The Beginnings of New England Part 5

In Ma.s.sachusetts the opposition was very strong indeed, and its character shows how wide the divergence in sentiment had already become between the upper stratum of society and the people in general. This divergence was one result of the excessive weight given to the clergy by the restriction of the suffrage to church members. One might almost say that it was not the people of Ma.s.sachusetts, after all, that shed the blood of the Quakers; it was Endicott and the clergy. The bill establis.h.i.+ng death as the penalty for returning after banishment was pa.s.sed in the upper house without serious difficulty; but in the lower house it was at first defeated. Of the twenty-six deputies fifteen were opposed to it, but one of these fell sick and two were intimidated, so that finally the infamous measure was pa.s.sed by a vote of thirteen against twelve. Probably it would not have pa.s.sed but for a hopeful feeling that an occasion for putting it into execution would not be likely to arise. It was hoped that the mere threat would prove effective. Endicott begged the Quakers to keep away, saying earnestly that he did not desire their death; but the more resolute spirits were not deterred by fear of the gallows. In September, 1659, William Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, and Mary Dyer, who had come to Boston expressly to defy the cruel law, were banished. Mrs. Dyer was a lady of good family, wife of the secretary of Rhode Island. She had been an intimate friend of Mrs. Hutchinson. While she went home to her husband, Stevenson and Robinson went only to Salem and then faced about and came back to Boston. Mrs. Dyer also returned. All three felt themselves under divine command to resist and defy the persecutors. On the 27th of October they were led to the gallows on Boston Common, under escort of a hundred soldiers. Many people had begun to cry shame on such proceedings, and it was thought necessary to take precautions against a tumult. The victims tried to address the crowd, but their voices were drowned by the beating of drums. While the Rev. John Wilson railed and scoffed at them from the foot of the gallows the two brave men were hanged. The halter had been placed upon Mrs. Dyer when her son, who had come in all haste from Rhode Island, obtained her reprieve on his promise to take her away. The bodies of the two men were denied Christian burial and thrown uncovered into a pit. All the efforts of husband and son were unable to keep Mrs. Dyer at home. In the following spring she returned to Boston and on the first day of June was again taken to the gallows. At the last moment she was offered freedom if she would only promise to go away and stay, but she refused. "In obedience to the will of the Lord I came," said she, "and in his will I abide faithful unto death." And so she died. [Sidenote: Executions on Boston Common] [Sidenote: Wenlock Christison's defiance and victory]

Public sentiment in Boston was now turning so strongly against the magistrates that they began to weaken in their purpose. But there was one more victim. In November, 1660, William Leddra returned from banishment. The case was clear enough, but he was kept in prison four months and every effort was made to induce him to promise to leave the colony, but in vain. In the following March he too was put to death. A few days before the execution, as Leddra was being questioned in court, a memorable scene occurred. Wenlock Christison was one of those who had been banished under penalty of death. On his return he made straight for the town-house, strode into the court-room, and with uplifted finger addressed the judges in words of authority. "I am come here to warn you," said he, "that ye shed no more innocent blood." He was instantly seized and dragged off to jail. After three months he was brought to trial before the Court of a.s.sistants. The magistrates debated for more than a fortnight as to what should be done. The air was thick with mutterings of insurrection, and they had lost all heart for their dreadful work. Not so the savage old man who presided, frowning gloomily under his black skull cap. Losing his patience at last, Endicott smote the table with fury, upbraided the judges for their weakness, and declared himself so disgusted that he was ready to go back to England.

[27] "You that will not consent, record it," he shouted, as the question was again put to vote, "I thank G.o.d I am not afraid to give judgment."

Christison was condemned to death, but the sentence was never executed.

In the interval the legislature a.s.sembled, and the law was modified. The martyrs had not died in vain. Their cause was victorious. A revolution had been effected. The Puritan ideal of a commonwealth composed of a united body of believers was broken down, never again to be restored.

The principle had been admitted that the heretic might come to Ma.s.sachusetts and stay there.

It was not in a moment, however, that these results were fully realized.

For some years longer Quakers were fined, imprisoned, and now and then tied to the cart's tail and whipped from one town to another. But these acts of persecution came to be more and more discountenanced by public opinion until at length they ceased.

It was on the 25th of May, 1660, just one week before the martyrdom of Mary Dyer, that Charles II. returned to England to occupy his father's throne. One of the first papers laid before him was a memorial in behalf of the oppressed Quakers in New England. In the course of the following year he sent a letter to Endicott and the other New England governors, ordering them to suspend proceedings against the Quakers, and if any were then in prison, to send them to England for trial. Christison's victory had already been won, but the "King's Missive" was now partially obeyed by the release of all prisoners. As for sending anybody to England for trial, that was something that no New England government could ever be made to allow.

Charles's defence of the Quakers was due, neither to liberality of disposition nor to any sympathy with them, but rather to his inclinations toward Romanism. Unlike in other respects, Quakers and Catholics were alike in this, that they were the only sects which the Protestant world in general agreed in excluding from toleration. Charles wished to secure toleration for Catholics, and he could not prudently take steps toward this end without pursuing a policy broad enough to diminish persecution in other directions, and from these circ.u.mstances the Quakers profited. At times there was something almost like a political alliance between Quaker and Catholic, as instanced in the relations between William Penn and Charles's brother, the Duke of York.

[Sidenote: The "King's Missive"] [Sidenote: Why Charles II. interfered to protect the Quakers]

Besides all this, Charles had good reason to feel that the governments of New England were a.s.suming too many airs of sovereignty. There were plenty of people at hand to work upon his mind. The friends of Gorton and Child and Va.s.sall were loud with their complaints. Samuel Maverick swore that the people of New England were all rebels, and he could prove it. The king was a.s.sured that the Confederacy was "a war combination, made by the four colonies when they had a design to throw off their dependence on England, and for that purpose." The enemies of the New England people, while dilating upon the rebellious disposition of Ma.s.sachusetts, could also remind the king that for several years that colony had been coining and circulating s.h.i.+llings and sixpences with the name "Ma.s.sachusetts" and a tree on one side, and the name "New England"

with the date on the other. There was no recognition of England upon this coinage, which was begun in 1652 and kept up for more than thirty years. Such pieces of money used to be called "pine-tree s.h.i.+llings"; but, so far as looks go, the tree might be anything, and an adroit friend of New England once gravely a.s.sured the king that it was meant for the royal oak in which his majesty hid himself after the battle of Worcester!

Against the colony of New Haven the king had a special grudge. Two of the regicide judges, who had sat in the tribunal which condemned his father, escaped to New England in 1660 and were well received there.

They were gentlemen of high position. Edward Whalley was a cousin of Cromwell and Hampden. He had distinguished himself at Naseby and Dunbar, and had risen to the rank of lieutenant-general. He had commanded at the capture of Worcester, where it is interesting to observe that the royalist commander who surrendered to him was Sir Henry Was.h.i.+ngton, own cousin to the grandfather of George Was.h.i.+ngton. The other regicide, William Goffe, as a major-general in Cromwell's army, had won such distinction that there were some who pointed to him as the proper person to succeed the Lord Protector on the death of the latter. He had married Whalley's daughter. Soon after the arrival of these gentlemen, a royal order for their arrest was sent to Boston. If they had been arrested and sent back to England, their severed heads would soon have been placed over Temple Bar. The king's detectives hotly pursued them through the woodland paths of New England, and they would soon have been taken but for the aid they got from the people. Many are the stories of their hairbreadth escapes. Sometimes they took refuge in a cave on a mountain near New Haven, sometimes they hid in friendly cellars; and once, being hard put to it, they skulked under a wooden bridge, while their pursuers on horseback galloped by overhead. After lurking about New Haven and Milford for two or three years, on hearing of the expected arrival of Colonel Nichols and his commission, they sought a more secluded hiding-place near Hadley, a village lately settled far up the Connecticut river, within the jurisdiction of Ma.s.sachusetts. Here the avengers lost the trail, the pursuit was abandoned, and the weary regicides were presently forgotten. The people of New Haven had been especially zealous in s.h.i.+elding the fugitives. Mr. Davenport had not only harboured them in his own house, but on the Sabbath before their expected arrival he had preached a very bold sermon, openly advising his people to aid and comfort them as far as possible. [28] The colony, moreover, did not officially recognize the restoration of Charles II. to the throne until that event had been commonly known in New England for more than a year. For these reasons the wrath of the king was specially roused against New Haven, when circ.u.mstances combined to enable him at once to punish this disloyal colony and deal a blow at the Confederacy.

We have seen that in restricting the suffrage to church members New Haven had followed the example of Ma.s.sachusetts, but Connecticut had not; and at this time there was warm controversy between the two younger colonies as to the wisdom Of such a policy. As yet none of the colonies save Ma.s.sachusetts had obtained a charter, and Connecticut was naturally anxious to obtain one. Whether through a complaisant spirit connected with this desire, or through mere accident, Connecticut had been prompt in acknowledging the restoration of Charles II.; and in August, 1661, she dispatched the younger Winthrop to England to apply for a charter.

Winthrop was a man of winning address and of wide culture. His scientific tastes were a pa.s.sport to the favour of the king at a time when the Royal Society was being founded, of which Winthrop himself was soon chosen a fellow. In every way the occasion was an auspicious one.

The king looked upon the rise of the New England Confederacy with unfriendly eyes. Ma.s.sachusetts was as yet the only member of the league that was really troublesome; and there seemed to be no easier way to weaken her than to raise up a rival power by her side, and extend to it such privileges as might awaken her jealousy. All the more would such a policy be likely to succeed if accompanied by measures of which Ma.s.sachusetts must necessarily disapprove, and the suppression of New Haven would be such a measure. [Sidenote: New Haven annexed to Connecticut]

In accordance with these views, a charter of great liberality was at once granted to Connecticut, and by the same instrument the colony of New Haven was deprived of its separate existence and annexed to its stronger neighbour. As if to emphasize the motives which had led to this display of royal favour toward Connecticut, an equally liberal charter was granted to Rhode Island. In the summer of 1664 Charles II. sent a couple of s.h.i.+ps-of-war to Boston harbour, with 400 troops under command of Colonel Richard Nichols, who had been appointed, along with Samuel Maverick and two others as royal commissioners, to look after the affairs of the New World. Colonel Nichols took his s.h.i.+ps to New Amsterdam, and captured that important town. After his return the commissioners held meetings at Boston, and for a time the Ma.s.sachusetts charter seemed in danger. But the Puritan magistrates were shrewd, and months were frittered away to no purpose. Presently the Dutch made war upon England, and the king felt it to be unwise to irritate the people of Ma.s.sachusetts beyond endurance. The turbulent state of English politics which followed still further absorbed his attention, and New England had another respite of several years. [Sidenote: Founding of Newark]

In New Haven a party had grown up which was dissatisfied with its extreme theocratic policy and approved of the union with Connecticut.

Davenport and his followers, the founders of the colony, were beyond measure disgusted. They spurned "the Christless rule" of the sister colony. Many of them took advantage of the recent conquest of New Netherland, and a strong party, led by the Rev. Abraham Pierson, of Branford, migrated to the banks of the Pa.s.saic in June, 1667, and laid the foundations of Newark. For some years to come the theocratic idea that had given birth to New Haven continued to live on in New Jersey. As for Mr. Davenport, he went to Boston and ended his days there. Cotton Mather, writing at a later date, when the theocratic scheme of the early settlers had been manifestly outgrown and superseded, says of Davenport: "Yet, after all, the Lord gave him to see that in this world a Church-State was impossible, whereinto there enters nothing which defiles."

The theocratic policy, alike in New Haven and in Ma.s.sachusetts, broke down largely through its inherent weakness. It divided the community, and created among the people a party adverse to its arrogance and exclusiveness. This state of things facilitated the suppression of New Haven by royal edict, and it made possible the victory of Wenlock Christison in Ma.s.sachusetts. We can now see the fundamental explanation of the deadly hostility with which Endicott and his party regarded the Quakers. The latter aimed a fatal blow at the very root of the idea which had brought the Puritans to New England. Once admit these heretics as citizens, or even as tolerated sojourners, and there was an end of the theocratic state consisting of a united body of believers. It was a life-and-death struggle, in which no quarter was given; and the Quakers, aided by popular discontent with the theocracy, even more than by the intervention of the crown, won a decisive victory.

As the work of planting New England took place chiefly in the eleven years 1629-1640, during which Charles I. contrived to reign without a parliament, so the prosperous period of the New England Confederacy, 1643-1664, covers the time of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, and just laps on to the reign of Charles II. By the summary extinction of the separate existence of one of its members for the benefit of another, its vigour was sadly impaired. But its const.i.tution was revised so as to make it a league of three states instead of four; and the Federal Commissioners kept on holding their meetings, though less frequently, until the revocation of the Ma.s.sachusetts charter in 1684. During this period a great Indian war occurred, in the course of which this concentration of the military strength of New England, imperfect as it was, proved itself very useful. In the history of New England, from the restoration of the Stuarts until their final expulsion, the two most important facts are the military struggle of the newly founded states with the Indians, and their const.i.tutional struggle against the British government. The troubles and dangers of 1636 were renewed on a much more formidable scale, but the strength of the people had waxed greatly in the mean time, and the new perils were boldly overcome or skilfully warded off; not, however, until the const.i.tution of Ma.s.sachusetts had been violently wrenched out of shape in the struggle, and seeds of conflict sown which in the following century were to bear fruit in the American Revolution. [Sidenote: Breaking down of the theocratic policy]

[Sidenote: Weakening of the Confederacy]

CHAPTER V.

KING PHILIP'S WAR.

For eight-and-thirty years after the destruction of the Pequots, the intercourse between the English and the Indians was to all outward appearance friendly. The policy pursued by the settlers was in the main well considered. While they had shown that they could strike with terrible force when blows were needed, their treatment of the natives in time of peace seems to have been generally just and kind. Except in the single case of the conquered Pequot territory, they scrupulously paid for every rood of ground on which they settled, and so far as possible they extended to the Indians the protection of the law. On these points we have the explicit testimony of Josiah Winslow, governor of Plymouth, in his report to the Federal Commissioners in May, 1676; and what he says about Plymouth seems to have been equally true of the other colonies. Says Winslow, "I think I can clearly 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. Nay, because some of our people are of a covetous disposition, and the Indians are in their straits easily prevailed with to part with their lands, we first made a law that none should purchase or receive of gift any land of the Indians without the knowledge and allowance of our Court .... And if at any time they have brought complaints before us, they have had justice impartial and speedy, so that our own people have frequently complained that we erred on the other hand in showing them overmuch favour." The general laws of Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut as well as of Plymouth bear out what Winslow says, and show us that as a matter of policy the colonial governments were fully sensible of the importance of avoiding all occasions for quarrel with their savage neighbours. [Sidenote: Puritans and Indians]

There can, moreover, be little doubt that the material comfort of the Indians was for a time considerably improved by their dealings with the white men. Hitherto their want of foresight and thrift had been wont to involve them during the long winters in a dreadful struggle with famine.

Now the settlers were ready to pay liberally for the skin of every fur-covered animal the red men could catch; and where the trade thus arising did not suffice to keep off famine, instances of generous charity were frequent. The Algonquin tribes of New England lived chiefly by hunting, but partly by agriculture. They raised beans and corn, and succotash was a dish which they contributed to the white man's table.

They could now raise or buy English vegetables, while from dogs and horses, pigs and poultry, oxen and sheep, little as they could avail themselves of such useful animals, they nevertheless derived some benefit. [29] Better blankets and better knives were brought within their reach; and in spite of all the colonial governments could do to prevent it, they were to some extent enabled to supply themselves with muskets and rum. [Sidenote: Trade with the Indians]

Besides all this trade, which, except in the article of liquor, tended to improve the condition of the native tribes, there was on the part of the earlier settlers an earnest and diligent effort to convert them to Christianity and give them the rudiments of a civilized education.

Missionary work was begun in 1643 by Thomas Mayhew on the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. The savages at first declared they were not so silly as to barter thirty-seven tutelar deities for one, but after much preaching and many pow-wows Mayhew succeeded in persuading them that the Deity of the white man was mightier than all their _manitous._ Whether they ever got much farther than this toward a comprehension of the white man's religion may be doubted; but they were prevailed upon to let their children learn to read and write, and even to set up little courts, in which justice was administered according to some of the simplest rules of English law, and from which there lay an appeal to the court of Plymouth. In 1646 Ma.s.sachusetts enacted that the elders of the churches should choose two persons each year to go and spread the gospel among the Indians. In 1649 Parliament established the Society for propagating the Gospel in New England, and presently from voluntary contributions the society was able to dispose of an annual income of 2000. Schools were set up in which agriculture was taught as well as religion. It was even intended that Indians should go to Harvard College, and a building was erected for their accommodation, but as none came to occupy it, the college printing-press was presently set to work there. One solitary Indian student afterward succeeded in climbing to the bachelor's degree,--Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck of the cla.s.s of 1665. It was this one success that was marvellous, not the failure of the scheme, which vividly shows how difficult it was for the white man of that day to understand the limitations of the red man. [Sidenote: Missionary work: Thomas Mayhew]

The greatest measure of success in converting the Indians was attained by that famous linguist and preacher, the apostle John Eliot. This remarkable man was a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge. He had come to Ma.s.sachusetts in 1631, and in the following year had been settled as teacher in the church at Roxbury of which Thomas Welde was pastor. He had been distinguished at the university for philological scholars.h.i.+p and for linguistic talent--two things not always found in connection--and now during fourteen years he devoted such time as he could to acquiring a complete mastery of the Algonquin dialect spoken by the Indians of Ma.s.sachusetts bay. To the modern comparative philologist his work is of great value. He published not only an excellent Indian grammar, but a complete translation of the Bible into the Ma.s.sachusetts language,--a monument of prodigious labour. It is one of the most instructive doc.u.ments in existence for the student of Algonquin speech, though the Ma.s.sachusetts tribe and its language have long been extinct, and there are very few scholars living who can read the book. It has become one of the curiosities of literature and at auction sales of private libraries commands an extremely high price. Yet out of this rare book the American public has somehow or other within the last five or six years contrived to pick up a word which we shall very likely continue to hear for some time to come. In Eliot's Bible, the word which means a great chief--such as Joshua, or Gideon, or Joab--is "mugwump."

It was in 1646 that Eliot began his missionary preaching at a small Indian village near Watertown. President Dunster, of Harvard College, and Mr. Shepard, the minister at Cambridge, felt a warm interest in the undertaking. These worthy men seriously believed that the aborigines of America were the degenerate descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel, and from this strange backsliding it was hoped that they might now be reclaimed. With rare eloquence and skill did Eliot devote himself to the difficult work of reaching the Indian's scanty intelligence and still scantier moral sense. His ministrations reached from the sands of Cape Cod to the rocky hillsides of Brookfield. But he soon found that single-handed he could achieve but little over so wide an area, and accordingly he adopted the policy of colonizing his converts in village communities near the English towns, where they might be sequestered from their heathen brethren and subjected to none but Christian influences.

In these communities he hoped to train up native missionaries who might thence go and labour among the wild tribes until the whole lump of barbarism should be leavened. In pursuance of this scheme a stockaded village was built at Natick in 1651 Under the direction of an English carpenter the Indians built log-houses for themselves, and most of them adopted the English dress. Their simple government was administered by t.i.thing-men, or "rulers of tens," chosen after methods prescribed in the book of Exodus. Other such communities were formed in the neighbourhoods of Concord and Grafton. By 1674 the number of these "praying Indians,"

as they were called, was estimated at 4000, of whom about 1500 were in Eliot's villages, as many more in Martha's Vineyard, 300 in Nantucket, and 700 in the Plymouth colony. There seems to be no doubt that these Indians were really benefited both materially and morally by the change in their life. In theology it is not likely that they reached any higher view than that expressed by the Connecticut sachem Wequash who "seeing and beholding the mighty power of G.o.d in the English forces, how they fell upon the Pequots, ... from that time was convinced and persuaded that our G.o.d was a most dreadful G.o.d;" accordingly, says the author of "New England's First Fruits," "he became thoroughly reformed according to his light." Matters of outward observance, too, the Indians could understand; for we read of one of them rebuking an Englishman "for profaning the Lord's Day by felling of a tree." The Indian's notions of religion were probably confined within this narrow compa.s.s; the notions of some people that call themselves civilized perhaps do not extend much further. [Sidenote: Villages of Christian Indians]

From such facts as those above cited we may infer that the early relations of the Puritan settlers to the Algonquin tribes of New England were by no means like the relations between white men and red men in recent times on our western plains. During Philip's War, as we shall see, the Puritan theory of the situation was entirely changed and our forefathers began to act in accordance with the frontiersman's doctrine that the good Indians are dead Indians. But down to that time it is clear that his intention was to deal honourably and gently with his tawny neighbour. We sometimes hear the justice and kindness of the Quakers in Pennsylvania alleged as an adequate reason for the success with which they kept clear of an Indian war. This explanation, however, does not seem to be adequate; it does not appear that, on the whole, the Puritans were less just and kind than the Quakers in their treatment of the red men. The true explanation is rather to be found in the relations between the Indian tribes toward the close of the seventeenth century.

Early in that century the Pennsylvania region had been in the hands of the ferocious and powerful Susquehannocks, but in 1672, after a frightful struggle of twenty years, this great tribe was swept from the face of the earth by the resistless league of the Five Nations. When the Quakers came to Pennsylvania in 1682, the only Indians in that neighbourhood were the Delawares, who had just been terribly beaten by the Five Nations and forced into a treaty by which they submitted to be called "women," and to surrender their tomahawks. Penn's famous treaty was made with the Delawares as occupants of the land and also with the Iroquois league as overlords. [30] Now the great central fact of early American history, so far as the relations between white men and red men are concerned, is the unshaken friends.h.i.+p of the Iroquois for the English. This was the natural consequence of the deadly hostility between the Iroquois and the French which began with Champlain's defeat of the Mohawks in 1609. During the seventy-three years which intervened between the founding of Pennsylvania and the defeat of Braddock there was never a moment when the Delawares could have attacked the Quakers without incurring the wrath and vengeance of their overlords the Five Nations. This was the reason why Pennsylvania was left so long in quiet.

No better proof could be desired than the fact that in Pontiac's war, after the overthrow of the French and when Indian politics had changed, no state suffered so much as Pennsylvania from the horrors of Indian warfare. [Sidenote: Why Pennsylvania was so long unmolested by the Indians]

In New England at the time of Philip's War, the situation was very different from what it was between the Hudson and the Susquehanna. The settlers were thrown into immediate relations with several tribes whose mutual hostility and rivalry was such that it was simply impossible to keep on good terms with all at once. Such complicated questions as that which involved the English in responsibility for the fate of Miantonomo did not arise in Pennsylvania. Since the destruction of the Pequots we have observed the Narragansetts and Mohegans contending for the foremost place among New England tribes. Of the two rivals the Mohegans were the weaker, and therefore courted the friends.h.i.+p of the formidable palefaces. The English had no desire to take part in these barbarous feuds, but they could not treat the Mohegans well without incurring the hostility of the Narragansetts. For thirty years the feeling of the latter tribe toward the English had been very unfriendly and would doubtless have vented itself in murder but for their recollection of the fate of the Pequots. After the loss of their chief Miantonomo their att.i.tude became so sullen and defiant that the Federal Commissioners, in order to be in readiness for an outbreak, collected a force of 300 men.

At the first news of these preparations the Narragansetts, overcome with terror, sent a liberal tribute of wampum to Boston, and were fain to conclude a treaty in which they promised to behave themselves well in the future.

It was impossible that this sort of English protectorate over the native tribes, which was an inevitable result of the situation, should be other than irksome and irritating to the Indians. They could not but see that the white man stood there as master, and even in the utter absence of provocation, this fact alone must have made them hate him. It is difficult, moreover, for the civilized man and the savage to understand each other. As a rule the one does not know what the other is thinking about. When Mr. Hamilton Gus.h.i.+ng a few years ago took some of his Zuni friends into a hotel in Chicago, they marvelled at his entering such a mighty palace with so little ceremony, and their wonder was heightened at the promptness with which "slaves" came running at his beck and call; but all at once, on seeing an American eagle over one of the doorways, they felt that the mystery was solved. Evidently this palace was the communal dwelling of the Eagle Clan of palefaces, and evidently Mr.

Gus.h.i.+ng was a great sachem of this clan, and as such ent.i.tled to lordly sway there! The Zunis are not savages, but representatives of a remote and primitive phase of what Mr. Morgan calls the middle status of barbarism. The gulf between their thinking and that of white men is wide because there is a wide gulf between the experience of the two.

[Sidenote: Difficulty of the situation in New England] [Sidenote: It is hard for the savage and the civilized man to understand one another]

This ill.u.s.tration may help us to understand an instance in which the Indians of New England must inevitably have misinterpreted the actions of the white settlers and read them in the light of their uneasy fears and prejudices. I refer to the work of the apostle Eliot. His design in founding his villages of Christian Indians was in the highest degree benevolent and n.o.ble; but the heathen Indians could hardly be expected to see anything in it but a cunning scheme for destroying them.

Eliot's converts were for the most part from the Ma.s.sachusetts tribe, the smallest and weakest of all. The Plymouth converts came chiefly from the tribe next in weakness, the Pokanokets or Wampanoags. The more powerful tribes--Narragansetts, Nipmucks, and Mohegans--furnished very few converts. When they saw the white intruders gathering members of the weakest tribes into villages of English type, and teaching them strange G.o.ds while clothing them in strange garments, they probably supposed that the pale-faces were simply adopting these Indians into their white tribe as a means of increasing their military strength. At any rate, such a proceeding would be perfectly intelligible to the savage mind, whereas the nature of Eliot's design lay quite beyond its ken. As the Indians recovered from their supernatural dread of the English, and began to regard them as using human means to accomplish their ends, they must of course interpret their conduct in such light as savage experience could afford. It is one of the commonest things in the world for a savage tribe to absorb weak neighbours by adoption, and thus increase its force preparatory to a deadly a.s.sault upon other neighbours. When Eliot in 1657 preached to the little tribe of Podunks near Hartford, and asked them if they were willing to accept of Jesus Christ as their saviour, their old men scornfully answered No! they had parted with most of their land, but they were not going to become the white man's servants. A rebuke administered to Eliot by Uncas in 1674 has a similar implication. When the apostle was preaching one evening in a village over which that sachem claimed jurisdiction, an Indian arose and announced himself as a deputy of Uncas. Then he said, "Uncas is not well pleased that the English should pa.s.s over Mohegan river to call _his_ Indians to pray to G.o.d." [31]

Thus, no matter how benevolent the white man's intentions, he could not fail to be dreaded by the Indians as a powerful and ever encroaching enemy.

Even in his efforts to keep the peace and prevent tribes from taking the warpath without his permission, he was interfering with the red man's cherished pastime of murder and pillage. The appeals to the court at Plymouth, the frequent summoning of sachems to Boston, to explain their affairs and justify themselves against accusers, must have been maddening in their effects upon the Indian; for there is one sound instinct which the savage has in common with the most progressive races, and that is the love of self-government that resents all outside interference. All things considered, it is remarkable that peace should have been maintained in New England from 1637 to 1675; and probably nothing short of the consuming vengeance wrought upon the Pequots could have done it. But with the lapse of time the wholesome feeling of dread began to fade away, and as the Indians came to use musket instead of bow and arrow, their fear of the English grew less, until at length their ferocious temper broke forth in an epidemic of fire and slaughter that laid waste the land. [Sidenote: It is remarkable that peace should have been so long preserved]

Ma.s.sasoit, chief sachem of the Wampanoags and steadfast ally of the Plymouth colonists, died in 1660, leaving two sons, Wamsutta and Metacom, or as the English nicknamed them, Alexander and Philip.

Alexander succeeded to his father's position of savage dignity and influence, but his reign was brief. Rumours came to Plymouth that he was plotting mischief, and he was accordingly summoned to appear before the General Court of that colony and explain himself. He seems to have gone reluctantly, but he succeeded in satisfying the magistrates of his innocence of any evil designs. Whether he caught cold at Plymouth or drank rum as only Indians can, we do not know. At any rate, on starting homeward, before he had got clear of English territory, he was seized by a violent fever and died. The savage mind knows nothing of pneumonia or delirium tremens. It knows nothing of what we call natural death. To the savage all death means murder, for like other men he judges of the unknown by the known. In the Indian's experience normal death was by tomahawk or firebrand; abnormal death (such as we call natural) must come either from poison or from witchcraft. So when the honest chronicler Hubbard tells us that Philip suspected the Plymouth people of poisoning his brother, we can easily believe him. It was long, however, before he was ready to taste the sweets of revenge. He schemed and plotted in the dark. In one respect the Indian diplomatist is unlike his white brethren; he does not leave state-papers behind him to reward the diligence and gratify the curiosity of later generations; and accordingly it is hard to tell how far Philip was personally responsible for the storm which was presently to burst upon New England. [Sidenote: Deaths of Ma.s.sasoit and Alexander] [Sidenote: Philip's designs]

Whether his scheme was as comprehensive as that of Pontiac in 1763, whether or not it amounted to a deliberate combination of all red men within reach to exterminate the white men, one can hardly say with confidence. The figure of Philip, in the war which bears his name, does not stand out so prominently as the figure of Pontiac in the later struggle. This may be partly because Pontiac's story has been told by such a magician as Mr. Francis Parkman. But it is partly because the data are too meagre. In all probability, however, the schemes of Sa.s.sacus the Pequot, of Philip the Wampanoag, and of Pontiac the Ottawa, were substantially the same. That Philip plotted with the Narragansetts seems certain, and the early events of the war point clearly to a previous understanding with the Nipmucks. The Mohegans, on the other hand, gave him no a.s.sistance, but remained faithful to their white allies.

For thirteen years had Philip been chief sachem of his tribe before the crisis came. Rumours of his unfriendly disposition had at intervals found their way to the ears of the magistrates at Plymouth, but Philip had succeeded in setting himself right before them. In 1670 the rumours were renewed, and the Plymouth men felt that it was time to strike, but the other colonies held them back, and a meeting was arranged between Philip and three Boston men at Taunton in April, 1671. There the crafty savage expressed humility and contrition for all past offences, and even consented to a treaty in which he promised that his tribe should surrender all their fire-arms. On the part of the English this was an extremely unwise measure, for while it could not possibly be enforced, and while it must have greatly increased the irritation of the Indians, it was at the same time interpretable as a symptom of fear. With ominous scowls and grunts some seventy muskets were given up, but this was all.

Through the summer there was much uneasiness, and in September Philip was summoned to Plymouth with five of his under-sachems, and solemnly warned to keep the peace. The savages again behaved with humility and agreed to pay a yearly tribute of five wolves' heads and to do no act of war without express permission.

For three years things seemed quiet, until late in 1674 the alarm was again sounded. Sausamon, a convert from the Ma.s.sachusetts tribe, had studied a little at Harvard College, and could speak and write English with facility. He had at one time been employed by Philip as a sort of private secretary or messenger, and at other times had preached and taught school among the Indian converts at Natick. Sausamon now came to Plymouth and informed Governor Winslow that Philip was certainly engaged in a conspiracy that boded no good to the English. Somehow or other Philip contrived to find out what Sausamon had said, and presently coming to Plymouth loudly a.s.severated his innocence; but the magistrates warned him that if they heard any more of this sort of thing his arms would surely be seized. A few days after Philip had gone home, Sausamon's hat and gun were seen lying on the frozen surface of a.s.sowamsett Pond, near Middleborough, and on cutting through the ice his body was found with unmistakable marks of beating and strangling. After some months the crime was traced to three Wampanoags, who were forthwith arrested, tried by a mixed jury of Indians and white men, found guilty, and put to death. On the way to the gallows one of them confessed that he had stood by while his two friends had pounded and choked the unfortunate Sausamon. [Sidenote: Murder of Sausamon]

More alarming reports now came from Swanzey, a pretty village of some forty houses not far from Philip's headquarters at Mount Hope. On Sunday June 20, while everybody was at church, a party of Indians had stolen into the town and set fire to two houses. Messengers were hurried from Plymouth and from Boston, to demand the culprits under penalty of instant war. As they approached Swanzey the men from Boston saw a sight that filled them with horror. The road was strewn with corpses of men, women, and children, scorched, dismembered, and mangled with that devilish art of which the American Indian is the most finished master.

The savages had sacked the village the day before, burning the houses and slaying the people. Within three days a small force of colonial troops had driven Philip from his position at Mount Hope; but while they were doing this a party of savages swooped upon Dartmouth, burning thirty houses and committing fearful atrocities. Some of their victims were flayed alive, or impaled on sharp stakes, or roasted over slow fires. Similar horrors were wrought at Middleborough and Taunton; and now the misery spread to Ma.s.sachusetts, where on the 14th of July the town of Mendon was attacked by a party of Nipmucks. [Sidenote: Ma.s.sacres at Swanzey and Dartmouth, June, 1675]

At that time the beautiful highlands between Lancaster and the Connecticut river were still an untrodden wilderness. On their southern slope Worcester and Brookfield were tiny hamlets of a dozen houses each.

Up the Connecticut valley a line of little villages, from Springfield to Northfield, formed the remotest frontier of the English, and their exposed position offered tempting opportunities to the Indians. Governor Leverett saw how great the danger would be if the other tribes should follow the example set by Philip, and Captain Edward Hutchinson was accordingly sent to Brookfield to negotiate with the Nipmucks. This officer was eldest son of the unfortunate lady whose preaching in Boston nearly forty years before had been the occasion of so much strife. Not only his mother, but all save one or two of his brothers and sisters --and there were not less than twelve of them--had been murdered by Indians on the New Netherland border in 1643; now the same cruel fate overtook the gallant captain. The savages agreed to hold a parley and appointed a time and place for the purpose, but instead of keeping tryst they lay in ambush and slew Hutchinson with eight of his men on their way to the conference. [Sidenote: Murder of Captain Hutchinson]

Three days afterward Philip, who had found home too hot for him, arrived in the Nipmuck country, and on the night of August 2, took part in a fierce a.s.sault on Brookfield. Thirty or forty men, with some fifty women and children--all the inhabitants of the hamlet--took refuge in a large house, where they were besieged by 300 savages whose bullets pierced the wooden walls again and again. Arrows tipped with burning rags were shot into the air in such wise as to fall upon the roof, but they who crouched in the garret were watchful and well supplied with water, while from the overhanging windows the volleys of musketry were so brisk and steady that the screaming savages below could not get near enough to the house to set it on fire. For three days the fight was kept up, while every other house in the village was destroyed. By this time the Indians had contrived to mount some planks on barrels so as to make a kind of rude cart which they loaded with tow and chips. They were just about setting it on fire and preparing to push it against the house with long poles, when they were suddenly foiled by a heavy shower. That noon the gallant Simon Willard, ancestor of two presidents of Harvard College, a man who had done so much toward building up Concord and Lancaster that he was known as the "founder of towns," was on his way from Lancaster to Groton at the head of forty-seven hors.e.m.e.n, when he was overtaken by a courier with the news from Brookfield. The distance was thirty miles, the road scarcely fit to be called a bridle-path, and Willard's years were more than threescore-and-ten; but by an hour after sunset he had gallopped into Brookfield and routed the Indians who fled to a swamp ten miles distant. [Sidenote: Attack on Brookfield]

The scene is now s.h.i.+fted to the Connecticut valley, where on the 25th of August Captain Lothrop defeated the savages at Hatfield. On the 1st of September simultaneous attacks were made upon Deerfield and Hadley, and among the traditions of the latter place is one of the most interesting of the stories of that early time. The inhabitants were all in church keeping a fast, when the yells of the Indians resounded. Seizing their guns, the men rushed out to meet the foe; but seeing the village green swarming on every side with the horrid savages, for a moment their courage gave way and a panic was imminent; when all at once a stranger of reverend aspect and stately form, with white beard flowing on his bosom, appeared among them and took command with an air of authority which none could gainsay. He bade them charge on the screeching rabble, and after a short sharp skirmish the tawny foe was put to flight. When the pursuers came together again, after the excitement of the rout, their deliverer was not to be found. In their wonder, as they knew not whence he came or whither he had gone, many were heard to say that an angel had been sent from heaven for their deliverance. It was the regicide William Goffe, who from his hiding-place had seen the savages stealing down the hillside, and sallied forth to win yet one more victory over the hosts of Midian ere death should come to claim him in his woodland retreat. Sir Walter Scott has put this pretty story into the mouth of Major Bridgenorth in "Peveril of the Peak," and Cooper has made use of it in "The Wept of Wish-ton-wish." Like many other romantic stories, it rests upon insufficient authority and its truth has been called in question. [32] But there seems to be nothing intrinsically improbable in the tradition; and a paramount regard for Goffe's personal safety would quite account for the studied silence of contemporary writers like Hubbard and Increase Mather. [Sidenote: The mysterious stranger of Hadley]

This repulse did not check for a moment the activity of the Indians, though for a long time we hear nothing more of Philip. On the 2d of September they slew eight men at Northfield and on the 4th they surrounded and butchered Captain Beers and most of his company of thirty-six marching to the relief of that village. The next day but one, as Major Robert Treat came up the road with his 100 Connecticut soldiers, they found long poles planted by the wayside bearing the heads of their unfortunate comrades. They in turn were a.s.saulted, but beat off the enemy, and brought away the people of Northfield. That village was abandoned, and presently Deerfield shared its fate and the people were crowded into Hadley. Yet worse remained to be seen. A large quant.i.ty of wheat had been left partly threshed at Deerfield, and on the 11th of September eighteen wagons were sent up with teamsters and farmers to finish the thres.h.i.+ng and bring in the grain. They were escorted by Captain Lothrop, with his train-band of ninety picked men, known as the "Flower of Ess.e.x," perhaps the best drilled company in the colony. The thres.h.i.+ng was done, the wagons were loaded, and the party made a night march southward. At seven in the morning, as they were fording a shallow stream in the shade of overarching woods, they were suddenly overwhelmed by the deadly fire of 700 ambushed Nipmucks, and only eight of them escaped to tell the tale. A "black and fatal" day was this, says the chronicler, "the saddest that ever befell New England." To this day the memory of the slaughter at b.l.o.o.d.y Brook survives, and the visitor to South Deerfield may read the inscription over the grave in which Major Treat's men next day buried all the victims together. The Indians now began to feel their power, and on the 5th of October they attacked Springfield and burned thirty houses there. [Sidenote: Ambuscade at b.l.o.o.d.y Brook, September 12]