232 VIII. WAR AMONG THE INDIANS. CHAP. Uncas, he offered to meet him face to face, and prove his treachery; seemed greatly grieved that his honesty should be called in question; and urged that his slanderers should be suitably punished. Nearly two days were spent in this discussion; but in conclusion, he "accommodated himself to the satisfaction of the court, and was dismissed with presents." July, 1613. It was but a few days, however, before fresh tidings came from Connecticut, asserting the intention of the people there to commence a war; but a new meeting of the magistrates being held, letters were forwarded to dissuade them from their purpose; and gradually the fears of the people subsided, and quiet was restored.1 In the following year, a war broke out between Uncas, the Mohegan chief, and Sequasson of Connecticut. Miantonomo took the part of the latter, complained of the conduct of Uncas to the colonial magistrates, and requested permission to redress the wrongs of his confederate, which was granted. Raising an army of a thousand warriors, he attacked Uncas, whose men numbered but three or four hundred; but with such ill-success that he was defeated and taken prisoner. The news of his capture reaching Providence, Gorton, of Warwick, demanded his release; but taking his prisoner to Hartford, Uncas left him with the magistrates until his fate could be decided. At the meeting of the commissioners of the United ColoSept. 7. nies at Boston, his case came up for discussion. The magistrates were in a dilemma. It was their unanimous opinion that it would not be safe to liberate him, yet they had not sufficient grounds to condemn him to death. In this emergency, to shift the responsibility from their own shoulders, the advice of the clergy was asked, and "all agreed that he ought to be put to death." He was accord 1 Winthrop, 2. 95–102. DEATH OF MIANTONOMO. 233 VIIL 1643. ingly delivered up to Uncas; two Englishmen were sent to CHAP. see that he was executed; and as soon as the Mohegan sachem reached his own jurisdiction, at a given signal the chieftain was attacked from behind, and with a blow from a tomahawk was killed!1 If by the "pleading of an advocate "2 and the "opinion of a judge," the course of the commissioners and the clergy is unqualifiedly condemned, we should hardly have looked for an apology from a reputable divine. Policy may have prompted this step, but was it in accordance with Christianity? Well might the people of Rhode Island mourn the fate of Miantonomo, and drop a tear on his ashes, for he and Canonicus were the best aboriginal friends and benefactors their colony ever knew.5 Nor need we be surprised that the death of the chief enkindled the resentment of his tribe, and that difficulties with the Narragansets were often occurring. Yet such was the power of the English, and such was the weakness of the Indians, that the latter were generally subdued; nor was it until after the lapse of thirty years, that any signal disturbance spread terror throughout all the settlements. There was peace for a generation, won by the sword. We cannot, however, forbear remarking, in closing this narrative of the earlier Indian wars, that, had the conduct of our fathers been less retaliatory, we should perhaps have been spared the necessity of reflecting upon the correctness of their policy; nor would the pages of history have been stained with the sickening details of heads, scalps, hands and feet, as trophies of conquest. But we bear in mind the difference between those days and ours. Such cruelties 234 THE WAR SPIRIT OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. VIII. CHAP. were common then; and the demon of War, like the idol Moloch, was gorged with its victims, until rivers of blood reddened the earth. Yet even in the nineteenth century, with all its light, cruelties as great have been practised by Christians of all sects; nor is it to the Puritans that we are to charge the massacres in Europe, where, within the last year, hospitals have been blown up, filled with the wounded, and thousands of homes and hearts have been. desolated. Happy will it be for us, when our own conduct shall be above reproach! And though we may lament the errors of the past, it is not wise to censure too severely the conduct of our ancestors, until we shall have proved ourselves more worthy to sit in judgment upon them. It would not be difficult, for one disposed to be captious, to point out, in the history of Massachusetts, even within ten years, scenes as little creditable as any recorded in this chapter. Passion and prejudice are confined to no age; and each age exhibits excesses and follies of its own. CHAPTER IX. RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES. IX. THE religious controversies in which the colony was CHAP. early involved will form the subject of the present chapter; and an acquaintance with these is highly necessary to a clear understanding of the history of those times. The Puritans came to these shores to establish a community of their own. Dissenting chiefly from the ritual and discipline of the Anglican Church, they designed to erect a church of a different description; and, to protect themselves from aggression from whatever source it might spring, they resolved to exclude from their communion all who did not sympathize with their views, and who would not pledge themselves fully to their support. In this respect they imitated the conduct of the Church from which they had withdrawn; and precisely for the same reasons that dissenters were not tolerated in the bosom of the Episcopal Church, were they shut out from the privileges of the churches of Massachusetts. Puritans as well as Episcopalians assumed their own infallibility; and, as Church and State were one and inseparable in Old England, they were bound together in New England; and the purity of the former was deemed indispensable to the safety of the latter. This policy was resolutely adhered to; and the laws which sanctioned it were as inflexible as the laws of the Medes and Persians. The correctness of such a policy may well be questioned; but it was a policy which our fathers were in a measure compelled to adopt, in order to prevent the overthrow of their community. Nor was it long before they were called upon practically to apply it. 236 CHAP. 1630-1. ROGER WILLIAMS. While Europe and America were shrouded in the darkness of religious intolerance, he who was to aid in showing a "more excellent way" had already entered the lists of theological warfare, and was ready to offer himself a sacrifice for the world's benefit. This was Roger Williams, who, from the alembic of his own soul, had evolved the sublime principle of liberty of conscience. Within six Feb. 9, months after the settlement of Boston, he arrived in the Lyon, accompanied by his wife, the companion of his trials. An exile from England like most of the emigrants, he fled to these shores for freedom and repose. The poverty of his circumstances requiring early employment, he received a Apr. 12, call to settle at Salem, as an assistant to Mr. Skelton, in the place of Mr. Higginson, recently deceased. This call was the commencement of a series of difficulties, which led to his banishment from the colony, and his removal to Rhode Island. 1631. Looking upon "every national church as of a vicious constitution," the Church of England in particular was, in his estimation, so corrupt as to demand of all a renunciation of its communion; and holding that "the doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience" was a "Bloudy Tenent," "most evidently and lamentably contrary to the doctrine of Christ Jesus," and that "the power of the magistrate extended only to the bodies, and goods, and outward estates of men," he boldly demanded that the ecclesiastical should be wholly divorced from the civil power, and that the church and the magistracy should each be confined to its appropriate sphere. As these opinions, however excellent in themselves, were subversive of the policy of the Puritan as well as of the Episcopal Church, a letter was written to the brethren at Salem, requesting them to forbear to proceed in his settlement; but the very day this letter was written 1 Cotton's Way, 72; Tenet Washed, 166; Reply, 26, 40, 61, 64, 77. |