Once Upon a Time in Connecticut

by Caroline Clifford Newton

“This caused me,” says Lieutenant Gardiner, “to keep watch and ward, for I saw that they plotted our destruction.”

From this time on the fort was almost besieged by Indians who lay in ambush around it, watching and waiting for a chance to attack any of the garrison who might venture out.

One day two men were “beating samp at the Garden Pales,” not far from the fort, when the sentinels called to them to run in quickly because a number of Pequots were creeping up to catch them. “I, hearing it,” says Gardiner, “went up to the redoubt and put two cross-bar shot into the two guns that lay above, and levelled them at the trees in the middle of the limbs and boughs. The Indians began a long shout, and then the two great guns went off and divers of them were hurt.”

These “two great guns” were two pieces, of three inches each, by which the fort was defended.

“After this,” writes Gardiner, “I immediately took men and went to our cornfield to gather our corn, appointing others to come with the shallop [the boat] and fetch it, and I left five lusty men in the strong house I had built for the defense of the corn. Now, these men, not regarding the charge I had given them, three of them went a mile from the house, a-fowling; and having loaded themselves with fowl, they returned. The Pequots let them pass first, till they had loaded themselves, but at their return they arose out of their ambush and shot all three; one of them escaped through the corn, shot through the leg, the other two they tormented.”

An equally cruel fate befell a trader named Tilly, who was taken alive by the Indians and tortured. Tilly came from Massachusetts Bay and was going up the river to Hartford. When he landed at Saybrook, as all travelers were obliged to do, he saw a paper nailed up over the fort gate with orders that no boat going up the river should stop anywhere between Saybrook and Wethersfield. These orders were put up by Lieutenant Gardiner because a boat with three men well armed in it had lately been captured by the river Indians. Tilly, however, refused to obey, and quarreled with Gardiner. “I wish you, and also charge you,” said Gardiner to him in reply, “to observe that which you have read at the gate; ’tis my duty to God and my masters which is the ground of this, had you but eyes to see it; but you will not till you feel it.” Tilly went up the river safely, obeying orders; but coming down, when he was about three miles above Saybrook, he went ashore with only one man and carelessly fired off his gun. The Indians, hearing it, came up, captured him, and carried him away. Gardiner called the spot where this happened “Tilly’s Folly.”

It was a winter of great responsibility and danger for Lieutenant Lion Gardiner, and all his courage and good sense were needed to carry him safely through it. Once he was himself wounded by Indian arrows and nearly lost his life. On the 22d of February, he “went out with ten men and three dogs, half a mile from the house, to burn the weeds, leaves, and reeds upon the neck of land” behind the fort, when, suddenly, four Indians “started up out of the fiery reeds,” and the sentinels he had set to watch called to him that a great many more were coming from “the other side of the marsh.” The Indians attacked his party, killed three or four men, and tried to get between the rest and the fort and cut off their return. “They kept us in a half-moon,” says Gardiner, “we retreating and exchanging many a shot... defending ourselves with our naked swords, or else they had taken us all alive.... I was shot with many arrows, but my buff coat preserved me, only one hurt me.” The English soldiers of those days wore back and breast pieces of steel over their buff coats. A few days later, the Indians, believing Gardiner dead, came again and surrounded the fort, and, as the old record says, “made many proud challenges and dared the English out to fight,” but Gardiner ordered the “two great guns” set off once more, and the Indians disappeared.

Finding the fort at Saybrook so well defended, the Pequots fell upon the settlement at Wethersfield, killed a number of men working in the fields, and carried off two young girls. Flushed with this success, they paddled down the river in their canoes and when they passed the Saybrook fort they set up poles, like masts, in the canoes and, by way of bravado, hung upon them the clothes of the Englishmen whom they had murdered. The men in the fort fired on the canoes, but the distance was too great. One shot just grazed the bow of the boat in which were the two young English girls. The Indians passed safely and carried their captives with them to the Pequot country.

The Connecticut men now determined to put a stop to the depredations of the Pequots. It was a serious undertaking, for there were only about two hundred and fifty Englishmen in all Connecticut at this time, and there were several hundred Pequot warriors. Help was asked from the colonies in Massachusetts, and, meanwhile, about ninety men were collected from the three settlements of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor and sent down to Saybrook under the command of Captain John Mason. A number of friendly Indians also went with them, and chief among these was Uncas, sachem of the Mohegans.

While this expedition was at Saybrook, taking counsel with Lieutenant Lion Gardiner and making ready, a Dutch boat put in at the fort on its way to trade in the Pequot country. The officers at the fort were unwilling to let the boat proceed, for there were articles on board for trade with the Indians that might be useful to the latter in war time, such as kettles, out of which the Indians could make arrowheads. The Dutch, however, promised that if they were allowed to go on they would do all in their power to obtain the release of the two captive English girls. So they were given permission and they sailed for the Pequot River. There the master of the boat went ashore and offered to trade with the Indians.