King Philip / Makers of History

by John S. C. Abbott

The English overpowered.

The tragic drama was soon closed. The troops, broken and scattered, could only resort to the Indian mode of fighting, each one skulking behind a tree. But they were so entirely surrounded and overpowered that no one could discharge his musket more than two or three times before he fell. Some, in their dismay, leaped into the branches of the trees, hoping thus to escape observation. The savages, with shouts of derision, mocked them for a time, and then pierced them with bullets until they dropped to the ground. All the wounded were indiscriminately butchered. But eight escaped to tell the awful story. Ninety perished upon this bloody field. The young men who were thus slaughtered constituted the flower of Essex county. They had been selected for their intrepidity and hardihood from all the towns. Their destruction caused unspeakable anguish in their homes, and sent a wave of grief throughout all the colonies. The little stream in the south part of Deerfield, upon the banks of which this memorable tragedy occurred, has in consequence received the name of Bloody Brook.

Captain Mosely attempts a rescue.

Captain Mosely had been left in the garrison at Deerfield with seventy men, intending to go the next day in search of the Indians. As he was but five miles from the scene of the massacre, he heard the firing, and immediately marched to the rescue of his friends. But he was too late. They were all, before his arrival, silent in death. As the Indians were scalping and stripping the dead, Captain Mosely, with great intrepidity, fell upon them, though he computed their numbers at not less than a thousand. Keeping his men in a body, he broke through the tumultuous mass, charging back and forth, and cutting down all within range of his shot.

A prolonged fight.

Still, aided by the swamp and the forest, and being so overwhelmingly superior to the English in numbers, the savages maintained the fight with much fierceness for six hours. Captain Mosely and all his men might perhaps also have perished, had not another party providentially and very unexpectedly come to their relief.

The Indians vanquished.

Major Treat, from Connecticut, was ascending the river with one hundred and sixty Mohegan Indians, on his way to Northfield, in pursuit of the foe in that vicinity. It was so ordered by Providence that he approached the scene of action just as both parties were exhausted by the protracted fight. Hearing the firing, he pressed rapidly forward, and with fresh troops fell vigorously upon the foe. The Indians, with yells of disappointment and rage, now fled, plunging into the swamps and forests. They left ninety-six of their number dead by the side of the English whom they had so mercilessly slaughtered in the morning. It is supposed that Philip himself commanded the Indians on this sanguinary day. The Indians, though in the end defeated, had gained a marvelous victory, by which they were exceedingly encouraged and emboldened.

Burial of the dead.