** Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia, ii., 486, says, "Yea, and now we speak of things ominous, we may add, some time before this [the execution of three Indians for the murder of Sassamon], in a clear, still, sunshiny morning, there were divers persons who heard in the air, on the southeast of them, a great gun go off, and presently thereupon the report of small guns, like musket shot, very thick discharging, as if there had been a battle. This was at a time when there was nothing visible done in any part of the colony to occasion such noises; but that which most of all astonished them was the flying of bullets, which came singing over their heads [beetles? See page 574, vol. i.], and seemed very near to them; after which the sound of drums, passing along westward, was very audible; and on the same day, in Plymouth colony, in several places, invisible troops of horse were heard riding to and fro." No credence is to be attached to this book of Mather's.
Indian Method of Warfare.—Destruction of New England Villages.—Terrible Retaliation by the Whites.
where the Pilgrims found a friend, and from his cabin, which had sheltered the exiles, Philip and his warriors spread through the country, arousing their brethren to a warfare of extermination.
"The war, on the part of the Indians, was one of ambush and surprise. They never once met the English in open field; but always, even if eight-fold in number, fled timorously before infantry. But they were secret as beasts of prey, skillful marksmen, and in part provided with fire-arms, fleet of foot, conversant with all the paths of the forest, patient of fatigue, mad with passion for rapine, vengeance, and destruction, retreating into swamps for their fastnesses, or hiding in the green-wood thickets, where the leaves muffled the eyes of the pursuers. By the rapidity of their descent, they seemed omnipotent among the scattered villages, which they ravaged like a passing storm; and for a full year they kept all New England in a state of terror and excitement. The exploring party was waylaid and cut off, and the mangled carcasses and disjointed limbs of the dead were hung upon the trees to terrify pursuers. The laborer in the field, the reapers as they went forth to harvest, men as they went to mill, the shepherd's boy among the sheep, were shot down by skulking foes, whose approach was invisible. Who can tell the heavy hours of woman? The mother, if left alone in the house, feared the tomahawk for herself and children; on the sudden attack, the husband would fly with one child, the wife with another, and perhaps only one escape; the village cavalcade, making its way to meeting on Sunday, in files on horseback, the farmer holding the bridle in one hand and a child in the other, his wife seated on a pillion. behind him, it may be with a child in her lap, as was the fashion of those days, could not proceed safely; but, at the moment when least expected, bullets would whiz among them, discharged with fatal aim from an ambuscade by the wayside. The red men hung upon the skirts of the English villages 'like the lightning on the edge of the clouds.'
"What need of repeating the same tale of horrors? Brookfield was set on a August 12 fire, (a) rescued only to be abandoned. Deerfield was burned. (b) Hadley b September 11 surprised during a time of religious service, * was saved only by the daring of Goffe, the regicide, now bowed with years, a heavenly messenger of rescue, who darted from his hiding-place, rallied the disheartened, and, having achieved a safe defense, sank away in his retirement, to be no more seen. The plains of Northfield were wet with the blood of a September 23 Beers (a) and twenty of his valiant associates. Lathrop's company of young men, the very flower of Essex, culled out of the towns of that county, were b September 28. butchered; (b) hardly a white man escaped; and the little stream whose channel became red with their life currents, is called Bloody Brook to this day."
The Narragansets played false to the white men, and in winter sheltered the foe that wasted their settlements. It was resolved to treat them as enemies, and through the deep snows of December, a thousand men, levied by the united colonies, marched to the great fort of the tribe. ** Its feeble palisades quickly yielded, and fire and sword soon "swept away the humble glories of the Narragansets. Their winter stores, their wigwams, and all the little comforts of savage life, were destroyed; and more, their old men, their women, their babes, perished by hundreds in the fire." ** It was a terrible blow for the Indians. Cold, hunger, and disease followed, and were the powerful allies of the English in the decimation of the tribe. Yet Canonchet did not despair, and he fought gallantly, until, being taken prisoner by the English, he was put to death.
In the spring, the spirit of revenge and retaliation began its work. Weymouth, Groton, Medfield, Lancaster, and Marlborough, in Massachusetts, were laid in ashes;
* See page 420, of this vol.
** The fort was situated upon an island containing four or five acres, imbosomed in a swamp. The island was encompassed by high and strong palisades, with abatis outside, and there three thousand of the Narragansets were collected to pass the winter. This swamp is a short distance southwest of Kingston village, in the township of Kingston, Washington county, Rhode Island. The Stonington and Providence rail-way passes along the northern verge of the swamp.
*** Bancroft, ii., 105.