[170]. Letter to Major Mason.
[171]. The principal force from Massachusetts, under General Stoughton, did not arrive till some time after the action. The Plymouth troops did not march, though fifty men were got in readiness, but not till the war was nearly finished. The friendly Indians did very little service, except to intercept some fugitives. The battle was fought by the whites.
[172]. “It was judged,” says Dr. Holmes, (Annals, vol. i. p. 241) “that, during the summer, seven hundred Pequods were destroyed, among whom were thirteen sachems. About two hundred, besides women and children, survived the swamp fight. Of this number, the English gave eighty to Miantinomo, and twenty to Ninigret, two sachems of Narraganset, and the other hundred to Uncas, sachem of the Mohegans, to be received and treated as their men. A number of the male children were sent to Bermuda. However just the occasion of this war, humanity demands a tear on the extinction of a valiant tribe, which preferred death to what it might naturally anticipate from the progress of English settlements—dependence, or extirpation.
‘Indulge, my native land! indulge the tear,
That steals, impassion’d, o’er a nation’s doom;
To me each twig from Adam’s stock, is dear,
And sorrows fell upon an Indian’s tomb.’”
Dwight’s Greenfield Hill.
[173]. Backus, vol. i. p. 95. None might have a voice in government in this new plantation, who would not allow this liberty. Hence, about this time, I found the following town act, viz. “It was agreed, that Joshua Verin, upon breach of covenant, for restraining liberty of conscience, shall be withheld from liberty of voting, till he shall declare the contrary.” Verin left the town, and his absence seems to have been considered as a forfeiture of his land, for in 1650, he wrote the following letter to the town, claiming his property. The town replied, that if he would come and prove his title, he should receive the land.
“Gentlemen and countrymen of the town of Providence: