Chapter I

What We Know about the American Indian

Few young people who live east of the Mississippi River have ever seen an Indian. Nearly all are familiar with pictures of him, or have read stories about him. Most of these stories are highly colored, and represent him as more or less than human, and not at all as he really is. Even those who have made a study of the Indian differ widely in their estimate of him.

Perhaps you will ask how it happens that the Indians are now aliens and paupers in a land of which they were once the undisputed possessors? It is easy to see how it all came about, but it is a story by no means creditable to the white man. In the first place, the European sovereigns claimed their lands by right of discovery. Precisely as though you should claim another boy's sled because it was the first time you had seen it, and then should wrest it from him because you were the stronger. This is just what the white man did to the Indian: in plain language, robbed him.

It is true that in some cases lands were bought of the natives, but the Indian had no idea of exclusive ownership in land, and supposed he was giving the white man only an equal privilege in it with himself. The price paid was often insignificant enough. For the territory now covered by the great city of New York the Indians received twenty-four pounds—about one hundred and twenty dollars—a sum which would now buy little more than a square foot of it.

One way to cheat the Indian out of his land was this: a tract of territory granted by the Delawares to William Penn fifty years before was to extend in a given direction as far as a man could walk in a day and a half, and from this point eastwardly to the Delaware River. The Indians justly complained that, instead of walking, the men appointed by the proprietors ran. Not only did they run, but they had previously cut a path through the forest and removed whatever could hinder their swift passage. This was not all. Instead of running the northern line direct to the Delaware, the plain meaning of the deed, the proprietors inclined it so far to the north as to form an acute angle with the river.

By these fraudulent methods they gained possession of many hundred thousand acres of valuable land which the Indians had no intention of surrendering, and from which they were compelled immediately to remove. This and other injuries and aggressions ended in a terrible border war, in which the French joined the Delawares against the English.

When the Indian turned upon his white oppressor, the effort was made to crush and exterminate him. By alternate wars and treaties he was pushed back from his ancient seats, until at length, cooped up in reservations under the eye of the military, he is fed and clothed by the government, having no rights as a citizen.

To this state of things there are some notable exceptions. In the Indian Territory the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles, known as the Five Civilized Tribes, live under a government of their own; in New York the remaining Iroquois, having become civilized, are citizens; in New Mexico the Pueblo Indians are semi-civilized; and in Michigan and North Carolina there are a few Indians not on reservations. All these are self-supporting.

Is it to be wondered at that the Indian has made no greater progress in civilization? If white men had been treated as he has been, and placed beyond the necessity of labor, they would quickly become worthless vagabonds. It will not do to assume the inherent inferiority of the red men. We must remember that, like them, our British ancestors were savages, who painted their bodies, clothed themselves in the skins of wild beasts, and lived in rude huts in a country covered with forests and swamps.

The folly and wickedness of most of our Indian wars is only too apparent when we reflect that the injury the Indian could inflict upon the innocent settlers on our border was many times greater than we could possibly inflict upon him, and that simple justice and honesty in our dealings with him would have prevented them altogether.

It was a blunder—the first of a long series in our dealings with them—to call the natives "Indians." On discovering America, Columbus supposed he had reached India, the object of his voyage. Indeed, the great navigator died in ignorance of the fact that he had discovered a new continent. To this day the lands he first saw are known as the West Indies.

It is supposed that this country was inhabited by an earlier race of men called Mound Builders from the earthworks of various forms and sizes found in the valley of the Mississippi and elsewhere.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.

In Wisconsin many of these mounds are in the form of gigantic animals. The builders must have been familiar with the mastodon, or elephant, judging from the "Big Elephant" mound found a few miles below the mouth of the Wisconsin River. It is 135 feet long, and well proportioned. One in Adams County, Ohio, represents a serpent 1000 feet long, its body gracefully curved, and its open jaws about to swallow a figure shaped like an egg.

The great mound of Cabokia, opposite St. Louis, is 90 feet in height and 700 feet in length. Unity of design and mathematical precision of construction appear in all these works, most of which are of a defensive character, and in which are represented the square, the circle, the octagon, and the rhomb. They have gate-ways, parallel lines, and outlooks; and it is evident that they are the results of the labors of a vast number of men directed by a single governing mind having a definite object in view. At Newark, Ohio, a fortification exists which covers an area of several miles, and has over two miles of embankment from two to twenty feet high.

NEWARK EARTHWORK.

The present native race has neither knowledge nor tradition respecting these singular remains. Their builders have left us no other record than the mounds themselves, and the tools and ornaments, some of them of copper, and the tastefully moulded pottery found in them.

A probable conjecture about tins mysterious people is that they were village Indians of New Mexico, and that some of these earthworks were the foundations of their long houses, in which great numbers of them lived, and that they were finally driven off by fierce savage hordes from the West and North. Their houses, being of wood, long since disappeared.

Let me now tell you what the Indian is like. Picture to yourselves a man with straight black hair, a scanty beard, small black eyes, high cheek-bones, large thick lips, a narrow forehead, and a reddish-brown or cinnamon complexion, and you have a tolerably correct idea of how the North American Indian appears. Though divided into seven or eight stocks or families, each speaking a different language, the Indians throughout the United States have a common physical likeness and similar manners and institutions.

A NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN.

The principal of these great divisions or families are:

Algonkins;  found throughout the eastern portion of the country, from Nova Scotia to North Carolina, and west to the Mississippi. They covered sixty degrees of longitude and twenty degrees of latitude, and numbered 90,000—more than one-third of the entire Indian population.

Iroquois, or Five Nations;  in western and central New York, and, farther north, the Hurons, or Wyandots.

Dakotas, or Sioux;  west of the Algonkins, and extending from the Saskatchewan River to southern Arkansas, and from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains.

Muskokis, or Appalachians;  all the south-eastern part of the United States, extending west to the Mississippi. They embraced the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles, Uchees, and several other small tribes.

Shoshonis, or Snakes;  this division forms six groups, extending over parts of Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, Arizona, Texas, California, and New Mexico.

Besides these are the Athabascas, Yumas, and New Mexican Pueblos. The first are, perhaps, the most numerous, inhabiting Alaska, Canada, and a part of Oregon. The Yumas inhabit Arizona and California. The Pueblos (village Indians) speak six different languages. The wide diversity of tongues in these twenty-six towns in New Mexico, of similar habits and social life, is a most singular circumstance.

Ali these great families were divided into numerous tribes and clans, and these again into smaller tribes, bands, and villages. They are now distributed among one hundred reservations, and more than half of them wear citizen's dress. Some of these reservations are very extensive; that of the Sioux, in Dakota, is larger than the State of New York. The Indian Territory, with a population of 76,585, of whom more than one-fourth are yet uncivilized, contains some thirty-five tribes or parts of tribes.

Having shown you how the Indian appears, I will now tell you what he is.

The characteristic traits of the Indian are such as are common to all barbarous races. Ambitious, vindictive, cruel, envious, and suspicious, he is also sagacious, warlike, and courageous, and, at the same time, excessively cautious. Revenge is with him a sacred duty. Treacherous and deceitful to his foes, he prefers to slay his enemy by a secret rather than an open blow.

On the other hand, he loves liberty passionately; will brave famine, torture, and even death in the pursuit of glory; is strongly affectionate to his family; hospitable to the extent of sharing his last morsel with a stranger, though famine stares him in the face; faithful in friendship, he will lay down his life for his comrade, and never forgets a kindness. He is grave, dignified, and patient, and possesses a stoicism that enables him to control his emotions under the most trying circumstances. His out-door life and habitual self-control keep him from all effeminate vices. He uses tobacco for smoking only, and, before the white man came, was happily ignorant even of the existence of intoxicating drinks.

The superiority of Indian hospitality to that of the white man was, no doubt, truly stated by Canassatego, a chief of the Six Nations, in a conversation with an English friend:

"If," said he, "a white man enters one of our cabins, we all treat him as I do you; we dry him if he is wet, we warm him if he is cold, and give him meat and drink that he may allay his thirst and hunger, and we spread soft furs for him to rest and sleep on. We demand nothing in return. But if I go into a white man's house in Albany and ask for victuals and drink, they say, 'Where is your money?' and, if I have none, they say, 'Get out, you Indian dog?'"

Out of many instances of Indian humanity I select that of Petalashara, a distinguished Pawnee brave. The son of a chief, he had, at the age of twenty-one, earned from his tribe the title accorded to the celebrated French soldier, Marshal Ney, "the bravest of the brave."

A female captive was about to suffer torture at the stake in accordance with Indian custom. A large crowd had, as usual, gathered to witness the horrible scene.

The brave, unobserved, had stationed two fleet horses near at hand, and silently waited the moment for action. The flames were about to envelop the victim, when, to the astonishment of all, Petalashara was seen severing the cords that bound her, and, with the swiftness of thought, bearing her off in his arms; and then, placing her upon one horse, and himself mounting the other, he bore her safely away to her friends and country. Such an act would have endangered the life of any ordinary warrior; but such was his sway over the tribe that no one presumed to censure the daring act.

Though not the equal of the white man in bodily strength, the Indian was his superior in endurance and fleetness of foot. Some of their best runners could make seventy or eighty miles in a day through the unbroken wilderness. A close observer of natural phenomena, in the densest forest the Indian could travel for miles in a straight line, and could note signs and sounds the white man could not perceive. His temperament is poetic and imaginative, and his simple eloquence possesses great dignity and force.

A little anecdote will give an idea of his native wit and shrewdness. A half-naked Indian was looking on at some workmen in the employ of Governor Dudley, of Massachusetts.

"Why don't you work and get yourself some clothes?" asked the governor.

"Why don't you work?" retorted the son of the forest.

"I work head-work," said Dudley, pointing to his head.

The Indian said he was willing to work, and agreed to kill a calf for the governor. Having done so, he came for his pay.

"But," said the governor, "you have not dressed the calf."

"No, no," said the Indian; "I was to have a shilling for killing him. Am he no dead, governor?" Finding himself out-witted, the governor gave him another shilling for dressing it. It was not long before the Indian came back demanding a good shilling in place of a bad one which he claimed that the governor had paid him. The governor gave him another. Returning a second time with still another brass piece to be exchanged, the governor, convinced of his knavery, offered him half a crown if he would deliver a letter for him. The letter was directed to the keeper of the prison, and ordered him to give the bearer a certain number of lashes.

The Indian suspected that all was not right, and, meeting a servant of the governor, induced him to take the letter to its address. The result of the Indian's stratagem was that a severe whipping was administered to the unfortunate servant. The governor was greatly chagrined at being a second time out-witted by the Indian. On falling in with him some time after, he accosted him with some severity, asking him how he had dared to cheat and deceive him so many times.

"Head-work, governor; head-work," was the reply. Pleased at the fellow's wit and audacity, the governor freely forgave him.

MOCCASINS.

Perhaps some of my younger readers may wonder how people could exist in a wilderness where there were no houses to live in, no markets where they could buy food, and no stores in which clothing and other necessary articles could be procured. If they look into the matter, they will find that the Creator had provided whatever was required by their simple mode of life, and that they had no artificial wants. For these they were indebted to the white man.

Formerly the Indians were clad in the skins of animals; a robe and breech cloth for the man, and a short petticoat for the women. On great occasions, as councils or war-dances, they daubed themselves with paint, the color being varied for joy or grief, peace or war. They also decorated themselves with beads, feathers, porcupine quills, and parts of birds and animals. The women wore their hair long, the men shaved theirs off, except the scalp-lock, which was left as a point of honor.

For food the Indian relied upon the chase, the fisheries, and agriculture. Maize, or Indian corn, was his principal food. It grew luxuriantly without cultivation, was gathered by hand and roasted before the fire; a small supply of it parched and pounded sufficed for a long journey. He also raised beans and pumpkins, and a little tobacco. If all other supplies failed, he had nuts, roots, berries, and acorns, which grew wild. His cooking was simple and without seasoning, usually by roasting over a fire. Baking was done in holes in the ground, and water was boiled by throwing heated stones into it.

Most of the natives lived in cabins or wigwams. These were made by fixing long poles in the ground, bending them towards each other at the top, and covering them outside with bark or skins, and inside with mats. A bear-skin served for the door; an opening in the roof was the chimney. There were no windows. It could be quickly set up and easily removed. Its size was proportioned to the number it was to hold. In these dirty, smoky habitations men, women, and children huddled together. Some of the tribes built permanent villages, with streets and rows of houses; these were generally surrounded with palisades of logs and brushwood. Nearly all the tribes changed their abode at different seasons in pursuit of the various kinds of game.

ZUNI DWELLINGS.

A remarkable exception to the usual form of the Indian dwelling is found among the Pueblo, or village, Indians of New Mexico.

In the face of a line of cliffs extending over sixty miles on the western side of the Rio Grande, between Cochiti and Santa Clara, are seen numerous excavations which had once been human habitations, but which are now in ruins. At a distance they look like a long line of dark spots. They were approached by foot-paths and stairways cut in the rock, which was soft and easily worked, and were in tiers of two, three, four, and occasionally five, rows, one above the other and not far apart. The only entrance was by an arch-shaped door-way, widening until there was room enough within for a single family. Wooden structures in front served as out-door habitations for the women and children.

So numerous are these caves that one hundred thousand persons might have lived at once where only a few hundred of their descendants now dwell. It is wonderful how this region, which is exceedingly desolate, volcanic, and sterile, and in which there are few watercourses, could have sustained such a dense population.

BOWL OF INDIAN PIPE.

The fort-like community houses of the Zuni Indians outwardly present one unbroken wall of hard mud. Their inner faces consist of a series of terraces or houses, piled one above the other, from two to five stories in height. Each tier above is less than the one beneath by the width of one story, and is entered over the roof of the tier below. Formerly the only house-doors were hatchways in the roof; and to enter their habitation the family—babies, dogs, and all—went up an outside ladder to the roof, and down an inside ladder to the floor. Narrow door-ways cut in the rock are now made use of.

The Indian's implements of husbandry were of the rudest kind, yet he had learned many useful arts. He knew the art of striking fire; of making the bow with the string of sinew, and the arrow-head both of flint and bone; of making vessels of pottery; of curing and tanning skills: of making moccasins, snow-shoes, and wearing apparel, together with various implements and utensils of stone, wood, and bone; of rope and net-making from fibres of bark; of finger-weaving with warp and woof the same materials into sashes, burden-straps, and other useful fabrics; of weaving rush-mats; of making pipes of clay or stone, often artistically carved; of basket-making with osier, cane, and splints; of canoe-making—the skin, birch-bark, and that hollowed from the trunk of a tree; of constructing timber-framed lodges and skin tents; of shaping stone mauls, hammers, axes, and chisels; of making fish spears, nets, and bone hooks; implements for athletic games; musical instruments, such as the flute and the drum; weapons and ornaments of shell, bone, and stone.

SNOW-SHOE.

His most ingenious inventions were the snow-shoe, the birch canoe, the method of dressing the skins of animals with the brains, and the Dakota tent, or tepee, the model of the Sibley army tent. With the snow-shoe he could travel forty miles a day over the surface of the snow, and easily overtake the deer and the moose, whose hoofs penetrated the crust and prevented their escape. The bark canoe, sometimes thirty feet long and carrying twelve persons, was very light and easily propelled. The bark of the tree was stripped off whole and stretched over a light, white cedar frame. The edges were sewed with thongs, and then covered with gum. They varied in pattern, drew little water, and were often graceful in shape. The Iroquois used elm-bark, the Algonkins birch. The Pacific tribes made baskets, some of which were so skilfully woven as to hold water.

In hunting, the bow and arrow, and sometimes the dart or spear, were used. The smaller animals were trapped. When game was plenty it was sometimes driven into an enclosure and killed. The southern tribes used the lasso and stone balls attached to hide ropes. Fish were taken in nets, and with bone hooks, or speared.

Though the Indian believed his own way of life superior to all others, and in accordance with the design of the Great Spirit, and detested civilization, he has been unable to resist its progress. The gun has taken the place of the bow and arrow, and his rude arts and implements have gradually been replaced by those of greater utility and simplicity. The printing-press is already employed by the Cherokees, who publish a newspaper in their own language at Tahlequah; another is issued at Caddo, in the Creek nation, in the Creek or Choctaw tongue. The plough is in very general use among the tribes.

CANOE AND HOUSE OF SOUTHERN INDIANS.

Having no alphabet, the aborigines conveyed their ideas to the eye by means of rude pictures of visible objects engraved upon smooth stones or the bark of trees, and sometimes drawn on the skins of animals. Their records of treaties were kept by strings or belts of wampum made of shells and beads, which was also in use as money. These beads were commonly used for ornament. Ten thousand of then have been known to be wrought into a single war-belt four inches wide.

The accompanying sketch was copied from a tree on the banks of the Muskingum River, Ohio. The characters were drawn with charcoal and bear's oil. It describes the part borne in Pontiac's war by the Delawares of the Muskingum, under the noted chief, Wingemund.

PICTURE-WRITING.

No. 1 represents the oldest and main branch of the Delaware tribe by its ancient symbol, the tortoise. No. 2 is the totem, or armorial badge, of Wingemund, denoting him to be the actor. No. 3 is the sun; the ten horizontal strokes beneath it denote the number of war-parties in which this chief had participated. No. 4 represents men's scalps. No. 5, women's scalps. No. 6, male prisoners. No. 7, female prisoners. No. 8, a small fort situated on the banks of Lake Erie, which was taken by the Indians in 1762, by surprise. No. 9 represents the fort at Detroit, under the command of Major Gladwyn, which, in 1763, resisted a siege of three months. No. 10 is Fort Pitt, denoted by its striking position on the extreme point of land at the confluence of the Alleghany and the Monongahela rivers. No. 11 signifies the incipient town near it. The eleven crosses or figures arranged below the tortoise denote the number of persons who were either killed or taken prisoners by this chief; the prisoners are distinguished from the slain by the figure of a ball or circle above the cross-figure denoting a head. Those devices without the circle are symbols of the slain; but four out of the eleven appear to have been women, and of these two were retained as prisoners. It appears that but two of the six men were led into captivity. The twenty-three nearly vertical strokes at the foot of the inscription indicate the strength of the chieftain's party. The inclination denotes the course of their march to the scene of conflict. This course, in the actual position of the tribe, and of the side of the tree chosen to depict it, was northward. As an evidence of the order and exactitude of these rude memorials in recording facts, it is to be observed that the number of persons captured or killed in each expedition of the chief is set on the left of the picture, exactly opposite the symbolical mark of the expedition.

GRAVE-POST.

Similar devices upon Indian grave-posts commemorate the family and the deeds of the deceased. The one here represented is that of Wabojeeg, a celebrated Chippewa war-chief. He was of the family of the Addik, or American Reindeer. This fact is represented by the figure of a deer. The reversed position denotes death. The seven transverse marks on the left denote that he had led seven war-parties. The three perpendicular lines below the totem represent three wounds received in battle. The figure of a moose's head denotes a desperate conflict with an enraged animal of that kind. The symbols of the arrow and pipe indicate his influence in war and peace. The Indians mourned their dead sincerely and preserved their remains with affectionate veneration.

The famous Dighton Rock inscription, once ascribed to the Northmen, is now known to be merely the record of a battle between two Indian tribes. The amazement of the vanquished at the sudden assault of the victors is shown by their being deprived of both hands and arms, or the power of resistance. Nothing in the inscription denotes a foreigner, nor is there any figure or sign for any weapon or implement brought by white, men from beyond the sea. This interesting object is situated on the border of the Taunton River.

THE DIGHTON ROCK INSCRIPTION.

Each tribe had its sachem or civil chief, and regarded itself as a sovereign and independent nation. The form of government was patriarchal. The sachem had no power except through the influence of his wisdom and ability Any one could be a war-chief whose tried bravery and prudence on time war-path enabled him to raise volunteers. The sachem was sometimes a woman. The succession of chiefs was through the female line, a brother or nephew succeeding instead of a son.

As there were no written laws, their government rested on opinion and custom, and these were all-powerful. Each man was his own protector and avenger. Murder was retaliated by the next of kin, and family and tribal strifes thus caused often continued from generation to generation. Each village had its independent government, one long building in each being devoted to festivals, dances, and public councils. The affairs of the nation were transacted only in a general council.

In these assemblies, in which the Indian took great delight, strict order was kept. Seated in a semicircle on the ground, painted and tattooed, the chiefs adorned with feathers, with the beak of the red-bird or the claws of the bear, they smoked in silence, and listened attentively to the speaker. There was no war of words, no discord. They used tobacco in all their important assemblies, and the pipe was the symbol of peace.

INDIAN COUNCIL.

A common emblem, called the totem, consisting of the figure of some beast, bird, or reptile, formed the distinguishing mark of the tribes or smaller clans, serving the same purpose with them as the family name does with us. The tortoise, the bear, the beaver, the turtle, and the wolf were the totems of the "first families." The figure representing the totem of his tribe was tattooed upon the Indian's breast. The spirit of the animal was supposed especially to favor the clan thus represented.

Marriage could not be contracted between kindred of near degree, or families having the same totem. Husband and wife in the same family must be of different clans If the presents of the lover to the father of his intended were accepted, she became his wife, though neither may have spoken to the other, and for a while the husband had a home in her father's lodge. The presents have been known to be returned and the match broken off because there was no powder-horn sent.

A peculiar method of match-making prevails among time Moquis of New Mexico—a simple, happy, and most hospitable people. There the fair one selects the youth who pleases her, and her father proposes the match to the sire of time fortunate swain. Such is the gallantry of the sterner sex in this region that the proposition is never refused. The preliminaries being arranged, the young man on his part furnishes two pairs of moccasins, two fine blankets, two mattresses, and two of the sashes used at the feast, while the maiden for her share provides an abundance of eatables, and the marriage is celebrated by feasting and dancing.

INDIAN CRADLE.

The love of the Indian mother for her off-spring is strong and constant, yet her treatment of her child during infancy seems to us cruel and unfeeling. To the cradle made of thin pieces of light wood, and ornamented with porcupine's quills, beads, and rattles, the infant, carefully wrapped in furs, is securely tied. This bandaged, it is carried by the mother, its back to hers, or, while she works in the field, is suspended from the limb of a tree. In this way the future warrior takes his first lesson in endurance. The patience and quiet of the Indian child in this close confinement are quite wonderful. Children are left pretty much to themselves; their assistance in household labor is voluntary, and they are seldom scolded or beaten.

The strength of the paternal tie among the Indians is seen in the act of Bianswah, a Chippewa chief, as related by Schoolcraft. In his absence from home his son was captured by a hostile band. On reaching his wigwam the old man heard the terrible news, and, knowing what the fate of his son would be, he followed on the trail of the enemy alone, and reached their village while they were preparing to roast their captive alive. Stepping boldly into the arena, he offered to take his son's place.

"My son," said he, "has seen but a few winters; his feet have never trod the war-path; but the hairs of my head are white; I have hung many scalps over the graves of my relatives which I have taken from the heads of your warriors; kindle the fire about me, and send my son home to my lodge." The offer was accepted, and the old chief suffered torture to save his son.

Filial devotion is finely illustrated in the story of Nadowaqua, the daughter of a chief who lived in the vicinity of Michilimackinac. This chief, known as Le Grand Sable, was able, politic, and brave. He had been a warns friend of the French, and was one of the prominent actors in the memorable capture of old Fort Michilimackinac in 1763, related farther on.

Many years afterwards, when he had become quite aged, he accompanied his relatives, in the month of March, on their annual journey to the forests which yield the sugar-maple. After this season, which is one of enjoyment with the Indians, was over, and they had packed their effects to return, it was found that the old chief was unable to sustain the journey.

His daughter Nadowaqua determined to carry him on her shoulders to his wigwam. For this purpose she took her long stout deer-skin apekun, or head-strap, and, fastening it around his body, bent herself strongly forward under the load, then rose under the pious burden, and took the path to Lake Michigan. It is usual to put down the burdens at fixed points or resting-places on the way. In this manner she brought her father safely to the shore of the lake, a distance of ten miles!

The feat of Æneas in carrying Anchises on his shoulders through the flames of Troy is rivaled here by that of a simple Algonkin woman.

THE INDIANS AT HOME.

Most of the hard work is done by the women, in order that the bodies of the men may be kept supple and active for the purposes of war and the chase. The Indian had no cow or domestic beast of burden, and regarded all labor as degrading and fit only for women. His wife was his slave. With rude implements she cultivated the ground and reaped the harvest, while he amused himself playing, gambling, singing, eating, or sleeping. In their journeys the poles of the wigwam are borne upon her shoulders. Much of her time is occupied in making moccasins and in quill work.

The Indian's amusements were running, leaping, wrestling, paddling, shooting at a mark, games of ball and with small stones, dances and feasts. His chief resource from inactivity was gambling. He would stake his arms, the furs that covered him, his stock of winter provisions, his cabin, his wife, even his own freedom, on the chances of play. Among their field-sports one of the commonest is the casting of stones, in which they attain astonishing skill and precision. Their dances were numerous, and formed part of their religious observances and warlike preparations, as well as merry-makings. The women generally danced apart.

The fleeka, or arrow-dance, practised by the Pueblo Indians in Arizona, is a picturesque performance. One of the braves is led up in front of his friends, who are drawn up in two ranks. Here he is placed upon one knee, his bow and arrow in his hand, when the Malinchi, a handsomely attired young girl, commences the dance. From her right wrist hangs the skin of a silver-gray fox, and bells that jingle with every motion are fixed at the end of her embroidered scarf.

At first she dances along the line in front, and by her movements shows that she is describing the war-path. Slowly and steadily she pursues; suddenly her step quickens; she has come in sight of the enemy. The brave follows her with his eye, and, by the motion of his head, implies that she is right. She dances faster and faster; suddenly she seizes an arrow from hint, and now by her frantic gestures it is plain that the fight has begun in earnest. She points with the arrow, shows how it wings its course, how the scalp was taken and her tribe victorious. As she concludes the dance and returns the arrow to the brave, fire-arms are discharged, and the whole party wend their way to the public square to make room for other parties, who keep up the dance until dark.

Boys were trained from infancy to feats of dexterity and courage, gaining a name and a position only on returning from a warlike expedition. A feast was always given for a boy's first success in the chase. A spirit of emulation and a thirst for glory was awakened in him by stories of the exploits of his ancestors. As soon as he was old enough, he travelled the war-path that he might earn the feather of the war-eagle for his hair, and boast of his exploits in the great war-dance and feast of his band.

A SCALP DANCE.

War was the Indian's chief delight and glory, and between many of the tribes it was of constant occurrence. When a war was about to break out, some leading chief would paint himself black all over and retire to the forest. There he remained, fasting and praying, until he could dream of a great war-eagle hovering over him. This was the favorable omen; and, returning to his band, he would call them to battle and certain victory, assuring them that the Great Spirit was on their side.

He would then give a feast to his warriors, at which he would appear in war-paint of bright and startling colors, setting before his guests wooden dishes containing dog-flesh, a great luxury. The chief himself sat smoking, his fast not yet ended.

The war-dance followed. If at night, the scene was lighted up by the blaze of fires and burning pine-knots. A painted post would be driven into the ground, and the warriors, their faces painted in a frightful manner, formed a circle around it. The chief would then leap into the open space, brandishing his hatchet, chanting his exploits, and, striking at the post as if it were an enemy, he would go through all the motions of actual fight. Warrior after warrior would follow his example, till at last the whole band would be dancing, striking and stabbing at the air, and yelling like so many fiends.

Next morning they would leave the camp in single file, discharging their guns one after another as they entered the forest. Halting near the village, they would strip off their ornaments, and hand them over to the women who had followed them for this purpose. They would then move silently on. These parties were generally small, as their warfare was one of patient watchfulness, stealthy approaches, stratagems, and surprises. Following an enemy's trail, they killed him as he slept, or lay in ambush near a village, watching for an opportunity to pounce upon an individual and take his scalp. The scalp-lock was an emblem of chivalry, and was left upon the head of the warrior as a sort of defiance—a way of saying, "Take it if you can." This trophy the warrior hung in his cabin on his return. There was no dishonor in killing an unarmed enemy, or in private deceit and treachery. It was no disgrace to run away when there seemed no chance of success. Torture and the stake enabled the victim to display what the Indian considered a heroic virtue—power of endurance, the triumph of mind over matter. He thought the meaning and intent of war was to inflict all possible pain and injury on his foe.

SCALP.

The war weapons of the Indian were the bow and arrow, the spear, and the club. Until the breech-loading rifle was invented the bow and arrow remained the most effective, as they were the most ancient, means of slaughter of animals in droves. The arrow-point is of chert, hornstone, or flint. Spears were pointed with similar material. The arrow, two and a half feet long, is feathered for about five inches beyond the place where it is held in drawing the bow. The feathers are placed in a form a little winding, thus keeping the tail of the shaft nearly in the rear of the head, and causing a rotary motion which insures accuracy in its course. The war-club, of heavy wood, is usually elaborately ornamented with war-eagle feathers and with painted devices. The prairie tribes use a shield made of raw buffalo hide contracted and hardened by an ingenious application of fire. It is oval or circular in form, is about two feet in diameter, and is worn on the left ann. It is elaborately painted, and decorated with eagle's feathers. It is effectual against arrows, but is not proof against a rifle ball that strikes it squarely.

Their love of freedom and impatience of control made military discipline impossible, and no large body of Indians could be kept together for any length of time. Jealousy, discord, and old feuds were likely at any moment to break out, when the warriors would desert in crowds. They never provided themselves with supplies for a campaign, and could therefore carry out no extended operations. They never attacked unless they could take their enemy at a disadvantage. A campaign against them was no easy matter. They had to be sought in the recesses of the forest with which they were familiar, and which afforded every advantage for their peculiar mode of fighting.

Captives were compelled to run the gauntlet through a double line, composed of the women, children, and young warriors of the village, who, armed with sticks and clubs, struck the prisoners as they passed, and sometimes inflicted severe injuries upon them. Generally they were put to death, sometimes by torture. Occasionally one would be adopted into a family in the place of a deceased brother, son, or husband. The Iroquois and the Creeks often incorporated the tribes they had conquered with their own. In their treatment of female captives, the Indians were more humane than the victorious soldiery of civilized nations.

IN AMBUSH.

The religion of the Indian, like that of other primitive races, had neither temple nor ritual. It had its songs and dances, and its sacrifices, at which animals and human beings were offered, the former as substitutes for the latter. Sun-worship and fire-worship were formerly very prevalent among the aborigines. Their priests and physicians are called medicine-men, or powwows. They profess to heal diseases by jugglery and magic arts, to give good-fortune to the hunter, the warrior, and the lover, or to cause the death of an enemy. In cases of sickness the Indian uses medicinal herbs, but the vapor-bath is his most general and effectual remedy for disease.

Rude and ignorant as he is, and believing in many gods, the Indian yet worships the Great Spirit after a fashion of his own, and believes almost universally in a future life. With the dead warrior is buried his pipe and his manitou, his tomahawk, bow and quiver, his best apparel, and food for his long journey to the abode of his ancestors. By the side of her infant the mother lays its cradle, its beads, and its rattles.

The Indian has no idea of future rewards or punishments. He believes that conflicting powers of good and evil rule over the universe. A spirit dwells in every object—in the beast, the bird, the river, the lake, and the mountain. Every Indian has a manitou, or household god, to consecrate his house; sometimes it is a bird or a bear, sometimes a buffalo, a feather, or a skin. To propitiate the deity he employs some kind of sacrifice or prayer. An Indian lamenting the loss of a child exclaims, "O manitou! thou art angry with me; turn thine anger from me, and spare the rest of my children!" Dreams are regarded by him as divine revelations, and they exert a powerful influence over him.

Great pains have been taken to convert the Indian to Christianity. The Spaniard, the Frenchman, and the Englishman have all tried their hand upon him, but hitherto with small success. His own religion seemed to him best adapted to his condition and manner of life. It was necessary to lift him out of barbarism before he could either understand or appreciate the boon they sought to bestow upon him. "One season of hunting," said the Apostle Eliot, "undid all my missionary work." At present the establishment of schools and the general introduction of the arts and implements of civilization are helping the missionary in his self-sacrificing labors, and a more hopeful prospect seems at last to have dawned upon the race.

A CLASSROOM.

But, while in the matter of education something has been done for the Indian, much yet remains to be done. Carlisle, Hampton, and Forest Grove only demonstrate, on a limited scale, what our government ought to do, and what it has bound itself by treaty to do, in behalf of the 60,000 Indian children now growing up in idleness, ignorance, and superstition.

The schools above named supply their pupils with the training and discipline which on their return will serve as a leverage for the uplifting of their people. In aptness, docility, and progress, the red children are fully equal to the white. In these schools they acquire not only the English language and the elementary branches of knowledge, but they also learn useful trades, and in most cases have found, on returning home, suitable employment at the agencies as interpreters, teachers, or mechanics. Money could in no way be so well applied as in the education of our Indian youth, thus lifting them out of barbarism.

Fabulous legends and stories are common among the Indians, and their relation over their camp-fires and in the long winter evenings forms one of their principal sources of amusement. Among them the story of Hiawatha, of Onondaga origin, is best known, as it forms the basis of Longfellow's beautiful poem. A few specimens of their traditions and stories are here given.

Owayneo (the creator), says Iroquois tradition, after making them from handfuls of red seeds, assembled his children together and said: "Ye are five nations, for ye sprang each from a different handful of the seed I sowed; but ye are all brethren, and I am your father, for I made you all. Mohawks, I have made you bold and valiant; and see, I give you corn for your food. Oneidas, I have made you patient of pain and hunger; the nuts and fruits of the trees are yours. Senecas, I have made you industrious and active; beans do I give you for your nourishment. Cayugas, I have made you strong, friendly, and generous; ground-nuts and every generous fruit shall refresh you. Onondagas, I have made you wise, just, and eloquent; squashes and grapes have I given you to eat, and tobacco to smoke in council. The beasts, birds, and fishes I have given to you all in common. Be just to all men, and kind to strangers that come among you."

"The missing link," connecting man with the lower animals, which Darwin failed to find, is supplied by the tradition of a California tribe of Indians, who refer their origin to the coyote, or wolf. This is the tradition:

The first Indians that lived were coyotes. After they began to burn the bodies of those who died, the Indians began to assume the shape of man, but at first very imperfectly. They walked on all fours, and were incomplete and imperfect in all their organs, in their limbs and joints, but progressed from period to period, until they became perfect men and women.

"In the course of their transition from coyotes to human beings," said the old chief who related this tradition, "they acquired the habit of sitting upright and lost their tails. This is with many of them a source of regret to this day, as they consider the tail quite an ornament; and, in decorating themselves for the dance or other festive occasions, a portion of them always complete their costume with tails."

The tradition of the Mandans is that they dwelt together near an underground lake shut out from the light of heaven. The roots of a grape-vine penetrating this recess first revealed to them the light from the world above. By means of this vine one-half of the tribe climbed up to the surface; the other half were left in their dark prison-house owing to the bulk and weight of an old woman, who by her ponderosity tore down the vine, and prevented any more of the tribe from ascending.

The Osages believe that the first man of their nation came out of a shell, and that this man, when walking on earth, met the Great Spirit, who gave him a bow and arrows and told him to go a-hunting. Having killed a deer, the Great Spirit gave him fire and told him to cook his meat and to eat. He also told him to take the skin and cover himself with it, and also the skins of other animals that he should kill.

One day as the Osage was hunting be saw a beaver sitting on a beaver-hut, who asked him what he was looking for. The Osage answered that, being thirsty, he carne there to drink. The beaver then asked him who he was and whence he came. The Osage replied that he had no place of residence. "Well, then," said the beaver, "as you appear to be a reasonable man, I wish you to come and live with me. I have many daughters, and if any of them should be agreeable to you, you may marry." The Osage accepted his offer and married one of his daughters, by whom he had many children. The tribe give this as a reason for not killing the beaver, their offspring being, as they believe, the Osage nation.

Mondamin, or the Origin of Indian-Corn

An Indian youth who had ever been obedient to his parents, on reaching the age of fifteen prepared to undergo the ceremony of fasting usual at that age. As soon as spring came, he found a retired spot and began his fast. He had often thought on the goodness of the Great Spirit in providing all kinds of fruits and herbs for the use of man, and he now earnestly prayed that he might dream of something to benefit his people, for he had often seen them suffering for want of food.

On the third day he became too weak and faint to walk about, and kept his bed. He fancied, while thus lying in a dreamy state, that he saw a handsome young man dressed in green robes and with green plumes on his head advancing towards him. The visitor said, "I am sent to you, my friend, by the Great Spirit who made all things. He has observed you. He sees that you desire to procure a benefit for your people. Listen to my words and follow my instructions." He then told the young man to rise and wrestle with him. Weak as he was, he tottered to his feet and began; but, after a long trial, the handsome stranger said, "My friend, it is enough for once; I will come again." He then vanished.

On the next day the celestial visitor re-appeared and renewed the trial. The young man knew that his strength was even less than the day before, but as this declined he felt that his mind became stronger and clearer. Perceiving this, the plumed stranger again spoke to him. "To-morrow," he said, "will be your last trial. Be strong and courageous; it is the only way to obtain the boon you seek." He again departed.

On the sixth day, as the young faster lay on his pallet weak and exhausted, the pleasing visitor returned, and as he renewed the contest he looked more beautiful than ever. The young man grasped him and seemed to feel new strength imparted to his body, while that of his antagonist grew weaker.

At length the stranger cried out, "It is enough; I am beaten. You will win your desire from the Great Spirit. To-morrow will be the seventh day of your fast and the last of your trials. Your father will bring you food which will recruit you. I shall then visit you for the last time, and I foresee that you are destined to prevail. As soon as you have thrown me down, strip off my garments and bury me on the spot. Visit the place, and keep the earth clean and soft. Let no weeds grow there. I shall soon come to life, and re-appear with all the wrappings of my garments and my waving plumes. Once a month cover my roots with fresh earth, and by following these directions your triumph will be complete." He then disappeared.

Next morning the youth's father came with food, but he asked him to set it by for a particular reason till the sun went down. When the sky-visitor came for his final trial, although the young man had not partaken of food, he engaged in the combat with him with a feeling of supernatural strength. He threw him down. Stripping off his garments and plumes, he then buried him in the earth, carefully preparing the ground and removing every weed, and then returned to his father's lodge.

Keeping everything to himself, the youth revealed nothing of his vision or trials. Partaking sparingly of food, he soon regained his strength. But he never for a moment forgot the burial-place of his friend. He frequently visited it, and would not let even a wild-flower grow there. Soon he saw the tops of the green plumes coming out of the ground, at first in spiral points, then expanding into broad leaves and rising in green stalks, and finally assuming their silken fringes and yellow tassels.

Spring and summer had passed, when one day towards evening he requested his father to visit the lonely spot where he had fasted. The old man stood amazed. The lodge was gone, and in its place stood a tall, graceful, and majestic plant, waving its taper-leaves and displaying its bright-colored plumes and tassels. But what most excited his admiration was its cluster of golden ears. "It is the friend of my dreams and visions," said the youth. "It is Mondamin; it is the spirit's grain," said the father. And this was the origin of Indian-corn.

Shingebiss: A Chippewa Allegory

"There was once a poor man called Shingebiss, living alone in a solitary lodge on the shores of a deep bay, in a large lake. Now this man, as his name implies, was a duck when he chose to be, and a man the next moment: it was only necessary to will himself the one or the other. It was cold winter weather, and this duck ought to have been off with the rest of his species towards the South, where the streams and lakes are open all winter, and where food is easily got; but the power he had of changing himself into a man when he wished, made him linger till every stream was frozen over, and the snow lay deep over all the land.

"The blasts of winter now howled fiercely around his poor wigwam, and he had only four logs of wood to keep his fire during the whole winter. But he was cheerful, manly, and trustful, relied on himself, and cared very little for anybody, beyond treating kindly all who called on him; and as he always had something to offer them to eat, he was treated with much respect and consideration by his people.

"How he managed to live nobody knew. It was a perfect mystery to every one. The ice was very thick on the streams and the weather was intensely cold; yet, on the coldest day, when every one thought he must starve and freeze, he would go out to places where flags and reeds grew up through the ice, and changing himself to a duck, pluck them up with his bill, and, diving through the orifice, supply himself plentifully with fish.

"The hardihood, independence, and resources of Shingebiss vexed Kabibonocca, the god who sends cold and storms, and he determined to freeze him out and kill him for his obstinacy. 'Why,' said he, 'he must be a wonderful man; he does not mind the coldest days, but seems to be as happy and content as if it were strawberry time. I will give him cold blasts to his heart's content.' So saying, he poured forth tenfold colder winds and deeper snows, and made the air so sharp that it cut like a knife. Still the fire of Shingebiss, poorly supplied as it was, did not go out. He did not even put on more clothing—for he had but a single strip of skins about his body—while walking on the ice in the coldest days, carrying home loads of fish.

"'Shall he withstand me?' said Kabibonocca one day; 'I will go and visit him, and see wherein his great power lies. If my presence does not freeze him, he must be made of rock.' Accordingly, that very night, when the wind blew furiously, he came to his lodge door and listened. Shingebiss had cooked his meal of fish and finished his supper, and was lying on his elbow, singing this song:

"The hunter knew that Kabibonocca was at his door, but affected utter indifference, and went on singing. At length Kabibonocca, not to be defeated in his object, entered the wigwam and took his seat, without saying a word, opposite to him. But Shingebiss put on an air of the most profound repose. Not a look or change of muscle indicated that he heard the storm or was sensible of the cold. Neither did he seem aware of the presence of his powerful guest. But taking his poker as if no one were present he stirred the embers to make them burn brighter, and then reclining as before again sang,

"Very soon the tears ran down Kabibonocca's face, and increased so fast that he presently said to himself, 'I cannot stand this; the fellow will melt me if I do not go out.' He went, leaving the imperturbable Shingebiss to the enjoyment of his song, but resolving, at the same time, that he would put a stop to his music. He then poured forth his very fiercest blasts, and made the air so cold that it froze up every flag orifice, and increased the ice to such a thickness that it drove Shingebiss from all his fishing-grounds. Still, by going a greater distance and to deep water, he contrived to get the means of subsistence, and managed to live. His four logs of wood gave him plenty of fire, and the few fish he got satisfied him, for he ate them with cheerfulness and contentment. At last Kabibonocca was compelled to give up the contest, and exclaimed, 'He must be some monedo (spirit). I can neither freeze him nor starve him. I will let him alone.'"

The Great Snake of Canandaigua Lake

"Nundowaga Hill, which looks down upon the waters of Canandaigua Lake, was once completely encircled by an enormous snake. The people of the hill, alarmed for their safety, resolved one day, in solemn council, that the snake must die on the following morning.

"Just as the day was breaking, the monstrous reptile was seen at the base of the hill, closing every avenue of escape, its huge jaws wide open just before the gate-way. Vigorously did the whole tribe assail it, but neither arrows, spears, nor knives could be made to penetrate its scaly sides. Some of the frightened people endeavored to escape by climbing over it, but were thrown violently back, rolled upon, and crushed. Others, in their mad efforts, rushing into its very jaws, were devoured. Terrified, the tribe recoiled, and did not renew the attack till hunger gave them courage for a last desperate assault, in which all perished and were swallowed, except a woman and her two children, who escaped into the forest, while the monster, gorged with its horrible feast, was sleeping.

"In her hiding-place the woman, by a vision, was instructed to make arrows of a peculiar form, and taught how to use them effectually for the killing of the destroyer of her tribe. Believing that the Great Spirit was her teacher, she made the arrows, and carefully following the directions she had received, she confidently approached the yet sleeping monster, and successfully planted the arrows in its heart. The snake, in its agony, lashed the hill-side with its enormous tail, tore deep gullies in the earth, broke down forests, and rolling down the slope, plunged into the lake. Here, in the waters near the shore, it disgorged its many human victims, and then, with one great convulsive throe, sank slowly to the bottom. Rejoiced at the death of her enemy, the happy woman hastened with her children to the banks of the Canesedage Lake, and from them sprung the powerful Seneca nation."

The Indians affirm that the rounded pebbles, of the size and shape of the human head, to this day so numerous on the shores of the Canandaigua Lake, are the petrified skulls of the people of the hill, disgorged by the great snake in its death agony.

Chapter II

Early European Intercourse with the Indians

The discovery of an unknown continent and of a new race of men was the exploit and wonder of the age. Princes dreamed of vast additions to their domains; priests of the conversion of heathen nations and the enlargement of their spiritual possessions; merchants speculated upon the prospect of a profitable trade with the natives; while poets sung of the new El Dorado as of a heaven upon earth, a land of inexhaustible fertility and riches. But neither seer nor statesman, priest nor poet, was able to foresee the future of this continent. No one dreamed that this remote and savage wilderness was soon to become the seat of flourishing and powerful communities, or that it was the chosen arena for the full and unchecked development of human progress and freedom.

Strange stories were told of this new world. Its northern shores were said to be infested by griffins, while two islands north of Newfoundland were known as the Isles of Demons, whose occupants were pictured with wings, horns, and tail. An early geographer wrote that he had heard from many who had voyaged that way that "they heard in the air, in the tops and about the masts, a great clamor of men's voices, confused and inarticulate, such as you may hear from the crowd at a fair or market-place, whereupon they well knew that the Isles of Demons was not far off."

By the first voyagers the natives were found to be simple, hospitable, and friendly. Soon, however, they learned to fear and distrust the strangers, who took every advantage of their ignorance and kindness. The different tribes were found to be widely scattered, many of them in a state of hostility to their neighbors.

Columbus and other early voyagers took some of the natives with them on their return to Europe. Three presented to Henry VII. by Sebastian Cabot, in 1502 were the first Indians seen in England. Those first taken to France were brought thither by Captain Aubert six years later.

SEBASTIAN CABOT, BY HOLBEIN.

From time to time others were kidnapped and sold into slavery, and conflicts between them and their European visitors became frequent. The frauds and injuries of which they were the victims were not forgotten by the natives, but were eventually returned by them with interest.

One of these acts of barbarity is thus related by Captain John Smith, with whom my readers will soon become better acquainted.

"One Thomas Hunt, the master of this ship, when I was gone, betrayed four-and-twenty of these poor salvages aboard his ship, and most dishonestly and inhumanly, for their kind usage of me and all our men, carried them with him to Malaga, and there, for a little private gain, sold these silly salvages. But this vile act kept him ever after from any more employment in those parts."

When we learn what the clergy of that day thought of the poor Indian, we can better understand the infamous conduct of these cruel man-stealers. "We may guess," says that eminent divine of New England, Rev. Cotton Mather, "that probably the devil decoyed these miserable salvages hither, in hopes that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ would never come here to destroy or disturb his absolute empire over them."

Columbus says of the natives of the West Indies, "We found them timid, and full of fear, very simple and honest, and exceedingly liberal, none of them refusing anything he may possess when asked for it. Like idiots—they bartered cotton and gold for fragments of glasses, bottles, and jars, which I forbade as being unjust, and myself gave them many beautiful and acceptable articles which I had brought with me, taking nothing from them in return."

Upon his first arrival, Columbus took some of the natives by force, in order that they might learn the language of the Spaniards and communicate what they knew respecting the country; and they were soon able, either by gesture or by signs, to understand each other. They entertained the idea that the white men descended from heaven, and on their arrival at any new place, cried out immediately, with a loud voice, to the other Indians, "Come! come and look upon beings of a celestial race;" upon which both women and men, children and adults, young and old, when they got rid of their first fear, would come out in throngs, crowding the roads to see them, some bringing food, others drink, "with astonishing affection and kindness."

Gaspar Cortereal, a mariner in the service of the King of Portugal, ranged the newly-discovered coast for six hundred or seven hundred miles, as far as the fifteenth parallel, admiring the brilliant verdure and dense forests wherever he landed. He repaid the hospitality with which he was everywhere received by the natives, by taking with him on his return fifty-seven of them, whom he had treacherously enticed on board his ship, and selling them for slaves. From a second voyage he never returned, having been slain in a combat with some Indians whom he was trying to kidnap.

The earliest description of the Atlantic coast of the United States is found in the narrative of John Verrazzano, an Italian mariner, who had been sent on a voyage of discovery by Francis I. of France. He reached the coast in the latitude of Wilmington, N C., and is supposed to have visited the harbors of New York and Newport. He describes the natives as very courteous and gentle, and possessing prompt wit, but as mild and feeble, of mean stature, with delicate limbs and handsome visages.

Seeing many fires ashore, and the natives friendly, he sent his boat to them, but the surf was too violent to permit landing. One of the sailors offered to swim ashore with some presents; but, when he came near, his fears prevailed, and throwing out his presents he attempted to return to the ship, but the waves cast him on the sand half-dead and quite senseless. The Indians immediately ran to his assistance, carried him ashore, dried his clothes before a fire, and did everything to restore him. His alarm, however, was excessive. When they pulled off his clothes to dry them, he thought they meant to sacrifice him to the sun, which then shone brightly in the heavens. He trembled with fear. As soon as he was restored they gently led him to the shore, and then retired to a distance until the ship's boat had been sent for him and they saw him safely on board.

JOHN VERRAZZANO.

In requital for this kindness, the visitors robbed a mother of her child, and attempted to kidnap a young woman "of tall stature and very beautiful." Her outcries and her vigorous resistance saved her.

At one place, where he remained fifteen days, Verrazzano found the natives "the gentlest people" he had yet seen. They were liberal and friendly, yet so ignorant that, though instruments of steel and iron were often exhibited, they neither understood their use nor coveted their possession. The things they esteemed most were bells, crystals of azure color, and other toys to hang at their ears or about the neck. "When they beheld themselves in our mirrors they suddenly laughed and gave them us again." The women wore ornaments of wrought copper. Wood only was used in the construction of their wigwams, which were covered with coarse matting.

The natives of the more northerly regions visited, perhaps, those of the coast of Maine, having already learned to fear the Europeans, were hostile and jealous. They knew the value of iron, and demanded in trade fish-hooks, knives, and weapons of steel. "When we went on shore," says the narrator, "they shot at us with their bows, making great outcries, and afterwards fled into the woods. When we departed from them they showed all signs of discourtesy and disdain as was possible for any creature to invent."

They were clad in skins or furs, lived by hunting and fishing, and had no grain nor any kind of tillage. Their canoes were trunks of trees hollowed out by fire and with stone hatchets, and their arms were bows and arrows.

Pleased with Verrazzano's report, King Francis said, referring to the edict of the Pope of Rome, giving all America to the Spaniards, "he did not think God had created these new countries for the Castilians alone." His great rival, Charles V. of Spain, had laid claim to all the new discoveries on the ground of priority. "I should like," said the French king. "to see that article of Adam's will which gives him America!" The authenticity of Verrazzano's narrative is yet an unsettled question.

Ten years after Verrazzano's voyage, Jacques Cartier, an experienced navigator of Saint Maio, sailed from France to the region of the St. Lawrence. Landing in the Bay of Gaspé, a lofty cross was raised, bearing a shield with the lilies of France and an appropriate inscription. The country was thus taken possession of for the French king.

JACQUES CARTIER.

The natives, who were very friendly, gazed at this ceremony in wonder. They seemed to have guessed its meaning, for, by signs, they made known to Cartier that the country was theirs, and that no cross should be set up without their leave. Cartier did not scruple to deceive the natives, by telling them that it was only intended as a beacon-light for mariners entering their port. He seized two of these Indians and took then with him to France.

Cartier describes the natives as being "of an indifferent good stature and bigness, but wild and unruly. They wore their hair tied on the top, like a wreath of hay, and put a wooden pin within it instead of a nail, and with them they bind certain birds' feathers. They were clothed with beasts' skins, as well the men as the women, but that the women go somewhat straighter and closer in their garments than the men do, with their waists girded. They paint themselves with certain roan colors; their boats are made of the bark of birch-trees; in them they fish, and take great store of seals."

At their first interview the narrator tells us that "so soon as they saw us they began to flee, making signs that they came to traffic with us, showing us such skins as they clothed themselves withal, which are of small value. We likewise made signs unto them that we wished them no evil, and in sign thereof two of our men ventured to go on land to them, and carry them knives, with other iron wares, and a red hat to give unto their captain, which, when they saw, they also came on land and brought some of their skins, and so began to deal with us, seeming to be very glad to have our iron wares, still dancing, with many other ceremonies, as with their hands to east sea-water on their heads. They showed their friendship in this way, as also by rubbing their hands upon the arms of the European visitors, and lifting them up towards the heavens." From the intense heat here, Cartier named the inlet "Baie de Chaleur," a name it still bears.

The Indians about Gaspé Bay differed from the others both in nature and language, and in being abjectly poor. They were only partly clothed in old skins, and had no structures to protect them from the weather. "I think," said the old narrator, "all they had together, besides their boats and nets, was not worth five sous." They shaved their heads, with the exception of a tuft on the crown, sheltered themselves at night under their canvas, on the bare ground, and ate their food partially cooked. They were unacquainted with the use of salt, and ate nothing that had any taste of it.

In a second voyage, made in the following year, Cartier named the gulf, in honor of the day in which he entered it, the St. Lawrence, a name since extended to the noble river beyond. Sailing up to isle since called Orleans, he was hospitably received by the natives at their village of Stadacona, now Quebec; the two natives Cartier had carried off, and who had been kindly treated, acting as interpreters. He next ascended the river to the chief Indian settlement of Hochelaga, the modern Montreal, which takes its name from the neighboring elevation which they christened Mount Royal.

JACQUES CARTIER ERECTS A CROSS.

Every artifice had been made use of by the Indians to prevent their journey to this place. They were jealous lest some of the knives, looking-glasses, and other trinkets should fall into the hands of the rival chieftain and his people.

Three of them, dressed as devils, wrapped in huge skins, white and black, their faces besmeared and black as coals, and with horns on their heads more than a yard long, tried to frighten Cartier, and after holding a long powwow, declared to him that their god had spoken, and that there was so much ice and snow at Hochelaga that whoever went thither should die. The Frenchman only laughed at this trick, and told them that their god was a fool.

The Indian capital they found encompassed by a triple row of high palisades of heavy timber, and having only a single gate of entrance. Over this, and elsewhere on the walls, were platforms for its defenders, provided with ladders and with stones for its defence. It contained some fifty houses, each about fifty paces long, and twelve or fifteen broad, built of wood, and covered with bark, and skilfully joined together. These houses had many rooms, and in the midst of each was a large court, with a place in the centre for a fire. In a room at the top of their houses they stored their corn. Fishing and agriculture furnished them with food. Their chief, an old man, was borne to Cartier's presence on the shoulders of his men; around his forehead he wore a band of red-colored hedgehog skins, but in other respects was dressed no better than his people.

VIEW OF MONTREAL AND ITS WALLS IN 1760.

Viewing the white men as heavenly visitors, the Indians crowded around them to touch them, paying them every mark of reverence and respect. They brought to Cartier their lame, blind, diseased, and impotent, to be healed; and he gratified their desires, praying to God to open the hearts of these poor people that they might be converted. The interview closed with his giving them knives, beads, and toys. Before returning to France, in the following spring, Cartier took possession of the country for the king in the usual manner. When he was about to sail, he enticed the chief, Donnaconna, with nine others, on board his ship, seized and confined and, regardless of the cries and entreaties of their people, carried them to France. Four years later all these, excepting one little girl, were dead.

PONCE DE LEON.

Although the country is so named on a Portuguese map of ten years earlier date than that of his voyage, Juan Ponce de Leon, a Spanish gentleman, claimed to be the discoverer of Florida. He had distinguished himself at home in the expulsion of the Moors from Granada, had accompanied Columbus in his second expedition, and had been governor of Porto Rico, where he had acquired wealth by oppressing the natives. One of the objects he had in view was the discovery of a fountain whose waters would, according to an ancient fable, impart perpetual youth to whosoever bathed in them. Landing near the point now called Fernandina, he claimed the territory for Spain. He found a delightful climate, charming scenery, and a fragrant atmosphere, but no gold or youth-restoring fountain. Everywhere the Indians displayed determined hostility.

Upon his return, De Leon was rewarded by the King of Spain with the government of Florida for his pretended discovery, but on the condition that he should colonize the country. When he attempted some years later to do so, his men were attacked with great fury by the natives. Many Spaniards were killed, the remainder returned to their ships, and De Leon himself was mortally wounded by an Indian arrow.

Other Spanish voyagers explored the North American coast and encountered the hostility of the natives. Lucas Vasquez D'Ayllon, after treacherously kidnapping a large number of natives of South Carolina, in a subsequent voyage attempted a settlement on the Combahee River. In retaliation for his treachery, his men were unexpectedly set upon by the Indians and nearly all killed. Vasquez, mortally wounded, escaped to his vessel; and thus ended the first attempt to plant a colony within the area of the United States.

The expedition of Pamphilio de Narvaez was disastrous in the extreme. It was this officer who had been sent by the governor of Cuba to take Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, prisoner, and who was himself easily defeated, and captured in the attempt. When brought before Cortez he said to him, with his usual arrogance, "Esteem it great good-fortune that you have taken me captive." Cortez replied, "It is the least of the things I have done in Mexico."

Landing near Tampa Bay, Florida, Narvaez struck into the interior. By his cruelty and want of judgment he provoked the hostility of the natives, who, to rid themselves of these unwelcome intruders, told them of a rich country, only nine days' march to the south. These Indians were of fine stature, great activity, and expert and accurate bowmen, who could hit their mark at the distance of two hundred yards. Instead of rich and populous towns, such as they had hoped to discover, the Spaniards found only clusters of wigwams, and were plundered and cut oil whenever opportunity offered.

After a fatiguing and fruitless six months' tramp, the wretched remnant of the party reached Pensacola Bay in a state of destitution. Narvaez was ill, his men were dispirited, and his horses were reduced to skeletons. Boats must be built, but how was this to be done without tools or materials?

In this exigency a soldier told Narvaez that he could make pipes of wood, and convert them into bellows by the aid of deerskins. The idea was instantly acted upon. A forge was constructed, and immediately stirrups, spurs, cross-bows, etc., were converted into nails, saws, and axes. The pines yielded pitch; a kind of oakum was obtained from the palmetto. Hair from the manes and tails of horses was twisted into ropes, and the shirts of the men supplied sails. The horses were killed and their flesh used for food. Oysters and maize completed their store of provisions. After sixteen days of hard work they had constructed five boats, each of which held fifty-six men.

In these frail vessels the remnant of that once gallant army embarked, and nearly all perished in a storm near the mouth of the Mississippi. Four survivors reached Mexico by land, after eight years of wandering and almost incredible hardships.

FERNANDO DE SOTO.

The story of these men, that Florida was the richest country in the world, was credited by many. Among them was Fernando de Soto, who had been the favorite companion of Pizarro in the conquest of Peru, where he had acquired both military renown and wealth. He believed that another Peru existed at the north, and aspiring to rival Cortez and Pizarro in fame and wealth, asked and received permission of the king to conquer Florida at his own cost. It must be remembered that the term Florida was at that time a vague expression, covering an immense territory—no less than the whole North American coast.

This was by far the most magnificent and well appointed of the numerous expeditions to this continent. Men of noble birth and good estates sold their lands to join in it. Portuguese soldiers were to be seen in the glittering array of burnished armor, and the Castilians, brilliant with hope, were "very gallant with silk upon silk." Front the numerous aspirants De Soto selected six hundred men—the flower of Spain; many persons of good account who had sold their estates were obliged to remain behind. Everything was provided that experience in former invasions could suggest, including chains for captives, and blood-hounds as auxiliaries against the wretched natives. As the latter were to be converted as well as plundered, twenty-four ecclesiastics accompanied the expedition. The fleet landed at Tampa Bay, on the western coast, the adventurers disembarked, and the memorable march began.

Soon after landing, a party of Spaniards attacked and put to flight a few Indians who were advancing towards them, making friendly signals. One of them had been knocked down, and was about to receive a deadly blow, when he uttered in excellent Spanish these words,

"Sir, I am a Christian! I am a Christian! Slay me not, nor these Indians, for they have saved my life."

The blow was withheld; and this man, whose name was Juan Ortiz, related his most extraordinary story. He was one of the survivors of Narvaez's company, and in a subsequent expedition had fallen into the hands of the natives, and was doomed to suffer death by torture.

Four stakes were set in the ground, to which four ropes were fastened. To these poles the captive, with his legs and arms extended, was bound, at such a distance from the ground that a fire made under him would be a long time in consuming him. Already had the fire been lighted, and the victim resigned himself to his terrible fate, when the daughter of Ucita, the chief, throwing herself at her father's feet, begged his life in these words:

"My kind father, why kill this poor stranger? he can do you nor none of us any injury, seeing he is but one and alone. It is better that you should keep him confined, for even in that condition he may some time be of great service to you."

DE SOTO DISCOVERING THE MISSISSIPPI.

The chief was silent a short time, but finally ordered his release. His wounds were dressed, and he was made tolerably comfortable. Possibly, this incident suggested to Captain John Smith the story he long afterwards wrote of his rescue from death by Pocahontas, the daughter of Powhatan.

At one end of Ucita's village stood a temple; over the door was the figure of a bird carved in wood, and with gilded eyes. As soon as the wounds of Ortiz were healed, he was stationed to guard the entrance of this temple, more especially from the inroads of wild beasts. As human victims were sacrificed here, wolves were frequent visitors. Death was the penalty for allowing a body to be removed.

One night he had a terrible scare. A young Indian had been killed, and his body was placed in the temple. Spite of all his efforts, a pack of hungry wolves effected an entrance and seized upon the body. As soon as he recovered from the fright of their first onset, he seized a heavy cudgel, drove them out, and pursued them some distance, dealing one of them a mortal blow.

When morning came, and it was seen that the body was gone, Ortiz was condemned to die; but before executing him Ucita sent a party in pursuit of the wolves, and, if possible, to recover the body. Contrary to all expectations, it was found, and near it the carcass of a huge wolf. The order for Ortiz's execution was revoked, and he was afterwards held in great esteem by the Indians.

Some time afterwards he was again selected for sacrifice, but was a second time saved from a terrible death by the chief's daughter, who aided him to escape to the country of Mocoso, a rival chief, by whom he was well treated, and with whom he remained three years. At the expiration of that time the fleet of De Soto arrived, and Mocoso, out of friendship for Ortiz, sent him to his countrymen, who, as we have seen, supposing him to be what he appeared—an Indian—came near killing him. Ortiz rendered important services to De Soto, as interpreter among the various Indian tribes.

For three years the Spaniards wandered through the country in search of gold, De Soto obstinately refusing to turn back. No gold was discovered; the only wealth of the natives was in their stores of corn; they were poor, but independent, hardy and brave. Everywhere he was met by the most determined hostility on the part of the natives, with whom he had a bloody battle at Mauvilla, or Mobile. For nine hours the Indians fought with desperation, and but for the flames, which consumed their light cabins, they would have repulsed the invaders. Thousands of them were slain. Though protected by their armor, many Spaniards were killed or wounded, and all their baggage was burned.

Mauvilla was a strongly-fortified village on the Coosa. It was surrounded by stout palisades, with loop-holes for arrows. Early in the morning the Indian war-cry was raised. De Soto led his amen to storm the fort. The entrance was narrow and well defended, and some of his best cavaliers were fatally pierced between the joints of their armor, and numbers of horses were killed. The Spaniards were obliged to withdraw. The Indians then sallied from the gates and rushed upon the foe, charging and retiring over the plain; but the advantage was finally with the Spaniards, and the Indians withdrew to their fort.

In a second assault the gate was broken down, when the assailants rushed in, and a furious conflict ensued. The Indians thronged the square; lance, club, and missile were wielded from every quarter. Even their young women snatched up the swords of the slaughtered Spaniards and mingled in the fray, being more reckless than the men. The struggle was so fierce and protracted, particularly from the roofs of the houses, that the soldiers set fire to their combustible dwellings, which were soon in flames. At length the Indians gave way and fled, pursued by the cavalry. They would neither give nor take quarter; not a man surrendered. These Indians were of the Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw tribes; among the slain was their famous chief, Tuscaloosa, the Black Warrior.

During the first winter De Soto encamped at the deserted Indian town of Chicaza, where for two months his men enjoyed comparative repose. At length the Chickasaws resolved to burn the encampment, which was constructed of inflammable materials.

A dark and windy night having been chosen, the camp was fired in several places, the savages at the same time uttering furious yells and making a desperate attack. A high wind fanned the flames into irresistible fury, and for a time the confusion was such as rendered it impossible to resist the impetuosity of the assailants. Discipline and courage, how-ever, regained the ascendancy, and the enemy was repulsed. But the camp was totally destroyed, together with all the arms, accoutrements, and provisions of the army. All that had been saved at the conflagration of Manilla was here annihilated. The droves of hogs, which had formed their main dependence for provisions, were burned in their pens. The temper of their swords had been impaired by the action of the fire, and almost every valuable article of equipage consumed.

De Soto more than once displayed great coolness and presence of mind. He had, at one time, pitched his camp near Costa, a town in Alabama, and, with a few of his followers, was conversing with the chief, when some of his troopers entered the town and plundered several of the houses. The justly-incensed Indians fell upon them with their clubs. Seeing himself surrounded by the natives, and in great personal danger, the general seized a cudgel and, with his usual presence of mind, commenced beating his own men. The savages, observing this, became pacified in a moment. In the mean time, taking the chief by the hand, he led him, with flattering words, towards his camp, where the was presently surrounded by a guard and held as a hostage. The Spaniards remained under arms all night. Fifteen hundred armed Indians surrounded them, frequently threatening them with attack, and uttering cries of insult and menace. Restraining his troops, De Soto, aided by a prominent Indian, who had followed him for some time, at length succeeded in restoring peace and in averting what seemed likely to prove a serious affair.

Upon one occasion De Soto tried to overawe the Natchez Indians, who worshipped the sun, by claiming a supernatural birth and demanding tribute.

BURIAL OF DE SOTO.

"You say you are the child of the sun," replied the incredulous chief. "Dry up the river, and I will believe you. If you wish to see me, come to the town where I dwell. If you come in peace I will receive you with special good-will; if in war, I will not shrink one foot back."

The sole achievement of this costly and memorable expedition was the discovery of the Mississippi River at the lowest Chickasaw Bluff. Boats were required to cross, and it took a month to build them. The Spaniards crossed, and extended their tedious journey as far as Kansas. They found the Indians an agricultural people, with fixed places of abode, and subsisting chiefly on the product of the fields. They were neither turbulent nor quarrelsome. Their dress was in part mats; in cold weather they wore deerskins, and mantles woven of feathers. Their villages were generally small, but close together. The natives were treated with the utmost cruelty by the Spaniards, who held their lives as of no account. They would cut off their hands on the slightest suspicion, and the guide who was unsuccessful, or who purposely misled them, was thrown to the hounds or condemned to the flames.

Disappointed and dispirited, De Soto's health rapidly declined, and he was finally carried off by a malignant fever. His body was buried at night in the great river he had discovered. "He had crossed a large part of the continent in search of gold," says the historian Bancroft, and found nothing so remarkable as his burial-place."

His followers wandered about for months afterwards, but at length abandoned their fruitless expedition and returned to the Mississippi. They then, with extraordinary patience and labor, ingeniously constructed some vessels out of their scanty materials, in which Sept. 1543, the survivors, three hundred and eleven in number, finally reached Mexico.

While De Soto was vainly seeking wealth and fame in the American wilderness, Mendoza, the Viceroy of Mexico, organized an expedition under Francis Vasquez Coronado, to search for the "Seven Cities of Cibola," the fame of whose riches was fully credited by the gullible Spaniards. Three hundred men were enlisted for the expedition, who were accompanied by eight hundred Indians.

The tale of the famous seven cities originated in the report of a Spanish missionary, who pretended that he had discovered, north of Sonora, a populous and rich kingdom called Quivera, or the Seven Cities, abounding in gold, the capital of which was called Cibola. Tezon, an Indian, also told the Spanish viceroy, Nuno de Guzman, that his father, who was now dead, had been a trader in ornamental feathers, such as are used in head-dresses, to a people in the interior lying north of the Gila River, and that he brought back in exchange large quantities of precious metals. He had accompanied his father, he said, on one of these journeys, and saw seven cities as large as Mexico, built on a regular plan, with high houses, and that there were entire streets of gold and silver smiths. No story seems to have been too absurd for these credulous Spaniards, and this one was still further corroborated by the return of Cabeca de Vaca with three companions from the ill-fated expedition of Narvaez, whose glowing accounts of the countries through which they had passed, inflamed still further the avarice of their countrymen.

Crossing the Gila, Coronado led his men over a desert and through the valley of a small stream, until they arrived before the lofty, natural walls of Cibola (old Zuni). On the top of these stood the town. The Indians cultivated corn in the valleys below, as they do at this day, wore coarse stuffs for clothing, and manufactured a species of pottery, but possessed neither gold nor mines.

Without waiting to make any inquiries, the Spaniards immediately assaulted the town. The natives rolled down stones from above, one of which struck Coronado and knocked him down. The place being taken after an hour's struggle, the troops found provisions, but no gold nor silver. Proceeding onward in his invasion of New Mexico, Coronado was everywhere resisted by the natives. The explorations were continued to the Colorado River on the west, and to the Rio Grande on the east. Realizing at last that the country was barren and destitute of resources, the Spaniards, after two years of fruitless exploration, returned to Mexico, wiser, but no richer than when they departed.

ZUNI WOMAN AT A WINDOW.

Nearly seventy years elapsed before France, desolated by civil strife and torn by religions dissensions, could renew her purpose of founding a French empire in America. In the mean time, however, voyages for traffic with the natives were regularly and successfully made, and there had been no less than one hundred and fifty French fishing vessels at Newfoundland in a single year.

The father of the French settlements in Canada was Samuel de Champlain, a skilful seaman, cool, courageous, and persevering, and a man of science. Selecting Quebec as the site for a fort, he returned to France just before the issue to the Sieur De Monts of the patent of Acadia, a region claimed by France to extend from the Delaware River to beyond Montreal. Port Royal, called Annapolis after the conquest of Acadia, in honor of Queen Anne, was settled in the spring of 1605 preceding by two years the first English settlement at Jamestown.

With a view to future settlements, De Monts explored and claimed for France the rivers, coasts, and bays of New England as far south as Cape Cod. Jesuit missions were at once established among the natives. That at St. Mary's, the oldest European settlement in Michigan, was established in 1668. Though many of these heroic men suffered death by torture at the hands of the natives, others sprang forward to take their vacant places. Through their influence the Abenakis of Maine, already hostile to the English, became the allies of France, and made a firm barrier to English encroachments.

Within the present limits of the United States, a French colony was, in 1613, planted at Mount Desert. Quebec was founded by Champlain in 1608. Having formed an alliance with the Algonkin tribes around him, Champlain twice invaded the territory of the Iroquois, their hereditary enemies. Having to take sides, unfortunately for France he took that of the weaker. The story of these Iroquois conflicts will be found in a subsequent chapter.

While residing among the Hurons, Champlain's influence over them was put to a severe test. A quarrel, ending in bloodshed, had occurred between two friendly tribes; the principal Algonkin chief had been murdered, and his band forced to pay a heavy tribute of wampum.

CHAMPLAIN'S FORTIFIED RESIDENCE AT QUEBEC.

Champlain was made umpire. The great council-house was filled with Huron and Algonkin chiefs, "smoking," says the historian Parkman, "with that immobility of feature beneath which their race often hides a more than tiger-like ferocity." Addressing the assembly, Champlain enlarged on the folly of fighting among themselves, while the common enemy stood ready to devour both; showed them the advantages of the French trade and alliance, and zealously urged them to shake hands and be friends. His good advice was taken, the peace-pipe was smoked, and a serious peril for New France averted.

In 1624 Champlain built the castle of St. Louis—so long the place of council against the Iroquois and the English—and was governor of Quebec at the time of his death in 1635.

The first attempt to found an English colony in New England was made by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, who crossed the ocean in a small bark called the Concord. He first landed on Cape Cod. Some of the natives came along-side in their birch canoes, others ran May along the beaches, gazing in wonder at the strangers. It was observed that the pipes of those who came on board were "steeled with copper," and that one of the Indians wore a copper breastplate.

Gosnold afterwards sailed into Buzzard's Bay, and began a settlement on Elizabeth Island, now known as Cuttyhunk. This, however, was soon abandoned, for want of provision for its support, when his vessel had completed her lading. Here he traded with the Indians, who were frequent visitors, and who are described as "exceeding courteous, gentle of disposition, and well conditioned, exceeding all others that we have seen in shape and looks. They are of stature much higher than we, of complexion much like a dark olive; their eyebrows and hair black, which they wear long, tied up behind in knots, whereon they prick feathers of fowls in fashion of a coronet. They make beards of the hair of beasts, and one of them offered a beard of their making to one of the sailors for his that grew on his face, which, because it was of a red color, they judged to be none of his own.

"They have great store of copper . . . none of them but what have chains, ear-rings, or collars of this metal. They head some of their arrows with it. Their chains, worn about their necks, contain four hundred hollow pieces, very fine and nicely set together. So little did they esteem these that they offered the finest of them for a knife or some similar trifle."

The settlement of Maine was largely owing to the vast fisheries on her coast. For more than a century before, these had been known and drawn from by English and French mariners. The territory, as we have seen, was claimed by the French, but the Abenaki and Micmac tribes were its aboriginal inhabitants. These Indians had permanent villages, enclosed by palisades. They wore many ornaments in their dress, skilfully made from shells and stones. They were agriculturists, amiable and social, brave, faithful to engagements, and especially strong in their family attachments. They had been gained over by the French missionaries, captivated by the picturesque and striking ceremonies of the Catholic religion, which appealed so strongly to the eye and the imagination.

In May, 1605, Captain George Weymouth landed on their coast, and seized some of the natives, whom he carried to England. There was great difficulty in getting the Indians into their boat. The narrator of the voyage tells us that it was as much as five of them could do, for they were strong and naked, so that "their best hold was by their long hair." In England they were objects of great wonder, and crowds of people followed them in the streets, as they had done, a century before, when those brought over by Cabot were exhibited.

Landing with them at Plymouth, the commandant, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, became greatly interested in them, and ultimately became largely concerned in the settlement of New England through the information derived from them. He kept them with him three years, finding in them "great civility of manners, far from the rudeness of our common people." Two of these natives piloted Popham's colony to the Kennebeck River in 1607.

This was the first colony that spent a winter in New England; and a most severe winter it was. From the natives they found "civil entertainment and kind respect, far from brutish or savage nations," but from adverse circumstances gave up the settlement in the following year and returned to England. Gorges, who was far-sighted and energetic, continued to exert himself earnestly and unselfishly to promote a permanent settlement of his countrymen upon the continent.

An act of singular boldness was performed by an Indian named Pechmo. Captain Harlow, while at Monhegan Island, detained him and two others on board his ship, but the leaped overboard and escaped. Not long afterwards he with others cut Harlow's boat from his ship's stern, got her on shore, and filling her with sand, with their bows and arrows prevented the English from recovering her.

Another instance of successful daring and duplicity on the part of the Abenakis is seen in the escape of Epanow, an Indian who had promised Gorges, in a voyage undertaken in 1611, to point out a gold mine in his country. Of this Indian it was said that, "being a man of so great a stature, he was showed up and down London for money as a wonder. He was of no less courage and authority than of wit, strength, and proportion.

"Every precaution was taken to prevent Epanow's escape. He was even obliged to wear long garments, that might easily be laid hold of it occasion should require. Notwithstanding all this, his friends being all come at the time appointed with twenty canoes, the captain called to them to come aboard; but they did not stir. Then Epanow, who was standing between two gentlemen that had been on guard, started suddenly from them, called his friends in English to come aboard, and leaps overboard. And although he was laid hold of by one of the company, yet, being a strong and heavy man, he could not be stayed, and was no sooner in the water but the natives in the boats sent such a shower of arrows, and came withal desperately so near the ship, that they carried him away in despite of all the musketeers aboard. And thus," continues Gorges, "were my hopes of that particular voyage made void and frustrate."

HENDRIK HUDSON.

In September, 1609, Henry Hudson, an English navigator of experience, in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, sailed in the Half Moon  up the noble river that now bears his name. "This day," says the narrator, "the people of the country came aboard of us in canoes made of single, hollowed trees, seeming very glad of our coming, and brought green tobacco, and gave us of it for knives and beads. They go in deerskins, loose, well dressed. They have yellow copper, desire clothes, and are very civil. . . . Next day many of the people came aboard in mantles of feathers. Some women also came to us with hemp; they had red copper tobacco-pipes, and other things of copper they did wear about their necks." One of Hudson's men, named Colman, was killed with an arrow on the following day in a conflict with some of the natives belonging to the fierce tribe of Manhattans.

Hudson then sailed up the river as far as Albany, the natives found above the Highlands being a "very loving people." They brought tobacco, grapes, oysters, beans, pumpkins, and furs to the vessel, for which he paid them in hatchets, beads, and knives. They invited him to visit them on shore, where they made him welcome, and a chief "made an oration and showed him all the country round about."

THE HALF-MOON AT YONKERS.

One thievish Indian climbed up by the rudder and stole some articles, but was shot and killed by the master's mate. The others fled, some taking to the water. A boat was sent out and the articles recovered. "Then," says the narrator, "one of them that swam got hold of our boat, thinking to overthrow it, but our cook took a sword and cut off his hands, and he was drowned."

It was a sad day for the natives when they were, for the first time, brought under the influence of strong drink. Some of the chiefs were invited into Hudson's cabin, and were plied with wine and brandy till they were intoxicated. "That was strange to them," says the old chronicler, "for they could not tell how to take it." One of them was so tipsy that his companions thought him bewitched, and brought charms (strips of beads) to save him from the strangers' arts. As Hudson and his men sailed down the river, the natives followed with friendly presents and hearty regrets at their departure. Hudson put to sea October 4th, and arrived at Dartmouth, England, on the 7th of November.

A few years later the Dutch laid the foundation of Manhattan, now the great city of New York. The first European settlements in America were nearly all trading posts, established at points where they could barter with the Indians for the skins and furs of the animals they had trapped or shot. These were fitted out by trading companies in England, France, and Holland. The traders were constantly defrauding the Indians, and at the same time rendering them formidable by selling them arms. The attempt of Kieft, the Dutch governor, to exact tribute from them, followed by an attack on the Raritans, for an alleged theft at Staten Island, brought on, finally, a desolating warfare, lasting for two years.

DUTCH AND INDIAN TRADING.

In the winter of 1642-43 the dreaded Mohawks came swooping down upon the Algonkin settlements, driving great numbers of them into Manhattan and other Dutch settlements near it. Though these Indians had committed hostile acts, policy and humanity alike suggested that they should be well treated. Instead of this their defenceless condition only suggested to Kieft the policy of exterminating them.

Across the river, at Pavonia, a large number of them had collected, and here, at midnight, the Dutch soldiers, joined by some privateersmen, fell upon them while asleep in their tents, and butchered nearly one hundred of them, including women and little children. This cruel and impolitic act was terribly avenged. The Indians everywhere rose upon the whites, killing the men, capturing the women and children, and destroying and laying waste the settlements. Trading boats on the Hudson were attacked and plundered and their crews murdered. The war extended into Connecticut, and at Pelham's Neck, near New Rochelle, Anne Hutchinson, a remarkable woman, exiled from Boston on account of her religious opinions, was murdered, together with her family, with the exception of a daughter, who was carried into captivity.

THE MASSACRE OF THE INDIANS AT PAVONIA.

The terror-stricken people crowded into Fort Amsterdam, where, during the following winter, they suffered from hunger and cold. Meantime they organized a force, fifty of whom were English, under Captain John Underhill, who had won renown in the Pequot war. Early in 1644 they undertook an expedition against the principal village of the Connecticut Indians, situated near Stamford.

THE TRADING POST.

A night-march brought them to the Indian town. They had hoped to surprise the Indians, but it was a bright moonlight night and they found then prepared. The Dutch numbered one hundred and fifty; the Indians, protected by their rude fortifications, were seven hundred strong. Advancing steadily, the Dutch repelled the sorties of the Indians, nearly two hundred of whom fell in the attempt to drive them back. Underhill at last succeeded in setting fire to the village. There was an end of the fighting; it was only slaughter now. But eight of the Indians escaped. This victory put a period to the strife. In the following summer a treaty was concluded with all the hostile tribes on the beautiful spot in front of Fort Amsterdam, now known as the Battery, and the pipe of peace was duly smoked in presence of the entire Dutch population. One week later a day of thanksgiving was kept by the Dutch for the conclusion of this terrible war, in the course of which nearly every one of their settlements had been attacked and destroyed.

NEW YORK IN 1664.

Early one morning in September, 1655, during the absence of Governor Stuyvesant, who was besieging the Swedes at Fort Christian, nearly two thousand Algonkin warriors swarmed through the streets of New Amsterdam, and after plundering the houses all day, were finally driven off in the evening after a desperate conflict. They then ravaged the adjacent country, killing the men and making prisoners of the women and children. Stuyvesant hastened back and took prompt measures to meet the emergency; but, instead of attacking the savages, by a prudent and conciliatory course he avoided further trouble, and procured a lasting peace and the return of all the captives.

PETER STUYVESANT.

On the Pacific coast, Sir Francis Drake, the first Englishman who sailed round the world, discovered "a fair and good bay," which may have been that of San Francisco, and remained there long enough to refit his vessel and to build a fort upon the shore. He took possession of the country for Queen Elizabeth with the usual formalities, erecting a post upon which an engraved plate of brass was placed, bearing, besides the picture and arms of the Queen, and Drake's arms, the statement of the free resignation of the country by the king and people into her hands.

With the Indians Drake maintained the most friendly relations. Soon after he landed he received a visit from the king of the country, a man of comely presence and stature, who with his train appeared in great pomp. In front of him marched a tall man, with the sceptre or mace of black wood a yard and a half long. Upon it hung two crowns, with three long chains of bone; these had innumerable links and were marks of honor. The king was dressed in rabbit-skins. The common people were almost naked, but their hair was tied with many feathers. Their faces were painted, and they all brought with them some present. The sceptre bearer and another made long speeches, and then there was a dance and a song. They were then understood to ask Drake "to become their king and governor," the king singing with all the rest; and more fully to declare their meaning, set the crown upon Drake's head and encircled his neck with their chains. They then saluted him by the title of Hioh, or king, and sang and danced to show their joy not only at this visit of the gods, but that Drake, the great god, was become their king and patron.

BEGINNING OF NEW YORK.

In the interior the natives were found living in villages. Their houses were round holes in the ground, surmounted by poles which met in the centre, the whole being covered with earth to keep out water. The door, "made sloping like the scuttle of a ship," was also the chimney. The people slept in these homes on rushes, on the ground around a fire in the middle. The country was fruitful. Deer and wild horses were plenty. The natives were loving and tractable, and expressed great sorrow at Drake's departure. In his narrative of this voyage, Drake sets forth fully the abundance of gold in California.

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.

The natives who met the founder of Pennsylvania were Lenni-Lenape, who formerly had their seat beyond the Alleghanies, whence they emigrated to the Hudson and the Delaware. The Raritan, Navesink, Mingo, and Assanpink creeks and rivers, preserve for us the names of the tribes commonly known as Delawares. They were of a warlike disposition, and frequently fought with their Indian neighbors. At the time of Penn's visit they had been conquered by and were subjects of the fierce Iroquois.

WILLIAM PENN.

Penn had thus described them: "They are tall, straight, tread strong and clever, and walk with a lofty chin. Their custom of rubbing the body with bear's fat gives them a swarthy color. They have little black eyes. Their heads and countenances have nothing of the negro type, and I have seen as comely European-like faces among them as on the other side of the sea. Their language is lofty, yet narrow; like short-hand in writing, one word serveth in the place of three, and the rest are supplied by the understanding of the hearers. I have made it my business to learn it that I might not want an interpreter on any occasion.

"In liberality they excel; nothing is too good for their friend. Give them a fine gun, coat, or other thing, it may pass twenty hands before it sticks; light of heart, strong affections, but soon spent. The justice they have is pecuniary. In case they kill a woman, they pay double; and the reason they render is that she breedeth children, which the man cannot do. It is rare that they fall out, if sober, and if drunk they forgive it, saying it was the drink and not the man that abased them."

LANDING OF WILLIAM PENN AT PHILADELPHIA.

At Penn's first interview with the Delawares, Taminent, the chief sachem, sat in the middle of a semicircle composed of old men and councillors. At a little distance back sat the young people. One of the sachems addressed Penn, during whose "talk" no one whispered or smiled. Penn and his friends were without arms; he was easily distinguished by a blue silk network sash. The sachem wore a chaplet, with a small horn projecting from it, as a symbol of sovereignty.

The name of the famous Delaware sachem with whom Penn made his treaty has been handed down to posterity in a very singular manner. Notwithstanding the discredit into which it has latterly fallen, the name of Tammany (Taminent) was an honored one, not only during the lifetime of the warrior and sage who bore it, but long after his decease.

A century ago it was adopted by a society in Philadelphia, who, on the first day of May in each year, walked in procession through the streets of that city, their hats decorated with buck's tails, to a place of meeting which they called the wigwam, where the day was passed in mirth and festivity. Since that period the honored name has been associated with a political faction in New York City, at whose meetings a semblance of Indian customs is still preserved.

PENN AND THE INDIANS.

Penn told the Indians that he desired to live in perfect amity with them, and that he and his friends came unarmed because they never used weapons. In addition to the price of the land he bought of them, he presented them with various articles of merchandise.

He tried in every way to conciliate them and gain their confidence. He walked with them at one of their earliest meetings, sat with them on the ground, and ate with them of their roasted acorns and hominy. They expressed their delight at this by hopping and jumping, in which the staid Quaker himself joined them, and, as the story goes, "beat them all." His open, straightforward, simple manner and kind treatment of them was repaid by friendly offices both to himself and his followers.

His famous treaty with them took place at Shakamaxon, on the northern edge of Philadelphia. Every right of the Indians was to be respected, and every difference adjusted by a tribunal composed of an equal number of men from each race. Neither oaths, signatures, nor seals were made use of in this treaty, and no written record of it exists; but it was sacredly kept for sixty years. Harmony also subsisted with the neighboring Indians, among whom were bands of the war-like Shawnees.

Chapter III

Virginia Colonized

It was time for England to assert her rights, and to plant colonies in the vast and fertile regions Cabot had discovered almost a century before. So thought Sir Walter Raleigh, one of the most brilliant Englishmen of an exceptionally brilliant period, when he despatched two vessels, under Captains Anadas and Barlow, to the New World.

Landing at Cape Hatteras in July, they received a friendly welcome, and trafficked with the natives, who came off to their ship in boats, and whom they described as "a handsome and goodly people, most gentle, loving, and faithful, void of all guile and treason, and such as lived after the manner of the golden age."

FORM OF RALEIGH'S SHIPS.

Among these visitors was Granganameo, the king's brother, who, taking a fancy to a pewter dish, made a hole through it and hung it about his neck for a breastplate. From him they learned that Wingina, the king of that country, was confined at home by a wound received in battle. The Christians drove excellent bargains with these simple heathen, the price of the pewter dish being twenty deerskins, worth five pounds sterling, and fifty deerskins for a copper kettle. The simple natives "marvelled much" at the whiteness of the strangers.

The chief's wife came to see them. She wore a long cloak of leather, with a piece of leather about her loins, around her forehead a band of white coral, and from her ears bracelets of large pearls "of the bigness of good pease" hung down to her middle. The other women wore pendants of copper, as did the children, five or six in an ear. Their boats were hollowed trunks of trees.

They kept their white visitors supplied with game and fruits, and did all they could for their comfort. Captain Barlow, with seven men, visited the chief's residence, and in his absence were most hospitably entertained by his wife. Her house of five rooms she placed at their disposal; she and her women provided bountifully for their wants, washing and drying their clothing, and even bathing their feet in warm water, and placing a guard over their boat while they slept. They were feasted upon hominy, boiled venison, and roasted fish, with a dessert of melons and other vegetables. After exploring the coast and acquiring information, the expedition, about the middle of September, returned to England. Two of the natives, Wanchese and Manteo, accompanied them on the return voyage.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

The glowing accounts they gave of the country made it easy to gather a company of emigrants to colonize Virginia, for so the country had been named by Queen Elizabeth. Under the lead of Ralph Lane, a soldier of some reputation, one hundred and eight colonists embarked at Plymouth in seven vessels, commanded by Sir Richard Greenville, a kinsman of Raleigh, and one of the best known of the naval captains of the age.

Two years later, Greenville, in his single ship off the Azores, fought fifteen great Spanish galleons for fifteen hours, and when at last mortally wounded, exclaimed with his latest breath, "Here die I, Richard Greenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended my life as a true soldier ought to do, fighting for his country, queen, religion, and honor." One of the ships that bore Lane's colony was commanded by Captain Amadas, another by a young captain named Thomas Cavendish, who a year afterwards made a famous voyage round the world. Thomas Hariot was the scientific man of this well-equipped expedition, and John White the artist.

Landing in August, Lane established his colony at Wocokon, on Roanoke Island. Here they found tobacco, to the use of which they soon accustomed themselves, maize, or Indian corn, which attracted their attention from its extraordinary productiveness, and the potato, which, when boiled, they found very palatable. The country was explored as far south as the Indian village of Secotan, and northwardly to the territory of the Chesapeakes in the bay of that name.

The inhabitants who were on the boundary of the Algonkin and Southern or Appalachian races were a mixture of both. Each clan obeyed its own chief, but all were associated in a general confederacy which was ruled by Powhatan, whose council-fire and residence were on the James River. They were described by one of the colonists as a very strong and lusty race, and swift warriors. He tells us, "Their skin is tawny, not so born, but with dyeing and painting themselves, in which they delight greatly. The maids shave close the forepart and sides of their heads, and leave the hair long behind, where it is tied up and hangs down to the hips. The married women wear their hair all of a length, but tied behind as that of the maid's is. The women scratch on their bodies and limbs with a sharp iron, pictures of birds, fishes, and beasts, and rub into the drawings lively colors, which dry into the flesh and are permanent. The people are witty and ingenious, but steal anything they can lay hands on—yea, are so practised in this art, that looking in our faces they would with their foot convey between their toes a chisel, knife, or any indifferent light thing, which, having once conveyed, they hold it an injury to take the same from them. They are naturally given to treachery, howbeit we could not find it in our travel up the river, but rather a most kind and loving people."

They were exceedingly fond of ornaments, some of which were very singular, not to say repulsive. An early traveller tells us, "Their ears they bore with holes, commonly two or three, and in the same they do hang heavy chains of stained pearl, bracelets of white bone, or shreds of copper beaten thin and bright, and wound up hollow, and with a great pride, certain fowles legs, eagles, hawks, turkeys, etc. The claws thrust through, they let hang upon the cheek to the full view, and some there be who will wear in these holes a small green and yellow live snake, near half a yard in length, which, crawling and lapping himself about his neck, oftentimes familiarly he suffereth to kiss his lips. Others wear a ded rat tyed by the tail, and such like conundrums."

Their towns were small, the largest containing but thirty dwellings. Their greatest chief could not muster more than seven hundred or eight hundred warriors. Mathematical instruments, the burning-glass, guns, clocks, mirrors, and the use of letters, attracted their superstitious regard, and the English were reverenced as superior beings. Fire-arms were terrible to them, and every sickness was attributed to wounds from invisible bullets discharged by unseen beings inhabiting the air.

"To make their children hardy," says an early writer, "they wash them in the river in the coldest mornings, and by paintings and ointments so tan their skins that after a year or two no weather will hurt them. To practise their children in the use of their bows and arrows, the mothers do not give them their breakfast in a morning before they have hit a mark which she appoints them to shoot at, and commonly so cunning (skilful) they will have them as, throwing up in the air a piece of moss or some light thing, the boy must with his arrow meet it in its fall and hit it, or else he shall not have his breakfast."

Gradually the friendly disposition of the Indians towards the colonists changed, owing to the greed and cruelty of the whites. They believed that the English were come to kill them and take their places. This belief led to a feeling of enmity. The English perceived it, and fearing a wide-spread conspiracy to destroy them, determined to anticipate it. Obtaining an interview with Wingina, the principal chief, who was wholly unsuspicious of their design, at a preconcerted signal the English fell upon him and his followers and put them all to death. It is not strange that acts of cruelty like these were remembered by the natives, and that savage retribution followed.

Very soon Lane's colony became dissatisfied; provisions were scarce, the Indians were unfriendly, and the colonists were homesick and anxious to return to England. The fleet of Sir Francis Drake opportunely arriving on the coast, he permitted them to embark, and thus ended the first attempt at English colonization. A few days after their departure a ship arrived, laden with all the stores needed by the colony. Greenville, with further supplies, also appeared a little too late. He left fifteen men on Roanoke Island to hold possession for England; they were all killed by the Indians.

Constant to his purpose of colonization, Raleigh now determined to plant a colony of emigrants, with their wives and families, who would make permanent homes in the New World. John White was appointed its governor. In the month of July, 1587, it arrived on the coast of North Carolina, and laid the foundations of the city of Raleigh on Roanoke Island.

Here the first white child of English parents was born to Eleanor Dare, the daughter of Governor White, and named Virginia from the place of its birth.

Captain Stafford, with twenty men, was sent to Croatan to seek lot the lost colonists. He heard that they had been set upon by the Indians, and after a sharp skirmish had taken boats and gone to a small island near Haterask, and afterwards had gone none knew whither. A party, under the guidance of Manteo, an Indian who had accompanied Amadas and Barlow to England, was sent to avenge their supposed murder. By mistake they attacked and killed some members of a friendly tribe. Such mistakes have been only too common in our intercourse with the Indians.

When the ship which had brought them was about to return, the emigrants prevailed on Governor White to go back and see to the prompt despatch of reinforcements and supplies. No seasonable relief, however, arrived, and the fate of the colony remains to this day a mystery. Owing to the threatened invasion of England by the Spanish armada, and to other untoward events, it was not until three years had elapsed that White could return to seek for his colony. It had disappeared, leaving no trace behind. He found the island of Roanoke a desert. Raleigh's efforts and sacrifices to colonize America were all in vain; but his faith was still unshaken, and to his friend Cecil he wrote the memorable words, "I shall yet live to see it an Inglishe nation." America owes a large debt of gratitude to the illustrious man who did so much to promote her colonization.

A period of twenty years now elapsed before a permanent English settlement was made. St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest town in the United States, had been founded by the Spaniards in 1565, and in 1605 the French had begun the settlement of Nova Scotia. On the 14th of May, 1607, Captain Christopher Newport's colony planted itself at Jamestown, Virginia. The colonists at once set manfully to work, felling trees and erecting a fort.

Three weeks before, a party had explored the James River, visiting on the way several Indian kings, or werowances, as they were called, "the people in all places kindly entertaining us," says Captain John Smith, one of the explorers, "dancing, and feasting us with strawberries, mulberries, bread, fish, and other country provisions, whereof we had plenty, for which Captain Newport kindly requited them with bells, pins, needles, and glass beads, which so contented them that his liberality made them follow us from place to place, and ever kindly to respect us."

A remarkable man has come upon the scene, the first to render illustrious the otherwise prosaic name of John Smith. He was now twenty-eight years of age, and from his earliest youth had led a roving and adventurous life. His military career began in the service of the gallant Henry of Navarre, under whose banner we find at the same time Captain Thomas Dudley, afterwards governor of the Massachusetts colony. Smith's exploits in the wars with the Turks in Hungary, his capture and sale in the slave market at Adrianople, his cruel treatment by his master, and his escape, as told by himself, make a most entertaining and romantic, if not a strictly veracious, narrative.

ARRIVAL AT JAMESTOWN, 1607.

While a slave in the Crimea he was clothed in the skin of a wild beast, an iron collar was fastened about his neck, and he was cuffed and kicked about like a dog. One day he avenged himself by breaking his master's skull with a flail, and then mounting his horse fled in disguise to Poland, and thence made his way to Morocco. Here he joined an English roan-of-war, and after a fierce sea-fight arrived in England just in time to embark in the colonization of Virginia.

These experiences, taken in connection with his subsequent career in Virginia, make Captain John Smith by far the most picturesque character in our annals. Even if we give up the chivalric exploit of the slaying of the three Turks, one after the other, in single combat before the walls of Regall, for the pastime of the ladies, and the romantic story of his rescue from death by Pocahontas, enough remains to immortalize the name of Captain John Smith in all time to come.

As soon as the natives became aware of the purpose of the whites to dispossess them of their territory, they began to be troublesome. They would skulk about at night, and hang around the fort by day, bringing sometimes presents of deer, but given to theft of small articles, and showing jealousy of the invasion of their soil. The day before the return of a second exploring party, two hundred Indians attacked the fort. They fought bravely, but were driven off after an hour's fight by the guns of the ship. In this affair the colonists had eleven men wounded and a boy killed. For several days alarms and attacks continued, and it was unsafe for any to venture beyond the fort.

Newport's colony consisted mainly of "gentlemen." No more useless commodity could have been sent here. Among them were ruined spend-thrifts, broken tradesmen, fortune-hunters, rakes, and libertines. They expected to find gold; they found instead danger, disappointment, toil, and sickness.

"We did not come here to work," they said.

"Then you shall not eat," said the redoubtable Captain Smith. "The labor of a few industrious men shall not be consumed to maintain idle loiterers."

In order to stop profanity Smith kept a daily account of every man's oaths, and at night a can of cold water poured down the offender's sleeve was the penalty for each transgression. To the company in England who had sent out the colony he wrote: "When you send again, I entreat you send thirty carpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, or diggers up of roots, well provided, rather than a thousand of such as we have." After Smith's return to England they had things their own way; they plundered the Indians, who in turn slew them, and were reduced by famine to the greatest straits. When relieved by Sir Thomas Gates, from four hundred and ninety their number had dwindled to sixty.

With so many drones in the hive there was soon a scarcity of food. But for the kindness of the natives, who brought them maize and other provisions, they must have starved. Smith made several excursions up the Chickahominy River to trade with the Indians for corn. When, as it sometimes happened, the savages were insolent, and refused to trade, he brought them to terms by force of arms. But for his energy in procuring supplies, and his success in dealing with the Indians, it is probable that the colony would have famished. With all his vanity and impatience of restraint, Smith possessed extraordinary executive ability.

Not long after the settlement was begun, Smith, while engaged in exploring the sources of the Chickahominy, was set upon by the natives. Seizing the Indian guide who had accompanied him, he used him as a shield against their arrows, at the same time defending himself with his pistol. He was soon surrounded by two hundred Indians, led by Opechanganough, chief of the Pamunkeys, the brother of Powhatan. Sure of making him prisoner they would not shoot, but laid down their bows and demanded his arms. Let the valiant captain tell the rest of the story in his own words:

RUINS OF JAMESTOWN.

"In retiring," says Smith, "being in the midst of a low quagmire, and minding them more than my steps, I stept fast into the quagmire, and also the Indian in drawing me forth. Thus surprised, I resolved to try their mercies and cast my arms from me, till which none durst approach me.

"Having seized on me they drew me out, diligently chafed my benumbed limbs, and led me to the king. I presented him with a compass-dial, describing by my best means the use thereof; whereat he so amazedly admired, as he suffered me to proceed in a discourse of the roundness of the earth, the course of the sun, moon, stars, and planets. (Much of this learned discourse must have been thrown away upon an unlettered savage.) With kind speeches and bread he requited me. I expected they would execute me, yet they used me with what kindness they could. I was taken to their town, six miles off, only made as arbors and covered with mats, which they remove as occasion requires. For supper I had a quarter of venison and some ten pounds of bread; what I left was reserved for me. Each morning three women presented me three great platters of fine bread, and more venison than ten men could eat. I had my gowne, points, and garters; my compass and tablets they gave me again. Though eight ordinarily guarded me, I wanted not what they could devise to content me, and still our longer acquaintance increased our better affection."

Smith also greatly astonished the Indians by writing a letter to be sent to his friends, for they could not understand how a message could be put on paper. And when the articles for which he had sent were delivered to diem, they regarded him as a wonderful powwow or conjuror.

Some days later he was conducted to the residence of Powhatan, the principal chief of the country, near the historic field of Yorktown, but on the other side of the river.

Powhatan was at this time about seventy years of age, and of majestic appearance. He was tall, well proportioned, and exceedingly vigorous. By his bravery, energy, and policy he had raised himself to kingly power. He swayed many nations upon the great rivers and bays, as far as the Patuxent, most of whom he had conquered. There were thirty of these, with a population of twenty-four thousand. He wore an ornamented robe of raccoon-skins, and his head-dress was composed of many feathers wrought into a kind of crown. He usually kept a guard of forty or fifty of the most resolute and well formed of his warriors about him, especially when he slept; but after the English came into his country he increased it to about two hundred. Smith's interview with this great chief, who received him with much ceremony, is best given in his own words:

"Arriving at Woramocomoco, on the Pamunkey [York] River," says Smith, "their emperor was proudly lying upon a bedstead a foot high, upon ten or twelve mats, richly hung with many chains of great pearls about his neck, and covered with a great covering of raccoon-skins. At his head sat a woman; at his feet another. On each side, sitting on a mat upon the ground, were ranged his chief men, ten in a rank, and behind them as many young women, each having a great chain of white beads over their shoulders, their heads painted red. At my entrance before the king all the people gave a great shout. The Queen of Appomattuck was appointed to bring me water to wash my hands, and another brought a bunch of feathers instead of a towel to dry them.

"With such a grave and majestical countenance as drew me into admiration to see such state in a naked savage, Powhatan kindly welcomed me with good words and great platters of sundry victuals, assuring me his friendship, and my liberty within four days. He much delighted in Opechanganough's relation of what I had described to him, and oft examined me upon the same. He promised to give me corn, venison, or what I wanted to feed us. Hatchets and copper we should make him, and none should disturb us. This I promised to perform; and thus having, with all the kindness he could devise, sought to content me, he sent me home."

When Powhatan inquired of Smith the cause of their coming, he was careful not to let him know that the English had come to settle in the country. He told him that in a fight with the Spaniards they had been overpowered and compelled to retreat, and by stress of weather had to put to that shore. Perhaps Powhatan believed him. Smith had a decided knack for romancing.

This account of his captivity was written by Smith at the time, and was soon afterwards published in London. In it nothing is said about Pocahontas saving his life. That romantic story, first published sixteen years later, and since everywhere repeated, has latterly been questioned. It is wholly inconsistent with what Smith had previously told of the kind treatment he received from Powhatan. It is as follows:

"Having feasted him (Smith) after the best barbarous manner they could, a long consultation was held; but the conclusion was, two great stones were brought before Powhatan; then as many as could laid hands on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs to beat out his brains, Pocahontas, the king's dearest daughter, when no entreaty could prevail, got his head in her arms and laid her own upon his to save him from death, whereat the emperor was contented he should live to make him hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper, for they thought him as well capable of all occupations as themselves." There can be little doubt that Smith owed his escape from death to his own native wit and readiness.

Smith thus describes some of the religious and other ceremonies performed by their medicine-men, or powwows:

"Three or four days after my taking," he says, "seven of them came rushing in, painted half black, half red, in the house where I lay; round about him these fiends danced a pretty while; then each, with a rattle, began, at ten o'clock in the morning, to sing about the fire, which they environed with a circle of meal, and afterwards, a foot or two from that, at the end of each song, laid down two or three grains of wheat, continuing this order till they have included six hundred or seven hundred in a half-circle, and, after that, two or three more circles in like manner, a hand's-breadth from the others; that done, at each song they put between every three, two, or five grains a little stick, so continuing, as an old woman her paternoster.

"One, disguised with a great skin, his head hung round with little skins of weasels and other vermin, with a coronet of feathers on his head, painted as ugly as possible, came skipping in with a fearful yell, and a rattle in his hand. At the end of each song he made many signs and demonstrations, with strange and vehement actions; great cakes of deer suet; deer, and tobacco he cast in the fire. Their howling would continue till six o'clock in the evening ere they would depart. Three days they used this ceremony, the meaning whereof was to show if I intended them well or no.

POCAHONTAS SHIELDS HIM FROM THEIR CLUBS.

Each morning, in the coldest frosts, the principal, to the number of twenty or thirty, assembled themselves in a circle a good distance from the town, where they told me they consulted where to hunt the next day. So fat they fed me that I much doubted they intended to have sacrificed me to the power they worship. To cure the sick, a man with a rattle, and extreme howling, shouting, singing, and such violent gestures and antic actions, labors over the patient. In passing over the water in foul weather they offer tobacco to their god to conciliate his favor. Death they lament with great sorrow and weeping; their kings they bury betwixt two mats, within their houses, with all his beads, jewels, hatchets, and copper; the others in graves like ours. For the crown their heirs inherit not, but the first heirs of the sister."

The colonists were constantly in fear of the savages, who lurked in the neighboring forest. One of them brought in a glittering stone one day, and said he would show them where there was a great abundance of it. Smith went to see this mine, but was led hither and thither until he lost patience, and seeing that the Indian was fooling him, gave him twenty lashes with a rope. He then handed him his bow and arrows, told him to shoot if he dared, and let him go.

Smith was always prompt and "square" with the Indians, keeping his promises to them, and never hesitating to attack or punish them when necessary. They feared and respected him. Smith was a great boaster, but there was no nonsense about him.

He was a born explorer, and in one of his voyages discovered and sailed up the Potomac River, collecting from the natives a quantity of furs. Fish were so abundant that his men attempted, though without success, to catch them with frying-pans; the fishes very properly declined this premature introduction to the frying-pan, not being dressed for the occasion. In a subsequent journey he made acquaintance with the Susquehannocks, a tribe of large stature and of honest and simple disposition. "Their voices were proportioned to their size," says Smith, "sounding, as it were, a great voice in a vault or cave, as an echo."

Early in the following year Smith, with Newport and about twenty others, went to Powhatan's residence to trade. Three hundred savages conducted Smith to Powhatan, who received him in great state. Before his house were ranged forty or fifty great platters of bread. Entering his house, "with loud tunes they made all signs of great joy."

The emperor sat upon his bed of mats, his pillow of leather embroidered with pearls and white beads, and his attire "a fair robe of skins, as large as an Irish mantle." He welcomed Smith with kindness, caused him to sit beside him, and with pleasant converse renewed their old acquaintance. Smith presented him with a suit of red cloth, a white greyhound, and a hat. Powhatan professed a great desire to see Smith's "father," Captain Newport, upon whose greatness Smith had before freely enlarged. That night the English were feasted liberally, and entertained with singing, dancing, and orations.

Next day Newport came on shore, and presents were exchanged. Newport gave Powhatan a white boy, thirteen years old, named Thomas Savage. This boy remained a long time with the Indians, and was useful to the colonists as an interpreter. In return, Powhatan gave Newport a bag of beans, and an Indian, named Namontack, for his servant. The party stayed three or four days, feasting, dancing, and trading with the natives.

In the matter of trade, Smith says of Powhatan, "he carried himself so proudly, yet discreetly (in his savage manner), as made us all to admire his natural gifts.

"'Captain Newport,' said he, 'it is not agreeable to my greatness in this peddling manner to trade for trifles; therefore lay down all your commodities together, what I like I will take, and in recompense give you what I think fitting their value.'"

Smith saw through his craftiness and warned Newport; but the latter resented his interference and placed all his goods before Powhatan, who in return gave him only a few bushels of corn, whereas he expected to have obtained twenty hogsheads. Smith, who was as wily as the Indian, showed him, as if by accident, a few blue beads which he pretended he did not wish to part with, as they were of great price, being of the color of the skies, and worn only by great kings. He so stimulated Powhatan's eagerness to possess such treasures that for a pound of blue beads he paid him two or three hundred bushels of corn.

It had been decided by the company in England to crown Powhatan, and to present him with a basin and ewer, bed, bedding, and clothes. The ceremony of coronation, which took place at Worawocomoco, is thus humorously described by Smith:

"The presents were brought him, his bed and furniture set up, his scarlet cloke and apparel with much adoe put on him. But a foule trouble there was to make him kneel to receive his crown; he not knowing the majesty nor meaning of a crown, nor bending of the knee, endured so many persuasions, examples, and illustrations as tired them all. At last, by bearing hard on his shoulders, he a little stooped, and three having the crown in their hands put it on his head, when, by the warning of a pistol, the boats were prepared with such a volley of shot that made the king start up in a horrible fear, till he saw all was well. Then, remembering himself to congratulate their kindness, he gave his old shoes and his mantle to Captain Newport."

Of this absurd ceremonial Smith observes, "We had his favor and better for a plain piece of copper, till this stately kind of solicitation made him so much overvalue himself that he respected us as much as nothing at all."

Nothing could be more plausible or apparently more free from treacherous intent than Powhatan's talk with Smith, when upon one occasion the latter, to extort food for the famished settlers which the Indians withheld, threatened to take it by force.

"Why should you," said the chief, "take by force that from us which you can have by love? Why should you destroy us who have provided you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and fly into the woods, and then you must, consequently, perish by wronging your friends. What is the cause of your jealousy? You see us unarmed, and willing to supply your wants if you will come in a friendly manner, and not with guns and swords as to invade an enemy. I am not so simple as not to know it is better to eat good meat, lie well, and sleep quietly, to laugh and be merry with the English, and being their friend, to have copper, hatchets, and whatever else I want, than to fly from all, to lie cold in the woods, feed upon acorns, roots, and such trash, and to be so hunted that I cannot rest, eat, or sleep, unless in this miserable manner to end my miserable life; and, Captain Smith, this might be your fate too, through your rashness and unadvisedness. I, therefore, entreat you to peaceable counsels, and, above all, I insist that the guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy and uneasiness, be removed and sent away."

CAPTAIN SMITH SUBDUING THE CHIEF.

Smith rightly interpreted this cunning speech exactly contrary to what it expressed, and it confirmed rather than lessened his former suspicions that the wily chief sought an opportunity to destroy them. At length, finding all artifices in vain, Powhatan resolved to fall upon the English in their cabins in the night. From this peril they were saved by Pocahontas, who came alone to Jamestown, in a dismal night, through the woods, and informed Smith of her father's design. To show his gratitude, Smith says he would have given her "such things as she delighted in, but with the tears rolling down her cheeks she said she durst not be seen to have any, for if Powhatan should know it she were but dead; and so she ran away by herself as she came."

Another of Smith's wonderful exploits must now be recorded. With fifteen of his men he visited Opechanganough's residence, where he soon found himself surrounded by seven hundred armed savages seeking his life. Boldly charging the king with intent to murder him, he challenged him to single combat, Smith to be as naked as the king. The latter still professed friendship, but Smith seizing him by his long hair, in the midst of his guard, with his pistol at his breast led him trembling and near dead with fear among all his people. The king gave up his arms, and the savages, astonished at the daring of Smith, threw down their bows and loaded his men with corn and other commodities. A picture of this astonishing feat in Smith's "Generall Historic," represents the savage king as of gigantic stature, Smith appearing like a boy beside him.

Smith once encountered the king of Paspahegh, "a most strong, stout savage," who, seeing that the Englishman had only his sword, attempted to shoot him. Smith grappled with him, and the savage bore him into the river to drown him. Finally Smith got him by the throat and nearly strangled him. Then drawing his sword he was about to cut off his head, when the king begged his life so earnestly that Smith led him a prisoner to the fort and put him in chains. The chief afterwards succeeded in making his escape.

If the Indian was treacherous, so was the white man. Captain Argall, an English trader, with the gift of a copper kettle for himself, and a few toys for his squaw, induced a chief to entice Pocahontas on board his vessel. No wonder she had no suspicion of this base design, for she had proved her friendship for the English on more than one occasion, at a great sacrifice to herself.

This Indian maiden, as we are told by Smith, "far excelled all others for feature, countenance, and proportion," and for wit and spirit was "the only nonpareil of this country." In the early days of the colony, when but about twelve years of age, she had been sent by her father to Jamestown, to procure the release of some Indians detained at the fort. She was accompanied by Rawhunt, her father's trusty messenger, who assured Smith of Powhatan's love and kindness, in that he had sent his child whom he most esteemed to see him, and a deer and bread besides for a present. The prisoners were given to Pocahontas "in regard to her father's kindness, and Pocahontas also we requited with such trifles as contented her."

Pocahontas was taken by Argall to Jamestown, and a ransom was demanded of her father. Angry and indignant, as he well might be, Powhatan prepared for war.

MARRIAGE OF POCAHONTAS.

One of the few romances that enliven the pages of our early history prevented such a calamity, and was the beginning of a firm and lasting peace. It happened that this dusky Indian maiden was beloved by John Rolfe, a worthy young Englishman who was the first to cultivate the tobacco plant In Virginia. Gaining her favor, he asked her in marriage. Her baptism was soon followed by her nuptials with Rolfe. In April, 1614, with the approbation of her father and friends, Opachisea, her uncle, gave the bride away, and the marriage ceremony was performed according to the forms of the English Church. Two years later the pair visited England. She was taken to the court, where she was known as the Lady Rebecca, and was received with great favor, everywhere attracting general attention as the daughter of the Virginia emperor, but died just as she was about to return to her native land, at the age of twenty-one. Among the distinguished Virginians who claim descent from this Indian princess was the celebrated John Randolph, of Roanoke.

While Pocahontas was in England, Smith went to see her. She had believed him dead, and was displeased at his neglect of her. Being a king's daughter, he would not permit her to call him father, at which she was greatly offended. "I will call you father," so she told him, and you shall call me child. They did tell me always you were dead, for your countrymen will lie much, and I knew no other till I came to Plymouth."

POCAHONTAS.

The Lady Rebecca and her husband had been accompanied to England by an Indian named Tomocomo, who was commissioned by Powhatan to inquire into the state of the country, and to note the number of its inhabitants. Arriving at Plymouth, he procured a long stick and began the performance of his task by cutting a notch for each person he saw. This primitive manner of taking the census was soon abandoned. His report of the state of the country he visited, if he ever made one, would to-day be very interesting reading.

An unlucky accident, which nearly cost Smith his life, put an end to his connection with the colony, and compelled him to go to England for proper surgical aid. While lying in his boat an explosion of gunpowder tore the flesh from his thigh and set fire to his clothing. He threw himself out of the boat into the water, and was nearly drowned before he could be rescued. He left Virginia in the autumn of 1609, and never returned. His efforts to preserve the colony, and to restrain the evil and turbulent spirits with which it abounded, had made him unpopular, and his life had been many times endangered by the machinations of his enemies. His later years were employed in explorations of the New England coast, in the composition of his valuable and interesting memoirs and descriptions of the New World, and in efforts to interest London capitalists in its colonization.

The only monument to the memory of this extraordinary man is a little marble shaft on the southerly summit of Star Island, one of the Isles of Shoals. His epitaph, given in Stow's "Survey of London," begins thus:

A tablet, with three Turks' heads engraved upon it, in St. Sepulchre's Church, London, marks the place of his burial.

Powhatan's successor, the famous Opechanganough, the gigantic chief who had captured Smith, for twenty-five years acted an important part in the history of Virginia. During his sway the most terrible of Indian massacres took place. Idle and vicious white men had stolen the Indians' corn, driven the game out of the country, and wronged them in many ways. Their lands had been taken from them, and scattered settlements had sprung up on the bay and the rivers running into it, in many cases remote from each other. The haughty Opechanganough had ever been intent on the destruction of the English, and by a course of craft and policy had lulled them into a fatal security. Having matured his plans, a general rising of the Indians took place, and three hundred and forty-seven persons, including six members of the council, were cut off.

The secrecy and dissimulation of the Indians were perfect. Treachery and falsehood are the natural weapons of the weak and timorous. Only two days before the fatal blow fell they sent one of their youth to live with the English and learn their language. On the very morning of the massacre they came unarmed among them and traded as usual, and even sat down to breakfast with their victims in several instances. No respect was paid to age, sex, or condition. Their best friends were among their first victims.

Those attacked were at a distance from Jamestown; there, fortunately, the people had warning. The night before the massacre a converted Indian was told by his brother of the proposed extermination of the English, and was urged to do his part by murdering his master. This seems to have been the only instance in which any obligation to the white man for benefits received was remembered. The Indian revealed the plot to his master.

Before daylight the planter, who lived opposite to Jamestown, crossed the river and warned the inhabitants. The people assembled with their arms, word was sent to all the settlements within reach, and the larger part of the colonists were by this means saved, the Indians making no attack where they seemed likely to encounter resistance.

Virginia was well-nigh ruined. The settlements were reduced from eighty to less than eight. All the smaller settlements and plantations were abandoned. Industries of all kinds ceased, except in the vicinity of the large towns, and the colonists at once set about to take "a sharp revenge upon the bloody miscreants." They destroyed the towns, the crops, the fishing weirs of the natives, shot them down as they would wild beasts wherever found, tracked them with blood-hounds to their hiding-places in the forest, and trained their mastiffs to tear them in pieces. This state of things lasted for years, and it was long before the planters returned to their old occupations.

A second massacre of the settlers, also planned by the now aged Opechanganough, who, borne upon a litter, accompanied his warriors, lasted two days. Three hundred persons were murdered. Its progress was finally checked by Sir William Berkeley, at the head of an armed force.

The old chief was taken prisoner not long afterwards, and carried to Jamestown. The soldier who guarded him barbarously shot him, inflicting a mortal wound. Just before he died, observing a curious crowd about hum, he roused himself from his lethargy, and in a tone of authority demanded that the governor should be summoned. When he came, Opechanganough indignantly said to him,

"Had it been my fortune to have taken Sir William Berkeley prisoner, I would not meanly have exposed him as a show to my people."

From this period the native population of Virginia gradually disappeared, leaving as memorials only the names of their mountains and streams.

Chapter IV

The New England Indians

Only a few years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, the coast of New England had been visited by a pestilence which had swept off nearly all the natives. A few Indians were seen hovering about soon after their arrival, but they quickly disappeared when pursued.

THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS.

Their first encounter with the natives took place at Wellfleet, while they were exploring the coast for a suitable place for a settlement. Edward Winslow, afterwards governor of Plymouth colony, has left this account of it:

"All of a sudden," says Winslow, "we heard a great and strange cry. One of the company came running and said, 'They are men! Indians, Indians!' and withal their arrows came flying amongst us. The cry of our enemies was dreadful, especially when our men ran to recover their arms, which lay on the shore at a little distance, as by the good providence of God they did.

"In the mean time Captain Miles Standish made a shot, and after him another. Other two of us were ready, and there were only four of us which had their arms ready, and stood before the open side of our barricade, which was first assaulted. We called to them in the shallop to know how it was with them, and they answered,

"'Well, well!' every one; and 'Be of good courage.'

"There was a lusty man, and no whit less valiant, who was thought to be their captain, stood behind a tree within half a musket-shot of us, and there let his arrows fly at us. He was seen to shoot three arrows, which were all avoided, for he at whom the first was aimed stooped down and it flew over him. He stood three shots of a musket. At length one took, as he said, full aim at him, after which he gave an extraordinary cry, and away they went, all. We followed them about a quarter of a mile. Then we shouted altogether several times, and shot off a couple of muskets, and so returned. This we did that they might see we were not afraid of them nor discouraged.

"By the special providence of God none of these arrows hit us, though many came close by us and on every side of ns, and some coats that hung in our barricade were shot through and through."

FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE INDIANS.

Captain Miles Standish, who was so conspicuous in the military annals of Plymouth Colony, and who was the leader of as their warlike expeditions, had seen service, having fought the Spaniards in Holland. He was a fiery, hot-tempered little man, and afraid of nothing. Finding himself upon one occasion in company with Pecksuot, an Indian of great strength and courage, and suspected of plotting against the English, Standish, exasperated by his taunts and boasts of what he would do to the English, snatched the warrior's knife from his belt, and after a long struggle killed him with it. Others of Pecksuot's party were killed at the same time by Standish's companions. It was with reference to this affair that the Rev. John Robinson, father of the Plymouth church, said, "Oh that they had converted some before they had killed any."

Not long after the landing at Plymouth, Samoset, an Indian of the Wampauong tribe, who had picked up a little of their language from the English fishermen at Pemaquid, boldly entered the town, exclaiming, "Welcome, Englishmen!" This was the first Indian with whom the Pilgrims had spoken. In the name of his nation he invited them to possess the soil, the old occupants of which were no longer living.

"WELCOME, ENGLISHMEN."

Samoset is described as "a tall, straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind, only short before, none on his face at all. He was free of speech and of a seemly carriage." Being naked, they gave him a hat, a pair of stockings and shoes, a shirt, and a piece of cloth to tie about his waist. They learned a great deal from him about the Indians of the country. He came again to them, bringing five others with him. They were dressed in skins, most of them having long hose up to their groins, close made, and above, to their waists, another leather, "altogether like the Irish trousers. They are of complexion like our English gypsies Some trussed up their hair before with a feather broadwise, like a fan, another (had) a fox-tail hanging out." They professed to be friendly, and sang and danced after their fashion. Some had their faces painted black, four or five fingers broad, others in a different manner.

PLYMOUTH WILDERNESS.

Soon afterwards another Indian named Squanto came to them. He was one of those who had been carried off by Captain Hunt, but escaped to England, and came back to his native land with Captain Dermer. He acted as interpreter to the colonists, taught them how to plant Indian-corn, where to take fish and procure other commodities, and, says Governor Bradford, "was a special instrument sent of God for their good, beyond their anticipation." After a while Squanto began to abuse his power and influence over the Indians, and received a sharp reprimand from Governor Winslow, who, however, admits that he was "so necessary and profitable an instrument as at that time we could not spare him." Hobbomuk was another of these natives who rendered invaluable aid to the pilgrims in the time of their early hardship and privation.

About twenty different tribes of Indians were found in New England. They were generally independent of each other, but sometimes united for mutual protection or for the purpose of making war. The chiefs of tribes or clans had such power only as they were entitled to by mental or physical superiority. The Pequots, Narragansets, Pokanokets, Massachusetts, and Pawtuckets were the principal tribes. There were also the Mohegans and Nipmucks, and the Abenakis of Maine. The Pequots, the most powerful, numbered about four thousand. Next came the Narragansets, in Rhode Island, with about one thousand. The Pokanokets, or Wampanoags, located in Plymouth colony, were much inferior to the Narragansets, whose sachem, Canonicus, was a chief of great ability.

To test the mettle of the white intruders, Canonicus, soon after they landed, sent them a bundle of arrows wrapped in a rattlesnake's skin. To this challenge the English replied by returning the skin filled with powder and ball, and with it a message from Governor Bradford, telling them that he desired peace, but if the Narragansets wanted war they might begin as soon as they had a mind to, and that he was prepared. This prompt defiance was enough, and no further hostile demonstrations were made by the Narragansets for many years.

The Massachusetts Indians, once a numerous people and often at war with the Narragansets, lived about the bay of that name. They comprised the Nausets, on Cape Cod; Pokanokets, or Wampanoags, between Plymouth and Narraganset Bay; Massachusetts; Pennacooks, on the northern frontier extending into New Hampshire; and the Nipmucks, in central Massachusetts, extending into Connecticut and Rhode Island. The Pawtuckets, also nearly destroyed by the great pestilence, were north of the Massachusetts tribes, and included the Pennacooks and other smaller clans. The language of all these tribes was substantially the same.

Massasoit, the Wampanoag sachem, paid an early visit to the Pilgrims, and was received with all the ceremony the condition of the colony allowed. He and his men were conducted to a new house, a green rug was spread upon the floor, and several cushions for Massasoit and his men to sit down upon. Then came the English governor, followed by a drummer and a trumpeter and a few soldiers, and after kissing one another all sat down.

INTERVIEW WITH MASSASOIT.

The chief was described at this time as "a very lustie man, in his best years, an able body, grave of countenance, and spare of speech. His face was painted of a sad red, and both face and head were well oiled, so that he looked greasily. A great chain of white bone beads was around his neck, on which hung a little bag of tobacco; this he used himself and passed to the English. In his bosom he carried a great, long knife. He marvelled much at our trumpet, and some of his men would sound it as well as they could. Some were naked, all were painted, and all were tall, strong men. The governor filled the king's kettle with peas, which pleased them well, and so they went their way." Massasoit's residence was at Mount Hope, which is now included in the town of Bristol, Rhode Island.

A treaty of friendship was soon made, and it was sacredly kept for more than forty years. Massasoit gained an important ally, for the powerful Narragansets were his enemies, and the English obtained security and the opportunity of a profitable trade.

THE PALACE OF KING MASSASOIT.

Some time afterwards, Edward Winslow and Stephen Hopkins visited the sachem at his home. Their account of this visit gives us an amusing glimpse of Indian domestic life. He had no victuals for them, and night coming on they retired supperless to bed. This article of furniture consisted of planks, laid a foot from the ground, and a thin mat upon them. "The chief and his wife occupied one end of the bed," says Winslow, "and we the other. Two of his men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us, so that we were worse weary of our lodging than our journey. What with bad lodging, the savages' barbarous singing (for they used to sing themselves asleep), vermin within doors and mosquitoes without, we could hardly sleep, and feared if we stayed longer we should lack strength to get home. When we departed, Massasoit was both grieved and ashamed that he could no better entertain us."

Massasoit, being at one time dangerously sick, sent word to his friends at Plymouth, who sent Winslow to him with medicines and cordials. These he administered successfully, and Massasoit, believing that Winslow had saved his life, was very grateful. Just as Winslow was about to depart he informed him of a plot by some of his sub-sachems to cut off the English, which he had refused to join and had used his efforts to prevent. Massasoit remained a fast friend to the colonists to the day of his death.

EDWARD WINSLOW.

The tribute of Hobbomuk to the dead chief shows how strong was his attachment to his master. "My loving sachem, my loving sachem!" he exclaimed with tender accent, "many have I known, but never any like thee." Then turning to Winslow, he said, "While you live on will never see his like. He was no liar, nor bloody and cruel like other Indians; he was easily reconciled towards such as had offended him, and he governed his people better with few blows than others did with many."

Captain John Oldham, while on a trading expedition at Block Island, was murdered by some Narraganset Indians. Oldham had been the first deputy from Watertown to the General Court, and was a prominent and highly-respected citizen. What led to the catastrophe, whether it was occasioned by a thirst for plunder or out of revenge for some injury from him, is not known.

Immediately after the murder, Captain John Gallup, of Boston, who with two sons and a servant, "a stout, strong fellow," was in a larger vessel, also trading with the Indians near Block Island, discovered a vessel making off from the shore. He saw that she was awkwardly handled and appeared full of Indians. Believing her a piratical craft, Gallup determined upon her capture.

Having the advantage of a good breeze he made all sail towards her, and struck her on her quarter with such force as almost overset her. This frightened the Indians so much that six of them jumped into the sea and were drowned. Gallup repeated this mauœuvre successfully, and then with his fire-arms drove every remaining Indian below. Meanwhile four or five more of them leaped overboard, and Gallup then boarded and captured her. Oldham's body was found still warm, the head split open and the feet and hands chopped off. Two boys taken with Oldham were rescued uninjured. This is the first American sea-fight on record.

In order to ascertain and punish the instigators of this murder, the English sent a deputation to Canonicus, the Narraganset sachem, who was well known to be "a just man and a friend to the English." They observed in him "much state, great command over his men, and much wisdom in Ins answers, clearing himself and his neighbors of the murder, and offering assistance for revenge of it, yet upon very safe and wary conditions."

An expedition under Governor Endicott was sent against the Block Island Indians and the Pequots, the perpetrators of Oldham's murder, which ravaged their villages and destroyed their crops, and on its return doing the same along the Narraganset shore. Forty of the natives were killed and wounded in a skirmish. At Saybrook, near the mouth of the Connecticut, a fort had been built, and Captain Lion Gardner placed in command. He condemned this unwise action of Endicott in a letter to Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts, in which he says, "You came hither to raise these wasps about my ears, and then you will take wing and flee away." He and his little garrison of less than one hundred had all they could do, he said, "to fight Captain hunger." He was right; so far from being overawed, the Pequots sought the alliance of their neighbors the Narragansets and the Mohegans; a state of constant hostility was produced, and the fort was for a long time beleaguered. The persevering energy and intrepidity of one man caused the dissolution of this formidable conspiracy.

GOVERNOR ENDICOTT.

When Roger Williams, the famous apostle of civil and religious liberty in America, was in midwinter exiled from Massachusetts, he fled to Rhode Island, where he was kindly received by the Indians. He was well acquainted with their language, and while a resident of Plymouth had often been the guest of the neighboring sachems. He was welcomed to the cabin of Massasoit, and "the barbarous heart of Cauonicus loved him as his son to the last gasp." "The ravens," said Williams, "fed me in the wilderness." He requited the hospitality of the red men by being ever after their friend and counsellor; their "pacificator when their rude passions were inflamed, and their advocate and protector" whenever wrong was offered them.

At the earnest request of the authorities of Massachusetts, who had just before driven him into exile, Williams endeavored to prevent the Pequots from obtaining the alliance of the Narragansets. At the hazard of his life he hastened to the home of the Narraganset sachem. "Three days and three nights," he says, "my business forced me to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequot ambassadors, whose hands and arms methought reeked with the blood of my countrymen, and from whom I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my own throat also. God wonderfully preserved me and helped me to break in pieces the Pequots' negotiations and designs."

The Pequots kept on plundering and murdering the settlers until in May, 1637, a force of seventy-seven men, under Captains Mason and Underhill, accompanied by four hundred Narragansets and Mohegans, was sent against them. Mason was a veteran soldier who, with Miles Standish and Underhill, had learned the art of war in Belgium, under that renowned leader the Prince of Orange.

Of the Indian tribes of New England the Pequots were the most formidable. All the other tribes were afraid of them. They were settled near the Thames River in Connecticut, and could muster seven hundred warriors. In his prosperous days, Sassacus, their sachem, had no less than twenty-six sachems under him, and reigned supreme from Narraganset Bay to the Hudson River, and over Long Island. Seeing the English settlements multiplying around him, and fearing that sooner or later the English would be in possession of the hunting grounds of his tribe, he resolved to make war upon them.

As the English vessels sailed by the mouth of the Thames, the Pequots, who had assembled in large numbers, supposed they had nothing further to fear. They had no suspicion that the English captain was executing a flank movement, so as to attack them from an unexpected quarter. But so it was. When Mason's Indians got near the hostile fort, though they had boasted of what they would do, their fears of the terrible Sassacus got the better of them, and they kept at a safe distance until the affair was over. When Uncas was asked how many of his men would run away when the battle begun, the answered, "Every one but myself." The result justified his prediction.

Mason landed his men near the village of Cononicus, whose permission he obtained to march across his territory and attack the Pequots. The old thief told Mason that his force was much too small for the big job he had undertaken. After a tedious march, Mason's men reached Pawcatuck Ford (now Stouington), weary, hungry, and footsore. Resting awhile, they continued their march, with Incas and Wegna, a recreant Pequot, for guides, and one hour after midnight encamped on the head-waters of the Mystic River.

Although Mason had resolved to attack both Pequot forts, which were four or five miles apart, at the same time, yet the fatigue and privations of his men, who had been two days on the march without provisions, and suffering from the extreme heat of the weather, determined him to confine his attack to the nearest fort. Reposing a few hours, his men took up the line of march and arrived before the fort, which was two miles distant, about two hours before daybreak. The moon was shining brightly when they reached the foot of the eminence on which the fort was situated.

Fort Mystic, the principal Pequot stronghold, was a palisade work that stood at the top of a hill in the present town of Groton. It covered an area of twenty acres, and was so crowded with wigwams that the English "wanted foot-room to grapple with their adversaries." Its two entrances were at opposite points, and were blocked up with boughs or baskets. The wigwams were ranged in two rows, and were covered with matting or thatch.

The Indians had spent the night in dancing, singing, and rejoicing at their supposed escape from invasion. Asleep in their wigwams, the barking of a dog just at daybreak was their first intimation of danger. The cry, "Owanux Owanux!" (Englishmen) was raised.

Removing the obstacles, Mason, with sixteen followers, entered the fort at one end, while Underhill did the same at the other, and before the startled sleepers had time to oppose them, the work of destruction had begun.

Although surprised, the Indians defended themselves as well as they could with their bows and arrows, but they were quickly overpowered. Many of them sought shelter in the wigwams, covering themselves with the thick mats, from which it was almost impossible to dislodge them. The sword and bullet doing the work too slowly, Mason seized a firebrand, exclaiming, "We must burn them!" A warrior drew his bow to send an arrow through his heart, but a soldier cut the bowstring with his sword. The combustible cabins were soon in a blaze, and five or six hundred of the miserable natives perished in the flames. Those who tried to escape by climbing over the palisades were shot down. Of the English, two only had fallen and twenty were wounded. Lieutenant Bull had a narrow escape, an Indian arrow being stopped by a piece of hard cheese in his pocket.

This victory was regarded by the Puritans as a signal evidence of the goodness of God. "The Lord was pleased," says Captain Mason in his narrative, quoting the Psalmist, "to smite our enemies in the hinder parts, and to give us their land for an inheritance."

The rigor displayed by the settlers in this first great blow inflicted on the Indians struck terror into them and secured a long season of peace. It was indeed a terrible massacre, involving helpless women and children, as well as men. The early colonial laws had forbidden the sale of fire-arms to the Indians, and till they possessed them they were never formidable in battle.

The remainder of the tribe were soon hunted down. A portion of them fled for protection to the Mohawks, who treacherously beheaded Sassacus and five other sachems. "A nation had disappeared from the family of men." Their fate drew these lines from the poet Dwight:

Rumors of a general conspiracy of the Indians caused the colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Hampshire to unite in a confederacy for mutual protection against them. Its affairs were managed by two commissioners from each colony.

One of the ablest of the New England Indians was Miantonomo, a nephew of Canonchet and chief of the Narragansets. Had he not been made the victim of the cruel policy of the English, his name would have been justly held by them in high estimation. Miantonomo was tall and well made, "subtle and cunning in his contrivements, as well as haughty in his designs." He was requested to come to Boston to clear himself of the charge of conspiracy against the colonists, and he did so. The court assembled, and before his admission," says Governor Winthrop, "we consulted how to treat with him, for we knew him to be a very subtle man, and agreed that none should propound anything but the governor"—a striking tribute from one of the wisest and ablest of the colonists to the sagacity and wisdom of an unlettered Indian.

Miantonomo would not proceed with any business but in the presence of some of his own counsellors, that they on their return might bear witness to his people of all his words. He was very deliberate in his answers, and showed great ingenuity as well as a clear understanding of the principles of justice and equity. He very properly called upon the English to produce his accusers. As they had proceeded wholly on vague rumors, this demand placed them in an awkward predicament. He told them that if the charges were proved against him, he came prepared to suffer the consequences, and now, if he had been accused falsely, he expected the authors of the accusation to be subjected to the same penalty. Certainly this was but just. He also told the court that he believed Uncas, the Mohegan sachem, to be at the root of all the mischief, and that he was doing his best to embroil the Narragansets and the English. And so, in fact, it was. On taking leave of the governor, a coat was given to him and to each of his counsellors.

It was the policy of the English to pit one tribe against another for their own protection, and so Uncas, the Mohegan chief, who was disposed to conform to their wishes, was used by them to balance the power of Miantonomo. This chief had suffered numerous indignities from the English, which rankled in his breast, and hated Uncas as the cause of them, and also as a traitor to his race.

Suddenly, and in disregard of a treaty, he collected one thousand warriors and fell upon the Mohegans. His rashness and impetuosity caused his defeat, and he himself was made a prisoner. It seems that in this fight Miantonomo wore a suit of armor or coat of mail loaned him by an English friend, Samuel Gorton, and that, when it became necessary to retreat, it so impeded his motions as to cause his capture. His life was forfeited by Indian law, but Uncas took him to Hartford and asked the advice of the Commissioners of the United Colonies as to what was to be done with him.

The commissioners replied that they saw no reason for mercy. Five of "the most judicious" elders of the church were also consulted, and they agreed that he ought to suffer death, and he was accordingly put to death by Uncas. Thus was this remarkable man sacrificed to the envy of a rival chief and to the supposed political interest of the colonies. His execution took place at the spot, in the eastern part of the town of Norwich, Connecticut, now called Sachem's Plain, where a monument has been erected to his memory, upon which is the simple inscription:

John Eliot's missionary labors among the Indians of New England began at Nonantum, and were continued at various places for more than thirty years. He acquired the Indian language and with infinite labor translated into it the Bible, the catechism, and other devotional works, distributing them among them. The natives were taught to read and write, and soon there were fourteen places of Praying Indians, as they were called. In 1673 six Indian churches had been gathered. A death-blow was given to these pious labors by Philip's war. Some of these Indians joined in it with their countrymen, and this so exasperated the English, that the remainder of those who were faithful to them were with difficulty rescued from destruction. The treatment they then received created a breach between them and the English that was never healed. Their number rapidly diminished, and they finally disappeared.

JOHN ELIOT.

Eliot introduced among his converts industry, cleanliness, and good order. He drew up for them a simple code, punishing idleness, filthiness, licentiousness, and cruelty to women. A court was established at Nonantum, over which presided Waban, an Indian justice of the peace. There was no circumlocution in his office. Justice was speedily and impartially administered. Here is a specimen warrant: "You, you big constable, quick you catch um Jeremiah Offscow, strong you hold um, safe you bring um afore me, Waban, Justice Peace." His sagacious and sententious judgment in a case between some drunken Indians would do no discredit to a much higher civilization than that at Nonantum: "Tie um all up," said he, "and whip um plaintiff, and whip um 'fendant, and whip um witness."

Uncas, the Mohegan sachem, was originally a Pequot, and one of the twenty-six war captains of that famous but ill-fated nation. Setting up for himself at the head of the Thames River, near the present city of Norwich, he was politic enough to court the favor of the English, and in 1637 joined with them in their war upon the Pequots. In the pursuit that followed the Fort Mystic fight his men captured a Pequot chief of distinction. Cutting off the captive's head, Uncas placed it in a conspicuous spot near the harbor, where it remained many years. This circumstance gave to Guilford harbor the well-known name of "Sachem's Head."

JOHN ELIOT PREACHING TO THE INDIANS.

Summoned to Boston, upon the charge of shielding some of the conquered Pequots, he appeared before Governor Winthrop, and laying his hand upon his heart said:

"This heart is not mine, but yours. I have no men; they are all yours. Command me any difficult thing, I will do it. I will not believe any Indian's word against the English. If one of my men should kill an Englishman I will put him to death, were he ever so dear to me."

"So the governor gave him a fine red coat," says the chronicle, "and defrayed his and his men's diet, and gave them corn to relieve them homeward, also a letter of protection, and," continues the record, "he departed very joyful." Uncas was still living, at a great age, in 1680.

GOVERNOR WINTHROP.

Chapter V

The Iroquois

The Iroquois, or Six Nations, stand first among the native races of this continent for valor, policy, and eloquence. Their home was in western and central New York, and their geographical situation, on a broad summit of fertile table-land, favorable for raising maize and abounding in game, gave them great advantages. The leading rivers of this region, running in all directions, and enabling then to descend rapidly into an enemy's country, contributed largely to the success of their warlike expeditions. Their attachment to the English alone saved Western New York from becoming a French colony.

They had attained their highest point about the year 1700. At that period, besides carrying terror by their war parties to the walls of Quebec, they had, by virtue of their combination, subdued and held in subjection, one after another, all the principal Indian nations occupying the territory now embraced in the States of New York, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and parts of Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Northern Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New England, and Upper Canada.

If any of these nations became involved in domestic differences, a delegation of chiefs went among them and restored tranquillity, prescribing at the same time their future conduct. From the Delawares they took all civil power, declared them women, and bade them henceforth to confine themselves to the pursuits of the females.

"How came you," said Cauassatego, an Iroquois chief, addressing the Delawares upon occasion of a dispute about a sale of land to the English—"how cause you to take upon you to sell land at all? We conquered you, we made women of you; you know you are women, and can no more sell land than women. For the laud you claim you have been paid with clothes, meat, drink, and goods, and now you want it again, like children as you are. But what makes you sell land in the dark? Did you ever tell us that you had sold this land! . . . We charge you to remove instantly. We don't give you liberty to think about it. You are women!" The Delawares dared not disobey this command, and very soon left the country.

In New England and Canada the Iroquois were the dread of the native Algonkin tribes. When, in the early days of the Massachusetts colony, they made war on the New England Indians, it was said that as soon as a single one of them was seen in their country, these Indians raised the cry from hill to hill, "A Mohawk a Mohawk!" upon which they all fled, like sheep before wolves, without attempting to make the least resistance.

LONG HOUSE AT ONANDAGA.

Independence and love of liberty was one of the most marked characteristics of the Iroquois. Their pride was so great that they called themselves Ongwe Hongwe, "the men surpassing all others," and yet in their most prosperous days they could hardly muster four thousand warriors. Their losses in battle were made up by their custom of adopting a part of their captives as members of their tribe.

Their strongholds were surrounded by palisades pierced with loop-holes, having platforms within, supplied with stones to hurl upon the heads of the enemy, and with water to extinguish any fire that might be kindled from the outside. These defences sometimes included a large area, and dwellings more than one hundred feet in length. They were circular or oval in form.

Their general assembly was at the Great Council held at the Long House in the Onondaga Valley. This was built of bark; on each side were six seats, each holding six persons. None but members of the council were admitted, except a few who were particularly honored. If one rose to speak, all the rest sat silent, smoking their pipes. The speaker uttered his words in a singsong tone, always rising a few notes at the close of each sentence. Whatever was the pleasure of the council was confirmed by all with the word "Nee," or yes, and at the close of each speech the whole assembly applauded the speaker by shouting "Hoho!"

Originally the confederacy consisted of five tribes or nations: Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayugas, Oneidas, and Senecas. The Tuscaroras of North Carolina, after their defeat by the colonists in 1714, joined them, and thenceforth they were known as the Six Nations. These again were divided into three tribes, or families, who distinguished themselves by three different arms or ensigns called totems. These were the tortoise, the bear, and the wolf, and the sachems, or old men of their families, put this family mark to every public paper when they signed it. Each of these six nations was an absolute republic by itself. Each had a castle of its own, and was governed in all public affairs by its own sachems, or old men.

Their league was a defensive measure adopted long before the European discovery. Their general council, composed of sachems equal in rank, was the supreme authority over all matters considered by it. Its sessions lasted five days. Discussion was open to all, but the council alone decided. It made peace and war, and concluded treaties and agreements. When the question of peace or war was decided, the councillors united in chanting hymns of praise or warlike choruses, which at the same time gave expression to public feeling and imparted a kind of sanctity to the act. The Onondagas, being the central tribe, were made "the keepers of the council brand," and their valley was the seat of government.

A remarkable instance of Iroquois treachery is related by Parkman. At their urgent solicitation a French colony and mission had been planted on the margin of Lake Onondaga. A plot for its destruction was revealed to one of the Jesuit fathers by a dying Indian convert.

What was to be done? Immediate action was necessary, but the warriors camped around them watched them so closely that the case seemed hopeless. A plan of escape was at length suggested which seemed to promise success. Two light, large flat-boats were built in a loft over the mission-house. The grand difficulty was to get them to the lake unobserved. This is the way it was done:

One of the peculiar customs of the Indians is to hold a feast at which all must devour everything set before them, as long as the provider of the feast wishes to have them, or so long as they have the power to eat. One of the younger colonists who had been adopted by an Iroquois chief, pretending to have dreamed that he would soon die unless the spirits were appeased, gave one of these feasts. Obedience to the wishes of the spirits is a sacred obligation with the Indian. The day for the feast was fixed, and all was prepared for the occasion.

Late in the evening of the appointed day, when the festivity was at its height, and the French musicians with drum and trumpet were making all the noise they possibly could, the boats were carried from the house to the lake. The French silently embarked and made good their escape.

Next morning the amazed savages, on recovering from their stupor—for they had completely gorged themselves on the previous evening—found, on peering curiously into the deserted mission, that its sole occupants were a hen and her brood of chickens. The Indians were superstitious enough to believe that the blackbirds—the black-robed priests—and their flock had actually flown away.

GOING TO FIGHT THE IROQUOIS.

The Iroquois first came in contact with the Europeans when, in the summer of 1609, Samuel de Champlain, with two other Frenchmen, joined a party of Hurons and Algonkins in all expedition against the Iroquois, their hereditary enemies. Ascending the river Sorel they crossed the lake that now bears his name. At night they felled large trees, as a barricade to their camp, and sent out a party to reconnoitre, but posted no sentinels. When near their foes they would advance stealthily by night and retire by day into the picket fort, where they kept perfectly quiet, so as to avoid discovery. Champlain's account of the first conflict with the Iroquois in which fire-arms were used, is as follows:

"At nightfall we embarked in our canoes to continue our journey, and as we advanced very softly and noiselessly, we encountered a war party of Iroquois about tell o'clock at night, at the point of a cape which juts into the lake on the west side (near Crown Point). They and we began to shout, each seizing his arms. We withdrew towards the water, and the Iroquois repaired on shore and arranged all their canoes, the one beside the other, and began to hew down trees with villanous axes and fortified themselves very securely. Our party likewise kept their canoes arranged, the one along side the other, tied to poles so as not to run adrift, in order to fight altogether should need be. We were on the water, about an arrow-shot from their barricades.

FIRST BATTLE WITH THE IROQUOIS.

"The whole night was spent in dancing and singing, as well on one side as on the other, mingled with an infinitude of insults and taunts. After the one and the other had sung, danced, and parleyed enough, day broke. My companions and I were always concealed, for fear the enemy should see us preparing our arms. After being equipped with light armor we took each an arquebuse (a short musket) and went ashore. I saw the enemy leave their barricade. They were about two hundred men, of strong and robust appearance, who were coming slowly towards us, with a gravity and assurance which greatly pleased me, led on by three chiefs. Ours were marching in similar order, and told me that those who bore three lofty plumes were the chiefs, and that I must do all I could to kill them.

"The moment we landed they began to runabout two hundred paces towards their enemies, who stood firm and had not yet perceived my companions, who went into the bush with some savages. Ours commenced calling me in a loud voice, and making way for me opened in two and placed me at their head, marching about twenty paces in advance, until I was within thirty paces of the enemy. The moment they saw me they halted, gazing at me, and I at them. When I saw them preparing to shoot at us I raised my arquebuse, and aiming directly at one of the three chiefs, two of them fell to the ground by this shot and one of their companions received a wound of which he died afterwards. I had put four balls in my arquebuse. Ours, on witnessing a shot so favorable for them, set up such tremendous shouts that thunder could not have been heard, and yet there was no lack of arrows on one side and the other.

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN.

"The Iroquois were greatly astonished, seeing two men killed so instantaneously, notwithstanding they were provided with arrow-proof armor woven of cotton thread and wool; this frightened them very much. Whilst I was reloading, one of my companions in the bush fired a shot which so astonished them anew, seeing their chiefs slain, that they lost courage, took to flight, and abandoned the field and their fort, hiding themselves in the depths of the forest, whither pursuing them I killed some others. Having feasted, danced, and sung, we returned three hours afterwards with ten or twelve prisoners. I named the place where this battle was fought, Lake Champlain."

This was the first time the Iroquois had heard the sound of fire-arms, by the mysterious power of which they were then easily vanquished. The French having allied themselves with the Adirondacks and Hurons, and given them arms and assistance, a spirit of hatred for them was aroused among the Iroquois that never ceased to burn until Canada was wrested from them by the English.

LAKE CHAMPLAIN.

A year later another conflict took place near the mouth of the Richelieu, in which Champlain again participated. One hundred Iroquois were at bay behind a palisade surrounded by a horde of Algoukin warriors, whose attack they had bloodily repulsed. When Champlain, with four of his men, approached, wild yells arose from the Algonkins in which were mingled the howl of the wolf, the whoop of the owl, and the screams of the cougar, to which a fierce response was made by the desperate Iroquois.

A storm of arrows burst upon the French as they rushed on, wounding Champlain and one of his companions. When, however, the terrible weapons of their mysterious assailants were thrust through the crevices of their barricade, dealing death among its defenders, they could not control their fear, and threw themselves flat on the ground. The allied Indians now rushed in and leveled the barricade, while at the same time a boat-load of French fur-traders who had heard the firing joined in the fray, and helped to secure a complete victory. "By the grace of God," writes Champlain, "behold the victory won!"

ATTACK ON AN IROQUOIS FORT.

While journeying to the country of the Hurons at a later period, Champlain suddenly encountered three hundred Indians, whom, from their odd method of dressing their hair, he named the Cheveux Relevez. "Not one of our courtiers," he says, "takes so much pains in dressing his hair as these savages do." They were wholly naked, their bodies were tattooed, and they were armed with bows and arrows, and shields of bison-hide.

They informed him that the great Lake of the Hurons was close at hand. He explored its shores for more than one hundred miles, and visited many Huron villages, all of which were palisaded like that seen by Cartier at Montreal. Cahiagué, the Huron capital, the modern township of Orillia, near the River Severn, contained two hundred lodges, and here gathered the warriors whom, after days and nights of feasts and war-dances, Champlain led in his last expedition against the Iroquois.

Entering the hostile territory they encountered a fortified town of the Onondagas. Some of the Hurons rushed to attack it, and were driven back with loss. Four rows of palisades, thirty feet high, set aslant in the earth and meeting at the top, supported a shot-proof gallery provided with wooden gutters and amply supplied with water from an adjoining pond. They were also well provided with stones to hurl upon the assailants.

Champlain reproved his allies for their rash conduct, and the next morning had a wooden tower made higher than the palisades, and large enough to contain four or five marksmen. Great wooden shields or parapets were also constructed. Two hundred warriors dragged the tower close to the palisades. From it three arquebusiers opened a raking fire along the galleries upon the throng of its defenders.

The ungovernable Hurons threw aside the shields designed for their protection and scattered over the open field, shouting and shooting off their arrows, to which the Iroquois replied in like manner. Champlain and his men, unable to control these wild and infuriated allies, at last abandoned the attempt, and occupied themselves with picking off the Iroquois on the ramparts. The French leader was at length disabled, being struck by an arrow in the knee and the leg, and after a three-hours' contest the assailants drew off discomfited. He was eager to renew the attack, but the Hurons, crestfallen and disheartened, would not move without a reinforcement, for which they had sent. After waiting in vain five days they retreated, followed by the victorious Iroquois. The wounded leader was packed in a basket and borne upon the shoulders of a warrior.

"Bundled in a heap," says Champlain, "doubled and strapped together in such a fashion that one could move no more than an infant in swaddling-clothes . . . I lost all patience, and as soon as I could bear my weight I got out of this prison, or, to speak plainly, 'out of hell.'" He was obliged to remain with the Hurons all that winter.

In 1660 a daring enterprise was undertaken by a few young Canadians, led by Daulac, commandant of the garrison at Montreal. It was known that a large body of Iroquois had planned a descent upon Canada, and these brave fellows thought that by attacking the Indians in their own haunts this danger might be averted. Having bound themselves by oath to accept no quarter, made their wills, confessed, and received the sacrament—for they were all good Catholics—they set out upon their heroic but desperate adventure.

FORTIFIED TOWN OF THE ONONDAGAS.

The Thermopylæ of this Spartan band was at the foot of the formidable rapid called the Long Sault, where the Iroquois were sure to pass. Here, in an old enclosure formed of trunks of small trees planted in a circle, seventeen Frenchmen awaited the savage host. They were soon joined by some Hurons and Algonkins.

In a few days they were attacked by a large war party of Iroquois. Again and again the Indians were driven back with loss. The fifth day found the defenders of the fort still at bay, although they had been deserted by their Indian allies. Five hundred fresh warriors now joined their assailants, and the attacks were fiercely renewed. In vain they rushed upon the feeble barrier between them and their foe, yelling and firing; the French stood firm, and many a warrior fell before the leaden greeting of the little garrison.

Three days more passed in constant attack and repulse, the French, meanwhile, suffering from exhaustion, famine, and thirst. At length, stung to madness at the thought of the disgrace that would attend such a failure, the Iroquois determined to make one more effort to take the fort.

A chosen band of warriors, covering themselves with large heavy shields, led the advance and succeeded in reaching the fort. With their hatchets they endeavored to hew their way through the palisades. At this critical moment the premature explosion of a large musketoon, intended to be thrown over the barrier, and to explode among the throng of warriors without, killed and wounded several of the Frenchmen. In the confusion some of the Iroquois thrust their guns through the loop-holes, firing on those within, and others entered the enclosure through the breach made in the logs by their hatchets. The French fought desperately. Daulac, the Leonidas of this Spartan band, was slain, and one after another of his companions was struck down, until all had fallen. One only seemed likely to survive, and he was reserved for torture. By thus sacrificing themselves these heroes had saved the colony.

Amazed and dispirited, the Iroquois gave up their intended enterprise, and returned to their villages to bewail their discomfiture and to howl with wrath over their losses.

For many years the warfare between the French and Iroquois was almost constant. Expedition after expedition was launched against the Indian towns by the French governors with but little result. One of these, under M. de Courcelle, undertaken in the dead of winter, was a complete failure. They lost their way, and suffered from cold and hunger to such a degree that sixty of the French perished during their homeward march.

A new expedition was undertaken soon after by De Tracy and Courcelle. With one thousand three hundred men they left Quebec, crossed Lakes Champlain and St. Sacrament, now Lake George, in three hundred boats and canoes, and landing on the spot where Fort William Henry was afterwards built, traversed the hundred miles of wilderness that lay between them and the Mohawk towns. Arriving at the first Mohawk stronghold in the early morning, twenty drums beat the charge, and the Indians, panic-stricken by the noise, which seemed to them to be made by evil spirits in the service of the French, fled in terror to their next town.

This was taken as easily as the first, and so were the third and fourth, The French pushed on, and at sundown reached Andaraqué, the largest and strongest of their forts. Again the drums struck terror into the savages and there was no opposition. Andaraqué was a quadrangle, with a triple palisade twenty feet high, a bastion at each corner. Some of the houses in the enclosure were one hundred and twenty feet long, with fires for eight or nine families. Here the Iroquois had resolved to fight to the last, but at the sight and sound of the enemy lost courage and fled. Their dwellings, forts, and possessions were all destroyed.

The blow told, and in the following spring they sent an embassy to Quebec begging for peace. It was at last granted; hostages were given by them, and there was a respite from war for nearly twenty years.

Causes for hostility, however, were frequently arising, and an expedition against the Senecas was at length undertaken by Governor La Barre. It failed ignominiously. Fever and famine prostrated his men, and he was glad to make a truce with his enemies and to be permitted to withdraw without molestation.

The Marquis de Denonville, his successor, "a pious Colonel of Dragoons," resolved to inflict a severe chastisement upon the hostile nation. As he advanced he invited some peaceful Iroquois, living at a Jesuit Mission on the north shore of Lake Ontario, to a feast at Fort Frontenac. They came, but no sooner were they inside the fort than all—men, women, and children—were captured. There were nearly two hundred of them. They were baptized, and the men, excepting those who were restored to their relatives, were sent as slaves to France to work in the galleys. Many of these captive women and children died from excitement and distress, and some from a pestilential and fatal disease.

Denonville then summoned the Western Indians from lakes Huron and Michigan, and from Illinois, to come and be revenged on their enemies. A few weeks later a great fleet of canoes came down from the lakes, filled with warriors. They landed one July morning at Irondequoit Bay, Lake Ontario, the boundary of the Seneca country, north-east of Rochester, New York.

Here was to be seen upon this unusual occasion a motley and picturesque assemblage: French soldiers in uniform, Jesuit priests, and Indians in war-paint and feathers, wearing skins of the buffalo, the horns ornamenting their heads, the tails trailing upon the ground, brandishing their tomahawks and scalping knives among the camp-fires at night, boasting of their exploits, and telling how they would destroy their enemies. Including Indians, the army numbered fully three thousand men.

The distance to the chief Seneca town was only fifteen miles. The day was hot and dusty, and as the army marched forward, scouts reported that only squaws were to be seen at the village. Several dangerous defiles had been passed, no enemy had appeared, and it looked as though the Indians had fled. Suddenly, as the troops entered a narrow pass, a yell was heard, the air was filled with flying arrows, guns flashed upon all sides at once, and the Iroquois were upon them.

Denonville quickly rallied his troops, and the Canadians from behind the trees returned the fire. Soon the Senecas, who were a mere handful, retired, bearing off their dead and wounded. A heap of ashes was all that remained of the town as the French entered it next morning. The Senecas had burned it and vanished. After destroying their corn, Denonville built a fort at Niagara and returned to Montreal. The enraged Senecas were soon back again, rebuilding their wigwams. Though in want of food and with their fields laid waste, their Iroquois brethren would not let them starve. Denonville was told when he went out that if he destroyed a wasp's nest he must crush the wasps or they would sting him. He left the wasps alive.

Adario, also called Kondiaronk, or the Rat, was the leading chief and councillor of the Huron Wyandot tribe. He was brave, politic, and sagacious, and possessed great energy and decision of character. His nation had been driven from its ancient seat by the Iroquois, and it was his policy to keep the latter embroiled with his friends the French.

Learning that Denonville was about to conclude a peace with the Five Nations, and perceiving that such a step would leave the Iroquois free to push the war against his people, he waylaid the Iroquois delegates as they were proceeding to Montreal, and killed or captured the whole party.

AT AN IROQUOIS COUNCIL FIRE.

Adario then adroitly shifted the blame of the act upon Governor Denonville, telling his prisoners that it was by him that he had been informed of their intention to pass that way. Surprised at this act of apparent perfidy, they told Adario that they were truly on an errand of peace. Affecting great anger, the chief declared he would be revenged on Denonville for making him a tool in such a piece of treachery. Then looking steadfastly on the prisoners, "Go," said he, "my brothers, I untie your hands and send you home again, although our nations are at war. The French governor has made me commit so black an action that I shall never be easy after it until the Five Nations have taken full revenge."

So completely were the ambassadors deceived that they replied in the most friendly terms, and said the way was open to their concluding peace between their respective tribes at any time. Adario then dismissed his prisoners with presents. He thus rekindled the embers of discord between the French and their old enemies, at the moment they were about to expire, and laid the foundation of a peace with his own nation. Though Denonville sent a message to the Iroquois to disclaim the act of Adario, they put no faith in it, but burned for revenge.

It was not long before the Iroquois found an opportunity to return the blow inflicted upon them by Denonville in 1687 with interest.

Fifteen hundred of their warriors followed the well-known trail to Canada, paddling their canoes along Lake Champlain by night, and secreting themselves in the forest by day. Early one morning, during a violent hail-storm, they crawled on their hands and knees into the village of La Chine, six miles from Montreal, and sounding their terrible warwhoop, began the most frightful massacre in Canadian history.

In one hour two hundred—men, women, and children—were murdered. After a severe skirmish they captured the fort and the island. For miles around, all the houses were burned and the country pillaged. Next day they attacked and defeated a party of eighty French soldiers. After extending their ravages over the open country for more than twenty miles, occupying it for weeks, they at last withdrew, taking with them one hundred and twenty prisoners destined to be tortured for their diversion.

Denonville's successor was one of the most striking and picturesque characters of a remarkable age—that of Louis XIV., of France, the "Grande Monarque."

Louis de Buade, Count de Frontenac, was a courtier of noble family, "a man of excellent parts," says St. Simon, a contemporary, "living much in society and completely ruined." Vanity was one of his especial weaknesses; and one who knew him well tells us that whenever he had new clothes "he paraded them like a child. He praised everything that belonged to himself," says the same authority, "and acted as if everybody owed duty to him." Entering upon a military career, he became a colonel at twenty-three and a brigadier-general at twenty-six, and had seen service in Italy and in Holland under the Prince of Orange.

At the age of fifty-two, to retrieve his fortunes, he accepted the post of Governor of New France, and at once set himself to work to promote the prosperity of the country. He was a man of strong vitality, "keen, fiery, and headstrong," and from the very first he exercised an extraordinary influence over the Indians with whom he had to deal.

Frontenac knew just how to manage them, flattering them adroitly, conforming to their usages, and borrowing their modes of expression, while at the same time assuming towards them an air of haughtiness which compelled their respect. He would not call them "brothers"—the usual mode of addressing them—but "children," and this indication of superiority even the proud Iroquois accepted from him. They admired the great "Onontio," as the French governors were called, who condescended to play with their children and gave small presents to their wives; who smiled upon them when they did well, and who saw through their artifices, and who did not fear, when they transgressed, to punish them.

Having quarrelled with the priests, who were all-powerful in Canada, he had been recalled in 1682; but when, a few years later, the condition of the colony had become desperate, he was re-appointed as the only man who could revive and strengthen it.

"I send you back to Canada," said King Louis, "where I am sure you will serve me as well as you did before; and I ask nothing more of you." Although seventy years of age, Frontenac accepted the arduous task.

On his arrival at Quebec, Frontenac found Canadian affairs in a truly deplorable condition. The energetic governor at once sent out numerous war parties to strike the English settlements, inflicting a series of terrible blows upon them as will be seen in a subsequent chapter. Against the Iroquois he sent the skilful partisans De Mantet, Courtemanche, and La None, with a force of six hundred and twenty-five men. Sixteen days' journey brought them to the Iroquois country. They captured and destroyed three Mohawk villages, and returned with three hundred prisoners—women and children. Under Frontenac's vigorous rule Canada speedily became prosperous, and a source of dread to the English.

In 1694 an Iroquois deputy came to Quebec with overtures of peace. War and famine had greatly reduced the Confederacy, and they were almost entirely destitute of arms and ammunition, and even the necessaries of life.

"Let each of your Five Nations send me two deputies," says Frontenac, "and I will listen to what they have to say."

They would not go to him, but sent another deputation inviting him to come and treat with them at Onondaga. The haughty governor kicked away their wampum belts and told them they were rebels, bribed by the English; that if they would send a deputation to Quebec, honestly desiring to make peace, he would still listen; but if they came to him with any more such propositions as they had just made they should be roasted alive.

GOVERNOR COLDEN.

A final delegation, headed by the renowned orator, Decanisora, then came. He spoke eloquently and offered peace, but demanded that it should include the English. Frontenac declined this proposition, and the envoys departed, pledging themselves to return and deliver up all their prisoners, leaving two hostages as security for the performance of their promise. Dissensions among the Iroquois and the efforts of the Governor of New York prevented the consummation of this treaty, and the war was renewed.

Frontenac determined to thoroughly subdue this fierce and powerful enemy. Leaving Montreal, at the head of twenty-two hundred men, he reached Fort Frontenac on the 19th, and on the 1st of August had arrived at the border of Lake Onondaga. On the 5th they reached the Onondaga village, the governor, enfeebled by age, being carried in an arm-chair. Two bundles of reeds suspended from a tree, which they encountered on their way, denoted that fourteen hundred and thirty-four warriors (the number of reeds) defied them. They found the stronghold in ashes, the Indians having, upon the approach of so large an army, burned their town and retreated into the forest.

For two days the army was employed in destroying the corn and other stores of the Onondagas. A messenger for peace from the Oneidas was told that they could have it on condition that they should all migrate and settle in Canada. Within three days Vaudreuil, with seven hundred men, had destroyed their town and seized a number of chiefs as hostages for the fulfilment of Frontenac's demands. The expedition then returned, achieving only a partial success. The Indians had saved themselves by flight. The government of New York supplied them with corn to prevent a famine, and the Iroquois had not yet been subdued. Their power, however, was so far broken that they were never again very formidable to the French.

The peace of Utrecht (February, 1698) ended the struggle, and the death of the heroic old governor took place a few months later (November 28).

In 1750 the Iroquois had diminished one-half, from the introduction of ardent spirits among them and from emigration to the St. Lawrence under Jesuit influence. With the exception of the Oneidas, they espoused the British cause during the Revolution, and were severely punished by an expedition into their country under General Sullivan in 1779.

Chapter VI

King Philip's War

A little more than two centuries ago, New England was the scene of one of the bloodiest of Indian wars. It contained at that time some thirty thousand red men; of these less than eight thousand were in Massachusetts. The domain of the Pokanoket tribe, which began the war, extended over nearly all of south-eastern Massachusetts, from Cape Cod to Narraganset Bay. Under Philip, the son and successor of Massasoit, this tribe had been gradually crowded into the two small necks of land now known as Tiverton and Bristol.

Philip's residence was at Mount Hope; from it he could look on the south over the beautiful expanse of Narraganset Bay. The charming view from this eminence now includes also the city of Providence and the towns of Bristol and Warren. On the west was the country of the powerful Narraganset tribe.

One by one the fields and hunting-grounds of the Pokanokets had been sold to the white man. Though the lands were of little value to them, and though they were fully satisfied with the small price paid for them, yet, when the beads and trinkets for which they had been bartered were gone, the thriving farms of the settlers around them remained, and were in their eyes only so many evidences that they had been overreached and defrauded.

Efforts to Christianize them had wholly failed, but the white man's laws had been extended over them, and they were frequently obliged to appear before the magistrates of Boston or Plymouth, to answer groundless accusations, and to explain their acts and purposes. To an independent nation—for as such they regarded themselves—this was very humiliating.

Besides this, the white settlers despised the Indians, looking upon them as inferiors, and were haughty and overbearing in their demeanor towards them. Collisions and mutual injuries were the inevitable result.

They said that "if twenty of their honest Indians proved that an Englishman had wronged them, 'it was nothing,' while if one of their worst Indians testified against any of them, it was sufficient;" that the English made the Indians drunk and then cheated them; that the English cattle and horses had so increased that they could not keep their corn from injury, never being used to make fences. Such were some of the grievances of the Indians, and they were but too well founded.

MOUNT HOPE.

On the other hand, the Plymouth settlers said that not a foot of land had been taken from the Indians except by fair purchase. More than this. In order to protect the natives from covetous white men, a law was made "that none should purchase or receive gifts of any lands of the Indians without the knowledge and allowance of the court," under heavy penalty. Besides prohibiting the sale of intoxicating drinks to them, a law was made in 1673 that no person should take anything in pawn of an Indian for liquor.

At one of the first courts held in Boston, on complaint of the Sachem Chickataubut and his men that Mr. Josias Plaistowe had stolen four baskets of corn from them, he was ordered to return them eight baskets, pay a fine of £5, and hereafter to be called Josias, and not Mr. Josias, as formerly, and thus to be degraded from the title of a gentleman. Two of his servants who were accessary were ordered to be whipped.

After all, it is not strange that trouble arose. No two races, the one barbarous and the other civilized, can live harmoniously side by side for any length of time. That they did so for so many years, here and in Pennsylvania, is a fact highly creditable to both.

The Pokanoket chief, from his ambitious and haughty spirit, was called King Philip. His Indian name was Pometacom. His pride was shown in his dress, which was rich and gaudy. One who saw him in Boston says that "his coat and buskins were thickset with beads in pleasant wild works, and a broad belt of the same. His accoutrements were valued at twenty pounds." His belts and other ornaments are correctly shown in the picture here given.

KING PHILIP.

The following letter, preserved among the Dorchester records, shows that at that date Philip dressed after the English fashion:

"Philip, Sachem of Mount Hope,
     "To Captain Hopestill Foster, of Dorchester,
"Sendeth greeting:

SIR,—You may please to remember that when I last saw you, at Wading River, you promised me six pounds in goods. Now my request is that you would send by this Indian five yards of white or light-colored serge to make me a coat, and a good Holland shirt, ready made, and a pair of good Indian Breeches, all which I have present need of. Therefore I pray, Sir, fail not to send them, and the several prices of them, and silk and buttons, and seven yards of galloon for trimming. Not else at present to trouble you with, only the subscription of

KING PHILIP, HIS MAJESTY, P.P.

"Mount Hope, the 15th of May, 1672."

Only a little while before the war of 1675 began, the Massachusetts authorities sent to Philip to know why he would make war upon the English, and at the same time requested him to enter into a treaty. This was his haughty reply:

"You governor is but a subject of King Charles of England. I shall not treat with a subject. I shall treat of peace only with the King, my brother. When he comes, I am ready."

General Daniel Gookin, who knew Philip well, spoke of him as "a person of good understanding and knowledge in the best things." He was humane, and was known to exercise his authority on several occasions to prevent harm being done to English families who had been friendly to him or to his father.

He was nevertheless looked upon with suspicion by the English, and some warlike demonstrations made by him in 1671 caused him to be summoned by them to a conference to be held on Taunton Green. Owing to the threats of the Plymouth people, Philip and his men came armed. Perceiving that the English party was large, and also armed, they paused on the ridge of a hill outside the town. A parley was held, and it was agreed that the conference should take place in the meeting-house, the English to occupy one side of the house and the Indians the other.

What a singular and impressive spectacle the interior of that plain old meeting-house must have presented that morning! Upon its rude benches sat representatives of two races, each distrusting the other; the weaker smarting under its injuries, sullen and angry; the stronger looking down on his dusky neighbor as a heathen, and at the same time feeling the necessity for pursuing a politic course towards him, and determined to prevent an outbreak. Under such circumstances this was a scene in our early history not to be forgotten.

Both parties were in fighting trim. The Indians had their faces and bodies painted as for battle, with their long-bows and quivers of arrows at their backs. Here and there a gun was seen among them, in the hands of those best skilled in its use. The English were in the dress of that day, protected by cuirasses, wearing slouched hats with broad brims, and equipped with bandoleers, long swords, and unwieldy guns.

Philip soon saw that he was in the power of the English, and had to yield to their terms. He was compelled to give up his guns, and to agree to pay £100 and five wolves' heads yearly, or as many as he could procure. This humiliation greatly increased his hatred of the whites.

Tradition says that Philip was averse to the war, and that, on hearing that blood had been shed, he wept at the news. However this may be, there can be no doubt of his desire to rid his country of the white intruders, and at the close of the year 1674 he began his preparations in good earnest. Notwithstanding the severity of the laws against the sale of fire-arms to the Indians, they had generally supplied themselves with them, and had become skilful in their use.

This is the way the war began. In January, 1675, John Wussaussamon, a Christian Indian, who had informed the English that Philip was plotting against them, was murdered. This man could read and write. He had been a missionary among his countrymen, and at one time was Philip's scribe or secretary.

The Indians who committed this act were seized, tried by a jury, half of whom were their own countrymen, found guilty, and hanged. In their justification they said they had a right to execute justice in accordance with their own customs on a traitor, and that the English had nothing to do with it.

No sooner were they executed than hostilities began, the Indians having killed or wounded several Englishmen at Swansey. The Indian priests or medicine-men having prophesied defeat to the party that should shed the first blood, they had for some days previously confined their hostile acts to burning the houses and killing the cattle of the white men, one of whom in retaliation shot and wounded an Indian.

At once Philip and his warriors spread themselves over the country, devastating, burning, and plundering. For a whole year they kept New England in a state of constant alarm and excitement. They roved from place to place with secrecy and celerity, retiring, when pursued, into swamps and thickets, never meeting the English in the open field. They were skilful marksmen, were familiar with the forest, and any small parties of the English were sure to be tracked and waylaid by these crafty and vigilant foemen. The burning of Swansey was soon followed by that of portions of Taunton, Middleboro', Dartmouth, and other neighboring towns and villages.

Troops from Boston and Plymouth were hurried to the scene of action, which was at first in Plymouth Colony only, and in less than a month Philip and his warriors had fled and taken refuge among the Indians in the interior. But though the scene was shifted, the terrible conflict had only just begun.

Of the white population of New England about eight thousand were capable of bearing arms. Massachusetts had ready for service twelve troops of horse, each composed of sixty men, besides officers. They were well mounted, and armed with swords, carbines, and pistols, each troop being distinguished by its coat. The men wore buff coats, and were protected by back, breast, and head pieces.

The trainbands, numbering from sixty-four to two hundred men, included all the males capable of bearing arms between the ages of sixteen and sixty, and who were required to provide themselves with arms and ammunition. Their arms were muskets, pikes, and swords. There were two musketeers to each pikeman, the latter being selected for their superior stature. The muskets had matchlocks or firelocks, and to each one there was a pair of bandoleers or pouches for powder and ball, and a stick called a rest, for use in taking aim. The pikes were ten feet in length, besides the spear at the end. Corslets and coats quilted with cotton were a sufficient protection against arrows. The captain, lieutenant, and ensign carried swords, partisans, or leading-staves, and sometimes pistols. The sergeants bore halberds. Their only field-music was the drum. The trainings were always begun and ended with prayer.

CAPTAIN BENJAMIN CHURCH.

Captain Benjamin Church was the most skilful and successful Indian fighter of that day. He was as sagacious and resolute as he was physically powerful and active, and he was greatly feared and respected by the Indians. His residence was in the vicinity of the Pokanokets. Captain Samuel Moseley was another energetic and successful officer.

On one occasion Church was at Pocasset, now Tiverton, Rhode Island, with thirty-six men, when he was unexpectedly attacked by three hundred Indians. He retreated to the water-side, piled a quantity of flat stones one upon another as a barricade, and fought until Captain Goulding came to his relief in a sloop. The water was shallow, and the canoe that plied between the vessel and the shore could take but two persons at a time. Church was the last to go. A bullet grazed his hair, and another struck a stake in front of him, but he got off without losing a man.

FIGHT AT TIVERTON.

The courageous act of a young woman is deserving of notice. One Sunday morning "in sermon time," an Indian straggler from one of Philip's bands came to John Minot's horse, in Dorchester, in which, at the time, there were only a servant-maid and two young children. Secreting the children under two brass kettles, and perceiving that the Indian was trying to get in at the window, the door being fast, the brave girl ran upstairs and charged a musket with which she shot the Indian in the shoulder. Before this he had fired at and missed her.

Dropping his gun, the Indian was just in the act of coining in at the window which he had forced open, when the girl seized a shovel, and filling it with live coals from the fireplace, thrust it in his face and sent him yelling to the woods, where he was found dead soon afterwards. The Minot house, where this affair happened, is still standing on Chickataubut Street.

After Philip's flight the first blood was shed at Mendon. Brookfield was next attacked, and a party under Captains Hutchinson and Wheeler waylaid, and thirteen men killed or mortally wounded. All the houses were burned but one—that in which the inhabitants had taken refuge. This was saved by the timely arrival of a force under Major Simon Willard, after withstanding for two days and nights incessant and furious attacks. The roof and walls of their place of refuge were pierced with arrows, around which were wound burning rags filled with sulphur. Finally, a cart filled with combustibles was fired and pushed towards it, but the exertions of the garrison, aided by a sudden shower of rain, speedily extinguished the flames. So successful had been the defence that eighty of the Indians had been killed or wounded.

Philip now made a distribution of wampum, as a present to the principal chiefs, and congratulated them upon their success. His emissaries worked upon the Indians of Connecticut, and he even succeeded in bringing the baptized Indians to his aid. On the other hand, Uncas, the Mohegan sachem, sent to the aid of the English his three sons and about sixty warriors, who were distributed among the different commands and who rendered efficient service. During the whole war the Mohegans were the faithful allies of the English.

Lancaster, Northampton, Deerfield, and Northfield suffered during the summer, and near the latter place Captain Beers was surprised and slain with most of his company. A fortnight later Captain Lathrop, with about ninety men, "the flower of Essex County," was waylaid while marching to Deerfield, and he and nearly all his men were killed. The place where this sad affair occurred is now known as the village of Bloody Brook.

Captain Moseley, who with seventy men was scouting in the neighborhood, hearing the guns, hastened to the scene of action. On his approach the Indians dared him to begin the fight, saying: "Come, Moseley, come! you want Indians, here are Indians enough for you."

Moseley charged them repeatedly with great resolution, but their superiority of numbers was such that he was obliged to withdraw. Soon, however, a party under Major Treat arrived, and the Indians were in turn driven back. When the English reached the battle-ground they were amazed at seeing an Englishman coming towards them. This man proved to be Robert Dutch, of Ipswich, who had been shot and scalped and left for dead. Strange to say, he recovered, and lived many years after.

At Springfield thirty houses were burned and several people killed. An attack on Hatfield by a large body of Indians was bravely repulsed. This success, occurring on the same day that a vote for reformation of evils and abuses was passed at Boston, was attributed by many devout persons to that cause. To the Puritan every victory was a providential interference on his behalf, while every defeat was an equally direct manifestation of God's displeasure at his sins and shortcomings. Of one of the actions of this war Rev. Increase Mather wrote thus: "This Providence is observable, that the nine men which were killed at that time belonged to nine several towns; as if the Lord should say that he hath a controversy with every plantation, and therefore that all had need to repent and reform their way."

When Philip's warriors dispersed, some of them fled to their friends the Narragansets. The English demanded that they should be given up. The Narragansets refused, and the English, fearing that they would join with Philip against them, determined to prevent it.

The Narraganset fort was situated on an island in an extensive swamp in the present town of South Kingstown, Rhode Island. It was strongly defended with palisades (sharp-pointed upright stakes), and around it was a ditch. Felled trees, their branches pointing outward, made a chevaux-de-frise a rod in thickness—another formidable obstacle to an attacking force.

Here Philip and his warriors intended to pass the winter, and here all their women and children were gathered. Five hundred wigwams contained a population of about three thousand persons, besides their grain and provision for the winter. Baskets and tubs of corn, piled one upon another, rendered the wigwams bullet-proof.

The blow must be struck while the warriors were gathered here, and before the return of spring should enable them to renew their depredations. The colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut sent fifteen hundred men, under General Josiah Winslow, for the reduction of this stronghold. During the march the troops suffered severely from the cold. They were without tents, and camped at night in the open air with no covering but their blankets.

Snow was falling, and a piercing wind assailed them, when, on a cold December day, they reached their destination. They had the good-fortune to capture an Indian, who treacherously pointed out to them the concealed entrance to the fort, which was defended by a block-house. It could be approached by only one person at a time, over the felled tree which bridged the ditch.

Along this narrow causeway the English rushed to the attack. They were swept of by the fire of the Indians, but as fast as they fell their places were supplied by others equally intrepid, until six captains and many soldiers had fallen. But in the mean time a handful of men, under Captains Moseley and Church, forcing their way over the breastwork of fallen timber, had gained an entrance at another point. Fighting hand to hand against fearful odds, these men raised the cry, "They run! they run!" This inspiring shout brought a number of their fellow-soldiers to their assistance.

THE GREAT SWAMP FIGHT IN RHODE ISLAND.

The attention of the defenders of the block-house was distracted by this diversion, which enabled the English to cross the fatal ditch where so many brave men had fallen, and to enter time fort. Philip and Canonchet, the Narraganset leader, were everywhere seen encouraging their warriors by their presence and example, but the superior weapons and fighting qualities of the English were too much for them. Then began a terrible slaughter, which included women and children as well as men. No mercy was shown, no quarter asked. The warriors fought with the energy of despair. Here again, as at the destruction of the Pequot fort, fire was applied to the combustible cabins, and all who could not escape perished in the flames.

This barbarous and ill-advised act was contrary to the urgent entreaties of Captain Church. "We can live on their corn and make our wounded comfortable," said he; but the fury of the soldiers could not be controlled.

Terrible were the sufferings of the troops during that night-march homeward, and many of their wounded died in consequence of it.

Philip, with many of his followers, escaped from the fort and rejoined the Nipmucks, as the Indians of the interior were called. The Narragansets were almost exterminated. In this terrible struggle seven hundred of then had fallen. Of the English, over eighty were killed and a large number wounded.

Early in the following year (February 10, 1616) Lancaster was laid in ashes, and fifty persons killed or carried into captivity.

LANCASTER ATTACKED.

The wife of the village minister, Rev. Joseph Rowlandson, one of these unfortunate captives, has left a thrilling narrative of this calamity. She tells us that "about sunrising, hearing the noise of guns, we looked out; several houses were burning, and the smoke ascending to heaven. . . . The murderous wretches (the Indians) were burning and destroying all before them. . . . At length they came and beset our house, and quickly it was the dolefullest day that ever mine eyes beheld. The bullets seemed to fly like hail, and quickly they wounded three men among us. The Indians then set fire to the house. Now the dreadful hour came that I have often heard of in time of war as the ease of others, but now mine eyes see it. Some in our house were fighting for their lives, others wallowing in blood, the house on fire over our heads, and the bloody heathen ready to knock us on the head if we stirred out. Now might we hear mothers and children crying out for themselves and one another, 'Lord! what shall we do?'

"Then I took my children, and one of my sisters hers, to go forth and leave the house; but as soon as we appeared at the door the Indians shot so thick that the bullets rattled against the house as if a handful of stones had been thrown against it, so that we were forced to give back.

"We had six stout dogs belonging to our garrison, but none of them would stir, though at another time, if an Indian had come to the door, they were ready to fly upon him and tear him. . . . But out we must go—the fire increasing and coming along behind us, roaring, and the Indians gaping before us with their guns, spears, and hatchets to devour us. . . .The bullets flying thick, one went through my side and through the poor child in my arms. The Indians laid hold of us, pulling us one way and the children another, and said, 'Come, go along with us.' I told them they would kill me. They answered, if I were willing to go along with them they would not hurt me.

"Oh, the doleful sight that was now to behold at this house! Of thirty-seven persons who were in it, none escaped either present death or a bitter captivity, save only one. There were twelve killed, some shot, some stabbed with their spears, and some knocked down with their hatchets; yet the Lord, by his almighty power, preserved a number of us from death, for there were twenty-four of us taken alive and carried captive."

After a detention of nearly three months, during which her wounded child died, and she herself experienced all the miseries and privations incident to a life among a band of savages who were being hunted and pursued from place to place, Mrs. Rowlandson was ransomed, and joined her husband, who had been absent at the time of the attack. A son and daughter survived, who were also restored to her. Of her immediate family, seventeen suffered death or captivity in this war.

Immediately following the destruction of Lancaster, fifty houses were burned at Medfield, and twenty of its inhabitants slain. Groton, Northampton, Springfield, Marlborough, Sudbury, Warwick, Rehoboth, and Providence were, in succession, partially destroyed, and many persons killed.

At Pawtucket, Captain Michael Peirce, of Scituate, was ambushed, and with almost all his party of seventy was slain. These repeated disasters were in part owing to the carelessness of the whites, and their contempt for the Indians. After this they were more cautious.

A single ludicrous incident relieves this dark and tragic story. Captain Moseley, an active and successful officer, having on one occasion encountered a large body of Indians, "all being ready on both sides to fight," says the old Indian chronicle, "Captain Moseley plucked off his periwig and put it into his breeches, because it should not hinder him in fighting. As soon as the Indians saw that they fell a howling and yelling most hideous; and wholly ignorant of its meaning, but suspecting sorcery, the astonished natives, unwilling to contend with a magician who, when one head was taken off, could so easily replace it with another, all fled in terror; and could not be overtaken nor seen ally more afterwards."

Numerous parties of English were now in the field, but Philip eluded them, and concentrating some four hundred warriors near Sudbury, waylaid Captains Wadsworth and Brocklebauk, who, with seventy men, were marching to the relief of Marlborough. A desperate fight ensued. Both captains fell, and above half their men. The Indians gained this victory by superior strategy. Setting the dry grass and woods on fire to the windward of the English, they drove them from an advantageous position, and then overpowered them by their overwhelming numbers.

Flushed with success, the Indians now boastingly said, "We will fight you twenty years if you will. There are many Indians yet. You must consider the Indians lose nothing but their lives; you must lose your fine houses and your cattle."

But the end was near. The last important conflict of the war was the "Fall Fight," so called from its having taken place near the great falls of the Connecticut at Deerfield, now known as Turner's Falls. Here the Indians had collected in large numbers, making the most of the fishing season. From this place they also sent out their war parties.

Captain Turner, with one hundred and eighty men, by a night ride across the country, surprised and routed them at this place with great loss, but was in turn taken at a disadvantage, and he, with thirty of his men, was slain. This haunt of the enemy was, however, completely broken up, and all their ammunition and provisions destroyed. This serious reverse caused Philip's allies to fall off from him and to scatter in every direction, and Philip himself, having lost many of his best warriors, with his remaining followers returned to Pokanoket.

Here, hunted from place to place like a wild beast, hiding in swamps, his numbers steadily diminishing, Philip still prolonged the hopeless contest. Twice within a few weeks he had barely escaped capture or death. At length his able and energetic antagonist, Church, surprised his camp, and made prisoners of his wife and child, Philip, having cut off his hair to disguise himself, narrowly escaping capture. "Now I am ready to die!" exclaimed the heart-broken chief. His son, a boy of nine—the last of the race of Massasoit—was sold into slavery.

DEATH OF KING PHILIP.

A few days later his last place of refuge at Mount hope was surrounded by Church's men, and King Philip, the great and dreaded foe of the white man, was shot by an Indian of Church's party, whose brother Philip had killed for counselling submission to the English. In accordance with the barbarous usage of that day, the dead sachem was beheaded and quartered. His head was set upon a gibbet at Plymouth, where it was to be seen for twenty years. Such was the joy caused by the news of his death that it was the occasion of a public thanksgiving.

Meanwhile Nanuntenoo, known to the English as Canonchet, son and successor of Miantonomo, the great sachem of the Narragansets, after leading his men in the bloody raids on Lancaster and Medfield, and at the defeat of Captain Peirce, had been captured by the Connecticut troops under Colonel George Denison. While seeking safety in flight he was recognized and hotly pursued. To expedite his movements he threw off his laced coat and wampum belt, and would have escaped had he not made a misstep and fallen into the water, wetting his gun. A swift-footed Pequot, who was in the English army, seized and held him until some soldiers came up.

"The said Nanuntenoo's carriage," says the old chronicle, "was strangely proud and lofty. He refused the offer of his life if he would procure a treaty of peace. Being examined why he would foment that war, he would make no other reply to any question but this—'that he was born a prince, and if princes came to speak with him he would answer, but none present being such he thought himself obliged in honor to hold his tongue, and not hold discourse with persons below his birth and quality.' "A young man asked the chief some questions.

"Child," replied he, "you no understand matters of war. Let your brother or chief come, him I will answer." He was executed by Colonel Denison's Indian allies near Stonington, Connecticut. When told that he must die, and that his last hour had arrived, the proud warrior, with the spirit of an ancient Roman, replied,

"I like it well. I shall die before my heart is soft, or I have said anything unworthy of myself."

After the death of Nanuntenoo the remnant of his tribe united with the Nianties under Ninigret, a famous warrior who, at the head of his tribe, had preserved neutrality with the English during the war. It was this sachem who, on being asked to allow the preaching of Christianity among his people, replied that "it would be better to preach it among the English till they became good" Roger Williams calls him "a proud and fierce sachem." His portrait, painted at Boston in 1617, is owned by the Winthrop family.

The cost of this Indian war was as great in proportion as was that of the Revolutionary War a century later. Twelve or thirteen towns were destroyed, one in twenty of the able-bodied men had fallen, and one family in twenty had been burned out. In addition to this the colonies had incurred a debt of half a million dollars—an enormous sum for those days. But the power of the Indians in southern New England was broken forever. Many of the Indians fled westward, and those captured were sold into slavery.

NINIGRET.

As soon as the news of the rising of the Pokanokets reached the Indians at the eastward, they too began hostilities, the French on the Penobscot supplying them with arms. One of the causes of this outbreak was said to be the cruel conduct of some English seamen, who overset a canoe containing the wife and child of Squando, a chief of the Saco tribe, in order to see if young Indians could swim naturally, like animals of the brute creation, for so they had heard. The child was saved from drowning by the mother, who dived down and brought it up from the bottom; but it died soon afterwards, and Squando became the fierce foe of the English. Many of the eastern Indians had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. These wrongs and injuries called for vengeance.

No general rising took place, but a relentless border warfare, extending over a space of three hundred miles, was carried on. In the two years of its duration nearly half the English settlements were destroyed, and their inhabitants either driven off, killed, or carried into captivity. Peace was finally established in 1678.

Saco was burned by the Indians, led by Squando, who besieged the garrison-house of Major Philips. Early in the following morning a cart, filled with combustibles and protected by a sort of plank breastwork in front, was pushed towards the house. Some of the garrison were dismayed on the sight of this seemingly formidable engine of destruction, but were encouraged by their officers. Orders were given not to fire until it came within pistol-shot. When it had about reached that point one of the wheels stuck fast, which those who were pushing did not observe. The other wheels moving forward brought them into a position to be effectually raked by the garrison. This accident was quickly improved by them—a sudden volley killed six and wounded fifteen more. The Indians immediately retreated, and abandoned the attack.

DEFENCE OF THE GARRISON-HOUSE.

The escape of Anne Brackett, whose family had been taken captives at the sack of Falmouth (now Portland, Maine), was remarkable. Loitering behind her captors, she spied the wreck of a birch canoe. She patched and repaired it with a needle and thread found in a deserted house. Embarking with her husband, a negro servant, and her infant in this frail vessel, she crossed Casco Bay with infinite peril. Arriving at Black Point, where she feared to find Indians, and could only expect to find a solitude, to her great joy she found a vessel from Piscataqua that had just entered the harbor.

The pioneer women of America were in no respect inferior in heroism and devotion to their husbands, their fathers, or their brothers. In what is now the town of Berwick, Maine, the house of a settler was attacked by Hopehood, a Kennebec chief, notorious for his savage prowess. This same chief was afterwards engaged in the massacre at Salmon Falls, New Hampshire. He, with a companion, attempted to surprise the family of the settler, but was discovered by one of the inmates of the house—a young woman—in season to prevent his effecting his purpose. Quickly fastening the door, she held it while all the other persons in the house escaped by a rear window. The Indians finally effected an entrance, and having wreaked their fury on the brave girl who had frustrated their plan, left her for dead. Though severely wounded, she recovered, and lived many years afterwards.

Chapter VII

The Southern Indians

A century and a half had elapsed since the invasion of De Soto, when the French began to explore the fertile regions watered by the Mississippi. Joliet, Marquette, and La Salle led the way in this adventurous exploit, the latter taking possession of its mouth for France. He named the country Louisiana, in compliment to the French monarch, Louis XIV.

The Spaniards had already planted themselves at St. Augustine and Pensacola, when Iberville, a French naval officer, one of seven distinguished brothers, landed the first French colony at Biloxi. A fort was erected, Sanvolle, his elder brother, was appointed Governor, and Bienville, a younger brother, Lieutenant-governor, of Louisiana. The site of New Orleans was selected for the principal settlement. After twenty years' service in the colony, Bienville became governor, in 1718.

The Southern Indians inhabited the region now embraced in the States of Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, most of Georgia, and portions of South Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. These Indians, sometimes called Appalachians or Mobilians, were divided into three distinct confederacies: the Creeks or Muskokis, including also the Seminoles and the Yamassees; the Choctaws, whose country, bordering upon the Gulf of Mexico, was west of the Creeks and extended to the Mississippi; and the Cherokees, the mountaineers of the South, whose land extended from the Cherokee Broad River, on the east, to the Alabama, on the west, one of the most delightful regions in the United States. The Chickasaws, who were united with the Choctaws, were seated upon the western branches of the Mobile, in Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

On the banks of the Mississippi, chiefly on the bluffs where stands the beautiful city that bears their name, the Natchez Indians once dwelt. It was a region of great fertility, and lay between the territories of the Choctaws and Chickasaws. They had originally inhabited the south-western portion of Mexico, and had brought thence many of their religious rites and customs. Their form of government was more despotic than that of the other Southern tribes.

The great chief of the Natchez bore the name of the Sun, and pretended to claim his origin from that luminary. Every morning as it rose above the horizon he stood at the door of his cabin, turned his face towards the east, and howled thrice, at the same time prostrating himself on the ground. A pipe, used only upon these occasions, was then handed him, from which he puffed smoke, first towards the east, then towards the other cardinal points.

"The Sun has eaten," proclaimed an officer of his household, before the ruling chief of the Sun, after each morning's repast, "and the rest of the earth may now eat." The death of the Great Sun was sometimes followed by that of one hundred persons, who considered it a great honor to be sacrificed at the same time.

The Temple of the Natchez was oblong in form. In it were kept the bones of deceased chiefs, and in the middle of the floor a fire was kept constantly burning. One of their traditions is, that the keeper of this sacred flame having on one occasion fallen asleep, the fire went out, and in consequence a horrible malady raged for years, during which many of the Suns and an infinite number of people died. When Iberville first visited them, in the spring of 1700, their population did not exceed one thousand two hundred.

Bienville, in April, 1716, led a small party into the territory of the Natchez, to revenge the murder of some Frenchmen. He intended, after making an example of some of their chiefs and intimidating the tribe, to proceed to their towns, and build a fort in obedience to the orders of his king. He halted on an island in the river, at some distance from Natchez. Here three of the tribe came to see him with the pipe of peace, but Bienville sent them back, telling them he would smoke with the Great Sun chiefs only, for he was the great chief of the French, and that their chiefs had shown a want of friendship and respect in not coming themselves to greet him. The Frenchmen thoroughly understood the Indian character.

One morning not long afterwards, Bienville saw four magnificent canoes descending the river and approaching his island camp. Eight warriors stood erect and sung the pipe-song, while two chiefs in each canoe sat under an immense umbrella. They were the Natchez chiefs, drawn thither by the snare of the wily Frenchman. Concealing one-half of his soldiers, and advancing in a friendly way, he led them into his camp. They entered, singing the song of peace and holding the pipe over his head.

Bienville refused the pipe offered him by the chiefs with contempt, and inquired the cause of their visit. Then the high-priest, after addressing the sun, and invoking its aid to soften the stern Bienville, also offered him the peace-pipe, which was again scornfully rejected. At the same moment the chiefs were seized, ironed, and put in prison.

At night Bienville informed the Grand Sun that nothing would satisfy him but the heads of those who had advised or executed the murder of his countrymen. They were sent for, and the heads of two of them were brought him. Bienville then made a treaty with them, sparing their lives on certain conditions, and no longer refusing to smoke with them the pipe of peace.

A fort was then built on an eminence advantageously situated near the Mississippi; when it was finished, six hundred Natchez warriors appeared unarmed before the gate, and joined three hundred women in a dance in honor of Bienville. Afterwards the chiefs crossed the threshold, and again smoked the peace-pipe with him.

Some years later Fort Rosalie, as it was called, and the post of Natchez was under the command of M. de Chopart, a man wholly unfit for the position. This officer, for purposes of his own, selected the village of one of the Suns, or great chiefs, and ordered him to go elsewhere. Justly indignant at this outrage, preparations were quietly made by the tribe to cut off the French by a sudden attack here and at other settlements lower down the river. The neighboring tribes were also enlisted in the plot. Chopart was warned of the danger, but instead of taking precautions against it, had those who gave him the information put in irons.

The massacre began about nine o'clock in the morning. The arrival of a number of richly-laden boats for the garrison and the colonists determined the Indians to strike their blow sooner than they had intended. Dividing themselves into parties, they gave out that they were going on a grand hunt, and began to traffic with the French, giving them poultry and corn, and in return obtaining arms and ammunition.

Being now intermingled with the French, and provided with arms, they attacked at the same time each his man, and in less than two hours they had massacred more than two hundred of them, among them Chopart, the commander of the fort—the cause of this terrible slaughter. To show their contempt for this man, the Indians would not permit a warrior to kill him, but for that purpose sent a "mean "person, who pursued the wretch from his house into his garden, and there despatched him with a wooden tomahawk. Two men only were spared—a tailor and a carpenter, whose services the Indians required. Some of the women were killed, others were made slaves, and treated with great indignity. The post at Yazoo was soon afterwards surprised and its garrison massacred.

When this terrible massacre became known the consternation was great throughout the colony. Governor Perier, at New Orleans, immediately sent the Chevalier De Loubois against the Natchez. At the same time seven hundred Choctaws, under M. Le Sueur, marched to their village, surprised them at break of day, and set free a large number of prisoners, besides taking sixty scalps and a number of the Natchez. The victory would have been more complete if they had been less intent on freeing the slaves, or if they had waited for the arrival of De Loubois with his troops. The great body of the Natchez escaped by flight. Shutting themselves up in two of their forts, the Natchez proposed to surrender more than two hundred prisoners if the French commander would remove his artillery and withdraw his forces, or else all the prisoners should be burned. De Loubois consented; but the Indians, suspecting treachery, withdrew in the night and gained the opposite shore of the Mississippi, with all their women and children. The prisoners, however, were found in the fort and released.

A large part of the tribe, conducted by the Great Sun, then established themselves upon the Washita River, others sought an asylum among the Chickasaws, and some settled in Alabama. But the French had not done with them yet. In November, 1731, Governor Perier organized an expedition, which in January following he led to the mouth of Black River, the site of the last stronghold of the devoted tribe.

Investing the fort, the French encountered a spirited resistance. Mortars were used by them in this siege, and a bomb, falling in the centre of the court, caused great havoc, and still greater consternation among the Indians. At length they agreed to surrender the Great Sun and one war-chief, which Perier refused. They then consented to surrender sixty-five men and two hundred women and children, upon condition that their lives should be spared.

That night, in the midst of a tempest of wind and rain, the miserable, hunted-down remnant of this unfortunate tribe abandoned their fort and endeavored to escape up the river. Perier's Indian allies pursued, and brought in one hundred of them. Next day the governor demolished the fort, and returned to New Orleans with four hundred and twenty-seven prisoners. At their head was the Great Sun and several principal chiefs. They were all sent to St. Domingo and sold for slaves.

Such of the Indians as escaped the terrors of that tempestuous night attacked the French post and settlements on Red River. They were repulsed by St. Denys, the commandant, with the loss of ninety-two warriors, including all their chiefs. A remnant escaped by flight, but, as a nation, the Natchez no longer existed.

The Chickasaws were the fiercest, most insolent, haughty, and cruel of the Southern Indians. They were constantly at war, and though, in comparison with the nations around them, a mere handful, they had seldom been defeated. It was natural, therefore, that they should despise the cultivation of the soil, as they could live on the proceeds of the chase and the plunder of their neighbors.

The Chickasaws were the most expert of the American Indians in following the trail, and were also exceedingly skilful in the chase. Although their country abounded in beaver, they did not disturb them, saying, "anybody can kill a beaver." Their ambition was to capture the swift-footed deer or elk. They were all excellent swimmers, an art early taught to their children. They were very overbearing towards their females, and extremely jealous of their wives. They were athletic, well formed, and graceful.

Chickasaw tradition says they came from the west, and on starting eastward were provided with a large dog, as a guard, and a pole, as a guide. The dog would give them notice of the approach of an enemy, and the pole, which they planted in the ground every night, would lean next morning in the direction they were to go. In this way they kept on until they crossed the great Mississippi River.

Arriving at the Alabama River, near what is now Huntsville, the pole was for some days undecided which way to lean, but finally made up its mind and pointed to the south-west. They then resumed their journey, fighting their way through enemies on all sides, until, at a place now known as Chickasaw Old Fields, the pole stood perfectly erect. All then came to the conclusion that this was the Promised Land, and here they accordingly remained until, in 1837, the tribe emigrated to the Indian Territory.

A small portion of the Natchez Indians had united with the Chickasaws, who were friends of the English, and of course enemies of the French. In order to establish French supremacy in that region, and to keep the communication open between New Orleans in the south and Kaskaskia in the north, Bienville prepared to invade the Chickasaw territory and subdue them. By a free distribution of presents he gained over the Choctaws, who consented to assist him in his enterprise.

He embarked at Mobile, in a fleet comprising more than sixty large pirogues and batteaux. Never before had so large and imposing a fleet disturbed the deep, smooth waters of Mobile. He disembarked his forces at what is now Cotton Gin Port, twenty-seven miles east of the Chickasaw towns. Taking with him provisions for twelve days, he began his march, and encamped near the enemy. On the afternoon of May 26th the Chevalier Noyau advanced to the attack at the head of three hundred French troops.

With the help of some Englishmen the Chickasaws had fortified themselves with much skill, and the French were not a little astonished on beholding the English flag waving over their adversaries. Their houses had been fortified by large stakes driven into the ground around them, and were loop-holed for musketry. Within the palisades were breast-works, from which, through the loop-holes, the Indians fired. Their houses stood in such positions as to admit of cross-firing.

The attacking column was protected by movable breastworks, called mantelets, carried by negroes, and which served as shields. No sooner had these come within gunshot than one of the negroes was killed and another wounded; the rest fled precipitately. The French then rapidly advanced under a severe fire, and carried three fortified cabins, setting fire to and destroying others. Many of them had by this time fallen; but the officers, placing themselves at the head of a few brave men, attempted to storm the principal fort, but were nearly all shot down before they could reach it.

At a safe distance from this scene of slaughter Bienville's six hundred Choctaw allies, painted and plumed and dressed in the most fantastic and horrible manner, yelled and shouted, but, beyond occasionally firing in the air, rendered no assistance. After the conflict had lasted three hours, De Noyau and the brave remnant of his men were compelled to retreat.

Bienville's plan of operations had included a junction with D'Artagnette, a brave and experienced officer, who was to have assembled the tribes of the Illinois and, together with one hundred and thirty Frenchmen, united his force with that of Bienville at the Chickasaw towns. The unavoidable delays experienced by the latter caused the failure of the plan and disaster to both.

D'Artagnette was the first to arrive. He sought in vain for intelligence of Bienville. The impatience of his red allies, who, after eleven days of inaction, could no longer be controlled, led him to attack the Chickasaws without further delay. His force consisted of one hundred and thirty French and three hundred and sixty Indians. At the first onset five hundred of the enemy, who had been concealed, rose from their ambush and fell upon the invaders, with such impetuosity that nearly all D'Artagnette's Indians took to their heels, leaving the unfortunate Frenchmen surrounded by their foes.

After maintaining for some time a heroic but unavailing struggle, in which a large number of brave men had fallen, D'Artagnette, Vincennes, and a few others surrendered; a small number escaped. The fruits of this important victory were all the provisions and baggage of the French, eleven horses, four hundred and fifty pounds of powder, and one thousand two hundred bullets. The powder and ball were used to shoot down the troops of Bienville, as we have already seen. The prisoners were at first kindly treated, but after the defeat of Bienville all were burned at the stake excepting one, who was sent to Bienville with the intelligence of the defeat and fate of D'Artagnette. The Chickasaws remained masters of the situation.

OGLETHORPE'S LANDING.

Little was known of the Cherokees who inhabited northern Georgia and north-western Carolina, one of the most beautiful and healthful regions on this continent, until the period of English settlement. In their appearance, their habits, and their customs, they bore a great resemblance to the Creeks. Owing to their delightful climate, with its mountain air and delicious springs of pure water, they attained a greater age than the other tribes.

These Indians were of middle stature and of an olive color, but were generally painted. Their skins were stained with indelible ink, representing a variety of subjects. The women were tall, and symmetrically formed; their feet and hands were small and exquisitely shaped, and they moved with grace and dignity. The ears of the males were slit, and stretched to an enormous size—an exceedingly painful operation. They were very fond of dancing, spending almost every night in this amusement, and were skilled in getting up and preparing pantomimes, being excellent mimics.

In January, 1733, General James Oglethorpe led a colony to Georgia, pitching his tent where the city of Savannah now stands. Though he had a royal title to the land, he took care to pay the Indians for it, and they were always friendly to him. The purchase was made of Tomo Chichi, one of their principal chiefs, who afterwards accompanied Oglethorpe to England. The Cherokees gave Oglethorpe a buffalo-skin, with the head and feathers of an eagle painted on the inner side. They said: "The feathers of the eagle are soft, signifying love; the skin is warm, and is the emblem of protection, therefore love and protect our little families." He was ever their true friend and they reciprocated his kindness. When, in 1740, he attacked the Spaniards at St. Augustine, he was accompanied on his expedition by one thousand Cherokee warriors.

GENERAL OGLETHORPE.

Mutual injuries had, at the beginning of the year 1760, brought about a state of hostility between the settlers on the frontier of South Carolina and their Cherokee neighbors. Governor Littleton, in violation of good faith and sound policy, had seized thirty-two of their chiefs, who had visited him for the purpose of preventing a war, and imprisoned them in Fort Prince George. His intention was to hold them until twenty-four Indians implicated in the murder of white men should be delivered up to him. This it was impossible for them to do, as the Cherokee chiefs had no power to coerce their countrymen, and the governor was so informed by Atakullakulla, their venerable head chief, the staunch friend of the white man. One of the imprisoned chiefs was Otacite, a renowned warrior.

Their rescue was soon attempted. Oconostata, one of their leading chiefs and warriors, approached Fort Prince George with a band of his countrymen, and requested Lieutenant Coytmore, the commander, to come out and have a talk with him. That officer assented, and while they were conversing the chief swung a bridle which he held three times around his head. This was the preconcerted signal, and a volley from the concealed Indians mortally wounded Coytmore, and severely wounded two others who were with him.

The garrison seeing the fate of their officer, at once proceeded to put irons upon the Indians in their custody, but meeting with a furious resistance, the exasperated soldiers put them all to death. Those without attacked the fort, shouting to their countrymen within, ignorant of their fate, "Fight strong, and you shall be aided." But the fort was too strong for them, and they finally withdrew. The vengeance of the tribe fell heavily on the defenceless frontier, which became a scene of blood and rapine, and the war-belt was sent to the Catawbas and other tribes, asking their aid in exterminating the English.

Meantime General Amherst, the English Commander-in-chief in America, had despatched one thousand two hundred men, under Colonel Montgomery, from New York to the scene of action. This officer arrived in Charleston late in April, and moved rapidly towards the Cherokee villages. Coming after a night-march upon the town of Little Keowa, he surrounded it, and ordered his troops to bayonet every man. This was done, and the women and children were captured. In Estatoe, a town of two hundred houses, he found but ten or twelve men, all of whom were killed. Determining to make the Indians feel the power of the English, he visited, and in succession destroyed, all the villages in the lower nation.

CHEROKEES.

Montgomery then returned to Fort Prince George, where he awaited proposals for peace. None came, and he again advanced, this time on the middle settlements. In three days he reached the town of Etchowee. Here the Cherokees had determined to make a stand. A smart fire was opened upon the advancing troops from a thicket. Montgomery immediately pushed forward through an ambuscade of five hundred Indians, rousing them from their coverts. As soon as they reached clearer and more elevated ground, the troops drove the enemy be- fore them at the point of the bayonet, and a severe chastisement was inflicted upon the Indians. Etchowee was found to be abandoned, but the warriors had generally escaped to the mountains, and the only result of the expedition was to increase the wrath of the tribe. Unable to effect anything further, Montgomery returned to New York.

FRANCIS MARION.

A band of Creek Indians, under Chlucco, better known as the Long Warrior, Micco, or King of the Seminoles, accompanied Montgomery in his expedition and rendered essential service. By their aid the army escaped ambush after ambush, discovered the Cherokee villages, and finally covered his retreat out of one of the most dangerous countries through which an army could pass.

Fort Loudoun was garrisoned by two hundred men. Oconostata invested it with a large number of warriors, cutting it off from all communication. When the garrison was nearly famished, seeing no hope of escape the fort was surrendered, on condition that the men should retain their arms and march home unmolested. Their first night-encampment was fifteen miles from the fort. Next morning they were attacked, and nearly all slain or captured. This was done in retaliation for the massacre of the Cherokee hostages.

In the following year Carolina raised twelve hundred men, under Colonel Henry Middleton. Among his officers were Henry Laurens, afterwards President of Congress, Francis Marion, William Moultrie, Andrew Pickens, and Isaac Huger, all of whom became distinguished as soldiers and patriots in the Revolutionary War. Lieutenant-colonel James Grant joined them with two British regiments, and some Chickasaw and Catawba Indians as allies, making a total force of two thousand six hundred men.

They reached Fort Prince George May 29, 1761. On the 10th of June, at Etchowee, the scene of Montgomery's battle the year before, the Cherokees were gathered, well equipped and prepared for action. They had an advantageous position, and for three hours the contest was severe and bloody. They were finally driven at the point of the bayonet, falling back inch by inch until at length, completely overpowered, they fled, hotly pursued by the victors; many were slain.

JOHN ROSS.

Following up his victory, Grant laid Etchowee and fourteen other towns, together with their corn-fields and granaries, in ashes, and the people, in a state of complete destitution, were driven to the barren mountains. The spirit of the nation was broken, and through the venerable Atakullakulla, the chiefs humbly sued for peace. A treaty kept the nation peaceful until the breaking out of the American Revolution.

During that struggle the Cherokees fought against the colonists, and were severely punished and greatly reduced in numbers. Their first treaty with the United States dates from 1785. Its guaranties were disregarded by the Federal Government, and contrary to their wishes, and in spite of their resistance, they were forced from their country at the point of the bayonet in 1838.

John Ross, their principal chief, strenuously opposed the removal of his people. He was a half-breed, and at an early age had acquired a good English education, becoming head chief in 1828. A portion of the Cherokees, under the lead of Major Ridge, Boudinot, and other influential chiefs, in December, 1835, concluded a treaty with the United States Government for the removal of the tribe to the Indian Territory, which was repudiated by Ross and the larger part of the nation. Under this treaty the Ridge party—one-third of the tribe—emigrated in 1837. Ross and the remainder of his people held out against removal as long as possible, but, notwithstanding a decision of the United States Supreme Court in their favor, were finally compelled to go. The removal of the tribe was disastrous to them in many ways, but they are at present in a prosperous condition in their new home in the Indian Territory.

The Cherokees had a singular method of relieving the poor. Their head men issued orders for a war-dance, at which all the fighting men of the town assembled. Contrary to the usual custom, only one man danced at a time, who, with a tomahawk in his hand, hopped and capered for a moment, and then gave a whoop. The music then stopped while he related the manner of his taking his first scalp. He then cast a string of wampum, wire, paint, lead, or anything he could spare, upon a large bear skin spread for the purpose. Then the music again begun, and he continued in the same manner through all his warlike actions. Another succeeded him, and the ceremony lasted until all the warriors had related their exploits and thrown presents upon the skin. The stock thus raised, after paying the musicians, was divided among the poor. The same ceremony was used to recompense any extraordinary merit.

The Choctaws and the Chickasaws had a common origin, and are to-day substantially one people. Their traditions, like those of the Natchez, point to a Mexican origin. The Creeks were their great enemies. In 1765 a war began between them which raged fiercely for six years. Skillful in deceiving their enemies, they attached the paws of various animals to their own feet and hands, and roamed the woods, imitating their movements. Sometimes a large bush was carried by the warrior in front, concealing himself and those behind him, while the one in the extreme rear obliterated all the tracks with grass. Excellent themselves in following the trail, they could also deceive an enemy by their astonishing skill in imitating every fowl and quadruped.

They were inveterate gamblers. Besides ball play, they had an exciting game called Chunke, the players and lookers-on staking their ornaments, wearing apparel, pipes, and arms upon the result. Sometimes after losing all, the ruined gambler borrowed a gun and shot himself. Indians are very like white men, after all. The women have a game with sticks and balls, something like our game of battledoor.

Some of their funeral customs were peculiar. The assembled relatives wept and howled, and asked strange questions of the deceased, such as, "Why did you leave us? Did your wife not serve you well? Were you not contented with your children? Did you not have corn enough? Were you afraid of your enemies?" To increase the solemnity and importance of the occasion mourners were hired to cry.

Among other odd customs of the Southern Indians was this—being sun-worshippers, whenever the head chief sneezed, his subjects bowed their heads, opened and closed their arms, and saluted him with these words: "May the Sun guard you," "May the Sun be with you," "May the Sun shine upon you," or "May the Sun prosper and defend you."

If their knowledge of geography had been equal to their enterprise, a serious catastrophe that befell one of the Carolina tribes would have been prevented. The Sewees, a tribe living on the bay of that name, under the mistaken idea that England was not far from their coast, fitted out a large fleet of canoes, laden with skins and furs, for the purpose of traffic. All their able-bodied men embarked, leaving only the women and children and the aged and infirm at home. A storm destroyed a part of their fleet, and the remainder falling into the hands of the English, the Indians were sold as slaves in the West India Islands. Small-pox and intemperance still further reduced this once populous tribe.

The Creeks and the Seminoles are the subjects of future chapters.

Note.—For the best account of the Southern tribes, see Pickett's History of Alabama.

Chapter VIII

French and Indian Wars

With the reign of King William III. began a series of wars between the English and French on this continent which, with only one long interval, lasted seventy years. They grew out of the rivalry of the two nations for territorial power and the advantages of the Indian trade.

The genius and heroism of Champlain, Cartier, Marquette, Joliet, and La Salle, and the zeal and devotion of her missionaries, had given to the French not only Canada, then known as New France, Acadia, Hudson's Bay, and Newfoundland, but had also furnished her with a claim to the whole valley of the Mississippi, and to Texas as far as the Rio Bravo del Norte. A line drawn from Falmouth, now Portland, or Casco Pay, by the towns of Scarborough, Saco, Wells, York, Amesbury, Haverhill, Andover, Dunstable, Chelmsford, Groton, Lancaster, and Worcester constituted the frontier of Massachusetts, which then included Maine. Upon these settlements the stress of those cruel wars fell. The English colonists largely outnumbered the French, but the latter had succeeded in arraying the numerous tribes of the Algonkins against the English, and these savage allies made the warfare terrible to the settlers who were exposed to their incursions all along the extensive frontier. The only allies of the English were the Iroquois.

ROBERT CAVELIER, SIEUR DE LA SALLE.

By the French the war was carried on in a most barbarous manner. They fitted out parties of savages to attack the English settlers, shooting them down while tilling their fields, seizing their wives and children, loading them with heavy packs of plunder from their own houses, and driving them before them into the wilderness. These, when faint with hunger and unable to stagger under their burdens, were murdered, and their scalps torn off and exhibited by the savages to their civilized masters on their arrival at the French head-quarters. Only those who have read the story of these barbarities can realize the perils and sacrifices, the heroism and sufferings of the early English settlers.

The greater part of the early settlers were engaged in agriculture. Those on the sea-coast pursued the fisheries with success. Their every-day dress was plain, strong, and comfortable, and was the product of their own looms and knitting-needles. A cocked-up hat, a short frock of strongest warp, a pair of old leather breeches, and leggings confined above the knee and tied over the shoe with a string round the middle of the foot, was the costume of the man.

The farm work obliged them to be up before daylight. The early breakfast consisted of pea or bean porridge, boiled with salted beef or pork, served in wooden bowls, together with bread and beer. The bread was generally some preparation of Indian-corn mixed with rye. Dinner at noon began with Indian pudding and ended with boiled salt pork, fried eggs, brown bread, cabbage, and cider. Sometimes they had succotash, a native dish of corn and beans boiled together in the milk. Hasty pudding, consisting of the boiled meal of maize or rye, and eaten with molasses or milk, was a common dish. The spoons were pewter, the plates "wooden trenchers." Their sofa was the settle, their carpets clean white sand, their ceilings rough boards and rafters, and their parlor was at once kitchen, bedroom, and hall. Besides other household labor, the women did all the sewing, knitting, mending, spinning, cooking, and washing. Their toil was unremitting. Religious exercises, morning and evening, were never omitted. By eight o'clock the entire family were in bed.

INDIANS ATTACKING THE SETTLERS.

What a contrast does this simple, healthful, and laborious life of our ancestors present to that of most of their descendants!

To the Indians every part of the New England border was familiar ground. Many of them, before withdrawing to Canada, had lived in its vicinity, and had frequently visited the settlements to trade, and were thus well qualified to guide the French in their expeditions. Their motive was plunder, but it is doubtless true that some were governed by the remembrance of injuries, and it is proverbial that "an Indian never forgets an injury."

The first blow was struck by the Indians at Cocheco, now Dover, New Hampshire, which, from its exposed situation at the lowest ford of the Piscataqua, had been in constant dread of attack. The inhabitants had become alarmed at the attitude of the Indians, but were quieted by Major Waldron, the officer in command, who laughed at their fears. There were here five garrison-houses strongly built, to which the people retired at night, but the watch had become careless. These were strongly fortified dwellings calculated to repel Indian attacks.

At midnight the doors of four of these houses, including that of Major Waldron, were opened by some squaws, who had been permitted to lodge within them, and a large number of Indians rushed in, slaughtering all who resisted. Thirteen years before, Waldron had, by a stratagem, made prisoners of some four hundred Indians, more than half of whom were sold into slavery or executed at Boston. It was proposed to these Indians to join the English in a training and have a sham fight. The evolutions were so arranged by the English that the Indians were surrounded and secured. This piece of treachery was not forgotten by the Indians.

MAJOR WALDRON'S TERRIBLE FIGHT.

Waldron, now eighty years old, shouting, "What now? what now?" seized his sword and defended himself with great resolution, but was at length struck down by a blow from a hatchet. He was then dragged into his hall and placed in an arm-chair upon a table. He was a magistrate, and they mockingly cried out to him, "Judge Indians now! judge Indians now!"

He had the reputation of having taken advantage of the natives in trade, and in buying beaver of them, his fist, placed in the opposite scale, was accounted as weighing only a pound. After eating supper they began to torture him. Some who were in debt to him gashed him with their knives, saying, "I cross out my account," while others cut off the joints of his fingers, and said to him, "Now will your fist weigh a pound?" Finally, to end his misery, as he was sinking from loss of blood, they placed his sword so that he fell upon it. After burning the house, with the others near it, and having killed twenty-three persons, the Indians withdrew, taking with them to Canada twenty-nine captives. Some of these prisoners were sold to the French—the first instance, it is believed, of English captives being thus disposed of. Two months later another part of Dover, called Oyster Bay, now Durham, was attacked, and eighteen men killed while at work in the fields.

Count Frontenac, then in his seventieth year, had been recalled to the government of Canada. One of his first acts was to fit out and send three expeditions against the English settlements. One, from Montreal, was to strike Albany; another, from Three Rivers, was to assail the New Hampshire border; and the third, from Quebec, was directed to the frontier of Maine.

The expedition designed for Albany consisted of two hundred French and Indians, under De Mantet and De St. Hélène. They began their march in midwinter upon snow-shoes, carrying their packs upon their shoulders, and dragging their blankets and provisions over the snow on Indian sledges. Fearing that Albany was too strong for them, the Indians could not be persuaded to attack it, and Schenectady, a fortified town twenty miles from Albany, was selected instead. The weather was severe and the snow was deep, and the invaders suffered severely during the march, which took twenty-two days. So exhausted were they with cold, fatigue, and hunger before reaching the place, that some of them afterwards declared that they would have surrendered had they encountered serious opposition.

SCHENECTADY.

A scout having ascertained that the town was in a profound slumber and without a guard, the spirits of the party were greatly raised. The town was left thus unguarded because the severity of the weather was supposed to be a sufficient security. As if in derision of possible danger, two snow images, it is said, stood as mock sentinels at the gate.

At midnight the assailants entered the open and undefended gate, divided into parties of six or seven, waylaid the doors of each house, and then raised the terrible warwhoop. Massacre and pillage now held high carnival. Barbarities too shocking to relate were perpetrated. In two hours upward of eighty well-built and well-furnished houses were burned, two only escaping the flames, and sixty persons were put to death. Forty of the inhabitants were carried into captivity. About sixty women, children, and old men were spared, out of regard for Glen, the chief magistrate, whose former kindness to French prisoners was now reciprocated. On their return to Montreal the party was pursued, and a number killed or captured.

Intelligence of this shocking event was borne to Albany by some of the poor fugitives who, with no other covering than their night-clothes, and during a fall of snow, made their way to that place, some of them badly frost-bitten.

The second party, under Hertel de Rouville, an experienced officer, attacked at daylight the village of Salmon Falls, on the Piscataqua. Here was a fortified house, with two stockade forts, for the protection of the inhabitants. The three parties into which Hertel had divided his command made a sudden and simultaneous attack. No watch had been kept, and the surprise was complete and the resistance brief. Soon the scattered dwellings and barns were in ashes. Thirty persons, of all ages and sexes, were tomahawked or shot, and fifty-four, mostly women and children, were carried into captivity. Hertel was pursued and overtaken by a large party of English at Wooster River, but succeeded in holding the narrow bridge that crossed it until dark, when he continued his retreat.

On the way, Hertel met the third party under Portneuf, who had also been joined by the Baron de St. Castin and some Kennebec Indians, swelling his forces to the number of four or five hundred. Together they attacked the fort and settlement at Casco Bay. Fort Loyal, a palisade work having eight cannon, stood at what is now the foot of India Street, Portland. The fort having been undermined, it was surrendered on the fourth day upon the promise of protection. No sooner, however, had the garrison laid down their arms, than the women and children and wounded were all murdered in cold blood. The commander and four others only were spared. Scarcely had they surrendered when four vessels, sent to their relief from Boston, appeared in the offing just too late. This successful raid greatly elated the French, who had not yet recovered from the effects of the blow struck at Montreal by the Iroquois in the previous year.

When Davis, the commander at Fort Loyal, reached Quebec, he told Frontenac of the pledge given by his captor, and of the violation of it. "We were promised good quarter," said he, "and a guard to conduct us to our English. I thought I had to do with Christians who would have been careful of their engagements, and not to violate and break their oaths. Whereupon," continues Davis, "the Governor shaked his head, and, as I was told, was very angry with Burniffe" (Portneuf).

After these exploits a grand council was held at Quebec by the Western Indians who came to trade. Frontenac himself took part in this, and brandishing a hatchet, sung the war-song and led the dance, whooping and yelling with the rest. The other Frenchmen present followed his example. This excited the enthusiasm of the Indians, who snatched the proffered hatchet and promised to make war on the English and Iroquois to the death.

SCENE OF OPERATIONS—FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.

Major Peter Schuyler, with a force of two hundred and sixty-seven men, of whom the larger part were Iroquois, marching from Albany, had surprised a French camp at La Prairie, opposite Montreal, driving them into their fort with considerable loss. Informed of Schuyler's approach, Valrenne, a Canadian officer, was sent to intercept him on his retreat. Placing himself upon the path by which Schuyler was retreating, the advanced parties of each met, and their warwhoops sounded the alarm.

Valrenne had posted his men to great advantage behind some fallen trees and thickets, on a ridge, barring the way of the English. The English made repeated charges, and the combatants on either side became intermingled. The fight was long and stubborn, but the English at length broke through their foes, and forming again, attacked and finally drove them back. After the French had retreated, Schuyler and his men continued their march, carrying away their wounded, but losing their knapsacks.

PETER SCHUYLER.

York, one of the most important towns in the eastern country, was laid in ashes by a party of Abenakis from the Penobscot and the Kennebec. The village was a collection of scattered houses, along the banks of the river Agamenticus and the adjacent sea-shore. Some of them were built for defence. Snow fell as the party moved forward. Coming upon a boy chopping wood, they took him, and after getting what information they could from him tomahawked him. At the edge of the village they divided into two parties. The warwhoop was sounded at a given signal, and the savages burst into the houses and slaughtered or captured all their inmates. Rev. Samuel Dimmer, the minister, was shot as he was mounting his horse at his own door. His wife died in captivity. The few who escaped made for the fortified houses, which were not attacked by the Indians. The women and children were allowed to go free, in return, it is said, for the release some time before of some captive Indian children. One of the Indians arrayed himself in the gown of the slain minister, and preached a mock sermon to his captured parishioners. Two fortified houses of this period are yet standing at York. The Indian leader on this occasion was Madokawando, chief of the Penobscots.

This same chief soon afterwards attacked the garrison at Wells, Maine. With him were some Frenchmen, under Portneuf, St. Castin, and La Brognerie. So confident were the leaders of success, that before the attack they arranged the details of the division of the provisions and property of the garrison. Convers, the English commander, occupying the larger of the five fortified houses in the place, had but fifteen men with whom to defend it. Fortunately, two sloops, with supplies and a few men, arrived on the day before the attack. Forewarned of the enemy's approach, the inhabitants had fled to the forts.

The attack began fiercely, before daylight. The enemy, five hundred strong, fired from behind breastworks of timber filled with hay. Convers, however, had two or three twelve-pound cannon, which were well served, the men loading and pointing them, and the women, who brought ammunition, lighting the fuse. Many stratagems were tried, and the sloops were several times set on fire by burning arrows; but by the coolness and bravery of the crews the flames were easily subdued. A fire-raft was then floated down upon them, and destruction seemed inevitable. Providentially, when close upon them, the wind drove it on shore.

Next the besiegers made a huge shield of planks, which they fastened to the back of a cart. La Brognerie, with twenty-six men, got behind it, and shoved the cart towards the stranded sloops. It was within fifty feet of them when a wheel sunk in the mud and it stuck fast. La Brognerie tried to extricate it and was shot dead. The rest ran, and some of them dropped under the fire of the sailors.

Becoming discouraged, the assailants then tried persuasion upon the English commander. Instead of boldly attacking and overwhelming the small force opposed to them, the Indians leaped, yelled, and fired, and called on the English to yield. Failing to convince Convers of the necessity for surrender, a flag was sent as a last resource, with a summons for him to capitulate. To this Convers replied, "I want nothing but men to come and fight me."

"As you are so stout," said the bearer of the flag, "why don't you come and fight in the open field like a man, and not in a garrison like a squaw?" The taunt was followed by a threat: "We will cut you as small as tobacco before to-morrow morning." "Come on," said Convers, not at all frightened, "I want work."

After a two days' siege, and the expenditure of their ammunition, the enemy withdrew. A handful of determined men had rendered abortive one of the most formidable expeditions that had yet been undertaken.

A war party of Abenakis, headed by Yillieu, a French officer, and the priest Thury, struck the settlement at Oyster River, now Durham, about twelve miles from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The people had been assured that the war was over, and no watch was kept. Approaching by moonlight in numerous small bands, the slaughter was frightful. One hundred and four persons, principally women and children, were victims. Some escaped to the fortified houses or to the woods. The devastation extended six or seven miles. The church, strangely enough, was spared, while the other houses were destroyed. One of the evil results of this shocking affair was that it helped the French by putting an end to the negotiations for peace with their Indian allies, which the English had nearly concluded.

PEMAQUID.

Seven of the twelve fortified houses at Oyster River were successfully defended. One of these was saved by an ingenious stratagem of its owner, Thomas Bickford. Sending his wife and children down the river in a boat, he went back alone to defend his dwelling. When the Indians approached, he fired on them, sometimes from one loop-hole and sometimes from another, shouting the word of command to an imaginary garrison, and showing himself at different places, each time with a different hat, cap, or coat. Thus he saved both his family and home.

The new fort at Pemaquid was attacked by a strong force of French and Indians, under Iberville and the Baron de St. Castin. The fort, though well manned and supplied, had no casemates to protect its defenders from the explosion of bombs. Chubb, its commander, when summoned to surrender, replied that he would not give up the fort if the sea were covered with French ships and the land with Indians" A few bomb-shells, and a notification that if the fort had to be carried by assault the garrison would get no quarter from the Indians, caused Chubb to sound a parley, and he surrendered on condition that he and his men should be protected from the Indians, and sent to Boston to be exchanged. Meanwhile, Iberville sent them to an island in the bay, out of reach of the Indians. Chubb was arrested for cowardice, and kept awhile in Boston jail.

This officer had been guilty of a foul piece of treachery towards the Indians. While holding a conference with some of the Penobscots respecting an exchange of prisoners, he plied them with strong drink, and while they were intoxicated ordered his soldiers to fall upon them. Several were slain, including two chiefs. After his release from prison he returned to his home in Andover, but Indian vengeance followed him, and the next year he was killed by a party of savages.

OLD FORT FREDERICK, AT PEMAQUID.

A personage of considerable importance among the Abenakis at this time was the Baron Jean Vincent de St. Castin, a French nobleman who had resided twenty years among them, and who had married a daughter of the chief Madokawando. He had been an officer of the regiment of Carignan, in Canada, and when disbanded remained in the country. He established a trading-house and residence on the Penobscot, at a place now bearing his name. Living among the Indians, acquiring their language, and adopting their customs, he was highly regarded by them, and was made their great chief. His influence over them made him an object of dread to the people of New England.

Castin led two hundred Indians at the capture of Pemaquid, and was wounded at Port Royal in 1707. Having acquired a fortune by trade with the natives, he finally returned to France, and there ended his days.

An incident of this war, exhibiting the wonderful heroism of a woman, is too remarkable to be passed over in silence.

Early in the morning of March 15, 1697, when the war which had lasted ten years was nearly over, a party of Indians swooped suddenly down upon Haverhill, a little village on the Merrimac, about thirty-two miles from Boston. As the number of the band was small, its attack was swift, and its disappearance was equally rapid.

Upon the outskirts of the town stood the house of Thomas Duston, one of eight that were singled out for attack. Mr. Duston was at work at the time at some distance from his house, but on discovering the approach of the Indians at once regained it, having only time to direct the flight of his children, seven in number, the youngest being two years old, when the Indians were upon them.

"Run for your lives!" shouted the father; and the little flock hastily left their home and ran towards the nearest fortified house.

Mrs. Duston was ill in bed, and the husband was compelled to leave her to her fate. Mounting his horse, he soon overtook the children about forty rods from the house, and urged them forward.

His first thought had been to take up one of them and escape with it. Feeling it impossible to choose one from among them, he put himself between them and the pursuing Indians, faced about, and aiming his gun at the savages, succeeded in keeping them at bay until the fugitives reached a place of safety, when the Indians gave up the chase.

Meantime, some of the band had entered the house and driven the sick woman from her bed. They then pillaged the dwelling and set it on fire. Ill as she was, Mrs. Duston was compelled to march. Mrs. Neff, her nurse, attempted to escape with the infant child of Mrs. Duston, but was taken, and the infant's brains dashed out against an apple-tree. In this raid twenty-seven persons were killed and thirteen carried into captivity.

After travelling one hundred and fifty miles the band separated, dividing the captives. Mrs. Duston, Mrs. Neff, and Samuel Leonardson, a boy, fell to the lot of an Indian family consisting of twelve persons. The prisoners were kindly treated, but were told that on arriving at their village they would, according to Indian custom, be stripped and compelled to run the gauntlet. This news inspired Mrs. Duston with a desperate resolution. She determined, if possible, to escape, and consulted with her companions as to how it could be done.

They were now on an island at the mouth of the Contoocook River, about six miles above Concord, New Hampshire.

"Show me how you scalp an enemy," said the boy, who in a former captivity had gained some knowledge of their language, to one of his captors. Without mistrusting the motive of the inquiry, the Indian explained to him the manner in which it was done.

That night, when the Indians were sound asleep, the three captives noiselessly arose, grasped the tomahawks of the warriors, assigned to one another the work each was to do, and so effectively did they deal their blows that but one of those they designed to kill escaped, and that one was a woman. A boy whom they did not wish to harm was also allowed his liberty. Mrs. Duston killed her captor, and the boy slew the Indian who had taught him how to scalp and where to deal the deadly blow.

Filling a boat with provisions and arms, they proceeded down the Merrimac to their home, where the ten scalps and the arms they had secured afforded ample evidence of the truth of their wonderful story. The country was filled with amazement at the exploit of these women. The General Court gave them a reward of £50, and other gratuities were showered upon them. A monument at the mouth of the Contoocook River perpetuates the fame of this achievement, one of the most remarkable in Indian history.

Exeter, New Hampshire, owed its preservation from destruction to an accident. A party of concealed Indians were intending to fall upon it at daybreak on the following morning. Some women and children, in the afternoon, went into the adjacent fields to gather strawberries. They had been warned of the danger from Indians, but could not be prevented. Some one in the town fired alarm-guns to scare them back. This caused a muster of the men, and the Indians, supposing themselves discovered, hastily decamped.

Although a treaty of peace had been made at Ryswick between France and England, there was no cessation of murder and devastation in New England. At Lancaster twenty or thirty of the inhabitants, with their minister, were massacred. Several houses were burned, and a number of persons were put to death in Andover. A treaty was at length concluded with the Indians at Pejepscot, on the Kennebec, and the war of ten years was closed for a brief period. During its continuance the north-eastern tribes had taken and destroyed all the settlements in Maine, with three exceptions, killed more than seven hundred persons, and carried off two hundred and fifty captives, many of whom never returned.

Very soon another war broke out between England and France—Queen Anne's War, as it was commonly called. In America it involved South Carolina., bordering on Spanish Florida, and New England, which had Canada on its northern frontier. It was closed by the peace of Utrecht in 1713. At the south it resulted in the extension of the English boundary; at the north its history is a chapter of horrors, with no other result than to add largely to the sum of human misery.

Governor Dudley, of Massachusetts, held a conference at Casco with the Abenakis, who made strong professions of friendliness. One of the chiefs said: "The clouds fly and darken, but we still sing with love the songs of peace. Believe my words: so far as the sun is above the earth are our thoughts from war or the least rupture between us."

Notwithstanding all their assurances, within six weeks the whole country from Casco to Wells was in a flame, and another terrible ten years' war begun. Parties of French and Indians spread havoc through the feeble settlements, sparing neither old nor young. Wells, Winter Harbor, and Spurwink were among the towns destroyed. The whole of the exposed northern border of Massachusetts, from Casco Bay to the Connecticut River, was watched from hiding-places offering every facility for sudden invasion and safe retreat. For this reason little impression could be made upon the Indians, as they could rarely be found. De Vaudreuil, Governor of Canada, succeeded in keeping the Iroquois neutral. Between the Abenakis and the French a close friendship already existed.

Deerfield, a palisaded village on the Connecticut, enclosing twenty acres, had a garrison of twenty soldiers quartered in different houses. The town was still suffering from the ravages of the previous war. A party of two hundred French and one hundred and forty-two Indians, on snow-shoes, under the lead of Hertel de Ronville, made their way from Canada, reaching its vicinity on the last night of February, 1704. The drifted snow enabled them to enter the town over the pickets early next morning, and the sentinels having deserted their posts, the terrible warwhoop was the first notice the doomed villagers received of their approach. The torch was applied, and only the church and one dwelling-house escaped. Death or captivity was the lot of the inhabitants, one hundred and twelve of whom, including Rev. John Williams, the minister, and his family, were carried to Canada.

Mr. Williams, who, after his return home, published a narrative of this tragedy, tells us that he was roused from sleep by the sound of axes and hatchets plied against his doors and windows. Leaping from his bed, he seized his arms, and put a pistol to the breast of the first Indian who came up; but it missed fire, and he was seized and bound. He and his family were allowed to put on some clothing, and, "the sun about an hour high," they began their march, the snow being knee-deep. His wife, having recently become a mother, was feeble, and on the second day she fell from weariness, and was tomahawked.

During the march his life was often threatened. Nineteen of his fellow-prisoners were murdered and two starved to death by the way. "And yet," says the narrator, "God made the Indians so to pity our children that, though they had several of their own wounded to carry upon their shoulders for thirty miles before they came to the river, yet they carried our children, incapable of travelling, in their arms and upon their shoulders."

Williams's feet were "so full of pain" he could scarce stand upon them, but was forced to travel in snow-shoes twenty-five miles a day and sometimes more. The party were eight weeks reaching Montreal, where the governor took him from the Indians and treated him kindly. After a captivity of two years and a half he was exchanged, and with fifty-seven other prisoners, two of whom were his children, he returned home.

Eunice, his youngest daughter, was adopted by the Indians, who refused to ransom her, and she became the wife of a Caughnawaga chief. Long afterwards she visited her friends in Deerfield in her Indian dress, and, notwithstanding a day of fasting and prayer by the whole village for her deliverance, she returned to her Indian home and her Mohawk children.

OLD CHURCH IN ST. REGIS.

On Lake St. Louis, near Montreal, the Indian village of Caughnawaga (St. Regis), with its wretched log-houses, clusters round a fine stone church with a glittering tin roof. The early Jesuits induced the Indians to collect furs, which they sent to France in exchange for a church-bell. The return ship was captured by the English, and the bell was sent to Deerfield, Massachusetts.

When the Caughnawagas heard where their bell had gone, they determined to obtain possession of it. They took part in Hertel's expedition on condition that Deerfield should be the first place attacked. When in the midst of the massacre the tones of the bell sounded, they knelt in superstitious awe. Then, with shouts of victory, they bore it on poles through the forests, while it tolled with doleful sound. Exhausted with the terrible march in midwinter, they buried it at Burlington, Vermont. Next summer they dug it up, and it was borne into their village in triumph between two white oxen.

One house in Deerfield escaped destruction and stood until within a few years, the marks of the Indian bullets being still visible. It was courageously defended by seven men, who fired from the windows upon the enemy, the women with them running bullets and loading their guns. Several times the enemy tried to set fire to the house, but failed. Captain Stoddard, watching his opportunity, sprang from a window and made his way to Hatfield, giving the alarm. Soon the settlers were in pursuit, and gave De Rouville battle, but were forced to retreat.

GARRISON-HOUSE AT OYSTER RIVER SUCCESSFULLY DEFENDED.

Massachusetts and New Hampshire now offered a reward of £20 for every Indian captured, and £40 for each scalp. Evidently they thought one dead Indian worth two living ones. The old Indian fighter Church, prominent thirty years before in Philip's war, at the head of five hundred and fifty men, carried destruction through all the French settlements east of the Penobscot, but effected nothing of consequence.

An attack on a garrison-house at Oyster River was repelled in a singular manner. It happened at the moment to be occupied only by women. "They put on hats, letting their hair hang down, and fired so briskly that they struck a terror into the enemy, and they withdrew."

A formidable inroad upon the English settlements was planned by the French at Montreal in 1708, who fixed upon Lake Winnipiseogee as the place of rendezvous for their Indian allies. A few only came at the appointed time. The expedition was led by Des Chaillons, who attacked Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the night, burned the fort and many dwellings, and killed or captured about one hundred persons, including Rev. Benjamin Rolfe, the minister, his wife and child. A few brave men, led by Samuel Ayer, rallied a short distance from the town, formed an ambush, and by a vigorous attack succeeded in reselling a number of the prisoners and inflicted some loss on the enemy. Ayer lost his life in this daring attempt.

Haverhill was at this time a cluster of thirty cottages and log cabins near the Merrimac. In its centre stood the new meeting-house. On the north the unbroken wilderness stretched far away to the White Mountains.

The Indian leader on this occasion was Assacambuit. He had visited France in 1706, and having been knighted by Louis XIV., on his return wore the insignia of his rank upon his breast. He was also presented with a sword for his services. A famous club which he always carried had on it at this time ninety-eight notches, denoting the number of English he had slain.

It was estimated that one-third of the English population of Maine had fallen in this disastrous war. Some families had become extinct, others mourned the loss or captivity of parents, children, or husbands. The country was reduced to poverty, trade was ruined, houses burned, and fields devastated. A hundred miles of sea-coast, lately the scene of prosperity, was now a complete desert. There was one year of this war when one-fifth part of all capable of bearing arms were in active service. No wonder if the cruelties of the savage enemy inspired our fathers with a deep hatred of the French missionaries who instigated them, and even made them desire the extermination of the natives.

The treaty of Utrecht surrendered to England Acadia (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia). New England fishermen and traders at once pushed their enterprises over the ceded territory, revived the villages that had been desolated by the war, and laid on the east bank of the Kennebec the foundations of new settlements, and protected them by forts.

But the tribe of Abenakis inhabiting this region had prior claims of ownership, which they resolved not to abandon. "I have my land," said their chief, "where the Great Spirit placed me, and while one of my tribe remains I shall fight to preserve it." Several chiefs had been treacherously seized by the New England government and kept as hostages. Though their ransom had been paid, they had not been set free. The Abenakis demanded that their territory should be evacuated and their chiefs liberated, or war would follow. This tribe formed the barrier of Canada against New England, as did the Iroquois that of New York against Canada.

The answer to this demand was the seizure of the young Baron St. Castin, who, besides holding a French commission, was an Indian chief, and an expedition against Norridgewock, a village of the Abenakis, on the banks of the Kennebec, and the headquarters of hostile Indians. Here dwelt Sebastian Rasle, a French priest, who was thought by the English to be the instigator of the depredations of these Indians whose war parties prowled ceaselessly along the frontier, murdering and capturing the defenceless settlers and destroying their homes.

Rasle had erected a church in Norridgewock, and had adorned its walls with paintings from his own hand. Forty young savages had been trained by him, who, in cassock and surplice, assisted in the service and chanted the hymns of the church, and their public processions attracted great numbers of the red men. He was kind to them, and they revered him.

A reward was offered for the head of Rasle by the Massachusetts government, and two unsuccessful expeditions were sent to capture him. No peace could be had until "this incendiary of mischief," for so he was regarded by the New England people, was "wiped out."

This was at length accomplished by a party led by Colonel Moulton, who succeeded in reaching Norridgewock without being discovered. Dividing his force, one party proceeded directly to the village, while the other intercepted such as attempted flight. His men were already among the wigwams, when an Indian carne out of one of them and gave the alarm. The old men, women, and children fled. The warriors, sixty in number, tried to make a stand. The English held their fire until the Indians had discharged their guns in a hurried and ineffective volley, and then fired with fatal effect. After their second discharge the Indians fled to the river, which was about sixty feet wide. Some were shot while endeavoring to swim across.

Rasle tried to shield his flock, and succeeded in drawing the fury of the assailants upon himself. Pierced with bullets, he fell dead near the cross in the centre of the village where he had labored thirty-seven years. His church was plundered and burned to the ground, and a violent end was thus put to Jesuit missions and French influence in New England. Among the dead were Mogg and Bomazeen, two prominent chiefs of the Abenakis.

At this time the bounty for Indian scalps was £100. One of the most successful scalp-hunters of the day was John Lovewell, of Dunstable. His father, who was one of Cromwell's soldiers, emigrated to that place, and died there, it is said, at the great age of one hundred and twenty years. In March, 1725, Lovewell brought in ten scalps to the treasurer in Boston, received his money, and was highly applauded for his success.

The business was profitable, and Lovewell easily enlisted a party for an expedition against the tribe of Pequawkets. Their village lay at the southern base of the White Mountains, on the Saco River, near what is now Fryeburg, Maine. Their chief, Paugus, was well known in the white settlements, but the tribe had joined with the hostile Abenakis, and was supplied with powder and ball by the French at Montreal.

It was a lovely morning in spring when Lovewell found himself in close proximity to the Indian village. Leaving their packs, his men moved cautiously forward. Suddenly they came upon an Indian, who fired, mortally wounding Lovewell, and was himself shot by Ensign Wyman. Had the English been prudent, they would now have made a hasty retreat, since their attempted surprise had failed, and they themselves had been discovered by a much more numerous enemy, but they were brave men, and no doubt hoped to win the large reward promised them, so they kept on.

On seeking for their packs, they found that the Indians had secured them. This was an important advantage to the red men, as it told them just how many, or rather how few, white men there were, and inspired them with confidence. Lovewell had passed their village, and they had followed, intercepting his retreat; and had placed themselves in ambush. When discovered, they had nearly surrounded his small party. All at once eighty Indians, yelling and whooping like demons, confronted them.

The Indians advanced without firing, as if unwilling to begin the fight, and hoping, by their great superiority of numbers, that the English would yield without a battle. They thus threw away their chance for the first fire. They then held up ropes, which they had provided for securing captives.

"You shall have quarter," said the Indians.

"At the muzzles of our guns," was the reply of the English, as they rushed upon the enemy, firing as they advanced, and, killing several, drove them some rods. But the warriors soon rallied, and obliged the English in their turn to give ground, leaving nine dead and three wounded when the fight began—twelve men out of the thirty-four with which they started.

"Retreat to the pond!" shouted Wyman, who had succeeded Lovewell in command, to his men. They did so, and thus were protected on that side. Sheltering themselves as well as they could behind trees, the little band resolved to fight to the last. The contest was long and obstinate. The Indians kept up all kinds of hideous noises, sometimes howling like wolves, at others barking like dogs—the English frequently shouting and huzzaing.

The medicine-man of the tribe held a powwow, calling on the spirits for aid, but Wyman put an end to his mummery somewhat abruptly by sending a ballet through him. Finally, Paugus, their chief, fell; they lost heart, and when night came they stole away. The English had lost their captain, Lieutenant Robbins, and Chaplain Frye, and four were so badly wounded that they could not be removed. The survivors, sixteen in number, only nine of whom were unwounded, faint and weary, marched twenty miles that night to Ossipee, only to find the place abandoned by the men left there in charge of the supplies they so greatly needed. They were three days reaching home, which they at length succeeded in doing after severe toil and privation.

Tradition says that one of the rangers, while at the pond, cleaning his gun, which had become foul, discovered Paugus at a little distance similarly engaged. Both loaded their pieces, and dropped their ramrods upon the ground at the same moment, Paugus exclaiming,

"Me kill you quick!"

"Maybe not," was the ranger's cool reply. Those were the days of flintlocks, and while the Indian was priming his gun from his powder-horn, a precious moment was gained by the ranger, who primed his by a smart blow of the butt on the ground. Just as the chief raised his gun to take aim, he received his adversary's bullet, and fell dead.

One of the old ballads on "Lovewell's Fight," familiar to the past generation, refers to Wyman as the slayer of Paugus. Another, from which I quote, awards the honor to a different man. Here is a stanza—

Of the slain chaplain, Jonathan Frye of Andover, the old song says—

The escape of one of the men wounded in this fight was almost miraculous. Solomon Keyes, having been three times wounded, hid himself so that he might die where the Indians could not find him. As he crawled along the shore of the pond, some distance from the scene of action, he found a canoe into which he rolled himself, and was drifted away by the wind. To his great astonishment he was cast ashore at no great distance from the fort at Ossipee, which he succeeded in reaching. There he found several of his companions, and, gaining strength, returned home with them. The little lake which was the scene of the action is now called Lovewell's Pond.

We turn once more to the old ballad—

In November following this occurrence four Abenaki chiefs made a treaty at Boston, promising to maintain peace and to deliver up their prisoners. The treaty was faithfully kept, and the eastern colonies had a season of rest from the horrors of Indian warfare. The remainder of the Pequawkets, together with the Androscoggins, soon afterwards withdrew to the sources of the Connecticut River, and finally settled in Canada.

The war of the Austrian Succession not only set all Europe aflame, but it also again put in motion the Indian tomahawk and scalping-knife to do their terrible work upon the outlying settlements of New England. The news reached Canada much sooner than New England, where the arrival at Boston of prisoners captured by the French at Casco was the first intimation that war had begun. Hostilities in the East, the commencement of a long catalogue of horrors, began in the summer near Fort George, now Thomaston, Maine. In America the principal event of the war was the capture by New England troops of the strong fortress of Louisburg.

Number Four, now Charlestown, New Hampshire, was the most prominent and the most exposed of the posts in northern New England, as it stood directly in the way of Indian inroads to the settlements below. It had been several times attacked, but always without success. On one occasion Captain Stevens, its commander, with fifty men armed as usual, was in the field at work. He sent his dogs into the woods as scouts. They soon came back growling, and with their hair on end. The woods were full of Indians. One of his men catching sight of one fired on him, and the battle begun. Stevens's men took to the trees. They drove the Indians into a swamp, after killing twelve of them, and put the others to flight. Hatchets and blankets were left behind in their haste. Stevens had seven men wounded.

GOVERNOR SHIRLEY.

Another and more determined effort was made for its capture in the following year by a force of more than four hundred French and Indians.

Every effort that Indian subtlety and French skill could devise proved fruitless against its brave defenders, and after a three days' siege they withdrew discomfited. In the following letter to Governor Shirley, Stevens in his own way describes the affair. He says:

"Our dogs being very much disturbed, which gave us reason to think the enemy was about, we did not open the gate at the usual time; but one of our men ventured out privately to set on the dogs about nine o'clock in the morning, and when about twenty rods from the fort fired off his gull, whereupon the enemy, being within a few rods, rose from their cover and fired; but through the goodness of God the man got into the fort with only a slight wound.

"They then attacked us on all sides. The wind being high, and everything exceedingly dry, they set fire to the fences, and also to a log-house about forty rods distant, so that within a few minutes we were entirely surrounded with fire—all which was performed with the most hideous shouting and firing from all quarters, which they continued in a very terrible manner until the next day, at ten o'clock at night, without intermission, during which time we had no opportunity either to eat or sleep. I had trenches dug from under the fort, about a yard outward in several places, at so near a distance to each other as by throwing water we might put out the fire.

"But notwithstanding all their shoutings and threatenings our men seemed not in the least daunted, but fought with great resolution, which doubtless gave the enemy reason to think we had determined to stand it out to the last. The enemy had provided themselves with a sort of fortification which they had determined to push before them, and bring fuel to the side of the fort in order to burn it; but instead of performing what they had threatened, they called to us, and asked a cessation of arms until sunrise next morning, at which time they would come to a parley. Accordingly, the French general, Debeline, came, with about sixty of his men, with a flag of truce, and stuck it down within about twenty rods of the fort.

"Upon our men going to meet the monsieur, he proposed that in case we would immediately resign up the fort we should have all our lives, and liberty to put on all the clothes we had; and also a sufficient quantity of provisions to carry us to Montreal; and we might bind up our provisions and blankets, lay down our arms, and march out of the fort. He desired that the captain of the fort would meet him half-way, and give an answer to the above proposal, which I did; but without waiting to hear it, he went on to say that what had been promised he was ready to perform, but upon refusal he would immediately set the fort on fire, and run over the top, for he had seven hundred men with hint; and if we made any further resistance, or should happen to kill one Indian, we might all expect to be put to the sword.

"'The fort,' said Debeline, 'I am resolved to have or die; now do what you please, for I am as ready to have you fight as give it up.'

"I told the general that in case of extremity his proposal would do, but, inasmuch as I was sent here by the captain-general to defend this fort, it would not be consistent with my orders to give it up unless I was better satisfied that he was able to perform what he had threatened; and, furthermore, I told him that it was poor encouragement to resign into the hands of an enemy, that upon one of their number being killed they would put all to the sword, when it was probable that we had killed some of them already.

"'Well,' said he, 'go into the fort and see whether your men dare fight any more or not, and give me an answer quick, for my men want to be fighting.'

"Whereupon I came into the fort and called the men together, and informed them what the French officer said, and then put it to vote which they chose, either to fight or resign, and they voted to a man to stand it out as long as they had life. I returned this answer, upon which the enemy gave a shout, and then fired, and so continued firing and shouting until daylight next morning.

"About noon they called to us and said, 'Good-morning,' and desired another parley. Two Indians came within about two rods of the fort and stuck down their flag, proposing that if I would send them provisions they would leave and not fight any more. I answered that if they would send in a captive for every five bushels of corn I would supply them. After this they withdrew, and we heard no more of them. In all this time we had scarce opportunity to eat or sleep. There were but thirty men in the fort, but two of whom were wounded, and those slightly."

This letter exhibits the modesty of Stevens, which is in striking contrast with the braggadocio of the French commander.

Phineas Stevens, the hero of Number Four, was a native of Sudbury, Massachusetts. At the age of sixteen he, with three younger brothers, was taken by the Indians, who slew two of them, and were about to kill the youngest, then but four years of age. Phineas succeeded, however, in making the savages understand that if they would spare the life of his little brother he would carry him on his back. He conveyed him in this manner all the way to Canada, whence they were eventually returned. In 1746, when Number Four was abandoned by its inhabitants, he was ordered to occupy the fort, a small structure of timber with a garrison of thirty men. For his gallant defence of the fort he was presented with an elegant silver-hilted sword by Admiral Sir Charles Knowles, for whom Number Four was afterwards named Charlestown.

In January, 1747, Colonel Arthur Noble, with seven hundred men, undertook to drive the French and Indians out of Nova Scotia. While on the way he was surprised in his camp by a superior force, and himself, four of his principal officers, and seventy men were killed, and the remainder made prisoners.

A severe conflict occurred in the following year, near Number Four, between a party of forty men, under Captain Hobbs, and a much larger body of Indians who had waylaid them. Notwithstanding the smallness of his force, Hobbs stood his ground, giving the enemy a warm reception. For four hours the conflict continued, when, fortunately, the English captain got a shot at their leader, whom he either killed or badly wounded, as the Indians immediately afterwards drew off. In this well-fought contest the Indian loss exceeded that of the whites.

Although the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed in October 1748, it was not formally proclaimed in Boston until six months after, so slow was the means of communication between distant points at that time. War parties from Canada continued to hover on the border as before, committing depredations, but early in 1749 the Indians met in council and agreed to make peaceful overtures, and a treaty was finally concluded at Falmouth.

Chapter IX

The "Old French War" (1755-1760)

The treaties of Utrecht and of Aix-la-Chapelle had left the boundaries of the English and French possessions in North America wholly undefined. Vast regions were claimed by both countries, but France, both by exploration and occupation, had been beforehand with her rival. The French claimed the immense territory west of the Alleghanies by the right of discovery; the English also claimed it by virtue of a treaty with the Iroquois. As the latter never owned it, and as all the consideration paid was a little bad whiskey, their claim was of even less consequence than that of the French.

Between these rival claimants for his lands, the Indian, their real owner, was entirely overlooked. "You and the French," said one of them to an Englishman, "are like the two edges of a pair of shears, and we are the cloth which is cut to pieces between them." Another of the puzzled natives, seeing that the French claimed all on one side of the Ohio, and the English all on the other side, in his amazement inquired, "Where then are the lands of the Indian?" Between their "fathers," the French, and their "brothers," the English, the poor savages were unceremoniously "shared" out of the whole country.

As yet there was not a single English settlement in all this region. Delawares, Shawnees, Mingoes, and a few Iroquois were found about the Ohio and its branches. With these a lucrative traffic was carried on by Pennsylvania traders, who exchanged blankets, gaudy-colored cloth, trinkets, powder, shot, and rum for valuable furs and peltry. To participate in this trade, and to gain a foothold in this desirable region, the Ohio Company was formed in 1749, and surveys and settlements begun.

A skilfully distributed series of posts upon the lakes and streams between her settlements in the valley of the St. Lawrence and the mouth of the Mississippi, secured the ascendency of France in the interior of the country, and barred the way to English settlement. Missions and trading-houses were scattered at points favorable to trade and navigation, and Fort Frontenac, at the head of the St. Lawrence, Fort Frederick, at Crown Point, and a fort at Niagara covered the Canadian and menaced the English frontier.

At Detroit the passage from Lake Erie to the north was guarded, and at St. Mary's hostile access to Lake Superior was barred. Michilimackinac secured the mouth of Lake Michigan, forts at Green Bay and St. Joseph protected the two routes to the Mississippi by the rivers Wisconsin and Illinois, while those on the Wabash and the Maumee gave France the control of trade from Lake Erie to Ohio. French settlements were found at Kaskaskia and Cahokia, in Illinois, and a few small stockades were seen on the Mississippi.

France had labored long and diligently to conciliate the Indians. Her agents had lived among them, studying their language, adopting their customs, flattering their prejudices, and warning them against the English. When a party of chiefs visited a French fort, they were received with the firing of cannon and rolling of drums, were entertained at the tables of the officers, and presented with decorations, medals, and uniforms. Many of the French took to themselves Indian wives. From these unions sprung a race of half-breeds, who were of great service to the French.

Perceiving that their Indian trade was about to be wrested from them, and their communication between Canada and Louisiana broken, the French, in the spring of 1753, crossed Lake Erie and fortified Presque Isle (now Erie, Pennsylvania). Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, at once sent a message to the intruders, requiring them to remove from British territory.

Dinwiddie's messenger was George Washington, then only twenty-one years of age, but already adjutant-general of the Virginia militia. As a surveyor he had learned something of frontier life and of the ways of the Indians.

Among the many difficulties that the young envoy had to contend with while in the performance of his mission, there was one, he tells us, that caused him more anxiety than all the rest. Tanacharison, or the half-king, chief sachem of the Mingo-Iroquois, was friendly to the English, and with two other chiefs voluntarily accompanied Washington to the French commandant's quarters at Fort he Bœuf, on French Creek (now Waterford, Pennsylvania).

Here every blandishment and every artifice was practised upon these chiefs by the French officers to gain them over. Rum was not the least of these, and, the business of the mission accomplished, delay after delay took place in spite of Washington's frequent remonstrances. Gifts were also made to the chiefs, and at the last moment a present of guns was offered as an inducement for them to remain. Another precious day was lost, but next morning, when they had received their guns and were being plied with liquor, Washington reminded the half-king that his royal word was pledged to depart, and pressed him so closely that, exerting unwonted resolution and self-control, the chief turned his back upon the seductive fluid and embarked.

WASHINGTON AS A VIRGINIA COLONEL.

While returning from this delicate and difficult mission, Washington had several narrow escapes. Once his treacherous Indian guide suddenly turned round, when about fifteen paces ahead, levelled his gun, and fired at, but missed him. Pursuing and overtaking the savage, Gist, his companion, would have put him to death, but Washington humanely prevented him. They then let him go, taking the precaution, however, to travel all that night to remove from so dangerous a locality.

When they reached the Alleghany River, they constructed a raft, and endeavored to cross the stream by propelling it with setting-poles. Soon the raft became jammed between cakes of floating ice, and they were in imminent peril. Washington, bearing his whole force against the pole, endeavored to stay the raft, but the rapid current jerked him into deep water, and he only saved himself from being swept away and drowned by catching hold of the raft. This they were obliged to abandon, and passed the night on an island, exposed to extreme cold. The hands and feet of Mr. Gist were frozen, but next morning they succeeded in passing over the ice, and before night were in comfortable quarters.

Before reaching Williamsburg, where he delivered to Governor Dinwiddie the reply of the French commandant declining to evacuate his post, Washington found an opportunity for the exercise of his talent for diplomacy.

At the mouth of the Youghiogheny River dwelt a female sachem, Queen Aliquippa, whose sovereign dignity had been aggrieved because the party, while on their way to the Ohio, had neglected to pay their respects to her. Aware of the importance of conciliating the Indians at this critical period, Washington resolved to pay a ceremonious visit to this native princess. Her anger was readily appeased by the present of his old watch-coat, and her good graces were completely secured by a bottle of rum, which, he intimates, "appeared to be peculiarly acceptable to her majesty."

Early in the following year Fort Duquesne was erected by the French, at the confluence of the Monongahela and the Alleghany, where Pittsburg now stands. After a brief campaign for its recovery, the Virginia troops under Washington were obliged to withdraw from the disputed territory, and leave the French in full possession. At the close of the year, in the whole Mississippi valley no other standard floated but that of France.

At the Congress held at Albany during this year, memorable for the plan of Benjamin Franklin for the union of the colonies, deputies from the Six Nations were present. There was much dissatisfaction among them, and the Indians boldly reproached the English with their inaction and the slowness of their preparations. "Look at the French," said a Mohawk chief. "They are men, they are fortifying everywhere; it is but one step from Canada hither, and they may easily come and turn you out-of-doors."

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

War having been determined upon, the French were to be attacked on all sides at once. Three armies raised in the provinces were to advance upon Acadia, Crown Point, and Niagara, while General Braddock, commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America, with two British regiments and a provincial force, was to dislodge the French from Fort Duquesne. The expedition intended for Niagara never reached its destination; that for the expulsion of the French Neutrals from Acadia was successful. This event is the subject of Longfellow's beautiful poem, "Evangeline."

Braddock, who was to lead the expedition against Fort Duquesne, was not a fortunate selection. Though brave, he was arrogant, obstinate, and a bigot to military rules, and knew nothing of Indian warfare. He despised the colonial troops, because they had to some extent adopted the Indian mode of fighting. Worse than all, he could learn nothing.

At Fredericktown, where he halted for carriages, Benjamin Franklin, who was a daily guest at the general's table, mentioned that the Indians were dexterous in planning and executing ambuscades, and that during his march his long, slender line would be exposed to flank attacks and be cut like a thread, the pieces of which would be too far apart to support each other. "He smiled at my ignorance," says Franklin, "and replied, 'The savages may be formidable to your raw American militia; upon the king's regular and disciplined troops it is impossible they should make any impression. After taking Fort Duquesne I am to proceed to Niagara, and, having taken that, to Frontenac. Duquesne can hardly detain me above three or four days, and then I see nothing that can obstruct my march to Niagara.'" With such blind confidence and fatal prejudice did Braddock delude himself throughout this eventful expedition.

HORATIO GATES.

Braddock's forces numbered about two thousand, one-half of whom were provincials. Two companies of these from New York were under Captain Horatio Gates, afterwards the conqueror of Burgoyne at Saratoga. Here also was the gallant Hugh Mercer, who afterwards fell gloriously at Princeton, and one of the wagons was owned and driven by Daniel Morgan, the famous leader of the rifle regiment during the Revolutionary War, and the victor at the Cowpens.

Hewing their way through the wilderness with great difficulty, the advanced division of one thousand two hundred men were within seven miles of Fort Duquesne at noon on the 9th of July. Washington, who was serving as an aide-de-camp to Braddock, often afterwards said, that "the finest spectacle he had ever beheld was the display of the British troops on this eventful morning." They were in full uniform and marched with bayonets fixed, colors flying, and drums and fifes beating and playing, in the most perfect order, not dreaming of any obstacle to an easy conquest.

A detachment of three hundred and fifty men, under Lieutenant-colonel Thomas Gage, afterwards conspicuous as the British commander-in-chief at Boston, at the beginning of the Revolution, attended by a working party of two hundred and fifty, advanced cautiously towards the fort. There were no scouts or rangers in the advance, or on the flanks, to beat up the woods and ravines, but the army marched "as if in review in St. James's Park."

DANIEL MORGAN.

Contrecœur, the French commandant, informed of the approach of Braddock with an overwhelming force, was about to abandon the fort, when Captain de Beaujeu proposed to head a party of French and Indians, and waylay the English while on the march. The plan was adopted, and Beanjeu's party posted themselves in the woods and ravines in Braddock's line of march towards the fort.

It was one o'clock when Gage, with his advance guard, reached this locality. Suddenly a heavy volley was poured into his ranks from the dense woods in his front No enemy was to be seen, but the soldiers were more dismayed by the yells than by the rifles of the concealed savages. They fired in return, but at random, while the enemy, from behind trees and rocks and thickets, kept up their rapid and destructive volleys. Beaujeu, the French leader, was killed at the first return fire.

Braddock hastened to the relief of Gage, but his panic-stricken soldiers fell back in confusion upon the artillery, huddling together in the road, like a flock of sheep, and communicated their fright to the whole army. They fled in terror across the river, throwing away their arms, and did not stop till they reached Philadelphia. The general tried in vain to rally his troops. Himself and officers were in the thickest of the fight, and exhibited indomitable courage. Washington ventured to suggest the Indian mode of warfare, each man firing for himself without orders, but Braddock would not listen to him. For three hours he tried to form his men in regular columns and platoons, while his concealed enemy, with sure aim, was slaying his brave soldiers by scores. At length he received a wound which disabled him, and terminated his life three days afterwards.

BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT.

"Who would have thought it?" was the dying general's ejaculation that night. Just before he expired he again broke the silence he had kept, with the remark, "We shall better know how to deal with them another time."

The slaughter of officers was terrible. Out of eighty-six, sixty-three were killed and wounded. Secretary Shirley and Sir Peter Halket were killed—Colonels Burton, St. Clair, and Orne, Lieutenant-colonel Gage, Major Sparks, and Brigade-major Halket wounded. Of the privates, seven hundred and fourteen were killed and wounded. The loss of the enemy was trifling.

Every mounted officer except Washington was slain before Braddock fell, and the whole duty of distributing orders devolved upon the youthful colonel. Contrary to orders, his Virginians fought in their own way, and thus saved the remnant of the army.

This is a memorable event in our history. It has been characterized "as the most extraordinary victory ever gained, and the farthest flight ever made." "It gave the Americans," says Franklin, "the first suspicion that their exalted ideas of the prowess of British regular troops had not been well founded." That opinion, once received as gospel throughout the provinces, had received a fatal blow.

This defeat was the signal for the Western Indians to assail the exposed settlements; and the frontier of Pennsylvania and Virginia was soon a scene of bloody devastation. Most of the Indians engaged in these ravages were Delawares and Shawnees, whom the French had at last gained over. The old half-king refused to listen to them; "the defeat," said he, "was due to the pride and ignorance of that great general that came from England. He is now dead, but he was a bad man when he was alive. He looked upon us as dogs, and would never hear anything that we said to him. We often tried to advise him, and tell him of the danger he was in with his soldiers, but he never appeared pleased with us, and that was the reason a great many of our warriors left him."

Braddock's defeat alarmed the whole country and paralyzed the expedition against Niagara. General Johnson, however, was sent against Crown Point with three thousand four hundred men, mostly New Englanders.

William Johnson was a young Irishman, who carne to America in 1731, to take charge of a large tract of land in the Mohawk Valley, belonging to his uncle, Sir Peter Warren. Embarking in the fur trade, he learned the Indian language, and acquired so much influence over them by his native talent that, in 1754, the British Government made him its superintendent of Indian Affairs in the colonies. Appreciating the Indian character, he paid the utmost deference to them, received their delegations with great ceremony, listened to them patiently, answered them carefully, and made them liberal and judicious presents. His influence over the Iroquois enabled him to hold them to the English interest in spite of the efforts of the French and the other Indian nations. The Mohawks even adopted him into their tribe and made him a sachem. Johnson Hall, his residence, a well-constructed building of wood and stone, is still standing at Johnstown, New York.

SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON.

Soon after Johnson entered upon his duties as superintendent, he received from England some richly-embroidered suits of clothes. The Mohawk chief, Hendrick, was present when they were received, and took such a fancy to them that he told Johnson, not long afterwards, that he had dreamed that Johnson had given him one of his new suits. Johnson could not refuse, and Hendrick took the embroidered scarlet uniform to show to his countrymen.

Johnson's turn came next. He was too shrewd to neglect a good opportunity, and meeting the sachem one day he told him that he, too, had dreamed a dream. Hendrick desired to know what it was. The Englishman then told him that he had dreamed that Hendrick presented him with a certain tract of land, which the described—a tract containing five hundred acres of the most valuable land in the Mohawk valley. "It is yours," said the chief, shaking his head, "but I will never dream with you again."

JOHNSON'S HOUSE.

After building Fort Edward, and opening a road from the Hudson to Lake George, Johnson remained a long time inactive on its southern shore, fancying himself in perfect security, and neglecting to fortify his camp. From this state of torpor he was suddenly and rudely aroused by the tidings that a French army had landed at South Bay, and, rapidly advancing in his rear, threatened Fort Edward. The French were commanded by Baron Dieskan, an old veteran, a pupil of the celebrated soldier, Marshal Saxe. He had with him two hundred French regulars, six hundred Canadians, and six hundred Indians.

"Boldness wins" was Dieskan's motto. His plan was to capture Fort Edward and then to fall upon Albany. There was only one obstacle to the success of this excellent plan, but that was sufficient for its defeat. The Indians were afraid of cannon, and did not like to attack forts, so they urged the French leader to march against Johnson instead, and he was reluctantly persuaded to change his plan.

Johnson saw that something must be done without delay. One thousand men were immediately sent, under Colonel Ephraim Williams, to relieve Fort Edward. Two hundred warriors of the Six Nations went also, led by the gray-haired sachem Hendrick. Before leaving Albany, Williams made a will, by which he left the bequest to found the free-school that is now Williams College.

HENDRICK.

It was at first proposed to send a smaller force, but Hendrick's opinion being asked, he shrewdly replied, "If they are to fight, they are too few, if they are to be killed, they are too many." To the plan of separating them into three parties his reply was equally convincing. Taking three sticks, he said,