to the Commissioners that "he would not deliver up a Wampanoag, nor the paring of a Wampanoag's nail," and when he was told that his sentence was death, he said "he liked it well that he was to die before his heart was soft, or he had spoken anything unworthy of himself."1Open page
We know beforehand who must conquer in that unequal struggle. The red man may destroy here and there a straggler, as a wild beast may; he may fire a farm-house, or a village; but the association of the white men and their arts of war give them an overwhelming advantage, and in the first blast of their trumpet we already hear the flourish of victory. I confess what chiefly interests me, in the annals of that war, is the grandeur of spirit exhibited by a few of the Indian chiefs. A nameless Wampanoag who was put to death by the Mohicans, after cruel tortures, was asked by his butchers, during the torture, how he liked the war?—he said, "he found it as sweet as sugar was to Englishmen."2Open page
The only compensation which war offers for its manifold mischiefs, is in the great personal qualities to which it gives scope and occasion. The virtues of patriotism and of prodigious courage and address were exhibited on both sides, and, in many instances, by women. The
