INTRODUCTION TO PHILIP OF POKANOKET. KING Philip's War was due to the steady encroachment of the English upon the forests and hunting-grounds of the Indians. For fifty-five years peaceful relations had been maintained between the colonists and the powerful tribe of the Wampanoags (Waum-pa-no-agz), on whose lands Plymouth and other settlements had been planted. Philip, chief of the tribe, foreseeing the ultimate destruction of his people, resolved to depart from the policy of Massasoit, his father, and to turn upon the colonists. Rumors of war preceded its outbreak for many years. It is still a matter of doubt whether hostilities began in an accident or as the result of a deliberate plot. Once opened, they were carried on in a vindictive and desperate spirit. The war began in June, 1675, at Swansea, in Plymouth colony. It involved the Narragansetts and other New England tribes. Month after month saw scenes of ambush, assault, burning, pillaging, and butchery. The war was as savagely carried on by the English as by the Indians. It ended in the summer of 1676 through sheer exhaustion of the Indians. During this war thirteen towns were destroyed and many others suffered severely, six hundred buildings were burned, six hundred colonists were slain, many thousands suffered directly from the losses that accompany war, and frightful expenses were rolled up, entailing burdens upon feeble and sparsely settled communities that it took years to lighten. The mental anguish everywhere caused by the secrecy and cruelty of methods natural to Indian warfare, even when the dreaded blow did not fall, cannot be told. From two to three thousan Indians were killed or captured, and the wretched remnants of the tribes whose power was broken either united with other tribes or, lingering about their old homes, ceased thereafter to be a serious menace to the colonies. The various remains of Indian tribes in Massachusetts to-day, some of them descendants of the Indians that sur vived King Philip's War, number between one and two thousand souls. They are, to a certain extent, wards of the State of whose soil they were once the haughty owners. PHILIP OF POKANOKET. AN INDIAN MEMOIR. As monumental bronze unchanged his look; CAMPBELL. It is to be regretted that those early writers who treated of the discovery and settlement of America have not given us more particular and candid accounts of the remarkable characters that flourished in savage life. The scanty anecdotes which have reached us are full of peculiarity and interest; they furnish us with nearer glimpses of human nature, and show what man is in a comparatively primitive state, and what he owes to civilization. There is something of the charm of discovery in lighting upon these wild and unexplored tracts of human nature; in witnessing, as it were, the native growth of moral sentiment; and perceiving those generous and romantic qualities which have been artificially cultivated by society, vegetating in spontaneous hardihood and rude maguificence. In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence, of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow-men, he is constantly acting a studied part. The bold and peculiar traits of native character are refined away, or softened down by the levelling influence of what is termed good breeding; and he practises so many petty deceptions, and affects so many generous sentiments, for the purposes of popularity, that it is difficult to distinguish his real from his artificial character. The Indian, on the contrary, free from the restraints and refinements of polished life, and, in a great degree, a solitary and independent being, obeys the impulses of his inclination or the dictates of his judgment; and thus the attributes of his nature, being freely indulged, grow singly great and striking. Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface; he, however, who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice. These reflections arose on casually looking through a volume of early colonial history wherein are recorded, with great bitterness, the outrages of the Indians, and their wars with the settlers of New Eng land. It is painful to perceive, even from these par tial narratives, how the footsteps of civilization may be traced in the blood of the aborigines; how easily the colonists were moved to hostility by the lust of conquest; how merciless and exterminating was their warfare. The imagination shrinks at the idea, how many intellectual beings were hunted from the earth; how many brave and noble hearts, of nature's sterling coinage, were broken down and trampled in the dust! Such was the fate of PHILIP OF POKANOKET,1 an Indian warrior, whose name was once a terror throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut. He was the most distinguished of a number of contemporary sa chems who reigned over the Pequods, the Narragansetts, the Wampanoags, and the other eastern tribes, at the time of the first settlement of New England: a band of native untaught heroes; who made the most generous struggle of which human nature is capable; fighting to the last gasp in the cause of their country, without a hope of victory or a thought of renown. Worthy of an age of poetry, and fit subjects for local story and romantic fiction, they have left scarcely any authentic traces on the page of history, but stalk 1 Po-ko-nō'-ket, now Bristol, Rhode Island. The orthography of Indian names in this memoir is unsettled. The early colonists heard these names from Indian lips, but they could not spell them in a uniform way. The same Indian sometimes had several names. The same name showed minor diversities in pronunciation. The colonists were not exact in interpreting Indian sounds. Moreover, they did not spell common English words with consistency. It was natural, therefore, that a great deal of confusion should appear both in their spelling and in their pronunciation of Indian names. Thus Philip's name appears in various deeds and records under the following forms: Pometacom, Pumatacom, Pometacome, Metacom, Metacome, Metacum, Metacomet, Metamo'cet, and so on. For Pokonoket may be found Poconoket, Pocanakett, Pakanawkett, and Pawkunnawkeet; for Miantoni'mo, Miantonimoh, Miantonomio, Miantonomo, Miantonomah, and Miantunnomah: for Canon'chet, Quananchit, Quananchett, and Quanonchet; for Wět'amoe, Weetimoo and Wettimore. Study of these variations reveals the pronunciation of the forms adopted by Irving. like gigantic shadows in the dim twilight of tradi tion.1 When the Pilgrims, as the Plymouth settlers are called by their descendants, first took refuge on the shores of the New World, from the religious persecu tions of the Old, their situation was to the last degree gloomy and disheartening. Few in number, and that number rapidly perishing away through sickness and hardships; surrounded by a howling wilderness and savage tribes; exposed to the rigors of an almost arc tic winter, and the vicissitudes of an ever-shifting climate; their minds were filled with doleful forebodings, and nothing preserved them from sinking into despondency but the strong excitement of religious enthusiasm. In this forlorn situation they were visited by Massasoit, chief sagamore of the Wampanoags, a powerful chief, who reigned over a great extent of country. Instead of taking advantage of the scanty number of the strangers, and expelling them from his territories into which they had intruded, he seemed at once to conceive for them a generous friendship, and extended towards them the rites of primitive hospitality. He came early in the spring to their settlement of New Plymouth,2 attended by a mere handful of followers; entered into a solemn league of peace and amity; sold them a portion of the soil, and promised to secure for them the good will of his savage allies. Whatever may be said of Indian perfidy, it is certair 1 While correcting the proof-sheets of this article, the author is informed that a celebrated English poet has nearly finished an heroic poem on the story of Philip of Pokanoket.-W. I. 2 Simply Plymouth, Massachusetts, which for a time was spoken of as New Plymouth to distinguish it from the town of the same name in England. |