Page:What cheer, or, Roger Williams in banishment (1896).pdf/216



STANZA XI.

Brother, the spirit of my son is gone; I burned my lodge to speak my mighty grief. Williams says, "The chiefe and most aged peaceable father of the countrey, Canonnicus, having buried his sonne, he burned his own palace, and all his goods in it, (amongst them to a great value), in a solemn remembrance of his son, and in a kind of humble expiation to the gods, who (as they believe) had taken away his sonne from him." I am thy father, thou shalt be my son.

See the extract from Williams' testimony, in note to stanza xxii, of canto iv.

STANZA XXIV.

''The sable fox-hide did his loins enclose— The sable fox-tail formed his nodding crest.''

The Indians had a superstitious regard for the black fox. Williams says, they considered it a Manittoo—a god, spirit, or divine power.

STANZA XXXII.

''Hast thou forgot, when, by Cohannet's stream, To curse the strangers every charm was tried.''

"But before I pass on, let the reader take notice of a very remarkable particular which was made known to the planters at Plymouth some short space after their arrival; that the Indians, before they came to the English to make friendship with them, got all the Pawaws in the country, who, for three days together, in a horrid and devilish manner, did curse and execrate them