Page:Massasoit's town Sowams in Pokanoket, its history, legends and traditions (IA massasoitstownso00bake).pdf/14

8 ments were precisely those best calculated to develop a character naturally strong. He dwelt in a land which, if not literally flowing with milk and honey, abounded with everything needful to supply the simple wants of savage life, and thus he escaped those demoralizing influences which attend the struggle for mere existence. The proximity of a powerful enemy rendered him, cautious, alert, and vigilant. His position as the chief of a considerable confederacy invested him with dignity, and called into activity all those statesman-like qualities for which he was so justly famed. Winslow describes him as "grave of countenance, spare of speech," and this description tallies exactly with our ideal of the man. General Fessenden remarks: "This chief has never had full justice done to his character." Certainly it was no ordinary man who, conquered himself, still retained the respect and allegiance of several clans, differing in thought, mode of life, and interests. It was no ordinary man who, undaunted by misfortune, endured the yoke patiently till the opportunity to throw it off presented itself, and then quietly taking advantage of the auspicious moment accomplished the liberation of himself and his people from a servitude more bitter than death itself.

Massasoit was familiar with the appearance of white men before the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. In 1619, Captain Thomas Dermer, an Englishman, visited the Massachusetts coast and held an interview at Namasket with "two kings" of Pokanoket, undoubtedly Massasoit and his brother Quadequina. The English were regarded with suspicion and dislike by some of the tribes of the Wampanoag confederacy, owing to the fact that a certain unscrupulous trader had kidnapped some of the natives and sold them into slavery