Poor Miantinomo did not long escape. Two years afterwards, in a war with his enemy, Uncas, he was taken prisoner, and the colonists were only too glad to have an opportunity of getting rid of a man of mind and influence, who felt their aggressions and feared for his race—they outdid the savage captor in their resentment against him. Instead of interceding on his behalf and recommending mercy, by which they might, at once, have set a Christian example, and have made a fast friend, they procured his death. Uncas, with a generosity worthy of the highest character, instead of killing his captive, as he was entitled by the rules of Indian war, delivered him into the hands of the New-Englanders, and the New-Englanders again returned him to Uncas, desiring him to kill him, but without the usual tortures. It is wonderful that they did not purchase his scalp, or that they excused the torture; but a number of the English inhabitants went out and gratified themselves with witnessing his death.[39]
It was not to be marvelled at that such general treatment, and such a crowning deed exasperated the Narragansets to a dangerous degree. They nourished a rooted revenge, which shewed itself on the breaking out of Philip of Pokanoket’s war. They engaged to bring to his aid 4000 Indians.
Philip was one of the noblest specimens of the North American Indian. He was of a fine and active person; accomplished in all exercises of his nation, in war and hunting. He had that quick sense of injuries, and that sense of the honour and rights of his people which characterise the patriot; qualities which, though in the most cultivated and enlightened mind they may hurry their possessor on occasionally to sharp and vindictive acts, are the very essentials of that lofty and noble disposition without which no great deed is ever done. Had Philip contended for his country against its invaders on anything like equal terms, he would have been its saviour,—the naked Indians against the powers and resources of the English! It was hopeless,—he could only become the Caractacus, or the Cassibelaunus of his nation.
Philip has been painted by his enemies as a dreadful, perfidious, and cruel wretch;—but had Philip been the survivor how would he have painted them? With their shameless encroachments, their destruction of Indians, their blood-money, and their scalps, purchased at 1000_l._ each! Philip had the deepest causes of resentment. His father, Massasoit, had received the strangers and sold them land. They speedily compelled him to sign a deed, in which by “that pen and ink work” which the Indians did not understand, but which they soon learned to know worked them the most cruel wrongs, they had made him to acknowledge himself and his subjects the subjects of King James. Philip denied that his father had any idea of the meaning of such a treaty,—any idea of surrendering to the English more than the land he sold them; or if he had done so, that he had any right to give away the liberties of his nation and posterity; the government amongst the Indians not being hereditary, but elective. Philip, however, was compelled to retract and renounce such doctrines in another public document. But the moment he became at liberty, he held himself, and very justly, free from the stipulations of a compulsory deed.