interpret. He
is now about the last of his generation still exercising the right as
a member of the house of the Sachems, in the councils of the clan;
and, on August 3, 1687,[81] he unites once more with the members of
his tribe in the Montauk conveyance to the inhabitants of East
Hampton: "For all our tract of land at Mantauket, bounded by part of
the Fort Pond, and Fort Pond Bay west; the English land south by a
line from the Fort Pond to the Great Pond ... to the utmost extent of
the Island from sea to sea," etc., and then he retires from our view
forever on the records of the past.

At the time of making this deed, half a century had elapsed since the
conflict on the hills of Mystic--fifty eventful years in the history
of our Colonies. If he was twenty-five years of age when he parted
from Eliot in 1646 or 1647, he had then reached threescore years and
five; not by any means an aged man, but, for all we know, he may have
lived for some years afterward.[82]

There may be other recorded facts relating to his life which I have
overlooked, or they may lie buried in the time-stained archives
of other Long Island and New England towns--inaccessible,
undecipherable, and unpublished--which some future historian may
unfold and bring to light.[83] The seeds of knowledge planted by Eliot
on the fertile field of this native's mind bore good fruit, even if
his preceptor did write at an early day he knew not what use he then
made of it. For the part he took in the rise and development of our
settlements--a life work, unparalleled by that of any other Long
Island or New England Indian--he deserves to be enrolled upon the page
of honor.

And now, amid the rolling hills of Montauk, which he loved so well,
and within sound of the everlasting murmur of the mighty ocean, which
he so often heard, in a grave unmarked and unknown,[84] he sleeps to
await the resurrection morn. A scarred and battered fragment from
nature's world--a glacial bowlder, typical of the past--should be his
monument[85]--on one side a sculptured entablature, inscribed:

"_To the Memory of a Captive in the Pequot War, the first Indian
Teacher of John Eliot; A firm friend of the English Colonists;
Cockenoe-de-Long Island._"

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "The Pequots were a very warlike and potent people about forty
years since, (1624) at which time they were in their meridian. Their
chief Sachem held dominion ove