The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
finished an heroic poem on the story of Philip of Pokanoket.
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 persecutions 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 arctic
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, 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 certain that the integrity and good
faith of Massasoit have never been impeached. He continued a firm and
magnanimous friend of the white men, suffering them to extend their
possessions and to strengthen themselves in the land, and betraying no
jealousy of their increasing power and prosperity. Shortly before his
death he came once more to New Plymouth with his son Alexander, for
the purpose of renewing the covenant of peace and of securing it to his
posterity.
At this conference he endeavored to protect the religion of his
forefathers from the encroaching zeal of the missionaries, and
stipulated that no further attempt should be made to draw off his people
from their ancient faith; but, finding the English obstinately opposed
to any such condition, he mildly relinquished the demand. Almost the
last act of his life was to bring his two sons, Alexander and Philip
(as they had been named by the English), to the residence of a principal
settler, recommending mutual kindness and confidence, and entreating
that the same love and amity which had existed between the white men and
himself might be continued afterwards with his children. The good old
sachem died in peace, and was happily gathered to his fathers before
sorrow came upon his tribe; his children remained behind to experience
the ingratitude of white men.
His eldest son, Alexander, succeeded him. He was of a quick and
impetuous temper, and proudly tenacious of his hereditary rights and
dignity. The intrusive policy and dictatorial conduct of the
strangers excited his indignation, and he beheld with uneasiness their
exterminating wars with the neighboring tribes. He was doomed soon to
incur their hostility, being accused of plotting with the Narragansetts
to rise against the English and drive them from the land. It is
impossible to say whether this accusation was warranted by facts or was
grounded on mere suspicions. It is evident, however, by the violent and
overbearing measures of the settlers that they had by this time begun to
feel conscious of the rapid increase of their power, and to grow harsh
and inconsiderate in their treatment of the natives. They despatched
an armed force to seize upon Alexander and to bring him before their
courts. He was traced to his woodland haunts, and surprised at a
hunting-house where he was reposing with a band of his followers,
unarmed, after the toils of the chase. The suddenness of his arrest
and the outrage offered to his sovereign dignity so preyed upon the
irascible feelings of this proud savage as to throw him into a raging
fever. He was permitted to return home on condition of sending his son
as a pledge for his re-appearance; but the blow he had received was
fatal, and before he reached his home he fell a victim to the agonies of
a wounded spirit.
The successor of Alexander was Metamocet, or King Philip, as he was
called by the settlers on account of his lofty spirit and ambitious
temper. These, together with his well-known energy and enterprise, had
rendered him an object of great jealousy and apprehension, and he was
accused of having always cherished a secret and implacable hostility
towards the whites. Such may very probably and very naturally have been
the case. He considered them as originally but mere intruders into
the country, who had presumed upon indulgence and were extending
an influence baneful to savage life. He saw the whole race of his
countrymen melting before them from the face of the earth, their
territories slipping from their hands, and their tribes becoming feeble,
scattered, and dependent. It may be said that the soil was originally
purchased by the settlers; but who does not know the nature of Indian
purchases in the early periods of colonization? The Europeans always
made thrifty bargains through their superior adroitness in traffic, and
they gained vast accessions of territory by easily-provoked hostilities.
An uncultivated savage is never a nice inquirer into the refinements of
law by which an injury may be gradually and legally inflicted. Leading
facts are all by which he judges; and it was enough for Philip to know
that before the intrusion of the Europeans his countrymen were lords of
the soil, and that now they were becoming vagabonds in the land of their
fathers.
But whatever may have been his feelings of general hostility and his
particular indignation at the treatment of his brother, he suppressed
them for the present, renewed the contract with the settlers, and
resided peaceably for many years at Pokanoket, or as, it was called by
the English, Mount Hope,* the ancient seat of dominion of his tribe.
Suspicions, however, which were at first but vague and indefinite,
began to acquire form and substance, and he was at length charged with
attempting to instigate the various eastern tribes to rise at once, and
by a simultaneous effort to throw off the yoke of their oppressors. It
is difficult at this distant period to assign the proper credit due to
these early accusations against the Indians. There was a proneness to
suspicion and an aptness to acts of violence on the part of the whites
that gave weight and importance to every idle tale. Informers abounded
where tale-bearing met with countenance and reward, and the sword
was readily unsheathed when its success was certain and it carved out
empire.
* Now Bristol, Rhode Island.
The only positive evidence on record against Philip is the accusation
of one Sausaman, a renegado Indian, whose natural cunning had been
quickened by a partial education which he had received among the
settlers. He changed his faith and his allegiance two or three times
with a facility that evinced the looseness of his principles. He had
acted for some time as Philip’s confidential secretary and counsellor,
and had enjoyed his bounty and protection. Finding, however, that the
clouds of adversity were gathering round his patron, he abandoned his
service and went over to the whites, and in order to gain their favor
charged his former benefactor with plotting against their safety. A
rigorous investigation took place. Philip and several of his subjects
submitted to be examined, but nothing was proved against them. The
settlers, however, had now gone too far to retract; they had previously
determined that Philip was a dangerous neighbor; they had publicly
evinced their distrust, and had done enough to insure his hostility;
according, therefore, to the usual mode of reasoning in these cases,
his destruction had become necessary to their security. Sausaman, the
treacherous informer, was shortly afterwards found dead in a pond,
having fallen a victim to the vengeance of his tribe. Three Indians,
one of whom was a friend and counsellor of Philip, were apprehended
and tried, and on the testimony of one very questionable witness were
condemned and executed as murderers.
This treatment of his subjects and ignominious punishment of his friend
outraged the pride and exasperated the passions of Philip. The bolt
which had fallen thus at his very feet awakened him to the gathering
storm, and he determined to trust himself no longer in the power of the
white men. The fate of his insulted and broken-hearted brother still
rankled in his mind; and he had a further warning in the tragical story
of Miantonimo, a great Sachem of the Narragansetts, who, after manfully
facing his accusers before a tribunal of the colonists, exculpating
himself from a charge of conspiracy and receiving assurances of amity,
had been perfidiously despatched at their instigation. Philip therefore
gathered his fighting-men about him, persuaded all strangers that
he could to join his cause, sent the women and children to the
Narragansetts for safety, and wherever he appeared was continually
surrounded by armed warriors.
When the two parties were thus in a state of distrust and irritation,
the least spark was sufficient to set them in a flame. The Indians,
having weapons in their hands, grew mischievous and committed various
petty depredations. In one of their maraudings a warrior was fired on
and killed by a settler. This was the signal for open hostilities; the
Indians pressed to revenge the death of their comrade, and the alarm of
war resounded through the Plymouth colony.
In the early chronicles of these dark and melancholy times we meet with
many indications of the diseased state of the public mind. The gloom
of religious abstraction and the wildness of their situation among
trackless forests and savage tribes had disposed the colonists to
superstitious fancies, and had filled their imaginations with the
frightful chimeras of witchcraft and spectrology. They were much given
also to a belief in omens. The troubles with Philip and his Indians
were preceded, we are told, by a variety of those awful warnings which
forerun great and public calamities. The perfect form of an Indian
bow appeared in the air at New Plymouth, which was looked upon by the
inhabitants as a “prodigious apparition.” At Hadley, Northampton, and
other towns in their neighborhood “was heard the report of a great piece
of ordnance, with a shaking of the earth and a considerable echo.” *
Others were alarmed on a still sunshiny morning by the discharge of guns
and muskets; bullets seemed to whistle past them, and the noise of
drums resounded in the air, seeming to pass away to the westward; others
fancied that they heard the galloping of horses over their heads; and
certain monstrous births which took place about the time filled the
superstitious in some towns with doleful forebodings. Many of these
portentous sights and sounds may be ascribed to natural phenomena--to
the northern lights which occur vividly in those latitudes, the meteors
which explode in the air, the casual rushing of a blast through the top
branches of the forest, the crash of fallen trees or disrupted rocks,
and to those other uncouth sounds and echoes which will sometimes
strike the ear so strangely amidst the profound stillness of woodland
solitudes. These may have startled some melancholy imaginations, may
have been exaggerated by the love for the marvellous, and listened
to with that avidity with which we devour whatever is fearful and
mysterious. The universal currency of these superstitious fancies and
the grave record made of them by one of the learned men of the day are
strongly characteristic of the times.