Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/135

Rh chief Massasoit was suffering with a fever and was under the hands of his powwows, Palfrey and Arnold both describe a visit made to him by Winslow and Hopkins, of Plymouth. Arnold says the monarch received his Puritan visitors at “his seat” at Mount Hope. Palfrey says that the “monarch,” with his vermin-covered bear-skin, had no food to offer the envoys, that their lodging in his “stye” was of the most comfortless description, and that they had a distressing experience of the poverty and filth of Indian hospitality. More remarkable still is the contrast of estimate between the two historians of the religion of these same Indians. Arnold says: “Here we find the doctrine of the immortality of the soul entertained by a barbarous race, who affirmed that they received it from their ancestors. They were ignorant of revelation; yet here was Plato's great problem solved in the American wilderness, and believed by all the aborigines of the West.” But Dr. Palfrey writes: “The New England savage was not the person to have discovered what the vast reach of thought of Plato and Cicero could not attain.” It is but proper to add, that these works being in press at the same time, the writers were not controverting each other.

Yet there was a touch of nobleness in the words of the royal chief Miantonomo, accepting the dignity which the English ascribed to him. When, in King Philip's war, Miantonomo and another sachem, with some chief councillors, had been taken prisoners at Potuxit, a squad of common Englishmen put him under question. The “Old Indian Chronicle” tells us: “The said Miantonomo's carriage was strangely proud and lofty. Being examined why he did foment that war, he would make no other reply to any interrogatories but this: ‘That he was born a prince, and