cular
development of her warriors.

Immediately upon Captain Church's arrival the dance ceased. Awashonks
sat down, called her chiefs and the Wampanoag embassadors around her,
and then invited Captain Church to take a conspicuous seat in the
midst of the group. She then, in a speech of queenly courtesy,
informed Captain Church that King Philip had sent six of his men to
solicit her to enter into a confederacy against the English, and that
he stated, through these embassadors, that the English had raised a
great army, and were about to invade his territories for the
extermination of the Wampanoags. The conference was long and intensely
exciting. Awashonks called upon the Wampanoag embassadors to come
forward.

They were marked men, dressed in the highest embellishments of
barbaric warfare. Their faces were painted. Their hair was trimmed in
the fashion of the crests of the ancient helmets. Their knives and
tomahawks were sharp and glittering. They all had guns, and horns and
pouches abundantly supplied with shot and bullets.

Captain Church, however, was manifestly gaining the advantage, and the
Wampanoag embassadors, baffled and enraged, were anxious to silence
their antagonist with the bludgeon. The Indians began to take sides
furiously, and hot words and threatening gestures were abundant.
Awashonks was very evidently inclined to adhere to the English. She at
last, in the face of the embassadors, declared to Captain Church that
Philip's message to her was that he would send his men over privately
to shoot the cattle and burn the houses of the English who were within
her territories, and thus induce the English to fall in vengeance upon
her, whom they would undoubtedly suppose to be the author of the
mischief. This so enraged Captain Church that he quite forgot his
customary prudence. Turning to the Wampanoag embassadors, he
exclaimed,

"You are infamous wretches, thirsting for the blood of your English
neighbors, who have never injured you, but who, on the contrary, have
always treated you with kindness."

Then, addressing Awashonks, he very inconsiderately advised her to
knock the six Wampanoags on the head, and then throw herself upon the
protection of the English. The Indian queen, more discreet than her
adviser, dismissed the embassadors unharmed, but informing them that
she should look to the English as her friends and protectors.

Captain Church, exulting in this success, which took three hundred
warrio