VII. Indian Attacks
The children whose comment has just been quoted were probably safe from all dangers except ague and sparking; but in the previous century women and children daily faced possibilities that apparently should have kept them in a continuous state of fright. Time after time mothers and babes were stolen by the Indians, and the tales of their sufferings fill many an interesting page in the diaries, records, and letters of the seventeenth century and the early eighteenth. Hear these words from an early pamphlet, A Memorial of the Present Deplorable State of New England, inserted in Sewall's Diary:
"The Indians came upon the House of one Adams at Wells, and captived the Man and his Wife, and assassinated the children.... The woman had Lain in about Eight Days. They drag'd her out, and tied her to a Post, until the House was rifled. They then loosed her, and bid her walk. She could not stir. By the help of a Stick she got half a step forward. She look'd up to God. On the sudden a new strength entered into her. She was up to the Neck in Water five times that very Day in passing Rivers. At night she fell over head and ears, into a Slough in a Swamp, and hardly got out alive.... She is come home alive unto us."
The following story of Mrs. Bradley of Haverly, Massachusetts, was sworn to as authentic:
"She was now entered into a Second Captivity; but she had the great Encumbrance of being Big with Child, and within Six Weeks of her Time! After about an Hours Rest, wherein they made her put on Snow Shoes, which to manage, requires more than ordinary agility, she travelled with her Tawny Guardians all that night, and the next day until Ten a Clock, associated with one Woman more who had been brought to Bed but just one Week before: Here they Refreshed themselves a little, and then travelled on till Night; when they had no Refreshment given them, nor had they any, till after their having Travelled all the Forenoon of the Day Ensuing.... She underwent incredible Hardships and Famine: A Mooses Hide, as tough as you may Suppose it, was the best and most of her Diet. In one and twenty days they came to their Head-quarters.... But then her Snow-Shoes were taken from her; and yet she must go every step above the knee in Snow, with such weariness that her Soul often Pray'd That the Lord would put an end unto her weary life!"
"...Here in the Night, she found herself ill." [Her child was born here].... There she lay till the next Night, with none but the Snow under her, and the Heaven over her, in a misty and rainy season. She sent then unto a French Priest, that he would speak unto her Squaw Mistress, who then, without condescending to look upon her, allow'd her a little Birch-Rind, to cover her Head from the Injuries of the Weather, and a little bit of dried Moose, which being boiled, she drunk the Broth, and gave it unto the Child."
"In a Fortnight she was called upon to Travel again, with her child in her Arms: every now and then, a whole day together without the least Morsel of any Food, and when she had any, she fed only on Ground-nuts and Wild-onions, and Lilly-roots. By the last of May, they arrived at Cowefick, where they planted their Corn; wherein she was put into a hard Task, so that the Child extreamly Suffered. The Salvages would sometimes also please themselves, with casting hot Embers into the Mouth of the Child, which would render the Mouth so sore that it could not Suck for a long while together, so that it starv'd and Dy'd...."
"Her mistress, the squaw, kept her a Twelve-month with her, in a Squalid Wigwam: Where, in the following Winter, she fell sick of a Feavour; but in the very height and heat of her Paroxysms, her Mistress would compel her sometimes to Spend a Winters-night, which is there a very bitter one, abroad in all the bitter Frost and Snow of the Climate. She recovered; but Four Indians died of the Feavour, and at length her Mistress also.... She was made to pass the River on the Ice, when every step she took, she might have struck through it if she pleased."
"...At last, there came to the fight of her a Priest from Quebeck who had known her in her former Captivity at Naridgowock.... He made the Indians sell her to a French Family.... where tho' she wrought hard, she Lived more comfortably and contented.... She was finally allowed to return to her husband."[90]
The account of Mary Rowlandson's captivity, long known to every New England family, and perhaps secretly read by many a boy in lieu of the present Wild West series, may serve as another vivid example of the dangers and sufferings faced by every woman who took unto herself a husband and went forth from the coast settlements to found a new home in the wilderness. The narrative, as written by Mrs. Rowlandson herself, tells of the attack by the Indians, the massacre of her relations, and the capture of herself and her babe: