Part 14 (2/2)
On the 6th of August one of Philip's Indians deserted his master and fled to Taunton. To make terms for himself, he offered to conduct the English to a spot upon the river where Wetamoo had secreted herself with a party of Poca.s.set warriors. Twenty of the inhabitants of Taunton armed themselves and followed their Indian guide. He led them to a spot now called Gardiner's Neck, in the town of Swanzey.
At the beginning of the war, Wetamoo, flushed with hope, had marched to the conflict leading three hundred warriors in her train. She was now hiding in thickets, swamps, and dens, with but twenty-six followers, and they dejected and despairing. Next to King Philip, Wetamoo had been the most energetic of the foes of the English. She was inspired with much of his indomitable courage, and was never wanting in resources. The English came upon them by surprise, and captured every one but Wetamoo herself. The heroic queen, too proud to be captured, instantly threw off all her clothing, seized a broken piece of wood, and plunged into the stream. Worn down by exhaustion and famine, her nerveless arm failed her, and she sank beneath the waves. Her body, like a bronze statue of marvelous symmetry, was soon after found washed upon the sh.o.r.e. As faithful chroniclers, we must declare, though with a blush, that the English cut off her head, and set it upon a pole in their streets, a trophy ghastly, b.l.o.o.d.y, revolting. Many of her subjects were in Taunton as captives. When they beheld the features of their beloved queen, they filled the air with shrieks of lamentation.
The situation of Philip was now indescribably deplorable. All the confederate tribes had abandoned him; the most faithful of his followers had already perished. His only brother was dead; his wife and only son were slaves in the hands of the English, doomed to unending bondage; every other relative was cold in death. The few followers who still, for their own protection, accompanied him in his flight, were seeking in dismay to save their own lives. His domain, which once spread over wide leagues of mountain and forest, was now contracted to the dark recesses and dismal swamps where, as a hunted beast, he sought his lair. There was no place of retreat for him. All the Connecticut Indians had become his bitter foes, because he had embroiled them in a war which had secured their ruin. The Mohawks, upon the Hudson, were thirsting for his blood.
Still, this indomitable man would not think of yielding. He determined, with a resolution which seemed never to give way, to fight till a bullet from the foe should pierce his brain. In this hour of utter hopelessness, one of Philip's warriors ventured to urge him to surrender to the English. The haughty monarch immediately put the man to death as a punishment for his temerity and as a warning to others.
The brother of this Indian, indignant at such severity, deserted to the English, and offered to guide them to the swamp where Philip was secreted. The ruined monarch had returned to the home of his childhood to fight his last battles and to die.
Captain Church happened to be at this time, with a party of volunteers, at Rhode Island, having crossed over by the ferry from Tiverton. Here he met the Indian traitor. ”He was a fellow of good sense,” says Captain Church, ”and told his story handsomely.” He reported that Philip was upon a little spot of upland in the midst of a miry swamp just south of Mount Hope. It was now evening. Half of the night was spent in crossing the water in canoes. At midnight Captain Church brought all his company together, and gave minute directions respecting their movements. They surrounded the swamp. With the earliest light of the morning they were ordered to creep cautiously upon their hands and feet until they came in sight of their foes. As soon as anyone discovered Philip or any of his men, he was to fire, and immediately all were to rise and join in the pursuit. To make sure of his victim, Captain Church also formed a second circle surrounding the swamp, placing an Englishman and an Indian behind trees, rocks, etc., so that no one could pa.s.s between them. He also stationed small parties in selected places in ambuscade.
Having completed all his arrangements, he took his friend Major Sandford by the hand, and said,
”I have now so posted my men that I think it impossible that Philip should escape us.”
He had hardly uttered these words ere the report of a musket was heard in the swamp, and this was instantaneously followed by a whole volley.
Some of the Indians had been discovered, and the murderous work was commenced. The morning had as yet but just dawned. An awful scene of dismay, tumult, and blood ensued. Philip, exhausted by days and nights of the most hara.s.sing flight and fighting, had been found soundly asleep. The few warriors still faithful to him, equally exhausted, were dozing at his side. A party of the English crept cautiously within musket shot of their sleeping foes, discharged a volley of bullets upon them, and then rushed into their encampment.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DEATH OF KING PHILIP.]
The dreams of the despairing fugitive were disturbed by the crash of musketry, the whistling of bullets, and the shout and the onset of his foes. He leaped from his couch of leaves, and, like a deer, bounded from hummock to hummock in the swamp. It so happened that he ran directly upon an ambush which Captain Church had warily established.
An Englishman and the Indian deserter, whose name was Alderman, stood behind a large tree, with their guns c.o.c.ked and primed. As Philip, bewildered and unconscious of his peril, drew near, the Englishman took deliberate aim at him when he was but at the distance of a few yards, and sprung his lock. The night dews of the swamp had moistened the powder, and his gun missed fire. The life of Philip was thus prolonged for one half of a minute. The traitor Alderman then eagerly directed his gun against the chief to whom but a few hours before he had been in subjection. A sharp report rang through the forest, and two bullets, for the gun was double charged, pa.s.sed almost directly through the heart of the heroic warrior. For an instant the majestic frame of the chieftain, as he stood erect, quivered from the shock, and then he fell heavy and stone dead in the mud and water of the swamp.
Alderman, delighted with his exploit, ran eagerly to inform Captain Church that he had shot King Philip. Church ordered him to be perfectly silent about it, that his men might more vigorously pursue the remaining warriors. For some time the pursuit and the carnage continued. Captain Church then, by a concerted signal, called his army together, and informed them of the death of their formidable foe. The tidings were received with a simultaneous shout of exultation, which, repeated again and again, reverberated through the solitudes of the forests. The whole army then advanced to the spot where the sovereign of the Wampanoags lay gory in death. They had but little reverence for an Indian, and, seizing the body, they dragged it, as if it had been the carca.s.s of a wild beast, through the mud to an upland slope, where the ground was dry. Here, for a time, they gazed with exultation upon the great trophy of their victory, and spurned the dishonored body as if it had been a wolf or a panther which had been destroying their families and their flocks. Captain Church then said,
”Forasmuch as he has caused many an Englishman's body to lie unburied and to rot above the ground, not one of his bones shall be buried.”
An old Indian executioner, a vulgar, bloodthirsty wretch, was then called to cut up the body. With bitter taunts he stood over him with his hatchet, and cut off his head and quartered him. Philip had one remarkable hand, which was much scarred by the explosion of a pistol.
This hand was given to Alderman, who shot him, as his share of the spoil. Alderman preserved it in rum, and carried it around the country as a show, ”and accordingly,” says Captain Church, ”he got many a penny by it.” We would gladly doubt the statement, if we could, that the head of this ill-fated chief was sent to Plymouth, where it was for a long time exposed on a gibbet. The four quarters of the mangled body were hung upon four trees, and there they remained swinging in the moaning wind until the elements wasted them away.
Thus fell Pometacom, perhaps the most ill.u.s.trious savage upon the North American continent. The interposition of Providence alone seems to have prevented him from exterminating the whole English race upon this continent. Though his character has been described only by those who were exasperated against him to the very highest degree, still it is evident that he possessed many of the n.o.blest qualities which can embellish human nature.
It is said that with reluctance and anguish he entered upon the war, and that he shed tears when the first English blood was shed. His extraordinary kindness to the Leonards, inducing him to avert calamities from a whole settlement, lest they, by some accident, might be injured, develops magnanimity which is seldom paralleled. He was a man of first-rate abilities. He foresaw clearly that the growth of the English power threatened the utter extermination of his race. War thus, in his view, became a dire necessity. No man could be more conscious of its fearful peril. With sagacity which might excite the envy of the ablest of European diplomatists, he bound together various heterogeneous and hostile tribes, and guided all their energies.
Though the generality of the Indians were often inhuman in the extreme, there is no evidence that Philip ever ordered a captive to be tortured, while it is undeniable that the English, in several instances, surrendered their captives to the horrid barbarities of their savage allies.
”His mode of making war,” says Francis Baylies, ”was secret and terrible. He seemed like the demon of destruction hurling his bolts in darkness. With cautious and noiseless steps, and shrouded by the deep shade of midnight, he glided from the gloomy depths of the woods. He stole on the villages and settlements of New England, like the pestilence, unseen and unheard. His dreadful agency was felt when the yells of his followers roused his victims from their slumbers, and when the flames of their blazing habitations glared upon their eyes. His pathway could be traced by the horrible desolation of its progress, by its crimson print upon the snows and the sands, by smoke and fire, by houses in ruins, by the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the groans of the wounded and the dying. Well indeed might he have been called the 'terror of New England.' Yet in no instance did he transcend the ordinary usages of Indian warfare.
”We now sit in his seats and occupy his lands; the lands which afforded a bare subsistence to a few wandering savages can now support countless thousands of civilized people. The aggregate of the happiness of man is increased, and the designs of Providence are fulfilled when this fair domain is held by those who know its use; surely we may be permitted at this day to lament the fate of him who was once the lord of our woods and our streams, and who, if he wrought much mischief to our forefathers, loved some of our race, and wept for their misfortunes!”
There was, however, but little sympathy felt in that day for Philip or any of his confederates. The truly learned and pious but pedantic Cotton Mather, allowing his spirit to be envenomed by the horrid atrocities of Indian warfare, thus records the tragic end of Pometacom:
”The Englishman's piece would not go off, but the Indians presently shot him through his venomous and murderous heart.
And in that very place where he first contrived and commenced his mischief, this Agag was now cut in quarters, which were then hanged up, while his head was carried in triumph to Plymouth, where it arrived on the very day that the church was keeping a solemn thanksgiving to G.o.d. G.o.d sent them in the head of a Leviathan for a thanksgiving feast.”
We must remember that the Indians have no chroniclers of their wrongs, and yet the colonial historians furnish us with abundant incidental evidence that outrages were perpetrated by individuals of the colonists which were sufficient to drive any people mad. No one can now contemplate the doom of Pometacom, the last of an ill.u.s.trious line, but with emotions of sadness.
”Even that he lived is for his conqueror's tongue; By foes alone his death-song must be sung.
No chronicles but theirs shall tell His mournful doom to future times.
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