combination, with this view. These consultations were made known to the Plymouth authorities, under the following circumstances:

News came to Plymouth that Massasoit was sick, and near unto death. Mr. Winslow was sent to visit him; when he came to his residence he found his house so thronged with company that he could scarce gain admittance. The Pawaws were practising upon him their spells, with noise and tumult better calculated to distemper the well, than relieve the sick. The sachem's sight had already failed him, and he seemed indeed to be tottering on life's utmost verge. Winslow administered some cordials and medicines which gave him sudden and unexpected relief. His sight was gradually restored, and the kind attention of Winslow, continued for a few days, secured his recovery. The gratitude of Massasoit knew no bounds, and the benevolence of his Plymouth friends was rewarded with the revelation of a state secret. He called Hobomack, the Indian attendant of Winslow, to his bed side, and directed him to inform Winslow, on his way home, that an extensive conspiracy had been formed by the Massachusetts and Cape Indians to cut off or suppress Weston's company, and to defend themselves against the Plymouth people, in case they should resent it. Hobomack obeyed the directions of the chief, and immediately on the receipt of this intelligence at Plymouth, Captain Standish, with a body of armed men, was dispatched to Wessagussit. To the English there he gave immediate relief, and then, without having given the slightest warning, or opportunity for explanation, he fell on the suspected but still peaceful tribes, cut off the heads of six of their bravest warriors, and so terrified others-men, women and childrenthat they forsook their dwellings and wandered hither and thither in swamps and deserts, until they contracted diseases whereof great numbers died. Among those who fell victims to this act of treachery, (as it would have been called had it been perpetrated by Indians,) were Canaum, sachem of Menomet; the generous and humane Aspinet, sachem of Nawset, who, untutored in Christianity, had yet learned to return good for evil; and the courteous Tanaugh, sachem of Cumaquid, to whose open lodge and hospitable board the English had been ever welcome, and where, within but a short time previous, he had royally received and sumptuously entertained them as his brothers and his friends.

How far the numbers of the Wampanoag confederacy were reduced by this act of violence and its immediate consequences, can never be known; but its moral effects were far more decisive than its physical. They stood appalled at the hardihood of the outrage--they knew not

on what achievements these strangers might next venture; but worse than all, they could no longer have the slightest confidence in each other. They must have soon learned that the secret of their consultation had been betrayed by their own grand sachem. He had shown himself in this more under the influence of a fear or a friendship for the white than of love for the red man. The example of the great, even among barbarians, is contagious, and the influence of his, ran through the whole confederacy. From this time no one, whilst Massasoit lived, seems to have dared to think of resisting the power of the Whites; thus the whole confederacy, for all the puposes of the English, seems to have been suddenly dissolved, and its parties reduced to a state of absolute subjection.

In the mean time the numbers of the Whites were rapidly increasing, and the condition of the red men, who came in immediate contact with them, was as rapidly growing worse. They soon learned all the wants, without acquiring any additional means for their gratification, and fell into the most brutalizing vices of civilized society, without acquiring a single virtue to counterbalance them. They were at the same time exchanging their furs for the manufactures of the Whites, and selling the hunting grounds which produced them. A white population began to diffuse itself rapidly over the lands, and before it the primeval forests fell; and the bear, the beaver, the deer and moose, sought securer haunts in distant wilds. In order to give some idea of the rapidity with which the white population was at this time pressing on the red, and limiting their means of subsistence by appropriating their lands, one fact will be sufficient: There came over to Shawmut, or Boston, in 1631, in only one fleet, fifteen hundred emigrants.

But it was not only their new wants and the new vice of intemperance, acquired from the Whites, that were now reducing their numbers and rendering them wretchedly dependant; but, through the medium of civilized society, there passed amongst them a wide spreading death and desolation in the form of a strange and horrible contagion-it was the small pox-to them, until now, utterly unknown. Civilized society gathers, through the medium of commerce, within its bosom, all the diseases of the four quarters of the earth, but through the same instrumentality it acquires a knowledge of their appropriate remedies, and learns how to combat them. Not so with the Indian. This disease was forced upon him by the uninvited presence of the white man, and it found him in utter ignorance of any remedy or preventive, and in the midst of the comfortless and squalid wretchedness of barbarous life. Stretched naked on their hard mats of rushes or of birch, in

smoky hovels, surrounded by their weeping friends and wailing children, only waiting for the same fate, they rotted and died by hundreds-ay, by thousands. The three sachems of Massachusetts were swept off with almost all their people; and at Winnesimett, the residence of Sagamore John, thirty of his tribe were buried in one day. I have not observed that either the governments of Plymouth or Massachusetts did any thing to stay the wasting pestilence; but it is to be hoped, that the humanity of individuals was not wanting to alleviate their distress. Thus straigthened by the increase of the Whites, dependent upon them for the gratification of new wants and of new vices, and rapidly melting away with strange diseases, the tribes of the Wampanoag confederacy lay prostrate and powerless before their English neighbors. This situation of things brought the Narraganset people more immediately under the action and influence of white society.

The Narraganset chiefs had not yet visited the Whites-they had made no treaty with them. They had kept themselves aloof, but still refrained from any acts of hostility. They had probably too much to do at home, in repelling their old enemies, the Pequots, to think either of cultivating their friendly relations or of provoking the hostilities of the strangers. But in 1632 they evidently But in 1632 they evidently came near to an open rupture with them. Sassacus, the Pequot sachem, was mustering his warriors for the purpose of invading the Narragansets. Canonicus and Miantonomi summoned all their forces to repel them. Sagamore John and Chickatabot were called to their aid; and these sachems seem not to have forgotten their former subjection. They were not slow to obey the commands of their superior chiefs. But Massasoit, when summoned, probably for the same purpose, disregarding his former submission, refused to comply with the requisition. And when the Narragansets attempted to enforce a compliance he threw himself under the protection of the English, who occupied a trading house at Sowams, and who immediately sent to Plymouth for assistance; but before it was received news reached the Narraganset forces that the Pequots had actually invaded their territory. They thereupon immediately withdrew, and hastening to the scene of danger, drove back the enemy to his accustomed haunts.

Their war with the Pequots was at this time raging with great fury; but though their enemies were repeatedly foiled, they yet seemed to have had that within them which was destined, under the direction of the Whites, ultimately to operate the ruin of the Narragansets. To use an aboriginal figure, the Pequots seem to have been a flight of arrows, shot

down from the far West, by the bow of the Great Spirit. The English finding them, selected one of the number, pointed with the soul of the ferocious Uncas, for the destruction of the Narragansets, and then burnt and destroyed the rest.

The Narragansets were a people which it would have been dangerous for the whites at this period to have provoked or directly injured. Though at war with the Pequots, yet it was in their power, as will subsequently appear, to have made peace with them, and it is difficult to conceive how the English could have withstood their combined forces. But the tide of events seems to have moved on under a superhuman impulse. It is not probable that the English sought, by extirpating the Pequots, to open a way to the subjection of the successors of Canonicus and Miantonomi; but so they did, and I will proceed to show how it was accomplished.

In 1631, the people of Plymouth were invited by a sachem who dwelt on the banks of the Connecticut, and who had been cruelly oppressed by the Pequots, to commence a settlement in his neighborhood. In 1633 an establishment was accordingly formed, in a place now called Windsor, at the mouth of Little River. The land was purchased of Sequasson and Attawankut, chief sachems of the river Indians; and the latter chief, who had been expelled by the Pequots was reinstated in his former possessions.

To the Pequots, that proud and martial people, these events were, by no means agreeable; but they were in no condition to resist the encroachments. In fact they were in a situation to render it necessary for them to avail themselves of whatever advantages even these compromising circumstances might afford. They were at war among themselves. It was about this time that Uncas, a ferocious and bloodthirsty under-sachem of the nation, rebelled against Sassacus, and drawing off from their allegiance with him seventy or eighty warriors, cstablished himself at Mokuk, an Indian town, situated at the turn of Pequot river. They were also still at war with the Narragansets; and the tribes that they had subdued were watching for a favorable opportunity to bend the bow against them. Hostilities had about the same time broken out between them and the Dutch, who had established themselves on the Hudson and in some parts of Connecticut, and they could no longer look to them for a supply of arms. Under these circumstances, voluntarily to have added the English to the number of their enemies, would have been madness. They therefore saw the white settlements multiply around them without resistance. Windsor, Wethersfield, Herdford and Saybrook, were successively

commenced. Indeed, their necessities urged them so far that they at this time sought to form a commercial treaty with Massachusetts. The messengers whom they sent to Boston were at first coldly received on account of the murder of Captain Stone, when on a trading expedition up the Connecticut. But a treaty was finally concluded, by which the English engaged to open trade with them immdiately; and they were to pay or give four hundred fathoms of wampum, together with a quantity of furs, and to deliver up the surviving murderers of Stone when sent for.

return.

Matters continued in this pacific state until 1636. During that year Mr. Oldham, a man of irritable and violent temper, whilst engaged in a trading expedition, was slain by a party of Indians at Manisses, or Block Island. The slayers were demanded of the Narraganset sachems, who were inclined to surrender them. The offenders, however, being apprised of this, made their escape to the Pequots. Soon after this, Captain Endicot, under instructions from Massachusetts, after having given the Block Islanders a passing blow, landed with an armed force of ninety men at the mouth of Pequot river, where the principal part of the tribe then dwelt, and demanded one thousand fathoms of wampum for damages, and the surrender of the murderers of Stone. Sassacus, the chief sachem, was gone to Long Island, and the Indians desired him to wait a short time for his But the Captain demanded an immediate compliance with his requisition-he would admit of no such delay. Upon this, great excitement began to manifest itself among the Pequots. Large bodies of them soon gathered round, and he began to feel some little alarm at their presence, as well as vexation at their delay. He at length bade them begone. They had, he told them, dared the English to come and fight with them, and now he was ready. They thereupon peaceably retired; and when they were beyond musket shot, the English followed them, upon which the Indians discharged a shower of arrows, without effect, and fled, receiving in return a volley from the English musketry, by which two of the Pequots were killed and several wounded. The English then burnt all their wigwams on both sides of the river, and all their canoes. Endicot, after this exploit, left a reinforcement for the garrison at Saybrook, and sailed for Boston. After his departure, this detachment landed for the purpose of plunder. They were attacked by the Pequots, and a skirmishing fight was continued till near evening.

War was now commenced in right earnest, and the whole soul of Sassacus went with it. Nothing short of the complete extirpation of