HELPS TO STUDY

These two famous selections express the poetry and pathos of the disappearance of the Indians from our Continent. The generation or two of white men who fought the Indians, sometimes justly, sometimes unjustly, saw little good in them; still less could they see them as subjects for poetry and eloquent speeches. They saw them, rather, as shiftless, cruel, and treacherous enemies. But later generations, safe from the struggle, began to see something more of the Indian's rights, and something of the freedom and beauty of his life. The two addresses you have just read were written only sixty or seventy years ago.

I. 1. What customs and occupations of the Indians does the writer recall? 2. What did they worship? 3. What caused their disappear

ance?

Phrases: Tiger strife, fierce fighting; tables of stone, the ten commandments; God of revelation, the God of our Bible; anointed children of education, civilized people; pay due tribute, give the proper honor.

For Study with the Glossary: embellish, sedgy, pinion, adoration, usurped, progenitors, chronicles, exterminators.

II. 1. With what different feelings does Mr. Story think of the Indians? 2. What does he say of the stretch of country they once occupied? 3. What occupations and pleasures had they? 4. What virtues and what vices? 5. What things have caused their disappearance? 6. What lesson, or what feelings, do these authors impress upon us?

Phrases: Destined to extinction, doomed to perish; wasting pestilence, a destructive and spreading disease; moral canker, a moral evil that destroys; dark forebodings, gloomy and hopeless outlook.

For Study with the Glossary: atrocities, glades, tomahawk, sagacity, fidelity, sachem, remnants, vengeance, stifle, interpret, provocation, resentment, perfidy.

For Oral and Written Composition: 1. Why the Indian disappeared. 2. Records left of Indian life. 3. Indian Reservations.

DEATH OF KING PHILIP OF POKANOKET

However Philip had borne up against the complicated miseries and misfortunes that surrounded him, the treachery of his followers seemed to wring his heart and reduce him to despondency. It is said that "he never rejoiced afterwards, nor had success in any of his designs." The spring 5 of hope was broken — the ardor of enterprise was extinguished; he looked around, and all was danger and darkness; there was no eye to pity nor any arm that could bring deliverance.

With a scanty band of followers, who still remained true 10 to his desperate fortunes, the unhappy Philip wandered back to the vicinity of Mount Hope, the ancient dwelling of his fathers. Here he lurked about like a specter among the scenes of former power and prosperity, now bereft of home, of family, and of friend. There needs no better pic- 15 ture of his destitute and piteous situation than that furnished by the homely pen of the chronicler, who is unwarily enlisting the feelings of the reader in favor of the hapless warrior whom he reviles. "Philip," he says, "like a savage wild beast, having been hunted by the English forces 20 through the woods above a hundred miles backward and forward, at last was driven to his own den upon Mount Hope, where he retired, with a few of his best friends, into a swamp, which proved but a prison to keep him fast till the messengers of death came by divine permission to ex-25 ecute vengeance upon him."

Even in this last refuge of desperation and despair a sullen grandeur gathers round his memory. We picture him to ourselves seated among his careworn followers, brooding in silence over his blasted fortunes, and acquiring a savage 5 sublimity from the wildness and dreariness of his lurking place. Defeated, but not dismayed-crushed to the earth, but not humiliated he seemed to grow more haughty beneath disaster, and to experience a fierce satisfaction in draining the last dregs of bitterness. Little minds are 10 tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above it. The very idea of submission awakened the fury of Philip, and he smote to death one of his followers who proposed an expedient of peace. The brother of the victim made his escape, and in revenge betrayed the retreat 15 of his chieftain. A body of white men and Indians were immediately dispatched to the swamp where Philip lay crouched, glaring with fury and despair. Before he was aware of their approach they had begun to surround him. In a little while he saw five of his trustiest followers laid 20 dead at his feet; all resistance was vain; he rushed forth from his covert, and made a headlong attempt to escape, but was shot through the heart by a renegado Indian of his own nation.

Such is the scanty story of the brave but unfortunate 25 King Philip, persecuted while living, slandered and dishonored when dead. If, however, we consider even the prejudiced anecdotes furnished us by his enemies, we may perceive in them traces of amiable and lofty character sufficient to awaken sympathy for his fate and respect for

his memory. We find that amidst all the harassing cares and ferocious passions of constant warfare he was alive to the softer feelings of connubial love and paternal tenderness and to the generous sentiment of friendship. The captivity of his "beloved wife and only son" are mentioned 5 with exultation as causing him poignant misery: the death of any near friend is triumphantly recorded as a new blow on his sensibilities; but the treachery and desertion of many of his followers, in whose affections he had confided, is said to have desolated his heart and to have bereaved 10 him of all further comfort. He was a patriot attached to his native soil — a prince true to his subjects and indignant of their wrongs - a soldier daring in battle, firm in adversity, patient of fatigue, of hunger, of every variety of bodily suffering, and ready to perish in the cause he had espoused. 15 Proud of heart and with an untamable love of natural liberty, he preferred to enjoy it among the beasts of the forests or in the dismal and famished recesses of swamps and morasses, rather than bow his haughty spirit to submission and live dependent and despised in the ease and luxury of the 20 settlements. With heroic qualities and bold achievements that would have graced a civilized warrior, and have rendered him the theme of the poet and the historian, he lived a wanderer and a fugitive in his native land, and went down, like a lonely bark foundering amid darkness and 25 tempest, without a pitying eye to weep his fall or a friendly hand to record his struggle.

From The Sketch-Book, by WASHINGTON IRVING.

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HELPS TO STUDY

When the New England colonists first came they found the Indians friendly. After a time wrong actions and misunderstandings on both sides led to petty wars and massacres. Finally, in 1675, the Indian tribes gathered under the leadership of Philip, chief of the Pequots, to exterminate the whites who were growing too numerous and powerful for the Indians. The passage here is from a longer article in The Sketch-Book. Earlier writers seldom saw any good in the Indians, or any right on their side. But Irving, writing a hundred and fifty years later, could see things differently. Impartial historians, however, do not see in King Philip such an admirable figure as Irving does; to them, he is a brave, revengeful, suspicious savage, part of whose wrongs are real, part fancied.

1. What had broken King Philip's spirit? 2. Mount Hope was in Rhode Island, where the city of Bristol now stands. What does Irving say about it? 3. How did King Philip receive offers of peace? 4. How was he betrayed? How did he die? 5. What good traits did he have? 6. What excuses are to be made for his ferocity?

Phrases: Ardor of enterprise, eagerness to achieve something; sullen grandeur, the bitter and resentful mood of a great man; the last dregs of bitterness, the extreme of suffering and humiliation; an expedient of peace, a means of gaining peace; theme of poet and historian, celebrated by writers.

For Study with the Glossary: complicated, despondency, specter, destitute, unwarily, reviles, dismayed, renegado, connubial, poignant, espoused, morass.

For Oral and Written Composition: 1. Good and bad traits of the Indian. 2. The white man's invasion (from the Indian's point of view), 3. Unused treasures of our continent. 4. The Indians of to-day.