USA > Connecticut > The history of Connecticut, from the first settlement of the colony to the adoption of the present constitution, vol. I > Part 6
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65
MASON RETURNS TO HARTFORD.
[1637.]
palisades, the flames of their wigwams, not yet extinguished, the blackened bodies that lay scattered where death had overtaken them-in their grief and rage, they stamped upon the ground, tore the hair from their heads, and then rushed madly down the hill, as if they would have swept the enemy from the face of the earth. Captain Underhill, with a file of the bravest men, was ordered to defend the rear. This he did with such efficiency that the Indians were soon com- pelled to fall back. Yet such was their resolve to have their revenge upon the English that, during their march for the next six miles, they pursued them, sometimes hanging on their rear, sometimes hidden behind trees or rocks in front, discharging their arrows in secret, at others, making desper- ate attacks, that could be repelled only by the too deadly use of the musket. They fought at fearful odds, as was evinced by the dead bodies of their warriors picked up by the Mohe- gans who followed in their train, while not an Englishman was injured during the whole line of their march. At last, wearied with a pursuit that only brought harm to themselves, they abandoned it, and left the English to continue their march unmolested, with their colors flying, to Pequot harbor. Here they were received on board their vessels with many demonstrations of joy.
In about three weeks from the day when the army em- barked at Hartford, to go upon this uncertain and dangerous enterprise, they returned to their homes, where the kindest congratulations awaited them.
5
CHAPTER III.
PROSECUTION OF THE PEQUOT WAR.
THE Pequots, who had gone out to view the scene of the fatal conflagration at Mistick, and who had sought in vain to avenge it upon the heads of its authors, now returned to the principal fort, and told to Sassacus the details of the dismal story, as they had been able to gather it from the too certain indications that still remained. Their reverence for him, no longer kept them aloof from him. From having been his most abject servants, they now became his accusers. They charged it upon his arrogance and ambition, that his subjects had revolted and had called in to aid their rebellion, such ter- rible allies as the English were, with weapons that resembled the thunder and the lightning, who went upon the sea, and who made use of fire to execute their wrath. They said the ruin of the whole tribe would soon follow. They said that he merited death, and they would kill him. Indeed, it is probable that they would have done so, had not the counselors of the chief interposed with mild words to calm the excited passions of the warriors. They consented to spare his life, but the spell of his influence over them was broken forever. He had ceased to be "all one god," from the moment that it became known how inadequate he was to protect his people from the English. A consultation was now held of the most solemn character. What should be done ? Should they remain in the fort, and be exposed to the fate that had awaited their brothers at Mistick, or should they imitate the example of their enemies, and commit this their old retreat, and its royal wigwams and high palisades, to the flames, and then seek the fastnesses of the rocks and cedar swamps for a last refuge ? It was with a bitter struggle that they finally re- solved to burn the fort, and thus help to blot out the Pequot name. They burned it to ashes with their own hands, and,
67
MASON FOLLOWS SASSACUS.
[1637.]
in little companies, as they could best agree to assort them- selves, they fled into the most inaccessible hiding-places. Sassacus, Mononotto, and about eighty of his friends and braves, making up the proudest of the tribe, who preferred to die rather than desert their chief in his misfortune, set their faces toward the west, and fled for their lives.
Meanwhile Roger Williams, always the good angel of those who persecuted him, sent an Indian runner to Boston with the tidings that Connecticut had gained a victory over the Pequots at Mistick.
The governor and council of the Massachusetts, resolved to follow up Mason's success, sent forward with all haste one hun- dred and twenty men, under the command of Mr. Stoughton, with instructions to prosecute the war, even to the destruction of the Pequot name. The famous Mr. Wilson of Boston went with the army as chaplain. They reached Pequot harbor late in June, and soon found a party of the Indians, where they had secreted themselves in a swamp. They took eighty captives there-fifty women and children, whom they spared, and thirty men, every one of whom they killed with the ex- ception of the sachems, whom they saved on their promising to conduct them to Sassacus.
In June, the Connecticut court met at Hartford, and ordered that forty men should be raised, and put under the command of Mason, to carry on the war .* The wise Ludlow, and several of the principal gentlemen of the colony, went along with the party as advisers, for by this time the court had learned the folly of tying up Mason by the terms of a commission. They soon joined the Massachusetts men, under Stoughton, at Pequot harbor. A council of war was held, and it was resolved to follow Sassacus in his flight toward Hudson river. They soon found traces of the enemy. It was evident from the close proximity to one another of the rendezvous, where the Pequots spent the night, that they marched at a slow pace, and had their women, children, and movable property with them. The smoke that arose from
* J. H. Trumbull's Colonial Records, i. 10,
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
their fires, the prints of their fingers in the woods, where they had dug up the earth to search for roots to quell the cravings of hunger, and the marks that the tides had not obliterated where they had searched for clams in the wet sea sand, render- ed it no difficult task to pursue them. But the Pequots were scattered into so many parties, that it was impossible for the English, to tell from these doubtful signs whether they were on the trail of Sassacus or of some petty chief. At last, in this perplexity, they summoned the sachems taken by Stough- ton at Pequot harbor, who had been spared under the prom- ise of pointing out the trail of the great chief, and called upon them to redeem their pledge. But they refused to give in- formation against him, and were put to death .* The place where this too summary execution took place was within the limits of the present town of Guilford, where the land, rising into a bluff, affords a grateful elevation for the sea-breezes that have long tempted the lovers of cool summer nights and good cheer to take up a temporary abode. It still bears the name of "Sachem's Head." A part of the army, guided by Uncas and some of his Indians, marched along the shore within sight of the vessels, that hovered as near them as the nature of the coast would allow. When they reached Quin- nipiack, now New Haven, they saw a great smoke curling up through the trees, and hoped to find the fugitives near at hand. But the fires, they soon found, had been kindled by the Connecticut river Indians.
Here was a good harbor, and as the march through the woods had proved toilsome, and had resulted in nothing, the English all went on board the vessels. Here they stayed several days, in doubt what they would do, and waiting for the return of a Pequot, who had been sent forward to spy out the enemy. At last he returned, and reported that Sas-
* Drake, in his History of Boston, p. 216, names Mononotto as one of the sa- chems beheaded at this time. Trumbull, however, mentions him as one of the survivors of the " swamp fight," which took place several days after ; adding, that he was one of the twenty who fled to the Mohawks, all of whom were slain by the Mohawks, " except Mononotto, who was wounded, but made his escape."
69
THE SWAMP FIGHT.
[1637.]
sacus and his party, were secreted in a swamp a few miles to the westward.
The English were soon on the trail. They found the swamp without difficulty. It was situated within the limits of the old town of Fairfield. In this swamp were hidden about eighty Pequot warriors, with their women and children, and about two hundred other Indians. A dismal, miry bog it was, covered with tangled bushes. Dangerous as it was, Lieutenant Davenport rushed into it with his men, eager to encounter the Pequots.
The sharp arrows of the enemy flew from places that hid the archers, wounding the soldiers who, in their haste to retreat, only sunk deeper in the mire. The Indians, made bold by this adventure, pressed hard upon them, and would have car- ried off their scalps, had it not been for the timely aid of some other Englishmen, who waded into the swamp, sword in hand, drove back the Pequots, and drew their disabled friends from the mud that had threatened to swallow them up. The swamp was now surrounded, and a skirmish followed that proved so destructive to the savages, that the Fairfield Indi- ans begged for quarter. They said, what was probably true, that they were there only by accident, and had never done the English any harm-and that they only wished for the privilege of withdrawing from the swamp, and leaving the Pequots to fight it out.
Thomas Stanton, who knew their language, was sent into the swamp with instructions to offer life to all the Indians who had shed no English blood. When the Sachem of the Fairfield Indians learned the terms proposed by Stanton, he came out of the swamp followed by little parties of men, wo- men, and children. He and his Indians, he said, had shed no English blood. But the Pequot warriors, made up of choice men, and burning with rage against the enemy who had destroyed their tribe and driven them from their old haunts, fought with such desperate bravery, that the English were glad to confine themselves to the border of the swamp.
There now sprang up a controversy among the officers,
70
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
as to the best mode of annihilating this little handful of Pequots. Some advised that they should plunge into the swamp, and there fight them. But the experiment of Daven- port discouraged others from so foolhardy a course. Others suggested that they should cut down the swamp with the hatchets that they had brought with them; others, that they should surround it with palisades. Neither of these proposi- tions was adopted. They finally hit upon a plan that was more easily executed. They cut down the bushes that grew upon a little neck of firm upland, that almost divided the swamp into two parts. In this way, they so lessened the area occupied by the Pequots that, by stationing men twelve feet apart, it could all be surrounded by the troops. This was done, and the sentinels all stationed, before nightfall. Thus keeping watch on the borders of the morass, wet, cold, and weary, the soldiers passed the night under arms. Just before day, a dense fog arose, that shrouded them in almost total darkness. A friendly mist it proved to the Pequots, for it doubtless saved the lives of many of them. At a favorable moment they rushed upon the English. Captain Patrick's quarters were first attacked, but he drove them back more than once. Their yells, more terrible from the darkness that engulfed the scene of the conflict, were so unearthly and appalling, the attack was so sudden and so well sustained, that, but for the timely interference of a party sent by Mason to relieve him, Patrick would doubtless have been driven from his station or cut in pieces. The siege had by this time given place to a hand-to-hand fight. As Mason was himself marching up to aid Patrick, the Pequots rushed upon him from the thicket. He drove them back with severe loss. They did not resume the attack upon the man who had re- cently given them such fearful proofs of his prowess ; but turned upon Patrick, broke through his ranks, and fled. About sixty of the Pequot warriors escaped. Twenty lay dead upon the field. One hundred and eighty were taken prisoners. Most of the property that this fugitive remnant of the tribe had attempted to carry with them, fell into the hands of the
1
71
SASSACUS BEHEADED BY THE MOHAWKS.
[1637.]
English. Hatchets of stone, beautiful wampum-belts, pol- ished bows, and feathered arrows, with the utensils employed by the women in their rude domestic labors, became at once, as did the women themselves, the property of the conquerors. The captives and the booty were divided between Massa- chusetts and Connecticut. Some were sent by Massachu- setts to the West Indies, and there, as slaves, dragged out a wretched, yet brief existence. Among the captives taken in this battle, was the wife of Mononotto and her children. With much dignity, she begged them to save her honor in- violate and to spare her life and that of her offspring. She had been kind to the girls who had been taken from Weth- ersfield, and for this she and her little ones were recommended, not in vain, to the mercy of the governor of Massachusetts .*
Those who fell to the colony of Connecticut found their condition more tolerable. Some of them, it is true, spent their days in servitude ; yet its rigors softened as the horrors of the war faded from the recollections of the English. Sas- sacus seems not to have been present at this battle. Foiled and discomfitted at every turn, he fled far to the westward, and sought a refuge among the enemies of his tribe, the Mo- hawks. But he looked in vain for protection at their hands. He had defied them in his prosperity, and in his evil days they avenged themselves .. They beheaded him, and sent his scalp as a trophy to Connecticut. A lock of his black, glossy hair was carried to Boston in the fall of the same year, as a witness that the proud sachem of the Pequots was no more !
On the 21st of September, Uncas and Miantinomoh, with the remaining Pequots, met the magistrates of Connecticut at Hartford. About two hundred of the vanquished tribe still survived. A treaty was then entered into between Con- necticut, the Mohegans, and the Narragansetts. By its terms, there was to be perpetual peace between these two tribes and
* The scene of this famous " swamp fight" lies on the borders of Long Island sound, about three miles from Greenfield Hill, in the town of Fairfield. President Dwight, (who celebrated the battle in his poem, " Greenfield Hill,") states, in the preface of that work, that the " swamp " was at that time a beautiful field.
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HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
the English. If the subjects of either tribe did wrong to those of the other, the injured party promised not to take summary justice into its own hands, but to appeal to the English. Then, with imposing ceremonials, the magistrates divided the remnant of the Pequots among the Narragansetts and Mohegans. To Uncas, their favorite, they gave one hundred, to Miantinomoh eighty, and twenty to Ninigret. These poor creatures, thus given over to their enemies and subjected to their bitterest taunts, were to be called Pequots no more, nor were they ever to dwell again in their old haunts, or pay their wonted visits to the burial-places of their dead, or meet on festal days to revive the traditions of their people around the embers of the council fire.
The thoughtful reader may feel disposed to ask us, if we can justify the story that we have told with such painful minuteness. We answer, that such a war should never have been begun. The expedition of Endicott, the primary cause of this war, was ill advised, and carried on in defiance of the wishes of Connecticut. But, after the horrid murders that were committed by the Pequots, the sequel of this unhappy affair, Connecticut was compelled to take the field. The war was then one of extermination, for the enraged Pequot would give no quarter to the English. Some lineaments of the cam- paign are harsh and repulsive. Most gladly would we soften them with more delicate tints. But the features of truth have often a sharp, stern outline, as had the characters of those unflinching men, the fathers of New England, who struck down their enemies as they felled their forest trees, aiming at every blow of the axe at the annihilation of the wilder- ness. The roots of the brave old woods they could not at once destroy. A few years sent up a new growth, with fresh leaves, to wave in the breath of summer, and ripen beneath the August sun. But no new race of men sprung up to fill the places of the crushed and desolate Pequots. Let the reader decide the question of guilt or innocence as best he may ; but let him not forget to weigh against the fate of the Indians the atrocities that they had perpetrated, and the
73
[1637.]
CLOSE OF THE PEQUOT WAR.
horror inspired by their war whoops as they mingled at night with the howl of the wolf around the farmer's dwelling. Let him also bear in mind how much the last two centuries have done to modify the rules of war and the social and political relations of the world. In this way he will be able to adjust the scales between the contending parties, in a struggle not so much for dominion as for a national existence.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FIRST AMERICAN CONSTITUTION.
CIVIL liberty, as Christian nations understand the term, seems to have had its seeds first sown with a liberal hand in England. But England, with all her health and vigor, bor- rowed from the feudalism of the continent, during the early and middle ages, many a constitutional taint, that showed it- self in the blood of the state, and sometimes threatened it with a speedy dissolution. The struggle between the villein and his lord-the oppressive power of the great barons- their disregard of the interests of the lower orders-their bloody wars, waged to make and unmake kings-kept her in a state of almost perpetual unrest for centuries. There, too, the religious sentiment, long meditating the mild studies of the scholar and the doctrines of the Prince of Peace, in the depths of the cloister, was roused by the blast of the clarion to follow the wildest of priests and the most romantic of kings to the wars of the Holy Sepulchre, and often kindled to acts of violence at home that have left marks still visible in every part of the island.
But, by slow degrees, often repulsed, and still gathering its forces anew, popular constitutional liberty gained ground. By a union of the people with the crown, the barons were subdued, and the kingly prerogative itself was at length con- fined to fixed channels. Sometimes, indeed, swollen by the strong passions of some imperious monarch like Henry VIII., it broke over its banks, and spread a temporary desolation among the people; but the waters soon subsided into their calm and regular flow. But Henry VIII. was an exception to all rules. It is not often that a nation is governed by a monarch of such scholastic attainments, such intellectual en- dowments, such a strong and marked individuality, and such
75
HENRY VIII.
an imperious will. Never did a prince come to the throne with more flattering anticipations. A handsome person, a bold and gallant manner, a full exchequer, an undoubted title, all contributed to swell the popular shouts that hailed him king. With all these advantages, Henry was almost totally devoid of moral culture. He was also the victim of the most insatiate passions. It is idle to call him a Protestant, in any such sense as the term was understood in his day, or in that of his daughter Elizabeth. So far was he from being so, that he himself wrote what he called a refutation of Luther's tenets, in Latin, for which he was honored by Leo X. with the title of "Defender of the Faith." Nor is there any reason to suppose that he would have ever broken away from the Roman see, had he not been enraged at the excommunication that followed a public disclosure of his secret marriage with Anne Boleyn. All that he then did was to declare himself the "Head of the English Church." Still he adhered as closely as ever to the theological tenets of the Roman Cath- olic Church. He executed Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher, because they refused to take the oath of supremacy to him, and at the same time caused hundreds of reformers to be burned at the stake. The cruel and barbarous destruction of the religious houses, and the confiscation of monastic property, in 1538, the expunging of the sainted name of Thomas a Becket, from the calendar, and the burn- ing of his bones to ashes, were acts of violence leveled not against the Roman Catholic religion, but against those who dared to dispute his own ecclesiastical supremacy. His alli- ance with Catherine Howard brought him still more imme- diately under the control of the Catholic party, and while the new queen retained his favor a fearful persecution was waged against the Protestants.
If he ever was a Protestant, it was while under the brief dominion of Catherine Parr, his sixth wife, whose heart was touched, though she dared not openly avow it, with the dawn- ing beams of the Reformation. Even this secretly-cherished preference had well-nigh proved her ruin. That the king
76
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
afterwards forsook his old friends, does not evince, that I am able to discover, any change in his religious tenets.
All this while, the quick leaven of the Reformation was working in the minds of the English people. While the monarch was busy in freeing himself from the burden of one queen, only to become entangled in the toils of another, whose glory, alas, was to be equally evanescent ; while he was writing that darling word "supremacy," in characters red with the blood of bishops and statesmen adhering to their old allegiance, mingled, too, with that of reformers, whose pure souls were breathed forth in prayer, that the sickle might quickly be thrust in by other hands, since to them it was denied to reap the whitened harvest field-all this while, a large portion of his subjects, in the words of an English writer second to none, were "casting off the rags of their old vices," and were reading the Bible diligently to find the spirit and the form of the primitive church ; the spirit first, after that the form; the weightier matters of the law, after these, tithes of mint and cummin. By this party I mean not the Puritans alone, but rather the Reformation party, embrac- ing the high-born and the lowly of every rank and name, who dared for themselves to search the Scriptures, and apply to. the exposition of them the light of conscience and reason. This party was never able to make head against the self- willed monarch, but it grew in secret, and waited for his death with such patience as a fiery zeal is able to command.
With his death, this large party, made up of those who afterwards fell in with the established order of things under Edward VI., as well as of the Puritans, who fled from the pursuit of bloody Mary into Germany and Switzerland, dared to assert its claims to royal notice, and those claims were for a brief space in part allowed. During the mild reign of Edward much was accomplished. Articles of faith were compiled, that in later years served as the basis of a more complete and perfect system. In this reign, too, Cranmer and Ridley were associated with other divines to frame a liturgy, not in Latin, but in the vernacular tongue. The first
77
QUEEN ELIZABETH.
part of the homilies also, boldly setting forth the doctrines of Christianity, and defining with more certainty the then unsettled landmarks of the Protestant faith, were published under the same monarch.
But the mild reign of Edward and the fierce persecutions of Mary soon passed away. On the accession of Elizabeth to the throne, this large liberal party, that I have called the Reformation party, became severed, never to be united again. The queen, retaining in her mind too keen a remembrance of her own dangers and sufferings during her father's and sister's reign, ever to commit herself cordially to the arms of the Roman Catholic Church, yet wedded by the very state- liness of her character to its venerable forms of prayer, its lofty chants, its respect paid to externals, and the hold that it had upon the imagination, dating as it did from a remote antiquity, was ready to adopt some middle ground between the two extremes of the national mind-some safe ground where the more conservative elements of the state might blend themselves with the loyalty still inherent in the hearts of the lower orders-some sacred ground, fit for a shrine, where the sentiment of religion and that of patriotism might dwell together under the protecting shadow of the throne.
Where was this ground of union ? The queen was proud- for when was pride absent from the house of Tudor? Yet in her, the loftiest pride was united with that sturdy sense, that keen, intuitive vision, that characterized her noble family, and enabled them to measure the English people, and judge with such accuracy how far they might push the royal pre- rogative, and note the line of foam that marked the danger- ous proximity of popular breakers. Besides, stern as she was, she was not deaf to the voice of those softer monitions that in perilous times whisper of weakness and danger in the ear of woman. Proud as she was, therefore, she had much need to consult her wisest subjects. I can not impugn the motives of this high-toned woman, placed as she was upon the verge of that fearful revolution whose swift wheels were stayed until
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