USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Northfield > Puritan outpost, a history of the town and people of Northfield, Massachusetts > Part 5
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Why then, this marching into the village, under the hot sun of an August day, of twenty armed men from Hadley, down the river? The news they brought was ample reason. Brookfield had been at- tacked by the Indians in the war that Philip had transferred from the Plymouth towns into Massachusetts territory. Its people had been slaughtered, all save a few who had been rescued after days of tor- ment from fear in their stockade, surrounded by howling savages and again and again saved from burning by their efforts and finally by a providential shower of rain. The Nipmucks, trusted allies of the English, as far as trust could be placed upon any of the Indians after the repeated treacheries of Philip and his followers, had joined the enemy. The Connecticut valley was clearly marked for the next theatre of war for white extermination. Already prowling Indians
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had given the lower settlements cause for alarm. Not one of the vil- lages must be left unwarned or unguarded.
Twenty soldiers added to the population of this little outpost, most exposed of all, farthest removed from other settlements, set in the midst of the forest, brought the burden of support but brought also the comfort of protection. Their arms added to the practiced flint- locks of the settlers, with the shelter of the stout stockade, could meet attack and protect the people. There would be no deserting these homes so long as they could hold their ground. Major Pynchon had sent the armed company under command of Lieutenant Samuel Wright. Thus came to him the first military service which in years to follow would be borne with valor by those of his name and race. His blood was to be the first to redden the soil of Northfield.
Alarm, mingled with confidence, courage, resolution, and prayer marked the August days. Not yet had the sign appeared of Indian design upon this far-away village. There had been unbroken peace these three summers. There were no known enemies in the few In- dians who were the somewhat vagrant neighbors. Not so confident were the men of the lower and larger towns. Pynchon was sending his scouting troops here and there about the valley, some of them as far as Deerfield. The peace was unbroken-but had not Philip and his band moved to the west from Brookfield? And where but in the forests along the great river could they be lurking?
The silence of the great stretches of primal country about Squak- heag was unbroken save by the lowing of the cattle and the soft bleating of the sheep. Then, one day, the bleating was not heard; the flock had vanished, somehow captured and driven away. No question now of the unfriendly presence-and the loss of the sheep should be reported down the valley to add an item to the accumu- lating signs of impending trouble. Joseph Dickinson, one of the younger men among them, was chosen by the villagers to carry the message to Hadley. He left his wife and his five children, the young- est among the first born of the settlement, on the morning of August 19, 1675, and before the day's end was in consultation with Hadley's people, pleading that the Squakheag post be strengthened or that its exposed people be brought away. He was not again to see his Phoebe and their little family.
Days passed with no message from Dickinson. Down the river,
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the settlements were seething with excitement. From Hadley, the news of the sheep raid at Squakheag was relayed to Major Pynchon at Springfield and thence to the Connecticut council under date of August 22 as an added item in the appeal of the commander for greater aid. The scouting parties had discovered only empty wig- wams, which they burned. Captain Watts, at Pocumtuck with a squad like that of Wright at Squakheag, was asking to be called off but Pynchon distrusted the calm and suspected that the enemy was gathered at Paquayag, "between Hadley and Squakheag, about ten miles from the Great River." He would have Watts stay and the pro- tection of the two northern-most settlements strengthened.
At Hadley, Dickinson witnessed the massing of the English troops under Captains Watts, Lothrop and Beers. Here he sat in the council of war which took note of the gathering at their fort below Hatfield, across the river, of the Nonotucks-no longer to be trusted as friends since they had given eleven triumphant shouts the morning after Brookfield's battle, one each for the eleven white men killed. They were close relatives to the Quabaugs-against whom they would not fight as against their mothers, brothers and cousins. The years of peaceful co-dwelling in the Northampton country were now to be broken. The poison of Philip's savagery had been injected into Nono- tuck blood.
The Nonotucks moved first, were out of their fort before the Hadley troops arrived. The one wise counsellor among them, a sachem of unknown name, who had pleaded that they stay in peace, had met his reward by death at their hands. Close in pursuit, the hundred men under Lothrop and Beers, had overtaken the Indians and in the broad level below Wequamps (Sugarloaf) was fought the battle that goes down in history as the "Swamp fight." Then a week of quiet, of concealment and tense uncertainty. But the Nonotucks had gone northward-it could only mean their union with the Pocum- tucks-and let Deerfield beware. The blow fell there on September I, and only the rush into the fort saved the lives of the villagers while their homes outside the stockade went up in flames.
The tide of exterminating warfare was moving up the valley. It must next reach the farthest outpost but it would give no warning of its approach. The gunfire of the Swamp and at Deerfield did not reverberate so far.
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The wheat was yellow in the Squakheag meadows and the flax was at the point when it must be gathered. What occasion was there to wait? Dickinson's long absence could only mean, as the Squakheag dwellers reasoned, that there was no need of speeding relief. What occasion for varying from the regular work? None but the recollec- tion of the stolen sheep; but that a mere marauding of hungry and improvident natives.
Giving prayers for the safety of their homes, the men went out on the early September morning-it was Thursday the 2nd-to harvest the grain in Great Meadow. With them went the soldiers, under arms, but quite as much ready to share in the labor as in defence. Others of the men found their day's task in the home lots, for these too were in full yield. The children played on the slopes of the fort hill-not to wander far away, their mothers warned, they not easy in their recollection of the stealthy capture of the sheep the fortnight before.
Then the shriek of the Indian yell, the rush from every quarter of the fleet savage warriors. Gunfire in swift return, splitting the air in the meadows and close about the fort-but at an enemy that hid behind tree and bush and under the shelter of council rock. All the exposure on the side of the surprised wheat-harvesters and the households.
Quick as the flash of the guns the rush of mothers to gather their children into the fort, only to be followed by the men from the fields, their climb up the meadow's steep bank covered by the guns of the militiamen. In an hour, there huddled inside the palisade the whole of the settlement's people, there to hear the guns of the Indians trained now upon the cattle in the pastures, and to breathe the smoke from burning wheat-stacks. The calm that now settled over the scene was one of waiting for what new attack or what merciful relief from down the valley hours and days might bring.
They were fewer by nine than in the morning. Of these, three were of their own-Sergeant Wright and two of the Janes boys, sons of the Elder-Ebenezer, 16 years old, and Jonathan, two years younger. The others had proved their valor as defenders, six soldiers, giving their lives that the homesteaders might live-Ebenezer Parsons, son of the first petitioner, Joseph, John Peck of Hadley, Nathaniel Curtis of Northampton, Thomas Scott and Benjamin Durwich, from
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what homes is now unknown-"probably eastern soldiers" is the near- est identification that Trumbull, the Northampton historian can give them.
What Dickinson had thus far failed to accomplish at Hadley was brought about when the news reached headquarters of the Deer- field attack. Preparations were hastened for an expedition to Squak- heag to bring off the exposed settlers. The September morning when that first tragedy was falling upon the outpost, the militia captains were making ready the relief party, drafting the little troop, impress- ing one Montague to take a supply of bread, taking oxen, horses and carts from private owners and putting all in readiness for march- ing early Friday morning.
Hadley to Northfield, not an hour's journey as civilization would reckon it, comparable then to a venture from Boston to Buffalo in a later day, a distance to be covered at best between sun and sun, with the rate of speed set by oxen, the motive power with the world's record through centuries for slowness. Nor was there known reason for expedition. It had taken a fortnight of pleading by Dickinson to get the expedition started, his direst evidence being the loss of the sheep. What crime was being wrought there, what terror had befallen, what pendency of utter destruction, all that was happening of tragedy on the morning the Beers party was toiling o'er the trail, none of this was known; had it been, the oxen might have been whipped up to livelier step or left behind and the horses put into speed to reach the beleaguered and distressed hamlet.
Night fell upon the slow-moted relief party with Squakheag unreached. Dickinson, who had been all the long way impatiently urging haste did not avail to tell the captain that the village was not more than four miles farther on-a hopeless four miles in the darkness of this wilderness-and Beers knowing the region quite as well as he. The night's encampment was under the shelter of the trees along Stony brook, the four-mile stream that rushes from the region of Old Crag and reaches the Connecticut at Pine Meadow.
All day the keen, experienced eyes of Beers' men had watched for sign of Indians. Pynchon had warned them that the foe was prob- ably gathered just to the east of the trail they were following. No- where had they heard a sound other than those of the forests without human occupation. But other eyes were watching. Every step of the
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march had been followed. Behind the trees, at night, the calm en- campment was measured by scouts whose message was to put into effect the scheme to waylay and utterly destroy the relief party before it should reach its objective.
"Tomorrow at sun-up," said Captain Beers to his company, and to ears that he had no thought he was reaching, "we shall be well on our way over the little distance to Squakheag. We shall pass near the hill where I first saw this region with Captain Gookin six years ago. We will divide our company so that the village will be reached early and made ready for return to Hadley. Few will be needed to guard our horses and oxen and the most of us will march across the plain and to the village. We have passed the region where there was danger and we have no sign that our march was so much as seen by the savages."
The tragic story of the fourth of September, 1675, is the most familiar page in frontier history to every succeeding generation in the neighborhood of its scene. Captain Beers, confident but ever wary, trained by years of command in encounters with Indian foes, led his men afoot across the plain ever since to bear his name, keeping well away from the deeper valley that Saw-mill brook cuts through as it nears the great river, over the beaten trail that crossed the little stream to approach the settlement over the level by the path which later became the South Warwick road-Maple street when roads were to take on definite names. The slower moving carts followed and reached the southerly edge of the plain when the drivers heard musket fire crack the air a mile up the trail.
Captain Beers and his troop were crossing the brook, when from behind the trees and up from the tall grass and brakes there sprang upon him the Indians who had been waiting here in ambush. The shots from their guns were instantly met by the return fire of the surprised white men. They were too long seasoned to be thrown into panic, and foot by foot, man to man, they defended themselves. To slight purpose. Death and capture all but exterminated them.
"Every man for himself !" Such was the one order the captain is said to have given his men. Doubtful it is that he so much as put into words the command that all their training in Indian warfare would instantly form in their minds. Fighting in retreat, sheltering himself behind tree and rock, giving shot for shot, the captain found a
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momentary shelter in the ravine near the little hill he first knew in the region, there to fall as he stood fighting to the end.
Thirty-eight men left Hadley in the relief party on Friday morn- ing. Thirteen of them stumbled back into the town Saturday night, to tell the story of the darkest day the valley had yet seen or was again to see until, nearly a generation later, Deerfield should be sacked. Sunday morning, a straggler followed and, before the day was passed, another. It was six days after the battle that there wandered into Hadley, a mumbling, starving, hardly clothed man, scarce able to tell that he had been of those who fought with Beers. No more could he tell how many days had passed, nor what day was the battle; but this he knew that he leaped into the leaves that had been blown into a ravine and under the cover had heard the savages going about, searching for such as might not have made their escape, shouting over their victory, busy, as not even he yet knew, in torturing such as they captured and hanging them to trees for agonizing death.
One man, Robert Pepper, first counted among the killed, was yet to tell his story of captivity, far into the winter when Mrs. Row- landson, prisoner and staying in Philip's camp at Squakheag, was to hear it, of his hiding in the crotch of a great tree, being found by Sagamore Sam and made to lie for two days in the open and then in the sagamore's hut to see if he would but die of his wounds, taken away to Philip's camp, near the Mohawk country, brought back and left on the path to Hadley which he dared not try to follow lest he be shot down, by this choice staying captive to what further experi- ence he could not know-and the world was never to know.
The casualties of the ambuscade and battle of Beers Plain included twenty-one killed. Not all of these were shot down in the engage- ment. The wounded were saved for ingenious torture. Their bodies hung to the trees, along with the heads of the slain impaled on poles along the trail, were to tell in their silent ghastliness the cruelest part of the story to the next relief party that should pass that way.
Cooped tight in the stockade, the helpless and hopeless families of the settlement awaited an unguessable fate. The morning after the second night, they heard the sudden fusillade to the east of them, not a mile away, then the scattering shots, diminishing in nearness and number. They reasoned rightly that it was battle between savages and the white men coming to their relief. Silence again befell and
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unbroken waiting, through the Sabbath with its fervid prayers, and then another day with deeper despair, hopelessness that any venture forth could mean else than death and resignation to whatever end Providence might send them to their torture of body and mind.
Monday had not far advanced when the silence was broken by the approaching sound of horses' hoofs. The gate swung open to greet a great troop with Major Treat at its head. It was the fifth day of their seemingly eternal separation from the world. Before a word was spoken as to what had taken place outside, before a single ques- tion was asked as to the battle they knew must have occurred, they fell upon their knees in thanks to God for their rescue and release. Then, first of all, was Dickinson here? He had shared the fate of Captain Beers. Were there others of their kin in this slaughter? No, none from Northampton, one only from the valley, William Mark- ham, the younger, of Hadley; the rest, soldiers from the Bay towns.
Outside the fort the men of the settlement sat down for council with Pynchon and his elder officers as to what now should be done as to settlement. Resolute spirits were for holding the ground. The fort had proved its worth as shelter. The meadows and the plains were as much as ever the God-given place for Christian homes. Three years had sanctified its possession. Were they now to quail before perils that were not different from those they had all the while faced? Was the General Court to fail in their defence? Was the kingdom of Jesus Christ and his cause on earth to admit defeat?
Against the outpouring of an unquelled devotion to the cause that had just sent these people into the wilderness, could only be advanced the plea of a saving prudence. It was a season of distress and it would pass ; but while it lasted there should be no reckless exposure. The warlike state was the product of an arch-fiend's designs. Philip, rene- gade from Christian friendship, son of the faithful Massasoit, becom- ing possessed of the Devil, had taken the valley of the Great River, as his battleground. He had poisoned the minds of the Nonotucks and the Pocumtucks, with no grievance of their own but now ar- rayed in deadly enmity. Who, indeed, were these who had slaugh- tered Sergeant Wright and the Janes boys, but the Squakheags-for who but they would have known this country?
There was but one conclusion possible out of such weighing of the chances in an encounter with an aroused and united mass of
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heathen. It went into action in the loading of such possessions as could well be transported, the devising of ways to mount the less strong of the women and the infants, the putting into marching trim of men and boys and women, and the departure of the entire settle- ment for the retreat down the valley.
The sun of September 6, 1675, set upon a deserted cluster of houses, of cattle left behind to become beasts of the wilderness, fields of grain ungarnered if not blackened already by fires set by a savage enemy-the end, until a day none could predict, of the outpost of civilization in the Connecticut valley.
Puritan America's outstretched hand was now withdrawn, bruised and bleeding, from its farthest reach. It grasped for a moment, at its next hold, the Pocumtuck village. Then, because its grasp was plainly insecure, it withdrew to the guarded hamlet of Hadley. The vast region between this post and Canada, into which Squakheag had been the daring intrusion, was abandoned by civilization.
Mingled with their old neighbors in the lower settlements, the surviving people of the outpost learned the relation of the last tragic days at Squakheag to other events which were the evidence of the Indian drive to exterminate the white pioneers. To them was now identified the leader of the onslaught as Metacomo, renamed Philip, son of Massasoit, the chieftain who had given the Pilgrims their wel- come at Plymouth. He and his warriors had been driven from Rhode Island in July and were now only too clearly making the valley of the Great River the theatre of their campaign of destruction. Brook- field's burning in mid-summer had given warning of the savage uprising.
At Hadley, now become the military headquarters for the fron- tier's defence, were Major Treat, with his hundred or more Connecti- cut troops; Captain Appleton of Ipswich, commanding men from the Bay towns; Captain Thomas Lothrop of Beverly with a choice com- pany, the "Flower of Essex"; Lieutenant Cooper, with Springfield men ; Captain Samuel Moseley of Boston; and, with these, a body of friendly Mohegans, under a son of Uncas, their former chief.
The day before the attack on the Squakheag settlement, Deerfield had been attacked and its people driven into the garrison house, there
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to be besieged while the unsheltered houses and barns were burned. It was again attacked September 12. Promptly a company under Loth- rop set out from Northampton for Deerfield's relief and to bring down a quantity of threshed wheat. On the return, having passed a dense forest for a mile and a half and skirted a bushy swamp, the soldiers, in advance of the loaded carts, paused at the side of a brook, laying down their arms and feasting on wild, luscious grapes. Suddenly the fierce war-whoop rang in their ears and a murderous volley burst from the swamp. Overcome by the attack of a thousand red men, only seven or eight escaped the slaughter; of the seventeen Deerfield men in charge of the grain-laden carts, all were killed. The brook ran red with the blood of the "Flower of Essex," whose commander, Lothrop, shared the common fate. It was now that Deerfield was completely abandoned.
The shadow deepened with the advancing autumn. On October 5, Springfield was attacked and burned. Then warning came from a captured squaw that an attack was to be made on Hatfield, Hadley and Northampton, now the farthest settlements of the valley. Suc- cessful resistance was made at Hatfield and the astonished Philip changed his plan by breaking up his braves into small bands for con- tinuous pillaging. None of the valley towns escaped their marauding and the scattered murdering of their men. Eastward in February (1676) Lancaster was destroyed, the men of its fifty families killed, its women and children carried off as captives, among them Mrs. Rowlandson, the minister's wife. Then Weymouth, down on the coast, was attacked, and Groton, thirty miles inland from Boston, destroyed.
By March Squakheag had become the rendezvous of Philip's com- bined tribes, the Pocumtucks, the Wampanoags and new allies, young warriors from the New York tribes and from Canada. Thenceforward it was the capital of the New England aborigines. Presently its chief, already the King Philip of common, fearsome speech, was joined by Canonchet, son of Miantonomoh, "young, able, tall and command- ing," with 1200 Narragansett warriors, and to him passed the general command.
Northampton was chosen for the first attack by this massed In- dian force and there they learned a new lesson. The assault was made at daybreak of March 14. The palisade gates were passed and
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the invaders met within them an attack by Treat and Turner, only to find themselves entrapped, such of them as could find the gates fleeing in panic. Hatfield was successfully defended by Moseley, and a second attack on Northampton, the 16th, was completely resisted.
The wooden knoll on the bank of the Great River, where it swept around the great meadow at Squakheag, which had been Philip's outlook, was now deserted by this chief as he moved across the river to join Canonchet's councils, held on the broad flat rock, near the site of the now destroyed palisade of the white people's settlement. Assaulting bands moved out from the Indian camp and fell upon the scattered settlements down the river, as upon Windsor, Simsbury and Longmeadow, all on the same day, March 26. The valley be- came all but untenable for white men and word was sent out from Boston to abandon all its towns except Springfield and Hadley, into which were to be gathered the remaining people of the lesser places.
Now the tide turned. To Philip at Squakheag came a messenger to tell that Canonchet, who had ventured again into Narragansett country, had been captured and executed. It was fair warning. Philip heeded it and with his own followers moved to the fastnesses of Wachusett, where he established his lessened command.
Passacus, uncle of Canonchet, took command at Squakheag and continued the valley raids. Returning from one on the pastures of Hadley, he encamped in fancied security on the bluff near the great falls, halfway between the abandoned sites of Pocumtuck and Squak- heag, only to be surprised by an attack by a troop under Captain Turner, so sudden that his men fled to their canoes, only to be car- ried over the falls, while others, along with women and children, were put to the sword. Fresh bands from other camps rallied and pursued the fleeing soldiers through the forests and swamps, Captain Turner losing his life in the disordered retreat. This event fixed upon the cataract the name of Turners Falls.
If the valley frontier were to be saved, the Bay Colony authorities realized there must be a massed defence and plans were made to con- centrate "the armies" at Hadley. Captain Henchman, one of the four discoverers of Squakheag in 1669, was ordered up from the Bay with 400 horse and foot. Major Talcott was to come from Connecti- cut with 250 troopers and 400 Mohegans.
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