LITTLE METACOMET
OR
THE INDIAN PLAYMATE
BY HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH
NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1904,
BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY.
_Published September, 1904._
CONTENTS.
I. TIMID SUSAN AND HER NEIGHBORS
II. LITTLE METACOMET
III. HAYSTACK FRIENDSHIP
IV. ANOTHER VISIT TO THE HERMIT
V. HOW THE HERMIT TAMED BIRDS
VI. THE FEATHERED CAT
VII. LITTLE METACOMET'S QUAIL
VIII. LITTLE METACOMET VISITS THE WHITE-WINGED BLACKBIRD
IX. LITTLE METACOMET'S BLUE ROBIN
X. THE CAT IN THE BAG--THE FROG RACE
XI. THE SCHOOL OF THE WOODS
XII. A FLYING MOUSE
XIII. LITTLE METACOMET SEES HIMSELF IN A LOOKING-GLASS
XIV. ROGERS GOES TO THE INDIAN RACES
XV. THE THUNDER BIRD
XVI. THE TREE TRAP
XVII. AN INDIAN CLAMBAKE
XVIII. THE HEART OF MASSASOIT
XIX. THE INDIANS PASS BY
XX. KING PHILIP'S FORT
XXI. DARK DAYS FOR LITTLE METACOMET
XXII. ROGER PARTS WITH LITTLE METACOMET
XXIII. SUSAN IS TIMID NO LONGER
XXIV. TO THE PALM LANDS
PREFACE
The author's purpose in writing this book for young people is to
picture life in the New England woods in old Indian days, when
barbarism was passing under the influence of civilization. His mother
passed a part of her girlhood at Mt. Hope, and he was born near the Mt.
Hope Lands, at Warren, R. I., the Sowams of Massasoit, who protected
the Pilgrims and sheltered Roger Williams when the latter was forming
his views of liberty of conscience, or soul freedom, which have
entered into the constitution of every republic in the world. He used
to roam in the green groves of Swansea, has often met the last of the
Wampanoags at Lakeville, and as often pictured in his own mind the
charming life of an Indian boy in the green woods around the Mt. Hope
and Narragansett Bays in the days of the forest kings.
This little nature book is an attempt to portray such a life. In
it the author has endeavored to picture, by much fact and a slight
framework of fiction, the life of Little Metacomet, the son of King
Philip, or Pometacom, or Metacomet, who followed his father, the great
chieftain, and his mother, the beautiful forest queen, before the
Indian war, and his mother during the war, and who was deported to the
Palm Islands after this last event. He has used Little Metacomet to
picture an Indian boy's life in the woods among the birds, animals,
and native races, and to tell the tale of what was most merciful in
Philip's war.
LITTLE METACOMET
CHAPTER I
TIMID SUSAN AND HER NEIGHBORS
During the early settlement days of this country, before the great
Indian war of 1675, when the pioneers and the savages shared the land
on Mt. Hope Bay and the Narragansett Bay between them, there was a
little woman named Susan Barley who was much afraid lest she should
"see something." We may not wonder that she was so much afraid, for she
lived in the green groves of Swansea, which bordered on the Mt. Hope
lands, and the Assowamset pond country, at the time that the Indians of
Pokonoket began to be hostile towards the white people.
Near her little cabin in the Swansea groves lived a very odd hermit
named William Blackstone, or, as he was generally called, Blaxton. He
founded Boston in apple orchards, and English roses, and then went
away to live all alone at a place which he called "Study Hill," near
Pawtucket Falls. He was a graduate of Oxford, England, but he loved
little birds and animals, and wished to live by himself that he might
study the soul. He made the birds and animals his brothers, and tamed
the forests around him, and the jays talked with him, and squirrels
lived with him, and hunted deer ran to him for protection. A bear and
her cubs would visit him among his apple trees, and the deer feed
around him like so many Jersey cows at the present time. At Study Hill
he wrote some ten volumes, probably of philosophy, which were burned in
the Indian wars.
He used to travel about on a white ox, which he guided by a cord
running through a ring in the animal's nose. It was in the witchcraft
times, and some people may have thought that the white ox and his rider
were ghosts. Blackstone used to visit Roger Williams at Providence,
riding on this white ox. He probably did his courting at Boston in a
like way. We are giving here some of the curious incidents of a real
character.
After his apple orchards had grown at Study Hill, now Lonsdale,
R.I.--where you may see his tomb in a yard of an immense cotton mill,
under the cornerstone of which he was finally buried, with the bones of
an ox, or an animal,--he would sometimes take a basket of the new fruit
to a place where Roger Williams preached, on the hill, probably near
Brown University, and when the good man of liberty of conscience had
ended a sermon, would say--
"Ho, ho! And here are refreshments from the trees of the Lord."
He would then toss about his apples to the people who had assembled to
worship,--Quakers, Baptists, outcasts, Indians and all.
"Ho, ho!"--they would sit down and eat the apples.
All the forest people loved Blackstone, and the very birds seemed to
sing his praise.
Near Blackstone and his orchards lived John Eliot, the Indian Apostle,
at Natick, where he preached to the Indians and had gathered an Indian
church. He was the minister of Roxbury Fields, and his grave may be
seen in Roxbury, in the Washington and Eustis Street Burying Ground,
where probably rests Anne Bradstreet, the first American poetess,
in the Dudley tomb. Eliot preached in many places near Natick, among
them on the high rock at the present Brook Farm, at West Roxbury; the
memorials of his Indian work are to be seen at Natick. Had all white
men been like him, there probably would have been no Indian war.
What noble men were these--Blackstone, Roger Williams, and John Eliot!
The latter failed to convert the Indian tribes, but his influence saved
New England. King Philip told him in a friendly way that he cared no
more for his religion than for the bright button on his coat, and yet
the chieftain at one time was very much interested in Eliot's teaching.
King Philip had a good heart at times--but it was a double heart.
The New England woods were like a menagerie in those days, full of
animals and birds. Turkeys and partridges scurried everywhere among the
white birches and green savins, and fat geese filled the coverts about
the ponds in the fall. On the open fields the Indians grew corn, which
they parched and pounded, and ate with clams and fish.
Savages, though they were, the Indians led a charming life in the
woods, and the Indian boy had a lively wonder age in his youth,
when he was learning the secrets of the forests. Little Metacomet,
King Philip's or Metacomet's son, was a small naturalist of these
forests and waterways before the great war. He met the great pioneers,
Blackstone, Williams, and Eliot, he followed his father in the last
days of peace, and he hunted and fished and enjoyed the Indian
clambakes and autumn festivals. So let us take the little brown hand
of the boy Metacomet, and go forth into our story, when every covert
had an animal, and every tree a bird, and the Indians thought that this
abundant life would last forever.
One day timid Susan said to her son Roger, a lad of some ten years--
"Let's go over to the hermit's and see what the world is about. I will
be careful not to touch anything."
So the two went over to Study Hill to visit Blackstone, and the little
woman from the green groves of Swansea came timidly to the hermit's
door; for she had heard the strange tales of a phantom white ox in the
forest.
The hermit came out to welcome her.
"I'm proper glad I got here," said she. "I was afraid I might see
something. I came all the way from the green groves of Swansea."
"What were you afraid you might see, good mother?"
"The dead that wander; I'm never afraid of no living human, but I am
scary of the dead--they know all."
"But the dead do not wander, little woman, to scare innocent people
like you. There are no ghosts outside of us--ships do not sail on the
land, nor cattle pasture in the sea."
"You must be an infidel. Are you?"
"No."
"Sure--perfectly sure?"
"Sure!"
"And you've been to college?" She shook her head and added:
"But Boston folks believe such things!"
"They are led by a blind spirit of superstition."
"Have you ever seen the rider on the white ox?"
"Yes."
"You don't tell me!--I'd fly right out of my head were I to see that.
Where did you see it?"
"Here."
The little mother's eyes grew.
"There is no spirit rider of any white ox," said the hermit. "But, my
good woman, King Philip, John Eliot, and Roger Williams are coming here
to-morrow, and you and Roger must stay and see the great chieftain.
Perhaps the Indian chief will bring the Princess and Little Metacomet
with him."
"But Joe, my husband, what will he do? He would think that the white ox
had got me."
"I will send young John Quitumug to Swansea to tell your husband where
you are, and you will not see anything 'scary'."
"Then I will stay."
And in the morning came Roger Williams, sturdy, with an open face,
beautiful with the inner light. His spirit was full of loveliness, but
his language seemed strange.
"Brother Blaxton, the Inward Voice said 'Come'--and I am here. Thee
surprises me; who is this little woman and her boy? What may thy name
be, woman?"
"Susan, Joe's wife, of Swansea--they call him 'Onery Joe'--they say his
head was put on wrong--but he is good to me, ain't he, Roger?"
A sudden sound rose in the air--"Netop!" (friend), said an Indian
runner, peeping out of the thick wood. Philip, the Forest King, was
coming. There was heard a breaking of dry twigs beneath mocassined
feet, behind the thick curtains of leaves. Wood birds flew up into the
air with notes of alarm. Presently the glimmering hazels opened like
a wicker gate, and King Philip and his family, with some grave and
stately warriors, came into view, and approached the place.
With Philip came his wife, known as the Beautiful Princess, and Little
Metacomet, their son. The princess wore royal robes woven of river
grasses, and around her neck was a copper chain. The Pilgrim Fathers
had given two copper chains to Massasoit the lord of Lakonoket as a
pledge of eternal friendship.
It was to be a peace day; the princess had come as a kind of rural
goddess of Peace: King Philip extended his hand to Blackstone, and the
world seemed filled with gladness.
Presently the red bushes opened and the witch hazels that bloom in
the fall shook, at a place near the brook. A grave man appeared, and
Blackstone said--
"Thou art welcome, Father Eliot. I feared that thou wouldst not be able
to leave thy flock in Natick fields."
Then Blackstone, Williams, and Eliot shook hands with each other and
with Philip, while the Indians looked on in wonder.
More Indians came, and among them some praying Indians. They shook
hands with the three white men, but when they greeted King Philip's men
they followed the Indian custom of greeting.
Blackstone made an Indian clambake that day near the Falls of the
Pawtucket, to King Philip, John Eliot and Roger Williams. Some Indian
children were there, and they gathered in the cool to play.
It was October and the woods seemed to be on fire, they were so bright
in color.
The princess, the wife of King Philip, whose name was Wootoneshanuske,
hung her papoose in a cradle on a tree near by and began to sing to it,
shaking the copper chain.
The Indian cradle song of "Rock-a-bye, baby, upon the tree-top," though
of American origin, pictures the Indian cradle swinging in the woods.
The birds came to talk to the baby, the squirrels ran past it, and
stopped to chipper to it. The dogwood bloomed near it, and the early
leaves fell around it.
When the Indian boy, Metacomet, began to run about, his dog went with
him. They played tag, and hid, and made hide-and-seek surprises of the
game. Then he flew a kite. The Indian boys flew kites that were made in
a peculiar way of fish bladders. It was a charm to them to see these
light boats rise and sail away in the air.
At Indian clambakes Indian boys played "shinny" and games of skill
with the bow and arrow, and entered into long races. Eliot said of the
Indian children--"They play sly tricks upon dogs, and are much given to
singing."
The grave white men on this serene day sang or repeated Psalms, after
which the Indians made music and sang, and with them sang the beautiful
Princess of the Copper Chain.
The Indian music was simple; drums, rattles, and reeds or whistles.
The princess stood apart from the rest, and sang as if to her baby in
the trees.
The calling of birds by imitating the bird-call was amusement and music
with Little Metacomet. The birds whistled, and piped and drummed. So
did the boy. The black wild geese honked; so did the Indian. The dove
cooed; so did the mother to the baby, and so did the baby to the mother.
There were singing forests then; a thousand birds sang together; in the
pearl red morning; before the shower; on the long evenings of June in
the still light. The Indian mother and her children had quick ears for
vocal nature.
The winds of the seasons had their differing tones, and it was a joy
to hear the coming of the south wind, and a sadness to catch the first
piping of the north wind in the fall.
The beautiful season of the year was the red part of November called
the Indian summer. The leaves seemed to burn; the walnuts and acorns
fell. The purple gentians bloomed. The moonrise blended with the
sunset.