Philip still lurked in the swamps, where he was now beset on all hands, and at length, when endeavouring to make his escape, was shot through the heart by one of his own nation who had deserted to the English. His dead body was beheaded and quartered. One of his hands was given to the Indian who shot him, and five days afterwards, on the day appointed to be kept as “a solemn thanksgiving to God,” his head was carried in triumph to Plymouth.
Through this terrible war the Mohegans had remained faithful to the English, and no blood had been shed in happy Connecticut. The war was at an end, but vengeance was not yet appeased. Many chiefs, noted warriors of their respective tribes, were executed at Boston and Plymouth; 200 Indians, who had on one occasion come to treat of peace, were treacherously taken prisoners and carried to Boston, where some were hanged, and others sold as slaves. A bloodthirsty and remorseless spirit governed the whole colony. The captives who fell to the share of the Rhode Islanders were treated with somewhat more mercy; they were distributed among the different families as servants or slaves. To Roger Williams a boy was thus apportioned.
The losses of the English are thus estimated: twelve or thirteen towns destroyed; 600 men, chiefly young men, killed; 600 houses burned. Of the able-bodied men of the colony one in twenty had fallen, and one family in twenty had been burnt out. Scarcely a family existed which had not lost a member. Peace, however, was now generally established; though in Maine and New Hampshire the tribes remained hostile for yet two years.
The Pocanokets and the Narragansetts had shared the fate of the Pequods; the country of the Pocanokets was annexed to Plymouth, though sixty years afterwards it was transferred to Rhode Island; the Narragansett territory was for long a disputed possession. The few Indians of these tribes who still remained, removed to the west and north. They were no longer a nation.
After this the work of conversion went on with renewed vigour. A second edition of the Indian Old Testament, which, as if an evidence of the spirit which influenced the whites towards them, was more in request than the New, was published; but at this day not an individual remains to whom it can be useful.
The converted or praying Indians, as they were called, suffered much; by their forest brethren they were hated as Christians, by the Christians suspected as Indians. Four only, of their fourteen towns, remained to them; but Eliot continued to be the “faithful shepherd of these, his poor, despised flock in the wilderness,” and braved many dangers and hardships on their account.
Various romantic incidents occurred in this war, two of which we will relate. The escape of Anne Brackett, the grand-daughter of George Cleves, the first settler of Portland, was the marvel of that day. “Her family had been taken captive at the sack of Falmouth. When her captors hastened forward to further ravages on the Kennebec, she was able to loiter behind, and, discovering the wreck of a birchen bark, she repaired it by means of needle and thread, which she found in a deserted house. Then with her husband, a negro servant and her infant child, she confided herself to the sea in this frail bark, which was like a feather on the waves. And thus she crossed Casco Bay and arrived at Black Point, where she feared to find Indians. Indians however there were none, but to her joy a vessel from Piscataqua, on board which she was received, together with those so dear to her, whose lives she had saved.”
Again, on one occasion, “some fugitive Indians who had taken refuge in Canada descended the Connecticut, and falling upon a party assembled at Hadley, at a house-raising, carried off twenty persons. The husbands of two of the female captives proceeded to Canada, by way of Albany and Lakes George and Champlain, guided by a Mohawk Indian—the first recorded journey made in this direction—and by the intervention of the French government the captives were redeemed.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CHARTER OF MASSACHUSETTS ANNULLED.
But with the conclusion of the Indian war the troubles of Massachusetts were not at an end. The merchants of London, jealous of the rising commercial power of New England, complained of her total disregard of the laws of trade, and the Navigation Act was attempted to be enforced with renewed vigour.