thing but his face had been known, there was nothing to prevent Church from shooting him, as we have seen. And universally influential as he was, the master-spirit every where guiding, encouraging, soothing, and rewarding, it is a fact worthy of mention, that from the time of his first flight from Pocasset until a few weeks before his death, no Englishman could say that he had either seen his countenance or heard his voice. Hence Church describes him as being always foremost in the flight. The price put upon his head, the fearful power which pursued him, the circumstance that some of his own acquaintance were against him, and especially the vital importance of life to his cause, all made it indispensable for him to adopt every stratagem of the wary and cunning warfare of his race.

We have said something of Philip's ideas of his own sovereign dignity. Hence the fate of Sassamon, and of the savage who proposed peace. There is a well settled tradition, that in 1665 he went over to the island of Nantucket, with the view of killing an Indian called John Gibbs. He landed on the west end, intending to travel along the shore, undiscovered, under the bank, to that part of the island where Gibbs resided. By some lucky accident, the latter received a hint of his approach, made his escape to the English settlement, and induced one Mr. Macy to conceal him. His crime consisted in speaking the name of some deceased relative of Philip (his brother, perhaps), contrary to Indian etiquette in such cases provided. The English had a parley with the sachem, and all the money they were able to collect was barely sufficient to satisfy him for the life of the culprit. It was not a mere personal insult, but a violation of the reverence due from a subject to a king.

It appears that when he visited Boston, before the war, he succeeded in persuading the government,—as, no doubt, was the truth of the case, that notwithstanding the old league of his father, renewed by himself, or rather by force of it, he was still independent of Ply. mouth. "These successive engagements were agreements of amity, and not of subjection any further, as he apprehended." He then desired to see a copy of the treaty, and requested that one might be procured for him. He knew, he added, that the praying Indians had submitted to the English; but the Pokanokets had done no such thing, and they were not subject. The letter of the Massachusetts to the Plymouth Government, written just after this interview with the sachem, is well worthy of notice. "We do not understand," say the former, "how far he hath subjected himself to you; but the treatment you have given him does not render him such a subject, as that, if there be not present answering to summons, there should presently be a 'proceeding to hostilities."

Philip had himself the same notion of a Plymouth summons; and yet either policy or good feeling induced him to visit the Plymouth Governor, in March 1675, for the purpose of quieting the suspicions of the Colony: nothing was discovered against him, and he returned home. He maintained privately the same frank but proud independence. He was opposed to Christianity as much as his father was,

and would make no concessions upon that point. Possibly the remembrance of Sassamon might have rankled in his bosom, when, upon the venerable Eliot once undertaking to convert him, he took one of his buttons between his fingers, and told him he cared no more for the gospel than for that button. That he was generally more civil, however, may be inferred from Gookin's statement: "I have heard him speak very good words, arguing that his conscience is convicted," &c. The sachem evidently made himself agreeable in this case.

In regard to his personal appearance, always a matter of curiosity in the case of great men, sketches purporting to be portraits of him are extant, but none of them are believed to have more verisimilitude than the grotesque caricature prefixed to the old narrative of Captain Church (the model of the series); and we must therefore content ourselves to remain ignorant in this matter. As to his costume, Josselyn, who saw him at Boston, says that he had a coat on, and buskins set thick with beads, "in pleasant wild works, and a broad belt of the same;" his accoutrements being valued at £20. A family in Swanzey, (Mass.,) is understood to be still in possession of some of the royalties which were given up by Anawon, at the time of his capture by Church. There were two horns of glazed powder, a redcloth blanket, and three richly and beautifully wrought wampum belts. One was nine inches wide, and so long as to extend from the shoulder to the ancles. To the second, which was worn on the head, were attached two ornamented smail flags. The third and smallest had a star figured in beads upon one end, which came over the bosom.

Philip was far from being a mere barbarian in his manners and feelings. There is not an instance to be met with, of his having maltreated a captive in any way, even while the English were selling his own people as slaves abroad, or torturing and hanging them at home. The famous Mrs. Rowlandson speaks of meeting with him during her doleful captivity. He invited her to call at his lodge; and when she did so, bade her sit down, and asked her if she would smoke. On meeting her again, he requested her to make some garment for his child, and for this he paid her a shilling. He afterwards took the trouble of visiting her for the purpose of assuring her, that " in a fortnight she should be her own mistress." Her last interview, it must be allowed, shows his shrewdness to rather more advantage than his

* Anawon is said to have been Philip's chief counsellor and captain during the war; and also to have fought under Massasoit. But the latter was not a very belligerant character; nor do we find mention of Anawon's services under Philip, previous to the time of his fall at the swamp-skirmish, when the counsellor made his escape. Hubbard states that he boasted of having killed ten whites in one day; but nearly all that is known of him we derive from the picturesque account of his capture by Church, who headed an expedition for the express purpose. Anawon met his misfortune, and even entertained his conqueror, most manfully on that occasion, and Church reciprocated his courtesies; but all in vain-the_old warrior, with many others of his tribe, was soon after beheaded at Plymouth. To the traveller from Taunton to Providence, through the southeast corner of Rehoboth, Anawon's rock is pointed out to this day-an enormous pile, from twenty-five to thirty feet high, on a sort of island in a swamp of some thousand acres.

fair dealing. It was Indian stratagem in war-time, however; and the half-clad sachem was at this very time living upon ground-nuts, acorns and lily-roots. "Philip, smelling the business, [her ransom,] called me to him, and asked me what I would give him to tell me some good news, and to speak a good word for me, that I might go home tomorrow. I told him I could not tell,—but anything I had,—and asked him what he would have. He said two coats, and twenty shillings in money, half a bushel of seed-corn, and some tobacco. I thanked him for his love, but I knew that good news as well as that crafty fox." It is probable he was amusing himself with this good woman, much as he did with the worthy Mr. Gookin; but at all events, there are no traces of malevolent feeling in these simple anecdotes.

What is more striking, we find that when one James Brown, of Swanzey, brought him a letter from Plymouth, just before hostilities commenced, and the young warriors were upon the point of killing him, Philip interfered and prevented it, saying, that his father had charged him to show kindness to Mr. Brown." Accordingly, it is recorded in Hubbard, that a little before his death, the old sachem had visited Mr. Brown, who lived not far from Montaup, and earnestly desired that the love and amity he had received might be continued to the children. It was probably this circumstance, which induced Brown himself to engage in such a hazardous enterprise, after an interval, probably, of some twenty years.

Nor should we pass over the kindness of Philip to the Leonard family, who resided near Fowling Pond, in what is now Raynham. Philip, who wintered at Montaup,-for the convenience of fishing, perhaps, was accustomed to spend the summer at a hunting-house, by this pond. There he became acquainted with the Leonards, traded with them, and had his arms repaired by them frequently. On the breaking out of the war, he gave strict orders that these men should never be hurt, as they never were; and, indeed, the whole town of Taunton, as it then was, remained almost entirely unmolested throughout the war, and amid all the ravages and massacres which daily took place upon its very borders. How much of provocation and humiliation he was himself enduring meanwhile, we have already seen. All his relations were killed or captured, and a price set upon his own life.

At

It is a matter of melancholy interest to know that the sachem, wretched and hopeless as he had become in his last days, was still surrounded by a band of his faithful and affectionate followers. the very moment of his fatal surprise by the English, he is said to have been telling them of his gloomy dreams,† and advising them to

* A forge is still in operation upon the site of the one here mentioned. The violent prejudice existing against Philip, unmitigated even by his sufferings and death, appears singularly in a parenthetical surmise of Hubbard, "whether the devil appeared to him that night in a dream, foreboding his tragical end, it matters not." So Mather says he was hung up like Ahag, after being shot through his "venomous and murderous heart." Church, generally an honorable and humane man, speaks of his fallen foe in terms which we regard his reputation too much to repeat.

desert him and provide for their own safety. A few minutes after this, he was shot in attempting to escape from the swamp. An Englishman,-one Cook,-aimed at him, but his gun missed fire; the Indian who was stationed to watch at the same place discharged his musket, and shot him through the heart. The news of this success was of course received with great satisfaction; Church says that "the whole army gave three loud huzzas." It is to be regretted that the honest captain suffered his prejudices to carry him so far that he denied the rites of burial to his great enemy. He had him quartered, on the contrary, and his head carried to Plymouth, where, as Mather is careful to tell us, it arrived on the very day when the church there were keeping a solemn thanksgiving. The conqueror's temper was soured by the illiberality of the government toward himself. For this march he received but four and sixpence a man, together with thirty shillings a head for the killed. He observes that Philip's head went at the same price, and he thought it a "scanty reward and poor encouragement." The sachem's head was carried about the colony in triumph;* and the Indian who killed him was rewarded with one of his hands. To finish the wretched detail, several of his principal royalties were soon after given up by one of his chief captains; and the lock of the gun which was fatal to him, with a samp-dish found in his wigwam, are still to be seen among the antiquitics of the Historical Society of Massachusetts. Montaup, which became the subject of a dispute between the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies, was finally awarded to the latter by a special decision of King Charles..

Last and worst of all, his only son, a boy of nine years of age, whom we have already noticed as among the English captives, was sold as a slave and shipped to Bermuda. It should be stated, however, that this unfortunate measure was not taken without some scruples. The Plymouth court was so much perplexed upon the occasion, as to conclude upon applying to the clergymen of the colony for advice. Mr. Cotton was of opinion that "the children of notorious traitors, rebels, and murderers, especially such as have been principal leaders and actors in such horrid villanics, might be involved in the guilt of their parents, and might, salva republica, be adjudged to death." Dr. Increase Mather compared the child to Hadad, whose father was killed by Joab; and he intimates, that if Hadad himself had not escaped, David would have taken measures to prevent his molesting the next generation. It is gratifying to know that the course he recommended was postponed, even to the ignominious and mortifying one we have mentioned.

Such was the impression which had been universally forced upon the colonists by the terrible spirit of Philip. And never was a civilised or uncivilised enemy more generally or more justly feared. How much greater his successes might have been, had circumstances

It was kept many years at Plymouth. Dr. Mather says in 1700"It is not long since the hand which now writes, upon a certain occasion took off the jaw from the exposed skull of that blasphemous leviathan.”

favored instead of opposing him, it is fortunately impossible for us to estimate. It is confessed, however, that had even the Narragansetts joined him during the first summer of the war,-as nothing but the abrupt commencement of it prevented them from doing,-the whole country, from the Piscataqua to the Sound, must have been overswept and desolated. But as it was, Philip did and endured enough to immortalise him as a warrior, a statesman, and we may add, as a high-minded and noble patriot. Whatever might be the prejudice against him in the days of terror produced by his prowess, there are both the magnanimity and the calmness in these times to do him the justice he deserves. He fought and fell, miserably indeed, but gloriously, the avenger of his own household, the worshipper of his own gods, the guardian of his own honor, a martyr for the soil which was his birth-place, and for the proud liberty which was his birthright.

CHAPTER III.

THE NARRAGANSETT TRIBE-TERRITORY AND POWER-CHIEF SACHEMS AT THE DATE OF THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS IN NEW ENGLAND.

Next to the Pokanoket confederacy, none has a stronger claim on the early notice of the historian than the Narragansett; a nation composed of various small tribes, inhabiting a large part of the territory which afterwards formed the colony of Rhode-Island. Their dominion extended also over the islands in the bay of their own name; and the sagamores of a part of Long-Island, Block-Island, Cawesit, and Niantick were either their tributaries or subject to them in some other way. They had once been able to raise more than four thousand warriors; and so late as Philip's time, we have seen they could muster two thousand, one half of whom were provided with English arms, and were skilful in the use of them. From time immemorial they had waged war with both the Pokanokets on the north and the Pequots on the west.

It might be expected that the rulers of such a confederacy, thus situated, should be men of talent and energy; and this expectation will not be disappointed. Throughout the history of the New England Indians, as we find no people more resolute in declaring what they believed to be their rights, or more formidable in defending them, so we find no sachems more ready and able than theirs on all occasions to sustain the high spirit of their subjects.

There is an unnecessary confusion in the information conveyed by some of our best annalists, respecting the particular personage who governed the Narragansetts at the date of the first intercourse between them and the English. Governor Hutchinson, for example, speaks in one case of Canonicus as being their chief sachem. In another, alluding to the death of Miantonomo, while the former was yet living,