear the shouts of the savages in their
barbaric carousals. A few moments after midnight they were all aroused
from their sleep to march to the perilous assault. Devoutly these
Christian heroes gathered around their chaplain, the Reverend Mr.
Stone, and, with uncovered heads, united with him in fervent prayer
that God would bless their enterprise. They were not going into the
battle inspired by ambition, or the love of conquest, or the greed of
gain. They were contending only to protect their wives and their
children from the vengeance of a savage and a merciless foe. The
Narragansets, now that the stern hour of trial had come, were in such
a state of consternation that Captain Mason gathered them around him
and said,

"We ask no aid from you. You may stand at any distance you please, and
look on, and see how Englishmen can fight."

The fort was on the summit of a heavy swell of land, and consisted of
a village of seventy wigwams, surrounded by a palisade. These
palisades consisted of posts planted side by side, and so high that
they could not be climbed over. The warriors stationed behind them
were safe apparently from assault, for even a musket ball would not
pass through the posts. There were but two entrances to the fort, one
on the northeastern and the other on the southwestern side. Between
six and seven hundred Indians were within the fort.

The English troops were divided into two parties, one headed by
Captain Mason, and the other by Captain Underhill, who had been in
command of the fort at Saybrook. They decided to make a simultaneous
attack upon each of the entrances. Though the moon shone very
brilliantly, rendering it almost as light as day, yet the Indians,
unsuspicious of danger and soundly asleep, gave not the slightest
indication of alarm until the two parties had each silently approached
within a rod of the entrances. A dog was then heard to bark, and
immediately one solitary voice shouted frantically, "Englishmen!
Englishmen!" The entrances were merely blocked up with bushes about
breast high. The assailants instantly poured a volley of bullets in
upon their sleeping foes, and, sword in hand, rushed over the feeble
barriers. Notwithstanding the surprise and the appalling thunder of
the guns, the Pequots sprang to arms and made a fierce resistance.
The two parties, advancing from the opposite entrances, forced their
way along the main street, firing to the right and the left, and
making fearful slaughter of their foes. They speedily swept the street
clear of all opposition. The savages, however, who still vastly
outnumbered their assailants, retreated into their wigwams, and,
taking advantage of every covert, almost overwhelmed the compact bands
of the English with a shower of arrows and javelins. The conflict was
now fierce in the extreme, and for a time the issue was very doubtful.
Several of the colonists were already killed, and many severely
wounded.

The wigwams, composed of the boughs and bark of trees, and covered
with mats, were as dry as powder. Captain Mason, at this critical
moment, shouted to his exhausted men, "Set fire to the wigwams."
Torches were immediately applied; the flames leaped from roof to roof,
and in a few moments the whole village was as a furnace of roaring,
crackling flame. The savages, forced by the fire from their
lurking-places, presented a sure mark for the bullet, and they were
shot down and cut down without mercy. It was no longer a fight, but a
massacre. The Indians, bewildered with terror, threw down their arms,
and rushed to and fro in vain attempts to escape. Some climbed the
palisades, only to present a sure target for innumerable bullets;
others plunged into the eddying flames which were fiercely devouring
their dwellings. For a moment their dark bodies seemed to tremble and
vibrate in the glowing furnace, and then they fell as crisped embers.

The heat soon became so intense and the smoke so smothering that the
English were compelled to retire outside of the fort. But they
surrounded the flaming fortress, and every Indian who attempted to
escape was shot. In one short hour the awful deed was accomplished.
The whole interior of the fort was in ashes, and all the inmates were
destroyed with the exception of seven only who escaped, and seven who
were taken captives. The English knew that at a short distance from
them there was another fort filled with Pequot warriors. It
consequently was not safe to burden their little band with prisoners
whom they could neither guard nor feed. They also wished to strike a
blow which would appall the savages and prevent all future outrages.
Death was, therefore, the doom of all.

The Mohegans and Narragansets, who had timidly followed the English,
and who had not ventured into the fort of the dreaded Pequots, stood
tremblingly at a distance, gazing with dismay upon their swift and
terrible destruction. The morning was cold, and a strong wind swept
the bleak hills. The little army was entirely destitute of provisions,
for no baggage-wagons could accompany them through the wilderness.
They had hoped to obtain corn from the Indian fort, but the
conflagration to which they had been unexpectedly compelled to resort
had consumed every thing. Several of their number had been killed;
more than twenty were severely wounded. Their surgeon and all their
necessaries for the wounded were on board the vessels, which were to
have sailed the night before from Narraganset Bay for Pequot Harbor.
Nearly all their ammunition was consumed. At a short distance from
them there was another still more formidable fort filled with fierce
Pequot warriors, where Sassacus himself commanded. Thus, even in this
hour of signal victory, starvation and ruin stared them in the face.

The officers met together in anxious consultation. Just then the sun
rose brilliantly, and revealed the vessels but a few miles distant,
sailing before a fair wind toward Pequot Harbor. These strange men,
of cast-iron mould, gave expression to their joy, not in huzzas, but
in prayers and thanksgivings. But in the midst of this joy their
attention was arrested by another spectacle. Three hundred Pequots,
like a pack of tumultuous, howling wolves, came rushing along from the
other fort. They had heard the guns and seen the flames, and were
hurrying to the rescue.

As soon as the savages came in sight of the fort, and saw its utter
destruction, they stopped a moment, as if aghast with rage and
despair. They howled and tore out their hair, and, by their phrensied
gestures, appeared to be in a delirium of fury. They then made a
simultaneous rush upon the English, resolved to take revenge at
whatever sacrifice of their own lives. There were now but forty-four
Englishmen in a condition to fight. Three hundred savages--seven to
one--rushed upon them in demoniac rage. But European weapons, and the
courage and discipline of civilized life, were equal to the emergency.

Captain Mason promptly led forward a body of chosen men, who gave the
savages so warm a reception as to check their advance and cause them
to recoil. These intrepid colonists, with cool, unerring aim, wasted
not a bullet. Every report of the musket was the death of an Indian.
The savages, thus repulsed, took refuge behind trees and rocks, and
with great bravery pressed and harassed the English with every missile
of savage warfare. A rear-guard was now appointed, under Captain
Underhill, which kept the savages at a distance, while the whole party
marched slowly toward the vessels, which were now entering Pequot
Harbor.

Several of the English had been slain. Five were so severely wounded
that they were utterly helpless, and had to be carried in the arms of
their friends. Twenty others were also so disabled that, though they
could with difficulty hobble along, they were unable to bear the
burden of their own weapons. Nearly all the Narraganset Indians had
now abandoned the English, and, with cowardice which it is difficult
to explain, had retired precipitately through the woods to their own
country. But the Mohegans had no place of refuge; their only safety
was in clinging to the English. Captain Mason, that he might avail
himself of the energies of all his men who were able to fight,
employed these panic-stricken and impotent allies in carrying the
wounded, four taking in their arms one man. The Indians also bore the
weapons of those who were too weak to carry them themselves. In this
way the colonists marched in an uninterrupted battle for several miles
to their vessels. The Pequots pressed them closely, assailing them
with great fierceness and bravery, sending parties in advance to form
ambushes in the thickets, and shooting their barbed and poisoned
arrows from behind every rock and tree. At last the colonists reached
the water's side in safety, and the Pequots, with yells of rage,
retired.

Sassacus was quite overwhelmed by this disaster. All his warriors were
terror-stricken, and feared to remain in the fort, lest they should
experience the same doom which had overwhelmed their companions. In
their desultory wars, the loss of a few men was deemed a great
disaster. To have six or seven hundred of their warriors, hitherto
deemed invincible, in one hour shot or burned to ashes, was to them
inexpressibly awful. In dismay, they set fire to the royal fortress
and to all the adjacent wigwams, and fled into the fastnesses of the
forest. Captain Mason placed his wounded on board the vessels,
obtained a supply of food and a slight re-enforcement, and then
commenced his march for the fort at Saybrook, which was about twenty
miles distant. The Indians, whose wigwams were scattered here and
there through the forest, fled in terror before him. The English,
however, burned every dwelling, and destroyed all the corn-fields. At
Saybrook the victorious party were received with great exultation.
They then ascended the river to Hartford, and the men returned to
their several families, having been absent but three weeks.

It is impossible for us to conceive, in these days of abundance and
security, the rapture which this signal victory excited through all
the dwellings on the banks of the Connecticut. One half of the
effective men of the colony had gone forth to the battle, while the
rest remained at home, armed, and sleeplessly vigilant, to protect the
women and the children from a foe demoniac in mercilessness. The
issues of the conflict were doubtful. Defeat was death to all--more
than death: midnight conflagration, torture, and hopeless captivity of
mothers and daughters in the dark wilderness and in the wigwams of the
savage. Tears of gratitude gushed from the eyes of parents and
children; heartfelt prayers and praises ascended from every family
altar and from every worshiping assembly.

An Indian runner was immediately dispatched to Massachusetts to carry
the news of the decisive victory gained by the Connecticut troops
alone. To complete the work thus auspiciously begun, Connecticut
raised another band of forty men, and Massachusetts sent one hundred
and twenty to meet them at Pequot Harbor. The latter part of June,
four weeks after the destruction of the forts there, these two bodies
met, in strong martial array, upon the ruins of the empire of
Sassacus, resolved to prosecute the war to the utter extermination of
the Pequots. The despairing fugitives had retired into the wilderness
toward the west. The Indians, encumbered with their women and
children, and destitute of food, could move but slowly. They were
compelled to keep near the shore, that they might dig clams, which
food was almost their only refuge from starvation.

The English vigorously pursued them, occasionally shooting a straggler
or picking up a few captives, whom they retained as guides. When they
arrived at Saybrook, one party followed along the coast in boats,
while the others, accompanied by Uncas and a band of Mohegan Indians,
scoured the shore. They came at length to Menunkatuck, now called
Guilford. The south side of the harbor here is formed by a long
peninsula. Some Pequots, pursued by the English, ran down this neck of
land, hoping that their tireless enemies would miss their track and
pass by. But Uncas, with Indian sagacity, led the party on the trail.
The Pequots, finding their foes upon them, plunged into the water and
swam across the narrow mouth of the harbor. But another party of
English was already there, who seized them as they waded to the shore.
The chief of this little band of Pequots was sentenced to be shot. He
was bound to a tree, and Uncas, with nervous arm, sent an arrow
through his heart. The head of the savage was then cut off and placed
in the crotch of a large oak tree, where it remained for many years,
dried and shriveled in the sun, a ghastly memorial of days of violence
and blood. From this extraordinary incident, the bluff, to the present
day, bears the name of _Sachem's Head_.

The little army pressed vigorously on, by land and by sea, some twenty
miles farther west, to a place called Quinnipiac, now New Haven. Here
they found a good harbor for their vessels, and they remained several
days for rest. They saw the smokes of great fires in the woods, and
sent out several expeditions in search of the Indians, but could find
none. A Pequot, a traitor to his tribe, came in and informed them that
a hundred Pequot warriors, with some two hundred men, women, and
children of an adjacent tribe, had taken refuge in a large swamp about
twenty-five miles west. This swamp was in the present town of
Fairfield, directly back of the village. The army immediately advanced
with all dispatch to the swamp. The bog was so deep and wet, and
tangled with underbrush, that it seemed impossible to enter it. A few
made the attempt, but they sank in the mire, and were sorely wounded
by arrows shot from an invisible foe.

The English, with their Indian allies, surrounded the swamp. They were
enabled to do this by placing their men at about twelve feet distance
from each other. Several skirmishes ensued, in which a number of
Indians were shot. At length the Indians who lived in that vicinity,
and who had taken no part in the outrages committed against the
colonists, but who, in their terror, had followed the Pequots into
the swamp, sent a delegation to the English imploring quarter. The
poor creatures were perishing of starvation. The fierce and haughty
Pequots, however, scorned to ask for mercy. They resolved to cut their
way through the enemy, or to sell their lives as dearly as possible.
The English promised life to all who would surrender, and who had
never shed the blood of the colonists. Two hundred men, women, and
children immediately emerged from the swamp. The sachem declared that
neither he nor his people had ever done any harm to the English. They
were accordingly left unmolested.

There were now nearly two hundred Pequots in the swamp. Night came on,
and the English watched with sleepless vigilance lest they should make
their escape. Toward morning a dense fog rose, adding to the gloom and
darkness of the dreary scene. Availing themselves of this, the shrewd
savages made several feints at different points, and then, with a
simultaneous rush, made a desperate effort to break through. About
seventy of the most vigorous of the warriors effected their escape;
all the rest were either killed or taken prisoners.

Sassacus, with this remnant of his once powerful tribe, fled over the
mountains and beyond the Hudson to the land of the Mohawks. The fierce
Mohawks, regarding him and his companions as intruders, fell upon
them, and they were all slain but one, who, bleeding with his wounds,
made his escape. They cut off the head of Sassacus, and sent his
scalp, as evidence of his death, to Connecticut. A part of his skin
and a lock of his hair was sent to Boston. During these conflicts many
women and children were taken prisoners. We blush to record that the
boys were all sent to the West Indies, and sold into bondage. The
women and girls were divided about among the colonists of Connecticut
and Massachusetts as servants.

The Narragansets and the Mohegans now became very valiant, and eagerly
hunted through the woods for the few straggling Pequots who remained.
Quite a number they killed, and brought their gory heads as trophies
to Windsor and to Hartford. The Pequots had been so demoniac in their
cruelty that the colonists had almost ceased to regard them as human
beings. The few wretched survivors were so hunted and harassed that
some fled far away, and obtained incorporation into other tribes.
Others came imploringly to the English at Hartford, and offered to be
their servants, to be disposed of at their pleasure, if their lives
might be spared.

Such is the melancholy recital of the utter extermination of the
Pequot tribe. Deeply as some of the events in this transaction are to
be condemned and deplored, much allowance is to be made for men
exasperated by all the nameless horrors of Indian war. A pack of the
most ferocious of the beasts of the forest was infinitely less to be
dreaded than a marauding band of Pequots. The Pequots behaved like
demons, and the colonists treated them as such. The man whose son had
been tortured to death by the savages, whose house and barns had been
burned by the midnight conflagration, whose wife and infant child had
been brained upon his hearthstone, and whose daughters were, perhaps,
in captivity in the forest, was not in a mood of mind to deal gently
with a foe so fiendlike. We may deplore it, but we can not wonder, and
we can not sternly blame.

This destruction of the Pequots so impressed the New England tribes
with the power of the English, and struck them with so much terror,
that for nearly forty years the war-whoop was not again heard. The
Indian tribes had conflicts with each other, but the colonists,
blessed with ever-increasing prosperity, slept in peace and safety.

In view of the exploits of the Pequot warriors, Dr. Dwight, with some
poetic license, exclaims:

     "And O, ye chiefs! in yonder starry home,
     Accept the humble tribute of this rhyme.
       Your gallant deeds in Greece or haughty Rome,
     By Maro sung, or Homer's harp sublime,
     Had charm'd the world's wide round, and triumph'd over
       time."




CHAPTER V.

COMMENCEMENT OF THE REIGN OF KING PHILIP.

1640-1674

Continued prosperity.--Establishment of Harvard College.--Acts of
violence.--Death of Miantunnomah.--The war-whoop resumed.--The
United Colonies of New England.--A confederacy.--Indian
conspiracy.--Indian outrages.--Opposition of the English
to war.--Death of Massasoit.--Changing names.--Sons of
Massasoit.--Wetamoo.--Decline of Indian power.--Mutual
wrongs.--Alexander summoned to court.--He promises to attend.--Departure
of Major Winslow.--He finds Alexander.--Preparations for the
arrest.--Rage of Alexander.--The forced compliance.--The return to
Plymouth.--The royal prisoner.--Sickness of Alexander.--The king taken
by his followers.--Death of Alexander.--King Philip.--Enmity of
Wetamoo.--Her power.--Endowments of Philip.--His religious
beliefs.--His opposition to changing his religion.--Alleged justice
of the English.--The discontent of Philip noticed.--Mutual
suspicions.--Decline of the Narragansets.--The fidelity of the
Mohegans.--Indian vengeance.--Escape of the victim.--Summons to
Philip.--Philip appears with his warriors.--His caution.--The
commissioners.--Desire to attack the Indians.--Equitable
arrangements.--Philip's adroitness.--Charge for charge.--Result of
the conference.--Extraordinary pledge.--Desires in regard to the
Indians.--Uselessness of Indian treaties.--The English violate their
pledge.--Philip for "law and order."--Decision of the referee.--A
general council.--Complaints.--A new treaty.--Philip desires
peace.--Rumors of trouble.--The cloud of terror.--Independence of
Philip.--The close of the year 1674.


With peace came abundant prosperity. Emigrants flocked over to the New
World. In ten years after the Pequot war the colonists had settled
fifty towns and villages, had reared forty churches, several forts and
prisons, and the Massachusetts colony, decidedly pre-eminent, had
established Harvard College. The wilderness indeed began to blossom,
and gardens, orchards, rich pastures, fields of grain, and verdant
meadows cheered the eye and filled the dwellings with abundance.

There were now four English colonies, Plymouth, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and New Haven. There were also the germs of two more, one
at Providence and the other on Rhode Island. The Indians, with the
exception of illustrious individuals, were a vagabond set of
perfidious and ferocious savages. They were incessantly fighting with
each other, and it required all the efforts of the English to keep
them under any degree of restraint. The utter extirpation of the
Pequots so appalled them, that for forty years no tribe ventured to
wage war against the English. Yet during this time individual Indians
committed many enormous outrages of robbery and murder, for which the
sachems of the tribes were not responsible. The Mohegans, under Uncas,
had become very powerful. They had a fierce fight with the
Narragansets. Miantunnomah was taken captive. Uncas put him to death
upon Norwich plain by splitting his head open with a hatchet. The
Mohegan sachem tore a large piece of flesh from the shoulder of his
victim, and ate it greedily, exclaiming, "It is the sweetest meal I
ever tasted; it makes my heart strong."

Marauding bands of Indians often committed murders. The efforts of the
English to punish the culprits would exasperate others, and provoke
new violence. Indications of combinations among the savages were
frequently developed, and the colonists were often thrown into a
general state of alarm, in anticipation of the horrors of another
Indian war.

In the year 1644, a Massachusetts colonist visiting Connecticut was
murdered on the way by an Indian. The English demanded the murderer.
The Indians, under various subterfuges, refused to give him up. The
English, in retaliation, seized upon eight or ten Indians, and threw
them into prison. This so exasperated the savages that they raised the
war-whoop, grasped their arms, and threatened dire revenge. By
boldness and moderation the English accomplished their ends, and the
murderer was surrendered to justice. A few weeks after this an Indian
entered a house in Stamford. He found a woman there alone with her
infant child. With three blows of the tomahawk he cut her down, and,
plundering the house, left her, as he supposed, dead. She, however, so
far recovered as to describe the Indian and his dress. With great
difficulty, the English succeeded in obtaining the murderer. The
savages threw every possible impediment in the way of justice, and
assumed such a threatening attitude as to put the colonists to great
trouble and expense in preparing for war.

In view of such perils, in the year 1645, the colonies of
Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven formed a
confederacy, under the name of the _United Colonies of New England_.
They thus entered into an alliance offensive and defensive. Each
colony retained, in its domestic concerns, its own government and
jurisdiction. Two commissioners from each colony formed a board for
managing the common affairs of the Confederacy. This was the germ of
the present Congress of the United States.

In the year 1646 a large number of Indians formed a conspiracy to set
fire to Hartford and murder the inhabitants. An Indian who was engaged
to assassinate the governor, terrified, as he remembered that every
one who had thus far murdered an Englishman had been arrested and
executed, revealed the plot. The Indians generally, at this time,
manifested a very hostile spirit, and many outrages were perpetrated.
The English did not deem it prudent to pursue and punish the
conspirators, but overlooked the offense.

In the wars which the savages waged with each other, the hostile
parties would pursue their victims even into the houses of the
English, and cut them down before the eyes of the horror-stricken
women and children. In a very dry time the Indians set fire to the
woods all around the town of Milford, hoping thus to set fire to the
town. With the greatest difficulty the inhabitants rescued their
dwellings from the flames.

In the year 1648, marauding bands of the Narragansets committed
intolerable outrages against the people of Rhode Island, killing their
cattle, robbing their houses, and insulting and even beating the
inmates. The colonists were exceedingly perplexed to know what to do
in these emergencies. The whole wilderness of North America was filled
with savages. If they commenced a general war, it was impossible to
predict how far its ravages might extend. The colonists were eminently
men of peace. They wished to build houses, and cultivate fields, and
surround their homes with the comforts and the opulence of a high
civilization. They had bought their lands of the Indians fairly, and
had paid for them all that the lands then were worth.

Massasoit died about the year 1661. He remained firm in his fidelity
to the English until his death, though very hostile to the conversion
of the Indians to Christianity. At one time, when treating for the
sale of some of his lands in Swanzey, he insisted very pertinaciously
upon the condition that the English should never attempt to draw off
any of his people from their religion to Christianity. He would not
recede from this condition until he found that the treaty must be
broken off unless he yielded.

As the English found many of the Indian names hard to remember and to
pronounce, they were fond of giving English names to those with whom
they had frequent intercourse. The Indians in general were quite proud
of receiving these names. Massasoit, with that innate dignity which
pertained to his imperial state, disdained to receive any other name
but the one which he proudly bore as his ancestral legacy. A few years
before his death, however, he brought his two sons, Wamsutta and
Pometacom, to Plymouth, and requested the governor, in token of
friendship, to give them English names. They were very bright,
attractive young men, of the finest physical development. The governor
related to Massasoit the history of the renowned kings of Macedon,
Philip and Alexander, and gave to Wamsutta, the oldest, the name of
Alexander, the great warrior of Asia, and to Pometacom, the younger,
the less renowned name of Philip. These two young men had married
sisters, the daughters of the sachem of Pocasset. The name of the wife
of Alexander was Wetamoo, an unfortunate princess who became quite
illustrious in subsequent scenes. The wife of Philip had the
euphonious name of Wootonekanuske.

Upon the death of Massasoit, his eldest son Alexander was invested
with the chieftainship. The lands of the Indians were now very rapidly
passing away from the native proprietors to the new-comers, and
English settlements were every where springing up in the wilderness.
The Indian power was evidently declining, while that of the white man
was on the increase. With prosperity came avarice. Unprincipled men
flocked to the colonies; the Indians were despised, and often harshly
treated; and the forbearance which marked the early intercourse of the
Pilgrims with the natives was forgotten. The colonists had generally
become exasperated with the outrages of lawless vagabond savages, whom
the sachems could not restrain, and who ranged the country, shooting
their cattle, pillaging their houses, and often committing murder. A
hungry savage was as ready to shoot a heifer in the pasture as a deer
in the forest, if he could do so and escape detection. There thus very
naturally grew up, upon both sides, a spirit of alienation and
suspicion.

Alexander kept aloof from the English, and was cold and reserved
whenever he met them. Rumors began to float through the air that the
Wampanoags were meditating hostilities. Some of the colonists, who had
been called by business to Narraganset, wrote to Governor Prince, at
Plymouth, that Alexander was making preparations for war, and that he
was endeavoring to persuade the Narragansets to unite with him in a
general assault upon the English settlements. Governor Prince
immediately sent a messenger to Alexander, at Mount Hope, informing
him of these reports of his hostile intentions which were in
circulation, and requesting him to attend the next court in Plymouth
to vindicate himself from these charges.

Alexander apparently received this message in a very friendly spirit.
He assured Captain Willet, the messenger, that the accusation was a
gross slander; that the Narragansets were his unrelenting foes; and
that they had fabricated the story that they might alienate from him
his good friends the English. He promised that he would attend the
next meeting of the court at Plymouth, and prove the truth of these
declarations.

Notwithstanding this ostensible sincerity and friendliness, various
circumstances concurred to increase suspicion. When the court
assembled, Alexander, instead of making his appearance according to
his agreement, was found to be on a visit to the sachem of the
Narragansets, his pretended enemies. Upon this, Governor Prince
assembled his counselors, and, after deliberation, ordered Major
Winslow, afterward governor of the colony, to take an armed band, go
to Mount Hope, seize Alexander by surprise before he should have time
to rally his warriors around him, and take him by force to Plymouth.
Major Winslow immediately set out, with ten men, from Marshfield,
intending to increase his force from the towns nearer to Mount Hope.
When about half way between Plymouth and Bridgewater, they came to a
large pond, probably Monponsett Pond, in the present town of Halifax.
Upon the margin of this sheet of water they saw an Indian hunting
lodge, and soon ascertained that it was one of the several transient
residences of Alexander, and that he was then there, with a large
party of his warriors, on a hunting and fishing excursion.

The colonists cautiously approached, and saw that the guns of the
Indians were all stacked outside of the lodge, at some distance, and
that the whole party were in the house engaged in a banquet. As the
Wampanoags were then, and had been for forty years, at peace with the
English, and as they were not at war with any other people, and were
in the very heart of their own territories, no precautions whatever
were adopted against surprise.

Major Winslow dispatched a portion of his force to seize the guns of
the Indians, and with the rest entered the hut. The savages, eighty in
number, manifested neither surprise nor alarm in seeing the English,
and were apparently quite unsuspicious of danger. Major Winslow
requested Alexander to walk out with him for a few moments, and then,
through an interpreter, informed the proud Indian chieftain that he
was to be taken under arrest to Plymouth, there to answer to the
charge of plotting against the English. The haughty savage, as soon as
he fully comprehended the statement, was in a towering rage. He
returned to his companions, and declared that he would not submit to
such an indignity. He felt as the President of the United States would
feel in being arrested by a sheriff sent from the Governor of Canada,
commanding him to submit to be taken to Quebec to answer there to
charges to be brought against him. The demand was of a nature to
preclude the exercise of courtesy. As there were some indications of
resistance, the stern major presented a pistol to the breast of the
Indian chieftain, and said,

"I am ordered to take you to Plymouth. God willing, I shall do it, at
whatever hazard. If you submit peacefully, you shall receive
respectful usage. If you resist, you shall die upon the spot."

The Indians were disarmed. They could do nothing. Alexander was almost
insane with vexation and rage in finding himself thus insulted, and
yet incapable of making any resistance. His followers, conscious of
the utter helplessness of their state, entreated him not to resort to
violence, which would only result in his death. They urged him to
yield to necessity, assuring him that they would accompany him as his
retinue, that he might appear in Plymouth with the dignity befitting
his rank.

The colonists immediately commenced their return to Plymouth with
their illustrious captive. There was a large party of Indian warriors
in the train, with Wetamoo, the wife of Alexander, and several other
Indian women. The day was intensely hot, and a horse was offered to
the chieftain that he might ride. He declined the offer, preferring to
walk with his friends. When they arrived at Duxbury, as they were not
willing to thrust Alexander into a prison, Major Winslow received him
into his own house, where he guarded him with vigilance, yet treated
him courteously, until orders could be received from Governor Prince,
who resided on the Cape at Eastham. At Duxbury, Alexander and his
train were entertained for several days with the most scrupulous
hospitality. But the imperial spirit of the Wampanoag chieftain was so
tortured by the humiliation to which he was exposed that he was thrown
into a burning fever. The best medical attendance was furnished, and
he was nursed with the utmost care, but he grew daily worse, and soon
serious fears were entertained that he would die.

The Indian warriors, greatly alarmed for their beloved chieftain,
entreated that they might be permitted to take Alexander home,
promising that they would return with him as soon as he had recovered,
and that, in the mean time, the son of Alexander should be sent to the
English as a hostage. The court assented to this arrangement. The
Indians took their unhappy king, dying of a crushed spirit, upon a
litter on their shoulders, and entered the trails of the forest.
Slowly they traveled with their burden until they arrived at Tethquet,
now Taunton River. There they took canoes. They had not, however,
paddled far down the stream before it became evident that their
monarch was dying. They placed him upon a grassy mound beneath a
majestic tree, and in silence the stoical warriors gathered around to
witness the departure of his spirit to the realms of the Red Man's
immortality.

What a scene for the painter! The sublimity of the forest, the glassy
stream, meandering beneath the overshadowing trees, the bark canoes of
the natives moored to the shore, the dying chieftain, with his
warriors assembled in stern sadness around him, and the beautiful and
heroic Wetamoo, holding in her lap the head of her dying lord as she
wiped his clammy brow, nursing those emotions of revenge which finally
desolated the three colonies with flame, blood, and woe.

[Illustration: THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER.]

The tragic death of Alexander introduced to the throne his brother
Pometacom, whom the English named King Philip.

Much has been written respecting the Indian's disregard for woman. The
history of Wetamoo proves that these views have been very greatly
exaggerated, or that they admit of very marked exceptions. Wetamoo
immediately became the unrelenting foe of the English. With all the
fervor of her fresh nature, she studied to avenge her husband's death.
This one idea became the controlling principle of her future life.
That Wamsutta's death was caused by the anguish of a wounded spirit no
colonist doubted; but Wetamoo believed, and most of the Indians
believed, that poison had been administered to the captive monarch,
and that he thus perished the victim of foul murder. Wetamoo was an
energetic, and, for a savage, a noble woman. All the energies of her
soul were aroused to avenge her husband's death. She was by birth the
princess of another tribe, and it appears that she had power, woman
though she was, to lead three hundred warriors into the field.

Philip was a man of superior endowments. He clearly understood the
power of the English, and the peril to be encountered in waging war
against them. And yet he as distinctly saw that, unless the
encroachments of the English could be arrested, his own race was
doomed to destruction. At one time he was quite interested in the
Christian religion; but apparently foreseeing that, with the
introduction of Christianity, all the peculiarities of manners and
customs in Indian life must pass away, he adopted the views of his
father, Massasoit, and became bitterly opposed to any change of
religion among his people. Mr. Gookin, speaking of the Wampanoags,
says:

     "There are some that have hopes of their greatest and
     chiefest sachem, named Philip. Some of his chief men, as I
     hear, stand well-inclined to hear the Gospel, and himself is
     a person of good understanding and knowledge in the best
     things. I have heard him speak very good words, arguing that
     his conscience is convicted. But yet, though his will is
     bound to embrace Jesus Christ, his sensual and carnal lusts
     are strong bands to hold him fast under Satan's dominion."

Some time after this, Rev. Mr. Elliot records that, in conversation
with King Philip upon the subject of religion, the Wampanoag chieftain
took hold of a button upon Mr. Elliot's coat, and said, very
deliberately,

"Mr. Elliot, I care no more for the Gospel of Jesus Christ than I do
for that button."

For nine years Philip was probably brooding over the subject of the
encroachments of the English, and the waning power of the Indians.
This was the inevitable result of the idle, vagabond life of the
Indians, and of the industry and energy of the colonists. The Indians
had not thus far been defrauded. Mr. Josiah Winslow, governor of
Plymouth Colony, writes, in a letter dated May 1, 1676:

     "I think I can truly say that, before these present troubles
     broke out, the English did not possess one foot of land in
     this colony but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase
     of the Indian proprietors."

The discontent of Philip did not, however, escape the notice of the
English, and for a long time they saw increasing indications that a
storm was gathering. The wary monarch, with continued protestations of
friendship, was evidently accumulating resources, strengthening
alliances, and distributing more extensively among the Indians guns
and other weapons of Indian warfare. His warriors soon rivaled the
white men in skill as sharp-shooters, and became very adroit in the
use of their weapons. They were carefully laying up stores of powder
and bullets, and Philip could not conceal the interest with which he
endeavored to learn how to manufacture gunpowder.

Under this state of affairs, it is easy to perceive that mutual
suspicions and recriminations must have rapidly ensued. The Indians
and the colonists, year after year, became more exasperated against
each other. The dangers of collision were constantly growing more
imminent. Many deeds of violence and aggression were perpetrated by
individuals upon each side. Still, candor compels us to admit, as we
carefully read the record of those days, that the English were very
far from being patterns of meekness and long-suffering. Haughtiness
and intolerance when in power has marked the career of our venerated,
yet far from faultless ancestors in every quarter of the globe.

The Narraganset tribe had now lost its pre-eminence. Canonicus had
long since died, at the age of eighty years. Miantunnomah had been
taken prisoner by the Mohegans, and had been executed upon the plain
of Norwich. Ninigret, who was now sovereign chief of the Narragansets,
was old, infirm, and imbecile. His character illustrates the saying of
Napoleon, that "_better is it to have an army of deer led by a lion,
than an army of lions led by a deer_."

Philip, by his commanding genius and daring spirit, had now obtained
a great ascendency over all the New England tribes excepting the
Mohegans. They, under Uncas, were strongly attached to the English, to
whom they were indebted for their very existence. The character of
Philip is illustrated by the following incident. In 1665, he heard
that an Indian had spoken disrespectfully of his father, Massasoit. To
avenge the insult, he pursued the offender from place to place, until,
at last, he tracked him to the island of Nantucket. Taking a canoe,
Philip proceeded to the island. Assasamooyh, who, by speaking ill of
the dead, had, according to Indian law, forfeited his life, was a
Christian Indian. He was sitting at the table of one of the colonists,
when a messenger rushed in breathlessly, and informed him that the
dreaded avenger was near the door. Assasamooyh had but just time to
rush from the house when Philip was upon him. The Indian fled like a
frighted deer, pursued by the vengeful chieftain. From house to house
the pursued and his pursuer rushed, while the English looked with
amazement at this exhibition of the energy of Indian law. According to
their code, whoever spoke ill of the dead was to forfeit life at the
hand of the nearest relative. Thus Philip, with his brandished
tomahawk, considered himself but the honored executor of justice.
Assasamooyh, however, at length leaped a bank, and, plunging into the
forest, eluded his foe. The English then succeeded, by a very heavy
ransom, in purchasing his life, and Philip returned to Mount Hope,
feeling that his father's memory had been suitably avenged.

In the year 1671, the English, alarmed by the threatening aspect of
affairs, and seeing increasing indications that Philip was preparing
for hostilities, sent an imperious command to him to come to Taunton
and explain his conduct. For some time Philip made sundry rather weak
excuses for not complying with this demand, at the same time
reiterating assurances of his friendly feelings. He was, as yet, quite
unprepared for war, and was very reluctant to precipitate hostilities,
which he had sufficient sagacity to foresee would involve him in ruin,
unless he could first form such a coalition of the Indian tribes as
would enable him to attack all the English settlements at one and the
same time. At length, however, he found that he could no longer refuse
to give some explanation of the measures he was adopting without
giving fatal strength to the suspicions against him.

Accordingly, on the 10th of April of this year, he took with him a
band of warriors, armed to the teeth, and painted and decorated with
the most brilliant trappings of barbarian splendor, and approached
within four miles of Taunton. Here the proud monarch of the Wampanoags
established his encampment, and, with native-taught punctiliousness,
sent a message to the English governor, informing him of his arrival
at that spot, and requiring him to come and treat with him there. The
governor, either afraid to meet these warriors in their own
encampment, or deeming it beneath his dignity to attend the summons of
an Indian chieftain, sent Roger Williams, with several other
messengers, to assure Philip of his friendly feelings, and to entreat
him to continue his journey to Taunton, as a more convenient place for
their conference. Philip, with caution which subsequent events proved
to have been well timed, detained these messengers as hostages for his
safe return, and then, with an imposing retinue of his painted braves,
proudly strode forward toward the town of Taunton.

When he arrived at a hill upon the outskirts of the village, he again
halted, and warily established sentinels around his encampment. The
governor and magistrates of Massachusetts, apprehensive that the
Plymouth people might get embroiled in a war with the Indians, and
anxious, if possible, to avert so terrible a calamity, had dispatched
three commissioners to Taunton to endeavor to promote reconciliation
between the Plymouth colony and Philip. These commissioners were now
in conference with the Plymouth court. When Philip appeared upon the
hill, the Plymouth magistrates, exasperated by many outrages, were
quite eager to march and attack him, and take his whole party
prisoners, and hold them as hostages for the good behavior of the
Indians. With no little difficulty the Massachusetts commissioners
overruled this rash design, and consented to go out themselves and
persuade Philip to come in and confer in a friendly manner upon the
adjustment of their affairs.

Philip received the Massachusetts men with reserve, but with much
courtesy. At first he refused to advance any farther, but declared
that those who wished to confer with him must come where he was. At
length, however, he consented to refer the difficulties which existed
between him and the Plymouth colony to the Massachusetts
commissioners, and to hold the conference in the Taunton
meeting-house. But, that he might meet his accusers upon the basis of
perfect equality, he demanded that one half of the meeting-house
should be appropriated sacredly to himself and his followers, while
the Plymouth people, his accusers, should occupy the other half. The
Massachusetts commissioners, three gentlemen, were to sit alone as
umpires. We can not but admire the character developed by Philip in
these arrangements.

Philip managed his cause, which was manifestly a bad one, with great
adroitness. Talleyrand and Metternich would have given him a high
position among European diplomatists. He could not deny that he was
making great military preparations, but he declared that this was only
in anticipation of an attack from the Narraganset Indians. But it was
proved that at that moment he was on terms of more intimate friendship
with the Narragansets than ever before. He also brought charge for
charge against the English; and it can not be doubted that he and his
people had suffered much from the arrogance of individuals of the
domineering race. Philip has had no one to tell his story, and we have
received the narrative only from the pens of his foes. They tell us
that he was at length confounded, and made full confession of his
hostile designs, and expressed regret for them.

As a result of the conference, all past grievances were to be buried
in oblivion, and a treaty was entered into in which mutual friendship
was pledged, and in which Philip consented to the extraordinary
measure of disarming his people, and

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