XIV. CHAPTER had been discovered by Church, of Plymouth colony, collected in a great swamp at Pocasset, now Tiverton, the 1675. southern district of the Wampanoag country, whence small parties sallied forth to burn and plunder the neighboring settlements. After a march of eighteen miles, July 16. having reached the designated spot, the soldiers found there a hundred wigwams lately built, but empty and deserted, the Indians having retired deep into the swamp. The colonists followed; but the ground was soft; the thicket was difficult to penetrate; the companies were soon thrown into disorder. Each man fired at every bush he saw shake, thinking an Indian might lay concealed behind it, and several were thus wounded by their own friends. When night came on, the assailants retired with the loss of sixteen men. The swamp continued to be watched and guarded, but Philip broke through, not without some loss, and escaped into the country of the Nipmucks, in the interior of Massachusetts. That tribe had July 24. already commenced hostilities by attacking Mendon. Aug. 2. They waylaid and killed Captain Hutchinson, a son of the famous Mrs. Hutchinson, and sixteen out of a party of twenty sent from Boston to Brookfield to parley with them. Attacking Brookfield itself, they burned it, except one fortified house. The inhabitants were saved by Major Willard, who, on information of their danger, came with a troop of horse from Lancaster, thirty miles through the woods, to their rescue. A body of troops presently arrived from the eastward, and were stationed for some time at Brookfield. The colonists now found that by driving Philip to extremity they had roused a host of unexpected enemies. The River Indians, anticipating an intended attack upon Sept. 1. them, joined the assailants. Deerfield and Northfield, the northernmost towns on the Connecticut River, set XIV. tled within a few years past, were attacked, and sev- CHAPTER eral of the inhabitants killed and wounded. Captain Beers, sent from Hadley to their relief with a convoy of 1675. provisions, was surprised near Northfield and slain, with Sept. 11. twenty of his men. Northfield was abandoned, and burned by the Indians. "The English at first," says Gookin, "thought easily to chastise the insolent doings and murderous practice of the heathen; but it was found another manner of thing than was expected; for our men could see no enemy to shoot at, but yet felt their bullets out of the thick bushes where they lay in ambush. The English wanted not courage or resolution, but could not discover nor find an enemy to fight with, yet were galled by the enemy." In the arts of ambush and surprise, with which the Indians were so familiar, the colonists were without practice. It is to the want of this experience, purchased at a very dear rate in the course of the war, that we must ascribe the numerous surprises and defeats from which the colonists suffered at its commencement. Driven to the necessity of defensive warfare, those in command on the river determined to establish a magazine and garrison at Hadley. Captain Lathrop, who had been dispatched from the eastward to the assistance of the river towns, was sent with eighty men, the flower of the youth of Essex county, to guard the wagons intended to convey to Hadley three thousand bushels of unthreshed wheat, the produce of the fertile Deerfield meadows. Just before arriving at Deerfield, near a small stream still known as Bloody Brook, under the shadow of the abrupt conical Sugar Loaf, the southern termination of the Deerfield mountain, Lathrop fell into an am- Sept. 18. bush, and, after a brave resistance, perished there with all his company. Captain Moseley, stationed at Deer XIV. help him. CHAPTER field, marched to his assistance, but arrived too late to That town, also, was abandoned, and burned 1675. by the Indians. Springfield, about the same time, was set on fire, but was partially saved by the arrival of Major Treat with aid from Connecticut. Hatfield, now the frontier town on the north, was vigorously atOct. 19. tacked, but the garrison succeeded in repelling the assailants. Meanwhile, hostilities were spreading; the Indians on the Merrimac began to attack the towns in their vicin ity; and the whole of Massachusetts was soon in the utmost alarm. Except in the immediate neighborhood of Boston, the country still remained an immense forest, dotted by a few openings. The frontier settlements could not be defended against a foe familiar with localities, scattered in small parties, skillful in concealment, and watching with patience for some unguarded or favorable moment. Those settlements were mostly broken up, and the inhabitants, retiring toward Boston, spread every where dread and intense hatred of "the bloody heathen." Even the praying Indians, and the small dependent and tributary tribes, became objects of suspicion and terror. They had been employed at first as scouts and auxiliaries, and to good advantage; but some few, less confirmed in the faith, having deserted to the enemy, the whole body of them were denounced as traitors. Eliot the apostle, and Gookin, superintendent of the subject Indians, exposed themselves to insults, and even to danger, by their efforts to stem this headlong fury, to which several of the magistrates opposed but a feeble resistance. Troops were sent to break up the praying villages at Mendon, Grafton, and others in that quarter. The Natick Indians, "those poor despised sheep of Christ," as Gookin affectionately calls them, were hur XIV. ried off to Deer Island, in Boston harbor, where they CHAPTER suffered excessively from a severe winter. A part of the praying Indians of Plymouth colony were confined, in 1675. like manner, on the islands in Plymouth harbor. Not content with realities sufficiently frightful, superstition, as usual, added bugbears of her own. Indian bows were seen in the sky, and scalps in the moon. The northern lights became an object of terror. Phantom horsemen careered among the clouds, or were heard to gallop invisible through the air. The howling of wolves was turned into a terrible omen." The war was regarded as a special judgment in punishment of prevailing sins. Among these sins, the General Court of Massa- Oct. 19. chusetts, after consultation with the elders, enumerated. neglect in the training of the children of church members; pride, in men's wearing long and curled hair; excess in apparel; naked breasts and arms, and superfluous ribbons; the toleration of Quakers; hurry to leave meeting before blessing asked; profane cursing and swearing; tippling houses; want of respect for parents; idleness; extortion in shop-keepers and mechanics; and the riding from town to town of unmarried men and women, under pretense of attending lectures-"a sinful custom, tending to lewdness." Penalties were denounced against all these offenses; and the persecution of the Quakers was again renewed. A Quaker woman had recently frightened the Old South congregation in Boston by entering that meeting-house clothed in sackcloth, with ashes on her head, her feet bare, and her face blackened, intending to personify the small-pox, with which she threatened the colony, in punishment for its sins. About the time of the first collision with Philip, the Tarenteens, or Eastern Indians, had attacked the settlements in Maine and New Hampshire, plundering and XIV. CHAPTER burning the houses, and massacring such of the inhabitants as fell into their hands. This sudden diffusion of 1675. hostilities and vigor of attack from opposite quarters, made the colonists believe that Philip had long been plotting and had gradually matured an extensive conspiracy, into which most of the tribes had deliberately entered, for the extermination of the whites. This belief infuriated the colonists, and suggested some very questionable proceedings. It seems, however, to have originated, like the war itself, from mere suspicions. The same griefs pressed upon all the tribes; and the struggle once commenced, the awe which the colonists inspired thrown off, the greater part were ready to join in the contest. But there is no evidence of any deliberate concert; nor, in fact, were the Indians united. war would have been far more serious. The Connecticut tribes proved faithful, and that colony remained untouched. Even the Narragansets, the most powerful confederacy in New England, in spite of so many former provocations, had not yet taken up arms. But they were strongly suspected of intention to do so, and were accused, notwithstanding their recent assurances, of giving aid and shelter to the hostile tribes. Sept. Had they been so, the An attempt had lately been made to revive the union. of the New England colonies, At a meeting of commissioners, those from Plymouth presented a narrative of the origin and progress of the present hostilities, upon the strength of which the war was pronounced "just and necessary," and a resolution passed to carry it on at the joint expense. A thousand men were ordered to be raised. If the Narragansets were not crushed during the winter, it was feared they might break out openly Nov. hostile in the spring; and at a subsequent meeting of the commissioners, five hundred additional men were or |