Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/50

 whose white monuments might be seen through the trees, which surrounded the green where they were assembled.

"These men shall not lie side by side," they exclaimed, with their usual conciseness and energy. "Ask ye why? In one of them is the blood of our kings. He was sixteenth cousin to our last monarch. The other is an accursed Pequot. Think ye the same earth shall cover them? No! Their spirits would contend in their dark habitation. The noble soul would scorn to see the vile slumberer so near. They could not arise and walk together to the shadowy regions, for their everlasting home is not the same."

Such was the haughty spirit, which lurked in the bosom of an oppressed, a crushed people. They could not forget the throne that was overturned, though they grovelled among worms at its footstool.

Yet this tribe, now so despised, was once formidable to our ancestors. Its friendship was courted, and its aid, during the wars with Philip, in the seventeenth century, was very important to them in the infancy of their colony. It Was, at that time, formidable both for extent of territory, and number of warriors. Its power was increased by the conquest of Sassacus, king of the Pequots, who at the arrival of the English had under his dominion 26 sachems, and 700 warriors; and also by the subjugation of the Nipmucks, whose strong hold was in Oxford, in Massachusetts, though their dominion extended over a part of Connecticut. These conquests were achieved by the