Chapter 5

86. Summary.--Roger Williams, a young minister of Salem, Massachusetts, declared that the Indians, and not the king of England, owned the land in America. The governor of Massachusetts was afraid that if Mr. Williams kept on saying these things the king would hear of it and would take away the land held by the people of Boston and the other settlements. He therefore sent a constable to arrest the young minister and put him on board a ship going back to England. When Mr. Williams knew this, he fled to the Indian chief, Massasoit. In 1636 Roger Williams began building Providence. Providence was the first settlement in America which offered a home to all men without asking them anything whatever about their religious belief.

Who was Roger Williams? What is said about him and the Indians? Who did Mr. Williams think first owned the land in America? How did many of the people of Massachusetts feel about Mr. Williams? What did the chief men of Boston do? What did Mr. Williams do? Describe his journey to Mount Hope. What did Massasoit do for Mr. Williams? What did Mr. Williams do at Seekonk? What happened after that? Why did he name the settlement Providence? What is said of Providence? What about the Revolution?

KING PHILIP (Time of the Indian War, 1675-1676).

87. Death of Massasoit; Wamsutta[1] and Philip; Wamsutta's sudden death.--When the Indian chief Massasoit[2] died, the people of Plymouth lost one of their best friends. Massasoit left two sons, one named Wamsutta, who became chief in his father's place, and the other called Philip. They both lived near Mount Hope, in Rhode Island.

The governor of Plymouth heard that Wamsutta was stirring up the Indians to make war on the whites, and he sent for the Indian chief to come to him and give an account of himself. Wamsutta went, but on his way back he suddenly fell sick, and soon after he reached home he died. His young wife was a woman who was thought a great deal of by her tribe, and she told them that she felt sure the white people had poisoned her husband in order to get rid of him. This was not true, but the Indians believed it.

[Footnote 1: Wamsutta (Wam-sut'ta).]

[Footnote 2: Massasoit: see paragraph 68.]

88. Philip becomes chief; why he hated the white men; how the white men had got possession of the Indian lands.--Philip now became chief. He called himself "King Philip." His palace was a wigwam made of bark. On great occasions he wore a bright red blanket and a kind of crown made of a broad belt ornamented with shells. King Philip hated the white people because, in the first place, he believed that they had murdered his brother; and next, because he saw that they were growing stronger in numbers every year, while the Indians were becoming weaker.

When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Massasoit, Philip's father, held all the country from Cape Cod back to the eastern shores of Narragansett Bay; that is, a strip about thirty miles wide. The white settlers bought a small piece of this land. After a while they bought more, and so they kept on until in about fifty years they got nearly all of what Massasoit's tribe had once owned. The Indians had nothing left but two little necks of land, which were nearly surrounded by the waters of Narragansett Bay. Here they felt that they were shut up almost like prisoners, and that the white men watched everything that they did.

89. How King Philip felt; signs of the coming war; the "Praying Indians"; the murder.--King Philip was a very proud man--quite as proud, in fact, as the king of England. He could not bear to see his people losing power. He said to himself, if the Indians do not rise and drive out the white men, then the white men will certainly drive out the Indians. Most of the Indians now had guns, and could use them quite as well as the whites could; so Philip thought that it was best to fight.

The settlers felt that the war was coming. Some of them fancied that they saw the figure of an Indian bow in the clouds. Others said that they heard sounds like guns fired off in the air, and horsemen riding furiously up and down in the sky, as if getting ready for battle.

But though many Indians now hated the white settlers, this was not true of all. A minister, named John Eliot, had persuaded some of the red men near Boston to give up their religion, and to try to live like the white people. These were called "Praying Indians." One of them who knew King Philip well told the settlers that Philip's warriors were grinding their hatchets sharp for war. Soon after, this "Praying Indian" was found murdered. The white people accused three of Philip's men of having killed him. They were tried, found guilty, and hanged.

90. Beginning of the war at Swansea;[3] burning of Brookfield.--Then Philip's warriors began the war in the summer of 1675. Some white settlers were going home from church in the town of Swansea, Massachusetts; they had been to pray that there might be no fighting. As they walked along, talking together, two guns were fired out of the bushes. One of the white men fell dead in the road, and another was badly hurt.

The shots were fired by Indians. This was the way they always fought when they could. They were not cowards, but they did not come out boldly, but would fire from behind trees and rocks. Often a white man would be killed without even seeing who shot him.

At first the fighting was mainly in those villages of Plymouth Colony which were nearest Narragansett Bay; then it spread to the valley of the Connecticut River and the neighborhood. Deerfield, Springfield, Brookfield,[4] Groton,[5] and many other places in Massachusetts were attacked. The Indians would creep up stealthily in the night, burn the houses, carry off the women and children prisoners if they could, kill the rest of the inhabitants, take their scalps home and hang them up in their wigwams.

At Brookfield the settlers left their houses, and gathered in one strong house for defence. The Indians burned all the houses but that one, and did their best to burn that, too. They dipped rags in brimstone, such as we make matches of, fastened them to the points of their arrows, set fire to them, and then shot the blazing arrows into the shingles of the roof. When the Indians saw that the shingles had caught, and were beginning to flame up, they danced for joy, and roared like wild bulls. But the men in the house managed to put out the fire on the roof. Then the savages got a cart, filled it with hay, set it on fire, and pushed it up against the house. This time they thought that they should certainly burn the white people out; but just then a heavy shower came up, and put out the fire. A little later, some white soldiers marched into the village, and saved the people in the house.

[Footnote 3: Swansea (Swon'ze).]

[Footnote 4: See map in this paragraph.]

[Footnote 5: Groton (Graw'ton).]

91. The fight at Hadley; what Colonel[6] Goffe[7] did.--At Hadley, the people were in the meeting-house when the terrible Indian war-whoop[8] rang through the village. The savages drove back those who dared to go out against them, and it seemed as if the village must be destroyed. Suddenly a white-haired old man, sword in hand, appeared among the settlers. No one knew who he was; but he called to them to follow him, as a captain calls to his men, and they obeyed him. The astonished Indians turned and ran. When, after all was over, the whites looked for their brave leader, he had gone; they never saw him again. Many thought that he was an angel who had been sent to save them. But the angel was Colonel Goffe, an Englishman, who was one of the judges who had sentenced King Charles the First to death during a great war in England. He had escaped to America; and, luckily for the people of Hadley, he was hiding in the house of a friend in that village when the Indians attacked it.

[Footnote 6: Colonel (kur'nel): the chief officer of a regiment of soldiers.]

[Footnote 7: Goffe (Gof): and see List of Books at the end of this book.]

[Footnote 8: War-whoop (war-hoop): a very loud, shrill cry made by the Indians when engaged in war, or as a shout of alarm.]

92. How a woman drove off an Indian.--In this dreadful war with the savages there were times when even the women had to fight for their lives. In one case, a woman had been left in a house with two young children. She heard a noise at the window, and looking up, saw an Indian trying to raise the sash. Quick as thought, she clapped the two little children under two large brass kettles which stood near. Then, seizing a shovel-full of red-hot coals from the open fire, she stood ready, and just as the Indian thrust his head into the room, she dashed the coals right into his face and eyes. With a yell of agony the Indian let go his hold, dropped to the ground as though he had been shot, and ran howling to the woods.

93. The great swamp fight; burning the Indian wigwams; what the Chief Canonchet[9] said.--During the summer and autumn of 1675 the Indians on the west side of Narragansett Bay[10]took no open part in King Philip's War. But the next winter the white people found that these Indians were secretly receiving and sheltering the savages who had been wounded in fighting for that noted chief. For that reason, the settlers determined to raise a large force and attack them. The Indians had gathered in a fort on an island in a swamp. This fort was a very difficult place to reach. It was built of the trunks of trees set upright in the ground. It was so strong that the savages felt quite safe.

Starting very early in the morning, the attacking party waded fifteen miles through deep snow. Many of them had their hands and feet badly frozen. One of the chief men in leading the attack was Captain Benjamin Church of Plymouth; he was a very brave soldier, and knew all about Indian life and Indian fighting. In the battle, he was struck by two bullets, and so badly wounded that he could not move a step further; but he made one of his men hold him up, and he shouted to his soldiers to go ahead. The fight was a desperate one, but at length the fort was taken. The attacking party lost more than two hundred and fifty men in killed and wounded; the Indians lost as many as a thousand.

After the battle was over, Captain Church begged the men not to burn the wigwams inside the fort, for there were a great number of old men and women and little Indian children in the wigwams. But the men were very mad against the savages, and would not listen to him. They set the wigwams on fire, and burned many of these poor creatures to death.

Canonchet, the chief of the tribe, was taken prisoner. The settlers told him they would spare his life if he would try to make peace. "No," said he, "we will all fight to the last man rather than become slaves to the white men." He was then told that he must be shot. "I like it well," said he. "I wish to die before my heart becomes soft, or I say anything unworthy of myself."

[Footnote 9: Canonchet (Ka-non'chet).]

[Footnote 10: See map in paragraph 90.]

94. Philip's wife and son are taken prisoners; Philip is shot; end of the war.--The next summer Captain Church, with a lot of "brisk Bridgewater lads" chased King Philip and his men, and took many of the Indians prisoners. Among those then taken captive were King Philip's wife and his little boy. When Philip heard of it, he cried out, "My heart breaks; now I am ready to die." He had good reason for saying so. It was the custom in England to sell such prisoners of war as slaves. Following this custom, the settlers here took this boy, the grandson of that Massasoit[11] who had helped them when they were poor and weak, and sold him with his mother. They were sent to the Bermuda Islands,[12] and there worked to death under the hot sun and the lash of the slave-driver's whip.

Not long after that, King Philip himself was shot. He had been hunted like a wild beast from place to place. At last he had come back to see his old home at Mount Hope[13] once more. There Captain Church found him; there the Indian warrior was shot. His head and hands were cut off,--as was then done in England in such cases,--and his head was carried to Plymouth and set up on a pole. It stood there twenty years.

King Philip's death brought the war to an end. It had lasted a little over a year; that is, from the early summer of 1675 to the latter part of the summer of 1676. In that short time the Indians had killed between five and six hundred white settlers, and had burned thirteen villages to ashes, besides partly burning a great many more. The war cost so much money that many people were made poor by it; but the strength of the Indians was broken, and they never dared to trouble the people of Southern New England again.

[Footnote 11: See paragraph 68.]

[Footnote 12: Bermuda (Ber-mu'dah): the Bermuda Islands are in the Atlantic, north of the West India Islands and east of South Carolina; they belong to Great Britain.]

[Footnote 13: See map in paragraph 84.]

95. Summary.--In 1675 King Philip began a great Indian war against the people of Southeastern New England. His object was to kill off the white settlers, and get back the land for the Indians. He did kill a large number, and he destroyed many villages, but in the end the white men gained the victory. Philip's wife and child were sold as slaves, and he was shot. The Indians never attempted another war in this part of the country.

Who was Wamsutta? What happened to him? Who was "King Philip"? Why did he hate the white men? What did he say to himself? What is said about the "Praying Indians"? What happened to one of them? What was done with three of Philip's men? Where and how did the war begin? To what part of the country did it spread? Tell about the Indian attack on Brookfield. What happened at Hadley? Tell how a woman drove off an Indian. Tell all you can about the Great Swamp Fight. What is said about Canonchet? What is said of King Philip's wife and son? What happened to King Philip himself? What is said about the war?

WILLIAM PENN (1644-1718).

96. King Charles the Second gives William Penn a great piece of land, and names it Pennsylvania.--King Charles the Second of England owed a large sum of money to a young Englishman named William Penn. The king was fond of pleasure, and he spent so much money on himself and his friends that he had none left to pay his just debts. Penn knew this; so he told His Majesty that if he would give him a piece of wild land in America, he would ask nothing more.

Charles was very glad to settle the account so easily. He therefore gave Penn a great territory[1] north of Maryland[2] and west of the Delaware River. This territory was nearly as large as England. The king named it Pennsylvania, a word which means Penn's Woods. At that time the land was not thought to be worth much. No one then had discovered the fact that beneath Penn's Woods there were immense mines of coal and iron, which would one day be of greater value than all the riches of the king of England.

[Footnote 1: Territory: any very large extent of land.]

[Footnote 2: See map in paragraph 97.]

97. William Penn's religion; what he wanted to do with his American land.--Penn belonged to a religious society called the Society of Friends; to-day they are generally spoken of as Quakers. They are a people who try to find out what is right by asking their own hearts. They believe in showing no more signs of respect to one man than to another, and at that time they would not take off their hats even to the king himself.

Penn wanted the land which had been given him here as a place where the Friends or Quakers might go and settle. A little later the whole of what is now the state of New Jersey was bought by Penn and other Quakers for the same purpose. We have seen[3] that neither the Pilgrims nor the Catholics had any real peace in England. The Quakers suffered even more still; for oftentimes they were cruelly whipped, thrown into dark and dirty prisons where many died of the bad treatment they received. William Penn himself had been shut up in jail four times on account of his religion; and though he was no longer in such danger, because the king was his friend, yet he wanted to provide a safe place for others who were not so well off as he was.

[Footnote 3: See paragraphs 62 and 76.]

98. Penn sends out emigrants to Pennsylvania; he gets ready to go himself; his conversation with the king.--Penn accordingly sent out a number of people who were anxious to settle in Pennsylvania. The next year, 1682, he made ready to sail, himself with a hundred more emigrants. Just before he started, he called on the king in his palace in London. The king was fond of joking, and he said to him that he should never expect to see him again, for he thought that the Indians would be sure to catch such a good-looking young man as Penn was and eat him. 'But, Friend Charles,' said Penn, 'I mean to buy the land of the Indians, so they will rather keep on good terms with me than eat me.' 'Buy their lands!' exclaimed the king. 'Why, is not the whole of America mine?' 'Certainly not,' answered Penn. 'What!' replied the king; 'didn't my people discover it?[4] and so haven't I the right to it?' 'Well, Friend Charles,' said Penn, 'suppose a canoe full of Indians should cross the sea and should discover England, would that make it theirs? Would you give up the country to them?' The king did not know what to say to this; it was a new way of looking at the matter. He probably said to himself, These Quakers are a strange people; they seem to think that even American savages have rights which should be respected.

[Footnote 4: Referring to the discovery of the American continent by the Cabots, sent out by Henry the Seventh of England, see paragraph 22.]

99. Penn founds[5] the city of Philadelphia; his treaty[6] with the Indians; his visit to them; how the Indians and the Quakers got on together.--When William Penn reached America, in 1682, he sailed up the broad and beautiful Delaware River for nearly twenty miles. There he stopped, and resolved to build a city on its banks. He gave the place the Bible name of Philadelphia,[7] or the City of Brotherly Love, because he hoped that all of its citizens would live together like brothers. The streets were named from the trees then growing on the land, and so to-day many are still called Walnut, Pine, Cedar, Vine, and so on.

Penn said, "We intend to sit down lovingly among the Indians." On that account, he held a great meeting with them under a wide-spreading elm. The tree stood in what is now a part of Philadelphia. Here Penn and the red men made a treaty or agreement by which they promised each other that they would live together as friends as long as the water should run in the rivers, or the sun shine in the sky.

Nearly a hundred years later, while the Revolutionary War was going on, the British army took possession of the city. It was cold, winter weather, and the men wanted fire-wood; but the English general thought so much of William Penn that he set a guard of soldiers round the great elm, to prevent any one from chopping it down.

Not long after the great meeting under the elm, Penn visited some of the savages in their wigwams. They treated him to a dinner--or shall we say a lunch?--of roasted acorns. After their feast, some of the young savages began to run and leap about, to show the Englishman what they could do. When Penn was in college at Oxford he had been fond of doing such things himself. The sight of the Indian boys made him feel like a boy again; so he sprang up from the ground, and beat them all at hop, skip, and jump. This completely won the hearts of the red men.

From that time, for sixty years, the Pennsylvania settlers and the Indians were fast friends. The Indians said, "The Quakers are honest men; they do no harm; they are welcome to come here." In New England there had been, as we have seen,[8] a terrible war with the savages, but in Pennsylvania, no Indian ever shed a drop of Quaker blood.

[Footnote 5: Founds: begins to build.]

[Footnote 6: Treaty: an agreement; and see paragraph 69.]

[Footnote 7: See Rev. i. 11 and iii. 7.]

[Footnote 8: See paragraph 90.]

100. How Philadelphia grew; what was done there in the Revolution; William Penn's last years and death.--Philadelphia grew quite fast. William Penn let the people have land very cheap, and he said to them, "You shall be governed by laws of your own making." Even after Philadelphia became quite a good-sized town, it had no poor-house, for none was needed; everybody seemed to be able to take care of himself.

When the Revolution began, the people of Pennsylvania and of the country north and south of it sent men to Philadelphia to decide what should be done. This meeting was called the Congress. It was held in the old State House, a building which is still standing, and in 1776 Congress declared the United States of America independent of England. In the war, the people of Delaware and New Jersey fought side by side with those of Pennsylvania.

William Penn spent a great deal of money in helping Philadelphia and other settlements. After he returned to England he was put in prison for debt by a rascally fellow he had employed. He did not owe the money, and proved that the man who said that he did was no better than a thief. Penn was released from prison; but his long confinement in jail had broken his health down. When he died, the Indians of Pennsylvania sent his widow some beautiful furs, in remembrance of their "Brother Penn," as they called him. They said that the furs were to make her a cloak, "to protect her while passing through this thorny wilderness without her guide."

About twenty-five miles west of London, on a country road within sight of the towers of Windsor Castle,[9] there stands a Friends' meeting-house, or Quaker church. In the yard back of the meeting-house William Penn lies buried. For a hundred years or more there was no mark of any kind to show where he rests; but now a small stone bearing his name points out the grave of the founder of the great state of Pennsylvania.

[Footnote 9: Windsor Castle: see paragraph 77.]

101. Summary.--Charles the Second, king of England, owed William Penn, a young English Quaker, a large sum of money. In order to settle the debt, the king gave him a great piece of land in America, and named it Pennsylvania, or Penn's Woods. Penn wished to make a home for Quakers in America; and in 1682 he came over, and began building the city of Philadelphia. When the Revolution broke out, men were sent from all parts of the country to Philadelphia, to hold a meeting called the Congress. In 1776, Congress declared the United States independent.