and Plymouth, restless and jealous, retained their old belief; and Philip of Pokanoket, at the head of seven hundred warriors, professed with pride the faith of his fathers.

But he and the tribes that owned his influence were now shut in by the gathering plantations of the English, and were the first to forebode the danger of extermination. True, the inhabitants of New England had never, except in the territory of the Pequods, taken possession of a foot of land without first obtaining a title from the Indians. But the unlettered savage, who repented the alienation of vast tracts by affixing a shapeless mark to a bond, might deem the English tenure defeasible. Again, by repeated treaties, the red man had acknowledged the jurisdiction of the English, who claimed a guardianship over him, and really endeavored in their courts, with scrupulous justice, and even with favor, to protect him from fraud and to avenge his wrongs. But the wild inhabitants of the woods or the sea-shore could not understand the duty of allegiance to an unknown sovereign, or acknowledge the binding force of a political compact; crowded by hated neighbors, losing fields and hunting-grounds, and frequently summoned to Boston or Plymouth to reply to an accusation or to explain their purposes, they sighed for the forest freedom which was their immemorial birthright.

The clans within the limits of the denser settlements, especially the Indian villages round Boston, were broken-spirited from the overwhelming force of the English. In their rude blending of new lessons with ancient superstitions, in their feeble imitations of the manners of civilization, in their appeals to the charities of Europeans, they had quenched the fierce spirit of savage independence. They loved the crumbs from the white man's table.

But the Pokanokets had always rejected the Christian faith and Christian manners, and their chief had desired to insert. in a treaty, what the Puritans always rejected, that the English should never attempt to convert the warriors of his tribe from the religion of their race. The aged Massassoit-he who had welcomed the pilgrims to the soil of New England, and had opened his cabin to shelter the founder of Rhode Islandnow slept with his fathers, and Philip, his son, had succeeded

him as head of the 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," and as more easily watched. The principal seats of the Pokanokets were the peninsulas which we now call Bristol and Tiverton. As the English villages 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, their fisheries were impaired by more skilful methods, 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. There exists no evidence of a deliberate conspiracy on the part of all the tribes. The commencement of war was accidental; many of the Indians were in a maze, not knowing what to do, and disposed to stand for the English; sure proof of no ripened conspiracy. But they had the same complaints, recollections, and fears; and, when they met, they could not but grieve together at the alienation of the domains of their fathers. They spurned the English claim of jurisdiction over them, and were indignant that Indian chiefs or warriors should be arraigned before a jury. And, when the language of their anger and sorrow was reported to the men of Plymouth colony by an Indian tale-bearer, fear professed to discover in their unguarded words the evidence of an organized conspiracy.

The haughty Philip, 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 identified, seized, tried by a jury, of which one half were Indians, and, in June, 1675, on conviction, were hanged. The young men of the tribe panted for revenge; without delay, 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 yet, against his judgment and his will, he was involved in war. For what chances had he of success? The English were united; the Indians had no alliance, and half of them joined the English, or were quiet spectators of the fight: the English had guns enough; 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. They rose without hope, and they fought without mercy. For them as a nation there was

no to-morrow.

The English were appalled at the impending conflict, and superstition indulged in its wild inventions. At the time of the eclipse of the moon, they saw 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 heard invisible troops of horses gallop through the air, while others interpreted prophecies of calamity in the howling of the wolves.

At the first alarm, volunteers from Massachusetts joined the troops of Plymouth; on the twenty-ninth of June, within a week from the beginning of hostilities, the Pokanokets were driven from Mount Hope; and in less than a month Philip was a fugitive among the Nipmucks, the interior tribes of Massachusetts. The little army of the colonists then entered the territory of the Narragansetts, and from the reluctant tribe extorted a treaty of neutrality, with a promise to deliver up every hostile Indian. Victory seemed promptly assured. But it was only the commencement of horrors. Canonchet, the chief sachem of the Narragansetts, was the son of Miantonomoh; and could he forget his father's wrongs? Desolation extended along the whole frontier. Banished from his patrimony where the pilgrims found a friend, and from his cabin which had sheltered exiles, Philip and his warriors spread through the country, awakening their race to a warfare of extermination.

The war, on the part of the Indians, was one of ambuscades and surprises. They never once met the English in open field; but always, even if eightfold in numbers, fled timorously before infantry. They were secret as beasts of prey, skilful marksmen, fleet of foot, conversant with all the paths of the forest, patient of fatigue, and mad with a passion for rapine, vengeance, and destruction, retreating into swamps for their fastnesses, or hiding in the greenwood thickets, where the leaves muffled the eyes of the pursuer. By the rapidity of their descent, they seemed omnipresent among the scattered villages, which they ravaged like a passing storm; and for a full year they kept all New England in a state of terror and excitement. The exploring party was waylaid and cut off, and the mangled carcasses and disjointed limbs of the dead were hung upon the trees. The laborer in the field, the reapers as they sallied forth to the harvest, men as they went to mill, the shepherd's boy among the sheep, were shot down by skulking foes, whose approach was invisible. The mother, if left alone in the house, feared the tomahawk for herself and children; on the sudden attack, the husband would fly with one child, the wife with another, and perhaps one only escape; the vil lage cavalcade, making its way "to meeting" on Sunday, in files on horseback, the farmer holding the bridle in one hand and a child in the other, his wife seated on a pillion behind him, it may be with a child in her lap, as was the fashion in those days, could not proceed safely; but, at the moment when least expected, bullets would whiz among them, sent from an unseen enemy by the wayside. The forest, that hid the ambush of the Indians, secured their retreat.

On the second of August, Brookfield, a settlement of less than twenty families, the only one in the wilderness between Lancaster and Hadley, was besieged and set on fire, and most gallantly rescued by Simon Willard, then seventy years old, and rescued only to be abandoned; on the first of September, Deerfield was burnt. The plains of Northfield were wet with the blood of Beers and twenty of his valiant associates. On the eighteenth, as Lathrop's company of young men, all "culled" out of the towns of Essex county, were conveying the harvests of Deerfield to the lower towns, they were sud

denly surrounded by a horde of Indians; and, as each party fought from behind trees, the victory was with the far more numerous savages. Hardly a white man escaped; the little stream that winds through the tranquil scene, by its name of blood, commemorates the massacre of that day. For ten weeks of the autumn, the commissioners of the united colonies, which were now but three in number, were almost constantly in session. With one voice they voted that the war was a just and necessary war of defence, to be jointly prosecuted by all the united colonies at their common charge. They directed that a thousand soldiers should be raised, of whom one half should

be troopers with long arms. Of the whole number, the quota of Massachusetts was five hundred and twenty-seven; of Plymouth, one hundred and fifty-eight; of Connecticut, three hundred and fifteen. But the war still raged. In October, Springfield was burnt, and Hadley once more assaulted. The remoter villages were deserted; the pleasant residences of civilization in the wilderness were laid waste.

But the English were not the only sufferers. In winter, it was the custom of the red men to dwell together in their wigwams; in spring, they would disperse through the woods. In winter, the warriors who had spread misery through the west were sheltered among the Narragansetts; in spring, they would renew their devastations. In winter, the absence of

foliage made the forests less dangerous; in spring, every bush would be a hiding-place. It was resolved to regard the Narragansetts as enemies; and, just before the solstice, a second levy of a thousand men, raised by order of the united colonies, and commanded by the brave Josiah Winslow, a native of New England, invaded their territory. After a night spent in the open air, they waded through the snow from daybreak till an hour after noon, and, on the nineteenth of December, reached the wigwams of their enemies within the limits of the present town of South Kingston. The vil lage, built on about six acres of land which rose out of a swamp, was protected in its entire circumference by thickly set palisades, to which the approach was defended by a block-house. Without waiting to take food or rest, the New Englanders began the attack. Davenport, Gardner, John