The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
attained his twenty second year, the proud-hearted warrior, looking
with lofty contempt upon his youthful countenance, replied, “You are a
child--you cannot understand matters of war; let your brother or your
chief come: him will I answer.”
Though repeated offers were made to him of his life on condition of
submitting with his nation to the English, yet he rejected them with
disdain, and refused to send any proposals of the kind to the great body
of his subjects, saying that he knew none of them would comply. Being
reproached with his breach of faith towards the whites, his boast that
he would not deliver up a Wampanoag nor the paring of a Wampanoag’s
nail, and his threat that he would burn the English alive in their
houses, he disdained to justify himself, haughtily answering that others
were as forward for the war as himself, and “he desired to hear no more
thereof.”
So noble and unshaken a spirit, so true a fidelity to his cause and his
friend, might have touched the feelings of the generous and the brave;
but Canonchet was an Indian, a being towards whom war had no courtesy,
humanity no law, religion no compassion: he was condemned to die. The
last words of his that are recorded are worthy the greatness of his
soul. When sentence of death was passed upon him, he observed “that he
liked it well, for he should die before his heart was soft or he had
spoken anything unworthy of himself.” His enemies gave him the death of
a soldier, for he was shot at Stoningham by three young Sachems of his
own rank.
The defeat at the Narraganset fortress and the death of Canonchet were
fatal blows to the fortunes of King Philip. He made an ineffectual
attempt to raise a head of war by stirring up the Mohawks to take arms;
but, though possessed of the native talents of a statesman, his arts
were counteracted by the superior arts of his enlightened enemies, and
the terror of their warlike skill began to subdue the resolution of the
neighboring tribes. The unfortunate chieftain saw himself daily stripped
of power, and his ranks rapidly thinning around him. Some were suborned
by the whites; others fell victims to hunger and fatigue and to the
frequent attacks by which they were harassed. His stores were all
captured; his chosen friends were swept away from before his eyes; his
uncle was shot down by his side; his sister was carried into captivity;
and in one of his narrow escapes he was compelled to leave his beloved
wife and only son to the mercy of the enemy. “His ruin,” says the
historian, “being thus gradually carried on, his misery was not
prevented, but augmented thereby; being himself made acquainted with the
sense and experimental feeling of the captivity of his children, loss of
friends, slaughter of his subjects, bereavement of all family relations,
and being stripped of all outward comforts before his own life should be
taken away.”
To fill up the measure of his misfortunes, his own followers began
to plot against his life, that by sacrificing him they might purchase
dishonorable safety. Through treachery a number of his faithful
adherents, the subjects of Wetamoe, an Indian princess of Pocasset, a
near kinswoman and confederate of Philip, were betrayed into the hands
of the enemy. Wetamoe was among them at the time, and attempted to make
her escape by crossing a neighboring river: either exhausted by swimming
or starved with cold and hunger, she was found dead and naked near the
water-side. But persecution ceased not at the grave. Even death, the
refuge of the wretched, where the wicked commonly cease from troubling,
was no protection to this outcast female, whose great crime was
affectionate fidelity to her kinsman and her friend. Her corpse was the
object of unmanly and dastardly vengeance: the head was severed from the
body and set upon a pole, and was thus exposed at Taunton to the view of
her captive subjects. They immediately recognized the features of their
unfortunate queen, and were so affected at this barbarous spectacle
that we are told they broke forth into the “most horrid and diabolical
lamentations.”
However Philip had borne up against the complicated miseries and
misfortunes that surrounded him, the treachery of his followers seemed
to wring his heart and reduce him to despondency. It is said that “he
never rejoiced afterwards, nor had success in any of his designs.” The
spring of hope was broken--the ardor of enterprise was extinguished; he
looked around, and all was danger and darkness; there was no eye to
pity nor any arm that could bring deliverance. With a scanty band
of followers, who still remained true to his desperate fortunes, the
unhappy Philip wandered back to the vicinity of Mount Hope, the ancient
dwelling of his fathers. Here he lurked about like a spectre among the
scenes of former power and prosperity, now bereft of home, of family,
and of friend. There needs no better picture of his destitute and
piteous situation than that furnished by the homely pen of the
chronicler, who is unwarily enlisting the feelings of the reader in
favor of the hapless warrior whom he reviles. “Philip,” he says, “like a
savage wild beast, having been hunted by the English forces through the
woods above a hundred miles backward and forward, at last was driven to
his own den upon Mount Hope, where he retired, with a few of his best
friends, into a swamp, which proved but a prison to keep him fast till
the messengers of death came by divine permission to execute vengeance
upon him.”
Even in this last refuge of desperation and despair a sullen grandeur
gathers round his memory. We picture him to ourselves seated among his
care-worn followers, brooding in silence over his blasted fortunes, and
acquiring a savage sublimity from the wildness and dreariness of his
lurking-place. Defeated, but not dismayed--crushed to the earth, but
not humiliated--he seemed to grow more haughty beneath disaster, and
to experience a fierce satisfaction in draining the last dregs of
bitterness. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great
minds rise above it. The very idea of submission awakened the fury
of Philip, and he smote to death one of his followers who proposed an
expedient of peace. The brother of the victim made his escape, and in
revenge betrayed the retreat of his chieftain, A body of white men
and Indians were immediately despatched to the swamp where Philip lay
crouched, glaring with fury and despair. Before he was aware of their
approach they had begun to surround him. In a little while he saw five
of his trustiest followers laid dead at his feet; all resistance was
vain; he rushed forth from his covert, and made a headlong attempt to
escape, but was shot through the heart by a renegado Indian of his own
nation.
Such is the scanty story of the brave but unfortunate King Philip,
persecuted while living, slandered and dishonored when dead. If,
however, we consider even the prejudiced anecdotes furnished us by his
enemies, we may perceive in them traces of amiable and lofty character
sufficient to awaken sympathy for his fate and respect for his memory.
We find that amidst all the harassing cares and ferocious passions of
constant warfare he was alive to the softer feelings of connubial love
and paternal tenderness and to the generous sentiment of friendship.
The captivity of his “beloved wife and only son” are mentioned with
exultation as causing him poignant misery: the death of any near friend
is triumphantly recorded as a new blow on his sensibilities; but the
treachery and desertion of many of his followers, in whose affections he
had confided, is said to have desolated his heart and to have bereaved
him of all further comfort. He was a patriot attached to his native
soil--a prince true to his subjects and indignant of their wrongs--a
soldier daring in battle, firm in adversity, patient of fatigue, of
hunger, of every variety of bodily suffering, and ready to perish in
the cause he had espoused. Proud of heart and with an untamable love
of natural liberty, he preferred to enjoy it among the beasts of the
forests or in the dismal and famished recesses of swamps and morasses,
rather than bow his haughty spirit to submission and live dependent
and despised in the ease and luxury of the settlements. With heroic
qualities and bold achievements that would have graced a civilized
warrior, and have rendered him the theme of the poet and the historian,
he lived a wanderer and a fugitive in his native land, and went down,
like a lonely bark foundering amid darkness and tempest, without a
pitying eye to weep his fall or a friendly hand to record his struggle.
JOHN BULL.
An old song, made by an aged old pate,
Of an old worshipful gentleman who had a great estate,
That kept a brave old house at a bountiful rate,
And an old porter to relieve the poor at his gate.
With an old study fill’d full of learned old books,
With an old reverend chaplain, you might know him by his
looks, With an old buttery-hatch worn quite off the hooks,
And an old kitchen that maintained half-a-dozen old cooks.
Like an old courtier, etc.--Old Song.
THERE is no species of humor in which the English more excel than that
which consists in caricaturing and giving ludicrous appellations or
nicknames. In this way they have whimsically designated, not merely
individuals, but nations, and in their fondness for pushing a joke they
have not spared even themselves. One would think that in personifying
itself a nation would be apt to picture something grand, heroic, and
imposing; but it is characteristic of the peculiar humor of the English,
and of their love for what is blunt, comic, and familiar, that they have
embodied their national oddities in the figure of a sturdy, corpulent
old fellow with a three-cornered hat, red waistcoat, leather breeches,
and stout oaken cudgel. Thus they have taken a singular delight in
exhibiting their most private foibles in a laughable point of view, and
have been so successful in their delineations that there is scarcely
a being in actual existence more absolutely present to the public mind
than that eccentric personage, John Bull.
Perhaps the continual contemplation of the character thus drawn of them
has contributed to fix it upon the nation, and thus to give reality
to what at first may have been painted in a great measure from the
imagination. Men are apt to acquire peculiarities that are continually
ascribed to them. The common orders of English seem wonderfully
captivated with the beau ideal which they have formed of John Bull, and
endeavor to act up to the broad caricature that is perpetually before
their eyes. Unluckily, they sometimes make their boasted Bullism an
apology for their prejudice or grossness; and this I have especially
noticed among those truly homebred and genuine sons of the soil who have
never migrated beyond the sound of Bow bells. If one of these should
be a little uncouth in speech and apt to utter impertinent truths, he
confesses that he is a real John Bull and always speaks his mind. If he
now and then flies into an unreasonable burst of passion about trifles,
he observes that John Bull is a choleric old blade, but then his passion
is over in a moment and he bears no malice. If he betrays a coarseness
of taste and an insensibility to foreign refinements, he thanks Heaven
for his ignorance--he is a plain John Bull and has no relish for
frippery and knick-knacks. His very proneness to be gulled by strangers
and to pay extravagantly for absurdities is excused under the plea of
munificence, for John is always more generous than wise.
Thus, under the name of John Bull he will contrive to argue every fault
into a merit, and will frankly convict himself of being the honestest
fellow in existence.