authority had been transmitted in virtue of their birth-rights. They
consequently gave them the name of kings.

How far this opinion of the governments of the aborigines was true remains
a question, though there is certainly reason to think it less erroneous in
respect to the tribes of the Atlantic states, than to those who have since
been found further west, where, it is sufficiently known, that
institutions exist which approach much nearer to republics than to
monarchies. It may, however, have readily happened that the son, profiting
by the advantages of his situation, often succeeded to the authority of
the father, by the aid of influence, when the established regulations of
the tribe acknowledged no hereditary claim. Let the principle of the
descent of power be what it would, it is certain the experience of our
ancestors proves, that, in very many instances, the child was seen to
occupy the station formerly filled by the father; and, that in most of
those situations of emergency, in which a people so violent were often
placed, the authority he exercised was as summary as it was general. The
appellation of Incas came, like those of the Caesars and Pharoahs, to be a
sort of synonyme for chief with the Mohegans, a tribe of the Pequods,
among whom several warriors of this name were known to govern in due
succession. The renowned Metacom, or, as he is better known to the whites,
King Philip, was certainly the son of Massassoit, the Sachem of the
Wampanoags that the emigrants found in authority when they landed on the
rock of Plymouth. Miantonimoh, the daring but hapless rival of that Uncas
who ruled the whole of the Pequod nation, was succeeded in authority,
among the Narragansetts, by his not less heroic and enterprising son,
Conanchet; and, even at a much later day, we find instances of this
transmission of power, which furnish strong reasons for believing that the
order of succession was in the direct line of blood.