He saw the whole race of his countrymen melting
before them from the face of the earth, their territories
slipping from their hands, and their tribes becoming feeble,
scattered, and dependent. It may be said that the soil was
originally purchased by the settlers; but who does not know the
nature of Indian purchases in the early periods of colonization?
The Europeans always made thrifty bargains through their superior
adroitness in traffic, and they gained vast accessions of
territory by easily-provoked hostilities. An uncultivated savage
is never a nice inquirer into the refinements of law by which an
injury may be gradually and legally inflicted. Leading facts are
all by which he judges; and it was enough for Philip to know that
before the intrusion of the Europeans his countrymen were lords
of the soil, and that now they were becoming vagabonds in the
land of their fathers.
But whatever may have been his feelings of general hostility and
his particular indignation at the treatment of his brother, he
suppressed them for the present, renewed the contract with the
settlers, and resided peaceably for many years at Pokanoket, or
as, it was called by the English, Mount Hope,* the ancient seat
of dominion of his tribe.
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