 | The doomed chief, or, Two hundred years ago |  |
CONCLUSION.
The action of our tale is not yet, in all its parts, fully
concluded. We wish it were so. It were, indeed, but a
pleasing office, if that was all, to glance over the bright
picture of the domestic felicity enjoyed by those in whom we
have seen virtue and faith so signally rewarded, while casting
the veil of forgetfulness over the acts of those in whom we
have also seen vice and crime as signally punished. But
gladly would we be spared the melancholy task of depicting
the closing scene of that frightful drama of war and desolation
which came so near resulting in the annihilation of the infant
colonies of New England. Even for the credit of the conquering
race would we avoid, as we shall, many of the sickening
details that stained the laurels of their final victories. It
is not so much for them, however, as for the saddening duty
of following, to the last, two of the active personages of our
story—for whom, we trust, we have, in despite of their
wickedly blackened memories, succeeded in enlisting a share
of the reader's sympathy—that we add the concluding picture.
For in that closing scene, the heroic and unfortunate
Metacom, and the faithful and fiery Wetamoo, were both
destined to perish—but to perish, as they wished, otherwise
than by the hands of their foes: in the case of the one, a
fratricidal hand extinguishing the great light of the American
forest forever; and in that of the other, the embittered soul,
by her own act, voluntarily ascending, as an accusing spirit, to
her long worshipped Nemesis, to demand retribution for the
aggressor.
It was nearly four months subsequent to the occurrence of
the extraordinary developments at Plymouth, which brought
the main part of our story to a close in all that the reader's
fancy could not readily supply. Since that time, the contest
had assumed its most fearful aspect, and resulted in the most
disastrous consequences to the distressed and straitened colonists.
Three different corps of their bravest troops, with their
gallant leaders, had been successively cut up, routed, or utterly
destroyed, by the thickly mustering and frightfully vengeful
foemen. Four flourishing villages, within twenty miles of
Boston and Plymouth, had been successively assailed in open
day, and the bones and ashes of their helpless inhabitants left
mingling with the red ruins of their plundered and desolated
homes. The storm of war, indeed, rolling on nearer and
nearer, and growing darker and more portentous with every
hour of its appalling progress, had already approached to the
very confines of the populous towns and cities of the coast,
threatening the immediate destruction even of this last line
of the strongholds, and the refuges of the alarmed residents
and the frightened and fast ingathering people of the surrounding
country. And both rulers and people, perplexed
and amazed at the overshadowing portents of the hour, seemed
almost equally at loss which way to turn to escape the terrible
doom that, to all human appearance, must soon overtake them.
But, happily, their fears were not to be realized. All at once,
the storm ceased to advance. The expected bolt fell not.
Why this strange delay of the beleaguering foe, at a moment
when they seemingly had the keenly coveted prize of victory
all but within their very grasp? What unseen hand had
stayed that woe-freighted avalanche? Yes, why was all this?
The question has been answered in almost as many number
of ways as the number of different original writers who have
general acceptance. To this day, it is one of the mysteries
of history; and no satisfactory explanation has ever been
furnished, unless it be not found in the remark made by one
of the prisoner chiefs to his taunting captors, after the red
man's calamity had fallen: “You could have never subdued
us,” he said, “had not the Englishman's God suddenly made
us afraid.” Indeed, it did seem as if, at this fearful crisis,
the finger of Providence had been suddenly extended, and
that the whole of that formidable wampum-league, like a
blight-smitten tendril, or rope of sand, had withered and
crumbled at the touch.
And so it was; at the very hour when the prospects of the
victorious avengers of the forests were the brightest, and those
of the trembling colonists were the darkest, the tide of fate
and fortune not only ceased to flow forward, but was mysteriously
thrown upon its reflux. The time of the former had
come; that of the latter was yet in the untold distance. The
prophetic doom cloud, seen by the aged seer, as described in
a former chapter, had at last fallen on the devoted red men;
and their souls sunk within them under the dark and chilling
prefiguration. They felt that their day of war deeds and
daring was over and gone. And with the conscious departure
of their power and prestige, the confederate tribes slunk away
fearful and dismayed to their old separate recesses in the distant
forests.
Like the frost-smitten leaves of their own woods, they all
shrunk at the strange moral blight, scattered, and passed
noiselessly away—all but the lion-hearted Metacom. He,
though at first amazed at the unexpected and shameless desertion—he
yet quailed not under this terrible blow to his cause;
but his proud spirit seemed to grow more defiant and indomitable,
in proportion as fell the crushing weight of his misfortunes.
He and his faithful and still undaunted Wampanoog
red man's God, that they at least would fight on to the bitter
end; and that now returning to their old dear haunts and
homes, they would take their last, desperate stand over the
graves of their fathers.
And consequent on this, the excited colonists, who had not
yet become apprised of the great, but silent turn of affairs in
their favor, were soon thrown into fresh consternation and
alarm by the sudden appearance of King Philip and his supposed
numerous army of warriors, in the forests surrounding
the great ponds of Middleborough, once the seat of populous
native villages, but now almost in the heart of the Plymouth
colony. Sufficient military forces were already in the field,
under Major Bradford, fit successor in the command of the
Plymouth troops to the imbecile Cudworth of the previous
year.
But Bradford and his troops did nothing, except to march
from town to town along the public roads, and keep at a safe
distance from the places where their presence was most needed,
and the universal voice of the alarmed people had gone up to
their rulers for the appointment of more efficient military
leaders. Captain Willis who had speedily wed, after the great
denouement we have described, and retired with his blooming
bride to her gift farm in Rhode Island, had been offered,
before leaving town, a commission for raising and leading one
company into the field. This honor he had declined, ostensively
on the ground of his unwillingness to move with a force
so inadequate to the emergency.
But he was not to be let off so. The current of favor at
the court of Plymouth, since the death of Deacon Mudgridge
and the consequent change in its counsels, had now set as
strongly for, as previously against the gallant, but shamefully
slighted young officer. A second commission, empowering
him to raise double the force first specified, and conferring the
also he respectfully declined. But the same messenger that
carried back the declination, returned post haste, within two
days, with a third commission, with plenary powers to raise all
the forces he could, assume an independent command, and
lead them against the enemy with the least possible delay.
Yielding this time, but rather from the convictions of duty
than any desire for exchanging his domestic elysium on the
quiet shores of the beautiful Aquidneck, for the honors of a
command conferring a rank little less than that of General, he
tore himself away from his weeping wife, and at once entered
on the duties of the contemplated campaign, with a promptitude
and activity commensurate with the urgency of the occasion.
And so rapid and successful were all his movements
and measures, that within ten days he had raised, with his old
company, who promptly rallied at his call, a force amply sufficient,
as he believed, to effect his purposes; since they were
all men who would never hesitate to follow where he would
dare to lead them.
And with these, after a series of daring adventures and
achievements, which were never perhaps equaled in Indian
warfare, he had slain hundreds, taken hundreds of captives,
everywhere routed the foe, and driven them from forest to
forest, until they had reached the fated goal, at which they
had been steadily aiming—the spot of hallowed memories,
where their last stand was to be taken.
Sadly to them broke the morning sun into the last encampment
of the doomed Metacom and the still unyielding remnant
of his faithful Wampanoogs. It was a deeply secluded
spot, near the southern slope of the ever memorable Mount
Hope, opening to the sunny bay in front, and everywhere
hedged in and surrounded by a wide and densely wooded
morass in the rear. The forest lay hushed in the breathing
silence of nature, and no sounds were heard save the occasional
dashing of the waves as their long inward swells broke
soughing along the cliffy base of the neighboring elevation.
All nature seemed dressed in smiles, but her smiles brought no
animating gladness to the gloomy souls of the hunted warriors
and their sternly forlorn chieftain. He had effected by war
and diplomacy more the past year than the world's greatest
warriors, in the same space of time, and with such uncertain
elements for instruments, had ever accomplished. He had
also endured more of disappointment and affliction than any
of them ever suffered, and more than any but the sternest of
heroes could suffer and live. He had seen himself suddenly
forsaken, apparently on the very eve of a final triumph, by
fickle or foolishly panic-struck allies. And then, as with
proud resolve, he turned his face homeward, he had found
himself betrayed by basely deserting friends and kindred, at
almost every step of his progress. And to crown all, and
pierce his soul with redoubled anguish, he had seen his beloved
wife and darling son, surprised, captured, and sold into
slavery by his remorseless pursuers. And yet, under all this
mountain of accumulated woes, his proud and unsubdued
spirit faltered not, nor entertained one thought of submission.
That terrible red legion of two thousand warriors, whom, one
short year ago, he led forth, in all their confidence and pride,
to scatter over the land in their incursive warfare, had now,
by the losses in battle, sickness, and capture, wasted and
dwindled to nearly half as many hundreds. And these, the
sad remnant of his devoted followers, having, a day or two
before, and unknown as they supposed to their foes, reached
their final destination, had now gathered round the central
council-fire of their idolized chieftain to soothe his bursting
heart, and still take from his imperial lips their law of guidance
in the gloomy emergency. Moody and silent he sat, like some
colossal iron statue in their midst; while on his sternly compressed
anguish and desperation, which seems to court death, and at
the same time to defy his approach. By his side sat the
faithful and keenly sympathizing Wetamoo, the beauteous,
but vengeful warrior queen, who had resolved never to desert
him so long as he had an arm to raise against the pale faces.
In front of these, flanked on either side by rows of his grim
and sullen warriors, sat the stalwart old Annawan, long the
great war captain of the tribe, looking, with his rough, scarred
visage, giant contour of frame, and fixed ferocity of countenance,
like some gnarled, ancient mountain oak, that laughs
at the winds, and defies the bolts of heaven.
“Last sleep I had a dream,” at length slowly and gloomily
said Metacom, while all eyes were turning with eager expectance
to his opening lips—“I stood on the shadowy side of
the silent river that gently murmured along its half lighted
way between this and the spirit land. Soon, a small, feeble,
flickering blaze of fire began to be in the air, just over the
water about midway the stream; and growing stronger and
broader as it went, moved slowly on from me across the
brightening expanse, till, in the shape of a beautiful cloud of
gold, it floated over the far-reaching throng of departed warriors,
who, with shining faces, thickly lined that happy shore.
I looked on as one looks who sees a great wonder. There,
beneath bright, blue, smiling skies, and among green, pleasant
forests, watered by sparkling streams, stood the red host of
rewarded braves. The faces of all were bright; but the faces
of those slain in battle with pale faces were the brightest.
Their bullet scars glittered like spirit lights on their bodies,
and wreathed scalp-plumes floated, like clustering stars, from
their heads. There stood the Narraganset braves, who
died fighting to save our wives and children, and with them
the bold Nanuntenoo, towering high over the rest. And
there also, in the fairest, brightest spot of that shining shore,
My father, the good old Massasoit, was there. On
his face seemed to rest a shade of regret for having spared
and warmed into life the nest of white vipers, to sting his
family and tribe, instead of crushing them at first into the
earth with his heel. By his side stood my murdered brother,
the noble Wamsutta, with his face, like an unsatisfied spirit,
turned wistfully towards the land of life, as if to ask of us
one more deed of vengeance to appease his troubled soul. I
sprang wildly forth for an object on which to do the welcome
bidding, and, in the effort, awoke.”
“Oh, my husband! my poor, poisoned husband!” wildly exclaimed
the excited Wetamoo, goaded to frenzy by the chief's
dream-wrought picture of the appearance of her lamented lord,
as seen in the spirit land. “Oh for another blow at the accursed
pale faces!—Oh for another scalp—one more scalp,
good Manitou, that I may take it, when I go, to lay it at his
feet, as an acceptable offering to his unsatisfied vengeance!
Metacom, I thank you. It was a good—oh, it was a good
dream!”
“Ugh! Ugh!” approvingly roared the old war captain, in
a voice resembling the low bellowing of a bullock—a voice so
remarkable for tone and compass as to have found a place in
the histories of the times. “The words of Wetamoo are the
words of a brave, and she has read the dream with a clear
eye. The dream shows things in the spirit land that are
right to be true. My old chief, Massasoit, does well to be
sorry he did not crush out the hatching nest of the pale faces.
My young chief, Wamsutta, whom they made to die the death
of a poisoned dog, does well to want more vengeance. Annawan
is an old warrior, and his war-paths are strewed with the
bones of his white enemies. But his arm is still strong, and
his tomahawk is sharp. The starry scalp-plume he will carry
to the spirit land, is already big; but he would make it bigger.
is a good dream!”
“No, the dream is a bad dream,” said one of the warriors,
in a confident tone.
“How?” exclaimed Metacom, starting, and bending on the
other a look of mingled surprise, doubt, and suspicion.
“Much 'fraid the dream a bad one,” responded the former,
moderating his tone, but evidently inclined to persist in his
opinion. “No good to see faces of the dead in a dream.
And the fire kindled in the air without hands, and moving
away from him who sees it, is the fire, the old medicine men
say, that comes to light his way to the spirit land. And it
will soon be the fire to light all our paths there, if we stand
out much longer against the pale faces, who are gathering
round us, a hundred to our one, to kill us in battle. When
we were many, we were strong-hearted to fight, because we
had hope. But now we are few—we are nothing—we have
no hope. There is no fight in our hearts. It is no use to
try to fight any more. We had better lay down the bloody
hatchet. I advise Metacom to get terms and surrender.”
“Surrender!” shouted the astonished chieftain, springing
to his feet, with a countenance all fearfully alive with the
rapidly succeeding shades of pain, chagrin, and fiery indignation,
that quivered and flashed over it—“surrender, to be sold
and become whipt, cringing, groaning slaves, as my wife and
son have been! Surrender, on promised terms, and then be
secretly poisoned to death by the base, double-tongued white
cowards, as my noble brother was treated by the miscreant
crew! Was it,” he continued, his every feature glowing and
gleaming more and more fiercely in the gathering intensity of
his terrible emotions—“was it a Wampanoog warrior who
made that damning proposal? And shall one of our hitherto
undisgraced tribe, who still claims to be a warrior and a man,
eternal Manitou, no!”
Quick as the lightning's flash, the arm that had been lifted
high in the utterance of the irrevocable oath, descended to
the belted pistol, and whirled the gleaming barrel to the line
level of the quailing object of the frenzied denunciation.
Then there was a momentary, an awful pause, in which a cold
shudder ran visibly through the surprised and recoiling
assemblage; and then, suddenly, the steel gave fire, the bullet
sped—the warrior died!
“It is well,” growled the fierce old Annawan, the first to
rally from the general amazement that had seized the awestruck
warriors at the quick and terrible punishment that had
awaited this first sign of weakness and misgiving in their
devoted band. “Yes, it is well; it is well that he should
die before his heart grew any softer.”
“Ay, it is—it is well!” eagerly responded the warrior
queen also. “It is more than well; it is right, it is just, my
brave brother, who has been driven to make the painful
sacrifice to preserve unspotted the proud totem-eagle of his
tribe. Let every such weakness, in whomever betrayed, meet
the same punishment, and with the same swiftness. Load up
your pistol again, noble Metacom; and if you see even the
poor, weak woman, Wetamoo, growing faint before the foe,
send the mercy-meant bullet through her heart, and her
undishonored soul shall thank you with every wing-flap of its
flight from here to the spirit-land.”
Not another word was uttered aloud by any; yet the quickly
exchanged glances, and the varying shades of sensation which
flitted over the faces of the dusky warriors, evidently showed
that a busy thought-council was in progress in their sympathizing
bosoms. And, almost the next moment, the rapid
subsiding of the flashings of excitement, and the keenly
questioning expressions that had at first marked their startled
last were by low murmurs of satisfaction—that their silent
deliberations had resulted in a general verdict of approval of
the summary proceeding of their sovereign chief, and that he
was to be sustained by all—all, with one solitary exception.
That excepted one was the brother of the slain warrior. His
brow, as he gloomily looked on, grew darker and darker with
displeasure and meditated revenge; and soon rising, he took
his gun, edged away from the throng, and disappeared in the
forest. An uneasy and suspicious look passed over the face
of Metacom, as his eye fell on the retreating figure. But,
either from that strange apathy that grows of despair, or from
his ignorance of the fact that his white foes, though as yet
unapprised of the location of his camp, were already within a
mile of him in the rear, the chief made no corresponding
movement, sent out no scouts, and stationed no guarding outpost;
but, with the rest of his devoted band, soon relapsed
into the stern, moody silence which had been broken by the
occurrence of the sad scene we have been describing. And
another gloomy hour passed away without incident or alarm.
But the dread moment of doom had now, at length, arrived.
Suddenly as the breaking thunder-clap, burst from a concealing
thicket near by a deafening volley of musketry, and a shower
of bullets was poured in upon the devoted camp.
Leaping for their arms, the surprised and dismayed warriors
instantly scattered, fled, and quickly disappeared among
the protecting and supposed unoccupied thickets of the swamp
in their rear. Not yet venturing to make their appearance,
the small party of white assailants still kept close and quiet
in their coverts; and all, for a brief interval, relapsed into
silence. Presently, however, the report of a single musket
sent its ominous peal through the forests, and the next moment,
a fierce shout of exultation, portending no common trophy,
burst from one of the secreted bands of the stealthy
fresh outbursts of hurras, from station to station along the
whole extended line of the ambushing troops. The shout
was soon repeated at the starting point: and this time distinctly
came the words, “King Philip is slain! slain by
the bullet of the deserting Indian; and the great enemy is at
last overthrown!”
These jubilant demonstrations had scarcely died away, before
they were succeeded by other sounds, that fell on the ear
in sad and painful contrast. From every part of the distant
thickets rose the wild wail of the red warriors, who, but too
well comprehending what had befell, had paused in their
flight thus to give voice to their grief and despair at the fall
of their idolized chieftain. Then was heard the stentorian
roar of old Annawan, in rallying the fugitives to come to a
stand, and avenge the death of their great leader. And for
a few minutes the woods resounded with the battle cries of
the combatants, and the scattering fire of the pursuers and
pursued. But the shots growing fewer and fainter in the
distance, and soon followed by another shout of victory, told
that the brief contest was over, and that all was lost, forever
lost, to the red men.
But where, in the meanwhile, was the luckless, woe-wed
Wetamoo? Had she escaped here, as had many of the
wretched remnant of her people, only soon to be captured
elsewhere, and sold into slavery, or shot as was the lionlike
old Annawan? No; she had resolved to have her destiny
within her own keeping; and hers was to be a more befitting
fate, and one far more consonant with her high-wrought feelings
and desperate purposes. With a strange prescience of the
calamity at hand, she had, at the moment of the alarm, instead
of fleeing into the thickets of the swamp with the rest, instinctively
made her way to the water side. And here within
the covert of the scantily screening coppice, she stood, still
awaited the result in silence, until the dread announcement
of the death of her royal brother fell on her anguished ear;
when she joined in the general death cry then raised by the
scattering warriors, in a wail so shrill and loud as instantly to
bring upon her the pursuit of a party of her foes, who had
by this time reached the camp she had just left.
She then, with her pursuers pressing on hotly behind her,
rapidly forced her obstructed and difficult way along the shelvy
and precipitous shore of the bay, winding up the adjoining
elevation, till she had nearly gained the summit; when she
caught sight of another party of her foes coming up the opposite
side of the hill to intercept her course, and with those
in her rear, make sure of the prize of so noted a prisoner.
In the quick glance she threw around her, in her now hopeless
emergency, she caught a glimpse of a tall perpendicular
cliff, rising from a partially screening clump of bushes, a
short distance to her right, and beetling directly over the dark
chasm of the ocean waves dashing against its base far, far
away down beneath, and her eye sparkled with fierce joy at
the sight. In one moment her resolution was taken, and in
another she was standing on the dizzy brink of the cliff, towering
up in the wild beauty of her matchless form, like the
chiseled marble on its pedestal, and frowning her defiance on
her despised pursuers, who, having closed up within a few
yards of the rock on which she stood, were pausing in their
doubts of her questionable purposes.
“So,” she at length exclaimed, with a look of ineffable
scorn and hate, “so you think to take the warrior queen to
lead round, with boasts of the brave deed of capturing a lone,
unarmed squaw, and show her to your scared and wondering
women and children, who have so often turned pale at her
name—you think thus to make her a thing of show and
triumph, till you get ready to give her over, like a sold dog,
of the slain Metacom—you think to take her alive for such
ignoble purposes, do you, ye white wolves? Wetamoo's long
strained heart is ready to burst. She is ready to die, but not
by the hands of the hated pale faces. She goes to join her poor,
poisoned husband in the spirit-land, who is there constantly
besieging the Great Manitou to send death and desolation on
the race of his cowardly murderers. She goes, but she leaves
her bitter, her crying curse on you, ye pitiful, double tongued
thieves, and on the whole land you have stolen from the red
man and fattened with his blood, and let that curse be her farewell,
to remain on you and your guilty land, till the Heavenheard
cries of the wrongs and blood of a plundered people
shall all be appeased in the terrible atonement.”
She ceased; and while the thrilling sounds of the last of
her high-heaped anathemas were yet echoing among the rocks
around, her exasperated assailants made a sudden rush to seize
and drag her down by the feet. But her wary eye was too quick
for the baffled woman hunters. With a quickness of the
outstarting antelope, she leaped, with a wild cry of exultation,
out wide from the fearful brink, and then descended,
like a bow-driven arrow, to her watery grave below.
| The doomed chief, or, Two hundred years ago | |