The Wept of Wish Ton Wish by James Fenimore Cooper

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The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish

A Tale

By J. Fenimore Cooper

"But she is dead to him, to all;
Her lute hangs silent on the wall,
And on the stairs, and at the door,
Her fairy step is heard no more."

Rogers.

1871.

To The Rev. J. R. O. of Pennsylvania

The kind and disinterested manner in which you have furnished the
materials of the following tale, merits a public acknowledgment. As
your reluctance to appear before the world, however, imposes a
restraint, you must receive such evidence of gratitude, as your own
prohibition will allow.

Notwithstanding there are so many striking and deeply interesting events
in the early history of those from whom you derive your being, yet are
there hundreds of other families in this country, whose traditions, though
less accurately and minutely preserved than the little narrative you have
submitted to my inspection, would supply the materials of many moving
tales. You have every reason to exult in your descent, for, surely, if any
man may claim to be a citizen and a proprietor in the Union, it is one,
that, like yourself, can point to a line of ancestors whose origin is
lost in the obscurity of time. You are truly an American. In your eyes, we
of a brief century or two, must appear as little more than denizens quite
recently admitted to the privilege of a residence. That you may continue
to enjoy peace and happiness, in that land where your fathers so long
flourished, is the sincere wish of your obliged friend,

The Author

Preface.

At this distant period, when Indian traditions are listened to with the
interest that we lend to the events of a dark age, it is not easy to
convey a vivid image of the dangers and privations that our ancestors
encountered, in preparing the land we enjoy for its present state of
security and abundance. It is the humble object of the tale that will be
found in the succeeding pages, to perpetuate the recollection of some of
the practices and events peculiar to the early days of our history.

The general character of the warfare pursued by the natives is too well
known to require any preliminary observations; but it may be advisable to
direct the attention of the reader, for a few moments, to those leading
circumstances in the history of the times, that may have some connexion
with the principal business of the legend.

The territory which now composes the three states of Massachusetts,
Connecticut and Rhode-Island, is said, by the best-informed of our
annalists, to have been formerly occupied by four great nations of
Indians, who were, as usual, subdivided into numberless dependent tribes.
Of these people, the Massachusetts possessed a large portion of the land
which now composes the state of that name; the Wampanoags dwelt in what
was once the Colony of Plymouth, and in the northern districts of the
Providence Plantations; the Narragansetts held the well-known islands of
the beautiful bay which receives its name from their nation, and the more
southern counties of the Plantations; while the Pequots, or as it is
ordinarily written and pronounced, the Pequods, were masters of a broad
region that lay along the western boundaries of the three other districts.

There is great obscurity thrown around the polity of the Indians, who
usually occupied the country lying near the sea.

The Europeans, accustomed to despotic governments, very naturally supposed
that the chiefs, found in possession of power, were monarchs to whom
authority had been transmitted in virtue of their birth-rights. They
consequently gave them the name of kings.

How far this opinion of the governments of the aborigines was true remains
a question, though there is certainly reason to think it less erroneous in
respect to the tribes of the Atlantic states, than to those who have since
been found further west, where, it is sufficiently known, that
institutions exist which approach much nearer to republics than to
monarchies. It may, however, have readily happened that the son, profiting
by the advantages of his situation, often succeeded to the authority of
the father, by the aid of influence, when the established regulations of
the tribe acknowledged no hereditary claim. Let the principle of the
descent of power be what it would, it is certain the experience of our
ancestors proves, that, in very many instances, the child was seen to
occupy the station formerly filled by the father; and, that in most of
those situations of emergency, in which a people so violent were often
placed, the authority he exercised was as summary as it was general. The
appellation of Incas came, like those of the Caesars and Pharoahs, to be a
sort of synonyme for chief with the Mohegans, a tribe of the Pequods,
among whom several warriors of this name were known to govern in due
succession. The renowned Metacom, or, as he is better known to the whites,
King Philip, was certainly the son of Massassoit, the Sachem of the
Wampanoags that the emigrants found in authority when they landed on the
rock of Plymouth. Miantonimoh, the daring but hapless rival of that Uncas
who ruled the whole of the Pequod nation, was succeeded in authority,
among the Narragansetts, by his not less heroic and enterprising son,
Conanchet; and, even at a much later day, we find instances of this
transmission of power, which furnish strong reasons for believing that the
order of succession was in the direct line of blood.

The early annals of our history are not wanting in touching and noble
examples of savage heroism. Virginia has its legend of the powerful
Powhatan and his magnanimous daughter, the ill-requited Pocahontas; and
the chronicles of New-England are filled with the bold designs and daring
enterprises of Miantonimoh, of Metacom, and of Conanchet. All the
last-named warriors proved themselves worthy of better fates, dying in a
cause and in a manner, that, had it been their fortunes to have lived in a
more advanced state of society, would have enrolled their names among the
worthies of the age.

The first serious war, to which the settlers of New-England were exposed,
was the struggle with the Pequods. This people was subdued after a fierce
conflict; and from being enemies, all, who were not either slain or sent
into distant slavery, were glad to become the auxiliaries of their
conquerors. This contest occurred within less than twenty years after the
Puritans had sought refuge in America.

There is reason to believe that Metacom foresaw the fate of his own
people, in the humbled fortunes of the Pequods. Though his father had been
the earliest and constant friend of the whites, it is probable that the
Puritans owed some portion of this amity to a dire necessity. We are told
that a terrible malady had raged among the Wampanoags but a short time
before the arrival of the emigrants, and that their numbers had been
fearfully reduced by its ravages. Some authors have hinted at the
probability of this disease having been the yellow fever, whose
visitations are known to be at uncertain, and, apparently, at very distant
intervals. Whatever might have been the cause of this destruction of his
people, Massassoit is believed to have been induced, by the consequences,
to cultivate the alliance of a nation, who could protect him against the
attacks of his ancient and less afflicted foes. But the son appears to
have viewed the increasing influence of the whites with eyes more jealous
than those of the father. He passed the morning of his life in maturing
his great plan for the destruction of the strange race, and his later
years were spent in abortive attempts to put this bold design in
execution. His restless activity in plotting the confederation against the
English, his fierce and ruthless manner of waging the war, his defeat, and
his death, are too well known to require repetition.

There is also a wild and romantic interest thrown about the obscure
history of a Frenchman of that period. This man is said to have been an
officer of rank in the service of his king, and to have belonged to the
privileged class which then monopolized all the dignities and emoluments
of the kingdom of France. The traditions, and even the written annals of
the first century of our possession of America, connect the Baron de la
Castine with the Jesuits, who were thought to entertain views of
converting the savages to Christianity, not unmingled with the desire of
establishing a more temporal dominion over their minds. It is, however,
difficult to say whether taste, or religion, or policy, or necessity,
induced this nobleman to quit the saloons of Paris for the wilds of the
Penobscot. It is merely known that he passed the greater part of his life
on that river, in a rude fortress that was then called a palace, that he
had many wives, a numerous progeny, and that he possessed a great
influence over most of the tribes that dwelt in his vicinity. He is also
believed to have been the instrument of furnishing the savages, who were
hostile to the English, with ammunition, and with weapons of a more deadly
character than those used in their earlier wars. In whatever degree he may
have participated in the plan to exterminate the Puritans, death prevented
him from assisting in the final effort of Metacom.

The Narragansetts are often mentioned in these pages. A few years before
the period at which the tale commences, Miantonimoh had waged a ruthless
war against Uncas, the Pequod or Mohegan chief. Fortune favored the
latter, who, probably assisted by his civilized allies, not only overthrew
the bands of the other, but succeeded in capturing the person of his
enemy. The chief of the Narragansetts lost his life, through the agency of
the whites, on the place that is now known by the appellation of "the
Sachem's plain."

It remains only to throw a little light on the leading incidents of the
war of King Philip. The first blow was struck in June, 1675, rather more
than half a century after the English first landed in New-England, and
just a century before blood was drawn in the contest which separated the
colonies from the mother country. The scene was a settlement near the
celebrated Mount Hope, in Rhode-Island, where Metacom and his father had
both long held their councils. From this point, bloodshed and massacre
extended along the whole frontier of New-England. Bodies of horse and foot
were enrolled to meet the foe, and towns were burnt, and lives were taken
by both parties, with little, and often with no respect for age,
condition, or sex.

In no struggle with the native owners of the soil was the growing power of
the whites placed in so great jeopardy, as in this celebrated contest with
King Philip. The venerable historian of Connecticut estimates the loss of
lives at nearly one-tenth of the whole number of the fighting men, and the
destruction of houses and other edifices to have been in an equal
proportion. One family in every eleven, throughout all New-England, was
burnt out. As the colonists nearest the sea were exempt from the danger,
an idea may be formed, from this calculation, of the risk and sufferings
of those who dwelt in more exposed situations. The Indians did not escape
without retaliation. The principal nations, already mentioned, were so
much reduced as never afterwards to offer any serious resistance to the
whites, who have since converted the whole of their ancient
hunting-grounds into the abodes of civilized man. Metacom, Miantonimoh,
and Conanchet, with their warriors, have become the heroes of song and
legend, while the descendants of those who laid waste their dominions, and
destroyed their race, are yielding a tardy tribute to the high daring and
savage grandeur of their characters.

The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish

Chapter I.

"I may disjoin my hand, but not my faith."

Shakespeare.

The incidents of this tale must be sought in a remote period of the annals
of America. A colony of self-devoted and pious refugees from religious
persecution had landed on the rock of Plymouth, less than half a century
before the time at which the narrative commences; and they, and their
descendants, had already transformed many a broad waste of wilderness into
smiling fields and cheerful villages. The labors of the emigrants had been
chiefly limited to the country on the coast, which, by its proximity to
the waters that rolled between them and Europe, afforded the semblance of
a connexion with the land of their forefathers and the distant abodes of
civilization. But enterprise, and a desire to search for still more
fertile domains, together with the temptation offered by the vast and
unknown regions that lay along their western and northern borders, had
induced many bold adventurers to penetrate more deeply into the forests.
The precise spot, to which we desire to transport the imagination of the
reader, was one of these establishments of what may, not inaptly, be
called the forlorn-hope, in the march of civilization through the country.

So little was then known of the great outlines of the American continent,
that, when the Lords Say and Seal, and Brooke, connected with a few
associates, obtained a grant of the territory which now composes the state
of Connecticut, the King of England affixed his name to a patent, which
constituted them proprietors of a country that should extend from the
shores of the Atlantic to those of the South Sea. Notwithstanding the
apparent hopelessness of ever subduing, or of even occupying a territory
like this, emigrants from the mother colony of Massachusetts were found
ready to commence the Herculean labor, within fifteen years from the day
when they had first put foot upon the well-known rock itself. The fort of
Say-Brooke, the towns of Windsor, Hartford, and New-Haven, soon sprang
into existence, and, from that period to this, the little community, which
then had birth, has been steadily, calmly, and prosperously advancing its
career, a model of order and reason, and the hive from which swarms of
industrious, hardy and enlightened yeomen have since spread themselves
over a surface so vast, as to create an impression that they still aspire
to the possession of the immense regions included in their original grant.

Among the religionists, whom disgust of persecution had early driven into
the voluntary exile of the colonies, was more than an usual proportion of
men of character and education. The reckless and the gay, younger sons,
soldiers unemployed, and students from the inns of court, early sought
advancement and adventure in the more southern provinces, where slaves
offered impunity from labor, and where war, with a bolder and more
stirring policy, oftener gave rise to scenes of excitement, and, of
course, to the exercise of the faculties best suited to their habits and
dispositions. The more grave, and the religiously-disposed, found refuge
in the colonies of New-England. Thither a multitude of private gentlemen
transferred their fortunes and their families, imparting a character of
intelligence and a moral elevation to the country, which it has nobly
sustained to the present hour.

The nature of the civil wars in England had enlisted many men of deep and
sincere piety in the profession of arms. Some of them had retired to the
colonies before the troubles of the mother country reached their crisis,
and others continued to arrive, throughout the whole period of their
existence, until the restoration; when crowds of those who had been
disaffected to the house of Stuart sought the security of these distant
possessions.

A stern, fanatical soldier, of the name of Heathcote, had been among the
first of his class, to throw aside the sword for the implements of
industry peculiar to the advancement of a newly-established country. How
far the influence of a young wife may have affected his decision it is not
germane to our present object to consider, though the records, from which
the matter we are about to relate is gleaned, give reason to suspect that
he thought his domestic harmony would not be less secure in the wilds of
the new world, than among the companions with whom his earlier
associations would naturally have brought him in communion.

Like himself, his consort was born of one of those families, which, taking
their rise in the franklins of the times of the Edwards and Henrys, had
become possessors of hereditary landed estates, that, by their
gradually-increasing value, had elevated them to the station of small
country gentlemen. In most other nations of Europe, they would have been
rated in the class of the _petite noblesse_. But the domestic happiness of
Capt. Heathcote was doomed to receive a fatal blow, from a quarter where
circumstances had given him but little reason to apprehend danger. The
very day he landed in the long-wished-for asylum, his wife made him the
father of a noble boy, a gift that she bestowed at the melancholy price of
her own existence. Twenty years the senior of the woman who had followed
his fortunes to these distant regions, the retired warrior had always
considered it to be perfectly and absolutely within the order of things,
that he himself was to be the first to pay the debt of nature. While the
visions which Captain Heathcote entertained of a future world were
sufficiently vivid and distinct, there is reason to think they were seen
through a tolerably long vista of quiet and comfortable enjoyment in this.
Though the calamity cast an additional aspect of seriousness over a
character that was already more than chastened by the subtleties of
sectarian doctrines, he was not of a nature to be unmanned by any
vicissitude of human fortune. He lived on, useful and unbending in his
habits, a pillar of strength in the way of wisdom and courage to the
immediate neighborhood among whom he resided, but reluctant from temper,
and from a disposition which had been shadowed by withered happiness, to
enact that part in the public affairs of the little state, to which his
comparative wealth and previous habits might well have entitled him to
aspire. He gave his son such an education as his own resources and those
of the infant colony of Massachusetts afforded, and, by a sort of delusive
piety, into whose merits we have no desire to look, he thought he had also
furnished a commendable evidence of his own desperate resignation to the
will of Providence, in causing him to be publicly christened by the name
of Content. His own baptismal appellation was Mark; as indeed had been
that of most of his ancestors, for two or three centuries. When the world
was a little uppermost in his thoughts, as sometimes happens with the most
humbled spirits, he had even been heard to speak of a Sir Mark of his
family, who had ridden a knight in the train of one of the more warlike
kings of his native land.

There is some ground for believing, that the great parent of evil early
looked with a malignant eye on the example of peacefulness, and of
unbending morality, that the colonists of New-England were setting to the
rest of Christendom. At any rate, come from what quarter they might,
schisms and doctrinal contentions arose among the emigrants themselves;
and men, who together had deserted the fire-sides of their forefathers in
quest of religious peace, were ere long seen separating their fortunes, in
order that each might enjoy, unmolested, those peculiar shades of faith,
which all had the presumption, no less than the folly, to believe were
necessary to propitiate the omnipotent and merciful father of the
universe. If our task were one of theology, a wholesome moral on the
vanity, no less than on the absurdity of the race, might be here
introduced to some advantage.

When Mark Heathcote announced to the community, in which he had now
sojourned more than twenty years, that he intended for a second time to
establish his altars in the wilderness, in the hope that he and his
household might worship God as to them seemed most right, the intelligence
was received with a feeling allied to awe. Doctrine and zeal were
momentarily forgotten, in the respect and attachment which had been
unconsciously created by the united influence of the stern severity of his
air, and of the undeniable virtues of his practice. The elders of the
settlement communed with him freely and in charity; but the voice of
conciliation and alliance came too late. He listened to the reasonings of
the ministers, who were assembled from all the adjoining parishes, in
sullen respect: and he joined in the petitions for light and instruction,
that were offered up on the occasion, with the deep reverence with which
he ever drew near to the footstool of the Almighty; but he did both in a
temper into which too much positiveness of spiritual pride had entered, to
open his heart to that sympathy and charity, which, as they are the
characteristics of our mild and forbearing doctrines, should be the study
of those who profess to follow their precepts. All that was seemly, and
all that was usual, were done; but the purpose of the stubborn sectarian
remained unchanged. His final decision is worthy of being recorded.

"My youth was wasted in ungodliness and ignorance," he said, "but in my
manhood have I known the Lord. Near two-score years have I toiled for the
truth, and all that weary time have I past in trimming my lamps, lest,
like the foolish virgins, I should be caught unprepared; and now, when my
loins are girded and my race is nearly run, shall I become a backslider
and falsifier of the word? Much have I endured, as you know, in quitting
the earthly mansion of my fathers, and in encountering the dangers of sea
and land for the faith; and, rather than let go its hold, will I once more
cheerfully devote to the howling wilderness, ease, offspring, and, should
it be the will of Providence, life itself!"

The day of parting was one of unfeigned and general sorrow.
Notwithstanding the austerity of the old man's character, and the nearly
unbending severity of his brow, the milk of human kindness had often been
seen distilling from his stern nature in acts that did not admit of
misinterpretation. There was scarcely a young beginner in the laborious
and ill-requited husbandry of the township he inhabited, a district at no
time considered either profitable or fertile, who could not recall some
secret and kind aid which had flowed from a hand that, to the world,
seemed clenched in cautious and reserved frugality; nor did any of the
faithful of his vicinity cast their fortunes together in wedlock, without
receiving from him evidence of an interest in their worldly happiness,
that was far more substantial than words.

On the morning when the vehicles, groaning with the household goods of
Mark Heathcote, were seen quitting his door, and taking the road which
led to the sea-side, not a human being, of sufficient age, within many
miles of his residence, was absent from the interesting spectacle. The
leave-taking, as usual on all serious occasions, was preceded by a hymn
and prayer, and then the sternly-minded adventurer embraced his neighbors,
with a mien, in which a subdued exterior struggled fearfully and strangely
with emotions that, more than once, threatened to break through even the
formidable barriers of his acquired manner. The inhabitants of every
building on the road were in the open air, to receive and to return the
parting benediction. More than once, they, who guided his teams, were
commanded to halt, and all near, possessing human aspirations and human
responsibility, were collected to offer petitions in favor of him who
departed and of those who remained. The requests for mortal privileges
were somewhat light and hasty, but the askings in behalf of intellectual
and spiritual light were long, fervent, and oft-repeated. In this
characteristic manner did one of the first of the emigrants to the new
world make his second removal into scenes of renewed bodily suffering,
privation and danger.

Neither person nor property was transferred from place to place, in this
country, at the middle of the seventeenth century, with the dispatch and
with the facilities of the present time. The roads were necessarily few
and short, and communication by water was irregular, tardy, and far from
commodius. A wide barrier of forest lying between that portion of
Massachusetts-bay from which Mark Heathcote emigrated, and the spot, near
the Connecticut river, to which it was his intention to proceed, he was
induced to adopt the latter mode of conveyance. But a long delay
intervened between the time when he commenced his short journey to the
coast, and the hour when he was finally enabled to embark. During this
detention he and his household sojourned among the godly-minded of the
narrow peninsula, where there already existed the germ of a flourishing
town, and where the spires of a noble and picturesque city now elevate
themselves above so many thousand roofs.

The son did not leave the colony of his birth and the haunts of his youth,
with the same unwavering obedience to the call of duty, as the father.
There was a fair, a youthful, and a gentle being in the
recently-established town of Boston, of an age, station, opinions,
fortunes, and, what was of still greater importance, of sympathies suited
to his own. Her form had long mingled with those holy images, which his
stern instruction taught him to keep most familiarly before the mirror of
his thoughts. It is not surprising, then, that the youth hailed the delay
as propitious to his wishes, or that he turned it to the account, which
the promptings of a pure affection so naturally suggested. He was united
to the gentle Ruth Harding only the week before the father sailed on his
second pilgrimage.

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