CHAPTER XX

KING PHILIP'S FORT

The Indian war came in 1674.

The war-whoop startled the colonists everywhere: at Plymouth, near Boston, and in the frontier settlements.

Susan heard it again and again, at a distance, and shuddered to think what cruel deed it might proclaim.

Meanwhile the pioneers armed and resisted the onslaught of the Indians.

Some time in 1675, perhaps in the beautiful autumn, Little Metacomet followed his mother into the Narragansett Country, to a woods, near what is now North Kingston. The Narragansett Indians were about to unite with King Philip in an alliance to protect the Indian empire from being overthrown by the white people.

The question had been forced upon the Indian races, shall the Indian tribes govern themselves, or be governed by the white man's laws? When Philip's brother Wamsutta had been summoned to Plymouth, Philip took the view that the authority of the ancient sachemship had been taken away, and when the Plymouth magistrates had caused the arrest of the slayers of Sassamon, he had sent messages to the neighboring tribes that they must arm, unite, or perish.

So war, terrible war, came. Philip had induced the Narragansetts on the west side of Narragansett Bay to make common cause with them to maintain the authority of the Indian races. The colonists resolved to prevent this union which would be fatal to them.

Philip knew the Indian lands of both the Mt. Hope and Narragansett Bays. He knew that there was a very remarkable swamp near the sea at Kingston in which a natural island of some four or more acres rose out of a great morass. If he were to erect a fort on this island, the morass would protect it, for the morass was shallow water and deep mud. It was covered with bushes where swamp birds lived, where blackbirds built their nests, and frogs croaked in spring, an army of frogs. About it the crows built their nests in the high trees, and over it the fishing hawks wheeled and screamed at noontime.

Philip resolved to build a fort so strong it could not be taken, and planned to house the women and children of the warriors there during the coming winter, and to drill the braves of the Wampanoags and Narragansetts for the destruction of the white race.

He caused a wooden wall to be erected about this hard island in the great circle of mud, a che-val-de-frise, and he also made walls of corn that should afford protection, food and shelter. The fortress arose amid the woody splendors of the autumn. It was a fort that, after his own view, could never be taken. Into this large enclosure he gathered some three thousand Indian people. Here he lit his council fires, and held his war dances, and prepared, as he thought, to destroy New England, blot out its settlements, and restore the Indian races to their former estate.

There was only one way that this fort could be approached, as he thought, and that was by a secret bridge. No white man could know of this secret bridge, he reasoned, and his reasoning would have been right but for the treachery of an Indian named Peter whom he had made an enemy.

Into this fort, which it was deemed no enemy could so much as disturb in winter, Little Metacomet entered one day, following his mother over the hidden bridge.

It was a sunny day in Indian summer. That night the harvest moon was to rise and a council and dance were to be held.

Little Metacomet clung to his mother, and looked up to the walls of sharp elbows of trees, and the high bundles of corn.

A thousand or more Indian women were there, and they hailed the Indian queen of the Wampanoags and her little boy. They lifted their hands, and waved them in a fantastic way to the fortress that they thought never could be taken. When the princess sat down on the royal mats they gathered around her.

Little Metacomet touched his mother on the arm, and cast his great dark eyes up to hers.

"Mother, what would happen to us if the fortress _were_ to be taken?"

"I know not what would happen to me, but you, you, Little Metacomet, would lose your Kingdom of Pokonoket, the throne of your fathers at Mt. Hope, and you would be made a prisoner. They might put me to death."

"Oh, no, no! But they might send us both to Father Eliot, and he might send us to Mother Susan. Oh, what if such things were to happen!"

"But they can never happen. All the palefaces that live could not take this fort. An enemy who tried to cross the morass would sink, sink, sink, and find a grave in the mud."

"But suppose the bogs were to freeze?"

"The bogs do not freeze. They make only thin ice. The thin ice hangs on the bushes when the water goes down, and when anyone tries to cross, it goes crackle, crackle, with a hollow sound, ponk, ponk, ponk, ponk!"

"And are we going out in the spring and kill the white people?"

"Yes, we must, or you will never sit in your father's seat, by the spring of morning sun at Mt. Hope."

Then Little Metacomet was silent. At last he said:

"They will spare Roger's people I know; for we are friends."

That night there was a torch dance. Over it the broad moon rose like a night sun. It was one of the last dances of the Wampanoags. Little Metacomet lay down beside his mother after the drums had ceased to beat and wondered how his friendship with little Roger the white boy, would end. Would he ever rub noses with him again?