CONFESS to a constant historical interest in the Pequots. I should like to catch their profile in story. They were-we are assured-a truculent, warring, and bloodthirsty clan, which once occupied what is now southern New England. Their prowess was such as to enable them to dominate other tribes surrounding them, and to push their conquests even to the homes of the Iroquois. Between them and the Abenaki there was constant conflict, with varying victory. In fact, if I mistake not (although Peol could never be brought to admit it), they were close akin to these latter.

The Pequots, however, had the misfortune to be in occupation of the land over which the Puritans and Pilgrims wished to spread themselves; and of course they could never by fair means or foul bring either Puritan or Pilgrim to recognize their rights as first occupants. Mere pagans could have no just claims in competition with the theocratic rights of the elect. So this great tribeadmittedly the hardiest, bravest and most stalwart of northern tribes, and most wily and adroit-was duly exterminated to the chant of many a warlike psalm. They were wiped off the face of their hunting grounds much as underbrush is cleared from a pioneer farm, or dead leaves from the outlet of a spring.

A few stray bands or families escaped the slaughter on the Mystic, and found refuge in neighboring tribes. They were thus amalgamated with the Hurons and Algonquins; but theirs was a forceful breed, not easily assimilated. Their tribal identity might be merged into another, but their blood still shows after many generations. Outside the Micmacs-and they are degenerating physically-if you meet to-day an Indian of giant size, you can safely set him down as of Pequot descent. In aspect and temper he will still give forth the last echoes of tameless savagery.

All this, or its equivalent, I told Peol frankly and without reserve; with little expectation, however, of learning from him much that might redound to the credit of the Pequots. The feuds between them and the Abenaki, in the ancient times, had been too bitter and bloody to expect him to tell me a sympathetic story about

them. Yet if he could only lift the veil of oblivion enough to let me glimpse this warlike clan as they were known to their hereditary enemies, my curiosity would be satisfied. How widely he surprised me, let this story bear witness.

"How you like to be in the woods alone at night with a crazy man?" he asked abruptly, and with a brisk irrelevancy that I felt immediately like resenting.

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"I would not like it at all," I replied, concealing my impatience. Where did you have that experience?" For I knew that he must have had some such encounter or he would not have asked the question. It was no unusual thing with him, I remembered, to answer one question by asking another.

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"Over here on the Sysladobsis waters," he replied, "a few summers ago. Come in one evening to my camp from lake side where I build 'im canoe." We will suffer him to talk a while in his own quaint English. Split 'im kindlin' to make fire. Dogs growl, and I look around. There in the doorway stand 'im biggest man I ever saw-big as you and me together; and wild, eyes wild like bull moose when he turn to fight. His clothes old, green with age, and mossy where he had darned the rents with gray moss. He had no hat on his head, nuthin' but a queer contrivance of pleated cedar branchery, and his hair matted and fell around and over his face.

"My dogs growl, growl, and I say sharp to them, "Tishan-an!' but no use, they still growl and snarl as if at a bear. He step inside over doorstep, and I see with corner of my eye that he wore one larrigan and one low moccasin. I never take my eyes from his; they snapped and glowed like coals on a windy day. He sit down full in the doorway and glower round on dogs. I bid him 'Good evenin',' and ask him have a chair; but he say nuthin'-just sit there and snap his eyes, while his long arms drooped over his knees.

"I kept on splittin' wood, or makin' show of doin' so, and dogs kept on growlin'. My gun stand to his hand just inside door where I left 'im when I came in. 'Fraid he pick it up and shoot. I had my axe, and so was not afraid of him in rough-andtumble fight, but afraid of gun. I ask him to have some supper, for I was hungry myself and in a hurry to eat, but afraid to turn my back on him. Still he just sit and glower; and dogs mumble to themselves. All night they growl; all night I sit by cold stove, axe in hand ready to brain him; all night he sit in doorway and watch me. When mornin' come I ask him have some breakfast,

but he get up instead, and walk off as silent as he come. mornin' I lost my new canoe-just make 'im."

That

The recollection of his loss seemed to bring Peol to a standstill in his narrative, but it was only for a moment while he refilled his pipe.

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'That crazy man," he resumed, shaking his glowing pipe at me, was a Pequot. I knew it the moment I set eyes on him; never such a big man, unless he were one of the Micmac Ginniches, and I knew them personally. Had he been a white man I would have taken chances and got my supper, but could run no risk with a crazy Pequot-like 'im murder too well. Once afterwards I met him, and he came near killin' me in hand-to-hand fight. Had it not been for a bear he would have done so. But that is a story for another time, when you won't have those ravagin', murderin' Pequots so high on your mind."

Peol stopped and looked quizzically at me. I could perceive that he was calculating to turn me aside from the subject with which I started to his own more personal adventure; but I had my mind fixed on the ancient Pequots, or Wampanoags, of early New England history, and was not to be deflected. If I did not take him now that he was in the humor, I might have to wait indefinitely for the information I sought. So, at the risk of losing a better story, I affirmed again my desire to hear of the historic Pequots. Peol assented as I knew he would.

Still, before dismissing the interruption, it may be courteous to state that the story of his fight with the Pequot-demented and maniacal as he was-was a stirring bit of adventure, which was made doubly effective by the accidental interference of a bear, whereby Peol's life was undoubtedly saved. As it is a recent and personal tale, it very properly cannot find place amongst these stories of the ancient times.

"I left my camp that same day," the old Indian resumed, "because, with that wild man in the woods, my life was not safe. Pequots are bad men to have lying around; but handy men in a fight. Once in the old times they help us when we need it much; so that afterwards when a few of them sought shelter among us from the English we took them in; but we never would allow them to may our women; and we came, in the end, to say of any bad man, 'He's a Pequot.'

Peol had by this time settled down to his after-dinner smoke, and the odor of kinnikinic scented the air with tradition. I shall tell his tale in better English than he was wont to use. All through

it the figure of the giant Pequot, sitting in the doorway and refusing to accept hospitality, persisted in thrusting itself forward on my imagination; and I took him, as the tale progressed, to be a fitting type of his tribe-irreconcilable, unwavering and fiercely aloof in his racial hostility.

"I can hardly define," Peol began, "what were our relations, in the ancient times, with the tribes to the south of us. Sometimes it was peace, but more often it was war; with the Malicetes only and the Micmacs was there constant peace, for with them were we allied from the outset. Moreover, there came a time when the Abenaki of Chenascot took umbrage at the domineering spirit of the Pequots, who up to that time had been their allies; and, being defeated in the war that ensued, they were forced to seek refuge with us. The Etchemin never had much reason to complain of these Armouchiquois; they were actually of our blood and race; but because they had early drawn upon themselves the resentment of the Micmacs we, as allies, came to look upon them as enemies of our league. There was foray and revenge back and forth; and sometimes our allied tribes brushed the intermediate Armouchiquois aside from their warpath when they descended in force upon the Pequots. We were the fence around the bear trap, as I have often said; the Abenaki of the Penobscot could hardly be called more fenceful than the greenery along a runway of rabbits. They pleased us or displeased us as the spirit moved us; we held no deadly enmity against them; and sometimes a woman of their tribe would find her way amongst us as wife to one of our warriors. "Our attitude towards the Pequots, however, was constantly hostile. We recognized them from the beginning as forceful and stout enemies, with whom alliance meant subjugation. The ancient word speaks often of expeditions by sea down into the land of the Wampanoags; of surprises and stiff conflicts; of Pequots who, as our prisoners, ran gallantly the gauntlet, and were feasted and sent home unharmed; and of like generous treatment given to our warriors when they fell prisoners. But towards the Micmacs they were implacable; and the Micmacs, in turn, showed them no mercy. It was indeed a combat of giants when the two tribes met. Usually the Pequots had other clans allied with them, as the Micmacs had the Malicetes and ourselves, and in our engagements with them it came to be tacitly understood that the Pequots should be left to the Micmacs while we fought the others. They sought each other out in battle; challenges to personal combat were of common occurrence; and many a worthy fight occurred between great chiefs

beneath the gaze of the other combatants, who for the moment left off their individual strife to watch the greater combat. It was then battle-axe and knife against battle-axe and knife; club perhaps against club; and, not infrequently, fist against fist, with a wrestling bout thrown in to make the show more interesting. These were by no means, however, mere exhibitions of dexterity and adroitness, but fierce and deadly encounters, in which the weaker antagonist usually was left scalpless on the field. Hatchet and knife made the last stages of the combat swift release for the weaker

man.

'Then would it sharply behoove the friends of the conqueror to throw themselves between him and the enemy, whose resentment at the death or defeat of their champion might work him deadly ill. Experienced warriors, viewing the combat close at hand, usually could foresee who would be victor, and so took early precautions to rescue him. Occasions have happened on which the defeat of a chief in such single combat led immediately to the retreat of his tribe. Sometimes the victors, satisfied with the triumph of their champion, did not follow the enemy; but most often great slaughter ensued.

"I give you these details because I would have you know that it was not the play and mimic war of children when Micmac met Pequot in battle. I wish you also to be able to understand in advance how easily the minds on both sides lent themselves to such gage of battle, in order that you may better comprehend the great fight between our young chief Azoa and his rival, a warrior chief of the Pequots. It is one of the famous memories of our tribe. You will bear in mind also when, as the fight progresses, you are casting up his chances, that Azoa was the eldest son of Guesca, and that his father was a Mohawk: the best fighting blood of two warrior tribes flowed within him. His father, Waghinethe the sorcerer, was a giant of a man, and so was Azoa in turn. Two noted deeds did this great chief in his time: he defeated the champion of the Wampanoags in single combat when he was a young man, and when he was older he led our warriors down the Mississippi as escort to La Salle. His name lives fresh in our memory, and yet his son Talistoga was even a greater chief.

"It was during one of those rare intervals of amity between ourselves and the Abenaki of Chenascot that opportunity for rivalry was given between Azoa and the Pequot. How it came about that our young chief was enamored of the daughter of the war chief of the Armouchiquois, the old people never told