own
into a burning fever. The best medical attendance was furnished, and
he was nursed with the utmost care, but he grew daily worse, and soon
serious fears were entertained that he would die.

The Indian warriors, greatly alarmed for their beloved chieftain,
entreated that they might be permitted to take Alexander home,
promising that they would return with him as soon as he had recovered,
and that, in the mean time, the son of Alexander should be sent to the
English as a hostage. The court assented to this arrangement. The
Indians took their unhappy king, dying of a crushed spirit, upon a
litter on their shoulders, and entered the trails of the forest.
Slowly they traveled with their burden until they arrived at Tethquet,
now Taunton River. There they took canoes. They had not, however,
paddled far down the stream before it became evident that their
monarch was dying. They placed him upon a grassy mound beneath a
majestic tree, and in silence the stoical warriors gathered around to
witness the departure of his spirit to the realms of the Red Man's
immortality.

What a scene for the painter! The sublimity of the forest, the glassy
stream, meandering beneath the overshadowing trees, the bark canoes of
the natives moored to the shore, the dying chieftain, with his
warriors assembled in stern sadness around him, and the beautiful and
heroic Wetamoo, holding in her lap the head of her dying lord as she
wiped his clammy brow, nursing those emotions of revenge which finally
desolated the three colonies with flame, blood, and woe.

[Illustration: THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER.]

The tragic death of Alexander introduced to the throne his brother
Pometacom, whom the English named King Philip.

Much has been written respecting the Indian's disregard for woman. The
history of Wetamoo proves that these views have been very greatly
exaggerated, or that they admit of very marked exceptions. Wetamoo
immediately became the unrelenting foe of the English. With all the
fervor of her fresh nature, she studied to avenge her husband's death.
This one idea became the controlling principle of her future life.
That Wamsutta's death was caused by the anguish of a wounded spirit no
colonist doubted; but Wetamoo believed, and most of the Indians
believed, that poison had been administered to the captive monarch,
and that he thus perished the victim of foul murder. Wetamoo was an
energetic, and, for a savage, a noble woman. All the energies of her