XIV.

introduction of those articles into England. For the CHAPTER collection of these duties, the same act authorized the establishment of custom-houses in the colonies, under 1672. the superintendence of the English Commissioners of the Customs. Such was the origin of royal custom-houses in America, and of commercial duties levied there by authority of Parliament and in the name of the king.

As these inter-colonial duties were to be levied at the ports of shipment, and as the "enumerated articles," tobacco, sugar, rum, &c., were the produce exclusively of the Southern colonies, there was yet no occasion for royal custom-house officers in New England. Some slight duties on imports, levied by the colonial authorities, were too inconsiderable to prove any impediment to trade.

A new

A second Dutch war produced but transient alarm. The Massachusetts authorities, in fact, took advantage of it to give a new extension to their territory. survey of the Merrimac had been made, by which the 1671. northern boundary of Massachusetts was carried two leagues further north, being fixed at 43° 49' 12" of north latitude. According to the calculations of the surveyors, it crossed the Sagadahoc near where Bath now stands, stretching as far eastward as the southwest point of Penobscot Bay, including the Plymouth settlement at Sagadahoc, the ancient colony of Pemaquid, and other villages on the eastern coasts and islands. A Dutch fleet having recaptured the ancient New Netherland, the authorities of Massachusetts were induced to take advantage of this temporary overthrow of the Duke of York's government to stretch their authority over the eastern villages included in the re-survey. High-sounding reasons in behalf of this annexation were not wanting. "That the ways of godliness may be encouraged and 1673. vice corrected," the annexed territory was erected into Oct.

CHAPTER the new county of Devonshire.

All that now remained

XIV. to the Duke of York of his late extensive province were

1673. some little hamlets on the west shore of the Penobscot But this arrangement was destined to be very

May.

Bay.

short-lived.

Governor Bellingham, who died in office at a patriarchal age, had been succeeded by Leverett. Bradstreet, though a magistrate since the foundation of the colony, was still in disgrace from his attachment to a moderate course of policy. Denison, however, Bradstreet's brotherin-law, and, like him, an adherent of the moderate party, regained the office of major general, to which he had been elected ten years before, but had then laid down to make room for Leverett. The plantations were gradually extending. The future progress of New England in wealth and numbers was already foreseen. however, the entire white population did not exceed sixty thousand, distributed along the sea-coast and the banks of the Lower Connecticut. Lancaster, about forty miles from Boston, was the frontier town of the Bay settlements; Brookfield, some thirty miles from the river, was the most eastern town of those in the Connecticut Valley. There intervened between these townships a great space of rugged country, wholly unsettled, and occupied by a few straggling Indians.

As yet,

Except in the destruction of the Pequods, the native tribes of New England had as yet undergone no very material diminution. The Pocanokets or Wampanoags, though somewhat curtailed in their limits, still occupied the eastern shore of Narraganset Bay. The Narragansets still possessed the western shore. There were several scattered tribes in various parts of Connecticut; though, with the exception of some small reservations, they had already ceded all their lands. Uncas, the Mo

hegan chief, was now an old man.

XIV.

Their 1673.

The Pawtucket or CHAPTER Penacook confederacy continued to occupy the falls of the Merrimac and the heads of the Piscataqua. old sachem, Passaconaway, regarded the colonists with awe and veneration. In the interior of Massachusetts and along the Connecticut were several other less noted tribes. The Indians of Maine and the region eastward possessed their ancient haunts undisturbed; but their intercourse was principally with the French, to whom, since the late peace with France, Acadie had been again yielded up. The New England Indians were occasionally annoyed by war parties of Mohawks; but, by the intervention of Massachusetts, a peace had recently been concluded.

Efforts for the conversion and civilization of the Indians were still continued by Eliot and his coadjutors, supported by the funds of the English society. In Massachusetts there were fourteen feeble villages of these praying Indians, and a few more in Plymouth colony. The whole number in New England was about thirtysix hundred, but of these near one half inhabited the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.

We have seen, in former chapters, the strict hand held by Massachusetts over the Narragansets and other subject tribes, as well as the contraction of their limits by repeated cessions, not always entirely voluntary. The Wampanoags, within the jurisdiction of Plymouth, experienced similar treatment. By successive sales of parts of their territory, they were now shut up, as it were, in the necks or peninsulas formed by the northern and eastern branches of Narraganset Bay, the same territory now constituting the continental eastern portion of Rhode Island. Though always at peace with the colonists, the Wampanoags had not always escaped suspicion. The

CHAPTER increase of the settlements around them, and the proXIV. gressive curtailment of their limits, aroused their jeal1673. ousy. They were galled, also, by the feudal superiority, similar to that of Massachusetts over her dependent tribes, claimed by Plymouth on the strength of certain alleged former submissions. None felt this assumption more keenly than Pometacom, head chief of the Wampanoags, better known among the colonists as King Philip of Mount Hope, nephew and successor of that Massasoit who had welcomed the Pilgrims to Plymouth. Sus1670. pected of hostile designs, he had been compelled to deliver up his fire-arms, and to enter into certain stipulations. These stipulations he was accused of not fulfilling; and nothing but the interposition of the Massachusetts magistrates, to whom Philip appealed, prevented 1671. Plymouth from making war upon him. He was senApril 13. tenced instead to pay a heavy fine, and to acknowledge the unconditional supremacy of that colony.

A praying Indian, who had been educated at Cambridge and employed as a teacher, upon some misdemeanor had fled to Philip, who took him into service as a sort of secretary. Being persuaded to return again to his former employment, this Indian accused Philip anew of being 1675. engaged in a secret hostile plot. In accordance with Indian ideas, the treacherous informer was waylaid and killed. Three of Philip's men, suspected of having killed him, were arrested by the Plymouth authorities, and, in accordance with English ideas, were tried for murder by a jury half English, half Indians, convicted upon very June 24. slender evidence, and hanged. Philip retaliated by plundering the houses nearest Mount Hope. Presently he attacked Swanzey, and killed several of the inhabitants. Plymouth took measures for raising a military force. The neighboring colonies were sent to for assistance.

XIV.

Thus, by the impulse of suspicion on the one side and CHAPTER passion on the other, New England became suddenly engaged in a war very disastrous to the colonists, and ut- 1675. terly ruinous to the native tribes. The lust of gain, in spite of all laws to prevent it, had partially furnished the Indians with fire-arms, and they were now far more formidable enemies than they had been in the days of the Pequods. Of this the colonists hardly seem to have thought. Now, as then, confident of their superiority, and comparing themselves to the Lord's chosen people driving the heathen out of the land, they rushed eagerly into the contest, without a single effort at the preservation of peace. Indeed, their pretensions hardly admitted of it. Philip was denounced as a rebel in arms against his lawful superiors, with whom it would be folly and weakness to treat on any terms short of absolute submission.

A body of volunteers, horse and foot, raised in Massachusetts, marched under Major Savage, four days after June 28. the attack on Swanzey, to join the Plymouth forces. After one or two slight skirmishes, they penetrated to the Wampanoag villages at Mount Hope, but found them empty and deserted. Philip and his warriors, conscious of their inferiority, had abandoned their homes. If the Narragansets, on the opposite side of the bay, did not openly join the Wampanoags, they would, at least, be likely to afford shelter to their women and children. The troops were therefore ordered into the Narraganset country, accompanied by commissioners to demand assurances of peaceful intentions, and a promise to deliver up all fugitive enemies of the colonists-pledges which the Narragansets felt themselves constrained to give.

Arrived at Taunton on their return from the Narraganset country, news came that Philip and his warriors.