Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/72

46 was of greater value then than now, and that the Indians set a higher value on a knife or a gun, than on hundred acres of land, so that as the Indians themselves rested satisfied and content with their bargains, we should consider the contracts of our ancestors with them as business-like and honorable.

Concerning the mental and moral qualities of the Wampanoags, we may infer that they were "men of like passions with ourselves," in the main characteristics of natural endowments. In abilities of mind and body, they were the equals, if not superiors, of other savage tribes. Nature had taught them the law of retaliatory justice and a wrong or a benefit was never forgotten, and was always rewarded in kind. With narrower intelligence than the whites, they exhibited what all inferior people excel in, cunning, intrigue, and jealousy, as compensations in the struggle of life. Superstition was their religion. The Great Spirit was to them omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, a revelation as true as the Jewish race ever enshrined monotheism.

Bravery, a stoical indifference to pain, fatigue, and death, undying friendship, and persecuting hatred were elements of their faith. Their heaven had no cowards, no adulterers, no weak, complaining men, "with women's hearts." Their virtues made them heroic. Their vices never degraded them to brutes, until they made contact with the demoralizing influences of civilization. They perished as a race as heroically as they lived. The tragedy of Philip's War terminated, fittingly and pathetically, the race, which had it remained on our territory, would only have cumbered the ground on which they dwelt.