With the coming of the Dutch soldiers the settlers were strong enough to scatter their assailants. But most of the colonists, discouraged, drifted away to the New Netherlands or to the more easterly settlements. It was not till two years later that a force of Dutch and English stormed the Sinoway village and crushed the power of the tribe, after which the town was successfully settled.
Ten years have passed. The skill and toil of the whites have swept away the scars of Indian warfare. Pleasant homes rise amid smiling fields of maize and rye. One summer day, Cornelis Labden, a helpless cripple and almost half-witted, sat on the porch of Captain Underhill’s house, smoking his long Dutch pipe and looking at the shining waters of the Sound. Here or in the good Captain’s hearth-corner he would doze and mumble all day long summer and winter. An Indian youth, nearly grown, walked up the lane and stood before this poor wreck of a man. Cornelis shut his eyes, and waved him off as if to drive away some thought that troubled his weak brain.
“Lapten, me find Lapten,” said the Indian, whose blue eyes and brown hair were queerly amiss with the copper skin, the breech-clout, and the moccasins of the savage.
The sound of the voice stirred Cornelis strangely, and as if by some instinct he spoke in Dutch. The lad listened eagerly, for the words seemed to be half known to him, and he repeated them. Cornelis watched him with an intent look, like the gaze of one just awakened from a long sleep. He trembled, and for the first time in years intelligence burned in his eyes. Without another word he led the Indian lad within and began to rub the skin of his face with soap and water, and in a few moments the clear white was shown. While he was thus engaged over the unresisting youth, Captain Underhill entered.
“Cabdain, Cabdain,” said Cornelis, with a shaking voice, “mein Hans ist goom back. Done ye know yer old vader, leedle Hans? Vare ist Anneke?” And he threw his arms with a passion of sobs about the lad’s neck. This opened the gates of memory for father and son, and the identity was soon made clear. In recovering his son, Dutch Cornelis had also regained his reason.
By gradual questioning, the facts were fully obtained as the half-forgotten language of childhood came back. Hans and Anneke had been carried off by strange Indians of the more northern tribes, who had sent warriors to join in the Sinoway attack. The children had been separated, and Anneke was lost forever. As Hans grew up, forgetting much, he still remembered his father’s name and his white blood. He had finally escaped from his adopted tribe, and worked his way by a strange series of accidents and guesses back to the place of his birth. Such, in the main, is the legend of Labden’s Rock.
III
TOMMY TEN-CANOES
A Tale of King Philip’s Scout
There once lived in New York an Indian warrior by the name of Peter Twenty-Canoes. Tommy Ten-Canoes lived in New England, at Pokanoket, near Mount Hope, on an arm of the Mount Hope Bay.