MASSACHUSETTS UNDER CHARLES II.
Having drawn up what the people of Massachusetts considered a
declaration of their chartered liberties, and thus indemnified
themselves, as it were, by the assertion of democratic principles, John
Norton, “a fine scholar and rigid Puritan,” and the excellent Simon
Bradstreet, were sent over to convince the king of the loyalty of
Massachusetts, and to obtain from him a confirmation of her charter;
letters being at the same time sent to such English statesmen as might
be supposed to be favourable, bespeaking their co-operation.
Charles, though fully aware of the contumacious spirit of Massachusetts,
received, her envoys courteously, and confirmed the charter, burdening
it, however, with restrictions which had no place in those granted to
Connecticut and Rhode Island. He retained for himself “a right to
interfere in the domestic policy of the colony; he demanded a repeal of
all laws derogatory to his authority; the administration of the oath of
allegiance was required; justice was to be administered in his name;
complete toleration given to the Church of England; and the elective
franchise conceded to every inhabitant possessing a competent estate.”
A struggle now commenced between Massachusetts and the government at
home. Instead of obeying the royal requisitions, they resolved only to
adopt measures “conducive to the glory of God and the felicity of his
people,” and these of course were the maintenance of their religious and
democratic independence. The news of this opposition to authority did
not tend to promote a better feeling towards them. It was even reported
that Whalley and Goffe were at the head of an army of the four united
provinces of New England, which were about to throw off their allegiance
to the mother-country. Clarendon wrote, assuring them of “his true love
and friendship, and that they should receive no prejudice in privileges,
charter, government or church discipline;” and yet, before long, ships
of war anchored in Boston harbour, bringing commissioners appointed “to
regulate the affairs of the country according to royal authority and
their own discretion.”
Massachusetts had prepared for their coming. Her charter was entrusted
to the safe keeping of four of her citizens; and a day of solemn fasting
and prayer was appointed, as a means of propitiating Heaven in this
fearful emergency.
The commissioners were Nichols, Carr and Cartwright, together with
Samuel Maverick, a Massachusetts man, son of the first minister of
Dorchester, and who appearing now in this character, was regarded as a
traitor. They came out in the small fleet which we have already
mentioned as destined to the attack of the Dutch possessions in New
Netherlands. At first, Massachusetts objected to take part in this
aggression on the Dutch, but on second thoughts, considering the
position in which they stood with regard to the king, a levy of 200 men
was raised, which, as it happened, was not wanted, New Netherlands
yielding without force of arms.
Taking but little notice of their cold reception at Boston, the
commissioners proceeded with the fleet, touching at Connecticut, where,
the province having obtained in its charter all it desired, they were
well received; and Winthrop, the governor, proceeded with them to New
Amsterdam. New Netherlands having submitted, and Nichols being left
there as governor, the remaining commissioners returned to Boston, after
settling the boundaries of Connecticut and New York.
In the meantime the people of Massachusetts had resolved upon their line
of conduct, which was manly and straightforward. A remonstrance was
drawn up to the king, and even this some of the sturdy democrats thought
more than necessary, their compact being, it was argued, merely
one-fifth of all gold and silver ore; “which was an obligation, any
notice of the king beyond which was only by way of civility.” This
remonstrance stated to the king that the first planters of the colony
obtained a patent which empowered them to govern themselves by men
chosen from themselves, and according to such laws as they should enact.
“A royal donation,” said they, “under the great seal, is the greatest
security that may be had in human affairs;” having, therefore, now for
more than thirty years enjoyed the privilege of government within
themselves, as their undoubted right in the sight of God and man, they
required that the same should be left to them.
As regarded the appointment of a commission, one member of which was a
professed enemy, with power to receive and decide complaints according
to their will and pleasure, the remonstrants state, “that if these
things are to go on, his majesty’s subjects will either be forced to
seek new dwellings, or will sink under intolerable burdens, which would
be a loss to the king in the customs of exported and imported goods.”
And fearing, reasonably enough, that Charles’s rapacious courtiers might
be casting longing looks towards the now prosperous colony, they very
sagaciously observe: “If the aim should be to gratify some particular
gentlemen by livings and revenues here, that will also fail, because of
the poverty of the people. If all the charges of the whole government by
the year were put together, and then doubled or trebled, it would not be
counted by one of these gentlemen a considerable accommodation.
“God knows,” pursue they, “our greatest ambition is to have a quiet life
in a corner of the world. We came not into this wilderness to seek great
things to ourselves; and if any come after us to seek them here, they
will be disappointed. We keep ourselves within our line; a just
dependence upon and subjection to your majesty, according to our
charter, it is far from our hearts to disacknowledge. We would gladly do
anything within our power to purchase the continuance of your favourable
aspect. But it is a great unhappiness to have no testimony of our
loyalty offered but this, to yield up our liberties, which are far
dearer to us than our lives, and for which we have willingly ventured
our lives, and passed through many deaths to obtain.”
The conclusion is characteristic: “It was Job’s excellency, when he sat
as king among his people, that he was a father to the poor. A poor
people, destitute of outward favour, wealth and power, now cry unto
their lord the king. May your majesty regard their cause and maintain
their right; it will stand among the marks of lasting honour to after
generations.”
This remonstrance was not well received in England. The commission was
justified and submission recommended. But the sturdy magistrates would
not yield; and the commissioners, perfect jacks-in-office, were pompous
and over-bearing. Each day increased the mutual dislike of the two
parties. In the interval, however, between the remonstrance being sent
and the answer returned, the commissioners visited Plymouth and Rhode
Island. In Rhode Island all went smoothly. Plymouth, the weakest of all
the colonies, was offered the bribe of an independent charter, for which
she had long been urgent, if she would set an example of compliance, and
allow the king to nominate the governor. But Plymouth was nobly true to
the great principle of democratic liberty; and, to the sound of the
trumpet, to give emphasis to their decision, the representatives
declared, in the face of the commissioners, that, “by authority of the
charter, and in observance of their duty to God, to the king, and their
constituents, they would not suffer any to abet his majesty’s honoured
commissioners in their proceedings.”
“Since you will misconstrue our endeavours,” said the angry
commissioners, “we will lose no more of our labours upon you!” And
leaving Plymouth, they proceeded to the north, to establish the
boundaries and re-assert proprietary claims in New Hampshire and Maine;
and here again they came to issue with Massachusetts, which at once
forbade the towns on the Piscataqua, which had put themselves under her
jurisdiction, to obey the commissioners on their peril.
In Maine a strong party existed favourable to episcopacy and royalty,
and for some little time the commissioners had the ascendancy there; the
officers appointed by Massachusetts, under the jurisdiction of which
Maine was at this time governed, were deposed, and others, selected by
the commissioners, appointed in their stead. Two violent parties were
thus created in the province, which caused after troubles. Leaving
Maine, the commissioners returned to Boston, where they were formally
accused by the inflexible magistrates of having fomented disturbances in
Maine, and their prolonged stay in this contumacious city became
anything but agreeable. They were accustomed to hold every Saturday
evening a social party at a tavern, and this species of entertainment,
on that evening of the week which the strict Puritans regarded as the
commencement of the Sabbath, being contrary to their law, it was
resolved to put an end to. Accordingly a constable was sent to break up
the first which was now held. The constable, however, was soundly beaten
and driven off by Sir Robert Carr and his servant. Another and much more
determined constable, named Mason, now made his appearance, but the
party had in the meantime adjourned to a house over the way, whither he
followed them, and, entering the room where they sate, reproached them
for not setting a better example, and for beating a constable, saying,
it was well for them that they had changed their quarters, otherwise he
would have arrested every one of them. “What!” cried Carr, “arrest the
king’s commissioners!” “Yes,” replied Mason, “the king himself had he
been there.” “Treason! treason!” shouted Maverick; “knave, thou shalt
presently hang for this.”
The next day the commissioners accused the second constable of treason,
and the governor informed Sir Robert Carr that the first constable had
lodged a complaint against him for assault and battery. The affair was
brought before the court, but very little came of the accusations either
way. In the meantime, the commissioners having sent to England a report
of their general proceedings received their recall, together with his
Majesty’s approval of their conduct, and of the conduct of all the
colonies, with the exception of Massachusetts, which was ordered to send
over Bellingham, the governor, Hawthorne, a magistrate of great
influence, and three others, to answer for the charges which were
brought against the colony.
A general court was convened to deliberate on the letter of the king;
the next day was spent in prayer and religious exercises; and on the
third they again met for deliberation, the end of which was a refusal to
comply. “We have already,” replied the court, with dignity, “furnished
our views in writing, so that the ablest persons amongst us could not
declare our case more fully.” Therefore they declined to send over
deputies.
Willing, however, to evince their loyalty, they sent provisions to the
English fleet in the West Indies, and a cargo of masts as a present to
the English navy; “a blessing,” says Pepys, in his diary, “mighty
unexpected, and but for which we must have failed the next year.”
Massachusetts thus in part made her peace with the mother-country;
besides which, England was not just then in a state to compel obedience;
the war with Holland was pressing heavily on the country; and the great
fire and the plague which had just ravaged and depopulated London
brought subjects of serious thought much nearer home, which threw
Massachusetts for several years completely into the background. In the
meantime she prospered.
In 1670, Sir Joshua Child, in his discourse on trade, reported of
Massachusetts, that it is “the most prejudicial plantation of Great
Britain; the frugality, industry and temperance of its people, and the
happiness of their laws and institutions, promise them long life and a
wonderful increase of people, riches, and power.” And the promise was
fulfilled. The navigation act, which pressed so heavily on Virginia, and
which was intended to be enforced with equal severity in Massachusetts,
was disregarded; not a single custom-house was established; on the
contrary, Massachusetts enjoyed all the advantages of free-trade,
“acting as carrier to most of the colonies, sending her ships to various
parts of the world, while ships from Spain, Italy, France and Holland,
might all be seen in Boston harbour. Villages extended; prosperity was
universal; beggary was unknown; theft was rare.”
Such was the condition of Massachusetts in 1670. One internal trouble,
however, she still had, and that was, the growth of schismatics within
her borders. The Baptists, spite of all opposition, were not only
numerous, but had built themselves a meeting-house in Boston; and the
“abominable Quakers” still came, spite of flogging from town to town out
of the colony.
Half a century had now passed since the pilgrim fathers first landed in
the New World, and many of the “old worthies” had departed on a still
further pilgrimage. “Wilson, the sincere though persecuting minister,
who had mounted into a tree in his zeal to preach against Anne
Hutchinson; the mild John Davenport, the founder of New Haven;
Willoughby, the advocate of toleration; Bellingham, and many other
patriarchs, were no more; having closed their lives but with one
regret—that they had not been permitted to witness the fulness of New
England’s glory.”
In the midst of this growing prosperity, a sudden tempest of blood and
misery broke over New England. The colonies were gradually extending
themselves; “yet the entire white population,” says Hildreth, “did not
yet exceed 60,000, occupying the sea-coast, and the lands of the Lower
Connecticut. Lancaster, about forty miles from Boston, was the frontier
town of the Bay settlements; Brookfield, some thirty miles from the
river, was the most eastern town in the Connecticut valley. There
intervened between these townships a great space of rugged country,
wholly unsettled, and occupied by a few straggling Indian tribes.”
Excepting in the instance of the Pequods, the native tribes of New
England remained very much undiminished. The Pocanokets still occupied
the eastern, and the Narragansetts the western, side of Narragansett
Bay. In Connecticut but few natives remained, as the various tribes had
mostly ceded their land to the new-comers. Uncas, the celebrated Mohegan
chief, was now an old man. The Penacooks still occupied the falls of the
Merrimac and the heads of the Piscataqua, their aged sachem,
Passaconaway, having great respect for the whites. “The Indians of Maine
and the region eastward possessed their ancient haunts undisturbed; but
their intercourse was principally with the French settlers. Acadia was
again given up. The New England Indians were occasionally harassed by
war-parties of Mohawks, but by the intervention of Massachusetts peace
had recently been established.”
Earnest endeavours were being made to convert the Indians to
Christianity; Eliot and his devoted coadjutors were labouring to bring
these forlorn children of the forest into the fold of Christ, and
already, as we have related, civilisation and Christianity had been
accepted by considerable numbers. Still those remained who proudly
resisted their influence, among which were the Narragansetts and
Pocanokets already mentioned, lying in the very midst of the English
settlements. These tribes, who boasted of the glory and power of their
forefathers, of their great numbers and vast extent of territory, had
been galled by the gradual and irresistible advance of the white
intruders in their boundaries, until at length they found themselves
confined to the peninsulas formed by the northern and eastern branches
of Narragansett Bay, and began to dread that they should be driven into
the very sea itself.
None felt these humiliating circumstances more painfully than Pometacom,
or king Philip of Mount Hope, as he was called by the colonists, chief
of the Pocanokets, and son of that Massasoit who had welcomed the
pilgrim fathers, and ever shown himself their firm friend. Already, in
1670, suspected of hostile intentions, he had been compelled to give up
his fire-arms, to pay a heavy fine, and acknowledge the supremacy of the
English. By some writers it has been asserted, that Philip had for
several years been labouring to effect a union of the tribes for the
purpose of a war of extermination on the English; but this was never
proved. Others say, so far from having hostile designs, that he received
the news of the first Englishman who was slain with a sorrow which
forced tears from his eyes; and that the ardour of his young men alone
compelled him into the war against his own judgment. Be this as it may,
however, a converted Indian, who, on account of some misdemeanour, had
fled to Philip, returned after a while to his former friends, and
perhaps to ingratiate himself, accused Philip of a murderous plot. In
June of the following year, 1675, this man was killed, and three
Indians, taken up and tried on suspicion of the murder by a jury half
English and half Indians, were condemned and executed. This roused the
whole tribe, and Philip sending away the women and children for
protection to the Narragansetts, the chief of whom was Canonchet, the
son of Miantonomoh, who was burning yet to revenge the death of his
father, plundered some houses near Mount Hope, and shortly after made an
attack on Swanzey, where several people were killed.
Speaking of this war, Bancroft very justly says: “Frenzy prompted the
rising of the Indians. It was but the storm in which the ancient
inhabitants of the land were to vanish away. They rose without hope, and
they fought without mercy. For them as a nation there was no to-morrow.”
The whole country was in a state of alarm, and the troops of Plymouth
and Boston marched into the enemies’ country, and advancing to Mount
Hope, the residence of Philip, who had retreated with his warriors or
their approach, several Indians were killed. As yet, the Narragansetts
were quiet; but it being suspected that they favoured the designs of
Philip, the English forces proceeded into their territory and compelled
Canonchet to sign a treaty of peace.
And not alone was the public mind agitated by fears of the Indians;
other causes of terror prevailed. The aurora borealis lit up the
midnight sky; the moon was eclipsed; strange and awful sights were seen
in the heavens; Indian bows, and scalps and armies careering with
lightning speed; the moaning of the wind and the howling of the wolves
became also prophetic of dire calamity. The awe-stricken people thought
of the “signs in the sun, and the moon, and the stars; and upon earth
distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;
men’s hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things
which are coming on the earth.”
The approaching war, of which these signs were supposed to be the
prognostics, caused the austere Puritans to consult through their elders
as to the sins for which these calamities were the judgment; and a long
list was drawn up, among others, “neglect in the religious training of
their children; pride in dress; long and curled hair worn by the men;
the uncovered bosoms of the women and the wearing of superfluous
ribbons; toleration of the Quakers; hurry in leaving the meeting-houses;
cursing, swearing and drinking; and the riding from town to town of
unmarried men and women, on pretence of attending lectures”—these, and
other such things, were considered to be the cause of God’s anger, and
still greater austerity of life was required. Meantime, the Pocanokets
driven from Mount Hope, Philip and his warriors were fugitives among the
Nipmucks, a tribe in the interior of Massachusetts; the tribes in
Connecticut remained faithful, and the Narragansetts were quiet;
nevertheless, the colonists were on the alert, and in November a
combined force of 1,500 men was raised to carry on the war against the
Indians, which was now pronounced to be “just and necessary.”
“The war on the part of the Indians,” says Bancroft, “was one of
ambushes and surprises. They never once met the English in open field.
They were secret as beasts of prey, skilful marksmen and in part
provided with fire-arms, fleet of foot, conversant with all the paths of
the forest, patient of fatigue and burning for vengeance on an enemy
whom at the same time they feared and hated. By the rapidity of their
descent, they seemed omnipresent among the scattered villages, which
they ravaged like a passing storm. The forest that protected their
ambush secured their retreat; they hung upon the skirts of the English
villages ‘like the lightning on the edge of the cloud.’”
The English, unwilling that Philip should be sheltered among the
Nipmucks, whom they regarded as their allies, sent a force into their
territory to remonstrate with them; but the Indians, lying in ambush,
fell upon them near the appointed place, and killed most of them. The
remainder fled to the village of Brookfield, where a house was hastily
fortified, and they stood a siege for two days, when the Indians set
fire to the house; but the flames were extinguished by violent and
sudden rain, and soon after a party coming to the relief of the besieged
the Indians fled. A few days later the village of Deerfield was burned;
and on the same day, “it being Sunday, the town of Hadley was attacked
at the time of public worship, and the people thrown into the utmost
confusion, when on a sudden there appeared in the midst of the
affrighted inhabitants a man of venerable aspect, who put himself at
their head, and led them to the onset.” The army was completely routed,
but the stranger, who was almost supposed to be an angel from heaven,
had disappeared. It was the regicide General Goffe, who was at that time
concealed in the town. About the same time, Captain Beers and his
company were cut off at Deerfield by a brook, which, running red with
their blood, is called to this day “the Bloody Brook.” Deerfield was a
devoted place; the harvests were gathered in under force of arms, and,
says the old narrative, “on September 18th, that most fatal day, the
saddest that ever befell New England, as the company under Captain
Lathrop were marching along with the carts, they were suddenly set upon,
and ninety of them killed, not above seven or eight escaping;” and thus
fell “that choice company of young men, the very flower of the county of
Essex; all culled out of the towns belonging to that county; their dear
relations at home mourning for them, like Rachel for her children.” The
village of Springfield was burned; the more distant settlements were
deserted, and all “the pleasant residences which had been won by hard
toil in the desert, the stations of civilisation in the wilderness, were
laid waste.”
A quick alarm ran through those sylvan bowers,
All the wild tumult of approaching war:
And in the deep hush of the midnight hours
The dismal war-whoop sounded from afar,
Rousing the slumberers up with its unearthly jar.
And with the morning’s light was sadly traced,
Where those wild dwellers of the woods had gone;
Behind them lay a black and smoking waste,
As carrying fire and terror they went on.
Winter was now at hand and that season was unfavourable to Indian
warfare, the leafless trees affording them no longer ambush, while the
hardened surface of the swamps, which were the strongholds of the
savage, rendered them accessible to their enemies. It was now resolved
to include the Narragansetts in the list of enemies, and accordingly,
just before Christmas, 1,000 men, headed by Josiah Winslow, entered the
Narragansett country, then covered with deep snow. At length they
reached one of the ancient fastnesses of the Indians, where the town of
South Kingstone now stands. “It was built on a rising ground,” says
Hildreth, “in the morass, a sort of island of five or six acres,
fortified by a palisade, and surrounded by a close hedge. There was but
one entrance, quite narrow, defended by a tree thrown across it, with a
block-house of logs in front and another at the back. It was Lord’s-day,
but that did not hinder the attack.” Desperate was the onset, and
equally desperate the defence; victory for some time was doubtful, but
at length, after many lives were lost on both sides, the English became
masters of the fort. The wigwams, amounting to 600 in number, were
fired, and “all the horrors of the Pequod massacre renewed.” “Most of
their provisions, as well as their dwellings, were consumed with fire,”
says the old narrative, “and those that were left alive were forced to
hide themselves in a cedar swamp not far off, where they had nothing to
defend themselves from the cold but boughs of spruce and pine-trees.”
The English were masters of the place, and after burning all they could
set fire to, they retired with their dead and wounded, amounting to
between 200 and 300. This terrible contest is known as the “Swamp
Fight.”
“Our victory,” continues the chronicle, which reads like the history of
some wholesale slaughter of the heathen by the children of Israel, “was
more considerable than we at first expected. The enemy lost many of
their principal fighting men, their provisions also by the burning of
their wigwams and stores, so that it was the cause of their total ruin,
they being driven away from their habitations, and put by from planting
for the next year. Seven hundred fighting men of the Indians died that
day, besides 300 that died of their wounds. The number of old men, women
and children that perished either by fire, or that were starved with
hunger and cold, none can tell.”
“Now, indeed,” may we say with Bancroft, “was the cup of misery full for
the red men. Without shelter and without food, they hid themselves in
the cedar swamp. They prowled the forests and pawed up the snow for
ground-nuts and acorns; they ate the remnants of horse-flesh; they sunk
down and died from feebleness and want of food.
“The spirit of Canonchet did not droop under the disasters of his tribe.
‘We will fight to the last man,’ said he, ‘rather than become servants
to the English.’ In April, however, he was taken. His life was offered
him if he would procure a treaty of peace. He refused with disdain; and
being condemned to death, remarked, ‘I like it well; I shall die before
my heart grows soft—before I speak anything unworthy of myself.’” Two
Indians, in the employ of the English, shot him, and his head was sent
to Hartford.
The scattered remains of the Indians in the meantime pursued the work of
vengeance. “We will fight,” said they, “these twenty years; you have
houses, barns and corn; we have nothing to lose.” And Lancaster was
burned, and forty of its inhabitants killed and taken prisoners, among
the rest Mary Rolandson, the wife of the minister, whose narrative of
the fearful event is still preserved. The towns of Medfield, Groton,
Marlborough and Weymouth, only eighteen miles from Boston, were all laid
in ashes; the neighbourhood of the Narragansett country was deserted:
the towns of Rhode Island, though they had taken no part in the war,
suffered; Warwick was burned, and Providence partially destroyed. Roger
Williams, now an aged man, whose influence had formerly been so great
with the Narragansetts, accepted a captain’s commission for the defence
of Providence, and another governor was chosen in the place of
Coddington, whose peaceable Quaker principles would not allow him to
fight even in a war of defence.
The attack on the Narragansetts, who had always been faithful allies of
the English, was as unjustifiable as it was impolitic. The whole country
was now filled with hostile Indians; security was at an end; every
forest-path was an ambush for the day-light assault, and the silence of
night was broken by the fearful war-whoop, which was followed by murder
and fire. The sufferings of the Indians, also, were extreme; they had no
provisions, and their ammunition was exhausted. Vain were all their
attempts now to retrieve their circumstances; the English attacked them
even while attempting to plant corn, or to fish for a subsistence.
The English pursued the war with unabated determination, and, in the
spring of 1676, were in most cases victorious. Jealousies had also
arisen among the tribes themselves, and many submitted, while others
fled to the north. Philip was like a hunted wild beast; he fled from one
tribe to another, endeavouring still to rouse them against the whites.
In vain had the Mohawks urged upon him submission; he gave the warrior
his death-blow who spoke of peace; and now, twelve months after the war
broke out, he returned to Mount Hope, which was still held by him, by
his relative Witamo, the squaw-sachem of Pocasset. Philip was watched
narrowly by Captain Church, who at length surprised his camp, killed a
considerable number of his people, and took captive his wife and son.
The elders deliberated long on the fate of this child, the youngest
branch of the family of the friendly Massasoit; many were for putting
him to death, but finally he was sold as a slave in Bermuda, which was
the hapless fate of many another noble son of the forest. Witamo shared
the calamities of Philip; her people were killed, and she herself
drowned while crossing a river. Her body, however, was recovered, and
the head, being cut off, was set upon a pole, “amid the scoffs and jeers
of the soldiers, and the tears and lamentations of the Indians.”
Philip still lurked in the swamps, where he was now beset on all hands,
and at length, when endeavouring to make his escape, was shot through
the heart by one of his own nation who had deserted to the English. His
dead body was beheaded and quartered. One of his hands was given to the
Indian who shot him, and five days afterwards, on the day appointed to
be kept as “a solemn thanksgiving to God,” his head was carried in
triumph to Plymouth.
Through this terrible war the Mohegans had remained faithful to the
English, and no blood had been shed in happy Connecticut. The war was at
an end, but vengeance was not yet appeased. Many chiefs, noted warriors
of their respective tribes, were executed at Boston and Plymouth; 200
Indians, who had on one occasion come to treat of peace, were
treacherously taken prisoners and carried to Boston, where some were
hanged, and others sold as slaves. A bloodthirsty and remorseless spirit
governed the whole colony. The captives who fell to the share of the
Rhode Islanders were treated with somewhat more mercy; they were
distributed among the different families as servants or slaves. To Roger
Williams a boy was thus apportioned.
The losses of the English are thus estimated: twelve or thirteen towns
destroyed; 600 men, chiefly young men, killed; 600 houses burned. Of the
able-bodied men of the colony one in twenty had fallen, and one family
in twenty had been burnt out. Scarcely a family existed which had not
lost a member. Peace, however, was now generally established; though in
Maine and New Hampshire the tribes remained hostile for yet two years.
The Pocanokets and the Narragansetts had shared the fate of the Pequods;
the country of the Pocanokets was annexed to Plymouth, though sixty
years afterwards it was transferred to Rhode Island; the Narragansett
territory was for long a disputed possession. The few Indians of these
tribes who still remained, removed to the west and north. They were no
longer a nation.
After this the work of conversion went on with renewed vigour. A second
edition of the Indian Old Testament, which, as if an evidence of the
spirit which influenced the whites towards them, was more in request
than the New, was published; but at this day not an individual remains
to whom it can be useful.
The converted or praying Indians, as they were called, suffered much; by
their forest brethren they were hated as Christians, by the Christians
suspected as Indians. Four only, of their fourteen towns, remained to
them; but Eliot continued to be the “faithful shepherd of these, his
poor, despised flock in the wilderness,” and braved many dangers and
hardships on their account.
Various romantic incidents occurred in this war, two of which we will
relate. The escape of Anne Brackett, the grand-daughter of George
Cleves, the first settler of Portland, was the marvel of that day. “Her
family had been taken captive at the sack of Falmouth. When her captors
hastened forward to further ravages on the Kennebec, she was able to
loiter behind, and, discovering the wreck of a birchen bark, she
repaired it by means of needle and thread, which she found in a deserted
house. Then with her husband, a negro servant and her infant child, she
confided herself to the sea in this frail bark, which was like a feather
on the waves. And thus she crossed Casco Bay and arrived at Black Point,
where she feared to find Indians. Indians however there were none, but
to her joy a vessel from Piscataqua, on board which she was received,
together with those so dear to her, whose lives she had saved.”
Again, on one occasion, “some fugitive Indians who had taken refuge in
Canada descended the Connecticut, and falling upon a party assembled at
Hadley, at a house-raising, carried off twenty persons. The husbands of
two of the female captives proceeded to Canada, by way of Albany and
Lakes George and Champlain, guided by a Mohawk Indian—the first recorded
journey made in this direction—and by the intervention of the French
government the captives were redeemed.”