History of the United States Volume I Part 13

[l638]

For nearly forty years the New England colonies were not again molested, the merciless vigor with which they had fought making a lasting impression upon their blood-thirsty foes. The cruel slavery to which the surviving natives were subjected, the English justified by the example of the Jews in their treatment of the Canaanites.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Signature of Miantonomoh.]

[1642]

The Narraganset chief, Miantonomoh, had become the friend and ally of the English by a treaty ratified in 1636, mainly through the good offices of Roger Williams, In 1638, after the destruction of the Pequots, there was a new treaty, embracing Uncas with his bold Mohegans, and stipulating that any quarrel between Miantonomoh and Uncas should be referred to the English. In 1642 Miantonomoh was accused of plotting against the English, and summoned before the General Court at Boston.

Though acquitted he vowed revenge upon Uncas as the instigator of the charge. His friendship for Roger Williams, as also for Samuel Gorton, the purchaser of Shawomet, or Warwick, R. I., which was claimed by Ma.s.sachusetts, had perhaps created a prejudice against him. At any rate, when a quarrel arose between Uncas and Sequa.s.son, Miantonomoh's friend and ally, while the latter naturally sided with Sequa.s.son, the sympathies of the English were with Uncas, who had aided them against the Pequots. With the consent of Connecticut and Ma.s.sachusetts Miantonomoh took the field against Uncas, who had attacked Sequa.s.son. He was defeated and taken prisoner. Carried to Hartford he was held to await the decision of the Commissioners of the United Colonies at Boston. They would not release him, yet had no valid ground for putting him to death. The case was referred to five clergymen, and they voted for his execution. For this purpose the commissioners gave orders to turn the brave warrior over to Uncas, English witnesses to be present and see that no cruelty was perpetrated. The sentence was carried into effect near Norwich. Cutting a piece of flesh from the shoulder of his murdered enemy, Uncas ate it with savage relish, declaring it to be the sweetest meat he had ever tasted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Grave of Miantonomoh.]

[1640-1643]

The Dutch, too, as we have to some extent seen already, felt the horrors of Indian warfare. Kieft, the Dutch director-general, a man cruel, avaricious, and obstinate, angered the red men by demanding tribute from them as their protector, while he refused them guns or ammunition. The savages replied that they had to their own cost shown kindness to the Dutch when in need of food, but would not pay tribute. Kieft attacked.

Some of the Indians were killed and their crops destroyed. This roused their revengeful pa.s.sions to the utmost. The Raritan savages visited the colony of De Vries, on Staten Island, with death and devastation. Reward was offered for the head of anyone of the murderers. An Indian never forgot an injury. The nephew of one of the natives who twenty years before had been wantonly killed went to sell furs at Fort Amsterdam, and while there revenged his uncle's murder by the slaughter of an unoffending colonist. Spite of warlike preparations by Kieft and his a.s.sembly in 1641-42, the tribe would not give up the culprit. The following year another settler was knifed by a drunken Indian. Wampum was indeed offered in atonement, while an indignant plea was urged by the savages against the liquor traffic, which demoralized their young men and rendered them dangerous alike to friend and foe. But remonstrance and blood-money could not satisfy Kieft. At Pavonia and at Corlaer's Hook [footnote: now in the New York City limits, just below Broadway Ferry, East River] the Dutch fell venomously upon the sleeping and unsuspecting enemy. Men, women, and children were slaughtered, none spared. In turn the tribes along the lower Hudson, to the number of eleven, united and desperately attacked the Dutch wherever found. Only near the walls of Fort Amsterdam was there safety. The governor appointed a day of fasting, which it seems was kept with effect. The sale of liquor to the red men was at last prohibited, and peace for a time secured.

Soon, however, the redskins along the Hudson were again up in arms. The noted Underhill, who with Mason had been the scourge of the Pequots, came to the fight with fifty Englishmen as allies of the Dutch. Not waiting to be attacked, the Indians laid waste the settlements, even threatening Fort Amsterdam itself. At a place now known as Pelham Neck, near New Roch.e.l.le, lived the famous but unfortunate Mrs. Hutchinson, a fugitive from the persecuting zeal of Ma.s.sachusetts. Here the implacable savages butchered her and her family in cold blood. Her little granddaughter alone was spared, and led captive to a far-off wigwam prison. Only at Gravesend, on Long Island, was a successful stand made, and that by a woman, Lady Deborah Moody, another exile from religious persecution, who with forty stout-hearted men defended her plantation and compelled the savages to beat a retreat.

[1645]

The colony was in extremity. New Haven refused to aid, because, as a member of the New England confederacy, it could not act alone, and because it was not satisfied that the Dutch war was just. An appeal was made by Kieft's eight advisers to both the States-General and the West India Company in Holland. The sad condition of the colonists was fully set forth, and the responsibility directly ascribed to the mismanagement of Kieft. At the same time, undismayed by the gloomy outlook, the courage of the st.u.r.dy Dutchmen rose with the emergency. Small parties were sent out against the Connecticut savages in the vicinity of Stamford. Indian villages on Long Island were surprised and the natives put to the sword. In two instances at least the victors disgraced humanity by torturing the captured.

In these engagements Underhill was conspicuous and most energetic.

Having made himself familiar with the position of the Indians near Stamford, he sailed from Manhattan with one hundred and fifty men, landed at Greenwich, and, marching all day, at midnight drew near the enemy. His approach was not wholly unannounced, for the moon was full.

The fight was desperate and b.l.o.o.d.y. The tragedy that had made memorable the banks of the Mystic in the destruction of the Pequot fort was now almost equalled. After the example of his old comrade Mason, Underhill fired the village. By flame, shot, or sword more than five hundred human beings perished.

While New Netherland was awaiting some message of cheer from Holland, a company of Dutch soldiers came from Curacoa, but they did little to follow up the successes already gained. Again the Eight sent a memorial to the company, boldly condemning the conduct of the director and demanding his recall. Their remonstrances were at last heeded, and the removal of the unpopular governor resolved upon. In 1647 Kieft set sail for Holland, but the ship was wrecked, and he with nearly all on board was drowned.

It was high time for a change. In the two years, 1643-45, while sixteen hundred Indians had been slain, Manhattan had become nearly depopulated.

In 1645 peace was concluded, not only with the smaller tribes in the vicinity, but also with the powerful Mohawks about Fort Orange, and finally with all the Indians belonging to the Five Nations or acknowledging their authority. A pleasing incident of this treaty was the promise of the Indians to restore the eight-year-old granddaughter of Mrs. Hutchinson, a promise which they faithfully performed in 1646.

The great compact was made under the shadow of the Fort Amsterdam walls, and the universal joy was expressed by a day of thanksgiving.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Totem or Tribe Mark of the Five Nations.]

[1650-1660]

An interval of peace for ten years was now enjoyed, when the killing of a squaw for stealing some peaches led to an attack by several hundred of the infuriated savages upon New Amsterdam. They were repulsed here, but crossing to the sh.o.r.e of New Jersey they laid waste the settlements there. Staten Island, too, was swept with fire and sword. One hundred people were slain, 150 more taken captive, 300 made homeless. Peace was again effected and maintained for three years, when fresh quarrels began. It was not until 1660 that a more general and lasting treaty was brought about, on which occasion a Mohawk and a Minqua chief gave pledges in behalf of the Indians, and acted as mediators between the contending parties.

PERIOD II.

ENGLISH AMERICA TILL THE END OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

1660--1763

CHAPTER I.

NEW ENGLAND UNDER THE LAST STUARTS

[1660]

The Commonwealth in England went to pieces at the death of Oliver Cromwell, its founder. The Stuart dynasty came back, but, alas!

unimproved. Charles II. was a much meaner man than his father, and James II. was more detestable still. The rule of such kings was destined to work sad changes in the hitherto free condition of Ma.s.sachusetts. This colony had sympathized with the Commonwealth more heartily than any of the others. Hither had fled for refuge Goffe and Whalley, two of the accomplices in the death of Charles I. Congregational church polity was here established by law, to the exclusion of all others, even of episcopacy, for whose sake Charles was harrying poor Covenanters to death on every hillside in Scotland. Nor would his lawyers let the king forget Charles I.'s attack on the Ma.s.sachusetts charter, begun so early as 1635, or the grounds therefor, such as the unwarranted transfer of it to Boston, or the likelihood that but for the outbreak of the Civil War it would have been annulled by the Long Parliament itself. Obviously Ma.s.sachusetts could not hope to be let alone by the home government which had just come in.

At first the king, graciously responding to the colony's humble pet.i.tion, confirmed the charter granted by his father; but no sooner had he done so than the hot royalists about him began plotting to overthrow the same, and their purpose never slumbered till it was accomplished.

Ma.s.sachusetts was too prosperous and too visibly destined for great power in America to be suffered longer to go its independent way as. .h.i.therto.

[Ill.u.s.tration: King Charles II.]

[1661]

The province--as yet, of course, excluding Plymouth with its twelve towns and five thousand inhabitants--contained at this time, 1660, about twenty-five thousand souls, living in fifty-two towns. These were nearly all on the coast; Dedham, Concord, Brookfield, Lancaster, Marlborough, and the Connecticut Valley hamlets of Springfield, Hadley, and Northampton being the most noteworthy exceptions. Though agriculture was the princ.i.p.al business, fishing was a staple industry, its product going to France, Spain, and the Straits. Pipe-staves, fir-boards, much material for ships, as masts, pitch and tar, also pork and beef, horses and corn, were shipped from this colony to Virginia, in return for tobacco and sugar either for home consumption or for export to England.

Some iron was manufactured. The province enjoyed great prosperity.

Boston stood forth as a lively and growing centre, and an English traveller about this time declared some of its merchants to be "d.a.m.nable rich."

As their most precious possession the colonists prized their liberties, which they claimed in virtue of their original patent. In a paper which it put forth on June 10, 1661, the General Court a.s.serted for the colony the right to elect and empower its own officers, both high and low, to make its laws, to execute the same without appeal so long as they were not repugnant to those of England, and to defend itself by force and arms when necessary, against every infringement of its rights, even from acts of Parliament or of the king, if prejudicial to the country or contrary to just colonial legislation. In a word Ma.s.sachusetts, even so early, regarded itself to all intents and purposes an independent State, and would have proclaimed accordingly had it felt sufficiently strong.

[1664]

Manifestly the king would not grant so much. On the occasion of his confirming the charter he demanded that the oath of allegiance be taken by the people of the colony; that justice be administered there in his name; and that the franchise be extended to all freemen of sufficient substance, with the liberty to use in worship, public and private, the forms of the English Church. The people obeyed but in part, for they would not even appear to admit the king's will to be their law. The franchise was slightly extended, in a grudging way, but no new religious privileges were at this time conceded. Unfortunately political and religious liberty were now in conflict. It was worse for the Baptists and Quakers that the king favored them, and the treatment which they received in the colony inclined them to the royalist side in the controversy.

In July, 1664, commissioners arrived in Boston with full authority to investigate the administration of the New England charters. Such a procedure not being provided for in the Ma.s.sachusetts doc.u.ment, the General Court, backed by the citizens almost to a man, successfully prevented complainants from appearing before the commission. The commissioners having summoned the colony as defendant in a certain case, a herald trumpeted proclamation through the streets, on the morning set for the trial, inhibiting all from aiding their designs. The trial collapsed, and the gentlemen who had ordered it, baffled and disgusted, moved on to New Hampshire, there also to be balked by a decree of the Ma.s.sachusetts Governor and Council forbidding the towns so much as to meet at their behest.

[1668]

Vengeance for such defiance was delayed by Charles II.'s very vices.

Clarendon's fall had left him surrounded by profligate aides, too timid and too indolent to face the resolute men of Ma.s.sachusetts. They often discussed the contumacy of the colony, but went no further than words.

Ma.s.sachusetts was even encouraged, in 1668, forcibly to rea.s.sert its authority in Maine, against rule either by the king or by Sir Ferdinanda Gorges's heir as proprietary.

Its charter had a.s.signed to the colony land to a point three miles north of the Merrimac. Bold in the favor of the Commonwealth, the authorities measured from the head-waters of that river. But Plymouth had originally claimed all the territory west of the Kennebec, and had sold it to Gorges. Charles II. favored the Gorges heirs against Ma.s.sachusetts, and for some years previous to 1668 Ma.s.sachusetts' power over Maine had been in abeyance. Ten years later, in 1678, to make a.s.surance doubly sure, Ma.s.sachusetts bought off the Gorges claimants, at the round price of twelve hundred and fifty pounds sterling.

[1673]

From 1641 Ma.s.sachusetts had borne sway in New Hampshire as well, ignoring John Mason's claim under Charles I.'s charters of 1629 and 1635, still urged by one of Mason's grandsons, backed by Charles II.

Here Ma.s.sachusetts was beaten. In July, 1679, New Hampshire was permanently separated from her, and erected into a royal province, of a nature to be explained in a subsequent chapter, being the earliest government of this kind in New England.

[1662]

These territorial a.s.sumptions on the part of Ma.s.sachusetts much increased the king's hostility. This probably would not have proved fatal had it not been re-enforced by the determination of the merchants and manufacturers of the mother-country to crush what they feared was becoming a rival power beyond seas. They insisted upon full enforcement of the Navigation Laws, which made America's foreign trade in a cruel degree subservient to English interest. So incorrigible was the colony, it was found that this end could be compa.s.sed only by the abrogation of the charter, so that English law might become immediately valid in Ma.s.sachusetts, colonial laws to the contrary notwithstanding.

Accordingly, in 1684, the charter was vacated and the colonists ceased to be free, their old government with its popular representation giving way to an arbitrary commission.

The other New England colonies--Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Haven--had made haste to proclaim Charles II. so soon as restored to the throne, and to begin carrying on their governments in his name. That beautiful and able man, the younger Winthrop, sped to London on Connecticut's behalf, and, aided by his colony's friends at court, the Earls of Clarendon and Manchester and Viscount Say and Seal, in 1662 secured to Connecticut, now made to include New Haven, a charter so liberal that it continued till October 5, 1818, the ground law of the State, then to be supplanted only by a close vote. Under this paper, which declared all lands between the Narragansett River and the Pacific Ocean Connecticut territory, Connecticut received every whit of that right to govern itself which Charles was so sternly challenging in the case of Ma.s.sachusetts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: John Winthrop the Younger.]

From this time on, as indeed earlier, Connecticut was for many years perhaps the most delightful example of popular government in all history. Connecticut and New Haven together had about ten thousand inhabitants. Their rulers were just, wise, and of a mind truly to serve the people. Here none were persecuted for their faith. Education was universal. Few were poor, none very rich. Nearly all supplies were of domestic production, nothing as yet being exported but a few cattle.