References

  1. Winthrop, John., History of New England. Edited by James Savage. Boston, 1825.
  2. Gardiner, Curtiss C. “Papers and Biography of Lion Gardiner,” in Lion Gardiner and his Descendants. A. Whipple. St. Louis, 1890.
  3. Orr, Charles. History of the Pequot War. (Accounts of Mason, Underhill, Vincent and Gardiner.) The Helman-Taylor Co. Cleveland, 1897.
  4. Newton, Arthur Percival. The Colonizing Activities of the English Puritans. Yale University Press. New Haven, 1914.
  5. Saybrook Quadrimillenial, November 27, 1885. Hartford, 1886.

[The Frogs of Windham]

Once, in the days of Indian attacks on the small English settlements in Connecticut, a family of children had a narrow escape from capture by the savages. A party of Indians on the warpath passed near their home while their father and elder brothers were away working in the fields with the neighbors. It was the custom in those dangerous times for men to work together in companies, going from one man’s fields and meadows to another’s, and for greater safety they carried their firearms with them. They stacked the guns on the edge of the field with a sentinel to watch them and keep a lookout for possible Indians. Sometimes it was a boy who did this sentry duty, standing on a stump like a sentry in a box.

There was no one left at home that day but a girl fourteen years old and her four younger brothers. The mother had died not long before and the little sister was caring for the family. All unconscious that any Indians were near, she went down to the spring for water. As she lifted the full pail she caught sight of a dark, painted face peering at her from a thicket on the edge of the clearing. She dropped the pail at once and ran as fast as she could to the house, calling to the boys to run in too and help her close the heavy door. Doors were protected then by a thick wooden bar across them on the inside. The children hurried in and, working together, they got the bar in position before the Indians reached the house. But the two halves of the door yielded a little, just enough to let the edge of a tomahawk through, which hacked away at the wooden bar while the children stood watching, paralyzed with fear. Fortunately their own cries as they ran toward the house had reached the men in the fields, who dropped their scythes, seized their guns, and drove off the Indians. But the bar was half cut through before help reached the terrified children.

Stories like this one, and others with less happy endings, are common, not only in the written history of Connecticut, but in the unwritten traditions of Connecticut families. Whenever there was trouble with the Indians the settlers were exposed to these dangers. In the long wars between France and England for the possession of America, the Indians were often allies of the French, and then the English settlements suffered greatly from their attacks.

In 1754, not long before the beginning of the last “French-and-Indian War” (1756-63), there were several reasons why the people of Windham, in the northeastern part of Connecticut, were especially afraid of a surprise and attack by the Indians. Their town was on the border of the colony and less protected than some other places, and they also feared that they had lately given offense to the Indians by planning a new town on what was known as the “Wyoming territory” (in the present State of Pennsylvania). These lands were still held by the Indians, but Connecticut claimed them under her patent, and although the Windham people intended to pay the Indians fairly for them they were not sure that the Indians would not resent being forced to sell and be hostile to them in consequence.

News soon reached them that war had begun in the: Ohio country beyond the Susquehannah, and that an expedition against the French had gone there from Virginia under the command of a young officer named George Washington. They heard this name then for the first time and with indifference, of course, not knowing that it belonged to a man who would become very famous later, and be honored as no other man in America has ever been honored; but they understood at once that war-time was no time in which to plant a new town. The company which had been formed for the purchase of the Susquehannah lands, and which included such well-known men as Colonel Eliphalet Dyer and Jedediah Elderkin, therefore put off the undertaking until peace should come again.