THE BORDERERS; OR, THE WEPT OF WISH-TON-WISH: A TALE. BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE PILOT," "THE SPY," "THE PIONEERS," "But she is dead to him, to all: And on the stairs, and at the door, Her fairy step is heard no more." ROGERS. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET GALIGNANI, PARIS. 1833. PREFACE. So much has been written of the North American Indians of late, that very little explanation is necessary to prepare the reader for the incidents and allusions of this tale. The principal aborigines that are introduced are historical; and, although the situations are imagined, they so nearly resemble facts that are known to have occurred, as to give a sufficiently correct idea of the opinions, habits, and feelings of a class of beings whom we are pleased to term savages. Metacom, or, as he was called by the English, King Philip, Uncas, Conanchet, Miantonimoh, and Ounawon were all Indian chiefs of great note, whose names have become identified with the history of New-England. The appellation of Uncas, in particular, appears to have belonged to an entire race among the Mohegans, for it was borne by a succession of Sagamores, and at a later day was found, among their descendants, united to the common baptismal namės, such as John, Henry, Thomas, &c., having been regularly adopted as the surname of a family. Metacom, or Philip, who figures in these pages as the most ruthless enemy of the whites, eventually fell in the war which he had been the principal agent in inciting. This was much the most serious contest in which the English were ever engaged with the native occupants of the country; and there was a moment when it threatened serious obstacles to their system of colonisation. The defeat and death of Philip finally enabled the whites to maintain the possession of New England. Had he succeeded in uniting all the hostile tribes in a common effort, secretly supported, as there is little doubt was the case, by the French of the Canadas and the Dutch of the New Netherlands, the realisation of his vast and noble plans was an event far more likely to prove true, than we may be disposed to admit at this distant day. There is believed to be no exaggeration in the account of the temper and the practices of Indian warfare, as they are here presented to the reader. The traditions common to the whole of the western frontiers of the United States, the well-authenticated and printed accounts of the dangers and struggles of those who first peopled them, and all known circumstances, go to corroborate what there is an attempt here to delineate. It will be seen that the writer has departed a little from the usual style of novel-writing in this work, his object having been to produce a familiar poem, rather than a common work of fiction. The motive for this experiment grew out of his communications with certain literary men on the continent of Europe, the style being better suited, perhaps, to translations than to the language in which the book was originally written. The result would seem to be what might have been expected, as it is believed the tale has had more success abroad than at home. The work was originally printed as well as written in Italy, and the workmen employed on it were utterly unacquainted with the English language. So many errors are found in books which are printed under the most favourable circumstances, that the writer will be readily believed, when he ascribes very many of those which existed in the original edition of this work to the facts just mentioned. The punctuation was particularly bad, often so faulty as to destroy the sense, and, in many instances, words of the same sound were substituted for those that bore a different meaning. In the present edition care has been had to correct these errors; and it is hoped that the book, in these particulars at least, has been materially improved. Some redundancy has been curtailed; the style has |