acter, nor of that experience in political affairs which sometimes suffices in the absence of higher qualities. He made an expedition to Maine against the Indians, which had no brilliant result, while the fort he ordered to be built at Pemaquid was costly, of little use, and gave rise to bitter complaints of the taxation it involved. He was sometimes indolently or ignorantly good-natured, leaving the General Court to follow the bent of its own inclinations without check; and he was sometimes so choleric in temper as to assert what he conceived to be his official privileges, in a way better fitted to the deck of a ship and a disorderly crew than the peaceful citizens of a quiet city. For example, he disputed the authority of the Collector sent from England ; and when that officer declined to obey the Governor's order for the release of a ship and cargo, Sir William went down to the wharf, fell upon the Collector and gave him a beating. He had a dispute with a Captain Short, of a British frigate, and on meeting him in the street, upbraided and abused him and finally fell upon him and "broke his head with a cane." One incident of his administration, however, had political importance. It was common in the country towns of Massachusetts to choose their representatives to the General Court from among the citizens of Boston. The inevitable result was a preponderating influence which usually enabled a few men in Boston to manage affairs to suit themselves. Phips was popular in the country, where probably little was known of his overbearing temper and his ignorance of affairs of state. In 1694, a movement for his removal had gathered so much strength that his friends in the General Court proposed an address to the King against it. The motion was carried, but it was only by a vote of twenty-six to twenty-four, and in the minority were all the members chosen from Boston. A law was immediately enacted requiring that no town should be represented in the General Court by a non-resident. But Phips's enemies at length prevailed, and he was ordered to England to answer the charges made against him. He went in 1694, and about a year after died of malignant fever in London. Box in which the Connecticut Charter was kept. OUTBREAK OF PHILIP'S WAR. - ITS CAUSES.. - PHILIP'S EARLIER RELATIONS WITH KILLED NEAR THE conduct of affairs in Massachusetts devolved, when Phips Stoughton. went to England, upon William Stoughton, the Lieutenant- Lieutenantgovernor. The Indian hostilities, which, as the next chap- governor ter will relate, had broken out again in the eastern provinces, soon gave him sufficient occupation, and he was wanting neither in energy nor ability to meet the exigency. But he is better remembered as a benefactor of Harvard College, where a hall still makes his name familiar to each successive generation; less pleasantly remembered as one of Andros's judges in the Ipswich and other trials, where the people resisted the despotic Governor; while as the Chief Justice of the province in the witchcraft persecution, which marked the period of Phips's administration, the distinction he achieved was that of a cruel magistrate in whom superstition overcame all sense of justice. Before, however, that gloomy page in the history of Massachusetts is turned, it is necessary to revert to a previous bitter experiencethe last great war in New England with the Indians, an account of which, in chronological order, would have interrupted the consecutive narrative of events relating to the charters. Outbreak of war. a The origin of this war, which broke out in 1675 and lasted for two years, was, of course, in that hidden but inextinguishable Philip's hatred which the red man felt for the white intruder, hatred that might, at any moment, be lit by a single spark and blaze up at once into a mighty flame. Philip, the chief of the Wampanoags, or Pokanokets, who was at the head of this decisive struggle, did not, perhaps, premeditate a war until the temper of his tribe made it inevitable; even when his intentions were suspected, there was no wish, perhaps, for a conflict with the Indians, on the part of the colonists, but rather a dread of it, while the memory of the fate of the Pequots, it was hoped, would deter the savages from so desperate a measure. But there came the inexorable point of time and circumstance where race and interest, civilization and savage freedom, clashed, and forced the bloody conclusion. Causes of If it were easier to disentangle the web of Indian politics in New England through the last two thirds of the seventeenth century— from the settlement of New Plymouth to the time when the native tribes were subdued or annihilated, it would be possible, perhaps, to trace events to their immediate causes, to understand that sudden outbreak of relentless hate which blazed through the provinces from Narragansett Bay to the extreme northern and eastern borders. But this we know,—the very presence of the whites was a provthe conflict. ocation; instinct alone soon taught the savages that civilization must crowd them out of lands which were useless except they remained a wilderness. Purchase, so far as they understood what purchase meant, was no equivalent for the loss of the hunting-grounds from which they mainly drew the means of existence; practically an exchange of a cart-load or two of clothing and trinkets, a few guns and a little ammunition, for hundreds of square miles, was as much an infringement of the Indians' right to the soil as it was for the whites to take possession of the lands by violence. Purchase meant to the Indian, in the first place, only toleration of a joint occupancy; but when in the course of time it was plain that joint occupancy was impossible, that to the whites there came absolute possession, to themselves absolute expulsion, then the purchase, which they had misunderstood, was as much a robbery as if no price had been paid. Herein was the bitter root of deadly hostility. Other provocations there were, known and unknown. Personal wrongs and outrages were committed on one side and the other, impossible to be avoided in frontier settlements, however peaceful in theory and even in practice may have been the policy of the state. 1675.] CAUSES OF THE WAR. 403 Chiefs and tribes became involved in controversies and in the conflict of interests between different colonies. The Indian balance of power would sometimes be thrown in on one side or the other as a preponderating influence; the Indian himself would make use of an alliance with the whites to feed fat some ancient grudge against a rival tribe. So Uncas avenged himself in the death of Miantonomo when Massachusetts involved them in her quarrel with Gorton and his people. So Pumham and Sacononoco were used by the magistrates of Boston to give them a pretext for jurisdiction over the heretics of Shawomet. Personal of Philip allies. It is impossible now to separate and trace all these personal wrongs, these political expedients, these jealousies of tribes, intensified always by hatred of race, which led, at length, to the war grievances under Philip. If the outbreak seemed sudden and inexpli- and his cable, it was only because the real causes were sometimes remote and often unseen. Who could tell what influence may have been exercised over the mind of Philip by the memory of a feud between his father and Pumham, when Pumham was a tool in the hands of the Masssachusetts Puritans? What was the measure of all the outrages which Uncas for years inflicted upon other Indians, under the protection of his close alliance with the English? Philip had no stronger ally than Nanuntenoo, and he was hardly less dreaded than Philip himself. Could this chief of the Narragansetts forget that he was the son of Miantonomo? In 1661, Philip's elder brother, Alexander, was taken and compelled to go as a prisoner to Plymouth on suspicion of hostile designs, in conjunction with the Narragansetts, against the English. This accusation may have been, or may not have been, true; the proof was not forthcoming. On the way the chief was taken suddenly ill and in a few hours was dead, died, his captors said, of a fever, into which he was thrown by rage and mortification. His young wife was the squaw sachem Weetamoo, whose camp or fort was on the Pocasset shore, now Tiverton. She believed the English had poisoned her husband. Were her suspicions forgotten when, fourteen years later, she joined with Philip? She brought to the king three hundred warriors. One year later, but twenty-six were left, when all were surprised and taken prisoners on the banks of the Mattapoisett, she alone evading capture. She was drowned in attempting to swim the river, and when, soon after, her poor naked body was found washed up upon the bank, the head was cut off and set up in Taunton. When the prisoners, the feeble remnant of her late followers, saw this sight, "they made," says Mather, "a most horid and diabolical lamentation, crying out that it was their queen's head." The spirit that prompted the act, and this contemptuous comment, were not the growth of a single year. Massasoit, the sachem of the Wampanoags or Pokanokets, the early and steadfast friend of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, lations with lived till 1660. Three or four years before his death, he the English. took two of his sons, Mooanam, known also as Wamsutta, and Metacomet, also called Pometacom, to Plymouth, and asked that both should receive English names. Thenceforth the first was known as Alexander, and the second as Philip. How Alexander came to his death, soon after he succeeded his father as sachem, we have just related. From that time Philip was the head of the tribe. Philip was watched, as his brother had been, with anxiety and suspicion. In the intervening years, before war actually broke out, there were on both sides provocations enough to keep up the angry irritation of the old wounds, which were never closed, however hidden. In 1671, some strolling Indians murdered a white man near Dedham in Massachusetts. The connivance, if not the instigation of Philip, was suspected; but an Indian, the son of a Nipmuck sachem, was tried and executed. Boston called upon Philip to explain his position, and to allay if he could the jealousy which was created by the rumor that he was preparing arms of all kinds, and collecting ammunition. Taunton Green was designated as the place 1 Increase Mather's Brief History of Philip's War. Drake's Book of the Indians. Philip's re |