"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.
Decimation of the Indians.—Strifes among them.—Philip a Fugitive.—His Death.—His Son.—Captain Church.
Warwick and Providence, in Rhode Island, were burned; and every where the isolated dwellings of adventurous settlers were laid waste. But as the season advanced, and more remote tribes came not to re-enforce them, the Indians, wasted and dispirited, abandoned all hopes of success. Strifes arose among them. The Connecticut Indians charged their misfortunes upon Philip, and so did the Narragansets. The cords of alliance were severed. Some surrendered to avoid starvation; other tribes wandered off and joined those of Canada; while Captain Church, the most famous of the English partisan warriors, went out to hunt and destroy the fugitives. * During the year, between two and three thousand Indians were killed or submitted. Philip was chased from one hiding-place to another; and although he had vainly sought the aid of the Mohawks, and knew that hope was at an end, his proud spirit would not listen to words of peace; he cleft the head of a warrior who ventured to propose it. At length, after an absence of a year, he resolved, as it were, to meet his destiny. He returned to the beautiful land where his forefathers slept, the cradle of August, 1676 his infancy, and the nestling-place of his tribe. Once be escaped narrowly, leaving his wife and only son prisoners. This bereavement crushed him. "My heart breaks," cried the chieftain, in the agony of his grief; "now I am ready to die." His own followers now began to plot against him, to make better terms for themselves. In a few days he was shot by a faithless Indian, and Captain Church cut off his head with his own sword. The captive orphan was transported to an island of the ocean. So perished the princes of the Pokanokets. Sad to them had been their acquaintance with civilization. The first ship that came on their coast kidnapped men of their kindred; and now the harmless boy, who had been cherished as an only child and the future sachem of their tribes—the last of the family of Massasoit—was sold into bondage, to toil as a slave under the suns of Bermuda. ** Of the once prosperous Narragansets of old, the chief tribe of New England, hardly one hundred remained. The sword, famine, fire, and sickness had swept them from the earth. "During the whole war the Mohegans remained faithful to the English, and not a drop of blood was shed on the happy soil of Connecticut. So much the greater was the loss in the adjacent colonies. Twelve or thirteen towns were destroyed. The disbursements and losses equaled in value half a million of dollars—an enormous sum for the few of that day. More than six hundred men, chiefly young men, the flower of the country, of whom any mother might have been proud, perished in the field. As many as six hundred houses were burned. Of the able-bodied men in the colony, one in twenty had fallen; and one family in twenty had been burned out. The loss of lives and property was, in proportion
* Benjamin Church was born at Duxbury, in 1639. He was the first white settler at Seaconnet, or Little Compton. He was the most active and noted combatant of the Indians during King Philip's war, and when Philip was slain, Church cut off his head with his own hands. The sword with which he performed the act is in the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society (see page 562, ante). In 1689, Church was commissioned by President Hinckley, of Plymouth, and the governors of Maine and Massachusetts, commander-in-chief of a force sent against the Eastern Indians. He continued making expeditions against them until 1704. In his old age he was corpulent. A fall from his horse was the cause of his death, which occurred at Little Compton, January 17, 1718, at the age of seventy-seven years. Under his direction his son prepared a history of the Indian wars, which was published in 1716.