THE INDIANS VICTORIOUS.
1677
Spies.--Attack upon Medfield.--Suspicions.--Energy of Philip.--An
unpleasant surprise.--A conflagration.--The Indians retire.--Philip's
letter.--Indian warfare.--An ambuscade.--A decoy.--The town
burned.--Monoco's threats.--Monoco hung.--Destruction of Warwick.--Alarm
from the Indians.--Exultation of the Indians.--Defeat of the Plymouth
army.--Nanuntenoo.--Plan of action.--A stratagem, and its
success.--Defeat certain.--Heroic defense.--An escape.--Escape of the
Indians.--Their mode of accomplishing it.--Terrible slaughter.--Storming
of Providence.--Roger Williams.--Nanuntenoo's reply.--Cowardly
sentinels.--Alarm of the chief.--Flight of Nanuntenoo.--His
capture.--Young America rebuked.--Execution of the sachem.--Statement
of Cotton Mather.--Character of Nanuntenoo.--Peril of the
settlers.--Mutual disasters.--Philip's affection for Taunton.--A
family save a town.--Captain Wadsworth.--Attempt to save Sudbury.--The
woods fired.--The English conquered.--A monument erected.--Delight
in torture.--Mode of torture.--Attack upon Scituate.--Heroism of
Mrs. Ewing.--Attack upon Bridgewater.--Valor of the English
triumphs.--Deplorable condition of the English.--Sudden attack.--The
Indians vanquished.--Escape of two boys.--A surprise party.--Its perfect
success.--Slaughter of the Indians.--Burning the wigwams.--Refreshment
after battle.--Alarm of the party.--Terrible peril.--Bravery of Captain
Holyoke.--Heroic action.--Dawn of hope.--Escape.--Rage of the
Indians.--Assault upon Hatfield.--Unexpected assistance.--Heroism.--A
sudden appearance.--Attack upon Hadley.--Superstition.--General
Goffe.--Old tradition.--Union of forces.--Philip's stratagem.--It
recoils.--Hostility of the Mohawks.--Turn of the tide.--Dismay of
the Indians.--Extract from Cotton Mather.--Search for King Philip.--An
interview with the Indians.--The Indians desire peace.--Interview with
the governor.--Captain Church visits Awashonks.--A perilous
interview.--Rage of a warrior.--Proposals for an alliance.--Embassadors
to the governor.--The journey interrupted.--Awashonks visits Major
Bradford.--Proposals for an alliance.--Indian festivities.--Sagacious
care.--Captain Church to visit the queen.--A luxurious supper.--Bill
of fare.--A huge bonfire.--Indian dance.--Oath of fidelity.--Selection
of warriors.--Grief of Philip.--Undying resolution.--Capture of
Indians.--Continued success.--Approach of Philip's army.--Preparations
for his reception.--He is received by Bridgewater lads.--Narrow escape
of Philip.--His wife and child captured.--The Saconets continue the
pursuit.--Treachery of the Indians.--The reconnoitering
parties.--Description by Captain Church.--Captain Church's
adventures.--Capture of prisoners.--The captives make merry in the
pound.
The Massachusetts government now employed two friendly Indians to act
as spies. With consummate cunning they mingled with the hostile
Indians, and made a faithful report to their employers of all the
anticipated movements respecting which they could obtain any
information.
Eleven days after the destruction of Lancaster, on the 21st of
February, the Indians made an attack upon Medfield. This was a very
bold measure. The town was but seventeen miles from Boston. Several
garrison houses had been erected, in which all the inhabitants could
take refuge in case of alarm. Two hundred soldiers were stationed in
the town, and sentinels kept a very careful watch. On the Sabbath, as
the people were returning from public worship, one or two Indians were
seen on the neighboring hills, which led the people to suspect that an
assault was contemplated. The night was moonless, starless, and of
Egyptian darkness. The Indians, perfectly acquainted with the
location of every building and every inch of the ground, crept
noiselessly, three hundred in number, each to his appointed post. They
spread themselves over all parts of the town, skulking behind every
fence, and rock, and tree. They concealed themselves in orchards,
sheds, and barns. King Philip himself was with them, guiding, with
amazing skill and energy, all the measures for the attack. Not a
voice, or a footfall, or the rustling of a twig was heard, as the
savages stood in immovable and breathless silence, waiting the signal
for the onset. The torch was ready to be lighted; the musket loaded
and primed; the knife and tomahawk sharp and gleaming.
At the earliest dawn of day one shrill war-whoop was heard, clear and
piercing. It drew forth the instant response of three hundred voices
in unearthly yells. Men, women, and children sprang from their beds in
a phrensy of terror, and, rushing in their night-clothes from their
homes, endeavored to reach the garrison houses. But the leaping savage
was every where with his torch, and soon the blaze of fifty houses and
barns shed its lurid light over the dark morning. Fortunately, many of
the inhabitants were in the garrisons. Of those who were not, but few
escaped. The bullet and the tomahawk speedily did their work, and but
a few moments elapsed ere fifty men, women, and children were
weltering in blood. Though they promptly laid one half of the town in
ashes, the garrison houses were too strong for them to take. During
the progress of this awful tragedy King Philip was seen mounted on a
splendid black horse, leaping the fences, inspiriting his warriors,
and exulting in the havoc he was accomplishing.
At length the soldiers, who were scattered in different parts of the
town, began gradually to combine their strength, and the savages,
learning that re-enforcements were also approaching from Sudbury, were
compelled to retire. They retreated across a bridge in the southwest
part of the town, in the direction of Medway, keeping up a resolute
firing upon their foes who pursued them. Having passed the stream,
they set fire to the bridge to cut off pursuit. In exultation over
their victory, Philip wrote, probably by the hand of some Christian
Indian, the following letter to his enemies, which he attached to one
of the charred and smouldering posts of the bridge.
"Know by this paper that the Indians that thou hast provoked
to wrath and anger will war this twenty-one years, if you
will. There are many Indians yet. We come three hundred at
this time. You must consider the Indians lose nothing but
their life. You must lose your fair houses and cattle."
The Indians now wandered about in comparatively small bands, making
attacks wherever they thought that there was any chance of success,
and marking their path with flames and blood. Without a moment's
warning, and with hideous yells, they would dash from the forest upon
the lonely settlements, and as suddenly retreat before the least
effectual show of resistance. Weymouth, within eleven miles of Boston,
was assailed, and several houses and barns burnt. They ventured even
into the town of Plymouth, setting fire to a house and killing eleven
persons.
On the 13th of March, the Indians, in a strong party four hundred in
number, made an attack upon Groton. The inhabitants, alarmed by the
fate of Lancaster, had retreated into five garrison houses. Four of
these houses were within musket-shot of each other, but one was more
than a mile distant from the rest. The savages very adroitly formed,
in the night, two ambuscades, one before and one behind the four
united garrisons. Early in the morning they sent a small party of
Indians to show themselves upon a hill as a decoy. The inhabitants,
supposing that the Indians, unaware of their preparations for
resistance, had come in small numbers, very imprudently left two of
the garrisons and pursued them. The Indians retreated with
precipitation. The English eagerly pursued, when suddenly the party in
ambush rose and poured a deadly fire upon them. In the mean time, the
other party in ambush in rear of the garrison rushed to the palisades
to cut off the retreat of the English. Covered, however, by the guns
of the two other garrisons, they succeeded in regaining shelter. A
similar attempt was made to destroy the solitary garrison, but it was
alike unsuccessful. The Indians, however, had the whole town except
the garrisons to themselves. They burned to the ground forty
dwelling-houses, the church, and all the barns and out-houses. The
cattle were fortunately saved, being inclosed within palisades under
the protection of the garrisons.
A notorious Nipmuck chief, Monoco, called by the English _One-eyed
John_, led this expedition. While the church was in flames, Monoco
shouted to the men in the garrison, assailing them with every variety
of Indian vituperative abuse. He had been so much with the English
that he understood their language very well.
"What will you do for a place to pray in," said he, "now that we have
burned your meeting-house? We will burn Chelmsford, Concord,
Watertown, Cambridge, Charlestown, Roxbury, and Boston. I have four
hundred and eighty warriors with me; we will show you what we will
do."
But a few months after this Monoco was taken prisoner, led through the
streets of Boston with a rope round his neck, and hanged at the town's
end.
On the 17th of March, Warwick, in Rhode Island, was almost entirely
destroyed. The next day another band of Indians attacked Northampton,
on the Connecticut. But by this time most of the towns had fortified
themselves with palisades and garrison houses. The Indians, after a
fierce conflict, were repelled from Northampton with a loss of eleven
men, while the English lost but three.
On the Sabbath of the 26th of March, as the people of Marlborough
were assembled at public worship, the alarming cry was shouted in at
the door, "The Indians! the Indians!" An indescribable scene of
confusion instantly ensued, as the whole congregation rushed out to
seek shelter in their garrison. The terror and confusion were awfully
increased by a volley of bullets, which the Indians, as they came
rushing like demons over the plain, poured in upon the flying
congregation. Fortunately, the savages were at such a distance that
none were wounded excepting one man, who was carrying an aged and
infirm woman. His arm was broken by a ball. All, however, succeeded in
gaining the garrison house, which was near at hand. The meeting-house
and most of the dwelling-houses were burned. The orchards were cut
down, and all other ruin perpetrated which savage ingenuity could
devise.
The Indians, exultant with success, encamped that night in the woods
not far from Marlborough, and kept the forest awake with the uproar of
their barbarian wassail. The colonists immediately assembled a small
band of brave men, fell upon them by surprise in the midst of their
carousals, shot forty and dispersed the rest.
On the same day in which Marlborough was destroyed, a very disastrous
defeat befell a party of soldiers belonging to the old Plymouth
colony. Nanuntenoo, son of the renowned Miantunnomah, was now the head
chief of the Narragansets. He was fired with a terrible spirit of
revenge against the English, and could not forget the swamp fight in
which so many of his bravest warriors had perished, and where hundreds
of his women and children had been cut to pieces and burned to ashes
in their wigwams. He himself had taken a large share in this fierce
fight, and with difficulty escaped. This chieftain, a man of great
intrepidity and sagacity, had gathered a force of nearly two thousand
Indians upon the banks of the Pawtucket River, within the limits of
the present town of Seekonk. They were preparing for an overwhelming
attack upon the town of Plymouth.
The colonists, by no means aware of the formidableness of the force
assembled, dispatched Captain Pierce from Scituate with seventy men,
fifty of whom were English and twenty Indians, to break up the
encampment of the savages. Nanuntenoo, informed of their movements,
prepared with great strategetic skill to meet them. He concealed a
large portion of his force in ambush on the western side of the river;
another body of warriors he secreted in the forest on the eastern
banks. As Captain Pierce approached the stream, a small party of
Indians, as a decoy, showed themselves on the western side, and
immediately retreated, as if surprised and alarmed. The colonists
eagerly crossed the stream and pursued them.
The stratagem of the wily savage was thus perfectly successful. The
colonists had advanced but a few rods from the banks, near Pawtucket
Falls, when the Indians, several hundreds in number, rose from their
ambush, and rushed like an avalanche upon them. With bravery almost
unparalleled in Indian warfare, they sought no covert, but rushed upon
their foes in the open field face to face. They knew that the
colonists were now drawn into a trap from which there was no possible
escape. As soon as the battle commenced, the Indians who were in the
rear, on the eastern bank of the narrow stream, sprang up from their
ambush, and, crowding the shore, cut off all hope of retreat, and
commenced a heavy fire upon their foe. Utter defeat was now certain.
The only choice was between instantaneous death by the bullet or
death by lingering torture. Captain Pierce was a valiant man, and
instantly adopted his heroic resolve. He formed his men in a circle,
back to back, and with a few words inspired them with his own
determination to sell his life as dearly as possible. Thus they
continued the fight until nearly every one of the colonial party was
slain. But one white man escaped, and he through the singular sagacity
of one of the friendly Indians.
Captain Pierce soon fell, having his thigh bone shattered by a bullet.
A noble Indian by the name of Amos would not desert him; he stood
firmly by his side, loading and firing, while his comrades fell
thickly around him. When nearly all his friends had fallen, and the
survivors were mingled with their foes in the smoke and confusion of
the fight, he observed that all the hostile Indians had painted their
faces black. Wetting some gunpowder, he smeared his own face so as to
resemble the adverse party; then, giving the hint to an Englishman, he
pretended to pursue him with an uplifted tomahawk. The Englishman
threw down his gun and fled, but a few steps in advance of his
pursuer. The Narragansets, seeing that the Indian could not fail to
overtake and dispatch the unarmed fugitive, did not interfere. Thus
they entered the forest, and both escaped.
A friendly Indian, pursued by one of Nanuntenoo's men, took shelter
behind the roots of a fallen tree. The Indian who had pursued him
waited, with his gun cocked and primed, for the fugitive to start
again from his retreat, knowing that he would not dare to remain there
long, when hundreds of Indians were almost surrounding him. The roots
of the tree, newly-turned up, contained a large quantity of adhering
earth, which entirely covered the fugitive from view. Cautiously he
bored a small hole through the earth, took deliberate aim at his
pursuer, shot him down, and then escaped.
Another of the Indian allies, in his flight, took refuge behind a
large rock. This was a perfect shelter for a moment, but certain death
awaited him in the end. His pursuer, with loaded musket, sure of his
victim, quietly waited to see him start again. In this deplorable
condition the beleaguered Indian thought of the following shrewd
expedient. Putting his cap upon his gun, he raised it very gradually
above the rock, as if he were endeavoring to peep over to discover the
situation of his enemy. The sharp-eyed Narraganset instantly leveled
his gun and sent a bullet through the cap, and, as he supposed,
through the head of his foe. The fugitive sprang from his covert, and,
advancing toward his unarmed enemy, shot him dead. Thus was escape
effected. With the exception of one Englishman and five or six
friendly Indians, all the rest were cut down. The wounded were
reserved for the horrible doom of torture.
The Indians were exceedingly elated by this signal victory, and their
shouts of exultation were loud and long-repeated. The next morning,
with yells of triumph, they crossed the river, made a rush upon
Seekonk, and burned seventy buildings. The next day they stormed
Providence, and burned thirty houses. These devastations, however,
were not accompanied with much bloodshed, as most of the inhabitants
of Providence and of Seekonk had previously fled to the island of
Rhode Island for protection.
The heroic Roger Williams, however, remained in Providence. He had
ever been the firm friend of the Indians, and was well acquainted with
the leading chiefs in this war-party. The Indians, while setting fire
to the rest of the town, left his person and property unharmed.
Flushed with success, they assured him that they were confident of
the entire conquest of the country, and of the utter extermination of
the English. Mr. Williams reproached them with their cruelties, and
told them that Massachusetts could raise ten thousand men, and that
even were the Indians to destroy them all, Old England could send over
an equal number every year until the Indians were conquered.
Nanuntenoo proudly and generously replied,
"We shall be ready for them. But you, Mr. Williams, shall never be
injured, for you are a good man, and have been kind to us."
Nanuntenoo had about fifteen hundred warriors under his command.
Thinking that the English were very effectually driven from the region
of Seekonk, he very imprudently took but thirty men and went to that
vicinity, hoping to obtain some seed-corn to plant the fields upon the
Connecticut from which the English had been expelled. But the English,
alarmed by the ravages which the Indians were committing in this
region, sent a force consisting of forty-seven Englishmen and eighty
Indians to scour the country. Most of the Indians were Mohegans, under
the command of Oneco, a son of Uncas.
As this force was approaching Seekonk they encountered two Indians
with their squaws. They instantly shot the Indians and took the squaws
captive. Their prisoners informed them that Nanuntenoo was in a wigwam
at a short distance, with but seven Indians around him. His hut was
erected at the bottom of a hill, upon the brow of which he had
stationed two sentinels. These cowardly savages, when they saw the
English approaching in such force, precipitately fled, without giving
their chieftain any warning. The sachem, from his wigwam, saw their
flight, and sent a third man to the hill-top to ascertain the cause.
As soon as he arrived upon the brow of the hill he saw the glittering
array of more than a hundred men almost directly upon him. Appalled by
the sight, he also fled like his predecessors. Nanuntenoo, amazed by
this conduct, dispatched two more to solve the mystery. These last
proved more faithful to their trust. They came running back in
breathless haste, shouting, "_The English are upon you._"
Not a moment was to be lost in deliberation. The enemy was already in
sight. Nanuntenoo leaped from his wigwam, and, with the agility of a
deer, bounded over the ground in a hopeless attempt to escape. Nearly
the whole army, English and Indians, like hounds in full cry, eagerly
pressed the chase.
With amazing speed, the tall, athletic sachem fled along the bank of
the river, seeking a place to ford the stream. In his rapid flight he
threw off his blanket, his silver-laced coat, and his belt of wampum,
so that nothing remained to obstruct his sinewy and finely-moulded
limbs. A Mohegan Indian was in advance of all the rest of the company
in the pursuit. Nanuntenoo plunged into the narrow stream to cross.
His foot slipped upon a stone, and he fell, immersing his gun in the
water. This calamity so disheartened him that he lost all his
strength. His swift-footed pursuer, Monopoide, was immediately upon
him, and grasped him almost as soon as he reached the opposite shore.
The naked and unarmed chief could make no resistance, and, with
stoicism characteristic of his race, submitted to his fate.
Nanuntenoo was a man of majestic stature, and of bearing as lofty as
if he had been trained in the most haughty of European courts. A young
Englishman, but twenty-one years of age, Robert Staunton, following
Monopoide, was the first one who came up to the Narraganset chieftain
after his capture. Young Staunton, in the pert spirit of Young
America, ventured to question the proud monarch of the Narragansets.
Nanuntenoo, looking disdainfully upon his youthful face, after a short
silence, said,
"You are too much of a child--you do not understand matters of war.
Let your chief come; him I will answer."
He was offered life upon condition that he would submit to the
English, and deliver up to them all the Wampanoags in his territory.
"Let me hear no more of this," he replied, nobly. "I will not
surrender a Wampanoag, nor the paring of a Wampanoag's nail."
He was taken to Stonington, where he was sentenced to be shot. When
informed of his doom, he replied, in the spirit of an old Roman,
"I like it well. I shall die before my heart is soft, or before I have
said any thing unworthy of myself."
He was shot by one of the Indians who were in alliance with the
English; his head was cut off by them, and his body quartered and
burned. The Indians who aided the colonists were always eager for any
work of blood, and considered it a great privilege to enjoy the
pleasures of executioners. They often implored permission to torture
their enemies, and several times the English, to their shame be it
recorded, allowed them to do so. In this case, "The mighty sachem of
Narraganset," writes Cotton Mather, "the English wisely delivered unto
their tawny auxiliaries for them to cut off his head, that so the
alienation between them and the wretches in hostility against us might
become incurable."
His head, a ghastly trophy of victory, was sent by the Mohegans to the
Common Council at Hartford, in token of their love and fidelity to the
English. The spirit of the times may be inferred from the following
comments upon this transaction in the narrative written by Hubbard:
"This was the confusion of that damned wretch that had often opened
his mouth to blaspheme the name of the living God and those that made
profession thereof."
We can not take leave of Nanuntenoo without a tribute of respect to
his heroic and noble character. "His refusal," writes Francis Baylies,
"to betray the Wampanoags who had sought his protection is another
evidence of his lofty and generous spirit, and his whole conduct after
his capture was such that surely, at this period, we may be allowed to
lament the unhappy fate of this noble Indian without incurring any
imputation for want of patriotism."
The inhabitants of New London, Norwich, and Stonington, being in great
peril in consequence of their near vicinity to the enemy, raised
several parties of volunteers and ranged the country. They succeeded
in these expeditions in killing two hundred and thirty-nine of the
enemy without incurring the loss of a single man. As most of the
inhabitants of the towns had found it necessary to take refuge in
garrison houses, prowling bands of Indians experienced but little
difficulty in setting fire to the abandoned dwellings and barns, and
the sky was every night illumined with conflagrations.
On the ninth of April a small party made an attack upon Bridgewater.
They plundered several houses, and were commencing the conflagration,
when the inhabitants sallied forth and put them to flight. It is said
that Philip had given orders that the town of Taunton should be spared
until all the other towns in the colony were destroyed. A family by
the name of Leonard resided in Taunton, where they had erected the
first forge which was established in the English colonies. Philip,
though his usual residence was at Mount Hope, had a favorite summer
resort at a place called Fowling Pond, then within the limits of
Taunton, but now included in the town of Raynham. In these excursions
he had become acquainted with the Leonards. They had treated him and
his followers with uniform kindness, repairing their guns, and
supplying them with such tools as the Indians highly prized. Philip
had become exceedingly attached to this family, and in gratitude, at
the commencement of the war, had given the strictest orders that the
Indians should never injure a Leonard. Apprehending that in a general
assault upon the town his friends the Leonards might be exposed to
danger, he spread the shield of his generous protection over the whole
place. This act certainly develops a character of more than ordinary
magnanimity.
[Illustration: THE DESTRUCTION OF SUDBURY.]
On the 18th of April an immense band of savages, five hundred in number,
made an impetuous assault upon Sudbury. The inhabitants, warned of their
approach, had abandoned their homes and taken refuge in their garrisons.
The savages set fire to several of the dwellings, and were dancing
exultingly around the flames, when a small band of soldiers from
Watertown came to the rescue, and the inmates of the garrison,
sallying forth, joined them, and drove the Indians across the river.
Captain Wadsworth, from Boston, chanced to be in the vicinity with
about seventy men. Hearing of the extreme peril of Sudbury, although
he had marched all the day and all the night before, and his men were
exhausted with fatigue, he instantly commenced his march for that
place. Painfully toiling on through the night by the road leading from
Marlborough, early on the morning of the 19th he arrived within a mile
and a half of the town. Here the Indians, who by their scouts had kept
themselves informed of his approach, prepared an ambush. As the
English were marching along with great caution, a band of about a
hundred Indians crossed their path some distance in advance of them,
and fled, feigning a panic. The English pursued them impetuously about
a mile into the woods, when the fugitives made a stand, and five
hundred Indians sprang up from their concealment, and hurled a storm
of lead into the faces of their foes.
The English, with singular intrepidity, formed themselves into a
compact mass, and by unerring aim and rapid firing kept their foes at
bay while, slowly retreating, they ascended an adjacent hill. Here
for five hours they maintained the conflict against such fearful odds.
The superior skill of the English with the musket rendered their fire
much more fatal than that of their foes. Many of the savage warriors
were struck down, and they bit the dust in their rage and dying agony,
while but five or six of the English had been slain.
[Illustration: THE INDIAN AMBUSH.]
The wind was high, and a drought had rendered the leaves of the forest
dry as powder. Some shrewd savage thought of the fatal expedient of
setting the forest on fire to the windward of their foes. The
stratagem was crowned with signal success. A wide sheet of flame,
roaring and crackling like a furnace, and emitting billows of
smothering smoke, rolled toward the doomed band. The fierceness of the
flames, and the blinding, suffocating smoke, soon drove the English in
confusion from their advantageous position. The Indians, piercing them
with bullets, rushed upon them with the tomahawk, and nearly every man
in the party was slain. Some accounts say that Captain Wadsworth's
company was entirely cut off; others say that a few escaped to a mill,
where they defended themselves until succor arrived. President
Wadsworth, of Harvard College, was the son of Captain Wadsworth. He
subsequently erected a modest monument over the grave of these heroes.
It is probably still standing, west of Sudbury causeway, on the old
road from Boston to Worcester. The inscription upon the stone is now
admitted to be incorrect in many of its particulars. It is said that
one hundred and twenty Indians were slain in this conflict.
These successes wonderfully elated the Indians. They sent a defiant
and derisive message to Plymouth:
"Have a good dinner ready for us, for we intend to dine with you on
election day."
In this awful warfare, every day had its story of crime and woe.
Unlike the movement of powerful armies among civilized nations, the
Indians were wandering every where, burning houses and slaughtering
families wherever an opportunity was presented. They seemed to take
pleasure in wreaking their vengeance even upon the cattle. They would
cut out the tongues of the poor creatures, and leave them to die in
their misery. They would shut them up in hovels, set fire to the
buildings, and amuse themselves in watching the writhings of the
animals as they were slowly roasted in the flames. Nearly all the men
who were taken captive they tortured to death. "And that the reader
may understand," says Cotton Mather, "what it is to be taken by such
devils incarnate, I shall here inform him. They stripped these unhappy
prisoners, and caused them to run the gauntlet, and whipped them after
a cruel and bloody manner. They then threw hot ashes upon them, and,
cutting off collops of their flesh, they put fire into their wounds,
and so, with exquisite, leisurely, horrible torments, roasted them out
of the world."
On the 20th of April a band of fifty Indians made an attack upon
Scituate, and, though the inhabitants speedily rallied and assailed
them with great bravery, they succeeded in plundering and burning
nineteen houses and barns. They proceeded along the road, avoiding the
block-houses, and burning all that were unprotected. They approached
one house where an aged woman, Mrs. Ewing, was alone with an infant
grandchild asleep in the cradle. As she saw the savages rushing down
the hill toward her dwelling, in a delirium of terror she fled to the
garrison house, which was about sixty rods distant, forgetting the
child. The savages rushed into the house, plundered it of a few
articles, not noticing the sleeping infant, and then hastened to make
an assault upon the garrison. A fierce fight ensued. In the midst of
the horrid scene of smoke, uproar, and blood, Mrs. Ewing, with heroism
almost unparalleled, stole from the garrison unperceived, by a
circuitous path reached the house, rescued the babe, still
unconsciously sleeping, and bore it in safety to the garrison. Soon
after this, the savages, repelled from their assault, set fire to her
house, and it was consumed to ashes. All the day long the battle and
the destruction continued in different parts of the town. There were
several garrisoned houses which the Indians attacked with great
spirit, but in every case they met with a repulse. Many of the savages
were shot, and a few of the English lost their lives.
On the 8th of May a band of three hundred Indians made a very fierce
attack upon Bridgewater. The inhabitants had fortunately received
warning of the contemplated assault, and had most of them repaired to
their garrisoned houses. The savages, hoping to take the place by
surprise, with fearful yells rushed from the forest upon the south
part of the town. Disappointed in finding all the inhabitants
sheltered in their fortresses, they immediately commenced setting
fire to the buildings. But the inhabitants boldly sallied forth to
protect their property, and the Indians, though greatly outnumbering
them, fled before their determined valor. They succeeded, however, in
burning some thirteen houses.
The condition of the colonists was at this time deplorable in the
extreme. During the campaign thus far the Indians had been signally
successful, and had effected an inconceivable amount of destruction
and suffering. The sun of spring had now returned; the snow had
melted, and the buds were bursting. It was time to plow the fields and
scatter the seed; but universal consternation and despair prevailed.
Every day brought its report of horror. Prowling bands of savages were
every where. No one could go into the field or step from his own door
without danger of being shot by some Indian lying in ambush. It was an
hour of gloom into which scarcely one ray of hope could penetrate.