CHAPTER II

LITTLE METACOMET

Little Metacomet, the prince, was an usually bright Indian boy. His quickness of feeling and of ear and eye pleased the royal Indians, for it was expected that he would succeed his father in the sachemship. The boy followed his parents at times from Mt. Hope, the royal seat, to Kickemuit, Sowams, and the Assowamset Hill, near the great and beautiful lake. He was the grandson of Massasoit, and like that great monarch seems to have liked the English well.

He had learned a little English very early in life from John Sassamon, the interpreter to Philip, who had studied under John Eliot, and became a teacher and preacher in the towns of the praying Indians. It was Sassamon who later informed the English at Plymouth of the secret purpose of Philip to unite the tribes for war against the English, which caused Philip to demand his death. He was killed at Assowamset Lake, near Philip's seat. The English arrested his executioners, which Philip regarded as an interference with his own government, and this fact was the direct cause of the great war.

In the days when Sassamon was in the favor of the Indian court, Little Metacomet met many of the English people to whom his father was friendly, and heard the Indian teacher interpret for his father. So English words were impressed upon his mind when he was very young. He also had an uncle who had been to school in Cambridge. He loved nature, and he came to be interested in nature lovers like Blackstone.

There was one little animal with whom he became very friendly--the chipmunk, or ground squirrel, sometimes called the painted or striped squirrel.

The ground squirrel was very industrious in the fall. He gathered corn, grain, chestnuts, walnuts, acorns, and the like, and stored them away in his little house under ground. He filled the inside of his cheeks, which could be made a kind of pouch, with his foods, and he looked like a squirrel with a toothache when he carried these down cellar. He came up from his warm house looking very thin after putting these storages on the shelves and in his chests, which may have been crevices in hard earth, or hollows of rocks.

Little Metacomet would whistle to him, or blow a shell, and he would stand upon his feet, and seem to say--

"What now?"

"Chipper, chipper, chipper," would say the Indian prince, and his little companion of the woods would answer--

"Chipper, chipper, chipper," and then would be gone.

Metacomet was often followed by his dog. When the dog spoke to the ground squirrel, the latter had nothing more to say. He went.

Metacomet and Roger liked each other as soon as they looked into each other's face. We know our heart friends when we first see them. The prince from the Mt. Hope Lands, warmed toward the boy from the green groves of Swansea and wished to rub noses with him at once, after the queer Indian fashion.

"I wish I could have the Indian boy for a playmate," said Roger to his mother.

"What for?"

"O, think what things he might show me in the woods: animals, birds, flowers; he knows them all."

Roger watched Little Metacomet. The prince was scarcely ten years old, or about that age, but he seemed to see clearly into everything in nature, and he was friendly to every one. He inherited the keenness and sharpness of the Indian instinct.

"I find that the boy has an eye for what is wonderful," said timid Susan to Roger towards the end of the day. "We might ask him over to the green groves of Swansea."

The sun sprinkled the groves with long shadows. A little quail whistled. Little Metacomet listened to the quail. He loved this bird of the wild fields of the woods. There was something about the bird that kindled his imagination and went to his heart.

Presently he went over to his father and listened gravely to the speech of his address. King Philip was beginning to distrust the English, but he still desired to maintain peace.

He was talking with Eliot when Little Metacomet came and stood by him.

"I am true to my race," said the king, "but I can forgive. I forgave a man who spoke evil of the dead. I can be merciful. Hawks are in the sky. Suppose war should come and I were to fall, would you pity my family? Here is Little Metacomet, would you be merciful to him?"

"I would, as God is merciful to me," said Eliot.

He desired the welfare of the Indian Prince.

At first Little Metacomet walked apart from Roger, but he gradually drew nearer to him. There was something in his heart that he wished to express.

He whistled and called a blue jay to him from the trees. He looked towards Roger and smiled in a friendly way. Indian children do not often smile.

Then he went to Roger, and the latter put out his hand for him to shake, but Little Metacomet drew back his hand. Instead, he lifted his own hand and touched Roger on the nose.

"You do not understand, my boy," said Father Eliot to Roger. "He wishes to rub noses with you. It is the Indian custom. He will do it if you will always be his friend."

"I will be his friend," said Roger.

"And I," said Father Eliot, "for his grandfather's sake, and the copper chain of peace. I will always be a friend to Little Metacomet."

The two boys walked apart again, and the heart of Eliot followed the Indian, with a deeper interest.

It was a glorious day. The world was still; nature blazed; the maples were red; the oaks yellow; the gentians blue. Did a breeze move? It brought down showers of leaves of crimson and yellow.

The walls were purple with grapes; the swale meadows red with cranberries. The jays talked in the trees. The migrating birds gathered in flocks. The wild geese honked on high. The witch hazels bloomed amid the falling leaves.

Winter was delaying; a spell was on the earth, the waters, and in the air. "The trumpets of the north," as the Indians call the cold winds, were about to blow, but week by week they waited. Color was everywhere. Then was the charmed spell of the ripened year; the harvest calm; the rest of the spent forces of nature; all things in the silence were parables of life.

Night fell and the pine knots were lighted.

Then a great supper was spread--samp, succotash, game, no-cake, nuts, apples and oranges from over the sea, which Philip may never have seen before.

Susan was "scary of these great folks," but helped to wait on the table. Roger shrank away into the dark corner of the room, and Little Metacomet followed him there. The two boys sat down silently, but they began to feel friendly towards each other, as before. At last Roger touched the hand of Metacomet and then his small white hand grasped the brown hand of the Indian boy.

They did not speak.

Metacomet's black eyes were turned upon the yellow-globed oranges and red apples on the table.

Presently the hermit sent Roger an orange and an apple. He did not notice the Indian boy, for he was hidden behind Roger.

Roger handed his orange to Little Metacomet. The Indian grasped it eagerly. Roger then gave him the apple, which was seized as quickly.

The two sat in silence. Then the Indian boy began to draw nearer to Roger, nearer and nearer, and pushed his head slowly forward, and rubbed his brown nose against Roger's nose many times.

"I will be a king," said he.

Father Eliot saw that the better heart of Massasoit was in the little prince, the heart of the old sachem who had once worn the copper chain.

Roger's heart went out to this child of the forest. The two were friends for life after the pledge.

After the feast there was a talk by the great fire.

"If the two races would only come together like the hearts of these two children, the Indians would be saved to civilization," said Eliot.

"They might be made to come together by the same means; is that not so, brother Eliot?" said Williams.

"Will Little Metacomet here ever come to the throne of the forest kings?" asked Blackstone.

There was a silence. The Indian boy was standing by the red hickory fire. What would be his destiny?

Before the company lay down upon their mats in their rooms and lodges, another queer thing happened.

The little prince came to timid Susan, and put up his red hand to her kerchief.

"What would you have?"

He shook his nose kindly, and she bent down her face.

The two rubbed noses.

"And now you must come over to the green groves of Swansea and see us all some day," she said, her heart warming to the child.

There was a light step behind her. It was that of the princess. They too rubbed noses and parted. John Eliot prayed. Then all went to their beds and mats, and the whip-poor-wills sang outside in the woods, and the Indians crooned themselves to sleep.