"They believe that the soules of men and women go to the southwest—their great and good men to Cawtantowit his house, where they have hopes, as the Turks have, of carnal joys. Murtherers, liars, &c., their soules (say they) wander restless abroad."—Williams' Key.
STANZA XXXVII.
This yet unproved and doubted by the best.
The Charter of Pennsylvania was granted in 1681. The philanthropic Penn was preceded by Williams in the adoption of a mild and pacific policy toward the natives. Both seem to have been equally successful.
STANZA XLV.
Ere dark pestilence
Devoured his warriors—laid its hundreds low,
That sachem's war-whoop roused to his defence
Three thousand bow-men, and he still can show
A mighty force.
The pestilence, to which Waban has reference, is that which shortly preceded the arrival of the Plymouth planters. The Wampanoags, before this calamity, were relatively a powerful people. Patuxet, afterwards Plymouth, was then under the government of their sachem, who, at times, made it his place of residence. Indeed the whole country between Seekonk and the ocean, eastward, seems to have been occupied by tribes more or less subject to him. Those toward the Cape and about Buzzard's Bay were, however, rather his tributaries than his subjects. The different clans or communities, in this extensive territory, were under the government of many petty sachems, who regarded Ousamequin (afterwards Massasoit) as their chief. Availing themselves of the misfortune of their neighbors, the Narragansets extended their conquests eastward over some of these under-sachems; and when Ousamequin fled from Pawtuxet to Pokanoket, to avoid the devouring sickness, he found not only Aquidnay, but a part of Pokanoket, subject to his enemies. (See note to stanza xxxiii canto iv.) Pokanoket was the Indian name of the neck of land between Taunton river
