It was five or six months after this before they heard any more of the
savages, in which time our men were in hopes they had either forgot their
former bad luck, or given over hopes of better; when, on a sudden, they
were invaded with a most formidable fleet of no less than
eight-and-twenty canoes, full of savages, armed with bows and arrows,
great clubs, wooden swords, and such like engines of war; and they
brought such numbers with them, that, in short, it put all our people
into the utmost consternation.
As they came on shore in the evening, and at the easternmost side of the
island, our men had that night to consult and consider what to do. In
the first place, knowing that their being entirely concealed was their
only safety before and would be much more so now, while the number of
their enemies would be so great, they resolved, first of all, to take
down the huts which were built for the two Englishmen, and drive away
their goats to the old cave; because they supposed the savages would go
directly thither, as soon as it was day, to play the old game over again,
though they did not now land within two leagues of it. In the next
place, they drove away all the flocks of goats they had at the old bower,
as I called it, which belonged to the Spaniards; and, in short, left as
little appearance of inhabitants anywhere as was possible; and the next
morning early they posted themselves, with all their force, at the
plantation of the two men, to wait for their coming. As they guessed, so
it happened: these new invaders, leaving their canoes at the east end of
the island, came ranging along the shore, directly towards the place, to
the number of two hundred and fifty, as near as our men could judge. Our
army was but small indeed; but, that which was worse, they had not arms
for all their number. The whole account, it seems, stood thus: first, as
to men, seventeen Spaniards, five Englishmen, old Friday, the three
slaves taken with the women, who proved very faithful, and three other
slaves, who lived with the Spaniards. To arm these, they had eleven
muskets, five pistols, three fowling-pieces, five muskets or
fowling-pieces which were taken by me from the mutinous seamen whom I
reduced, two swords, and three old halberds.
To their slaves they did not give either musket or fusee; but they had
each a halberd, or a long staff, like a quarter-staff, with a great spike
of iron fastened into each end of it, and by his side a hatchet; also
every one of our men had a hatchet. Two of the women could not be
prevailed upon but they would come into the fight, and they had bows and
arrows, which the Spaniards had taken from the savages when the first
action happened, which I have spoken of, where the Indians fought with
one another; and the women had hatchets too.
The chief Spaniard, whom I described so often, commanded the whole; and
Will Atkins, who, though a dreadful fellow for wickedness, was a most
daring, bold fellow, commanded under him. The savages came forward like
lions; and our men, which was the worst of their fate, had no advantage
in their situation; only that Will Atkins, who now proved a most useful
fellow, with six men, was planted just behind a small thicket of bushes
as an advanced guard, with orders to let the first of them pass by and
then fire into the middle of them, and as soon as he had fired, to make
his retreat as nimbly as he could round a part of the wood, and so come
in behind the Spaniards, where they stood, having a thicket of trees
before them.
When the savages came on, they ran straggling about every way in heaps,
out of all manner of order, and Will Atkins let about fifty of them pass
by him; then seeing the rest come in a very thick throng, he orders three
of his men to fire, having loaded their muskets with six or seven bullets
apiece, about as big as large pistol-bullets. How many they killed or
wounded they knew not, but the consternation and surprise was
inexpressible among the savages; they were frightened to the last degree
to hear such a dreadful noise, and see their men killed, and others hurt,
but see nobody that did it; when, in the middle of their fright, Will
Atkins and his other three let fly again among the thickest of them; and
in less than a minute the first three, being loaded again, gave them a
third volley.
Had Will Atkins and his men retired immediately, as soon as they had
fired, as they were ordered to do, or had the rest of the body been at
hand to have poured in their shot continually, the savages had been
effectually routed; for the terror that was among them came principally
from this, that they were killed by the gods with thunder and lightning,
and could see nobody that hurt them. But Will Atkins, staying to load
again, discovered the cheat: some of the savages who were at a distance
spying them, came upon them behind; and though Atkins and his men fired
at them also, two or three times, and killed above twenty, retiring as
fast as they could, yet they wounded Atkins himself, and killed one of
his fellow-Englishmen with their arrows, as they did afterwards one
Spaniard, and one of the Indian slaves who came with the women. This
slave was a most gallant fellow, and fought most desperately, killing
five of them with his own hand, having no weapon but one of the armed
staves and a hatchet.
Our men being thus hard laid at, Atkins wounded, and two other men
killed, retreated to a rising ground in the wood; and the Spaniards,
after firing three volleys upon them, retreated also; for their number
was so great, and they were so desperate, that though above fifty of them
were killed, and more than as many wounded, yet they came on in the teeth
of our men, fearless of danger, and shot their arrows like a cloud; and
it was observed that their wounded men, who were not quite disabled, were
made outrageous by their wounds, and fought like madmen.
When our men retreated, they left the Spaniard and the Englishman that
were killed behind them: and the savages, when they came up to them,
killed them over again in a wretched manner, breaking their arms, legs,
and heads, with their clubs and wooden swords, like true savages; but
finding our men were gone, they did not seem inclined to pursue them, but
drew themselves up in a ring, which is, it seems, their custom, and
shouted twice, in token of their victory; after which, they had the
mortification to see several of their wounded men fall, dying with the
mere loss of blood.
The Spaniard governor having drawn his little body up together upon a
rising ground, Atkins, though he was wounded, would have had them march
and charge again all together at once: but the Spaniard replied,
"Seignior Atkins, you see how their wounded men fight; let them alone
till morning; all the wounded men will be stiff and sore with their
wounds, and faint with the loss of blood; and so we shall have the fewer
to engage." This advice was good: but Will Atkins replied merrily, "That
is true, seignior, and so shall I too; and that is the reason I would go
on while I am warm." "Well, Seignior Atkins," says the Spaniard, "you
have behaved gallantly, and done your part; we will fight for you if you
cannot come on; but I think it best to stay till morning:" so they
waited.
But as it was a clear moonlight night, and they found the savages in
great disorder about their dead and wounded men, and a great noise and
hurry among them where they lay, they afterwards resolved to fall upon
them in the night, especially if they could come to give them but one
volley before they were discovered, which they had a fair opportunity to
do; for one of the Englishmen in whose quarter it was where the fight
began, led them round between the woods and the seaside westward, and
then turning short south, they came so near where the thickest of them
lay, that before they were seen or heard eight of them fired in among
them, and did dreadful execution upon them; in half a minute more eight
others fired after them, pouring in their small shot in such a quantity
that abundance were killed and wounded; and all this while they were not
able to see who hurt them, or which way to fly.
The Spaniards charged again with the utmost expedition, and then divided
themselves into three bodies, and resolved to fall in among them all
together. They had in each body eight persons, that is to say, twenty-
two men and the two women, who, by the way, fought desperately. They
divided the firearms equally in each party, as well as the halberds and
staves. They would have had the women kept back, but they said they were
resolved to die with their husbands. Having thus formed their little
army, they marched out from among the trees, and came up to the teeth of
the enemy, shouting and hallooing as loud as they could; the savages
stood all together, but were in the utmost confusion, hearing the noise
of our men shouting from three quarters together. They would have fought
if they had seen us; for as soon as we came near enough to be seen, some
arrows were shot, and poor old Friday was wounded, though not
dangerously. But our men gave them no time, but running up to them,
fired among them three ways, and then fell in with the butt-ends of their
muskets, their swords, armed staves, and hatchets, and laid about them so
well that, in a word, they set up a dismal screaming and howling, flying
to save their lives which way soever they could.
Our men were tired with the execution, and killed or mortally wounded in
the two fights about one hundred and eighty of them; the rest, being
frightened out of their wits, scoured through the woods and over the
hills, with all the speed that fear and nimble feet could help them to;
and as we did not trouble ourselves much to pursue them, they got all
together to the seaside, where they landed, and where their canoes lay.
But their disaster was not at an end yet; for it blew a terrible storm of
wind that evening from the sea, so that it was impossible for them to go
off; nay, the storm continuing all night, when the tide came up their
canoes were most of them driven by the surge of the sea so high upon the
shore that it required infinite toil to get them off; and some of them
were even dashed to pieces against the beach. Our men, though glad of
their victory, yet got little rest that night; but having refreshed
themselves as well as they could, they resolved to march to that part of
the island where the savages were fled, and see what posture they were
in. This necessarily led them over the place where the fight had been,
and where they found several of the poor creatures not quite dead, and
yet past recovering life; a sight disagreeable enough to generous minds,
for a truly great man though obliged by the law of battle to destroy his
enemy, takes no delight in his misery. However, there was no need to
give any orders in this case; for their own savages, who were their
servants, despatched these poor creatures with their hatchets.
At length they came in view of the place where the more miserable remains
of the savages' army lay, where there appeared about a hundred still;
their posture was generally sitting upon the ground, with their knees up
towards their mouth, and the head put between the two hands, leaning down
upon the knees. When our men came within two musket-shots of them, the
Spaniard governor ordered two muskets to be fired without ball, to alarm
them; this he did, that by their countenance he might know what to
expect, whether they were still in heart to fight, or were so heartily
beaten as to be discouraged, and so he might manage accordingly. This
stratagem took: for as soon as the savages heard the first gun, and saw
the flash of the second, they started up upon their feet in the greatest
consternation imaginable; and as our men advanced swiftly towards them,
they all ran screaming and yelling away, with a kind of howling noise,
which our men did not understand, and had never heard before; and thus
they ran up the hills into the country.
At first our men had much rather the weather had been calm, and they had
all gone away to sea: but they did not then consider that this might
probably have been the occasion of their coming again in such multitudes
as not to be resisted, or, at least, to come so many and so often as
would quite desolate the island, and starve them. Will Atkins,
therefore, who notwithstanding his wound kept always with them, proved
the best counsellor in this case: his advice was, to take the advantage
that offered, and step in between them and their boats, and so deprive
them of the capacity of ever returning any more to plague the island.
They consulted long about this; and some were against it for fear of
making the wretches fly to the woods and live there desperate, and so
they should have them to hunt like wild beasts, be afraid to stir out
about their business, and have their plantations continually rifled, all
their tame goats destroyed, and, in short, be reduced to a life of
continual distress.
Will Atkins told them they had better have to do with a hundred men than
with a hundred nations; that, as they must destroy their boats, so they
must destroy the men, or be all of them destroyed themselves. In a word,
he showed them the necessity of it so plainly that they all came into it;
so they went to work immediately with the boats, and getting some dry
wood together from a dead tree, they tried to set some of them on fire,
but they were so wet that they would not burn; however, the fire so
burned the upper part that it soon made them unfit for use at sea.
When the Indians saw what they were about, some of them came running out
of the woods, and coming as near as they could to our men, kneeled down
and cried, "Oa, Oa, Waramokoa," and some other words of their language,
which none of the others understood anything of; but as they made pitiful
gestures and strange noises, it was easy to understand they begged to
have their boats spared, and that they would be gone, and never come
there again. But our men were now satisfied that they had no way to
preserve themselves, or to save their colony, but effectually to prevent
any of these people from ever going home again; depending upon this, that
if even so much as one of them got back into their country to tell the
story, the colony was undone; so that, letting them know that they should
not have any mercy, they fell to work with their canoes, and destroyed
every one that the storm had not destroyed before; at the sight of which,
the savages raised a hideous cry in the woods, which our people heard
plain enough, after which they ran about the island like distracted men,
so that, in a word, our men did not really know what at first to do with
them. Nor did the Spaniards, with all their prudence, consider that
while they made those people thus desperate, they ought to have kept a
good guard at the same time upon their plantations; for though it is true
they had driven away their cattle, and the Indians did not find out their
main retreat, I mean my old castle at the hill, nor the cave in the
valley, yet they found out my plantation at the bower, and pulled it all
to pieces, and all the fences and planting about it; trod all the corn
under foot, tore up the vines and grapes, being just then almost ripe,
and did our men inestimable damage, though to themselves not one
farthing's worth of service.
Though our men were able to fight them upon all occasions, yet they were
in no condition to pursue them, or hunt them up and down; for as they
were too nimble of foot for our people when they found them single, so
our men durst not go abroad single, for fear of being surrounded with
their numbers. The best was they had no weapons; for though they had
bows, they had no arrows left, nor any materials to make any; nor had
they any edge-tool among them. The extremity and distress they were
reduced to was great, and indeed deplorable; but, at the same time, our
men were also brought to very bad circumstances by them, for though their
retreats were preserved, yet their provision was destroyed, and their
harvest spoiled, and what to do, or which way to turn themselves, they
knew not. The only refuge they had now was the stock of cattle they had
in the valley by the cave, and some little corn which grew there, and the
plantation of the three Englishmen. Will Atkins and his comrades were
now reduced to two; one of them being killed by an arrow, which struck
him on the side of his head, just under the temple, so that he never
spoke more; and it was very remarkable that this was the same barbarous
fellow that cut the poor savage slave with his hatchet, and who
afterwards intended to have murdered the Spaniards.
I looked upon their case to have been worse at this time than mine was at
any time, after I first discovered the grains of barley and rice, and got
into the manner of planting and raising my corn, and my tame cattle; for
now they had, as I may say, a hundred wolves upon the island, which would
devour everything they could come at, yet could be hardly come at
themselves.
When they saw what their circumstances were, the first thing they
concluded was, that they would, if possible, drive the savages up to the
farther part of the island, south-west, that if any more came on shore
they might not find one another; then, that they would daily hunt and
harass them, and kill as many of them as they could come at, till they
had reduced their number; and if they could at last tame them, and bring
them to anything, they would give them corn, and teach them how to plant,
and live upon their daily labour. In order to do this, they so followed
them, and so terrified them with their guns, that in a few days, if any
of them fired a gun at an Indian, if he did not hit him, yet he would
fall down for fear. So dreadfully frightened were they that they kept
out of sight farther and farther; till at last our men followed them, and
almost every day killing or wounding some of them, they kept up in the
woods or hollow places so much, that it reduced them to the utmost misery
for want of food; and many were afterwards found dead in the woods,
without any hurt, absolutely starved to death.
When our men found this, it made their hearts relent, and pity moved
them, especially the generous-minded Spaniard governor; and he proposed,
if possible, to take one of them alive and bring him to understand what
they meant, so far as to be able to act as interpreter, and go among them
and see if they might be brought to some conditions that might be
depended upon, to save their lives and do us no harm.
It was some while before any of them could be taken; but being weak and
half-starved, one of them was at last surprised and made a prisoner. He
was sullen at first, and would neither eat nor drink; but finding himself
kindly used, and victuals given to him, and no violence offered him, he
at last grew tractable, and came to himself. They often brought old
Friday to talk to him, who always told him how kind the others would be
to them all; that they would not only save their lives, but give them
part of the island to live in, provided they would give satisfaction that
they would keep in their own bounds, and not come beyond it to injure or
prejudice others; and that they should have corn given them to plant and
make it grow for their bread, and some bread given them for their present
subsistence; and old Friday bade the fellow go and talk with the rest of
his countrymen, and see what they said to it; assuring them that, if they
did not agree immediately, they should be all destroyed.
The poor wretches, thoroughly humbled, and reduced in number to about
thirty-seven, closed with the proposal at the first offer, and begged to
have some food given them; upon which twelve Spaniards and two
Englishmen, well armed, with three Indian slaves and old Friday, marched
to the place where they were. The three Indian slaves carried them a
large quantity of bread, some rice boiled up to cakes and dried in the
sun, and three live goats; and they were ordered to go to the side of a
hill, where they sat down, ate their provisions very thankfully, and were
the most faithful fellows to their words that could be thought of; for,
except when they came to beg victuals and directions, they never came out
of their bounds; and there they lived when I came to the island and I
went to see them. They had taught them both to plant corn, make bread,
breed tame goats, and milk them: they wanted nothing but wives in order
for them soon to become a nation. They were confined to a neck of land,
surrounded with high rocks behind them, and lying plain towards the sea
before them, on the south-east corner of the island. They had land
enough, and it was very good and fruitful; about a mile and a half broad,
and three or four miles in length. Our men taught them to make wooden
spades, such as I made for myself, and gave among them twelve hatchets
and three or four knives; and there they lived, the most subjected,
innocent creatures that ever were heard of.
After this the colony enjoyed a perfect tranquillity with respect to the
savages, till I came to revisit them, which was about two years after;
not but that, now and then, some canoes of savages came on shore for
their triumphal, unnatural feasts; but as they were of several nations,
and perhaps had never heard of those that came before, or the reason of
it, they did not make any search or inquiry after their countrymen; and
if they had, it would have been very hard to have found them out.
Thus, I think, I have given a full account of all that happened to them
till my return, at least that was worth notice. The Indians were
wonderfully civilised by them, and they frequently went among them; but
they forbid, on pain of death, any one of the Indians coming to them,
because they would not have their settlement betrayed again. One thing
was very remarkable, viz. that they taught the savages to make wicker-
work, or baskets, but they soon outdid their masters: for they made
abundance of ingenious things in wicker-work, particularly baskets,
sieves, bird-cages, cupboards, &c.; as also chairs, stools, beds,
couches, being very ingenious at such work when they were once put in the
way of it.
My coming was a particular relief to these people, because we furnished
them with knives, scissors, spades, shovels, pick-axes, and all things of
that kind which they could want. With the help of those tools they were
so very handy that they came at last to build up their huts or houses
very handsomely, raddling or working it up like basket-work all the way
round. This piece of ingenuity, although it looked very odd, was an
exceeding good fence, as well against heat as against all sorts of
vermin; and our men were so taken with it that they got the Indians to
come and do the like for them; so that when I came to see the two
Englishmen's colonies, they looked at a distance as if they all lived
like bees in a hive.
As for Will Atkins, who was now become a very industrious, useful, and
sober fellow, he had made himself such a tent of basket-work as I believe
was never seen; it was one hundred and twenty paces round on the outside,
as I measured by my steps; the walls were as close worked as a basket, in
panels or squares of thirty-two in number, and very strong, standing
about seven feet high; in the middle was another not above twenty-two
paces round, but built stronger, being octagon in its form, and in the
eight corners stood eight very strong posts; round the top of which he
laid strong pieces, knit together with wooden pins, from which he raised
a pyramid for a handsome roof of eight rafters, joined together very
well, though he had no nails, and only a few iron spikes, which he made
himself, too, out of the old iron that I had left there. Indeed, this
fellow showed abundance of ingenuity in several things which he had no
knowledge of: he made him a forge, with a pair of wooden bellows to blow
the fire; he made himself charcoal for his work; and he formed out of the
iron crows a middling good anvil to hammer upon: in this manner he made
many things, but especially hooks, staples, and spikes, bolts and hinges.
But to return to the house: after he had pitched the roof of his
innermost tent, he worked it up between the rafters with basket-work, so
firm, and thatched that over again so ingeniously with rice-straw, and
over that a large leaf of a tree, which covered the top, that his house
was as dry as if it had been tiled or slated. He owned, indeed, that the
savages had made the basket-work for him. The outer circuit was covered
as a lean-to all round this inner apartment, and long rafters lay from
the thirty-two angles to the top posts of the inner house, being about
twenty feet distant, so that there was a space like a walk within the
outer wicker-wall, and without the inner, near twenty feet wide.
The inner place he partitioned off with the same wickerwork, but much
fairer, and divided into six apartments, so that he had six rooms on a
floor, and out of every one of these there was a door: first into the
entry, or coming into the main tent, another door into the main tent, and
another door into the space or walk that was round it; so that walk was
also divided into six equal parts, which served not only for a retreat,
but to store up any necessaries which the family had occasion for. These
six spaces not taking up the whole circumference, what other apartments
the outer circle had were thus ordered: As soon as you were in at the
door of the outer circle you had a short passage straight before you to
the door of the inner house; but on either side was a wicker partition
and a door in it, by which you went first into a large room or
storehouse, twenty feet wide and about thirty feet long, and through that
into another not quite so long; so that in the outer circle were ten
handsome rooms, six of which were only to be come at through the
apartments of the inner tent, and served as closets or retiring rooms to
the respective chambers of the inner circle; and four large warehouses,
or barns, or what you please to call them, which went through one
another, two on either hand of the passage, that led through the outer
door to the inner tent. Such a piece of basket-work, I believe, was
never seen in the world, nor a house or tent so neatly contrived, much
less so built. In this great bee-hive lived the three families, that is
to say, Will Atkins and his companion; the third was killed, but his wife
remained with three children, and the other two were not at all backward
to give the widow her full share of everything, I mean as to their corn,
milk, grapes, &c., and when they killed a kid, or found a turtle on the
shore; so that they all lived well enough; though it was true they were
not so industrious as the other two, as has been observed already.
One thing, however, cannot be omitted, viz. that as for religion, I do
not know that there was anything of that kind among them; they often,
indeed, put one another in mind that there was a God, by the very common
method of seamen, swearing by His name: nor were their poor ignorant
savage wives much better for having been married to Christians, as we
must call them; for as they knew very little of God themselves, so they
were utterly incapable of entering into any discourse with their wives
about a God, or to talk anything to them concerning religion.
The utmost of all the improvement which I can say the wives had made from
them was, that they had taught them to speak English pretty well; and
most of their children, who were near twenty in all, were taught to speak
English too, from their first learning to speak, though they at first
spoke it in a very broken manner, like their mothers. None of these
children were above six years old when I came thither, for it was not
much above seven years since they had fetched these five savage ladies
over; they had all children, more or less: the mothers were all a good
sort of well-governed, quiet, laborious women, modest and decent, helpful
to one another, mighty observant, and subject to their masters (I cannot
call them husbands), and lacked nothing but to be well instructed in the
Christian religion, and to be legally married; both of which were happily
brought about afterwards by my means, or at least in consequence of my
coming among them.