Book: The Beginnings of New England

J >> John Fiske >> The Beginnings of New England







CHAPTER V.

KING PHILIP'S WAR.


For eight-and-thirty years after the destruction of the Pequots, the
intercourse between the English and the Indians was to all outward
appearance friendly. The policy pursued by the settlers was in the
main well considered. While they had shown that they could strike with
terrible force when blows were needed, their treatment of the natives in
time of peace seems to have been generally just and kind. Except in the
single case of the conquered Pequot territory, they scrupulously paid
for every rood of ground on which they settled, and so far as possible
they extended to the Indians the protection of the law. On these points
we have the explicit testimony of Josiah Winslow, governor of Plymouth,
in his report to the Federal Commissioners in May, 1676; and what
he says about Plymouth seems to have been equally true of the other
colonies. Says Winslow, "I think I can clearly say that before these
present troubles 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. Nay, because some of our people are of a covetous
disposition, and the Indians are in their straits easily prevailed with
to part with their lands, we first made a law that none should purchase
or receive of gift any land of the Indians without the knowledge and
allowance of our Court .... And if at any time they have brought
complaints before us, they have had justice impartial and speedy, so
that our own people have frequently complained that we erred on the
other hand in showing them overmuch favour." The general laws of
Massachusetts and Connecticut as well as of Plymouth bear out what
Winslow says, and show us that as a matter of policy the colonial
governments were fully sensible of the importance of avoiding all
occasions for quarrel with their savage neighbours. [Sidenote: Puritans
and Indians]

There can, moreover, be little doubt that the material comfort of the
Indians was for a time considerably improved by their dealings with the
white men. Hitherto their want of foresight and thrift had been wont to
involve them during the long winters in a dreadful struggle with famine.
Now the settlers were ready to pay liberally for the skin of every
fur-covered animal the red men could catch; and where the trade thus
arising did not suffice to keep off famine, instances of generous
charity were frequent. The Algonquin tribes of New England lived chiefly
by hunting, but partly by agriculture. They raised beans and corn, and
succotash was a dish which they contributed to the white man's table.
They could now raise or buy English vegetables, while from dogs and
horses, pigs and poultry, oxen and sheep, little as they could avail
themselves of such useful animals, they nevertheless derived some
benefit. [29] Better blankets and better knives were brought within
their reach; and in spite of all the colonial governments could do to
prevent it, they were to some extent enabled to supply themselves with
muskets and rum. [Sidenote: Trade with the Indians]

Besides all this trade, which, except in the article of liquor, tended
to improve the condition of the native tribes, there was on the part of
the earlier settlers an earnest and diligent effort to convert them
to Christianity and give them the rudiments of a civilized education.
Missionary work was begun in 1643 by Thomas Mayhew on the islands of
Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. The savages at first declared they were
not so silly as to barter thirty-seven tutelar deities for one, but
after much preaching and many pow-wows Mayhew succeeded in persuading
them that the Deity of the white man was mightier than all their
_manitous._ Whether they ever got much farther than this toward a
comprehension of the white man's religion may be doubted; but they were
prevailed upon to let their children learn to read and write, and even
to set up little courts, in which justice was administered according to
some of the simplest rules of English law, and from which there lay an
appeal to the court of Plymouth. In 1646 Massachusetts enacted that the
elders of the churches should choose two persons each year to go and
spread the gospel among the Indians. In 1649 Parliament established the
Society for propagating the Gospel in New England, and presently from
voluntary contributions the society was able to dispose of an annual
income of L2000. Schools were set up in which agriculture was taught as
well as religion. It was even intended that Indians should go to Harvard
College, and a building was erected for their accommodation, but as none
came to occupy it, the college printing-press was presently set to work
there. One solitary Indian student afterward succeeded in climbing to
the bachelor's degree,--Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck of the class of 1665. It
was this one success that was marvellous, not the failure of the scheme,
which vividly shows how difficult it was for the white man of that day
to understand the limitations of the red man. [Sidenote: Missionary
work: Thomas Mayhew]

The greatest measure of success in converting the Indians was attained
by that famous linguist and preacher, the apostle John Eliot. This
remarkable man was a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge. He had come
to Massachusetts in 1631, and in the following year had been settled as
teacher in the church at Roxbury of which Thomas Welde was pastor. He
had been distinguished at the university for philological scholarship
and for linguistic talent--two things not always found in
connection--and now during fourteen years he devoted such time as he
could to acquiring a complete mastery of the Algonquin dialect spoken by
the Indians of Massachusetts bay. To the modern comparative philologist
his work is of great value. He published not only an excellent Indian
grammar, but a complete translation of the Bible into the Massachusetts
language,--a monument of prodigious labour. It is one of the most
instructive documents in existence for the student of Algonquin speech,
though the Massachusetts tribe and its language have long been extinct,
and there are very few scholars living who can read the book. It has
become one of the curiosities of literature and at auction sales of
private libraries commands an extremely high price. Yet out of this rare
book the American public has somehow or other within the last five
or six years contrived to pick up a word which we shall very likely
continue to hear for some time to come. In Eliot's Bible, the word which
means a great chief--such as Joshua, or Gideon, or Joab--is "mugwump."


It was in 1646 that Eliot began his missionary preaching at a small
Indian village near Watertown. President Dunster, of Harvard College,
and Mr. Shepard, the minister at Cambridge, felt a warm interest in the
undertaking. These worthy men seriously believed that the aborigines
of America were the degenerate descendants of the ten lost tribes of
Israel, and from this strange backsliding it was hoped that they might
now be reclaimed. With rare eloquence and skill did Eliot devote himself
to the difficult work of reaching the Indian's scanty intelligence and
still scantier moral sense. His ministrations reached from the sands of
Cape Cod to the rocky hillsides of Brookfield. But he soon found that
single-handed he could achieve but little over so wide an area, and
accordingly he adopted the policy of colonizing his converts in village
communities near the English towns, where they might be sequestered from
their heathen brethren and subjected to none but Christian influences.
In these communities he hoped to train up native missionaries who might
thence go and labour among the wild tribes until the whole lump of
barbarism should be leavened. In pursuance of this scheme a stockaded
village was built at Natick in 1651 Under the direction of an English
carpenter the Indians built log-houses for themselves, and most of them
adopted the English dress. Their simple government was administered by
tithing-men, or "rulers of tens," chosen after methods prescribed in the
book of Exodus. Other such communities were formed in the neighbourhoods
of Concord and Grafton. By 1674 the number of these "praying Indians,"
as they were called, was estimated at 4000, of whom about 1500 were in
Eliot's villages, as many more in Martha's Vineyard, 300 in Nantucket,
and 700 in the Plymouth colony. There seems to be no doubt that these
Indians were really benefited both materially and morally by the change
in their life. In theology it is not likely that they reached any higher
view than that expressed by the Connecticut sachem Wequash who "seeing
and beholding the mighty power of God in the English forces, how they
fell upon the Pequots, ... from that time was convinced and persuaded
that our God was a most dreadful God;" accordingly, says the author of
"New England's First Fruits," "he became thoroughly reformed according
to his light." Matters of outward observance, too, the Indians could
understand; for we read of one of them rebuking an Englishman "for
profaning the Lord's Day by felling of a tree." The Indian's notions of
religion were probably confined within this narrow compass; the notions
of some people that call themselves civilized perhaps do not extend much
further. [Sidenote: Villages of Christian Indians]

From such facts as those above cited we may infer that the early
relations of the Puritan settlers to the Algonquin tribes of New England
were by no means like the relations between white men and red men in
recent times on our western plains. During Philip's War, as we shall
see, the Puritan theory of the situation was entirely changed and our
forefathers began to act in accordance with the frontiersman's doctrine
that the good Indians are dead Indians. But down to that time it is
clear that his intention was to deal honourably and gently with his
tawny neighbour. We sometimes hear the justice and kindness of the
Quakers in Pennsylvania alleged as an adequate reason for the success
with which they kept clear of an Indian war. This explanation, however,
does not seem to be adequate; it does not appear that, on the whole, the
Puritans were less just and kind than the Quakers in their treatment of
the red men. The true explanation is rather to be found in the relations
between the Indian tribes toward the close of the seventeenth century.
Early in that century the Pennsylvania region had been in the hands
of the ferocious and powerful Susquehannocks, but in 1672, after a
frightful struggle of twenty years, this great tribe was swept from the
face of the earth by the resistless league of the Five Nations. When
the Quakers came to Pennsylvania in 1682, the only Indians in that
neighbourhood were the Delawares, who had just been terribly beaten by
the Five Nations and forced into a treaty by which they submitted to be
called "women," and to surrender their tomahawks. Penn's famous treaty
was made with the Delawares as occupants of the land and also with the
Iroquois league as overlords. [30] Now the great central fact of early
American history, so far as the relations between white men and red
men are concerned, is the unshaken friendship of the Iroquois for the
English. This was the natural consequence of the deadly hostility
between the Iroquois and the French which began with Champlain's defeat
of the Mohawks in 1609. During the seventy-three years which intervened
between the founding of Pennsylvania and the defeat of Braddock there
was never a moment when the Delawares could have attacked the Quakers
without incurring the wrath and vengeance of their overlords the Five
Nations. This was the reason why Pennsylvania was left so long in quiet.
No better proof could be desired than the fact that in Pontiac's war,
after the overthrow of the French and when Indian politics had changed,
no state suffered so much as Pennsylvania from the horrors of Indian
warfare. [Sidenote: Why Pennsylvania was so long unmolested by the
Indians]

In New England at the time of Philip's War, the situation was very
different from what it was between the Hudson and the Susquehanna. The
settlers were thrown into immediate relations with several tribes whose
mutual hostility and rivalry was such that it was simply impossible to
keep on good terms with all at once. Such complicated questions as that
which involved the English in responsibility for the fate of Miantonomo
did not arise in Pennsylvania. Since the destruction of the Pequots we
have observed the Narragansetts and Mohegans contending for the foremost
place among New England tribes. Of the two rivals the Mohegans were
the weaker, and therefore courted the friendship of the formidable
palefaces. The English had no desire to take part in these barbarous
feuds, but they could not treat the Mohegans well without incurring the
hostility of the Narragansetts. For thirty years the feeling of the
latter tribe toward the English had been very unfriendly and would
doubtless have vented itself in murder but for their recollection of
the fate of the Pequots. After the loss of their chief Miantonomo their
attitude became so sullen and defiant that the Federal Commissioners, in
order to be in readiness for an outbreak, collected a force of 300 men.
At the first news of these preparations the Narragansetts, overcome with
terror, sent a liberal tribute of wampum to Boston, and were fain to
conclude a treaty in which they promised to behave themselves well in
the future.

It was impossible that this sort of English protectorate over the native
tribes, which was an inevitable result of the situation, should be other
than irksome and irritating to the Indians. They could not but see that
the white man stood there as master, and even in the utter absence
of provocation, this fact alone must have made them hate him. It is
difficult, moreover, for the civilized man and the savage to understand
each other. As a rule the one does not know what the other is thinking
about. When Mr. Hamilton Gushing a few years ago took some of his Zuni
friends into a hotel in Chicago, they marvelled at his entering such a
mighty palace with so little ceremony, and their wonder was heightened
at the promptness with which "slaves" came running at his beck and call;
but all at once, on seeing an American eagle over one of the doorways,
they felt that the mystery was solved. Evidently this palace was the
communal dwelling of the Eagle Clan of palefaces, and evidently Mr.
Gushing was a great sachem of this clan, and as such entitled to lordly
sway there! The Zunis are not savages, but representatives of a remote
and primitive phase of what Mr. Morgan calls the middle status of
barbarism. The gulf between their thinking and that of white men is
wide because there is a wide gulf between the experience of the two.
[Sidenote: Difficulty of the situation in New England] [Sidenote: It is
hard for the savage and the civilized man to understand one another]

This illustration may help us to understand an instance in which the
Indians of New England must inevitably have misinterpreted the actions
of the white settlers and read them in the light of their uneasy fears
and prejudices. I refer to the work of the apostle Eliot. His design in
founding his villages of Christian Indians was in the highest degree
benevolent and noble; but the heathen Indians could hardly be expected
to see anything in it but a cunning scheme for destroying them.

Eliot's converts were for the most part from the Massachusetts tribe,
the smallest and weakest of all. The Plymouth converts came chiefly
from the tribe next in weakness, the Pokanokets or Wampanoags. The more
powerful tribes--Narragansetts, Nipmucks, and Mohegans--furnished very
few converts. When they saw the white intruders gathering members of the
weakest tribes into villages of English type, and teaching them strange
gods while clothing them in strange garments, they probably supposed
that the pale-faces were simply adopting these Indians into their white
tribe as a means of increasing their military strength. At any rate,
such a proceeding would be perfectly intelligible to the savage mind,
whereas the nature of Eliot's design lay quite beyond its ken. As the
Indians recovered from their supernatural dread of the English, and
began to regard them as using human means to accomplish their ends,
they must of course interpret their conduct in such light as savage
experience could afford. It is one of the commonest things in the world
for a savage tribe to absorb weak neighbours by adoption, and thus
increase its force preparatory to a deadly assault upon other
neighbours. When Eliot in 1657 preached to the little tribe of Podunks
near Hartford, and asked them if they were willing to accept of Jesus
Christ as their saviour, their old men scornfully answered No! they had
parted with most of their land, but they were not going to become the
white man's servants. A rebuke administered to Eliot by Uncas in 1674
has a similar implication. When the apostle was preaching one evening in
a village over which that sachem claimed jurisdiction, an Indian arose
and announced himself as a deputy of Uncas. Then he said, "Uncas is not
well pleased that the English should pass over Mohegan river to call
_his_ Indians to pray to God." [31]

Thus, no matter how benevolent the white man's intentions, he could not
fail to be dreaded by the Indians as a powerful and ever encroaching
enemy.

Even in his efforts to keep the peace and prevent tribes from taking the
warpath without his permission, he was interfering with the red man's
cherished pastime of murder and pillage. The appeals to the court at
Plymouth, the frequent summoning of sachems to Boston, to explain
their affairs and justify themselves against accusers, must have been
maddening in their effects upon the Indian; for there is one sound
instinct which the savage has in common with the most progressive
races, and that is the love of self-government that resents all outside
interference. All things considered, it is remarkable that peace should
have been maintained in New England from 1637 to 1675; and probably
nothing short of the consuming vengeance wrought upon the Pequots could
have done it. But with the lapse of time the wholesome feeling of dread
began to fade away, and as the Indians came to use musket instead of bow
and arrow, their fear of the English grew less, until at length their
ferocious temper broke forth in an epidemic of fire and slaughter that
laid waste the land. [Sidenote: It is remarkable that peace should have
been so long preserved]

Massasoit, chief sachem of the Wampanoags and steadfast ally of the
Plymouth colonists, died in 1660, leaving two sons, Wamsutta and
Metacom, or as the English nicknamed them, Alexander and Philip.
Alexander succeeded to his father's position of savage dignity and
influence, but his reign was brief. Rumours came to Plymouth that he was
plotting mischief, and he was accordingly summoned to appear before the
General Court of that colony and explain himself. He seems to have gone
reluctantly, but he succeeded in satisfying the magistrates of his
innocence of any evil designs. Whether he caught cold at Plymouth or
drank rum as only Indians can, we do not know. At any rate, on starting
homeward, before he had got clear of English territory, he was seized by
a violent fever and died. The savage mind knows nothing of pneumonia or
delirium tremens. It knows nothing of what we call natural death. To
the savage all death means murder, for like other men he judges of the
unknown by the known. In the Indian's experience normal death was by
tomahawk or firebrand; abnormal death (such as we call natural)
must come either from poison or from witchcraft. So when the honest
chronicler Hubbard tells us that Philip suspected the Plymouth people of
poisoning his brother, we can easily believe him. It was long, however,
before he was ready to taste the sweets of revenge. He schemed and
plotted in the dark. In one respect the Indian diplomatist is unlike his
white brethren; he does not leave state-papers behind him to reward
the diligence and gratify the curiosity of later generations; and
accordingly it is hard to tell how far Philip was personally responsible
for the storm which was presently to burst upon New England. [Sidenote:
Deaths of Massasoit and Alexander] [Sidenote: Philip's designs]

Whether his scheme was as comprehensive as that of Pontiac in 1763,
whether or not it amounted to a deliberate combination of all red men
within reach to exterminate the white men, one can hardly say with
confidence. The figure of Philip, in the war which bears his name, does
not stand out so prominently as the figure of Pontiac in the later
struggle. This may be partly because Pontiac's story has been told by
such a magician as Mr. Francis Parkman. But it is partly because the
data are too meagre. In all probability, however, the schemes of
Sassacus the Pequot, of Philip the Wampanoag, and of Pontiac the Ottawa,
were substantially the same. That Philip plotted with the Narragansetts
seems certain, and the early events of the war point clearly to a
previous understanding with the Nipmucks. The Mohegans, on the other
hand, gave him no assistance, but remained faithful to their white
allies.

For thirteen years had Philip been chief sachem of his tribe before the
crisis came. Rumours of his unfriendly disposition had at intervals
found their way to the ears of the magistrates at Plymouth, but Philip
had succeeded in setting himself right before them. In 1670 the rumours
were renewed, and the Plymouth men felt that it was time to strike, but
the other colonies held them back, and a meeting was arranged between
Philip and three Boston men at Taunton in April, 1671. There the crafty
savage expressed humility and contrition for all past offences, and
even consented to a treaty in which he promised that his tribe should
surrender all their fire-arms. On the part of the English this was an
extremely unwise measure, for while it could not possibly be enforced,
and while it must have greatly increased the irritation of the Indians,
it was at the same time interpretable as a symptom of fear. With ominous
scowls and grunts some seventy muskets were given up, but this was all.
Through the summer there was much uneasiness, and in September Philip
was summoned to Plymouth with five of his under-sachems, and solemnly
warned to keep the peace. The savages again behaved with humility and
agreed to pay a yearly tribute of five wolves' heads and to do no act of
war without express permission.

For three years things seemed quiet, until late in 1674 the alarm was
again sounded. Sausamon, a convert from the Massachusetts tribe, had
studied a little at Harvard College, and could speak and write English
with facility. He had at one time been employed by Philip as a sort of
private secretary or messenger, and at other times had preached and
taught school among the Indian converts at Natick. Sausamon now came to
Plymouth and informed Governor Winslow that Philip was certainly engaged
in a conspiracy that boded no good to the English. Somehow or other
Philip contrived to find out what Sausamon had said, and presently
coming to Plymouth loudly asseverated his innocence; but the magistrates
warned him that if they heard any more of this sort of thing his
arms would surely be seized. A few days after Philip had gone home,
Sausamon's hat and gun were seen lying on the frozen surface of
Assowamsett Pond, near Middleborough, and on cutting through the ice his
body was found with unmistakable marks of beating and strangling. After
some months the crime was traced to three Wampanoags, who were forthwith
arrested, tried by a mixed jury of Indians and white men, found guilty,
and put to death. On the way to the gallows one of them confessed
that he had stood by while his two friends had pounded and choked the
unfortunate Sausamon. [Sidenote: Murder of Sausamon]

More alarming reports now came from Swanzey, a pretty village of some
forty houses not far from Philip's headquarters at Mount Hope. On Sunday
June 20, while everybody was at church, a party of Indians had stolen
into the town and set fire to two houses. Messengers were hurried from
Plymouth and from Boston, to demand the culprits under penalty of
instant war. As they approached Swanzey the men from Boston saw a sight
that filled them with horror. The road was strewn with corpses of men,
women, and children, scorched, dismembered, and mangled with that
devilish art of which the American Indian is the most finished master.
The savages had sacked the village the day before, burning the houses
and slaying the people. Within three days a small force of colonial
troops had driven Philip from his position at Mount Hope; but while
they were doing this a party of savages swooped upon Dartmouth, burning
thirty houses and committing fearful atrocities. Some of their victims
were flayed alive, or impaled on sharp stakes, or roasted over slow
fires. Similar horrors were wrought at Middleborough and Taunton; and
now the misery spread to Massachusetts, where on the 14th of July the
town of Mendon was attacked by a party of Nipmucks. [Sidenote: Massacres
at Swanzey and Dartmouth, June, 1675]

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