USA > Connecticut > The history of Connecticut, from the first settlement of the colony to the adoption of the present constitution, vol. I > Part 22
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At sight of such a goodly land, whose acres they were so soon to part out among themselves and their fellow adventurers, the little company fell upon their knees and blessed God that their lines had fallen to them in such pleasant places. They encamped on the hill that night, and the next day they ex- plored the valley with earnest diligence to find out the best locality where they might build their log cabins, and gather about them the first rude comforts of pioneer life. At even- ing they encamped under a white oak tree, far down the river, in the present town of Southbury. The locality still retains the name of White Oak, in commemoration of the event; and tradition, true to the fathers of Woodbury, still points out the spot where they slept, though the oak that they rested under has long since mouldered like them into the soft, warm earth of the valley.
All the large territory of this venerable town-the oldest in Litchfield county-was amicably purchased of the In- dians. It was a very extensive region, fifteen miles in length
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
from north to south, and ten miles in width. It had a good variety of hill and valley lands and was watered by many lively streams, that for the most part helped to make up the two large branches of the Pootatuck river that I have before alluded to.
The settlers, soon after their arrival, formed a constitu- tion,* and signed it by a committee in due form. Their friends soon followed them, and in 1674, the plantation was incorporated under the name of Woodbury.t The town- ship then embraced all the territory now included in the towns of Washington, Southbury, Bethlem, Roxbury, and a part of Oxford and Middlebury. These different sections were first set off and incorporated as ecclesiastical societies ; but as they gradually increased in population, they were ultimately, one after another, invested with "town priv- ileges."
I have mentioned the settlement of these several towns in this chapter, not only to preserve the chronological order of events, but because they were obliged to devote their infancy to the prevention of the sanguinary struggle that I now proceed to narrate.
It had been thought that for several years Philip, chief sachem of the Wampanoags, had used all his address to incite a general insurrection of the Indians for the purpose of exterminating the English. That jealousies were exciting in his breast against his white neighbors, of a deeply-rooted growth, is certainly true ; it is also true that he kept under arms and paid frequent visits to the tribes that owed allegi- ance to him. This greatly alarmed the English colonies. A little while before the war broke out, the governor of Mas- sachusetts sent an ambassador to him to demand of him
* For a copy of this constitution, and for a more minute account of the settle- ment of this fine old town, I must refer the reader to Cothren's " History of Ancient Woodbury,"-a work that will remain a monument of the learning and untiring perseverence of the author, as long as there shall continue to exist upon this continent a single antiquarian library that tells a true tale of the sufferings and privations of the earlier if not better days of Connecticut.
t Col. Rec., ii. 227.
-
261
THE INDIANS REJECT CHRISTIANITY.
why he would make war with the English, and requested him to enter into a treaty with them. "Your governor," said Philip to the messenger, "is but a subject of King Charles of England. I shall not treat with a subject. I shall treat of peace only with the king, my brother. When he comes, I am ready." If he entertained any design of making an attack upon the colonies, he evidently wished to conceal it until he had ripened his plans. The causes of this fierce war were many, and of slow but certain operation. The immediate occasion of it was as sudden as the eruption of a volcano.
Efforts had long been made by the authorities of Massa- chusetts, to subdue the savageness of the Indians by convert- ing them to Christianity. No one can read the details of the life of Eliot, the Indian apostle on the main-land, or the still more touching story of the apostles of the isles, young Mayhew, whose missionary zeal was quenched in the billows of the Atlantic, and his aged father, who, by inverting the order of nature, took the place of his lost child, and taught the love and doctrines of Jesus to the tribes that would lend an ear to him, not without effect, until he was ninety-two years old ; and not feel a deep reverence for the religion that can lead its teachers voluntarily to take upon themselves such sacrifices. Nor will any one deny, who has dispassion- ately conned over those labors of love, that they had much to do in keeping the Indians who were the recipients of them, in proper subjection. But with the exception of the few villages in the vicinity of Boston, and the Indians inhabiting Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, the influence of the Christian teacher could hardly be said to exert any control over the aboriginal mind .* Even those Indians were kept in check by the indefinable charm of the missionary's life and character, rather than by any effect wrought in their own hearts by the doctrines that he attempted to inculcate.
Beyond this narrow limit, the most benighted idolatry reigned throughout all the tribes of New England. The
* Bancroft, ii. 97; Mayhew's Indian Convert, &c.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
Narragansetts were inflexible in their adherence to their old religion, and Philip with scorn rejected the gospel faith, as cowardly and unworthy of an Indian chief whose hereditary glory could only flourish amid the desolation of war. Be- sides, his father, Massasoit, for whom he appears to have cherished a deep filial regard-Massasoit, who had been the first to welcome the houseless exiles of Plymouth to the new world, and who had entertained Winslow and his retinue with such munificent hospitality in his royal wigwam at Po- hansket-had strictly enjoined upon his sons never to allow the pride of the warriors of his tribe to be tamed by what he believed to be the enervating spirit of Christianity .*
What a change had taken place in the condition of the Wampanoags since the first arrival of the English! Then, all the wide expanse, extending for miles along the coast, with its bays, creeks, coves, and inlets abounding in fish, as well as the undulating wilderness that stretched away to the very fountains of the rivers, those avenues that led from one hunting-glade or cornfield to another, were his realm and inheritance. By gradual encroachments during his life time and the brief reign of Wamsutta, his elder son, cove, cornfield, forest and stream, had passed into the hands of the English, until, finally, upon the accession of Philip, two small tracts of land made up the only territory that the tribe could safely call its own, and presume to retain in its exclu- sive possession without fear of molestation. Other fields, once their own, they could still wander over, but wherever they went in the summer, they saw the black mould where once their eyes rested upon the green turf; the unsightly stump and tree-top, in place of the mighty oak and shapely pine; and the hated village, with its stone chimneys and curling wreaths of smoke, like a moving panorama ever advancing to meet them.
Can it be thought strange that all those changes that had come over the familiar features of nature, should have been so many tokens of jealousy to her sons? Once her luxuriant
* Bancroft, ii. 99.
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ORIGIN OF THE WAR.
[1675.]
beauty soothed their rugged natures to short intervals of repose. Now that she smiled on others with an altered mein, and averted her eyes from them, the very sight of her seemed only to inflame them with envy and madness.
When once the Indians began to hate their white neigh- bors, every event seemed to hasten the catastrophe. They were cited to appear before the authorities at Boston and Plymouth ; they were subjected to the prejudices of an Eng- lish jury, and scorned to appear and defend themselves before courts that must have been more than human if they had in all cases done them exact justice. But I am aware that the causes of this war have passed under the review of the best writers of New England, and I shall prudently retire from a field where there is little left to be gleaned.
Philip had already been ordered to give up his English weapons, and had been from time to time compelled to sub- mit to a series of interferences and examinations that could not fail to arouse the indignation of an Indian sachem. He was also obliged to pay tribute to those whom he regarded as his inferiors .* Nor was it a mere nominal tribute that might serve as an acknowledgment of fealty to a sovereign power, but a heavy burden that enfeebled him and helped to enrich those who exacted it.
In a moment of passion, whether instigated by their chief or not I can not say, a few of his tribe waylaid the informer who had betrayed their interests, and killed him. One act of violence led to another, and the English, perhaps in no better spirit than the perpetrators of the first deed of blood, seized them, empaneled a jury, made up partly of Indians who were friendly to the English, and were doubtless known to be so, or their services would not have been put in requi- sition ; and, after a hasty trial that hardly served the de- mands of decency, found them guilty and hung them. t
This was early in June 1675, and on the 24th of that month, this act, so rash and unnecessary that few will now
* Bancroft, ii. 100.
+ Drake's Book of the Indians, b. iii, 23; Trumbull, i. 327.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
attempt to justify it, resulted in the barbarous murder of at least eight of the English at Swansey .*
It would seem that this bloody recrimination was not the work of Philip, for he expressed the deepest regret when he heard the sad tidings that he must have felt to be the mutter- ings of the distant thunder that heralded the coming of the destructive storm, for which, if he had anticipated it as a future event, he was not then prepared.t Well might he deplore the prospects that this untimely quarrel held out to him. Many of the New England tribes were fast friends of the English, as well in Connecticut as in Massachusetts. Some of them were bound to them by self-interest, others by fear. Even the Narragansetts, that large nation so closely allied to his own people by blood, although Canonchet, their chief, with his warriors, had not forgotten the death of his father, Miantinomoh, were kept in awe by the success and growing power of the friends of Uncas. He could not avoid looking at the relative resources of those who were to mix in the strife. He must have seen the painful contrast between himself and his few hundred warriors, together with such allies as could be induced for the sake of vengeance to espouse a desperate cause, spending the summer in the woods and snatching the scanty means of subsistence at irregular intervals ; passing the winter in lonely swamps, with magazines uncertain as the agriculture of the squaws was slender and unproductive; in forts that might easily be sought out by his enemies, and where surprise and defeat must be annihilation ; I say, he must easily have seen the contrast between such an army, fighting for the most part with clubs and bows and arrows, and the formidable array that could be sent out to meet it by the united colonies of New England, who, he knew were pledged to support each other, who lived in permanent habitations, had abundance of food, were provided with the most deadly weapons, had warm clothing to screen them from the cold, and who, in all
* Drake, b. iii. 24.
t Callender's Hist. Dis. at Newport, R. I., 1738.
265
PHILIP PREPARING FOR WAR.
[1675.]
battles that they had waged with the native tribes, had been conquerors.
On the other hand, the English were not without appre- hensions. They had always overrated the strength of the Indians, and had been kept in constant fear of some sudden surprise. In the earliest stages of their settlements, they had looked for total destruction at the hands of these half-naked savages, of whom they had a superstitious horror, such as they had of the devil, who, as they believed, loved best to dwell in deserts and solitary places, and often took the sem- blance of a painted savage. I do not think the emigrants were more superstitious than other Europeans of that age would have been in their situation. But there is a restless uncertainty that follows men into new and strange con- ditions, and often surrenders them to the dominion of ill- founded fears and false estimates of things. Hence it was that the Indian bow was seen in the sky, that the moon, when laboring under an eclipse, had still light enough left to give forth the ghostly semblance of a scalp from her dark- ened face .* Indeed, they had much cause for alarm. The Indians were not destitute of fire-arms, and they could handle them with the most fatal accuracy.
After it was made apparent to Philip that he could not shun the conflict, he addressed himself to it with all the earnestness and vigor of a mind naturally gifted, and now quickened into terrible activity by the force of circum- stances. He sent his runners and ambassadors to every tribe that he had reason to think hostile to the English, or whose chiefs could be wrought upon by the eloquence of his orators, to unite with him. His eager allies daily poured in, ranged under their respective captains, and ready for battle ; for the warriors, especially the younger ones, were tired of the long peace that had enervated their frames and relaxed their bow-strings. As they increased in numbers, they grew more and more intoxicated with the prospect of success. They flew from one settlement to another, silent as the pestilence,
* Bancroft, ii. 101.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
swift as the lightning. Village after village was burned to ashes. On the 24th of June, Swansey was destroyed, and in quick succession, Taunton, Middleborough and Dartmouth lit up the fair expanse of Narragansett Bay. The English fled for their lives before their destroyers. Messengers were sent off by them, to give the alarm at Boston and Plymouth. As soon as the tidings reached the former place, the drum was beaten, and in three hours that brave old privateer, Captain Samuel Mosely, had gathered an army of one hundred and ten picked men, who were soon ready to march. The captain had about a dozen of his privateers under his command, and there were added to the effective forces of the expedition some blood-hounds, that were em- ployed to track out the enemy in their concealment .*
A few days after that, the people of Swansey and Reho- both sent to Boston for further aid. Accordingly, Captain Thomas Savage was appointed commander-in-chief of the expedition, who, with sixty horse and the same number of foot soldiers, marched forthwith for the camp of Philip at Mount Hope. On arriving there, the English made an attack upon him so suddenly, while he was dining, that he was obliged to run for his life. Mosely pursued him about a mile, and killed a few of his warriors. In this hasty flight, Philip lost his cap. It fell into the hands of Cornelius, a Dutchman, half soldier and half servant of Mosely, who kept it as a trophy. This was on the 29th of June. On the 1st of July, two or three more Indians were killed, and their scalps sent to Boston.t For the honor of those brave men, I wish it had never been found necessary to record an inci- dent that seems to put the contending parties upon such an equal footing.
On the 8th of the same month, Benjamin Church and Captain Fuller, with a small company of kindred spirits, marched down to Pocasset Neck. Church had tried to dis- suade the English commander from building a fort at Mount Hope Neck, as an utter waste of time. With characteristic
* See Drake's Book of the Indians, b. iii. 24. t Drake, b. iii. 26.
267
HUTCHINSON AND BEERS KILLED.
[1675.]
shrewdness he asked the question, that was then thought to be so impertinent in a volunteer who had not at that time proved his superior prowess and sagacity as he did soon after-" Why should we build a fort for nothing, to cover the people from nobody ?"* It was a very significant in- quiry, as it turned out that like a flock of pigeons, every Indian had left the place. He advised to pursue the Indians upon the Pocasset side. Had this advice been followed, the towns lying between Pocasset and Plymouth would have been saved from conflagration. It would be out of place, were I to record here the hot conflict that took place at Pocasset, even had it not been delineated with such minute- ness by Church, whose pen was adequate to record whatever deeds of daring his sword could perform, and who, retreating backward to the boat that had saved his men from destruc- tion, was the last man to take refuge in this ark of safety. At this battle, Philip was present and fought with great bravery. It was on this occasion that it was made known how well provided the Indians were with fire-arms, as was learned, says the lively chronicler, by their "bright guns glittering in the sun."
On the 14th of July, five people were killed at Mendon. They were probably shot dead while at their work in the field, and were as ignorant as their surviving friends of the authors of their death.
On the 2d of August, Captain Hutchinson was waylaid and killed, with several of his men, while going to treat with the Nipmucks. Captain Wheeler also had his horse shot under him, and was shot through the body, but escaped by the aid of his son, who, himself badly wounded, assisted him to mount another horse and fly.t
On the 3d of September, Captain Richard Beers was sud- denly surprized while on his march with a company of thirty-six men to reinforce the garrison at Northfield; he was attacked by a large body of Indians, and after one of the most desperate struggles recorded in our annals, was
* Hist. of Philip's War, p. 6. + Captain Wheeler's Narrative, p. 1, 5.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
killed with about twenty of his men .* The hill to which he fled and where he sold his life at so dear a rate, was called, in honor of the event, "Beers' Mountain."+ The Indians, with a view of striking terror into the breasts of their ene- mies, committed shocking outrages upon the bodies of the slain. They cut off their heads and set them upon poles high in the air, and one " was found with a chain hooked into his under jaw and hung upon the bough of a tree."}
The little garrison that Beers had been sent to relieve, suffered every extremity, and was saved only by the timely coming of Major Robert Treat, who arrived there from Con- necticut two days after the battle, with one hundred soldiers, and conducted it to Hadley in safety.
By this it will be seen that Connecticut, whose soil was not invaded during the war, had nobly come up to the rescue of her sister colonies, and was found, as we shall see in the sequel, able to do them a service that they have been grate- ful enough to remember. Indeed, the people of Connecticut, though they looked for the approach of the enemy, and took the precaution to send troops to Stonington upon the break- ing out of the war, to protect that exposed part of their fron- tier, bordering on the Narragansett and Nihantick country, yet almost every step that they took was in defence of the other colonies, in obedience to the articles of confederation.
The Narragansetts did not very cordially second the efforts of Philip, and yet they aided him indirectly by harboring his old men and women, and it is not unlikely that some of the more adventurous young warriors of the tribe joined in the exciting game. The chiefs, at the head of whom was Canon- chet, had hitherto resisted the importunities of Philip, and refused to take any open part in the conflict. It was quite evident, however, that their sympathies were with him, and that their pretended neutrality was only preserved until they should be able to discover which scale of the trembling bal- ance was likely to preponderate. There was another motive
* Bancroft, ii. 104; Trumbull, i. 334. + Drake, b. iii. 31.
# Hubbard.
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THE NARRAGANSETTS.
than that of mere policy, for the inaction of the Narra- gansetts.
When the Mayflower first anchored off the coast that has since been so celebrated in song and story, the Narragan- setts were the most wealthy and numerous of all the New England tribes. Even the pestilence, that had a few years before swept off such numbers of the other Indians, had passed by their wigwams and left them untouched. They lived in the south-western part of what is now Rhode Island, and all the tribes that dotted the shore along the western line of Narragansett Bay paid them tribute. Even Massasoit, the chief of the Wampanoags, was subject to them, and as a matter of course his tributaries at Shawmut and Neponsit, must in some sense have acknowledged their dominion.
The pestilence had thinned the ranks of the Wampanoag warriors to such a degree that the Narragansett sachems had easily subdued them. Hence the readiness of Massasoit and his tributaries to make an alliance with the people of Ply- mouth that should enable them to throw off this irksome bondage. To the alliance established between the English and Massasoit, Canonicus and Miantinomoh, though it cost them perhaps one half of their subjects, submitted in silence. The loss that the Narragansetts sustained when the Wam- panoags thus achieved their independence, was hailed by Sassacus, chief sachem of the Pequots, with joy, as it weakened a powerful neighbor and rival. But Sassacus was too good a politician not to see, after watching for a little while the growth and policy of the English, that they would finally be the lords of the whole country unless they could be swept off at a single stroke. To this end he proposed to the Nar- ragansett sachems an alliance, and offered to merge all their old quarrels in this last struggle for existence. But the Nar- ragansetts had enjoyed a long interval of peace. Their warriors, from a disuse of their weapons and old arts, had become enervated and disinclined to them, and had turned their attention to the acquisition of wealth, and to the refine- ments of a more advanced stage of civilized life, than be-
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
longed to the tribes contiguous to them. The Narragansetts were then the mechanics and manufacturers of the Indians. At their principal village they made a large share of the peag that passed so current among the several nations of New England. Here, too, was manufactured pottery on a large scale, and other household utensils. Nor were they negligent of agriculture, as the supplies of corn that they furnished to those Indians who were destitute, and the vast stores that were found deposited in their humble granaries when their last hour of agony had come, bore witness.
On these accounts this ancient and generous tribe declined to connect themselves with the dangerous enterprise of Sas- sacus, and partly for the same cause, I doubt not, they shrunk at first from the still more adventurous designs of Philip.
Resolved to induce the Narragansetts to settle upon some fixed policy either of active alliance or of neutrality, the commissioners of the colonies came to the conclusion, imme- diately on the breaking out of the war, that it was best to make a treaty with them, and it was thought safest to send the army, that had gone to the relief of Swansey, forward into their country, to facilitate the negotiations by that most persuasive of all arguments, military force. Accordingly, this had been done before the fight at Pocasset Neck, and on the 15th of July, a treaty was concluded between the colo- nies and the six Narragansett sachems, in which it was stip- ulated that there should be perpetual peace between the parties, that the Narragansetts should return all goods stolen from the English, and that they should harbor neither Philip nor any of his subjects; but if any of the Wampanoags should take refuge among them, they should kill them.
On the part of the English, it was agreed that the Narra- gansetts should receive forty coats for Philip if they would take him and surrender him alive, and twenty for his head ; for one of his warriors, two coats, and one for every head. The Indians were compelled to give hostages for the faithful performance of this harsh and forced treaty. Had they kept
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CAPT. LATHROP KILLED.
[1675.]
it long, it would have been more wonderful than that they broke it as early as they did .*
Soon after the unhappy loss of Beers and his men, it was thought best to establish a magazine at Hadley and garrison the town. At Deerfield there were three thousand bushels of wheat in the stack, and for the use of the garrison it was determined to transport it to Hadley. Captain Lathrop, with eighty-eight young men, "the flower of Essex county," was sent with teams to accomplish the work. He had loaded it in sacks and was on his way to Hadley, when, in passing through a secluded dell, and at a moment when his soldiers, without anticipating danger, were plucking and eating the ripe clusters of wild grapes that hung temptingly from the trees that shaded their path, they were attacked by a large body of Indians so suddenly and with such ferocity that, notwithstanding the desperate resistance that they made, they were nearly all cut off.t Lathrop himself was among the slain. Mosely, who was not far off with seventy men, came to the rescue. He found the woods filled with Indians. He computed their number at one thousand warriors, and so emboldened were they by their recent success, that they did not seek to hide themselves, but came out boldly and dared him to fight with them.
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