Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/209

 Philip's war. 163 had sold the lands of Swansea to the people of Plymouth, and Philip had seemed to acquiesce in the sale, but after the death of his father, Massasoit, and the tragic death of his brother Alexander, his disposition towards the white settlers changed from friendship to a bitter and poorly-concealed hostility. All the neighboring lands, for twenty miles around him, had been sold and deeded to the whites. He possessed only Mount Hope Bay and Poppasquash Necks as his own, where he could hunt and fish at his pleasure, but the balance of the Pokanoket territory was divided into the house lots, planting and pasture lands, and meadows of the white settlers. He could not leave his own wigwam and lands at Mount Hope, except by canoes, without trespassing on the lands of the whites. This was a great trial to his free spirit. Still further, the cattle of the whites encroached on his Mount Hope lands, and caused him and his tribe great annoyance. Most of all was he influenced by the insult to Alexander, which caused his early death, and he nursed revenge in his heart while he mingled with the whites, visited their homes, received their favors, and made himself familiar with their affairs and modes of life. He was a man of great cunning, shrewd and subtle in his dealings, and at the very time when he made the strongest declarations of friendship for the whites, was planning the destruction of all the English colo- nists in New England. He had united all the New England tribes in his plot of destruction so secretly that, but for an accident, the terrible massacre might have fallen on the peo- ple like a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky. The sachem of a small tribe, he had made himself the real commander-in- chief of all the Indians from the Hudson to the Penobscot. Even his long-time enemies, the Narragansetts, had been won over by his wiles, while his treachery to Plymouth, and his sworn pledges to Massachusetts Bay, misled the whites, and lulled them into fateful security. He foresaw that noth- ing short of a war of extermination of the English could save his tribe from annihilation, in which they might conquer and could but perish. The English saw the impending dan-