snow, and a bright and joyous spring dawned upon them. The colonists crept from their huts, and commenced preparing their gardens in the deserted cornfields of the Indians. One beautiful sunny morning, the sixteenth of the month, an Indian suddenly appeared, and striding boldly through the street of the little village, approached a party at work in a garden, and, to their amazement, addressed them with the words "Welcome, Englishmen!" He informed them that his name was Samoset, that he had often met the English who came to fish at Manhegin, near the mouth of the Penobscot. He knew the names of most of these captains, and, being a man of unusually active mind, had so far acquired the English language as to be able to make himself perfectly understood.

Samoset was entirely naked, with the exception of a leathern belt about his loins, to which there was suspended a fringe about nine inches in length. In his hand he held a bow and two arrows. The savage was disposed to make himself quite at home, wishing to enter the houses, and calling for beer and food. The Pilgrims, to make him a little more presentable to their families, put a large horseman's coat upon him, and treated him with much hospitality. Samoset was very well, satisfied with his hosts, and manifested no disposition to leave them. As night came on, the colonists, apprehensive of Indian treachery, tried, in various ways, to get rid of him; but all their efforts were in vain; he would stay. They therefore made provision for him in Stephen Hopkins's house, and carefully, though concealing their movements from him, watched him all the night.

From this man the colonists learned of the terrible plague which, within a few years, had almost exterminated the tribes along the coast. He also informed them that there was, not far from them, a powerful tribe called the Wampanoags, which held many other neighboring tribes in subjection, and that the sovereign of this imperial people was called Massasoit.

In the morning, Samoset left, promising in a few days to come again, and to bring some other Indians with him. The next Sabbath morning he again made his appearance with five tall savages in his train. These were all clothed

SAMOSET, THE INDIAN VISITOR.

with skins, fitting closely to the body, and each one had on his arm a deer's skin and a panther's skin for sale. The Pilgrims received them with much hospitality, fed them abundantly, but refused to traffic with them, as it was the Sabbath day. They however promised that, if they would call on any other day, they would purchase all the skins they would bring. The five strangers soon retired, but Samoset, refusing to go, intruded himself upon his unwilling hosts until the next Wednesday, when he, having obtained some stockings, a pair of shoes, a shirt, and some cloth to wind around his loins, also disappeared in the pathless forest.

The next day, however, he came again, bringing with him another Indian, by the name of Squantum, who also could speak English very fluently. This Squantum was one of several men who had been treacherously seized by the captain of an English ship, carried off, and sold into slavery in Spain. Subsequently he effected his escape and reached England. Finding his way to London, and being kindly received there, he lived for some time in the service of one Mr. Slany, through whose benevolence he was subsequently restored to his native land. This man, forgetting the outrage of the knave who had kidnapped him, only remembered the great

Squantum brought the intelligence that his sovereign chief, Massasoit, had heard of the arrival of the Pilgrims, and had come with a retinue of sixty warriors to pay them a visit. With characteristic dignity and caution the chief had encamped upon a neighboring hill, and had sent a messenger to announce his arrival. He was well-informed of the treachery of the whites, and was too wary to intrust himself in their power.

The Pilgrims also, overawed by their lonely position, and by the mysterious terrors of the wilderness and of the savage, deemed it imprudent to send any of their force from behind the intrenchments which they had reared. After various messages had gone to and fro, through their interpreter, Massasoit, who, though unlettered, was a man of reflection and of sagacity, proposed that the English should send one of their number to his encampment to communicate to him their designs in entering upon his territories. One of the colonists, Edward Winslow, consented to go upon this embassy. Massasoit received him with frankness and dignity. Mr. Winslow addressed the chieftain, surrounded by his warriors, in fair and sincere words of peace and friendship.

Massasoit, warily detaining Mr. Winslow as a hostage, advanced with twenty of his men,

Governor, John Carver, received them with military pomp, and the monarch of the Wampanoags, with his chieftains, was escorted, with the music of the drum and the fife, into a loghut, where a long conference was held. The interview was eminently friendly. Massasoit was a man of mark-mild, genial, affectionate, yet bold, cautious, and commanding.

He was in the prime of life, of majestic stature, and of great gravity of countenance and manners. His glossy raven hair was well oiled, and he was picturesquely dressed in skins of brilliant colors.

Massasoit conducted this interview with the dignity and the courtesy of a polished gentleman. In what school of Chesterfieldian politeness these sons of the forest acquired their high breeding and lofty bearing is yet a mystery. Though the mass of the Indians were low, degraded, and vulgar men, many of the Indian chieftains, in every word and gesture, were gentlemen of the highest stamp. In the banqueting halls of Windsor Castle, and in the saloons of Versailles, they would have moved with ease and dignity, undazzled by the brilliance, unembarrassed by the mysteries of etiquette, and unsurpassed in all the proprieties of courtesy by the proudest lords who ever trod those tesselated floors.

As evening approached, Massasoit, with his followers, withdrew, and cautiously established his camp for the night upon the hill which he had selected at some distance in the woods. Here he stationed his sentinels to guard against

surprise, and the rest of the party threw themselves upon their hemlock boughs, with their bows and arrows in their hands, and were soon fast asleep. The Pilgrims also kept a vigilant watch that night, for neither party had full confidence in the other. The next morning two of the Pilgrims ventured into the camp of the Indians. Confidence gradually was strengthened between the two parties, and the most friendly relations were established. After engaging in a formal treaty of friendship, the interesting conference was terminated to the satisfaction of all parties, and the tawny warriors again disappeared in the pathless wilderness.

Early in July a deputation from Plymouth, with Squantum as their interpreter, set out to return the visit of Massasoit. He held his court in barbarian splendor upon a hillock called Pokanoket, now called Mount Hope, about forty miles from Plymouth, upon the shores of Bristol Bay. They had three objects in view: first, to ascertain his place of residence and his apparent strength; secondly, to renew and strengthen their friendly correspondence; and, thirdly, to adopt some measures to protect themselves, in a friendly way, from the intrusion of lazy vagabond Indians, who were ever hanging upon them, and threatening to eat out their substance. As presents, they took with them a trooper's red coat, gaudily trimmed, and a copper necklace.

At 10 o'clock, in the morning of a sultry day, Mr. Winslow and Mr. Hopkins, as embassadors of peace, commenced their journey through the picturesque trails of the forest. These trails were paths through which the Indians had passed, in single file, for uncounted centuries. They were distinctly marked, and almost as renowned as the paved roads of the Old World, which had reverberated beneath the tramp of the legions of the Cæsars. Here, generation after generation, the moccasined savage, with silent tread, threaded his way, delighting in the gloom which no ray of the sun could penetrate, in the silence interrupted only by the cry of the wild beast in his lair, and awed by the marvelous beauty of lakes and streams, framed in mountains and fringed with forests, where water-fowl of every variety of note and plumage floated buoyant upon the wave, and pierced the air with monotonous and melancholy song.

As they crossed Taunton River, followed down

THE PALACE OF MASSASOIT.

its banks and skirted the shore of the bay, they were every where received by the Indians with smiles of welcome. Late in the afternoon of the second day they reached Pokanoket, the imperial residence of Massasoit.

The chieftain had selected this spot with that peculiar taste for picturesque beauty which characterized the more noble of the Indians. The hillock was a graceful mound two hundred feet high, commanding an extensive and surpassingly beautiful view of wide sweeping forests and indented bays.

This celebrated mound is about four miles from the city of Fall River. From its summit the eye now ranges over Providence, Bristol, Warren, Fall River, and innumerable other minor towns. The whole wide-spread landscape is embellished with gardens, orchards, cultivated fields, and smiling villages. Gigantic steamers plow the waves, and the sails of a commerce which girdles the globe whiten the beautiful bay.

But as the tourist sits upon that solitary summit he forgets the present in memory of the past. Neither the pyramids of Egypt nor the Coliseum of the Eternal City are draped with a more sublime antiquity. Here, during generations which no man can number, the sons of

Alexander was at this time on a hunting ex

Here, long centuries ago, were the joys of the bridal and the anguish which gathers around the freshly-opened grave. Beneath the moon, which then, as now, silvered this mound, the Indian lover, in impassioned accents, wooed his dusky mate. Upon the beach barbaric childhood reveled and shouted, and their red limbs were laved in the crystal waves.

mouth and Bridgewater. Unsuspicious of any danger, he and his men were in a hunting house taking their dinner, with their guns stacked upon the outside. Major Winslow, afterward governor of the colony, who headed the English party, adroitly seized the guns and beset the house. The Indians were entirely defenseless. Major Winslow presented a pistol to the breast of the proud sovereign of the Wampanoags, and said to him:

"I am ordered to bring you to Plymouth, and by the help of God I will do it at all hazIf you submit peacefully, you shall receive respectful usage. If you resist, you shall die upon the spot.”

A

As years passed along, other colonies were established upon these shores. Though the English had frequent and sometimes very serious difficulties with the different tribes, still, for forty years, Massasoit remained the firm friend of the whites. At one time he brought his two sons, Wamsutta and Pometacom, to the Governor, and requested him to give them English names. They were bright and attractive young men, of the very finest physical development. The Governor told Massasoit the story of the renowned kings of Macedon, Philip and Alexander, and gave to Wamsutta, the eldest, the name of Alexander, the great warrior of Asia, and to Pometacom, the younger, the less renowned name of Philip. As these two lads grew up to manhood they married sisters, the daughters of a chief of a neighboring tribe. The name of the bride of Alexander was Wetamoo; the wife of Philip had the equally euphonious name of Wootonekanuske.

Very rapidly the lands of the Indians were now passing away to the English colonists. The power of the white man was rapidly increasing, and that of the Indians diminishing. The more thoughtful of the Indian chieftains became solicitous respecting the result. Alexander and Philip, though making no opposition to the friendly policy of their father, contemplated with great alarm the encroachments of the whites. In 1661, Massasoit, far advanced in years, was gathered to his fathers, and Alexander, his eldest son, was invested with the chieftainship. The anxiety he had felt respecting the prospective fate of the Indians, as their hunting grounds were rapidly passing away, naturally kept him away from the colony at Plymouth. Suspicions were excited that he was cherishing unfriendly feelings. An imperious message was sent to the proud king of the Wampanoags, to present himself before the court at Plymouth. Alexander, instead of obeying this mandate, went on a visit to the Narraganset Indians, his neighbors and his enemies. This increased suspicion, and the Governor sent a party of armed men to take him by force and bring him to court.

The high-spirited Indian king was almost insane with rage in finding himself thus insulted and unarmed. But his followers entreated him

not to resort to violence, which would only result in his death. They urged him to yield to necessity, assuring him that they would accompany him, as his retinue, that he might go with the dignity befitting his rank.

Alexander was thus constrained to comply. But his imperial spirit was so tortured by the humiliation, that he was thrown into a burning fever, and it was feared that he would die. The Indian warriors entreated that Alexander might be permitted to go home, promising, in their intense anxiety, that he would return as soon as he should recover. The court assented to this arrangement.

The warriors took their unhappy king, dying of a crushed spirit, upon a litter and entered the trails of the forest. They soon reached Taunton River. There they took canoes. It soon became manifest that their monarch was dying. They placed him upon a grassy mound, beneath a majestic tree, and in silence, the stoical warriors gathered around to witness the departure of his spirit to the realms of the red man's immortality.

What a scene for the painter! The sublimity of the eternal forest, the glassy stream meandering beneath overarching trees, the bark canoes of the natives moored to the shore, the dying chieftain, with his warriors assembled in stern sadness around him, and the beautiful and heroic Wetamoo holding in her lap the head of her dying lord! As she wiped his clammy brow she was nursing those emotions of revenge which finally desolated the colonies of the white men with flame and blood.

Philip now was at the head of the tribe. It may be well supposed that the treatment which his brother had received had not increased his affection for the English. It was almost universally supposed by the Indians that Alexander had been poisoned by the colonists. His wife, Wetamoo, an energetic and a noble wowan, was inflamed with the desire to avenge the death of her husband. She was by birth the princess of another tribe, and could rally all their energies for war. She urged Philip to