USA > Connecticut > The history of Connecticut, from the first settlement of the colony to the adoption of the present constitution, vol. I > Part 5
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A long pause ensued, when one of the Indians said, with a haughty air, "We are Pequots ; and have killed Englishmen, and can kill them as mosquitoes : and we will go to Connec- ticut, and kill men, women, and children, and carry away the horses, cows, and hogs." Gardiner then replied, with that good-natured irony so common with him, "No, no; if you kill all the English there, it will do you no good. English
53
ATTACK UPON WETHERSFIELD.
[1637.]
women are lazy, and can't do your work. The horses and cows will spoil your corn-fields. The hogs will root up your clam banks. You will be completely undone. But look here at our fort. Here are twenty pieces of trucking-cloth, and hoes, and hatchets; you had better kill us and get these things, before you trouble yourselves to go up to Connec- ticut."*
The Indians, enraged at this taunt, and unable to answer it, betook themselves to the thicket. They had scarcely reached it, when Gardiner gave the signal that was followed by a discharge of grape, that did the Indians little harm be- yond the fright that it gave them.
In April, they went as far as Wethersfield, and waylaid the farmers as they went into the fields to labor. They killed six men and two women, and took captive two maidens, t who were long and anxiously sought after, and were finally safely restored to their friends by the Dutch. They owed their lives to the wife of Mononotto, a chief second only to Sas- sacus. She protected them with a faithfulness and delicacy, that were honorably requited when it came her turn to be a prisoner. At Wethersfield, also, they killed twenty cows, and destroyed other property to a large amount.
Not long after, John Underhill, who had served under En- dicott in his attack upon the Pequots the year before, was sent from Massachusetts with twenty men, to reinforce the garrison at Saybrook. When he reached the fort, Mason and his men returned to Hartford.
With such an enemy hanging about the skirts of their three infant settlements-an enemy, growing every hour more daring and reckless-it was evident that some decisive steps must be taken at once.
In the midst of these calamities the General Court met at Hartford, on the 1st of May, 1637. This court represented the little republic of less than three hundred souls. An ex- cited session it was, and one fraught with doubts and teeming
* Gardiner. Mass. Hist. Col. xxxiii. 144, 146; Mass. Hist. Col. xxxvi. 11.
+ Mass. Hist. Col. viii. 132, new series ; Trumbull, i. 77.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
with weighty considerations. There is little evidence left us that there was a single faint heart in this company of fifteen picked men-six magistrates, and nine committee-men- who had in their hands the fate of Connecticut. Little evidence of fear, indeed, is to be found in the records of this body, for the first written memorial that we have of their doings, is in the following concise words : "It is ordered that there shall be an offensive war against the Pequot, and there shall be ninety men levied out of the three plantations of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor ;"* a declaration of war of a phraseology so unmistakable in its simplicity, that we would joyfully recommend it to the legislative bodies of our own day-words that the reader will not be surprised to find employed by a body, including the names of Ludlow, Steele, Talcott, and Sherman. Of these troops, Hartford was to furnish forty-two, Windsor thirty, and Wethersfield eighteen. It was a short session, for long speeches were not then in fashion in any of the American colonies, where a sound head and a ready hand were in better request than nimble tongues. After providing for the munitions and supplies requisite to carry on the war, the court adjourned.
The little commonwealth was united as one man in the cause, and the preparations went forward with such prompt- ness, that in about a week after the war was resolved upon, the troops were ready to set sail.
It was on Wednesday, the 10th of May, that the heroic army embarked at Hartford, in "a pink, a pinnace, and a shallop,"t a hundred and sixty men ; the ninety English levied from the plantations, and seventy Mohegan Indians, under the command of Uncas, and set sail for the mouth of ยท the river. The renowned John Mason was Captain of the army, and Samuel Stone, scarcely less known to fame for his battles in a different field of strife, was its chaplain, or spirit- ual guide.
The water was so shallow at this season of the year, that
* J. Hammond Trumbull's Colonial Records, i. 9.
+ Mason's " History of the Pequot War."
55
AN INDIAN CAPTIVE ROASTED.
[1637.]
the vessels several times ran aground in dropping down the river. This delay was so irksome to the Indians, that they begged to be set ashore, to which Mason consented, on their promising to meet the English at Saybrook. It was not until the 15th of May, that Mason and his men arrived at Say- brook, having spent five days in sailing about fifty miles. Uncas kept his word, and joined the English at Saybrook fort. He had fought one battle during his absence, and killed seven hostile Indians. The report of this skirmish was veri- fied by Captain John Underhill, who came with Uncas, when he rejoined the English troops. Underhill also tendered to Mason his services, with nineteen men, for the expedition, if Lieutenant Gardiner, whoas we have seen commanded at Say- brook fort, would consent to it. Gardiner as readily granted him and his men leave to go. Mason was delighted with this new ally, and at once resolved to send back twenty of his own troops to protect, during his absence, the almost defence- less towns upon the river .* In his recent expedition, Uncas, in addition to the seven Indians that he had killed, had also taken one prisoner. Unluckily for the captive, he was known to be a spy. He had affected great friendship for the English, and had lived with the garrison at the fort long enough to acquire their language. He then communicated to Sassacus their most secret counsels. Besides, he had been present at the horrid murders perpetrated by the Pequots at Saybrook. Uncas claimed the right to execute this Indian after the custom of his tribe. Never was justice meted out to a wretch with a more lavish hand. He was torn limb from limb, and roasted in a fire kindled for that purpose, and then passed around the council-ring, and eaten by Uncas and his Mohegans with a relish equaled only by the demonstrations of joy with which they threw the bones into the fire when they had completed their meal. t
Mason now began to be aware how critical was the task he had undertaken. From Wednesday, when he arrived at the mouth of the Connecticut river, until the next Friday,
* Mason ; Drake 207; Brodhead, i. 271. + Trumbull, i. 80.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
his little fleet lay wind-bound near the fort, and within sight of the Pequot runners and spies who kept watch along the river. Mason's commission instructed him to sail directly for Pequot harbor, land his men there, and attack the enemy on their own ground. But the keen soldier saw at a glance the peril of obeying such orders. Had he not been kept so long at Saybrook, the case might have been different. But eight days had elapsed since he set sail from Hartford, and he well knew that a Pequot runner, could carry the news from the mouth of the Connecticut to that of the Thames in an hour, and that the shore would be lined with savages to meet them on their arrival. Besides, the shore was wild and rough, with rocks and trees that afforded a safe screen to the Indians. He also knew from the poor girls who had been taken captive at Wethersfield, and who had just been brought safely back to Saybrook by the Dutch, that the Pequots had sixteen guns in their possession, and had learned how to use them. The Pequot warriors, too, he was aware, many times outnumbered his own, and were swift of foot, and having the advantage of a favorable position on land, could offer a for- midable opposition to the English, who were more slow in their movements. The Pequots, too, could choose their ground, as their harbor was the only place within many miles where the English could land. Lastly, he saw, that if he could fall upon the enemy in the rear, and when they were not prepared for an attack, they would fall an easy prey into his hands.
Mason summoned a council of war, and assigned boldly these reasons, among others, why it was necessary to depart from the letter of the commission, and land at some other point than the one named in it. He said, in such an emer- gency, their necessities must be their masters. He urged the propriety of sailing past the Pequot country, as far as Narra- gansett bay, and, there landing his army, march through the Narragansett country, under the protection of the old here- ditary enemies of the Pequots, steal upon them in the night and crush them.
57
THE CHAPLAIN CONSULTED.
[1637.]
This advice, backed as it was by such cogent reasoning, the other members of the council did not dare to second. The grim authority of the court haunted their minds like a spec- tre. They were law-abiding men. How should they dare traverse the written will of the republic ? They saw the overwhelming force of Mason's arguments-they foresaw the death that awaited them, if they pursued the line marked out by the commission, yet those iron-hearted men, in the strong language of Mason, "were at a stand, and could not judge it meet to sail to Narragansett." What was to be done ? A breeze might spring up at any moment, and then they must set sail. They had clearly no time to waste in debate. At last Mason remembers that these men, though they honor the authority of written laws, do so only because those laws are supposed to express the will of God. Is not Mr. Stone, one of the chosen servants of God, on board one of his vessels ? What so fitting as to consult the chaplain ?
Accordingly, Mason had an interview with Mr. Stone, and begged him " to commend their condition to the Lord that night," and ask advice of him.
The next morning, the chaplain came ashore, and told Cap- tain Mason "he had done as he had desired, and was fully satis- fied to sail for Narragansett." The council was again called, the case again stated, and with one consent they agreed to sail for Narragansett bay .* It was on Friday morning that they set sail, and arrived in port on Saturday evening. But the wind blew with such violence from the north-west, that they could not effect a landing until Tuesday at sunset; at which time Captain Mason landed and marched up to the resi- dence of Miantinomoh, the chief sachem of the Narragan- setts. Mason told the sachem, that he had not an opportu- nity to acquaint him beforehand of his coming armed into his country ; yet he doubted not the object would be approved by him, as the English had come to avenge the wrongs and injuries they had received from the common enemy, the Pequots. Miantinomoh expressed himself pleased with the
* Mason's Narrative.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
design of Mason, but thought his numbers were too few to deal with the enemy, who were, as he said, "very great cap- tains, and men skillful in war."*
During the night, an Indian runner came into the camp with a letter from Captain Patrick, who had been sent from Massachusetts with a small body of men to assist Connecti- cut in prosecuting the war, informing Mason that he had reached Providence with the Massachusetts forces, and beg- ging him to remain where he was until they could unite. But the Connecticut troops were worn with fatigue and im- patient to return home ; and it was finally resolved that they would not wait for their Massachusetts allies, but would march for the Pequot country the next morning. The Nar- ragansett Indians entertained such a dread of the Pequots that they could not believe the English to be in earnest.
It was on Wednesday, the 24th of May, that the little army of seventy-seven Englishmen, sixty Mohegans and Connec- ticut river Indians, and about two hundred Narragansetts, began their march for the Pequot forts. They went that day about twenty miles, when they reached the eastern Nihantick, a country that bordered on the Pequot territory. Here was the seat of one of the Narragansett sachems, and here he had a fort. But he refused to treat with the English, or let them enter his palisades to pass the night. Mason, having good cause to think from their behavior, that these Indians were in league with the Pequots, set a strong guard about their fort, and would not allow one of them to escape from it during the night.t But the conduct of the Nihanticks, was attributable to suspicion and fear, rather than to any alliance with the Pequots, as the event proved; for when they saw, the next morning, that the English were reinforced by a large party of Narragansetts, sent on by Miantinomoh, they took heart, and, forming a circle, declared that they, too, would fight the Pequots, and boasted with their usual bravado how many they would kill; so that when Mason resumed his march on Thursday, he had about five hundred Indian war-
* Mason's Narrative. t Ib.
59
MARCH TOWARD MISTICK.
[1637.]
riors in his train. The day was very sultry and oppressive, and some of the men fainted from heat, and the exhaustion that followed from a want of suitable provisions. After marching about twelve miles to a ford in the Pawcatuck river, the old fishing-ground of the Pequots,* the army made a halt and rested a while. The Narragansett Indians, had, from the first arrival of Mason among them, looked with ill-concealed contempt upon the scanty numbers and supposed weakness of the English. They had more than once hinted that Mason and his men had not the courage to fight the Pequots, and that whatever skill and firmness there was in the army, was confined to their own ranks. But, now that they had come into the country of Sassacus, and found that they were within a few miles of his principal fortress, the expedition seemed no longer to be a pleasant jest to them, but an earn- est reality, that grew more and more fearful with every step that lessened the distance between them and the chief, who was more terrible to their imaginations than Hobbomocko himself. Mason at last called Uncas to him, and asked him what he had to expect from the Indians. The chief replied, that the Narragansetts would all drop off, but that he and his Mohegans would never leave the English. " For which ex- pression and some other speeches of his," says Mason, "I shall never forget him."
After dining upon such coarse fare as was to be had, they marched about three miles to a field just planted with Indian corn. Here they made another halt and held a council, for it was thought that they drew near the enemy. The Indians now told them, for the first time, that the Pequots had two forts, and that they were " almost" impregnable. Nothing daunted by this intelligence, the council resolved to attack both these fortresses at once. But, on further inquiry, it ap- peared that the principal fort, where Sassacus resided, was too remote to be reached before midnight, so they were com- pelled to abandon this plan, and attack the smaller one at Mistick.
* Johnson's Wonder-Working Providence, Mass. Hist. Coll. xxiv, p. 47.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
The prediction of Uncas, with regard to the Narragan- setts, was soon verified. Indeed, all the Indians, who had at first marched in the van, fell into the rear; and soon not a Narragansett was to be seen. Wequash, a petty chief who had revolted from Sassacus, was the guide upon whom Mason most relied, and he proved worthy of trust. They marched on in silence until about an hour after sunset, when they reached a small swamp between two hills. Here, supposing that they were near the fort, " they pitched their little camp" between two high rocks, ever since known as "Porter's Rocks." It was a clear night, with a shining moon. Mason set his guards, and stationed his sentinels at a great distance from the camp, to prevent the possibility of a surprise. Then the tired soldiers, with no tents to shelter them from the dew, laid themselves down under the open sky and slept. "The rocks were our pillows," says the heroic leader of the expe- dition, "yet rest was pleasant." Mistick fort was farther off from the camp than they had been led to suppose. It was so near, however, that the sentries heard the enemy singing there till midnight, a wild strain of joy and exultation, they afterwards found it to have been, in commemoration of the supposed flight of Mason and his men-for they had watched their vessels a few days before, when they sailed eastward, and rationally enough concluded that they dared not meet the dreaded Pequot in battle. This night of festivity was their last.
About two hours before day, the men were roused up and commanded to make themselves ready for battle. The moon still shone full in their faces as they were summoned to prayer. They now set forward with alacrity. The fort proved to be about two miles off. A long way it seemed over the level though stony ground, and the officers began at last to fear that they had been led upon the wrong track, when they came at length to a second field of corn, newly planted, at the base of a high hill. Here they halted, and " gave the word for some of the Indians to come up." At first not an Indian was to be seen; but finally, Uncas and Wequash the
61
ATTACK UPON MISTICK FORT.
[1637.]
guide showed themselves. " Where is the fort ?" demanded Mason. "On the top of that hill," was the answer. "Where are the rest of the Indians ?" asked the fearless soldier. The answer was, what he probably anticipated, " Behind, and very much afraid." " Tell them," said Mason, "not to fly, but to stand as far off as they please, and see whether Englishmen will fight."
There were two entrances to the fort, one on the north- eastern side, the other on the west. It was decided that Mason should lead on and force open the former, while Un- derhill, who brought up the rear, was to pass around and go in at the western gate.
Mason had approached within about a rod of the fort, when he heard a dog bark, and almost in a breath, this alarm was followed up by the voice of an Indian, crying, "Owanux ! Owanux !"-Englishmen, Englishmen! No time was to be lost. He called up his forces with all haste, and fired upon the enemy through the palisades. The Pequots, who had spent the night in singing and dancing, were now in a deep sleep. The entrance near which Mason stood, was blocked up with bushes about breast high. Over this frail obstruction he leaped, sword in hand, shouting to his men to follow him. But Seely, his lieutenant, found it more easy to remove the bushes than to force the men over them. When he had done so, he also entered, followed by sixteen soldiers. It had been determined to destroy the enemy with the sword, and thus save the corn and other valuables that were stored in the wigwams. With this view, the captain, seeing no Indians, entered one of these wigwams. Here he found many warri- ors who crowded hard upon him, and beset him with great violence ; but they were so amazed at the strange apparition that had so suddenly thrust itself upon them, that they could make but a feeble resistance. Mason was soon joined by William Hayden, who, as he entered the wigwam through the breach that had been made by his impetuous captain, stumbled against the dead body of a Pequot, whom Mason had slain, and fell. Some of the Indians now fled from the
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
wigwam ; others, still stupefied with sleep, crept under mats and skins to hide themselves.
The palisades embraced an area of about twenty acres-a space sufficient to afford room for a large Indian village. There were more than seventy houses in this space, with lanes or streets passing between them. Mason, still intent on destroying the Pequots, and at the same time saving their property, now left the wigwam, and passed down one of these streets, driving the crowd of Indians that thronged it before him from one end of it to the other. At the lower extremity of this lane stood a little company of Englishmen, who, having effected an entrance from the west, met the Indians as they fled from Mason, and killed about half a dozen of them. The captain now faced about, and went back the whole length of the lane, to the spot where he had entered the fort. He was exhausted, and quite out of breath, and had become satisfied that this was not the way to exterminate the Indians, who now swarmed from the wigwams like bees from a hive. Two of his soldiers stood near him, close to the palisades, with their useless swords pointed to the ground. Their dejected faces told him that they felt as he did, that the task was a hopeless one. " We shall never kill them in this way," said the captain ; and then added, with the same laconic brevity, " We must burn them !" With these words the decree of the council of war to save the booty of the enemy was annulled ; for, stepping into the wigwam where he had before forced an entrance, he snatched a fire-brand in his hand, and instantly returning, applied it to the light mats that formed the cov- ering of their rude tenements. Almost in an instant, the little village was wrapped in flames, and the frightened Pequots fled in dismay from the roofs that had just before sheltered them. Such was their terror, that many of them took refuge from the English in the flames, and perished there. Some climbed the palisades, where they afforded but too fair a mark for the muskets of their enemies, who could see to take a dead aim in the light of the ghastly conflagration. Others fled from the beds of mats or skins, where they had sought a
63
MASON'S VICTORY.
[1637.]
temporary concealment, and were arrested by the hand of death in the midst of their flight. Others, still, warping up to the windward, whence the fire sped with such fatal velocity, fell flat upon the ground and plied their destroyers with arrows. But their hands were so palsied with fear, that the feathered messengers either flew wide of their aim or fell with spent force upon the ground. A few, of still stouter heart, rushed forth with the tomahawk, to engage the invaders of their homes in a hand to hand combat. But they were nearly all, to the number of about forty, cut in pieces by the sword. The vast volume of flame, the lurid light reflected on the dark background of the horizon, the crack of the muskets, the yell of the Indians who fought, and of those who sought vainly to fly, the wail of women and children as they writhed in the flames, and the exulting cries of the Narragansetts and Mohe- gans without the fort, formed a contrast, awful and sublime, with the quiet glories of the peaceful May morning, that was just then breaking over the woods and the ocean.
Seventy wigwams were burned to ashes, and probably not less than five hundred men, women, and children were destroyed .* The property, too, shared the same fate. The long-cherished wampum-belt, with the beads of blue, purple, and white, the war-club, the eagle plume, the tufted scalps, trophies of many a victory-helped only to swell the blaze that consumed alike the young warrior and the superannuated counselor, the squaw, and the little child that clung helplessly to her bosom. Of all who were in the fort, only seven were taken captive, and about the same number escaped.
Notwithstanding their victory, the English forces were in no very enviable situation. Two of their men lay dead on the field, and about twenty had been wounded. The surgeon had been left at Narragansett bay with the vessels, and by
* As to the number of the Pequots who perished on that memorable morning, authorities widely differ. Mason, the chief actor in the transaction, (whose narra- tive of the expedition we have generally followed,) says " six or seven hundred as some of them confessed ;" Winthrop puts the number at about three hundred. Brodhead, at six hundred. Trumbull, at five or six hundred. Underhill, at four hundred, &c.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
some misunderstanding had not arrived to attend upon such as needed his services. Nearly all the provisions, and other comforts required by men exhausted and wounded, were also on board the vessels. Without provisions, one quarter of his men disabled, in the midst of a country unknown to him, but familiar to his enemies, within a short distance of the fort of Sassacus, who had around him hundreds of fierce warriors, his ships far away, and his powder and ball almost spent, Mason found much to test the skill of a leader, and to call forth his courage.
While debating what measures should be adopted, it was with delight that he saw his little vessels, their sails filled with the welcome gale that blew from the north-east, gliding into Pequot harbor. The fainting soldiers hailed them with joy, as if they had been angels sent to deliver them.
By this time, the news of the destruction that had fallen upon his tribe at Mistick, heralded, no doubt, not only by the handful of men who had escaped from the fort, and by the clouds of smoke that floated from the fatal scene, but by the dismal cries that attended this exterminating sacrifice, had reached the fort of Sassacus, and three hundred warriors came rushing towards the English with the determination to avenge themselves for an injury not yet half revealed to them. Mason led out a file of his best marksmen, who soon gave the Pequots a check. Seeing that they could not stand his fire, he commenced his march toward Pequot harbor. Of the twenty wounded men, four or five were so disabled that it was necessary to employ about twenty other men to carry them ; so that he had but about forty men who could engage in battle, until he succeeded in hiring some Indians to take charge of the wounded. They had marched about a quarter of a mile, when the Pequot warriors, who had withdrawn out of the range of their muskets, reached the spot where, not two hours before, their fort had sheltered so much that was sacred to them. When they came to the top of the hill, ven- erable to them from so many associations connected with the history and glory of their tribe-when they saw the smoking
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