CHAPTER XIV.

’O Christian warriors! wherefore did you thus
Forget the precepts of your Lord and Chief,
And lend yourselves to deeds of guilt and blood! 
Did ye not know—­or, knowing, did not heed—­
Those solemn words of His, when death was nigh,
And He bequeathed a legacy of “peace"
To His disciples?  “They that take the sword
Shall perish with the sword.”  O, well it were
If ye who left your native land, and sought
A desert for the liberty of faith,
Had acted more according to that faith,
And sought to win the souls you rashly sent
To meet their God and yours!’ ANON.

Yes, well, indeed, lied it been if the settlers had been able and willing to preserve, unbroken, the friendly relations with the Indians, which, after the first natural distrust felt by the natives towards the white strangers had subsided, they were, in several instances, able to establish.  But such was not the case.  They received many provocations from the natives, even from those who professed to be most friendly towards them, and also from the settlers who followed them from the mother-country; and they did not always meet these provocations in the truly Christian spirit which, it must be allowed, generally pervaded their councils, and actuated their public and private proceedings with the wild tribes by whom they were surrounded.

Even Masasoyt—­their friend and ally—­was about this time nearly estranged from them, and on the point of joining the Narragansetts in a project for their destruction.  This change in his sentiments was the result of the machinations of Coubitant, assisted by the foolish pretensions and love of interference which rendered Squanto almost as dangerous as he was useful to his employers.  His boasting tales about the power of the English settlers to imprison and to let loose the desolating plague at their will and pleasure, had been told to the Sagamore of the Wampanoges, as well as to Coubitant and Miantonomo; and suspicions had arisen in the breast of Masasoyt, which he vainly strove to infuse into his more enlightened and trustworthy son, Mooanam.  Nothing that his father could say had any effect in weakening the friendship entertained by the young Sachem, and his brother Quadequina, towards the emigrants; and it was owing to this steady friendship that they were made acquainted with the altered feelings of the Sagamore in time to prevent their ripening into open hostility.

Mooanam communicated to the President the doubts and suspicions that had taken possession of his father’s mind, and advised him immediately to send the faithful and devoted Hobomak to Packanokick, to endeavor to remove the evil impression, and restore his confidence in the Pilgrim Fathers.  He also convinced both Bradford and his council that the conspiracy which Squanto had represented as already formed, and only waiting the concurrence of Masasoyt to be carried into