And this dread destruction continued, for the settlers were few, their homes were without stockades, and they were thoroughly unprepared for making a decent resistance against the overwhelming numbers of the Indians. The Nipmucks, with King Philip as director of affairs, had moved westward towards the town of Hadley, where was a large Indian encampment of supposedly friendly red men. "We will go out and fight Philip," they told the English. "We are your friends, not his." But the friendly Mohegan warriors gathered about the Puritan leaders. "Do not believe them," said they, "for they will give the enemy warning, when on the warpath, by shouting. Do not believe them." So, it was ordered that these warriors should come to the English troops and give up their arms, in token of their friendship. But the Indians left their village in a body (it was a group of wigwams with a stockade about it) and fled. The English pursued, next day, and overtook them in a swamp ten miles distant, where they attacked with vigor, firing from behind trees and boulders in true frontier fashion. The fight was sharp and bloody. It lasted for three hours, and in the end, the savages made good their retreat, leaving twenty-six warriors upon the field, while nine of the Englishmen died in the arms of their comrades, who were unable to capture a single red man.
Not far off was the little settlement of Deerfield, with about one hundred and twenty-six sturdy settlers living there. Three of the houses had palisades about them, but the rest were thoroughly unprotected. Philip's emissary had stirred up all the Indians hereabouts, and men went to meeting with their arms over their shoulders; ammunition was stored in the meetinghouse and each man furnished himself with at least five charges of powder and shot. In spite of this, the Indians found them thoroughly unprepared, when, a week later, they fell upon the little settlement, and, although the settlers rallied together in the centre of the village, the redskins soon set fire to all the houses and barns beyond range of the white men's trusty flintlocks. Not daring to leave the protection of their palisades, they saw the labor of long years of patient toil go up in smoke, while their sheep, oxen, and cows were driven off by their enemies. A few days later, Squakeog, a town fifteen miles distant, met the same fate, while some nine or ten settlers, who did not reach the garrison house soon enough, were easily slain by the crafty Indian braves. The red hand of war lay heavy upon the Massachusetts frontier.
It was now September, and the soft haze of Indian summer drowsily hung over the once peaceful hills and valleys of Massachusetts, making it so strange to believe in war, that even the followers of King Philip found it impossible to fight. But the stern commands of the last of the Wampanoags was for more slaughter, and, a month after the burning of Brookfield—when most of the garrison was absent from Hadley—the savages fell upon it with sudden and unexpected fury. It was fast-day, and the people were in the meetinghouse, when a wild warwhoop sounded from the forest, the loud report of a musket followed, and, as the startled congregation rushed into the street, a band of howling red men poured into the village with yells of savage hatred and defiance. Seizing their ever-present flintlocks, the men of Hadley backed away to the garrison house, forming a screen for the women and children behind them, but it was impossible to reach it, as they were cut off by the swarms of Indians. They retreated to another building (incapable of being defended from the inside) and here held off the exultant braves. It was a desperate situation, for should they go down before the onslaught, no quarter would be given to their loved ones and the Puritans knew that they must win in order to keep all that was dearest to them in life. Their hands trembled as they fired at the whooping warriors, now crouching behind fence posts and buildings, and pouring a steady fire into the brave defenders of Hadley, who, unnerved by the sight of their helpless families, fought grimly and desperately as the savages pressed ever nearer in front. The Puritans wavered; their line fell back and the fate of Hadley hung upon the trembling balance of a moment.
Suddenly, a loud cry sounded from the interior of the house, and an aged man of soldierly bearing and commanding presence, rushed into the open with sword in hand. "On, Englishmen, on!" he shouted, "back with this yelling vermin! Back! Drive them into the forest!"
There was a quick response from the stout Puritans, who were not lacking in courage, but who needed leadership. They rose to their feet. They rushed forward upon the yelling foe. In the place of despair, now energy and hope stirred their hearts, and as the calm old man walked among them with words of cheer, they pressed upon the attackers with a new vigor. The Indians fell back with dismay, and, as numbers of their foremost scouts were knocked to the ground—pierced by the well-directed shots of the English—suddenly they fled into the woods, pursued by the impetuous defenders of Hadley on the dead run. When the sound of the retreat had died away, the men gathered together in the village to thank their aged leader. He was not there. From whence he had come, no one knew, and none had seen him disappear. The man was a mystery.
Such is the story of the fierce fighting at Hadley and of the strange appearance of the ancient knight, whose presence turned the tide of conflict at a time when victory was most needed. It would be pleasant to believe that this were some friendly spirit come to aid the Puritans—some ghostly retainer from the dim ages of the past—but such cannot be the case. Eventually, it was known that one Colonel Goffe—a fugitive from England—was concealed in the house of a Mr. Russell at Hadley, and, as he was an old soldier and a veteran of the war in England, it was impossible for him to remain quiet when he saw the doughty villagers getting the worst of the battle with the Indians. It was unknown to the people that he was among them, for he was a regicide (or assassin of the King of England) and had he been discovered, it would have been necessary for some citizen or some magistrate to have returned him to the mother country. Fortunate, indeed, had it been for the people of Hadley that a fugitive from justice had been among them.
September was a fatal month for the English. On the same day that Hadley was attacked, a large force of King Philip's men visited Deerfield, where they burned several houses and barns, and killed two men. At Northfield, the blockhouse was besieged, all the dwelling houses were burned, and a dozen settlers were slaughtered by the savages, while a Captain Beers, who went to the relief of the town with thirty soldiers, was ambuscaded by the Indians and killed. Only ten of his followers escaped. Deerfield was again attacked, and more houses were burned, while the surrounding country was swept bare of all settlers, farm utensils, and cattle belonging to the whites. The frontiersmen clustered together at Deerfield and Hadley, determined to sell their lives dear, if the worst came to the worst, and eagerly awaited an opportunity to avenge themselves upon their cruel foe.
When the farmers fled from the vicinity of Deerfield, they left a quantity of unthreshed grain, and so a company of eighty picked men—the flower of Essex County—under the command of Captain Lathrop of Ipswich, was sent from Hadley to complete the threshing and load the grain on wagons. This they did, and as they were returning through the forest, the soldiers halted in a grove of trees near a brook, where the men broke ranks and loitered to and fro in the shade, off their guard, and with their muskets and armor upon the ground. But alas! the crafty Indians had been all night upon their trail, waiting for just such an opportunity, and suddenly seven hundred painted braves, sheltered by the trees, poured a withering fire of balls and arrows into the unsuspecting followers of Lathrop. All but seven of the whites were killed, the rest escaped through the dense forest to bear the sad tidings to their friends, while the Indians held a riotous scalp dance over the remains of their victims. Because of this massacre, the brook, to this day, is called Bloody Brook.
As the savages sang and danced hilariously, a Captain Mosely, who had heard the firing and had seen the fugitives, hurried to the spot with several followers. From eleven o'clock in the morning, until dusk, he held his own against the redskins, when one hundred whites and sixty friendly Mohegan Indians arrived to assist him. The victorious savages were driven off with great loss and were pursued for some distance, while only one white man was killed and eleven were wounded. When Captain Mosely came up as the followers of King Philip were collecting spoils and scalps, he took off his wig and stuffed it into his breeches pocket so that he could be in good fighting trim, and thus use his rifle with ease. This act was seen by the Indians, and one cried out: