Whittiers Complete Poems, vol 5 | Page 9

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 was his squaw and child that I had befriended; and he told me that be had often tried to speak to me, and make known his gratitude therefor; and that he came once to the garrison at Sheepscot, where he saw me; but being fired at, notwithstanding his signs of peace and friendship, he was obliged to flee into the woods. He said the child died a few days after its evil treatment, and the thought of it made his heart bitter; that he had tried to live peaceably with the white men, but they had driven him into the war.
"On one occasion," said the sick soldier, "as we lay side by side in his hut, on the