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THE PRAYING INDIANS.

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the Massachusetts dialect. His actions, his thoughts, his desires, all wore the hues of disinterested love. His uncontrollable charity welled out in a perpetual fountain.

Nor was Eliot alone. In the islands round Massachusetts, and within the limits of the Plymouth patent, missionary zeal and charity were active; and "that young New England scholar," the gentle Mayhew, forgetting the pride of learning, endeavored to win the natives to a new religion. At a later day, he took passage for England, to awaken interest there; and the ship in which he sailed was never more heard of. But such had been the force of his example, that his father, though bowed down by the weight of seventy years, resolved on assuming the office of the son whom he has lost, and, till beyond the age of fourscore years and twelve, continued to instruct the natives of the isles; and with the happiest results. The Indians within his influence, though twenty times more numerous than the whites in their immediate neighborhood, preserved an immutable friendship with Massachusetts.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE INDIAN WAR IN NEW ENGLAND.

THUS churches were gathered among the heathen ; villages of "praying Indians" established; at Cambridge, in 1665, an Indian actually became a bachelor of arts. Yet Christianity hardly spread beyond the Indians on Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket, and the seven feeble villages round Boston. The Narragansets, a powerful tribe, counting at least a thousand warriors, hemmed in between Connecticut and Plymouth, restless and jealous, retained their old belief; and

268 PHILIP OF POKANOKET AND HIS TRIBES. [1675.

Philip of Pokanoket, at the head of seven hundred warriors, professed with pride the faith of his fathers.

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The aged Massasoit- he who had welcomed the Pilgrims to the soil of New England, and had opened his cabin to shelter the founder of Rhode Island now slept with his fathers; and his son, Philip of Pokanoket, had succeeded him as chief over allied tribes. Repeated sales of land had narrowed their domains; and the English had artfully crowded them into the tongues of land, as most suitable and convenient for them." There they could be more easily watched; for the frontiers of the narrow peninsulas were inconsiderable. Thus the two chief seats of the Pokanokets were the necks of land which we now call Bristol and Tiverton; and as the villages of the English drew nearer and nearer to them, their hunting-grounds were put under culture; their natural parks were turned into pastures; their best fields for planting corn were gradually alienated; till they found themselves deprived of their broad acres, and, by their own legal contracts, driven, as it were, into the sea.

Collisions and mutual distrust were the necessary consequence. When the young warriors came together, how could they fail to regret the wide domains of their ancestors? They spurned the English claim of jurisdiction, and were indignant that Indian chiefs or warriors should be arraigned before a jury. And what, in their eyes, were paper deeds, the seals and signatures of which they could not comprehend the binding force? When the expressions of common passion were repeated by an Indian tale-bearer, fear magnified the plans of the tribes into an organized scheme of resistance.

The haughty chieftain, who had once before been compelled to surrender his " English arms," and pay an onerous tribute, was, in 1674, summoned to submit to an examination, and could not escape suspicion. The wrath of his tribe was roused, and the informer was murdered. The murderers, in their turn, were iden

1675.]

KING PHILIP'S WAR.

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tified; seized, in June, 1675; tried by a jury, of which one half were Indians, and, on conviction, were hanged. The young men of the tribe panted for revenge: on the twenty-fourth of the same month, eight or nine of the English were slain in or about Swansey; and the alarm of war spread through the colonies.

Thus was Philip hurried into "his rebellion;" and he is reported to have wept as he heard that a white man's blood had been shed. He had kept his men about him in arms, and had welcomed every stranger; and now, against his judgment and his will, he was involved in war. For what prospect had he of success? Destiny had marked him and his tribe. The English were united; the Indians had no alliance; the English made a common cause; half the Indians were allies of the English, or were quiet spectators of the fight; the English had guns enough; but few of the Indians were well armed, and they could get no new supplies; the English had towns for their shelter and safe retreat; the miserable wigwams of the natives were defenceless; - the English had sure supplies of food; the Indians might easily lose their precarious stores. The individual, growing giddy by danger, rushes, as it were, towards his fate; so did the Indians of New England. Frenzy prompted their rising. It was but the storm in which the ancient inhabitants of the land were to vanish away. They rose without hope, and, therefore, they fought without mercy. For them, as a nation, there was

no to-morrow.

The minds of the English were appalled by the horrors of the impending conflict, and superstition indulged in its wild inventions. At the time of the eclipse of the moon, you might have seen the figure of an Indian scalp imprinted on the centre of its disk. The perfect form of an Indian bow appeared in the sky. The sighing of the wind was like the whistling of bullets. Some distinctly heard invisible troops of horses gallop through the air, while others found the prophecy of calamities in the howling of the wolves.

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