CHAPTER I

TIMID SUSAN AND HER NEIGHBORS

During the early settlement days of this country, before the great Indian war of 1675, when the pioneers and the savages shared the land on Mt. Hope Bay and the Narragansett Bay between them, there was a little woman named Susan Barley who was much afraid lest she should "see something." We may not wonder that she was so much afraid, for she lived in the green groves of Swansea, which bordered on the Mt. Hope lands, and the Assowamset pond country, at the time that the Indians of Pokonoket began to be hostile towards the white people.

Near her little cabin in the Swansea groves lived a very odd hermit named William Blackstone, or, as he was generally called, Blaxton. He founded Boston in apple orchards, and English roses, and then went away to live all alone at a place which he called "Study Hill," near Pawtucket Falls. He was a graduate of Oxford, England, but he loved little birds and animals, and wished to live by himself that he might study the soul. He made the birds and animals his brothers, and tamed the forests around him, and the jays talked with him, and squirrels lived with him, and hunted deer ran to him for protection. A bear and her cubs would visit him among his apple trees, and the deer feed around him like so many Jersey cows at the present time. At Study Hill he wrote some ten volumes, probably of philosophy, which were burned in the Indian wars.

He used to travel about on a white ox, which he guided by a cord running through a ring in the animal's nose. It was in the witchcraft times, and some people may have thought that the white ox and his rider were ghosts. Blackstone used to visit Roger Williams at Providence, riding on this white ox. He probably did his courting at Boston in a like way. We are giving here some of the curious incidents of a real character.

After his apple orchards had grown at Study Hill, now Lonsdale, R.I.--where you may see his tomb in a yard of an immense cotton mill, under the cornerstone of which he was finally buried, with the bones of an ox, or an animal,--he would sometimes take a basket of the new fruit to a place where Roger Williams preached, on the hill, probably near Brown University, and when the good man of liberty of conscience had ended a sermon, would say--

"Ho, ho! And here are refreshments from the trees of the Lord."

He would then toss about his apples to the people who had assembled to worship,--Quakers, Baptists, outcasts, Indians and all.

"Ho, ho!"--they would sit down and eat the apples.

All the forest people loved Blackstone, and the very birds seemed to sing his praise.

Near Blackstone and his orchards lived John Eliot, the Indian Apostle, at Natick, where he preached to the Indians and had gathered an Indian church. He was the minister of Roxbury Fields, and his grave may be seen in Roxbury, in the Washington and Eustis Street Burying Ground, where probably rests Anne Bradstreet, the first American poetess, in the Dudley tomb. Eliot preached in many places near Natick, among them on the high rock at the present Brook Farm, at West Roxbury; the memorials of his Indian work are to be seen at Natick. Had all white men been like him, there probably would have been no Indian war.

What noble men were these--Blackstone, Roger Williams, and John Eliot! The latter failed to convert the Indian tribes, but his influence saved New England. King Philip told him in a friendly way that he cared no more for his religion than for the bright button on his coat, and yet the chieftain at one time was very much interested in Eliot's teaching. King Philip had a good heart at times--but it was a double heart.

The New England woods were like a menagerie in those days, full of animals and birds. Turkeys and partridges scurried everywhere among the white birches and green savins, and fat geese filled the coverts about the ponds in the fall. On the open fields the Indians grew corn, which they parched and pounded, and ate with clams and fish.

Savages, though they were, the Indians led a charming life in the woods, and the Indian boy had a lively wonder age in his youth, when he was learning the secrets of the forests. Little Metacomet, King Philip's or Metacomet's son, was a small naturalist of these forests and waterways before the great war. He met the great pioneers, Blackstone, Williams, and Eliot, he followed his father in the last days of peace, and he hunted and fished and enjoyed the Indian clambakes and autumn festivals. So let us take the little brown hand of the boy Metacomet, and go forth into our story, when every covert had an animal, and every tree a bird, and the Indians thought that this abundant life would last forever.

One day timid Susan said to her son Roger, a lad of some ten years--

"Let's go over to the hermit's and see what the world is about. I will be careful not to touch anything."

So the two went over to Study Hill to visit Blackstone, and the little woman from the green groves of Swansea came timidly to the hermit's door; for she had heard the strange tales of a phantom white ox in the forest.

The hermit came out to welcome her.

"I'm proper glad I got here," said she. "I was afraid I might see something. I came all the way from the green groves of Swansea."

"What were you afraid you might see, good mother?"

"The dead that wander; I'm never afraid of no living human, but I am scary of the dead--they know all."

"But the dead do not wander, little woman, to scare innocent people like you. There are no ghosts outside of us--ships do not sail on the land, nor cattle pasture in the sea."

"You must be an infidel. Are you?"

"No."

"Sure--perfectly sure?"

"Sure!"

"And you've been to college?" She shook her head and added:

"But Boston folks believe such things!"

"They are led by a blind spirit of superstition."

"Have you ever seen the rider on the white ox?"

"Yes."

"You don't tell me!--I'd fly right out of my head were I to see that. Where did you see it?"

"Here."

The little mother's eyes grew.

"There is no spirit rider of any white ox," said the hermit. "But, my good woman, King Philip, John Eliot, and Roger Williams are coming here to-morrow, and you and Roger must stay and see the great chieftain. Perhaps the Indian chief will bring the Princess and Little Metacomet with him."

"But Joe, my husband, what will he do? He would think that the white ox had got me."

"I will send young John Quitumug to Swansea to tell your husband where you are, and you will not see anything 'scary'."

"Then I will stay."

And in the morning came Roger Williams, sturdy, with an open face, beautiful with the inner light. His spirit was full of loveliness, but his language seemed strange.

"Brother Blaxton, the Inward Voice said 'Come'--and I am here. Thee surprises me; who is this little woman and her boy? What may thy name be, woman?"

"Susan, Joe's wife, of Swansea--they call him 'Onery Joe'--they say his head was put on wrong--but he is good to me, ain't he, Roger?"

A sudden sound rose in the air--"Netop!" (friend), said an Indian runner, peeping out of the thick wood. Philip, the Forest King, was coming. There was heard a breaking of dry twigs beneath mocassined feet, behind the thick curtains of leaves. Wood birds flew up into the air with notes of alarm. Presently the glimmering hazels opened like a wicker gate, and King Philip and his family, with some grave and stately warriors, came into view, and approached the place.

With Philip came his wife, known as the Beautiful Princess, and Little Metacomet, their son. The princess wore royal robes woven of river grasses, and around her neck was a copper chain. The Pilgrim Fathers had given two copper chains to Massasoit the lord of Lakonoket as a pledge of eternal friendship.

It was to be a peace day; the princess had come as a kind of rural goddess of Peace: King Philip extended his hand to Blackstone, and the world seemed filled with gladness.

Presently the red bushes opened and the witch hazels that bloom in the fall shook, at a place near the brook. A grave man appeared, and Blackstone said--

"Thou art welcome, Father Eliot. I feared that thou wouldst not be able to leave thy flock in Natick fields."

Then Blackstone, Williams, and Eliot shook hands with each other and with Philip, while the Indians looked on in wonder.

More Indians came, and among them some praying Indians. They shook hands with the three white men, but when they greeted King Philip's men they followed the Indian custom of greeting.

Blackstone made an Indian clambake that day near the Falls of the Pawtucket, to King Philip, John Eliot and Roger Williams. Some Indian children were there, and they gathered in the cool to play.

It was October and the woods seemed to be on fire, they were so bright in color.

The princess, the wife of King Philip, whose name was Wootoneshanuske, hung her papoose in a cradle on a tree near by and began to sing to it, shaking the copper chain.

The Indian cradle song of "Rock-a-bye, baby, upon the tree-top," though of American origin, pictures the Indian cradle swinging in the woods. The birds came to talk to the baby, the squirrels ran past it, and stopped to chipper to it. The dogwood bloomed near it, and the early leaves fell around it.

When the Indian boy, Metacomet, began to run about, his dog went with him. They played tag, and hid, and made hide-and-seek surprises of the game. Then he flew a kite. The Indian boys flew kites that were made in a peculiar way of fish bladders. It was a charm to them to see these light boats rise and sail away in the air.

At Indian clambakes Indian boys played "shinny" and games of skill with the bow and arrow, and entered into long races. Eliot said of the Indian children--"They play sly tricks upon dogs, and are much given to singing."

The grave white men on this serene day sang or repeated Psalms, after which the Indians made music and sang, and with them sang the beautiful Princess of the Copper Chain.

The Indian music was simple; drums, rattles, and reeds or whistles.

The princess stood apart from the rest, and sang as if to her baby in the trees.

The calling of birds by imitating the bird-call was amusement and music with Little Metacomet. The birds whistled, and piped and drummed. So did the boy. The black wild geese honked; so did the Indian. The dove cooed; so did the mother to the baby, and so did the baby to the mother.

There were singing forests then; a thousand birds sang together; in the pearl red morning; before the shower; on the long evenings of June in the still light. The Indian mother and her children had quick ears for vocal nature.

The winds of the seasons had their differing tones, and it was a joy to hear the coming of the south wind, and a sadness to catch the first piping of the north wind in the fall.

The beautiful season of the year was the red part of November called the Indian summer. The leaves seemed to burn; the walnuts and acorns fell. The purple gentians bloomed. The moonrise blended with the sunset.