But they had not proceeded far when their ears were assailed by the most discordant yells from the Pequodees. They had reached the scene of devastation; and, when they beheld the ruined fort, and the ground strewn with hundreds of mangled corpses and expiring friends, their fury knew no bounds. They stamped and howled with rage and grief, and madly tore their hair; while they gave vent to their excited feelings in that fearful and peculiar yell, at the sound of which the stoutest hearts might quail. Then, with a wild and desperate effort at revenge, they rushed down the bill in pursuit of their cruel enemies. The rear- guard turned, and met the onset bravely. The savages were received with a shower of bullets, which checked their furious assault; but they hung on the rear of the English, and harassed them during the whole of their retreat. They, however, reached their vessels in safety, and arrived in triumph at Hartford, from which port they had sailed three weeks before.
This discomfiture proved a death-blow to the pride and power of the redoubted Sassacus. Disgusted alike by his arrogance, and by his recent defeat, many of his own warriors deserted him and attached themselves to other tribes; and the Sachem then destroyed his second fortress, end carried off his treasure to the land of the Mohawks, near the river Hudson, and, with his principal Chiefs, joined that warlike race.
Meanwhile, the remainder of the troops from Massachusetts, whom the Government had not thought it necessary to send with Captain Mason, had landed at Saybroke, led by Captain Houghton, and attended by Wilson as their spiritual guide. They arrived just in time to hear of the successful issue of the campaign; and had, therefore, nothing left for them to do, except to join a small band from Connecticut, and keep down or destroy the few Pequodees, or other hostile Indians who still lurked about the district, and kept the settlers in fear and anxiety. These wretched natives were chased into their most secret haunts, where they were barbarously slain; their wigwams were burnt, and their fields desolated. Nor were the English the only foes of the once terrible Pequodees. Their Indian rivals took advantage of their present weak and scattered condition, to wreak upon them the suppressed vengeance of bygone years; and pursued, with ruthless cruelty, those whose very name had once inspired them with awe and dread. And yet—with shame be it said!—the Christian leader of the troops of Massachusetts, himself a member of the strict and exclusive Church of Boston, surpassed these savages in cruelty.
On one occasion, he made prisoners of nearly a hundred Pequodees. Of these miserable creatures he sent the wives and children into servitude at Boston, while he caused the men—thirty-seven in number—to be bound hand and foot, and carried in a shallop outside the harbor, where they wore thrown overboard. If this barbarous deed was not committed by the directions of the Christian Fathers of Massachusetts, yet they certainly neither disclaimed nor censured it. Indeed, so little were cruelty and oppression, when exercised against the red men, regarded as crimes by many of the settlers, that one of their learned divines, even of the age succeeding the perpetrations of the above appalling event, expressed it as his opinion that Heaven had smiled on the English hunt; and added, with horrible and disgusting levity, 'that it was found to be the quickest way feed the fishes with the multitude of Indian captives!'
The other tribes who had joined the Pequodees in opposing the conquering white men, were pardoned on their submission; but that devoted race, who fought like heroes to the very last, were extirpated as a nation from the face of the earth. The very name in which they had so long gloried, and which had been a terror to all the neighboring tribes, was not permitted to remain, and to tell where once they had dwelt and reigned unrivalled. The river, which had been called the Pequod, received the appellation of the Thames; and the native township, on the ruins of which an English settlement was founded, was afterwards called New London. Numbers of the women and boys, who were taken captive from tune to time by the British troops, were sold and carried as slaves to Bermuda, and others were divided among the settlers, and condemned—not nominally to slavery, for that was forbidden by the laws of New England, but—to perpetual servitude, which must, indeed, have been much the same thing to free-born Indian spirits, accustomed to the wild liberty of the forests and the prairies.
Sassacus—the once mighty Chief of this mighty and heroic people—was basely slain by the Mohawks, among whom he had sought fellowship and protection, for the sake of the treasures that be had brought with him from his own lost dominions; and his heart was sent by his murderers as a peace-offering to the government of Connecticut.
Thus ended the war which had been commenced as a necessary measure of self-defence, and in which the pious and high-minded Roger Williams had, at first, taken so active and influential a part. The manner in which it was carried out, and the cruelty that marked so many of its details, were repulsive in the highest degree to his just and benevolent spirit; but where mercy was concerned, his opinion and advice had no influence with the stern men of Boston. The only act which met with his approbation in the conclusion of the campaign, was the assignment of the depopulated lands of the Pequodees to Uncas, the Chief of the Mohicans. As being a conquered territory, the usual laws of war would have annexed it to the territory of the victors. But, in this case, the settlers adhered to their original principle of only obtaining, by purchase from the natives, those tracts of land on which they desired to settle; and a great part of that which was now bestowed on Uncas, was afterwards bought back from him and his inferior Sachems, or obtained by friendly contract, until the English became possessors of the whole district.
At a subsequent period, the Pequodees who had escaped from their desolated land, and joined other tribes, assembled themselves together, and made one final effort at establishing their independence in a distant part of the country. But their power and prosperity were broken for ever. Captain Mason was again sent to subdue this remnant of the tribe; and the destruction that was accomplished on these unhappy exiles spread a fear of the white men through all the Indian race in that part of the continent. From that time the settlers of Connecticut—who had been the original cause of this cruel war—enjoyed an unbroken peace and security for forty years.
CHAPTER XXIV.
'The voices of my home! I hear them still!
They have been with me through the stormy night—
The blessed household voices wont to fill
My hearts clear depths with unalloyed delight!
I hear them still unchanged; though some from earth
Are music parted, and the tones of mirth—
Wild silvery tones, that rang through days more bright,
Have died in others—yet to me they come
Singing of boyhood back!—the voices of my home!' HEMANS.