New England. It was between two servants, with sword and dagger. They were tried for their crime by the whole colony, and sentenced to be tied together, neck and heels, for twenty-four hours, without food or drink. A part of the punishment, however, was, in the end, remitted.

CHAPTER XXVII.

The Colony threatened by the Narraganset Indians.Drought and Scarcity.— Governor Bradford journeyɛ among the Indians.

1. GOVERNOR CARVER had died about the end of March, 1621, and Mr. Bradford, afterward the historian of the province, had succeeded him. Governor Bradford was much loved and revered for his public spirit, wisdom, and piety, and was continued in his office nearly the whole time till his death, about forty years in all.

2. The corn this year proved to be abundant and excellent. The summer grain was not so good. But the settlers found plenty of ducks and other wild-fowl, as well as fish, and these were of great service to them in the way of food. Still they sometimes suffered from scarcity.

3. About this time, Ca-non'-i-cus, sachem of the Narragansets, forgetting or disregarding the treaty he had made, sent to the Plymouth people a bundle of arrows tied up with a serpent's skin, which was the sign of war. Governor Bradford returned the skin, wrapped round some powder and ball. The Indians were so frightened that they dared not touch it. They sent it back again, and gave up the meditated hostilities.

4. The English, however, from this circumstance, took the hint, and began to fortify their settlement. It had, from the first, been laid out into streets and lots. They now surrounded the whole with a wall, called a stockade. Their guns were mounted on a kind of tower, built on the top of the town hill, with a flat roof-the lower story serving them for a church.

5. As a further preparation to defend themselves, should there be an invasion, the men and boys of the settlement were divided into four

12. The first duel in New England? CHAP. XXVII.--1. Governor Carver?

Governor Bradford? 2. Corn and grain in

1621? 3. Canonicus? 4. Why did the colonists fortify their settlement? How did they do this? 5 What of Captain Miles Standish?

PROGRESS OF THE PLYMOUTH COLONY.

67

squadrons, which alternately kept guard night and day. Captain Miles Standish, a young man distinguished for his bravery, was made the commander-in-chief.

6. The harvest of 1622, owing to a drought, was scanty, and the colonists were obliged to buy food of the Indians. Governor Bradford travelled among them for this purpose, and Squan'-to, a friendly Indian, accompanied him. They procured twenty-eight hogsheads of corn, for which they paid in knives, blankets, beads, &c. Squanto sickened and died while on this tour. When dying, he asked Governor Bradford to pray that he "might go to the Englishman's heaven."

7. But Squanto, anxious as he was to "die the death of the righteous,” was, in life, more artful and cunning than honest. Still, it is not to be denied that he employed his cunning in favor of the English. The Indians dreaded him as a sort of conjurer; and he took advantage of their fear to impose upon them, by relating to them great stories about the military skill and power of the English.

8. Up to the spring of 1623, the Plymouth colonists had labored in common. But some of them, as it had been at Jamestown, would in this way be idle. It was at length ordered that every family should work by itself, and should be furnished with land in proportion to its numbers. Under this system, the idlers soon disappeared. Even the women and children went to work in the fields.

9. The next year land was assigned to the people to be theirs forever. From this time forth there was no instance in the colony of a general scarcity of food. Indeed, before many summers had passed away, they had corn to sell to the Indians, in greater abundance than the latter had ever sold to them.

10. In the progress of the year 1624, new emigrants came over, and brought with them cattle, with a few swine, and some poultry; also clothing and provisions. The colony now contained thirty-two houses, and one hundred and eighty inhabitants. The fields and gardens began to assume a pleasing and rather a cheerful appearance. Thus the Puritan colony of Plymouth was established.

6. The harvest of 1622? Governor Bradford? Squanto? 7. Character of Squanto? 8. How did they hold their property till 1623? What was the effect of this system? 9. What effect did distribution have? 10. What of cattle? State of the colony in 1624?

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Progress of the Virginia Colony.-Opechancanough's Plot and the Massacre of 1622.-The Massacre of 1644.

1. We must now return to the colony of Virginia, of which Sir

Thomas Wyatt

had, in 1621, become the governor. He pursued the same general course in regard to the savages which his predecessors had done -a course by no means fortunate. Still, the country was beginning to be somewhat prosperous. There were already some eighty set

tlements, including a population of about three thousand persons.

2. After the marriage of Rolfe and Pocahontas, the Indians had lived at peace with the English for some time. But Powhatan, already a very old man, had survived his daughter but one year, and O-pechan'-can-ough, his brother, who indulged a mortal hatred of the English, had, in 1618, succeeded him. A plan was therefore laid, in 1622, to destroy them.

3. This plan required a good deal of contrivance on the part of the Indians, for the settlers were scattered along both sides of the James River, for nearly one hundred and fifty miles, and the Indians were also much scattered. It is thought that, in the more thickly-settled parts of the country, the Indian population did not average more than one to a square mile.

4. But Opechancanough took time enough for his plot, and persevered till he had brought all his people to unite with him in executing

CHAP. XXVIII.-1. What of Sir Thomas Wyatt? State of the Virginia settlement in 1621? 2. What of Powhatan and Opechancanough? What plot was laid? 3. Situation of the settlers? Of the Indians? Their population? 4. Proceedings of Opechancanough? Becrecy of the Indians?

MASSACRES IN THE VIRGINIA COLONY.

69

it. Though years may have elapsed from the time the plot began, the most entire secrecy was maintained among them to the very night before they struck the blow.

5. Indeed, on the very morning of the day appointed for the execution of the bloody deed some of the Indians were "in the houses and at the tables of those whose death they were plotting." "Sooner," said they, “shall the sky fall than peace be violated on our part." But their deceit in war was not so well understood two hundred years ago

as now.

6. The night before the massacre took place, however, the plot was revealed by a converted Indian to a part of the English, so that the people of Jamestown, and a few of the adjacent settlements, were on their guard, and a large part of them were thereby saved.

7. The attack was made precisely at noon, April 1st, and was made upon all, without regard to age, character, or sex. The feeble and sickly no less than the healthy; the child at the breast as well as its mother; the devoted missionary as well as the fraudulent dealer in trinkets and furs-were victims alike.

8. It is not a little singular that the savages should have selected such an hour of the day, in preference to the darkness of the night, for their work of butchery, and still, that the blow should have been struck so suddenly. So unexpected was the attack, that many, it is said, fell beneath the tomahawk, unconscious of the cause of their death.

9. Thus, in one short but awful hour, three hundred and forty-seven persons, in a population of three or four thousand, were butchered, and a group of eighty settlements reduced to eight. The rest were so frightened that they dared not pursue their usual avocations. Even the public works, in most places, were abandoned. And to add to the general distress, famine and sickness followed the massacre, as well as a general war with the Indians.

10. The savages, however, were but poorly provided with fire-arms, and a dozen, or even half a dozen white men, well armed, were able to cope with a hundred of them. When Captain Smith was captured, as we have related, he was defending himself, single-handed, till he stuck fast in the mire, against from one to two hundred Indians.

11. Peace, it is true, was finally made; but it was only a peace of

E. What of the savages on the day appointed for the massacre? 6. What took place the night before the massacre? 7. What of the attack? Who were the victims? 8. What was singular? What of the suddenness of the attack? 9. How many persons were killed; How were the settlements reduced? Fears of the settlers? 10. Comparative power of the whites and Indians? What of Smith, when captured? 11. State of feeling among the savages?

compulsion, so far as the Indians were concerned. They gave up open war, because the colonists came over too fast, and were too strong for them. But they still meditated revenge, as is obvious from the fact that only twenty-two years elapsed before they attempted another

massacre.

12. The 28th of April, 1644, was the time appointed for this second outrage, in which not only the settlers were aimed at, but their cattle and other property. The attack was sudden and unexpected, like the former. Providentially the savages took fright, from some unknown cause, and fled in the midst of their cruelties; not, however, till they had slain three hundred persons, and destroyed much property.

13. This second massacre, as well as the first, was succeeded by sickness and suffering, and both of them by emigration of some of the colonists to New England, and the return of others to the mother country. Not long after, the aged chief, Opechancanough, died of a wound inflicted by a soldier, after he had fairly and honorably given himself up as a prisoner.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Settlement at Weymouth.-Captain Standish chastises the Indians. Other Settlements. Incorporation of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay.

1. We must again return to the history of New England. A settlement was begun at Wey'-mouth, Massachusetts, in 1622, by Thomas Weston, a merchant of London, and fifty or sixty more. The next year a plot was laid by the Indians to destroy it, which would no doubt have succeeded had not Massasoit, the friendly chief, who supposed himself to be about to die, revealed it.

2. As soon as the plot was known, it was decided to defeat it, if pos sible, it being feared that if the conspirators were successful, they would carry their work of butchery into the rest of the settlements. Captain Stan'-dish, with eight men, was therefore sent out to destroy the leaders in the conspiracy, and put the rest in fear.

3. This was a singular expedition, and one which to us, at the pres

12. What of the second massacre? 13. What followed the massacres in Virginia? The death of Opechancanough?

CHAP. XXIX.-1. What of Weymouth, in New England? 2, 3. What did Captain Standish and eight soldiers do?