Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

IX.

CHAPTER men, women, and children, perished by the weapons of the colonists, or in the flames of the burning fort. "Great 1637. and doleful," says Underhill, "was the bloody sight to the view of young soldiers, to see so many souls lie gasping on the ground, so so thick you could hardly pass along." The fact that only seven prisoners were taken, while Mason boasts that only seven others escaped, evinces the unrelenting character of this massacre, which was accomplished with but trifling loss, only two of the colonists being killed, and sixteen or twenty wounded. Yet the victors were not without embarrassments. The morning was hot, there was no water to be had, and the men, exhausted by their long march the two days before, the weight of their armor, want of sleep, and the sharpness of the late action, must now encounter a new body of Pequods from the other village, who had taken the alarm, and were fast approaching. Mason, with a select party, kept this new enemy at bay, and thus gave time to the main body to push on for Pequod River, into which some vessels had just been seen to enter. When the Indians approached the hill where their fort had stood, at sight of their ruined habitations and slaughtered companions they burst out into a transport of rage, stamped on the ground, tore their hair, and, regardless of every thing save revenge, rushed furious in pursuit. But the dreaded fire-arms soon checked them, and Mason easily made good his retreat to Pequod harbor, now New London, where he found not only his own vessels, but Captain Patrick also, just arrived in a bark from Boston, with forty Mason sent the wounded and most of his forces by water, but, in consequence of Patrick's refusal to lend his ship, was obliged to march himself, with twenty men, followed by Patrick, to Fort Saybrook, where his victory was greeted by a salvo of cannon.

men.

IX:

June.

In about a fortnight Stoughton arrived at Saybrook CHAPTER with the main body of the Massachusetts forces; Mason, with forty Connecticut soldiers and a large body of Nar- 1637. ragansets, joined also in pursuing the remnants of the enemy. The Pequods had abandoned their country, or concealed themselves in the swamps. One of these fortresses was attacked by night, and about a hundred In- July. dians captured. The men, twenty-two in number, were put to death; thirty women and children were given to the Narraganset allies; some fifty others were sent to Boston, and distributed as slaves among the principal colonists. The flying Pequods were pursued as far as Quinapiack, now New Haven. A swamp in that neighborhood, where a large party had taken refuge, being surrounded and attacked, a parley was had, and life was August. offered to "all whose hands were not in English blood." About two hundred, old men, women, and children, reluctantly came out and gave themselves up. Daylight was exhausted in this surrender; and as night set in, the warriors who remained renewed their defiances. Toward morning, favored by a thick fog, they broke through and escaped. Many of the surviving Pequods put themselves under the protection of Canonicus and other Narraganset chiefs. Sassacus, the head sachem, fled to the Mohawks; but they were instigated by their allies, the Narragansets, to put him to death. His scalp was sent to Boston, and many heads and hands of Pequod warriors were also brought in by the neighboring tribes. The adult male prisoners who remained in the hands of the colonists were sent to the West Indies to be sold into slavery; the women and children experienced a similar fate at home. It was reckoned that between eight and nine hundred of the Pequods had been killed or taken. Such of the survivors as had escaped,

The

CHAPTER forbidden any longer to call themselves Pequods, were IX. distributed between the Narragansets and Mohegans, 1637. and subjected to an annual tribute. A like tribute was imposed, also, on the inhabitants of Block Island. colonists regarded their success as ample proof of Divine approbation, and justified all they had done to these "bloody heathen" by abundant quotations from the Old Testament. Having referred to "the wars of David," Underhill adds, "We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings;" and Mason, after some exulting quotations from the Psalms, concludes: "Thus the Lord was pleased to smite our enemies in the hinder parts, and to give us their land for an inheritance!" The Indian allies admired the courage of the colonists, but they thought their method of war "too furious, and to slay too many."

Some occurrences shortly after are sufficient to show that, in their relations with the Indians, the colonists were not governed by mere passion and hatred, but by systematic principles of what they considered justice. Three out of four runaway servants, who had robbed and murdered an Indian near Providence, after consultation with the magistrates of Massachusetts, were tried at Plymouth, found guilty, and hanged. The fourth escaped to Piscataqua, and the people there refused to give him up; "it was their custom, some of them," says Winthrop, "to countenance all such lewd persons as fled from us." The case of Sequeen was still more remarkable. This was the chief who had instigated the attack on Wethersfield, in which nine of the inhabitants had been slain. But the elders and magistrates of Massachusetts, whose opinion was asked on the subject, decided that Sequeen, having been first injured, might, by the law of nations, right himself, either by force or

IX.

fraud; "and though the damage he had done had been CHAPTER a hundred times more than what he had sustained, that is not considerable in point of a just war; neither was 1637. he bound, upon such an open act of hostility, to seek satisfaction first in a peaceable way; it was enough that he had complained of it as an injury." Upon the strength of this decision, the same doctrine, it would seem, in virtue of which the Pequod war had been undertaken, the people of Connecticut resolved to give over their quarrel with Sequeen, and to enter into a new arrangement with the Indians on the river.

The Pequods exterminated, it only remained to deal with the heretics, for which purpose a synod was assembled at Newtown, composed of all the elders in the country, including several who had just arrived, and of lay delegates, also, from all the churches, the members of it being entertained for eight weeks at the public expense. Before this synod was laid a list of eighty-two "false and Aug. 30. heretical opinions," nine "unwholesome expressions," and divers "perversions of Scripture." The eighty-two opinions were condemned at once, some as blasphemous, others as erroneous, and all as unsafe; and even Wheelwright joined in this condemnation. Some of the Boston delegates objected to the production before the synod of such a list of errors avowed by nobody, and exposing the colony to unnecessary reproach. Insisting upon this point too pertinaciously, they were silenced by threats of magisterial interference, and some of them left the assembly. The ground thus cleared, there remained only five points in dispute between Cotton and Wheelwright on the one hand, and the rest of the elders on the other. By mutual explanation, these five points were presently reduced to three, and those three were finally stated in terms so ambiguous that Cotton and the other elders ex

CHAPTER pressed themselves mutually satisfied. But Wheelwright would not agree.

IX.

1637. Besides these matters of faith, some points of discipline were also determined. Women, it was agreed, might meet, some few together, to pray and edify one another; but "such a set assembly as was then in practice at Boston, where sixty or more did meet every week, and one woman in a prophetical way, by resolving questions of doctrine and expounding Scripture, took upon her the whole exercise," was pronounced disorderly and without rule. The female church members, though acknowledged as joint-heirs of salvation, had no share in the earthly power of the theocracy, not even the right of voting in mere church affairs. It was also resolved that, "although a private church member might ask a question publicly after sermon for information, yet this ought to be very wisely and sparingly done, and that with leave of the elders; but questions then in use, whereby the doctrines delivered were reproved, and the elders reproached, and that with bitterness, were utterly condemned."

This synod, however, proved no more successful than others before and since, in bringing about unity of opinion. Though "confounded and clearly confuted," Wheelwright and his party persisted in their errors, and "were as busy in nourishing contentions as before." Convinced "that two so opposite parties could not contain in the same body without apparent hazard of ruin to the whole," the General Court, at its session shortly after, resolved Nov. 2. upon decisive steps. Aspinwall, elected to this court as a deputy from Boston, was deprived of his seat, disfranchised, and banished, because he had drafted the Boston petition presented at the previous court in Wheelwright's favor a very moderate and respectful document. His colleague, who justified the petition, though he had not

« ПредишнаНапред »