rminating
Puritans, who wished to plough their fields henceforth in peace. A
generation later the storm broke again in King Philip's War. Its
tales of massacre, captivity, and single-handed fighting linger in the
American imagination still. Typical pamphlets are Mary Rowlandson's
thrilling tale of the Lancaster massacre and her subsequent captivity,
and the loud-voiced Captain Church's unvarnished description of King
Philip's death. The King, shot down like a wearied bull-moose in the
deep swamp, "fell upon his face in the mud and water, with his gun
under him." They "drew him through the mud to the upland; and a doleful,
great, naked dirty beast he looked like." The head brought only thirty
shillings at Plymouth: "scanty reward and poor encouragement," thought
Captain Church. William Hubbard, the minister of Ipswich, wrote a
comprehensive "Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New
England," bringing the history down to 1677. Under the better known
title of "Indian Wars," this fervid and dramatic tale, penned in a quiet
parsonage, has stirred the pulses of every succeeding generation. The
close of King Philip's War, 1676, coinciding as it does with Bacon's
Rebellion in Virginia, marks an era in the development of our
independent life. The events of that year, in the words of Professor
Tyler, "established two very considerable facts, namely, that English
colonists in America could be so provoked as to make physical resistance
to the authority of England, and, second, that English colonists in
America could, in the last resort, put down any combination of Indians
that might be formed against them. In other words, it was then made
evident that English colonists would certainly be safe in the new world,
and also that they would not always be colonists."

While the end of an historical or literary era cannot always be thus
conveniently indicated by a date, there is no doubt that the final
quarter of the seventeenth century witnessed deep changes in the outward
life and the inner temper of the colonists. The "first fine careless
rapture" was over. Only a few aged men could recall the memory of the
first settlements. Between the founding of Jamestown and the rebellion
under the leadership of Nathaniel Bacon almost seventy years had
intervened, an interval corresponding to that which separates us from
the Mexican War. Roger Williams ended his much-enduring and beneficent
life in the flourishing town of Providence in 168