Preface

At this distant period, when Indian traditions are listened to with the
interest that we lend to the events of a dark age, it is not easy to
convey a vivid image of the dangers and privations that our ancestors
encountered, in preparing the land we enjoy for its present state of
security and abundance. It is the humble object of the tale that will be
found in the succeeding pages, to perpetuate the recollection of some of
the practices and events peculiar to the early days of our history.

The general character of the warfare pursued by the natives is too well
known to require any preliminary observations; but it may be advisable to
direct the attention of the reader, for a few moments, to those leading
circumstances in the history of the times, that may have some connexion
with the principal business of the legend.

The territory which now composes the three states of Massachusetts,
Connecticut and Rhode-Island, is said, by the best-informed of our
annalists, to have been formerly occupied by four great nations of
Indians, who were, as usual, subdivided into numberless dependent tribes.
Of these people, the Massachusetts possessed a large portion of the land
which now composes the state of that name; the Wampanoags dwelt in what
was once the Colony of Plymouth, and in the northern districts of the
Providence Plantations; the Narragansetts held the well-known islands of
the beautiful bay which receives its name from their nation, and the more
southern counties of the Plantations; while the Pequots, or as it is
ordinarily written and pronounced, the Pequods, were masters of a broad
region that lay along the western boundaries of the three other districts.

There is great obscurity thrown around the polity of the Indians, who
usually occupied the country lying near the sea.

The Europeans, accustomed to despotic governments, very naturally supposed
that the chiefs, found in possession of power, were monarchs to whom
authority had been transmitted in virtue of their birth-rights. They
consequently gave them the name of kings.

How far this opinion of the governments of the aborigines was true remains
a question, though there is certainly reason to think it less erroneous in
respect to the tribes of the Atlantic states, than to those who have since
been found further west, where, it is sufficiently known, that
institutions exist which approach much nearer to republics than to
monarchies. It may, however, have readily happened that the son, profiting
by the advantages of his situation, often succeeded to the authority of
the father, by the aid of influence, when the established regulations of
the tribe acknowledged no hereditary claim. Let the principle of the
descent of power be what it would, it is