proportion; and she did not wish to be taxed to support a general government. That would not seem like liberty. Moreover, what had Rhode Island to do with the other states? Had she not been persecuted by them? She had been excluded from the union of the New England colonies in 1643. She had received no help when her existence had been endangered by savages. Her territory had been invaded and despoiled. She had grown up a hundred years, and by the aid of England had maintained a separate existence; she would continue that separate existence. She had now sixty-eight thousand people within her borders, not an imposing number indeed, but commendable under the circumstances. Could union make her more prosperous?

So when the call was made for each state to hold a convention to elect delegates to a Constitutional Convention, Rhode Island paid not the slightest attention to it. All the other states sent delegates, but Rhode Island sent none; and the work of that convention, grand and glorious as it was, was not shared by her. That work was completed on the 27th of September, 1787. In three months Delaware did herself the honor of adopting it. In ten months all the states had adopted it, except North Carolina and Rhode Isiand. In North Carolina there was opposition, but the delay was caused by other questions and circumstances.

But

in November, 1789, the Legislature met, and the Constitution was adopted by a vote of 193 to 75. But Rhode Island had not the semblance of an excuse- and wanted none. The same party that favored inflation, or paper money, opposed the Constitution; and that party was in the majority and in power. The General Assembly had been elected with this very thing in view. Meanwhile the loyal party, which was found mostly in the cities and commercial centres, did all in its power to induce the General Assembly to call a convention; but that body persistently refused. Once it suggested a vote of the people in their own precincts; but that method was a failure. As state after state came into the Union, the Union party, by bonfire, parade, and loud demonstration, celebrated the event. But no amount of demonstration could move that General Assembly. One is constrained to call it,

with Professor Gammell, "individualism, jealousy of power, paper money, loose political ideas"; and to ascribe the persistence of the Legislature to "prejudice and ignorance." But was it possible, after the planting of the colony as it was planted, and in view of the principles that had controlled it, for it to change more easily?

At last the Legislature consented to call a convention. However reluctantly that was done, it was a great and triumphant day for the Union party. The state was beginning to suffer from a greater isolation than it had contended for. Rhode Island was small, and the great Union that surrounded her had her at its mercy. Men saw that duties on exports to every quarter, as well as other disadvantages in trade, would soon crush the little state. The rumor came that the United States was about to lay on heavy duties, and otherwise proscribe the privileges of the state, which had ever claimed that she was sufficient in herself. But the grant of a convention wrung from the General Assembly was used. The convention met in March, 1790, in South Kingston. It soon adjourned, to meet in Newport in May of the same year. There the work was done. The Constitution of the United States was accepted by Rhode Island by a vote of thirty-four to thirty-two-two majority. But it was accepted; and loyal hearts and fleet carried the news over the state, and to the border states. So Rhode Island came into the Union. But she came with many of her prejudices and Old English customs. She came with her English charter as her own constitution, and abode by its provisions until 1842. She came with her landholders and tenants, her classes, her aristocracy, her suffrage based on property. In 1842 occurred the memorable Dorr's Rebellion. The old English charter was cast overboard, and a new constitution framed and adopted. However, some of the old provisions remained; and it was not until the recent "Bourn Amendment," granting suffrage to citizens having no property, and to foreign-born citizens, that the last aristocratic provision of the old charter was eschewed. Even yet, in the wording and conditions of the new law, there are traces of the influence of the charter-echoes of the spirit that refused the national Constitution. But there is no more loyal state in the Union than Rhode Island to-day.

O

F all the Indians sketched in history and fiction, no one has been more popular than the accommodating Samoset, whose "Welcome, Englishmen !" has sounded as pleasantly to thousands of American readers as to the Pilgrims whom he greeted with his one English sentence. For Samoset's sake the tribe of Friendly Indians, of whom he was a typical representative, has been especially interesting to those who have taken little trouble to investigate the tribe's own claims to favor; yet on their own account, these Indians are entitled to a better place in literature than the pages in the state reports, which seem to be the only records of their advance into civilization. Always faithful in their friendship. to the whites, refusing to share in Indian wars against the colonists, even when summoned by King Philip, readily receiving the Christian teachings of the early missionaries, they have been inoffensive residents of Cape Cod from the earliest times. There are traditions that they ineffectively protested against the custom of the white settlers to take Indian lands, but as they successfully held upon a fertile strip of ground, and were neither destroyed nor driven away, their protests were not so pathetic as usual in Indian affairs. Friendship with the whites proved good policy. It might have been braver to die fighting for one's wigwam, but it was safer to become "praying Indians," and to possess the camping-grounds through the grace of God and the good-nature of the whites. There live in Mashpee one hundred and fifty descendants of the Indians, who possess all reasons for gratitude for the politic course of their peaceful ancestors, and who doubtless have become reconciled to the conditions granted by their friends, the whites. To-day their "Welcome, Englishmen!" is not the only English phrase which they possess, but it is quite as sincere as the greeting of the former English captive Samoset.

One week after ex-President Cleveland, Joseph Jefferson, and Mr. Gilder had sailed in a steam launch over the crystal waters of the lovely Mashpee Pond, and probably

had taken pickerel from its depths, two students of the Indian question determined to test the friendliness of the Friendly Indians. On account of the doubt which is always attached to Indian affairs in this country, they were not able to discover the exact end of their destination. Was it "Marshpee" or "Mashpee"? Old legislators had discussed the affairs of " Marshpee" in the General Court. "Don't Cape Codders cultivate the cranberry ma'sh?" asked one student; but the other, looking up derivations, found that "Massapee" was the original Indian name of the reservation, and gave the opinion of philologists in favor of the English form of "Mashpee" as the more correct and simple corruption of language.

The map directed the travellers to the "westerly part of Barnstable County"; but more attractive marks of the route were sign-boards standing at all the cross-roads, and sandy roads, whose contrast with grassgrown side-paths proved their right of way to Mashpee. Short but thick forest trees gave a northern aspect to the region, but an opening in the woods, through which the sun glowed hot upon a cranberry marsh, proved that the place was a part of Cape Cod. The town of Mashpee seemed to the travellers lost in the forest. A sudden clearing with a brilliant wood-border of cardinal flowers showed now and then a small wooden house of an unfinished aspect, either partly shingled or half-painted, or in other respects not wholly completed. It is evident that after a century or two of civilization, the Indian nature regards his house as a temporary refuge, which he would like to fold in wigwam fashion, if he could be sure of finding food upon another reservation. After several miles of forest road picked out with these small isolated houses, the Mashpee Lake gleams within its green rim and presents lovely views in aquarelle through the spaces between the trees which line the road. The students of the Indian question were delighted with the scenery, but being anxious to see Mashpee village, inquired of a wandering cranberry-picker:

"Will you kindly direct us to Mashpee?" "You have just come from Mashpee, a mile or two back," was the surprising reply.

Mashpee comes upon the traveller like a surprise. It lies in ambush, as it were, and is discovered only after careful searching. Instead of following the pattern of the New England village, with its one main street bordered by white houses with green blinds, its church with tall spire, and its shaded common, Mashpee is settled without regular design, with pink, gray, and yellow houses set among the forest trees. Having found the Attaquin House, one arrives at the solution of the Mashpee mystery. Or better, having met its former proprietor, Mr. Attaquin, as the students of the Indian question were fortunate in doing, one comes to know Mashpee.

A few years ago Mr. Attaquin moved out of the village inn to the plain red house standing not far below, on the right-hand Iside of the road. "If any one can tell you about the Mashpee Indians, Mr. Attaquin can," the people say. Having gained admission, the students of history entered a low room of the red house, and giving a quick glance at its spotless wooden floor, its large, old-fashioned desk, its wooden chairs, and open clothes-horse, awaited the arrival of the seer. It is said that when Mr. Attaquin was young, he was one of the most active fishermen and hunters of the region. Wading in the brooks and other exposures of sport have not failed to leave their effects. For a long time he has been an invalid with rheumatism, and he greets visitors wearily and with effort. Making the call brief in consideration of the invalid, the visitors had time to learn of Indian traditions.

"We were always friends to the whites," said Mr. Attaquin, in a well-modulated tone and with perfect pronunciation. "There had been a famine before the English came, and our people were dispirited. Some said that it was because a white man had been killed years before. But we were always friends to the English. When King Philip sent word to our squaw sachem to join him in war against the whites, we refused to go."

"How long ago was the reservation given you?" was asked.

"In 1760 Reuben Cognehew went over to see King George, to tell him about our

troubles, and King George gave us this land, which we have occupied to this day." Mr. Attaquin looks like a strong FrenchCanadian farmer, whose bronze-hued complexion has not faded during his placid term of old age. A natural question is:

"Are there any pure Indians now?" "No; the last one died years ago. He went fishing, and was found dead on the shores of the lake. I knew an old woman who could speak the language, but she is dead now."

The state records tell us that in 1792 there were only forty or fifty individuals of unmixed Indian blood in Mashpee. Twenty-one years before that there were fourteen negroes in the town, and the negro race having increased as the Indian decreased, the present population is wholly Indian-negro, with a trace of Portuguese.

Mr. Attaquin's niece, who stood in a neat cotton gown and apron behind the chair of the narrator, was clearly a type of the best Mashpee Indian, erect, lithe, dark in color, and with straight hair and intelligent black eyes.

"Mashpee is a fine place," Mr. Attaquin continued. "Deer are in the woods yet. I have often seen them looking out between the bushes, as I have been walking along the road. We have had one representative to the State Legislature, Mr. Hammond. He was the first. It is not often our turn to send a representative, because we have to take our place with the other towns."

As Mr. Attaquin said, the Indians have sent their representative to the Massachusetts General Court, a man distinguished for his quiet interest rather than for notable achievements, and of such sobriety of character that he was known among his fellow-legislators as "the Deacon."

From the Indians who welcomed the Pilgrims, dressed in skins, as the old records say, "most of them having long hose up to their groins and above their waists, some having trussed up their hair before with a feather broadwise like a fan," to the Indian who occupied his seat in the State Legislature, there are many degrees of civilization. Missionary efforts were the first civilizing influences. The apostle Eliot found encouragement among the Friendly Indians; and from 1630, when Mr. Richard Bourne of Sandwich turned his attention towards evangelizing the Mashpee

Indians, to the present day, there has been a long and nearly constant line of preach

ers.

Among the successors of Mr. Bourne, to whom the organization of the Indian church in 1670 is accredited, came Simon Popmonet, an Indian, who died after a ministry of forty years; Rev. Joseph Bourne, a grandson of the first missionary; Solomon Briant, an Indian, preaching always in the Indian dialect; Rev. Gideon Hawley, who was considered particularly adapted to his work; and Rev. Phineas Fish. The Indians now have their own meeting-house, a little wooden building in the woods, and carry on services in accord with the Baptist denomination. Unfortunately the seductive fire-water has rendered the task of the missionary and the minister difficult among the Mashpee Indians. There is a quaint story of an Indian who criticised the preaching of a certain preacher, because he talked too much about rum in his sermons. When the minister spoke against that drink, the Indian complained that "it made his mouth water so much" that he could not pay more attention to the discourse. Mr. Richard Bourne's lament that many of the Indians were "very loose in their course, to my heart-breaking sorrow," has been repeated by many who have attempted to solve the Mashpee branch of the Indian problem.

From the time when Massachusetts began to look upon the Indians as its wards, the state has shared with the missionaries the work of civilization. The early laws relate to deeds of land, providing from 1650 that the territory should be set apart for Indians, on condition that "no Indian should sell, or white man buy of an Indian, any land without license first obtained from the General Court or Court of Assistants." Ten thousand, five hundred acres of land were set apart at that time as an Indian reservation. In 1693 the Indians were placed in charge of commissioners appointed by the Colonial Government; but the result was far from satisfactory, and their descendants relate to-day gloomy traditions of "our troubles" at that time. An Indian was brave enough to go to King George with complaints, and returned with orders for a better government, by which Mashpee was constituted a district, with power to elect its own officers. For three years the Indians had the management of their own affairs in town meeting. In spite

of the good service done by the Indians in the Revolutionary War, in which they were ready soldiers, the town of Mashpee lost in 1788 all its civil rights, and was again placed under guardians.

The dry recorders of state legislation, having no right to expression of sympathy, give a pitiful tale of American Indian policy in a few terse sentences. "They uniformly remonstrated," is the account of the Indians, and they urged the "mortification" to which they were subjected, "of being put under guardianship and considered as minors." For nearly one hundred years the oppression of the Indians which characterized the early American policy, followed by constant complaints, made Mashpee an Indian problem" in miniature. When, in 1870, the town was incorporated, none of the pure Indians remained to welcome their newly gained privileges. But their descendants, however mixed in ancestry, do not fail to appreciate their rights as citizens, even to the privilege of taking an extraordinary variety of dogs to "the meetings," in order that an equally strange assortment of "teams" should have protection outside of the hall-door.

66

The school is a civilizing agency, which "keeps" two terms in the year. Even more beneficial is a Templars' Lodge of Good Hope, which has sixty members, and which is a strong influence for improvement.

Since their determined settling among the Cape Cod colonists, the Friendly Indians have followed, as far as possible, the occupations of the whites, formerly in sharing the whaling voyages, and latterly in farming and cranberry-picking. To these occupations they have added the more distinctively Indian pursuits of manufacturing baskets and brooms, and peddling these wares with berries and fish. The wandering life of the hunter and fisher has been most congenial to the Mashpee Indian, and acting the idler has been always carried on in spite of the example of the industrious Cape Cod people of the neighborhood. As Mashpee, with its pond of rare nymphæa lotus, famed since the time of Daniel Webster for the yellow blossoms, is in truth a lotus-land, who can wonder that its inhabitants partake of the characteristic languor which the name of “lotus suggests, even though the sacred water-lily is not edible?