Among the sportsmen on the bar at the season that I have just described, there was always found a tall, gaunt, and extremely taciturn old Indian, who passed among the people by the name of “Pequot.” His hut was about a mile beyond Scipio’s, on the same creek, and like him, he obtained his support mainly by the fruits of his hunting and fishing. Now and then, in the harvest, or when the game was scarce, he would assist the farmers in their lighter work, receiving, with neither thanks nor stipulation, such recompense as they saw fit to make; and sometimes, in the cold depths of winter, he would appear, and silently sitting at their firesides, receive, as a sort of right, his trencher at their tables. He was so kind in his assistance, and so inoffensive to all around him, that he was always sure of welcome. But there was a marked feature in his character, and one most unusual to the Indian’s nature, which was his dislike, almost to loathing, of ardent spirits. He was a great deal at Scipio’s hut, and I was strongly struck (boy as I was) with the harmony which subsisted between two characters so apparently dissimilar—the sullen, almost haughty Indian, and the light-hearted, laughter-loving negro; but there was a sort of common sympathy—of oppression, I suppose—between them, for they always assisted one another; and sometimes I have known them gone for days together in their fishing expeditions on the Sound. All the information that Scipio could give me about him, was that he had been the same ever since he had known him, that he was supposed to have come in from some of the Western tribes, and that from his haunting a great deal about a neighbouring swamp, where the gallant tribe of Pequots had, long years before, been massacred by fire and sword, the people had given him the name of Pequot. Whatever he was, he was a noble old Indian; the poetry of the character was left, while contact with the whites, and the kind teachings of the Moravians had hewn away the sterner features of the savage. I remember that I used to look at him, with all a boy’s enthusiasm, admiring him with a mingled sense of sympathy and awe. Even old Scip showed him habitual deference, for there was a melancholy dignity about him; and his words, short and sententious, were delivered with scrupulous exactness. I recollect once being completely taken aback by the display of a sudden burst of feeling, which completely let me into his ideal claims and imaginary pretensions.