USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Deerfield > History of Deerfield, Massachusetts: the times when the people by whom it was settled, unsettled and resettled, vol 1 > Part 10
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I have said that the outbreak at Swansea caused no uneas- iness among the settlers here. The affair at Brookfield
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THE ALARM AT HADLEY.
created sufficient anxiety and alarm to induce precautionary measures. The last attack was at their very doors, and the horrors of an Indian war, still very little comprehended, had now become a reality to them. Doubtless the English looked upon the savages as a weak and cowardly race, to be easily subdued ; and at this time we find no trace of fear on their part. Their only anxiety seems to have been to find the enemy, having no doubt about the result of the meeting. It was at a terrible cost that wisdom in this respect was ac- quired.
FIRST ATTACK ON DEERFIELD.
After the swamp fight of Aug. 25th, we get no trace of the Nipmucks, the Wampanoags, or the Pocumtucks, until Sept. Ist, when the latter made an attack on our town. On the morning of that day about sixty of them were lurking in the woods, watching a favorable opportunity for an attack. They were discovered by James Eggleston, a soldier of Windsor, while out looking for his horse. He was shot down, and the alarm being thus given, the inhabitants fled to the shelter of the forts, which all reached in safety. The Indians rushed on, as if to carry all before them; but the stockades, with a dozen men in each, were easily defended, and after losing two of their men, the assailants discreetly retired out of gin- shot. The English were too few prudently to engage in the field with the unknown numbers pitted against them, and they had the mortification of seeing the despised Indians burning their buildings and destroying with fiendish glee their hard earned estate. The leader in this attack is unknown. Men- owniett, a Connecticut Indian, is the only one of the party known by name. He was also in the swamp fight, Aug. 25th.
The news of this first attack on any town in the Connecti- cut valley, caused great consternation in the towns below. It reached Hadley while the inhabitants were assembled in the meetinghouse observing a fast, and Mather says they "were driven from the holy service they were attending by a most sudden and violent alarm, which routed them the whole day after." This brief allusion of the historian to the alarm at Hadley on hearing of the assault on Deerfield, is the slender foundation on which was built the elaborate ac-
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PHILIP'S WAR.
count, that has gone into accepted history,* of a furious at- tack on Hadley that day, when the town was only saved from destruction by the appearance and valor of Gen. Goffe, one of the Regicides. A careful study of all the authorities leads to the conclusion that this whole romantic tale is a pure myth. A full expose of this story by the writer may be found in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Oct., 1874. Also see Beach's Indian Miscellany, 461, and History and Proceedings of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, I, 202.
NORTHFIELD SURPRISED.
Thursday, Sept. 2d, a party of Nipmucks under Sagamore Sam and One Eyed John, surprised a party at work in Great Meadow, and killed eight men. The women and children, on the alarm, fled to a small stockaded enclosure, which was defended by the surviving men. But the inmates, like their friends at Deerfield the day before, saw the enemy wasting and burning everything beyond the range of their muskets.
Meanwhile the Northfield people had not been forgotten at headquarters. The news of the attack on Deerfield raised fears at Hadley for the safety of that exposed town, and measures were at once taken for its succor. Sept. 2d was spent in preparation. Richard Montague, the baker, was " impressed" to make bread. William Markham, with cart and oxen, was "impressed" to transport ammunition, and the settlers' horses were taken to mount the soldiers. On the morning of the 3d, Capt. Beers, with thirty-six mounted men, marched for the beleaguered town, " with supplies, both of men and provision, to secure the small garrison there." Beers encamped for the night three or four miles south of the village. The besieged fort had, we may be sure, been carefully guarded by the Indians to prevent any information of the disaster reaching the English. But the movements of Beers the next morning are inexplicable except on the theory that he had some inkling of Indians being about the town, and that he pushed on his dismounted soldiers, intend- ing to raise the siege by a surprise ; supposing, perhaps, that
* See Hutchinson's Hist. Mass., I. 201; Stiles's Judges, 108; Hoyt's Antiqua- rian Researches, 135; Judd's Hadley, 145, 214; Holmes's Annals, I. 272; P'al- frey's New England, II. 507, III. 164.
0
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THE UNMARKED GRAVE OF CAPT. BEERS.
he had only the small party that beset Deerfield to deal with. Neither Philip nor the Nipmucks had been heard of since they left Wennimisset, and Beers had not yet learned that it is always the unexpected which happens in Indian warfare. The men of those days seem to have been very slow to dis- cover this.
On the morning of the 4th, leaving his horses in camp with a small guard, Beers continued his march towards Northfield. Forgetful of the surprise of Hutchinson at Brookfield, and of his own at Wequamps, apparently neither vanguard nor flankers were thrown out, and the company was led directly into an ambuscade at the north end of Beers Plain, " when they were set upon by many hundreds of the Indians out of the Bushes by the Swampside." After the first shock, Beers rallied his shattered force and retreated, fighting bravely, to a hill on the right of his line of march, since called Beers Mountain, where he fell. Hubbard says he " was known to fight valiantly to the very last." Savage believes that he made a nuncupative will, after he was wounded. If these statements are well founded it would ap- pear that some of his company must have remained with him to the last, and then escaped. He was buried where he fell. The spot is known, but unmarked. [See Temple and Shel- don's History of Northfield.]
A partial list of those slain Sept. 2d, are: Sergt. Samuel Wright, Ebenezer and Jonathan James of Northfield ; Eben- ezer Parsons and Nathaniel Curtice of Northampton ; John Peck of Hadley, Thomas Scott and Benjamin Dunwich, residence unknown. Samuel Wright, Jr., was severely wounded. Those killed on the 4th were: Capt. Richard Beers of Watertown, Benjamin Crackbon of Dorchester, Ephraim Childe of Roxbury, John Getchell of Marblehead, Jeremiah Morrell of Boston, Joseph Dickinson and William Marcum of Hadley, John Genery of Dedham, George Lickens, Thomas Cornish, James Mullard, John Wilson, Elisha Woodward, and "8 others of whom there is no account." One of these was from Taunton. John Harrington of Watertown, and Robert Pepper of Roxbury were wounded, and the lat- ter captured. There is a tradition that several of the above were taken alive and put to death by torture. Thirteen of
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PHILIP'S WAR.
the party reached Hadley that evening with news of the dis- aster.
The alarm which recalled Maj. Treat to Hartford, Sept. Ist, had small foundation. Sept. 2d, Treat was appointed Com- mander-in-Chief of the Connecticut forces in the field, with orders to lead his command through Westfield to Northamp- ton, and thence where most needed ; and to send home all the men now in the up river service except the twenty-nine in the garrisons at Westfield, Hatfield, and Deerfield. On the 3d, Treat, with a strong force, including at least ninety dragoons, began his march. He reached Northampton on the 4th, and during the night learned the fate of Beers. The same news reached Hartford on the 5th, and at once the Council gave orders that one hundred Mohegans and Pe- quots should follow Treat ; and the next day twenty dragoons under Joseph Wardsworth were sent to Westfield, and twenty under John Grant to Springfield, to guard those towns.
TREAT'S MARCH TO NORTHFIELD.
Sunday morning, Sept. 6th, Treat crossed the river to Hadley with above one hundred men, and took the route to Northfield. He probably spent the night on the site of Beers's encampment, and reached the beleaguered stockade on the morning of the 6th. It must have been a joyful oc- casion to the inmates, who had been shut up four days, with death staring them in the face every hour. Not an Indian was seen on the march, or on reaching Northfield. They had doubtless watched the motions of the English and fled to their hiding place on the advance of Treat. Learning that the bodies of those slain Sept. 2d were still lying on the meadows where they fell, Treat detailed a party to bury them. That of Sergeant Wright, commander of the little garrison, naturally received the first attention. It was carried up the bank and placed in the first grave ever opened in the present village eemetery.
The following tradition, taken by the writer in 1876 from the lips of Mrs. Polly Holton of Northfield, who died in 1879 at the age of ninety-eight, is not found elsewhere; but with- out doubt it refers to the events of Sept. 2-6, 1675, and is reliable. Sergt. Wright was great-great-grandfather to Mrs. Holton ; his son, Samuel, Jr., her great-grandfather, who was
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A SEASONABLE RESCUE.
sorely wounded the same day, lived until his daughter, her grandmother, was thirty years old ; Mrs. Holton was twelve at the death of the latter: so she had the story only second hand from one who took part in the affair. The story, which came out in a conversation about the old cemetery, was this : "The first one buried there was a man by the name of Wright, from Northampton. He was killed by Indians. He was not found for several days. He was found in the mead- ow in a decaying condition. He was carried up the bluff and buried just as he was, in the present burying ground." This tradition preserves an interesting fact, and explains several otherwise obscure contemporaneous statements.
The grave of Sergt. Wright was hardly filled before the sad duties of the party were rudely interrupted. A party of Indians fired upon them from the bushes, where they had been skulking. No one was hurt, although Maj. Treat was struck by a spent ball. Duty to the living now superseded care for the dead, and the rest of the bodies were left where they fell.
In the upward march, says Hubbard, Treat's men "were much daunted to see the heads of Capt. Beers's soldiers upon poles by the wayside * * * One (if no more) was found with a chain hooked into his under jaw, and so hung up on the bow of a tree, ('tis feared he was hung up alive) by which means they thought to daunt and discourage any that might come to their relief and alsoe to terrifie those that should be spectators with the beholding so sad an object, insomuch
that Maj. Treat and his company * ** were solemnly affected with that doleful sight, which made them the more haste to bring down the garrison." On reaching the stockade these disheartened soldiers met about one hundred men, women and children, faint and weary with watching, whose nerves had been stretched to their utmost tension for four days, and each party had its tales of horror for the other. Add to this the sickening sight of the decomposing bodies in the meadow, and it would seem little was wanting to create a panic. More than enough was furnished by the appear- ance of the enemy, the attack on the burial party, and the narrow escape of the commander. It is no wonder that Maj. Treat " concluded forthwith to bring off the garrison ; so they came away the same night leaving the cattle there, and the
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PHILIP'S WAR.
dead bodies unburied." The panic had reached a crisis. The danger was magnified. Treat feared to wait the slow moving ox teams, by which the most valuable effects of the settlers might have been saved, or even to drive off the neat stock, so necessary to the owners, and so easily moved. Everything was left behind but their horses. Not a ray of his- toric light has been shed on this night retreat. We may as- sume that each trooper took one of the rescued party behind him, and all stole silently away into the darkness. We are left to imagine the long cavalcade, a line of strange, black looking spectres, threading its way the livelong night through the gloomy woods, and the panic stricken riders, peering fear- . fully right and left into the thickets, or crowding together in terror at the hoot of the owl or bark of fox or wolf, sure that each was the war-whoop of a pursuing foe. They were only reassured when met by a strong reinforcement under Capt. Samuel Appleton, who had just arrived from the Bay. Ap- pleton tried to induce Treat to turn back and "see if they could make any spoil upon the enemy;" but Treat could not be persuaded. The demoralized soldiers of Treat seemed to infect all classes at Hadley with despondency and gloom. Maj. Pynchon, writing about this time, says :-
"And when we go out after the Indians they doe so sculk in swamps we cannot find ym & yet do waylay o' people to there de- struction. Burne yr houses as lately they have destroyed a small village at Wussquakeak from whence formerly ye Maquas drove these Indians."
The danger of ranging the woods at random was now real- ized. A council of war was held on the 8th, when it was decided to give up operations in the field and only garrison the towns. To that end Pynchon sent Capt. Appleton with his company to Deerfield-probably about the ioth. Maj. Treat reported the action of this council at Hartford on the 9th, and all the Connecticut forces were ordered home ex- cept sixteen at Westfield under Ens. John Miles, and fifteen at Springfield under Lieut. John Standly. This policy of in- action was not satisfactory to the Connecticut Council, and the next day, Sept. ioth, they wrote the Commissioners for the United Colonies recommending active aggression. The Commissioners took the same view, and Sept. 16th voted to raise one thousand men for that service. For operation in
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APPLETON UNDER FIRE.
the valley, Massachusetts and Connecticut troops should be employed, with Maj. Pynchon as Commander-in-Chief ; the Connecticut Council being authorized to appoint a Connecti- cut man to "be second in command," Maj. Treat was ap- pointed.
After two days' consideration, bolder counsels had pre- vailed at Hadley, and a vigorous campaign was agreed upon. At the request of Pynchon, on the 11th, Treat, with a large force of Connecticut soldiers, was again sent up the river by the Council.
SECOND ATTACK ON DEERFIELD.
This town was now the frontier, and from its peculiar loca- tion was much exposed and difficult to defend. From the hills on the east and west every movement in the valley could be seen by Indian spies. Not a messenger could come or go, not a party enter the meadow to secure their crops, not a movement between the forts by the soldiers, without the lurking enemy being fully apprised of it.
Observing on the morning of Sunday, Sept. 12th, that the soldiers as well as settlers had collected in the Stockwell fort for public worship, the Indians took advantage of this cir- cumstance, and an ambush was laid in the swamp just north of Meetinghouse Hill, to intercept the north garrison on its return. Accordingly, as twenty-two men were passing over the causeway, they were fired upon from the swamp. All, however, retreated to Stockwell's in safety, except Samuel Harrington, who was wounded by a shot in the neck. Turn- ing now to the north, the Indians captured Nathaniel Corn- bury, who had been left as a sentinel, and was trying to reach his comrades. He was never afterwards heard from. Capt. Appleton soon rallied his men and drove the assailants from the village, but not until the north fort had been plundered and set on fire, and much of the settlers' stock killed or stolen. As Appleton had not force enough to guard the forts and engage in offensive operations outside, the Indians still insultingly hung round the outskirts and burned two more houses. The stolen horses were loaded with beef, pork, wheat, corn and other spoils and driven to their rendezvous at Pine Hill. The attacking force was doubtless the Pocumtucks, recruited from other tribes. No
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PHILIP'S WAR.
estimate of their numbers has been found, but as there were probably from seventy-five to one hundred men in the forts, the force opposed must have been a large one. An express was sent at once to Northampton. Red tape and a storm prevented action that night, but the next night a party of volunteers, with a few from Hadley, and "some of Lo- throp's men," came up to the relief of our town. On the morning of Tuesday, the 14th, the united forces, under Ap- pleton, marched to Pine Hill. Spies had doubtless reported the arrival of reinforcements, and the Indians had all fled.
Capt. Moseley, who was to play an important part in suc- ceeding events, arrived at headquarters at Hadley on the night of the 14th, and was at once sent to this town. Maj. Treat, with the Connecticut forces, reached Northampton on the 15th, on which date the Council ordered Capt. John Ma- son to join him with a strong force of Mohegans. The con- centration of so many men in the valley made it necessary to lay in a large stock of provision at headquarters. At this time wheat was the staple crop at Deerfield, used not only at the table, but as a circulating medium in barter, and in pay- ment of debts and taxes. Maj. Pynchon owned a large estate here, and he with others had a great quantity of wheat in the straw, "about 3000 bushels was supposed to be there standing in stacks," says Hubbard. This had been spared by the Indians in the expectation that it would soon be their own. About the 15th Pynchon sent orders to have a part of this thrashed and put in bags, and to impress teams and drivers for its transportation. Capt. Lothrop was sent up with his company from Hadley to convoy the train to head- quarters. He reached here without molestation, probably on the 17th of September.
BLOODY BROOK MASSACRE.
We now turn one of the darkest pages in the history of our town. Early in the morning of Sept. 18, 1675-a day memorable in our annals-" that most fatal day, the saddest that ever befel New England," Capt. Lothrop, "with his choice company of young men, the very flower of the County of Essex," followed by a slowly moving train of carts, marched proudly down the old Town Street, two miles across South Meadows, up Bars Long Hill, to the heavily wooded
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LOTHROP'S FATEFUL MARCH.
plain stretching away to Hatfield meadows. The carts were loaded with bags of wheat, upon which were a few feather beds and some light household stuff. These things may have been taken by Joshua Carter for his widowed sister, Sa- rah Field, planning an asylum for herself and helpless babes in her father's house in Northampton. But no evidence ap- pears at this time of any intent to abandon the settlement. Southward along the narrow Pocumtuck Path, through the primeval woods, moved Lothrop and his men-brave, fear- less, foolish. Confident in their numbers, scorning danger, not even a van-guard or flanker was thrown out.
Meanwhile the whole hostile force was lying like serpents in the way; but unlike the more chivalric of these reptiles, their fangs will be felt before a warning is given. The prob- able leaders were Mattamuck, Sagamore Sam, Matoonas and One Eyed John, of the Nipmucks ; Anawan, Penchason, and Tatason, of the Wampanoags, and Sangumachu of the rem- nant of the Pocumtucks. There is no evidence that Philip was present, and the probabilities are against it.
Keen eyes had seen the preparation for Lothrop's march ; swift feet had carried the news to the chieftains below, who at this moment were giving their last orders to their warriors lying in the ambush at Bloody Brook, into which Lothrop was marching in fatal security. From the top of Long Hill the path lay through the dense forest for a mile and a half, when it approached on the left a narrow, swampy thicket, trending southward, through which crept sluggishly a name- less brook. Skirting this swamp another mile, a point was reached where it narrowed and turned to the right. Here the path crossed it diagonally, leaving the marsh on the right. The soldiers crossed the brook and halted, while the teams should slowly drag their heavy loads through the mire; "many of them," says Mather, "having been so fool- ish and secure as to put their arms in the carts and step aside to gather grapes, which proved dear and deadly grapes to them." Meanwhile the silent morass on either flank was covered with grim warriors prone upon the ground, their tawny bodies indistinguishable from the slime in which they crawled, or their scarlet plumes and crimson paint from the glowing tints of the dying year on leaf and vine. Eagerly but breathless and still, they waited the signal. The critical
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moment had come. The fierce war-whoop rang in the ears of the astonished English :-
" When swarming forth from out their vine-clad hive The infernal hornets came,
And sting on sting made all the copse alive With darts and wounds and flame."
The men of Pocumtuck sank, the Flower of Essex wither- ed before it, and the nameless stream was baptized in blood.
" Then groans, and silent all; but now the brook, That from the forest glides,
Swells with a crimson flood, and angry look And bloody are its sides.
O what rich currents gave Their ruby tincture to the carpet green And bade for aye the wave Be Sanguinetto for our Thrasimene."*
Moseley, who with about sixty men had gone out from Deerfield to range the woods in another direction, "hearing the reports which the guns gave of this battel, came up with a handful of men though too late." He arrived on the scene about ten o'clock in the morning, and found the savages plundering the carts and stripping the dead. They had ripped open the bags of grain and the feather beds, and scat- tered the contents in the bloody mire. This disorganized mass was quickly driven from their prey. Among the slain lay Robert Dutch of Ipswich, who, says Hubbard his pas- tor, had "been sorely wounded by a Bullet that rased his skull, and then mauled by the Indian Hatchets, and left for dead by the Salvages, and stript by them of all but his skin, yet when Mosely came near, he came towards the English to their no small amazement."
Among these "Salvages" were many of Eliot's "Praying Indians." They could speak English, and were acquainted with many of the colonists. Some of them recognized the leader of the rescuers, and exulting in their success, with confidence in their numbers, dared him to the combat, shout- ing "Come, Mosely! Come! You seek Indians; you want Indians ; here's Indians enough for you !" Although the ene- my were ten to one, the gallant Captain at once charged upon them. Keeping his force in a compact body he swept through and through the swarming legions, cutting down all within
* William Everett's poem at the Bi-centennial Celebration on the spot.
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A BLACK AND FATAL DAY.
reach of his fire. In this manner he fought them for five or six hours, defying all attempts of the enemy to surround him, or to reach his wounded ; but he was not able to drive them from the ground, and their rich harvest of plunder. His Lieutenants, Perez Savage of Boston and John Pickering of Salem, greatly distinguished themselves in the action, "be- ing sometimes called to lead the Company in the Front," says Hubbard, "while Capt. Mosely took a little Breath, who was almost melted, laboring, commanding, and leading his men through the Midst of the Enemy." Exhausted by these heroic efforts, Moseley was about to retire from the un- equal contest, when, "just in the nick of time," welcome re- lief appeared. During the morning of this day, Maj. Treat left Northampton with one hundred Connecticut soldiers and sixty Mohegans under Attawamhood, second son of Un- cas, for Northfield, at or near which place he had planned to establish headquarters for the Connecticut forces. Some- where on the march he heard the firing, and hurried to the scene of conflict, where he joined Moseley. The savages were driven westward through the woods and swamps until dark- ness put a stop to the chase. The united forces then marched to Pocumtuck, carrying their wounded and leaving the dead where they fell. Mather says, "This was a black and fatal day, wherein there was eight persons made widows, and six and twenty children made orphans, all in one little Planta- tion." That little plantation was Pocumtuck ; and these were the heavy tidings which the sad, worn out soldiers brought to our stricken inhabitants.
Of seventeen men of Pocumtuck who went out in the morn- ing as teamsters, not one returned to tell the tale. The torturing anxiety and sickening fear, crowding the hearts of the distracted women the live-long day, now only gave place to the awful certainty of the worst. Their husbands, fathers, brothers, were slain, and the last offices of love denied. Their mangled bodies now lay uncared for in the dark morass at Bloody Brook. The curtain shrouding the valley of the Pocumtuck, and hiding the pitiful distress of that terrible night, has never been lifted ; and what imagination will dare an attempt to depict the agonizing scenes behind it!
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