Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year. E. C. Hartwell
of defiance that Philip delivered to the colonists.
White man, there is eternal war between thee and
me! I quit not the land of my fathers but with my
life. In those woods where I bent my youthful bow, I will
still hunt the deer. Over yonder waters I will still glide
unrestrained in my bark canoe. By those dashing waterfalls5
I will still lay up my winter's store of food. On these
fertile meadows I will still plant my corn. Stranger, the
land is mine! I understand not these paper rights. I gave
not my consent when, as thou sayest, these broad regions
were purchased, for a few baubles, of my fathers. They 10
could sell what was theirs; they could sell no more. How
could my fathers sell that which the Great Spirit sent me
into the world to live upon? They knew not what they
did. The stranger came, a timid suppliant, few and
feeble, and asked to lie down on the red man's bearskin, and 15
warm himself at the red man's fire, and have a little piece
of land to raise corn for his women and children; and now
he is become strong, and mighty, and bold, and spreads
out his parchment over the whole, and says, "It is mine!"
Stranger, there is not room for us both. The Great Spirit
has not made us to live together. There is poison in the
white man's cup; the white man's dog barks at the red
man's heels.
If I should leave the land of my fathers, whither shall I 5
fly? Shall I go to the south, and dwell among the graves
of the Pequots? Shall I wander to the west?—the fierce
Mohawk, the man-eater, is my foe. Shall I fly to the east?—the
great water is before me. No, stranger, here I have
lived, and here I will die! And if here thou abidest, there 10
is eternal war between thee and me. Thou hast taught
me thy arts of destruction. For that alone I thank thee;
and now take heed to thy steps; the red man is thy foe.
When thou goest forth by day, my bullet shall whistle
by thee; when thou liest down at night, my knife is at thy 15
throat. The noonday sun shall not discover thy enemy,
and the darkness of midnight shall not protect thy rest.
Thou shalt plant in terror, and I will reap in blood; thou
shalt sow the earth with corn, and I will strew it with ashes;
thou shalt go forth with the sickle, and I will follow after 20
with the scalping knife; thou shalt build, and I will burn,
till the white man or the Indian shall cease from the land.
Go thy way, for this time, in safety; but remember,
stranger, there is eternal war between me and thee.
1. What reasons did Philip give for declaring war? To what extent were his reasons good?
2. What did he mean by "paper rights"; "a timid suppliant"; "poison in the white man's cup"; "arts of destruction"?
3. Edward Everett (1794–1865) was an American statesman, orator, and scholar. He served as a member of Congress, and afterwards was president of Harvard College. He was the leading orator of his day.
PIONEER LIFE IN OHIO
By William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells (1837–1920) long held a position of leadership among American writers of prose. In his many years of authorship he produced novels, essays, criticism, plays, travel, and biography. For ten years he was editor of the Atlantic Monthly; and he was connected at various times with Harper's Magazine, The Nation, and other journals. His writings excel in the truthfulness of the descriptions.
It would not be easy to say where or when the first log
cabin was built, but it is safe to say that it was somewhere
in the English colonies of North America, and it is
certain that it became the type of the settler's house
throughout the whole Middle West. It may be called the 5
American house, the Western house, the Ohio house.
Hardly any other house was built for a hundred years by the
men who were clearing the land for the stately mansions of
our day. As long as the primeval forests stood, the log cabin
remained the woodsman's home; and not fifty years ago 10
I saw log cabins newly built in one of the richest and most
prosperous regions of Ohio. They were, to be sure, log
cabins of a finer pattern than the first settler reared. They
were of logs handsomely shaped with the broadax; the
joints between the logs were plastered with mortar; the 15
chimney at the end was of stone; the roof was shingled,
the windows were of glass, and the door was solid and well
hung. They were such cabins as were the homes of the
well-to-do settlers in all the older parts of the West. But
throughout that region there were many log cabins, mostly
sunk to the uses of stables and corn cribs, of the kind that
the borderers built in the times of the Indian War, from
1750 to 1800. They were framed of the round logs, untouched
by the ax except for the notches at the ends where 5
they were fitted into one another; the chimney was of
small sticks stuck together with mud, and was as frail
as a barn-swallow's nest; the walls were stuffed with moss,
plastered with clay; the floor was of rough boards called
puncheons, riven from the block with a heavy knife; the 10
roof was of clapboards, split from logs and laid loosely on
the rafters and held in place with logs fastened athwart
them.
When the first settlers broke the silence of the woods
with the stroke of their axes and hewed out a space for their 15
cabins and their fields, they inclosed their homes with a
high stockade of logs, for defense against the Indians; or
if they built their cabins outside the wooden walls of their
stronghold, they always expected to flee to it at the first
alarm and to stand siege within it. The Indians had 20
no cannon, and the logs of the stockade were proof against