Narragansett

In the north, beyond the Great Lakes and along the rivers that wound like silver veins through the dark green of the firs, it was the French who were the first to set foot in this realm. They came not as conquerors with sword and plow, but as traders and Jesuits, whose eyes sparkled at the luster of furs and whose hearts were animated by the zeal to win souls for the true faith. In their light canoes, they glided up the St. Lawrence, built wooden forts that stood like lonely islands in an ocean of trees, and forged alliances with the Huron and Algonquin based on trade and mutual benefit. The Jesuit fathers, in their black robes and with the cross in hand, learned the languages of the natives, shared their fires, and preached of a God who loved the red man as well. "We do not desire your land, our brothers," Father Marquette whispered in a gentle voice as he handed a chief a gleaming iron knife, enclosing the chief's hand with a gesture of paternal affection, "we seek only the salvation of your souls and the fair exchange of the forest's gifts." It was a policy of penetration, cunning and adaptable, which left the Indians their hunting grounds and behind the sweet words of humility always sought the profit of the traders and submission to the cross. The wilderness remained wild, and the red men retained their freedom as long as the beaver pelts flowed and the prayers ascended.

The English, who landed on the rocky coasts of New England, acted entirely differently. Animated by an insatiable hunger for land and settled order, they looked upon the endless forests not as a trading territory, but as a God-given property merely waiting to be cleared, surveyed, and cultivated. They came with women and children, with Bibles and muskets, and their goal was to create a new world in the image of old England, pure and God-fearing, free from the vices of the Papists and the shadows of the heathens. In Plymouth Colony, where the Pilgrim Fathers stranded on the shores of Massachusetts Bay in the year of our Lord 1620, this endeavor found its first, harsh expression. The men and women who stepped from the ship Mayflower were emaciated by the long crossing and the terrible winter that struck them like an iron fist. The snow covered the dead, and hunger gnawed at the living, while the forests all around were filled with the gazes of the indigenous inhabitants, watching and waiting from the shadows of the trees.

It was Massasoit, the great sachem of the Wampanoag, whose campfires burned at the foot of Mount Hope, who extended the hand of friendship to the pale strangers. He was a man of majestic stature, whose face bore the scars of many winters and the wisdom of countless councils. His people, the Wampanoag, the People of the First Light, inhabited the fertile coasts and wooded hills of Pokanoket, and their power extended over numerous smaller tribes that obeyed the great council. Massasoit recognized in the hungry newcomers no immediate threat, but desperate souls who were close to death. With the generosity inherent to the noble leaders of his people, he sent Squanto and other skilled men, who showed the pale ones how to plant corn, wrap beans around the stalks, and let squash grow in the spaces between. He taught them the trails of the deer and the spots where the fish ascended the rivers in spring. Without this help, the colony's seed would have frozen in the harsh frost, and the names of the Pilgrim Fathers would have blown away like dust in the wind in the annals of history.

A pact was struck, an alliance of mutual respect, sealed with words of loyalty and gifts of friendship. The early governors of Plymouth, men like Bradford and Winslow the Elder, swore eternal bonds, and for decades this fragile alliance held. The Wampanoag and the English lived side by side, traded furs and corn, and a cautious calm prevailed in the council houses of Pokanoket and the meetinghouses of Plymouth. Massasoit, who had granted the pale ones their lives, saw them as guests on the land of the ancestors, tolerated as long as they honored the old ways. But time passes like the river that never stands still, and with the aging of the great sachem, the foundation began to crumble. A new generation of settlers grew up who no longer viewed the land as a gift from the Indigenous people, but as property assigned to them by the Lord in heaven. Their eyes sparkled with greed when they saw the fertile plains and rich forests, and they reached for the iron chains to measure the earth as if it were a piece of cloth to be cut up and sold.

The tide of pale faces pressed relentlessly westward. Where the trails of the hunters once ran, the axes of the loggers now echoed, and the smoke of the settlements rose into the sky like dark pillars. The forests gave way to fields, and the shadows of the sacred groves were sliced by the straight lines of the plows. The English brought their laws, which were written in books and dismissed the words of the red men as a breath of wind. Treaties were concluded in which miles were measured not by the paces of the ancestors, but by the nautical charts of seafarers, and the Wampanoag, who trusted the generosity of their sachem, realized too late that the land beneath their feet was vanishing. The gratitude of the fathers gave way to the arrogance of the sons, who preached in the meetinghouses that the heathens served the devil and that it was a divine duty to carry the light of civilization into the dark forests, cost what it may.

In the midst of this creeping alienation, Massasoit's son Metacomet, whom the pale ones called Philip, grew up. He was still a youth when the first cracks became visible, and his dark eyes observed with growing bitterness how the promises of loyalty crumbled to dust. He saw how the colony's traders sold rum to the young warriors to weaken them, and how the settlers enclosed the hunting grounds of his ancestors with fences. The original help from the Wampanoag, which had given the strangers survival, proved to be the tool for their own displacement. What had been given out of generosity was now claimed as a right, and the chains of surveying wrapped like iron snares around the heart of the land. Metacomet learned the language of the pale ones and their books, but in his heart burned the fire of his ancestors, and he understood that the border had become a powder keg of greed and religious fanaticism.

In stark contrast to the French trade model, which left the red men a certain degree of autonomy, the British settler model stood as a death sentence for indigenous freedom. The French in the north trade and convert, but they do not displace; the English in the south, however, plant and possess, and where they plant, there is no longer room for the old ways. The Wampanoag, who had once viewed the land as a free gift of the spirits, now saw themselves cornered between the advancing sea of settlements and their own pride, which refused to bow. The councils of the elders still spoke of peace, but in the camps of the young warriors, voices whispered of revenge, and the wind carried the scent of coming blood over the hills of Mount Hope.

So New England stood in the shadow of history, a land in which the seed of friendship sprouted into thistles of enmity. The unstoppable tide of pale faces pressed farther, surveying the earth with iron chains and displacing the shadows of the forests, while Metacomet, the son of the great Massasoit, felt the wrath of his ancestors grow within him in the silence of the nights. The border was no longer a place of peace, but a powder keg, ready to burst into flames at the slightest spark. And in the dark forests, where the owls called and the rivers murmured, the wilderness waited for the storm that had to come.

The years passed, and with every spring that melted the snow, new ships came across the sea, laden with settlers whose eyes looked hungry for land. The governors of Plymouth Colony, successors to those who had once sworn the pact with Massasoit, now spoke of rights and ownership, and their words were as sharp as the blades of their swords. The traders who had once been welcome in the villages of the Wampanoag now brought fraud and injustice by taking advantage of the locals' ignorance of European measurements. Nautical miles instead of land miles—thus they robbed the expanses that had been sacred to the ancestors, and the red men, who honored the earth as a living being, understood too late the cunning behind the parchments and seals.

Metacomet, who ascended his father's throne after the death of the old sachem and the short reign of his brother Wamsutta, felt the weight of generations on his shoulders. He had seen the generosity of the fathers and the ingratitude of the sons, and in his heart matured the resolve that the time of endurance was over. The forests of Pokanoket echoed with the conversations of the warriors, and the drums of the councils beat lower, yet with a suppressed force that remained hidden from the pale ones. The French in the north, with their forts and their missions, offered a picture of possibility of how it could have been different: trade instead of plunder, alliance instead of subjugation. But the English knew only one way, and their hunger for land was like the frost in winter, relentless and destructive.

Thus ended the era of mutual respect, and the seed of conflict was sunk into the soil that had once been cultivated together by the hands of the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims. The realization weighed heavily on the land: the help that had given life to the strangers had become the means of their own destruction. And while the settlements grew and the bells of the meetinghouses rang, the wilderness waited for the day when the powder keg would be ignited, and the world that Massasoit had so wisely preserved would sink in blood and ashes.

In the long nights, when the moon stood over Mount Hope and the stars looked down like the eyes of the ancestors, Metacomet wandered alone through the forests. He heard the whispering of the leaves and the roaring of the sea, and in these sounds lay the voice of his father, reminding him not to lose his pride. The pale ones measured the land with chains of iron, but the heart of the forest could not be caught in miles. As yet the spark had not fallen, but the air was sultry with the proximity of the thunderstorm, and the red men and the white stood facing each other like two wolves fighting over the same bone. The story that had begun with the generosity of a sachem was about to discharge in a storm of fire and steel, and the new masters of the land had no idea what a terrible price their greed would demand.

The borders of the colonies expanded like the arms of an insatiable giant, and with every new treaty sealed in the halls of Plymouth, a piece of the Wampanoag's freedom vanished. The young warriors growing up under Metacomet learned the art of the bow and the tomahawk, but also the deceptions of the pale ones. They saw how the Praying Indians, those who had adopted the faith of the strangers, stood between worlds and often served as tools of betrayal. The world, which had once been a pantheon of nature, transformed into a battlefield of souls, where religious fanaticism met the desperate struggle for survival of a displaced culture. And in this abyss that opened between the peoples lay the germ of the war that was to go down in the annals as King Philip's War, a conflagration that would consume the villages of the settlers and the camps of the Indigenous people alike.

So the new world stood on the edge of the abyss, and the shadows of the future fell long and dark over the hills of New England. The French in the north continued their policy of trade, while the English drove their plow deeper into the earth, unconcerned about the blood sacrifices this plow might demand. Massasoit's legacy, which had once been a symbol of hope, became a legacy of injustice, and his son Metacomet bore the burden of confronting this injustice. The wilderness held its breath, and the spirits of the ancestors waited for the call of the drums that was to announce the beginning of the end.