Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 5 | Page 9

kindnesses, and prayed God to bless her. He must have been
a handsome lad in health, for he had a fair, smooth forehead, shaded
with brown, curling hair, and large, blue eyes, very sweet and gentle in
their look. He told us that he felt himself growing weaker, and that at
times his bodily suffering was great. But through the mercy of his
Saviour he had much peace of mind. He was content to leave all things
in His hand. For his poor mother's sake, he said, more than for his own,
he would like to get about once more; there were many things he would
like to do for her, and for all who had befriended him; but he knew his
Heavenly Father could do more and better for them, and he felt
resigned to His will. He had, he said, forgiven all who ever wronged
him, and he had now no feeling of anger or unkindness left towards any
one, for all seemed kind to him beyond his deserts, and like brothers

and sisters. He had much pity for the poor savages even, although he
had suffered sorely at their hands; for he did believe that they had been
often ill-used, and cheated, and otherwise provoked to take up arms
against us. Hereupon, Goodwife Stone twirled her spindle very
spitefully, and said she would as soon pity the Devil as his children.
The thought of her mangled little girl, and of her dying son, did seem to
overcome her, and she dropped her thread, and cried out with an
exceeding bitter cry,--"Oh, the bloody heathen! Oh, my poor murdered
Molly! Oh, my son, my son!"--"Nay, mother," said the sick man,
reaching out his hand and taking hold of his mother's, with a sweet
smile on his pale face,--"what does Christ tell us about loving our
enemies, and doing good to them that do injure us? Let us forgive our
fellow-creatures, for we have all need of God's forgiveness. I used to
feel as mother does," he said, turning to us; "for I went into the war
with a design to spare neither young nor old of the enemy.
"But I thank God that even in that dark season my heart relented at the
sight of the poor starving women and children, chased from place to
place like partridges. Even the Indian fighters, I found, had sorrows of
their own, and grievous wrongs to avenge; and I do believe, if we had
from the first treated them as poor blinded brethren, and striven as hard
to give them light and knowledge, as we have to cheat them in trade,
and to get away their lands, we should have escaped many bloody wars,
and won many precious souls to Christ."
I inquired of him concerning his captivity. He was wounded, he told me,
in a fight with the Sokokis Indians two years before. It was a hot
skirmish in the woods; the English and the Indians now running
forward, and then falling back, firing at each other from behind the
trees. He had shot off all his powder, and, being ready to faint by
reason of a wound in his knee, he was fain to sit down against an oak,
from whence he did behold, with great sorrow and heaviness of heart,
his companions overpowered by the number of their enemies, fleeing
away and leaving him to his fate. The savages soon came to him with
dreadful whoopings, brandishing their hatchets and their
scalping-knives. He thereupon closed his eyes, expecting to be knocked
in the head, and killed outright. But just then a noted chief coming up

in great haste, bade him be of good cheer, for he was his prisoner, and
should not be slain. He proved to be the famous Sagamore Squando,
the chief man of the Sokokis.
"And were you kindly treated by this chief?" asked Rebecca.
"I suffered much in moving with him to the Sebago Lake, owing to my
wound," he replied; "but the chief did all in his power to give me
comfort, and he often shared with me his scant fare, choosing rather to
endure hunger himself, than to see his son, as he called me, in want of
food. And one night, when I did marvel at this kindness on his part, he
told me that I had once done him a great service; asking me if I was not
at Black Point, in a fishing vessel, the summer before? I told him I was.
He then bade me remember the bad sailors who upset the canoe of a
squaw, and wellnigh drowned her little child, and that I had threatened
and beat them for it; and also how I gave the squaw a warm coat to
wrap up the poor wet papoose. It