Oh, there be some
Whose writhed features, fixed in all their strength
Of grappling agony, do stare at you,
With their dead eyes half opened.
And there be some struck through with bristling darts
Whose clenched hands have torn the pebbles up;
Whose gnashing teeth have ground the very sand.
--BAILLIE.
Massasoit kept his treaty with the English inviolate so long as he lived. He died in 1661, at the advanced age of eighty or ninety years, leaving two sons whom the English named respectively Alexander and Philip. Alexander, the eldest son and hereditary sachem, died soon after his father, when Philip became chief sachem and warrior of the Wampanoags, with his royal residence on Mount Hope, not far from Bristol, Rhode Island. He was called King Philip. He resumed the covenants with the English made by his father, and observed them faithfully for a period of twelve years.
But it had become painfully apparent to Massasoit before his death, that the spreading colonies would soon deprive his people of their land and nationality, and that the Indians must become vassals of the pale race. Long did the warlike King Philip ponder on these possibilities with deep bitterness of feeling, until he had lashed himself into a fury by the continued nursing of his wrath, and resolved to strike the exterminating blow against the English.