they often disguised themselves to resemble their allies, with paint, feathers, and all; it was sometimes impossible to tell in an attacking party which warriors were French and which were Indians. Without often going so far as this, the English colonists still modified their tactics. At first they seemed almost irresistible because of their armor and weapons. In the very first year of the Plymouth settlement, when report was brought that their friend Massasoit had been attacked by the Narragansetts, and a friendly Indian had been killed, the colony sent ten armed men, including Miles Standish, to the Indian town of Namasket (now Middleborough) to rescue or revenge their friend; and they succeeded in their enterprise, surrounding the chief's house, and frightening every one in a large Indian village by two discharges of their muskets.

as that quoted in a previous paper from | forest warfare from the Indians. The the Spanish "Requisition," and which | French carried their imitation so far that would, if logically carried out, have made all these bargainings quite superfluous. Increase Mather begins his history of King Philip's War with this phrase, "That the Heathen People amongst whom we live, and whose Land the Lord God of our Fathers hath given to us for a rightful Possession"; and it was this attitude of hostile superiority that gave the sting to all the relations of the two races. If a quarrel rose, it was apt to be the white man's fault; and after it had arisen, even the humaner Englishmen usually sided with their race, as when the peaceful Plymouth men went to war in defense of the Weymouth reprobates. This fact, and the vague consciousness that an irresistible pressure was displacing them, caused most of the early Indian outbreaks. And when hostilities had once arisen, it was very rare for a white man of English birth to be found fighting against his own people, although it grew more and more common to find Indians on both sides.

As time went on, each party learned from the other. In the early explorations, as of Champlain and Smith, we see the Indians terrified by their first sight of firearms, but soon becoming skilled in the use of them. "The King, with fortie Bowmen to guard me," says Captain John Smith, in 1608, "entreated me to discharge my Pistoll, which they there presented to me, with a mark at sixscore to strike therewith; but to spoil the practise I broke the cocke, whereat they were much discontented." Writing more than twenty years later, in 1631, he says of the Virginia settlers, "The loving Salvages their kinde friends they trained up so well to shoot in a Peace [fowling-piece] to hunt and kill them fowle, they became more expert than our own countrymen." La Hontan, writing in 1703, says of the successors of those against whom Champlain had first used fire-arms, "The Strength of the Iroquese lies in engaging with Fire Arms in a Forrest, for they shoot very dexterously." They learned also to make more skillful fortifications, and to keep a regular watch at night, which in the time of the early explorers they omitted. The same La Hontan says of the Iroquois, "They are as negligent in the night-time as they are vigilant in the day."

But it is equally true that the English colonists learned much in the way of

But the heavy armor gradually proved a doubtful advantage against a stealthy and light-footed foe. In spite of the superior physical strength of the Englishman, he could not travel long distances through the woods or along the sands without lightening his weight. He learned also to fight from behind a tree, to follow a trail, to cover his body with hemlock boughs for disguise when scouting. Captain Church states in his own narrative that he learned from his Indian soldiers to march his men "thin and scattering" through the woods; that the English had previously, according to the Indians, "kept in a heap together, so that it was as easy to hit them as to hit a house." Even the advantage of fire-arms involved the risk of being without ammunition, so that the Rhode Island colony, by the code of laws adopted in 1647, required that every man between seventeen and seventy should have a bow with four arrows, and exercise with them; and that each father should furnish every son from seven to seventeen years old with a bow, two arrows, and shafts, and should bring them up to shooting. If this statute was violated a fine was imposed, which the father must pay for the son, the master for the servant, deducting it in the latter case from his wages.

Less satisfactory was the change by which the taking of scalps came to be a | recognized part of colonial warfare. Hannah Dustin, who escaped from Indian cap

using inhumanities against a demon. Cotton Mather calls Satan "the old landlord" of the American wilderness, and says in his Magnalia: "These Parts were then cover

tivity in 1698, took ten scalps with her own hand, and was paid for them. Captain Church, undertaking his expedition against the Eastern Indians, in 1705, after the Deerfield massacre, announced that heed with Nations of Barbarous Indians and had not hitherto permitted the scalping Infidels, in whom the Prince of the Power of Canada men," but should thenceforth of the Air did work as a Spirit; nor could allow it. In 1722, when the Massachusetts it be expected that Nations of Wretches colony sent an expedition against the vil- whose whole religion was the most Exlage of "praying Indians," founded by plicit sort of Devil-Worship should not be Father Rasle, they offered for each scalp acted by the Devil to engage in some eara bounty of £15, afterward increased to ly and bloody Action for the Extinction £100; and this inhumanity was so far of a Plantation so contrary to his Interests carried out that the French priest himself as that of New England was. was one of the victims. Jeremiah Bumstead, of Boston, made this entry in his almanac in the same year. "Aug. 22, 28 Indian scalps brought to Boston, one of which was Bombazen's [an Indian chief] and one fryer Raile's." Two years after, the celebrated but inappropriately named Captain Lovewell, the foremost Indian fighter of his region, came upon ten Indians asleep round a pond; he and his men killed and scalped them all, and entered Dover, New Hampshire, bearing the ten scalps stretched on hoops and elevated on poles. After receiving an ovation in Dover they went by water to Boston, and were paid a thousand pounds for their scalps. Yet Lovewell's party was always accompanied by a chaplain, and had prayers every morning and evening.

Before the French influence began to be felt there was very little union on the part of the Indians, and each colony adjusted its own relations with them. At the time of the frightful Indian massacre in the Virginia colony (March 22, 1622), when 347 men, women, and children were murdered, the Plymouth colony was living in entire peace with its savage neighbors.

We have found the Indians," wrote Governor Winslow, "very faithful to their covenants of peace with us, very loving and willing to pleasure us. We go with them in some cases fifty miles into the country, and walk as safely and peaceably in the woods as in the highways of England." The treaty with Massasoit lasted for more than fifty years, and the first bloodshed between the Plymouth men and the Indians was incurred in the protection of the colony of Weymouth, which had brought trouble on itself in 1623. The Connecticut settlements had far more difficulty with the Indians than those in Massachusetts, but the severe punishment inflicted on the Pequots in 1637 quieted the savages for a long time. In that fight a village of seventy wigwams was destroyed by a force of ninety white men and several hundred friendly Indians; and Captain Underhill, the second in command, has left a quaint delineation of the attack.

The most painful aspect of the whole practice lies in the fact that it was not confined to those actually engaged in fighting, but that the colonial authorities actually established a tariff of prices for scalps, including even non-combatants—so much for a man's, so much for a woman's, so much for a child's. Dr. Ellis has lately pointed out the striking circumstance that whereas William Penn declared the person of an Indian to be "sacred," his grandson in 1764 offered $134 for the scalp of an Indian man, $130 for that of a boy under ten, and $50 for that of a woman or girl. The habit doubtless began in the fury of retaliation, and was continued in order to conciliate Indian allies; and when bounties were offered to them, the white volBut the first organized Indian outunteers naturally claimed a share. But break began with the conspiracy of King there is no doubt that Puritan theology Philip in 1675, although the seeds had helped the adoption of the practice. been sown before that chief succeeded to was partly because the Indian was held to power in 1662. In that year Wamsutta, be something worse than a beast that he or Alexander, Philip's brother-both being was treated as being at least a beast. The sons of Massasoit-having fallen under truth was that he was viewed as a fiend, some suspicion, was either compelled or and there could not be much scruple about persuaded by Major Josiah Winslow, aft

It

There was a period resembling peace in the Eastern colonies for nearly forty years after the Pequot war, while in Virginia there were renewed massacres in 1644 and 1656.

erward the first native-born Governor of died before he got half-way home. This Plymouth, to visit that settlement. The Indian came with his whole train of warriors and women, including his queen, the celebrated "squaw sachem" Weetamo, and they staid at Winslow's house. Here the chief fell ill. The day was very hot, and though Winslow offered his horse to the chief, it was refused, because there was none for his squaw or the other women. He was sent home because of illness, and

is the story as told by Hubbard, but not altogether confirmed by other authorities. If true, it is interesting as confirming the theory of that careful student, Mr. Lucien Carr, that the early position of women among the Indians was higher than has been generally believed. It is pretty certain, at any rate, that Alexander's widow Weetamo believed her husband to have been poisoned by the English, and she

ultimately sided with Philip when the war | known of a captive's receiving any, while

she had known few instances in the tribe of conjugal immorality, although she lived to see it demoralized and ruined by strong

broke out, and apparently led him and
other Indians to the same view as to the
poisoning. It is evident that from the
time of Philip's accession in 1662, whatev-drink.
er may have been his professions, his mind
was turned more and more against the
English.

The English colonists seem never to have inflicted on the Indians any cruelty resulting from sensual vices, but of barIt is now doubted whether the war barity of another kind there was plenty, known as King Philip's War was the re- | for it was a cruel age. When the Narrasult of such deliberate and organized ac- gansett fort was taken by the English, tion as was formerly supposed, but about December 19, 1675, the wigwams within the formidable strength of the outbreak the fort were all set on fire, against the there can be no question. It began in earnest entreaty of Captain Church; and June, 1675; Philip was killed August 12, it was thought that more than one-half the 1676, and the war was prolonged at the English loss-which amounted to several eastward for nearly two years after his hundred- - might have been saved had death. Ten or twelve Puritan towns were there been any shelter for their own utterly destroyed, many more damaged, wounded on that cold night. This, howand five or six hundred men were killed ever, was a question of military necessity; or missing. The war cost the colonists but the true spirit of the age was seen in £100,000, and the Plymouth colony was the punishments inflicted after the war left under a debt exceeding the whole valua- was over. The heads of Philip's chief tion of its property-a debt ultimately paid, followers were cut off, though Captain both principal and interest. On the other Church, their captor, had promised to spare hand, the war tested and cemented the their lives; and Philip himself was beleague founded in 1643 between four colo-headed and quartered by Church's order, nies-Massachusetts, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut-against the Indians and Dutch, while this prepared the way more and more for the extensive combinations that came after. In this early war, as the Indians had no French allies, so the English had few Indian allies; and it was less complex than the later contests, and so far less formidable. But it was the first real | experience on the part of the Eastern colonists of all the peculiar horrors of Indian warfare the stealthy approach, the abused hospitality, the early morning assault, the maimed cattle, tortured prisoners, slain infants. All the terrors that now attach to a frontier attack of Apaches or Comanches belonged to the daily life of settlers in New England and Virginia for many years, with one vast deduction, arising from the total absence in those early days of any personal violence or insult to women. By the general agreement of witnesses from all nations, including the women captives themselves, this crowning crime was then wholly absent. The once famous "white woman, Mary Jemison, who was taken prisoner by the Senecas at ten years old in 1743-who lived in that tribe all her life, survived two Indian husbands, and at last died at ninety-always testified that she had never received an insult from an Indian, and had never

since he was regarded, curiously enough, as a rebel against Charles II., and this was the state punishment for treason. Another avowed reason was, that “as he had caused many an Englishman's body to lye unburied," not one of his bones should be placed under-ground. The head was set upon a pole in Plymouth, where it remained for more than twenty-four years. Yet when we remember that the heads of alleged traitors were exposed in London at Temple Bar for nearly a century longer

till 1772 at least-it is unjust to infer from this course any such fiendish cruelty as it would now imply. It is necessary to extend the same charity, however hard it may be, to the selling of Philip's wife and little son into slavery at the Bermudas; and here, as has been seen, the clergy were consulted and the Old Testament called into requisition.

While these events were passing in the Eastern settlements there were Indian outbreaks in Virginia, resulting in war among the white settlers themselves. The colony was, for various reasons, discontented; it was greatly oppressed, and a series of Indian murders brought the troubles to a climax. The policy pursued against the Indians was severe, and yet there was no proper protection afforded by the government; war was declared against them in

1676, and then the forces sent out were sud- Dutch did to the English colonists, though denly disbanded by the Governor, Berkeley. unintentionally, a service so great that the At last there was a popular rebellion, which whole issue of the prolonged war may included almost all the civil and military have turned upon it, because of the close officers of the colony, and the rebellious friendship they established with the Five party put Nathaniel Bacon, Jun., a recently Nations, commonly called the Iroquois.