KING PHILIP'S FORT
The Indian war came in 1674.
The war-whoop startled the colonists everywhere: at Plymouth, near
Boston, and in the frontier settlements.
Susan heard it again and again, at a distance, and shuddered to think
what cruel deed it might proclaim.
Meanwhile the pioneers armed and resisted the onslaught of the Indians.
Some time in 1675, perhaps in the beautiful autumn, Little Metacomet
followed his mother into the Narragansett Country, to a woods, near
what is now North Kingston. The Narragansett Indians were about to
unite with King Philip in an alliance to protect the Indian empire from
being overthrown by the white people.
The question had been forced upon the Indian races, shall the Indian
tribes govern themselves, or be governed by the white man's laws? When
Philip's brother Wamsutta had been summoned to Plymouth, Philip took
the view that the authority of the ancient sachemship had been taken
away, and when the Plymouth magistrates had caused the arrest of the
slayers of Sassamon, he had sent messages to the neighboring tribes
that they must arm, unite, or perish.
So war, terrible war, came. Philip had induced the Narragansetts on
the west side of Narragansett Bay to make common cause with them to
maintain the authority of the Indian races. The colonists resolved to
prevent this union which would be fatal to them.
Philip knew the Indian lands of both the Mt. Hope and Narragansett
Bays. He knew that there was a very remarkable swamp near the sea at
Kingston in which a natural island of some four or more acres rose
out of a great morass. If he were to erect a fort on this island, the
morass would protect it, for the morass was shallow water and deep mud.
It was covered with bushes where swamp birds lived, where blackbirds
built their nests, and frogs croaked in spring, an army of frogs.
About it the crows built their nests in the high trees, and over it the
fishing hawks wheeled and screamed at noontime.
Philip resolved to build a fort so strong it could not be taken, and
planned to house the women and children of the warriors there during
the coming winter, and to drill the braves of the Wampanoags and
Narragansetts for the destruction of the white race.
He caused a wooden wall to be erected about this hard island in the
great circle of mud, a che-val-de-frise, and he also made walls of corn
that should afford protection, food and shelter. The fortress arose
amid the woody splendors of the autumn. It was a fort that, after his
own view, could never be taken. Into this large enclosure he gathered
some three thousand Indian people. Here he lit his council fires,
and held his war dances, and prepared, as he thought, to destroy New
England, blot out its settlements, and restore the Indian races to
their former estate.
There was only one way that this fort could be approached, as he
thought, and that was by a secret bridge. No white man could know of
this secret bridge, he reasoned, and his reasoning would have been
right but for the treachery of an Indian named Peter whom he had made
an enemy.
Into this fort, which it was deemed no enemy could so much as disturb
in winter, Little Metacomet entered one day, following his mother over
the hidden bridge.
It was a sunny day in Indian summer. That night the harvest moon was to
rise and a council and dance were to be held.
Little Metacomet clung to his mother, and looked up to the walls of
sharp elbows of trees, and the high bundles of corn.
A thousand or more Indian women were there, and they hailed the Indian
queen of the Wampanoags and her little boy. They lifted their hands,
and waved them in a fantastic way to the fortress that they thought
never could be taken. When the princess sat down on the royal mats they
gathered around her.
Little Metacomet touched his mother on the arm, and cast his great dark
eyes up to hers.
"Mother, what would happen to us if the fortress _were_ to be taken?"
"I know not what would happen to me, but you, you, Little Metacomet,
would lose your Kingdom of Pokonoket, the throne of your fathers at Mt.
Hope, and you would be made a prisoner. They might put me to death."
"Oh, no, no! But they might send us both to Father Eliot, and he might
send us to Mother Susan. Oh, what if such things were to happen!"
"But they can never happen. All the palefaces that live could not take
this fort. An enemy who tried to cross the morass would sink, sink,
sink, and find a grave in the mud."
"But suppose the bogs were to freeze?"
"The bogs do not freeze. They make only thin ice. The thin ice hangs on
the bushes when the water goes down, and when anyone tries to cross, it
goes crackle, crackle, with a hollow sound, ponk, ponk, ponk, ponk!"
"And are we going out in the spring and kill the white people?"
"Yes, we must, or you will never sit in your father's seat, by the
spring of morning sun at Mt. Hope."
Then Little Metacomet was silent. At last he said:
"They will spare Roger's people I know; for we are friends."
That night there was a torch dance. Over it the broad moon rose like
a night sun. It was one of the last dances of the Wampanoags. Little
Metacomet lay down beside his mother after the drums had ceased to beat
and wondered how his friendship with little Roger the white boy, would
end. Would he ever rub noses with him again?