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CHAPTER Death or slavery was the penalty for all known or susXIV. pected to have been concerned in shedding English blood. 1676. Merely having been present at the "Swamp Fight" was

adjudged by the authorities of Rhode Island sufficient foundation for sentence of death, and that, too, notwithstanding they had intimated an opinion that the origin of the war would not bear examination. The captives who fell into the hands of the Rhode Islanders were distributed among them as slaves or servants. Roger Williams received a boy for his share. Many chiefs were executed at Boston and Plymouth on the charge of rebellion; among others, Captain Tom, chief of the Christian Indians at Natick, and Tispiquin, a noted warrior, reputed to be invulnerable, who had surrendered to Church on an implied promise of safety. A large body of Indians, assembled at Dover to treat of peace, were treacherously made prisoners by Major Waldron, who commanded there. Some two hundred of these Indians, claimed as fugitives from Massachusetts, were sent by water to Boston, where some were hanged, and the rest shipped off to be sold as slaves. Some fishermen of Marblehead having been killed by the Indians at the eastward, the women of that town, as they came out of meeting on a Sunday, fell upon two Indian prisoners who had just been brought in, and murdered them on the spot. The same ferocious spirit of revenge which governed the cotemporaneous conduct of Berkeley in Virginia toward those concerned in Bacon's rebellion, swayed the authorities of New England in their treatment of the conquered Indians. By the end of the year the contest was over in the south, but some time elapsed before a peace could be arranged with the Eastern tribes. In the course of the year upward of two thousand Indians had been killed or taken.

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In this short war of hardly a year's duration, the CHAPTER Wampanoags and Narragansets had suffered the fate of the Pequods. The Niantics alone, under the guidance 1677. of their aged sachem Ninigret, had escaped destruction. Philip's country was annexed to Plymouth, though sixty years afterward, under a royal order in council, it was transferred to Rhode Island. The Narraganset territory remained as before, under the name of King's Province, a bone of contention between Connecticut, Rhode Island, the Marquis of Hamilton, and the Atherton claimants. The Niantics still retained their ancient seats along the southern shores of Narraganset Bay. Most of the surviving Narragansets, the Nipmucks, and the River Indians, abandoned their country, and migrated to the north and west. Such as remained, along with the Mohegans and other subject tribes, became more than ever abject and subservient.

The work of conversion was now again renewed, and, after such overwhelming proofs of Christian superiority, with somewhat greater success. A second edition of the Indian Old Testament, which seems to have been more in demand than the New, was presently published, revis- 1683. ed by Eliot, with the assistance of John Cotton, son of the "great Cotton," and minister of Plymouth. But not an individual exists in our day by whom it can be understood. The fragments of the subject tribes, broken in spirit, lost the savage freedom and rude virtues of their fathers, without acquiring the laborious industry of the whites. Lands were assigned them in various places, which they were prohibited by law from alienating. But this very provision, though humanely intended, operated to perpetuate their indolence and incapacity. Some sought a more congenial occupation in the whale fishery, which presently began to be carried on from the islands

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CHAPTER of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Many perished by enlisting in the military expeditions undertaken in 1677. future years against Acadie and the West Indies. The Indians intermarried with the blacks, and thus confirmed their degradation by associating themselves with another oppressed and unfortunate race. Gradually they dwindled away. A few hundred sailors and petty farmers, of mixed blood, as much African as Indian, are now the sole surviving representatives of the aboriginal possessors of southern New England.

On the side of the colonists the contest had also been very disastrous. Twelve or thirteen towns had been entirely ruined, and many others partially destroyed. Six hundred houses had been burned, near a tenth part of all in New England. Twelve captains, and more than six hundred men in the prime of life, had fallen in battle. There was hardly a family not in mourning. The pecuniary losses and expenses of the war were estimated at near a million of dollars. Massachusetts was burden

ed with a heavy debt. No aid nor relief seems to have come from abroad, except a contribution from Ireland of £500 for the benefit of the sufferers by the war, chiefly collected by the efforts of Nathaniel Mather, lately successor to his brother Samuel as minister of the nonconformist congregation at Dublin. These Dublin ministers, both graduates of Harvard College, were elder brothers of Increase Mather, minister of Boston North Church, already becoming a distinguished person in the colony. The New England colonists even accused their neighbors of Albany of furnishing powder and shot to the Indians; but this charge was indignantly denied by Andros, whom the Duke of York, on recovering his province, had appointed as its governor. Increase Mather, and William Hubbard, minister of Ipswich, soon published histo

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ries of this war. We have also "Some Account of the CHAPTER Divine Providence towards Colonel Benjamin Church," in memoirs dictated by the colonel, and published by his son. 1677. The war with the Eastern tribes still continuing, it was proposed to employ against them an auxiliary force of Mohawks. But this scheme did not succeed. Some fugitive Indians, who had taken refuge in Canada, descended the Connecticut, and falling upon a party assembled at Hadley, at a house raising, carried off twenty prisoners. The husbands of two of the female captives proceeded to Canada, by way of Albany and Lakes George and Champlain, guided by a Mohawk Indianthe first recorded journey made in that direction. By the intervention of the French governor, they succeeded in redeeming the captives.

Sept.

In the midst of these domestic disasters, new troubles were preparing in the mother country. A petition from the English merchants had been presented to the Privy 1675. Council, complaining of the total disregard of the acts of trade in New England. The Committee for Plantations had suggested, by way of remedy, to establish a royal custom-house at Boston, with officers to look after breaches of the acts of trade. The difficulty was to provide salaries for them. Should Massachusetts decline to receive these officers, it was proposed to refuse Mediterranean passes to her ships, thus exposing them to capture by the Barbary pirates; also to cut off her trade with the southern colonies, and to authorize such of the king's frigates as might visit the American coast to seize offenders and send them to England for trial-expedients indicative enough of the weakness and poverty of the king's government.

Association of breaches of the acts of trade, with resistance to prerogative, tended to strengthen the hands

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CHAPTER of the king, who might now expect, in the controversy with Massachusetts, support from the English mercantile 1676. interest. The Massachusetts theocracy gained also new hold on the affections of the colonists as advocates of colonial free trade, and new support from pecuniary as well as spiritual considerations.

Mason and Gorges had continued to urge in England their respective claims to New Hampshire and Maine; June. and, in the midst of the Indian war, Randolph, a kinsman of Mason, and henceforward, by his zeal and pertinacity, the terror and abhorrence of Massachusetts, arrived at Boston with notice from the Privy Council that unless, within six months, agents were sent to defend the right of Massachusetts to those provinces, judgment by default would be given for the claimants. Thus pushed, the General Court, after consulting the elders, commisSept. sioned Bulkley and Stoughton as agents; but their powers were very carefully circumscribed. Bulkley, son of the first minister of Concord, was speaker of the House, and subsequently a magistrate. The father of Stoughton, commander of the Massachusetts troops in the Pequod war, had afterward been a lieutenant colonel in the Parliamentary army. Stoughton himself, after graduating at Harvard College, studied divinity, and obtained, by his father's interest, an Oxford fellowship, from which he had been ejected at the Restoration. He inherited, however, a handsome estate, and, returning to New En gland, was presently chosen a magistrate, and now agent. 1677. After hearing the parties, the Privy Council decided, in accordance with the opinion of the two chief justices, that the Massachusetts patent did not include any territory more than three miles distant from the left, or northern bank of the Merrimac. This construction, which set aside the pretensions of Massachusetts to the province of

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