they were the Dutch and the Pe´quot Indians, of whom the latter
proved by far the more troublesome. Soon after murdering one
settler, the Pequots carried his family off to Block Island. The
news of murder and capture no sooner reached Massachusetts, than
ninety men set out, under John Endicott, to punish the Indians.
Sailing to Block Island, the Indian stronghold, they killed the
Indians and burned down their village. Then some of them went on
to the Connecticut valley, to join and help the English there. The
Pequots, angry with the colonists, now sought the friendship of the
Narragansett and Mo-he´gan Indians; for they thought that if three
such powerful tribes joined forces, the white men would soon be
crushed.
When the settlers heard of this, they were terrified. But knowing
Roger Williams was the only man who could prevent the Narragansetts
from making an alliance with their foes, they hastily sent him a
message, imploring his aid. Instead of acting meanly, as some other
men would have done in his place, and leaving those who had treated
him ill to look out for themselves, Roger Williams set out right
away, although a terrible storm was then raging.
Narrowly escaping death, he paddled bravely on in his frail skiff
till he came to the Narragansetts' camp. There he found the Pequots
fiercely urging their friends to fight by showing them the bloody
scalps they had already taken. During the next three days and
nights, Williams pleaded and argued with the Narragansett Indians,
and he finally persuaded them not to take part in the Pequot war.
Thanks to his efforts, too, the Mohegans sided with the white
men, their chief bravely helping John Mason, the commander of the
settlers' force.
After a night spent in prayer, the combined force of colonists and
friendly Indians suddenly attacked the principal Pequot camp in what
is now southeastern Connecticut. Taken unawares, the savages, roused
by the barking of their dogs, sprang out of their wigwams, only in
time to see the white men rush into their fort. A moment later, the
invaders flung blazing torches at their dwellings, which were soon
in flames over the heads of their wives and children. Many perished
in the fire, and the glare of the flames allowed the colonists to
see and kill nearly all their dusky foes.
Soon after this massacre, the Pequot chief was overtaken and slain,
and his head was long exposed on a tree, in a place since known as
Sachems Head, or Point. The few remaining Pequots either became
slaves or fled to the Hudson River. This was the first real Indian
war in New England (1636-1638). After it was all over the colonists
along the Connecticut were left in peace, and for nearly forty years
there was no more trouble with the red men.
The Pequot war was scarcely finished when three hundred English
settlers came to found New Haven. They were mostly rich trading
people, and they wanted to have a colony which would be governed
only by the laws of the Bible. The New Haven colony grew fast, and
before long included Saybrook and five other very prosperous towns.
It was in the Pequot war that the colonies first saw the advantage
of helping one another, and five years later (1643) a league was
formed between Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New
Haven. Maine and Rhode Island were not allowed to join it, because
they were not Puritan colonies. But New Hampshire really belonged to
it, as that colony had been joined to Massachusetts in 1641.
XXXV. THE QUAKERS.
While the English were founding the New England colonies, many
changes had taken place in England. King James I. was succeeded by
Charles I., and the English, weary of monarchs who did not keep
their promises, rose up in rebellion in 1643.
By this time, the English Puritans had increased so that they became
masters of the whole country. It was governed by their chief, Oliver
Crom´well, and called the Commonwealth of England. The Puritans,
being in power, made the Roman Catholics and the Church of England
people as uncomfortable as the latter had once made them. Many
Catholics and Anglicans were therefore only too glad to cross the
ocean, in their turn, so as to found new homes where they could
worship as they pleased; and you shall soon hear how they prospered.
Cromwell, as Protector of the Commonwealth of England, made a new
law (1651), called the Navigation Act. By this law it was decided
that the colonists should build no more ships, and that all their
goods should be carried across the ocean only in English vessels.
This law was very unjust, and captains of English ships speedily
took advantage of it to raise their prices for freight. So, while
England was rapidly growing rich, her colonists grumbled sorely at
the heavy rates they had to pay.
That same year began the great Quaker excitement in Massachusetts.
The Quakers were the disciples of a very good man, George Fox. They
called themselves Friends, but were called Quakers by the other
people, because they often said one ought to quake at the thought of
the wrath of God.
As some of the months and days of the week bore the names of old
heathen gods, the Friends would not use them, but, instead, numbered
the days and months, speaking of the first day of the sixth month,
the twelfth day of the second month, and so on. They would not take
any oaths, either, but used only the words "yea" and "nay." They
further treated all persons alike, calling even the king by his
given name, and refused to take off their hats in his presence.
Although generally quiet and modest, a few of the Quakers were so
anxious to spread the teachings of their preacher Fox that they came
over to Massachusetts, knowing they would be illtreated there.
Nevertheless, they began preaching, and firmly but quietly refused
to stop when told to do so. They were therefore tortured and
punished in many ways. A few were whipped, sent to jail, or put in
the stocks. Their books were burned; they were driven out of the
colony; and as all this was not enough, four of them were hanged.
The Quaker excitement finally grew so great that some of them were
sent back to England and the rest forced to take refuge in Rhode
Island, where they could practice any religion they liked. But the
Quakers who had been shipped back to England, and especially a few
discontented colonists, complained very much of the Massachusetts
government, and made considerable trouble for New England.
XXXVI. THE KING-KILLERS.
Cromwell having died in 1658, the English, most of whom were still
greatly attached to the royal family, soon begged Charles II. to
come back and take possession of his throne. He gladly returned to
England, where he punished no one for the revolution, except the
men who had condemned his father, Charles I., to death. A few of
these king-killers, or "reg´i-cides," as they were called, fled from
England as soon as they heard the king was coming, and three took
passage for America.
Two of these men, Goffe and Whal´ley, after some trouble, reached
the New Haven colony, where Puritan friends helped them to hide. The
king sent orders to arrest them, and magistrates began to search
every house to secure the regicides. For about eighteen years these
two men lived in constant dread of being caught; but, thanks to
their many friends, they always escaped. They dwelt for a while in
a deserted mill, then in a cave, and once hid under a bridge while
their pursuers galloped over it, expecting soon to overtake them.
The fact that the New Haven people had sheltered some of his
father's judges, added to the complaints of the Quakers and
discontented colonists, displeased Charles II. greatly; and he
finally declared that New Haven should cease to form a separate
colony, and joined it to Connecticut, which received a new charter
(1662).
It is also said, however, that these two colonies were united mainly
to please the Connecticut people, because they had won the king's
favor by sending him a pretty message to welcome him back to the
throne. The charter he gave them was the most liberal ever granted
the colonists, although the one Roger Williams secured for Rhode
Island also granted many privileges.
You doubtless remember the treaty made between the Indian King
Massasoit and Governor Carver, when the Pilgrims first came to
Plymouth. This treaty was kept forty years, and Massasoit and his
tribe faithfully helped the colonists to fight the other Indians.
But when Massasoit died, his two sons, who had received the names of
Alexander and Philip, began to rule in their turn.
Alexander knew, by the wampum belts which were the history books
of his tribe, that nearly all the land of his Indian fathers had
been sold to the white men, piece by piece. It had been given in
exchange for beads, kettles, blankets, etc., and now very little
was left. But the Indians fancied that, although they had sold the
land, they could still hunt and fish there as much as they pleased.
The colonists, however, would not allow them to do so, and drove the
Indians farther and farther off, until they began to feel cramped
for space.
It is said that when one of the colonists once came to bid an
Indian chief to remove still farther from the white settlements, the
red man invited him to take a seat beside him on a log. Crowding
nearer and nearer his guest, the chief bade him move again and
again, until he forced him to the very end of the log. But when the
colonist declared he could not move another inch without falling
off, the chief calmly answered: "It is just so with us. We have
moved as far as we can go, and now you come here to ask us to move
farther still."
This feeling of unfair treatment made Alexander so angry, at last,
that he formed a secret alliance with the Narragansett Indians to
kill all the white men. But the Plymouth governor, hearing of this,
promptly sent for him, bidding him come and clear himself of the
accusation of treachery. Then, as the Indian did not obey at once,
Winslow quickly set out, with his men, to bring him by force.
Alexander, furious at being thus compelled to mind, fell seriously
ill from fever. The colonists then allowed his followers to carry
him home; but on the way back, the Indian chief breathed his last.
Ever after, his people were in the habit of saying that he had gone
to the Happy Hunting Grounds, where the palefaces could never come
to crowd him out.
XXXVII. KING PHILIP'S WAR.
At Alexander's death, Philip became chief of his tribe; and thinking
the English had poisoned Alexander, he began to plot revenge. After
brooding over his wrongs for several years, Philip was accused of
planning to attack the colonists. The governor of Plymouth sent
word to Philip to come and explain his conduct, but, we are told,
the Indian haughtily said to the messenger: "Your governor is but
a subject of King Charles of England. I shall not treat with a
subject. I shall only treat with the king, my brother. When he
comes, I am ready."
[Illustration: An Indian Attack.]
Still, Philip did come, and promised to keep the peace. But a few
years later, he was about to fall upon the colonists unexpectedly,
when a praying Indian warned them of their danger. This Indian was
murdered by three of Philip's friends, who were found guilty and put
to death for the crime. Not long after this, the Indians attacked
the colonists at Swan´sea, as they were walking home from church,
and killed all those who could not escape in time to the blockhouse.
As had been agreed beforehand, an alarm was sent right away to
Plymouth and Boston, where signal fires were kindled on what is
still known as Beacon Hill. An army of colonists hastily obeyed this
summons, and set out to attack Philip. But the latter was too quick
for them, and managed to escape from his camp at Mount Hope, with
about seven hundred Indians.
Small villages and outlying farmhouses were now in constant danger;
for the savages, gliding along as noiselessly as snakes, pounced
upon the people by day or by night. They forced their way into the
houses, killed and scalped the men, carried women and children off
into captivity, and left nothing but heaps of smoking ruins behind
them.
In the course of this terrible war, several women were carried off
with all their children. One child--a tiny babe--annoyed one of the
savages by crying, so he killed it in the poor mother's arms. The
unhappy woman, too ill to walk as fast as the Indians wished, was
also slain; but the rest of her children were sold into captivity.
In time, all were rescued, except one little girl, who later
married an Indian, and never saw her family again until she was a
grandmother.
In the course of King Philip's War, which lasted from 1675 till
1678, forty out of ninety English towns suffered greatly, and
thirteen were burned to the ground. Although there were no great
battles,--except a swamp fight, in which about one thousand Indians
were killed,--there were many small engagements, one of the fiercest
being that of Bloody Brook, near Deerfield. It seems that, owing to
an alarm, the village was deserted, but nearly one hundred men were
sent there to save the crops. On their way back, they carelessly
laid their guns in a cart, and scattered to eat grapes. The Indians,
lurking in the forest in great numbers, took advantage of this to
fall upon them unawares, and seizing their weapons, killed all but a
few of them.
The Indians treated all their captives cruelly, and often made them
suffer horrible tortures. Terrible stories are told of this time,
when many died, and but few captives escaped. Once, the savages
suddenly broke into a house, and a servant hastily thrust a little
child under a big kettle to hide it from them. The little one kept
so very quiet that the Indians did not know it was there, and later
on it was found unharmed. We are also told that a woman once drove a
party of Indians away by flinging ladlefuls of boiling soap at them,
which made them flee, shrieking with pain. Another band of Indians,
creeping into a house by way of the chimney, were killed on the
hearth, one after another, by a mother who thus bravely defended her
little ones.
Once, while the people of Hadley were at church, some Indians came
sneaking into the village; but they were seen by the king-killer
Goffe, who happened to be hiding just then in the minister's house.
Rushing out, that white-haired old man gave the alarm, and led the
colonists so boldly that the Indians were driven away. But as soon
as the danger was over, Goffe again disappeared, and was never seen
in public again, although he is said to have died at Hadley a few
years later, and to have been buried in the minister's cellar.
All these secret attacks and massacres roused the anger of the
colonists, who finally got the better of their savage foes.
Philip's wife and son fell into their hands, and we are told that
when the Indian chief heard that his child had been sent to the West
Indies, to be sold as a slave, he bitterly cried: "My heart breaks!
I am ready to die."
Shortly after, the camp where he and his tribe were rapidly starving
to death was surrounded by Captain Church's little army. Philip
fled, hoping yet to escape; but a bullet from an Indian's gun struck
him, and "he fell upon his face in the mud and water, with his gun
under him." When his body was found thus, his head was cut off, and
set up on a pole in Plymouth, where it was kept for about twenty
years. To reward Church for his services to the colony, the settlers
gave him Philip's wampum belt, which has always been carefully
kept as a great curiosity; and the sword which he handled in King
Philip's War can still be seen in the rooms of the Massachusetts
Historical Society.
XXXVIII. THE BEGINNING OF NEW YORK.
Charles II. was such a very merry and easy-going king that whenever
his followers asked him for land in America, he readily granted it
to them. In fact, he was so free-handed that sometimes he even gave
away what really did not belong to him! Thus, he told his brother
James, Duke of York, that he could have all the country claimed by
the Dutch, saying that it was English because Cabot had visited it
first.
As you will see, this led to trouble; for the Dutch, after building
their first trading post on Manhattan Island, in 1614, had begun to
form a colony in the New World. At first, the Dutch settlers were
on very good terms with the Indians; but, owing mostly to the fire
water they so freely sold, quarrels soon arose.
Seeing this, the Dutchman Min´u-it purchased the whole of Manhattan
Island, in 1626, for about twenty-four dollars' worth of beads and
trinkets. The town on it was called New Amsterdam, after a great
city in Holland, and this sale, which gave the Dutch land for one
sixth of a cent an acre, was soon followed by many others. Indeed,
they soon owned all the Hudson and Delaware valleys, besides a strip
of coast between the mouths of these two rivers.
Under Governor Kieft, the Indians, exasperated by the treatment they
received, planned to murder all the Dutch. But a grateful Indian
gave a colonist timely warning of the coming danger. Kieft now
tried to make friends with the redskins, and appointed a meeting
with their chiefs on Long Island. When called upon to state their
causes of complaint, the Indians brought forth a bundle of sticks,
and laying them down, one after another, related a special wrong for
each stick.
Realizing that they had good cause for complaint, Kieft made a
treaty with them, which, however, was soon broken. Again farms were
attacked and settlers were scalped, and it was only after the number
of whites had been greatly reduced, and more than a thousand Indians
killed, that peace was finally made, in 1645. It was during this war
that Mrs. Hutchinson, who had left Rhode Island and settled in the
western part of Connecticut, was slain, with all her children except
one, who was carried off into captivity.
To induce people to come and settle in the New Netherlands,--as
the Dutch called their share of the New World,--rich settlers,
or patroons, were promised a farm of sixteen miles' water front,
provided they brought out fifty colonists with the necessary farming
tools and stock. The result of this offer was that many comfortable
Dutch houses arose in the New Netherlands, which soon had many
prosperous settlements, in each of which was a free school, so the
children should not grow up ignorant.
These colonists were simple-hearted, jolly, and fond of good things
to eat. On their numerous holidays they danced gayly, a pastime
which the Puritans considered very wicked, and they often assembled
to help one another and have a good time. Their principal festivals
were held in honor of St. Nicholas, and on January 1, when they
called upon all their friends to wish them a happy New Year.
In 1656, about ten years after the Indian troubles ended, there
were about one thousand inhabitants in the city of New Amsterdam,
which stood on the lower part of Manhattan Island. Protected on
three sides by the waters of the North and East rivers and the Bay,
the town was cut off from the rest of the island by a high palisade
running from shore to shore. This was called the "Wall," and the
place where it once stood is still known as Wall Street. Beyond this
palisade were many farms, among others one on Bowery Lane, which
belonged to Peter Stuȳ´ves-ant, the fourth governor of the city.
The settlers having been driven away from Fort Nassau, on the
Delaware, by the Indians, some Dutch merchants soon sent Swedes
to form a colony on the spot where Wil´ming-ton now stands. The
country around there was therefore called New Sweden. But the
newcomers could not live in peace with the Dutch; so Governor
Stuyvesant attacked them, seventeen years later, and took possession
of their town, so that New Sweden ceased to exist.
[Illustration: Stuyvesant wanted the People to resist.]
It was while this fighting governor was at the head of affairs that
King Charles's brother James, admiral of the English navy, first
claimed his new territory. His ships appeared unexpectedly at New
Amsterdam, and the astonished Stuyvesant soon received a letter
ordering him to surrender the city. Although Stuyvesant had but one
leg, he was a brave man, and wanted the people to resist. But they
refused to fight, and made him so angry by their talk of yielding
that he tore the English letter all to pieces.
In spite of his rage, however, New Amsterdam surrendered, and
Stuyvesant had to march out of the town and return to Holland. The
Dutch flag was hauled down and replaced by the English; but, as
the city had been seized in time of peace, Holland soon showed her
displeasure by declaring war against England. Vessels were sent out
to retake New Amsterdam, which surrendered the second time as easily
as the first, and the Dutch again ruled over their city.
But when the war was all over, the whole province of the New
Netherlands was given up to the English. New Amsterdam's name was
changed to New York (1664), and Holland never again claimed any part
of our country. But the Dutch settlers continued to occupy their
farms, and there are many people now in America who proudly claim
descent from the early settlers of the New Netherlands. Interesting
stories are told about the Dutch settlers, the most famous of all
being Washington Irving's tales of Sleepy Hollow and of Rip Van
Winkle.
The Duke of York, owner of all the land in the New World which had
once belonged to Holland, shortly gave part of it to two of his
friends, who called their tracts East and West New Jersey. The owner
of West New Jersey did not keep his share long, but sold it to some
Quakers, who settled near Bur´ling-ton. East New Jersey was likewise
sold to William Penn and others; but both provinces were given up to
the crown in 1702. New Jersey--as they were now called--was under
the same rule as New York--until 1738, when it became a separate
colony.
XXXIX. PENN AND THE INDIANS.
In the meantime, the Friends in England had greatly increased in
number. There were now many rich and clever people among them
besides William Penn, who was a scholar and a preacher. He had
become a Quaker in spite of all his father's efforts to make him a
courtier, for the elder Penn was an admiral, and a great friend of
Charles II., to whom he lent large sums of money. As the king could
not repay this money, William Penn suggested, after his father's
death, that Charles should give him, instead of all other payment, a
large tract of land in the New World.
Charles was only too happy to clear his debt in such an easy way.
He therefore made Penn a grant of woodland, which he insisted upon
calling Penn-syl-va´ni-a ("Penn's Woodland"). But we are told that
Penn tried to bribe the clerk to write the name "Sylvania" only, as
he thought it absurd that the land should bear his name. In exchange
for this tract, all the king asked was two beaver skins a year, and
one fifth of all the gold and silver found there. The land secured,
Penn prepared to carry out a long-cherished plan, which was to found
colonies of Friends in the New World. For that purpose, he had
already bought a share in the West New Jersey colony, and, in 1682,
he crossed over to America himself.
As soon as Penn set foot in West New Jersey, we are told that the
colonists brought him a sod in which was planted a green twig, to
show that he owned the land and all that grew upon it. Next they
presented him with a dish full of water, because he was master of
the seas and rivers, and with the keys of the fort, to indicate
that he was in command of the army and had all the power. Penn
graciously accepted these offerings, and, as you shall see, made a
noble use of his authority over his province. Although Pennsylvania
had been given him by the king, he rightly considered the Indians
the real owners of the soil, and decided to pay them for it.
[Illustration:
_Benjamin West, Artist._
Penn's Treaty.]
He therefore sent for the chiefs, whom he met under a huge elm. Penn
came among the Indians unarmed, and, after smoking a peace pipe with
them, bargained for the purchase of a large tract of land. Under
this elm he also made a treaty which lasted for more than sixty
years,--"the only one never sworn to and never broken."