PREFACE
The author's purpose in writing this book for young people is to picture life in the New England woods in old Indian days, when barbarism was passing under the influence of civilization. His mother passed a part of her girlhood at Mt. Hope, and he was born near the Mt. Hope Lands, at Warren, R. I., the Sowams of Massasoit, who protected the Pilgrims and sheltered Roger Williams when the latter was forming his views of liberty of conscience, or soul freedom, which have entered into the constitution of every republic in the world. He used to roam in the green groves of Swansea, has often met the last of the Wampanoags at Lakeville, and as often pictured in his own mind the charming life of an Indian boy in the green woods around the Mt. Hope and Narragansett Bays in the days of the forest kings.
This little nature book is an attempt to portray such a life. In it the author has endeavored to picture, by much fact and a slight framework of fiction, the life of Little Metacomet, the son of King Philip, or Pometacom, or Metacomet, who followed his father, the great chieftain, and his mother, the beautiful forest queen, before the Indian war, and his mother during the war, and who was deported to the Palm Islands after this last event. He has used Little Metacomet to picture an Indian boy's life in the woods among the birds, animals, and native races, and to tell the tale of what was most merciful in Philip's war.