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Updated: May 16, 2025
He seemed much pleased with these showy trappings, and his naked followers were exceedingly delighted in seeing their chieftain thus decorated. A motley group now gathered around the Indian king and the English embassy. Massasoit then made a long speech, to which the natives seemed to listen with great interest, occasionally responding with applause. It was now night.
The land along the east shore of Narragansett bay was the country of Massasoit; that on the west side, and the islands, belonged to the Narragansetts. It was in the heart of winter when he made his way in secrecy through snow and ice to a place not far from where Blackstone lived. Here he began to plant and build, and others came to join him.
He came early in the spring to their settlement of New Plymouth, attended by a mere handful of followers, entered into a solemn league of peace and amity, sold them a portion of the soil, and promised to secure for them the good-will of his savage allies. Whatever may be said of Indian perfidy, it is certain that the integrity and good faith of Massasoit have never been impeached.
To supply meat for the occasion four men had already been sent out to hunt wild turkeys. They killed enough in one day to last the whole company almost a week. Massasoit helped the feast along by sending some of his best hunters into the woods. They killed five deer, which they gave to their paleface friends, that all might have enough to eat.
Oh, there be some Whose writhed features, fixed in all their strength Of grappling agony, do stare at you, With their dead eyes half opened. And there be some struck through with bristling darts Whose clenched hands have torn the pebbles up; Whose gnashing teeth have ground the very sand. Massasoit kept his treaty with the English inviolate so long as he lived.
He always had his tickets for the side line and wore the badge as an ex-Yale captain. But the game itself Billy Rhodes never saw. "If at Springfield, he was to be found in the Massasoit House, walking the floor until the result of the game was known. If at New Haven, he was not at the Yale Field. He walked around the field and out into the woods.
The Indians stood reverently around, Massasoit explaining in low gutturals to a chieftain who had never visited Plymouth before, that the white men thus propitiated the Great Spirit, and engaged Him both to prosper them and kill their enemies.
It is no doubt true that for the most part the lands were purchased, and, according to the idea of the English, honorably purchased, yet the natives could not fail to foresee the result of these cessions of territory. There were English settlements at Bridgewater, Middleboro', Taunton, Rehoboth, Seekonk, and Swanzey, all within the ancient jurisdiction of Massasoit.
Massasoit, with that innate dignity which pertained to his imperial state, disdained to receive any other name but the one which he proudly bore as his ancestral legacy. A few years before his death, however, he brought his two sons, Wamsutta and Pometacom, to Plymouth, and requested the governor, in token of friendship, to give them English names.
They were very bright, attractive young men, of the finest physical development. The governor related to Massasoit the history of the renowned kings of Macedon, Philip and Alexander, and gave to Wamsutta, the oldest, the name of Alexander, the great warrior of Asia, and to Pometacom, the younger, the less renowned name of Philip.
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