"7 Coats a yd and half in a coat} Myles Standish 9 Hatchets } 8 Howes } Samuel Nash 20 Knives } 4 Moose skins } Constant Southworth. 10 Yds and half of cotton }" The original document of which we have here given a literal and exact copy has been preserved to this day. It is in the handwriting of Captain Standish. The precise date of Massasoit's death is unknown. In 1653, his name appears in a deed by which he conveyed part of the territory of Swansey to English grantees. Hubbard supposes that he died about three years subsequent to this; but as late as 1661, he is noticed in the Records of the United Colonies, as will appear more particularly in the life of his eldest son. Two or three years afterwards, conveyances were made of the Pokanoket lands in which he appears to have had no voice; and it may be fairly inferred that he died in that interval. He must have been near eighty years of age. Such are the passages which history has preserved concerning the earliest and best friend of the Pilgrims. Few and simple as they are, they give glimpses of a character that, under other circumstances, might have placed Massasoit among the illustrious of his age. He was a mere savage; ignorant of even reading and writing, after an intercourse of near fifty years with the colonists; and distinguished from the mass of savages around him, as we have seen, by no other outward emblem than a barbarous ornament of bones. It must be observed, too, as to them, that the authority which they conferred upon him, or rather upon his ancestors, was their free gift, and was liable at any moment to be retracted, wholly or in part, either by the general voice or by the defection or violence of individuals. The intrinsic dignity and energy of his character alone, therefore, must have sustained the dominion of the sachem, with no essential distinction of wealth, retinue, cultivation, or situation in any respect, between him and the meanest of the Wampanoags. The naked qualities of his intellect and is heart must have gained their loyalty, controlled their extravagant passions to his own purposes, and won upon their personal confidence and affection.