Volume I Part 12 (2/2)
5th. Fugitive servants to be returned.
This treaty rendered the cause of the Pequots hopeless, and secured the safety of the English.
It was in the main observed by the Narragansets. They allowed the colonial army to pa.s.s through their territories, and furnished five hundred men for the war.
Uncas, the chief of the Mohegans, had also been an ally of the English against the Pequots. After the destruction of this tribe, the three parties declared a peace, and the spoils of the war were divided between the allies. But the Narragansets and Mohegans were naturally enemies. The latter were of the Pequot race, and Uncas himself, having married the daughter of Sa.s.sacus, was but a revolted subject of that great chief. It is said that one of Uncas' dependent sachems attacked Miantonomo, who referred the matter to the English and was told to take his own course, and invaded the Mohegan country with a thousand warriors. The fortunes of war were against him and he fell into the hands of Uncas. The victor now referred the fate of his victim to the English. They decided that the rules of war permitted, and the safety of Uncas required, the death of Miantonomo. They were careful, however, not to permit his execution within their jurisdiction. The colonies were responsible for the death of this chief. Uncas was nominally their ally, but really their subject. From first to last he did their bidding with a spirit so craven and a manner so treacherous that he was neither trusted nor respected by them. But the English in their death-warrant voluntarily offered to protect Uncas from the consequences of Miantonomo's death. This was in 1643, and thus did the English observe the treaty of peace made seven years before under circ.u.mstances of extraordinary solemnity. Miantonomo died the victim of rivalry, jealousy and fear, yet with a spirit so heroic that he scorned to ask the precious boon of life from those whom he had served rather than wronged. His death was the seed of the war of 1675, --for how, under these circ.u.mstances, could Canonchet, his son and successor, be other than the enemy of the English, the ready and efficient ally of Philip.
But aside from particular incidents in the relations of the English to the Indians there were three ever-operating causes of hostility.
1st. The mutual disposition of the English and the Indians to traffic with each other. The colonies pa.s.sed the most stringent laws for the suppression of this traffic, or to make it a monopoly in their own hands, and the government at home issued two or more proclamations.
These laws and proclamations had no great practical value, and the Indians were constantly supplied with spirits, clothing, munitions and weapons of war, either by the English, French, or Dutch. Thus trade furnished an occasion for hostility, and the means of gratifying the spirit of war.
2nd. There was a universal tendency in the people and governments of the colonies to acquire land.
There was, however, a settled purpose on the part of the company in England and the governments here to make this spirit conform to the principles of honor and justice. In the company's letter of instruction of April 17, 1629, Endicott and his Council were told that ”If any of the savages pretend right of inheritance to all or any part of the lands granted in our patent, we pray you to endeavor to purchase their t.i.tle, that we may avoid the least scruple of intrusion.” And in a second letter of the 28th of May following, the same injunction is imposed upon the settlers. Attempts were made to pursue the course pointed out by the company, and a penalty of five pounds per acre was imposed upon any person who should receive an Indian t.i.tle without the consent of the government. Governor Winslow, in 1676, writes thus: ”I think I can clearly say, that before the present trouble 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.”
It is no doubt true that for the most part the lands were purchased, and, according to the idea of the English, honorably purchased, yet the natives could not fail to foresee the result of these cessions of territory. There were English settlements at Bridgewater, Middleboro', Taunton, Rehoboth, Seekonk, and Swanzey, all within the ancient jurisdiction of Ma.s.sasoit. And as a perpetual monitor to Philip of his limited domains, though in obedience to a different and highly honorable motive, the people erected a fence quite across the neck of land on the south of Swanzey, and thus confined the Pokanokets by metes and bounds.
That Philip was annoyed by applications for land is evident from his letter, without date, addressed to Governor Prince of Plymouth:
”Philip would intreat that favor of you, and any of the magistrates, if any English or Indians speak about any land, he pray to give them no answer at all. This last summer he made that promise with you, that he would sell no land in seven years' time, for that he would have no English trouble him before that time. He has not forgot that you promise him.”
The apostle Eliot, in a letter to the Ma.s.sachusetts government, dated in 1684, asking that certain fraudulent purchases of the Indians might be annulled, puts this suggestive inquiry: ”Was not a princ.i.p.al cause of the late war about encroachments on Philip's land at Mount Hope?”
The third disturbing cause was the desire of our ancestors to convert the Indian chiefs and tribes to Christianity. This was a primary and chief object of the settlement of the country. Governor Craddock, in a letter of February, 1629, to Endicott and his Council, says: ”You will demean yourselves justly and courteously toward the Indians, thereby to draw them to affect our persons, and consequently our religion.” And the Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts colony by his oath was required to use his ”best endeavor to draw on the natives of New England to the knowledge of the true G.o.d.” The company in England also expressed the hope that the ministers who were sent out would, by faithful preaching, G.o.dly conversation and exemplary lives, in G.o.d's appointed time, reduce the Indians to the obedience of the Gospel of Christ. And there is no fact in the history of the colonists inconsistent with an earnest purpose to accomplish so desirable a result. But the most formidable and warlike of the Indian tribes resisted the introduction of Christianity, not on account of its doctrines,--these they never comprehended; but its acceptance was regarded by them as an acknowledgment of political inferiority. When Philip protests against the jurisdiction of the English, he thinks to establish his independence by a.s.serting that he was never a praying Indian. It naturally happened that those Indians who embraced Christianity were more or less attached to the English, and soon a.s.sumed the position of dependent inferiors. They were consequently despised by such fierce spirits as swayed the Narraganset and Pokanoket tribes. But the English were instant in season and out of season in securing a.s.sent to their doctrines, though they must often have known that there was neither conviction of the head nor conversion of the heart. The colonists on some occasions even made a formal a.s.sent to the Christian faith a condition of allegiance.
Although Uncas never received the Christian religion, his friendly relations with the English gave him an importance and power which were offensive to the neighboring tribes; and there is reason to suppose that a desire to humble him was an element of the war.
The attack upon the Pequots, whether necessary or not, must have produced an unfavorable impression upon the neighboring tribes; but the death of Miantonomo was the cause of the undying hostility of the Narragansets, and made Canonchet the ready coadjutor of King Philip,-- and without Canonchet Philip could never have been formidable to the English.
But pa.s.sing by all the occasions or causes of war to which I have referred, we may presume from our knowledge of Philip's character, that he considered his personal injuries a sufficient ground for hostilities. Ma.s.sasoit, his father, had been the firm friend but never the subject of the English. He was rather their protector, and the colonists ever maintained towards him the kindest feelings.
His son Alexander succeeded him. A suspicion was early entertained by the English that he was plotting with the Narragansets. He was summoned to appear at Plymouth, but he avoided the summons upon some pretence, which probably had no real foundation. The Governor of Plymouth with about ten men proceeded to compel his attendance.
Alexander was then upon a hunting excursion with a small party of warriors. He was found in Middleboro', refres.h.i.+ng himself in a tent after the fatigues of the chase. His arms, having been left outside, were seized by the English. Some accounts state that Alexander went voluntarily towards Plymouth, others say that the Governor told him that if he did not go he was a dead man. But all accounts agree that he was soon violently sick, and that the efforts to relieve him were unavailing. He was allowed to return home and was borne away upon the shoulders of his faithful warriors. Hubbard says, ”Such was the pride and height of his spirit, that the very surprisal of him so raised his choler and indignation, that it put him into a fever, which, notwithstanding all possible means that could be used, seemed mortal.”
And so it proved.
Philip witnessed this unjust arrest of his brother, chief of a proud and free race; he remembered his father's services and fidelity; he saw his people dispossessed of their hunting grounds, and an unknown religion zealously pressed upon them. To him there was in the present only humiliation and disgrace, in the future only ignominy and death.
With this history and these gloomy antic.i.p.ations of the future, Philip became the sachem of the Pokanokets. He had never been a favorite with the English, yet early in life they had named him Philip, and his brother Wamsutta, Alexander; a singular yet just appreciation of their high spirit and warlike character. The colonists justly regarded these young men as dangerous to the public peace, and there was never a moment of true friends.h.i.+p after the death of Ma.s.sasoit.
The particular occasion of the war was the murder by Philip's agents of one Sa.s.samon, an educated Indian, who had been his private secretary.
Having in this confidential station obtained a knowledge of Philip's plans, he went to the English, by whom he had been educated, and probably disclosed his master's secrets. Philip secured his death, and of all who fell in fight or fray, or on the gallows swung, none deserved death before Sa.s.samon. The comprehensive mind of Philip saw at once the terrible nature and probable consequences of the war thus brought upon him. It is said that he wept, and that from that time forth he never smiled. But he laid new sacrifices upon the altar of his people's liberty, invoked the spirit of his ancestors, and exhibited resources and courage worthy of a heroic age.
He stood in a position of great and manifest peril. The English were superior in numbers, comparatively well equipped, and above all united.
They had garrisoned towns to which they could fly. Philip's own tribe was comparatively weak, but he easily a.s.sociated the Narragansets with him. But this combined force was inadequate to the emergency. He united many of the tribes of Ma.s.sachusetts, New Hamps.h.i.+re and Connecticut, and as far as possible animated them with his own unconquerable will. You may imagine him standing among the dark men of the forest and with a rugged yet burning eloquence reciting the history of their common wrongs, or with prophetic power lifting the veil from the shadowy, though not to him uncertain, future.
He was continually subject to great personal dangers. A price was set upon his head, the Christian Indians were allies of the English and continually employed against him, while above all Uncas and the Mohegans were his deadly enemies. Hunted by English and Indians, a.s.sailed by famine and treachery, weakened by death and desertion, his fate was inevitable. When his warriors had fallen in battle, been sold into slavery or corrupted by bribes, when his old men and women, and children had perished, when the first of the enemy had laid in ashes the wigwams and villages of the Pokanokets and their allies, when to his race there was neither seed-time nor harvest, he came to the home of his ancestors, and there his troubled spirit, contrasting sadly in death as in life with the placid scenes of nature around, pa.s.sed forever away. He fell by the hand of his own race,--
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