Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/82

54 "The messengers were returned; but finding his stomach come to him he would not have the chickens killed, but kept them for breed. Many whilst we were there came to see him; some by their report, from a place not less than a hundred miles. To all that came, one of his chief men related the manner of his sickness, how near he was spent, how his friends, the English, came to see him, and how suddenly he recovered to him this strength they saw. Upon this recovery, he brake forth unto these speeches; 'Now I see the English are my friends, and love me, and whilst I live I will never forget this kindness they have showed me.' Being fitted out for our return, we took our leave of him; who returned many thanks to our Governor, and also to ourselves for our labor and love; the like did all that were about him. So we departed."

Says Cotton Mather, "The fees he (Massassoit) paid his English doctor, were a confession of the plot among several nations of the Indians to destroy the English." This information was most timely to the English, and enabled them to ward off the threatened conspiracy which had been formed between the Massachusetts tribe and the people to the south and west of Plymouth, which Massassoit had been often and urgently solicited to aid in carrying out. The cause of the jealousies and combinations against the whites at this time was owing to the unkind treatment of the natives by a company of men called "Weston's Plantation of Settlers," from the name of their leader. The character of these settlers was profligate and unprincipled, and after they had become reduced to extreme penury by their idleness and dissolute habits, excited the ill-will of the Indians by fraudulent dealings and by theft. Massassoit advised Winslow, that the English should make an immediate attack upon the Massachusetts, lest after the tribes had destroyed the Weymouth settlement, they should fall upon the people of Plymouth and easily destroy them. The prompt and brave action of Miles Standish, with his "little army of eight men," soon put an end to this destructive plot, by the slaughter of a