As monumental bronze unchanged his look:
A soul that pity touch’d, but never shook;
Train’d from his tree-rock’d cradle to his bier,
The fierce extremes of good and ill to brook
Impassive--fearing but the shame of fear--
stoic of the woods--a man without a tear.
CAMPBELL.
IT is to be regretted that those early writers who treated of the
discovery and settlement of America have not given us more particular
and candid accounts of the remarkable characters that flourished in
savage life. The scanty anecdotes which have reached us are full of
peculiarity and interest; they furnish us with nearer glimpses of human
nature, and show what man is in a comparatively primitive state and what
he owes to civilization. There is something of the charm of discovery
in lighting upon these wild and unexplored tracts of human nature--in
witnessing, as it were, the native growth of moral sentiment, and
perceiving those generous and romantic qualities which have been
artificially cultivated by society vegetating in spontaneous hardihood
and rude magnificence.
In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence,
of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow-men, he is
constantly acting a studied part. The bold and peculiar traits of native
character are refined away or softened down by the levelling influence
of what is termed good-breeding, and he practises so many petty
deceptions and affects so many generous sentiments for the purposes
of popularity that it is difficult to distinguish his real from his
artificial character. The Indian, on the contrary, free from the
restraints and refinements of polished life, and in a great degree a
solitary and independent being, obeys the impulses of his inclination
or the dictates of his judgment; and thus the attributes of his nature,
being freely indulged, grow singly great and striking. Society is like
a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and
where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface;
he, however, who would study Nature in its wildness and variety must
plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent,
and dare the precipice.
These reflections arose on casually looking through a volume of early
colonial history wherein are recorded, with great bitterness, the
outrages of the Indians and their wars with the settlers New England.
It is painful to perceive, even from these partial narratives, how the
footsteps of civilization may be traced in the blood of the aborigines;
how easily the colonists were moved to hostility by the lust of
conquest; how merciless and exterminating was their warfare. The
imagination shrinks at the idea of how many intellectual beings were
hunted from the earth, how many brave and noble hearts, of Nature’s
sterling coinage, were broken down and trampled in the dust.
Such was the fate of PHILIP OF POKANOKET, an Indian warrior whose name
was once a terror throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut. He was the
most distinguished of a number of contemporary sachems who reigned over
the Pequods, the Narragansetts, the Wampanoags, and the other eastern
tribes at the time of the first settlement of New England--a band of
native untaught heroes who made the most generous struggle of which
human nature is capable, fighting to the last gasp in the cause of their
country, without a hope of victory or a thought of renown. Worthy of
an age of poetry and fit subjects for local story and romantic fiction,
they have left scarcely any authentic traces on the page of history, but
stalk like gigantic shadows in the dim twilight of tradition.*
* While correcting the proof-sheets of this article the
author is informed that a celebrated English poet has nearly
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.
* The Rev. Increase Mather’s History.
The nature of the contest that ensued was such as too often
distinguishes the warfare between civilized men and savages. On the part
of the whites it was conducted with superior skill and success, but with
a wastefulness of the blood and a disregard of the natural rights of
their antagonists: on the part of the Indians it was waged with the
desperation of men fearless of death, and who had nothing to expect from
peace but humiliation, dependence, and decay.
The events of the war are transmitted to us by a worthy clergyman of the
time, who dwells with horror and indignation on every hostile act of the
Indians, however justifiable, whilst he mentions with applause the most
sanguinary atrocities of the whites. Philip is reviled as a murderer and
a traitor, without considering that he was a true-born prince gallantly
fighting at the head of his subjects to avenge the wrongs of his family,
to retrieve the tottering power of his line, and to deliver his native
land from the oppression of usurping strangers.
The project of a wide and simultaneous revolt, if such had really been
formed, was worthy of a capacious mind, and had it not been prematurely
discovered might have been overwhelming in its consequences. The war
that actually broke out was but a war of detail, a mere succession of
casual exploits and unconnected enterprises. Still, it sets forth the
military genius and daring prowess of Philip, and wherever, in the
prejudiced and passionate narrations that have been given of it, we
can arrive at simple facts, we find him displaying a vigorous mind, a
fertility of expedients, a contempt of suffering and hardship, and an
unconquerable resolution that command our sympathy and applause.
Driven from his paternal domains at Mount Hope, he threw himself
into the depths of those vast and trackless forests that skirted the
settlements and were almost impervious to anything but a wild beast
or an Indian. Here he gathered together his forces, like the storm
accumulating its stores of mischief in the bosom of the thundercloud,
and would suddenly emerge at a time and place least expected, carrying
havoc and dismay into the villages. There were now and then indications
of these impending ravages that filled the minds of the colonists with
awe and apprehension. The report of a distant gun would perhaps be heard
from the solitary woodland, where there was known to be no white man;
the cattle which had been wandering in the woods would sometimes return
home wounded; or an Indian or two would be seen lurking about the
skirts of the forests and suddenly disappearing, as the lightning will
sometimes be seen playing silently about the edge of the cloud that is
brewing up the tempest.
Though sometimes pursued and even surrounded by the settlers, yet Philip
as often escaped almost miraculously from their toils, and, plunging
into the wilderness, would be lost to all search or inquiry until he
again emerged at some far distant quarter, laying the country desolate.
Among his strongholds were the great swamps or morasses which extend
in some parts of New England, composed of loose bogs of deep black
mud, perplexed with thickets, brambles, rank weeds, the shattered and
mouldering trunks of fallen trees, overshadowed by lugubrious hemlocks.
The uncertain footing and the tangled mazes of these shaggy wilds
rendered them almost impracticable to the white man, though the Indian
could thread their labyrinths with the agility of a deer. Into one of
these, the great swamp of Pocasset Neck, was Philip once driven with a
band of his followers. The English did not dare to pursue him, fearing
to venture into these dark and frightful recesses, where they might
perish in fens and miry pits or be shot down by lurking foes. They
therefore invested the entrance to the Neck, and began to build a fort
with the thought of starving out the foe; but Philip and his warriors
wafted themselves on a raft over an arm of the sea in the dead of night,
leaving the women and children behind, and escaped away to the westward,
kindling the flames of war among the tribes of Massachusetts and the
Nipmuck country and threatening the colony of Connecticut.
In this way Philip became a theme of universal apprehension. The mystery
in which he was enveloped exaggerated his real terrors. He was an evil
that walked in darkness, whose coming none could foresee and against
which none knew when to be on the alert. The whole country abounded with
rumors and alarms. Philip seemed almost possessed of ubiquity, for in
whatever part of the widely-extended frontier an irruption from the
forest took place, Philip was said to be its leader. Many superstitious
notions also were circulated concerning him. He was said to deal in
necromancy, and to be attended by an old Indian witch or prophetess,
whom he consulted and who assisted him by her charms and incantations.
This, indeed, was frequently the case with Indian chiefs, either through
their own credulity or to act upon that of their followers; and the
influence of the prophet and the dreamer over Indian superstition has
been fully evidenced in recent instances of savage warfare.
At the time that Philip effected his escape from Pocasset his fortunes
were in a desperate condition. His forces had been thinned by repeated
fights and he had lost almost the whole of his resources. In this time
of adversity he found a faithful friend in Canonchet, chief Sachem of
all the Narragansetts. He was the son and heir of Miantonimo, the great
sachem who, as already mentioned, after an honorable acquittal of the
charge of conspiracy, had been privately put to death at the perfidious
instigations of the settlers. “He was the heir,” says the old
chronicler, “of all his father’s pride and insolence, as well as of his
malice towards the English;” he certainly was the heir of his insults
and injuries and the legitimate avenger of his murder. Though he had
forborne to take an active part in this hopeless war, yet he received
Philip and his broken forces with open arms and gave them the most
generous countenance and support. This at once drew upon him the
hostility of the English, and it was determined to strike a signal blow
that should involve both the Sachems in one common ruin. A great force
was therefore gathered together from Massachusetts, Plymouth, and
Connecticut, and was sent into the Narragansett country in the depth of
winter, when the swamps, being frozen and leafless, could be traversed
with comparative facility and would no longer afford dark and
impenetrable fastnesses to the Indians.
Apprehensive of attack, Canonchet had conveyed the greater part of his
stores, together with the old, the infirm, the women and children of his
tribe, to a strong fortress, where he and Philip had likewise drawn
up the flower of their forces. This fortress, deemed by the Indians
impregnable, was situated upon a rising mound or kind of island of five
or six acres in the midst of a swamp; it was constructed with a degree
of judgment and skill vastly superior to what is usually displayed in
Indian fortification, and indicative of the martial genius of these two
chieftains.
Guided by a renegado Indian, the English penetrated, through December
snows, to this stronghold and came upon the garrison by surprise. The
fight was fierce and tumultuous. The assailants were repulsed in their
first attack, and several of their bravest officers were shot down in
the act of storming the fortress, sword in hand. The assault was renewed
with greater success. A lodgment was effected. The Indians were driven
from one post to another. They disputed their ground inch by inch,
fighting with the fury of despair. Most of their veterans were cut to
pieces, and after a long and bloody battle, Philip and Canonchet, with
a handful of surviving warriors, retreated from the fort and took refuge
in the thickets of the surrounding forest.
The victors set fire to the wigwams and the fort; the whole was soon in
a blaze; many of the old men, the women, and the children perished in
the flames. This last outrage overcame even the stoicism of the savage.
The neighboring woods resounded with the yells of rage and despair
uttered by the fugitive warriors, as they beheld the destruction
of their dwellings and heard the agonizing cries of their wives and
offspring. “The burning of the wigwams,” says a contemporary writer,
“the shrieks and cries of the women and children, and the yelling of
the warriors, exhibited a most horrible and affecting scene, so that it
greatly moved some of the soldiers.” The same writer cautiously adds,
“They were in much doubt then, and afterwards seriously inquired,
whether burning their enemies alive could be consistent with humanity,
and the benevolent principles of the gospel.” *
* MS. of the Rev. W. Ruggles.
The fate of the brave and generous Canonchet is worthy of particular
mention: the last scene of his life is one of the noblest instances on
record of Indian magnanimity.
Broken down in his power and resources by this signal defeat, yet
faithful to his ally and to the hapless cause which he had espoused, he
rejected all overtures of peace offered on condition of betraying Philip
and his followers, and declared that “he would fight it out to the
last man, rather than become a servant to the English.” His home being
destroyed, his country harassed and laid waste by the incursions of
the conquerors, he was obliged to wander away to the banks of the
Connecticut, where he formed a rallying-point to the whole body of
western Indians and laid waste several of the English settlements.
Early in the spring he departed on a hazardous expedition, with only
thirty chosen men, to penetrate to Seaconck, in the vicinity of Mount
Hope, and to procure seed corn to plant for the sustenance of his
troops. This little hand of adventurers had passed safely through the
Pequod country, and were in the centre of the Narragansett, resting
at some wigwams near Pautucket River, when an alarm was given of an
approaching enemy. Having but seven men by him at the time, Canonchet
despatched two of them to the top of a neighboring hill to bring
intelligence of the foe.
Panic-struck by the appearance of a troop of English and Indians rapidly
advancing, they fled in breathless terror past their chieftain, without
stopping to inform him of the danger. Canonchet sent another scout,
who did the same. He then sent two more, one of whom, hurrying back
in confusion and affright, told him that the whole British army was
at hand. Canonchet saw there was no choice but immediate flight. He
attempted to escape round the hill, but was perceived and hotly pursued
by the hostile Indians and a few of the fleetest of the English. Finding
the swiftest pursuer close upon his heels, he threw off, first his
blanket, then his silver-laced coat and belt of peag, by which his
enemies knew him to be Canonchet, and redoubled the eagerness of
pursuit.
At length, in dashing through the river, his foot slipped upon a stone,
and he fell so deep as to wet his gun. This accident so struck him with
despair that, as he afterwards confessed, “his heart and his bowels
turned within him, and he became like a rotten stick, void of strength.”
To such a degree was he unnerved that, being seized by a Pequod Indian
within a short distance of the river, he made no resistance, though
a man of great vigor of body and boldness of heart. But on being made
prisoner the whole pride of his spirit arose within him, and from that
moment we find, in the anecdotes given by his enemies, nothing but
repeated flashes of elevated and prince-like heroism. Being questioned
by one of the English who first came up with him, and who had not
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.