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Philip of Pokanoket
AN INDIAN MEMOIR.
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 bad 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 be 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 magnimity.
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, be 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 Stoning ham 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 loftly 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.
Washington Irving's short story: Philip of Pokanoket
_
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