King Philip

Chapter VIII

Mrs. Rowlandson's Captivity

Winter quarters.

Building a village.

The little army was now supplied with food, but the vast masses of snow extending every where around them through the pathless wilderness rendered it impossible to move in any direction. The forest afforded ample materials for huts and fuel. A busy village speedily arose upon the shores of the frozen bay. Many of the wounded were, for greater safety and comfort, sent to the island of Rhode Island, where they were carefully nursed in the dwellings of the colonists. In their encampment at Wickford, as the region is now called, the soldiers remained several weeks, blockaded by storms and drifts, waiting for a change of weather. It was a season of unusual severity, and the army presented a spectacle resembling, upon a small scale, that of the mighty hosts of Napoleon afterward encamped among the forests of the Vistula – a scene of military energy which arrested the gaze and elicited the astonishment of all Europe.

Indignation of the Indians.

As the English evacuated the Indian fort, the warriors who had escaped into the swamp returned to their smouldering wigwams and to the mangled bodies of their wives and children, overwhelmed with indignation, rage, and despair. The storm of war had come and gone, and awful was the ruin which it had left behind. The Rev. Mr. Ruggles, recording the horrors of the destruction of the Narraganset fort, writes:

"The burning of the wigwams, the shrieks and cries of the women and children, and the yells of the warriors, exhibited a most horrible and affecting scene, so that it greatly moved some of the soldiers. They were in much doubt then, and often very seriously inquired whether burning their enemies alive could be consistent with humanity and the benevolent principles of the Gospel."

The Narragansets disheartened.

Determination of Philip.

The Narragansets, who were associated with the warriors of Philip in this conflict, and in whose territory the battle had been fought, were exceedingly disheartened. This experience of the terrible power and vengeance of the English appalled them, and they were quite disposed to abandon Philip. But the great Wampanoag chief was not a man to yield to adversity. This calamity only nerved him to more undying resolution and to deeds of more desperate daring. He had still about two thousand warriors around him, but, being almost entirely destitute of provisions, they for a time suffered incredibly.

Diplomacy.

A new fort.

To gain time, Philip sent deputies to the English commander-in-chief to treat of peace. The colonists met these advances with the utmost cordiality, for there was nothing which they more earnestly desired than to live on friendly terms with the Indians. War was to them only impoverishment and woe. They had nothing to gain by strife. It was, however, soon manifest that Philip was but trifling, and that he had no idea of burying the hatchet. While the wary chieftain was occupying the colonists with all the delays of diplomacy, he was energetically constructing another fort in a swamp about twenty miles distant, where he was again collecting his forces, and all the materials of barbarian warfare. In this fortress, within the territorial limits of the Nipmuck Indians, he also assembled a feeble train of women and children, the fragments of his slaughtered families. The Nipmuck tribe, then quite powerful, occupied the region now included in the southeast corner of Worcester county.

Hardly a ray of civilization had penetrated this portion of the country. The gloomy wilderness frowned every where around, pathless and savage. From the tangled morass in which he reared his wigwams he dispatched runners in all directions, to give impulse to the torrent of conflagration and blood with which he intended to sweep the settlements in the spring.

A new army raised.

Sufferings of the troops.

It was now manifest that there could be no hope of peace. An army of a thousand men, early in January, was dispatched from Boston to re-enforce the encampment at Wickford. Their march, in the dead of winter, over the bleak and frozen hills, was slow, and their sufferings were awful. Eleven men were frozen to death by the way, and a large number were severely frostbitten. Immediately after their arrival there came a remarkable thaw. The snow nearly all disappeared, and the ground was flooded with water. This thaw was life to the Indians. It enabled them to traverse the forests freely, and to gather ground-nuts, upon which they were almost exclusively dependent for subsistence.

Two names for the Indians.

Their degraded nature.

The army at Wickford now numbered sixteen hundred. They decided upon a rapid march to attack Philip again in his new intrenchments. There were friendly Indians, as the English called them —traitors, as they were called by King Philip – who were ever ready to guide the colonists to the haunts of their countrymen. There were individual Indians who had pride of character and great nobility of nature – men who, through their virtues, are venerated even by the race which has supplanted their tribes. They had their Washingtons, their Franklins, and their Howards. But Indian nature is human nature, with all its frailty and humiliation. The great mass of the common Indians were low and degraded men. Almost any of them were ready for a price, and that an exceedingly small one, to betray their nearest friends.

An Indian would sometimes be taken prisoner, and immediately, in the continuance of the same battle, with his musket still hot from the conflict, he would guide the English to the retreats of his friends, and engage, apparently with the greatest zeal, in firing upon them. In the narrative given by Colonel Benjamin Church, one of the heroes of these wars, he writes, speaking of himself in the third person,

Colonel Benjamin's mode of making proselytes.

"When he took any number of prisoners, he would pick out some, and tell them that he took a particular fancy to them, and had chosen them for himself to make soldiers of, and if any would behave themselves well he would do well by them, and they should be his men, and not sold out of the country.

"If he perceived they looked surly, and his Indian soldiers called them treacherous dogs, as some of them would sometimes do, all the notice he would take of it would only be to clap them on the back and say, 'Come, come, you look wild and surly, and mutter; but that signifies nothing. These, my soldiers, were a little while ago as wild and surly as you are now. By the time you have been one day with me, you will love me too, and be as brisk as any of them.'

"And it proved so; for there was none of them but, after they had been a little while with him, and seen his behavior, and how cheerful and successful his men were, would be as ready to pilot him to any place where the Indians dwelt or haunted, though their own fathers or nearest relations should be among them, as any of his own men."

Such a character we can not but despise, and yet such, with exceptions, was the character of the common Indian. That magnanimity which at times has shed immortal brilliance upon humanity is a rare virtue, even in civilized life; in the savage it is still more rare.

Philip betrayed.

His flight.

Return of the troops.

Philip, in the retreat to which he had now escaped, was again betrayed by one of his renegade countrymen. The English, numbering sixteen hundred, immediately resumed active hostilities, and after having ravaged the country directly around them, burning some wigwams, putting some Indians to death, and taking many captives, broke up their encampment and commenced their march. It was early in February that Major Winslow put his army in motion to pursue Philip. As the English drew near the swamp, Philip, conscious of his inability to oppose so formidable a force, immediately set his wigwams on fire, and, with all his warriors, disappeared in the depths of the wilderness. As it was entirely uncertain in what direction the savages would emerge from the forest to kindle anew the flames of war, the troops retraced their steps toward Boston. The Connecticut soldiers had already returned to their homes.

Attack on Lancaster.

Precautions to guard against surprise.

On the 10th of February, 1676, the Indians, with whoop and yell, burst from the forest upon the beautiful settlement of Lancaster. This was one of the most remote of the frontier towns, some fifty miles west of Boston, on the Nashua River. The plantation, ten miles in length and eight in breadth, had been purchased of the Nashaway Indians, with the stipulation that the English should not molest the Indians in their hunting, fishing, or planting places. For several years the colonists and the Indians lived together in entire harmony, mutually benefiting each other. There were between fifty and sixty families in the town, embracing nearly three hundred inhabitants. They had noticed some suspicious circumstances on the part of the Indians who were dwelling around them, and they had sent their pastor, the Rev. Mr. Rowlandson, to Boston, to seek assistance for the defense of the town. He had taken the precaution before he left to convert his house into a bullet-proof fortress, and had garrisoned it for the protection of his family during his absence.

The savages, fifteen hundred in number, during the darkness of the night stationed themselves at different points, from whence they could, at an appointed signal, attack the town at the same moment in five different quarters. There were less than a hundred persons in the town capable of bearing arms, the remainder being women and children. The savages thus prepared to overpower them fifteen to one, and, making the assault by surprise, felt sure of an easy victory.

The torch applied.

Massacre of the inhabitants.

Just as the sun was rising the signal was given. In an instant every heart was congealed with terror as the awful war-whoop resounded through the forest. It was a cold winter's morning, and the wind swept bleakly over the whitened plains. Every house was immediately surrounded, the torch applied, and, as the flames drove the inmates from their doors, they fell pierced by innumerable bullets, and the tomahawk and the scalping-knife finished the dreadful work. There were several garrison houses in the town, where most of the inhabitants had taken refuge, and where they were able, for a time, to beat off their assailants. All who were not thus sheltered immediately fell into the hands of their foes. Between fifty and sixty were either slain or taken captive. The unhappy inmates of the garrisons looked out through their port-holes upon the conflagration and plunder of their homes, the mutilated corpses of their friends, and the wretched band of captives strongly bound and awaiting their fate.

Mr. Rowlandson's house.

There were forty-one persons in the Rev. Mr. Rowlandson's house. They all defended it valiantly, and no Indian dared expose himself within gun-shot of their port-holes. Still, the savages, in a body, prepared for the assault. The house was situated upon the brow of a hill. Some of the Indians got behind the hill, others filled the barn, and others sheltered themselves behind stones and stumps, and any other breastwork, from which they could reach the house with their bullets. For two hours, fifteen hundred savages kept up an incessant firing, aiming at the windows and the port-holes. Several in the house were thus wounded.

Burning the building.

After many unsuccessful attempts to fire the house, they at length succeeded in pushing a cart loaded with hay and other combustible materials, all in flames, against the rear of the house. All the efforts of the garrison to extinguish the fire were unavailing, and the building was soon in a blaze. As the flames rapidly rolled up the wall and over the roof, the savages raised shouts of exultation, which fell as a death-knell upon the hearts of those who had now no alternative but to be consumed in the flames or to surrender themselves to the merciless foe. The bullets were still rattling against the house, and fifteen hundred warriors were greedily watching to riddle with balls any one who should attempt to escape. The flames were crackling and roaring around the besieged, and their only alternative was to perish in the fire, or to go out and meet the bullet and the tomahawk of the savage. When the first forks of flame touched the flesh, goaded by torture to delirium, they rushed from the door. A wild whoop of triumph rose from the savages, and, pouring a volley of bullets upon the group, they fell upon them with gleaming knives.

The inmates shot.

Many were instantly killed and scalped. All the men were thus massacred; twenty of the women and children were taken captives. Mrs. Rowlandson had two children, a son and a daughter, by her side, and another daughter about six years of age, sick and emaciate, in her arms. Her sister was also with her, with several children. No less than seventeen of Rev. Mr. Rowlandson's family and connections were in this melancholy group.

Mrs. Rowlandson wounded.

Scalping a child.

As many dropped dead around Mrs. Rowlandson, cut down by the storm of bullets, one bullet pierced her side, and another passed through the hand and the bowels of the sick child she held in her arms. One of her sister's children, a fine boy, fell helpless upon the ground, having his thigh-bone shattered by a ball. A sturdy Indian, seeing that the poor child was thus disabled, buried his tomahawk in his brain and stripped off his scalp. The frantic mother rushed toward her child, when a bullet pierced her bosom, and she fell lifeless upon his mangled corpse. The savages immediately stripped all the clothing from the dead, and, having finished their work of conflagration and plunder, plunged into the wilderness, dragging their wretched captives along with them. The beautiful town was left in ruins.

Indian bacchanals.

Wastefulness of the Indians.

The victors, with shouts of exultation, marched about a mile, and encamped for the night upon a hill which overlooked the smouldering dwellings of their foes. Here was enacted one of the wildest scenes of barbarian bacchanals. Enormous fires were built, which, with roaring, crackling flame, illumined for leagues around the sombre forest. Fifteen hundred savages, delirious with victory, and prodigal of their immense booty of oxen, cows, sheep, swine, calves, and fowl, reveled in such a feast as they had hardly dreamed of before. Cattle were roasted whole and eagerly devoured, with dances and with shouts which made the welkin ring. With wastefulness characteristic of the Indians, they took no thought for the morrow, but slaughtered the animals around them in mere recklessness, and, when utterly satiated with the banquet, the ground was left strewed with smoking and savory viands sufficient to feed an army.

Mrs. Rowlandson's narrative.

The night was cold; the ground was covered with snow, and a piercing wind swept the icy eminence. Mrs. Rowlandson, holding her wounded and moaning child in her arms, and with the group of wretched captives around her, sat during the long hours of the dreadful night, shivering with cold, appalled at the awful fate which had befallen her and her family, and endeavoring in vain to soothe the anguish of her dying daughter. "This was the dolefullest night," she exclaims in her affecting narrative, "that my eyes ever saw. Oh, the roaring and singing, dancing and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell."

Her sufferings.

Her wounded child.

The next morning the Indians commenced their departure into the wilderness. Mrs. Rowlandson toiled along on foot, with her dying child in her arms. The poor little girl was in extreme anguish, and often cried out with pain. At length the mother became so exhausted that she fell fainting to the ground. The Indians then placed her upon a horse, and again gave her her child to carry. But the horse was furnished with neither saddle nor bridle, and, in going down a steep hill, stumbled, and they both were thrown over his neck. This incident was greeted by the savages with shouts of laughter. To add to their sufferings, it now began to snow. All the day long the storm wailed through the tree-tops, and the snow was sifted down upon their path. The woe-stricken captives toiled along until night, when the Indians again encamped upon the open ground.

"And now," writes Mrs. Rowlandson, "I must sit in the snow by a little fire, and a few boughs behind me, with my sick child in my lap, and calling much for water, being now, through the wound, fallen into a violent fever. My own wound, also, growing so stiff that I could scarce sit down or rise up, yet so it must be that I must sit all this cold winter's night upon the cold snowy ground, with my sick child in my arms, looking that every hour would be the last of its life, and having no Christian friend near me either to comfort or help me."

Friendly aid from an Indian.

Arrival at head-quarters.

In the morning the Indians resumed their journey, marching, as was their custom, in single file through trails in the forest. A humane Indian mounted a horse and took Mrs. Rowlandson and her child behind him. All the day long the poor little sufferer moaned with pain, while the savages were constantly threatening to knock the child in the head if she did not cease her moaning. In the evening they arrived at an Indian village called Wenimesset. Here, upon a luxuriant meadow upon the banks of the River Ware, within the limits of the present town of New Braintree, the savages had established their head-quarters. It was about thirty-six miles from Lancaster. A large number of savages were assembled at this place, and they remained here for several days, gathering around their council fires, planning new expeditions, and inflaming their passions with war dances and the most frantic revels. The Indians treated their captives with comparative kindness. No violence or disrespect was offered to their persons. They reared a rude wigwam for Mrs. Rowlandson, where she sat for five days and nights almost alone, watching her dying child. At last, on the night of the 18th of February, the little sufferer breathed her last, at the age of six years and five months. The Indians took the corpse from the mother and buried it, and then allowed her to see the grave.

Mrs. Rowlandson a slave.

Reciprocal barbarity.

Actions of the Christian Indians.

Meeting of the captives.

When Mrs. Rowlandson was driven from the flames of her dwelling, a Narraganset Indian was the first to grasp her; he consequently claimed her as his property. Her children were caught by different savages, and thus became the slaves of their captors. The Indians, by the law of retaliation, were perfectly justified in making slaves of their captives. The human mind can not withhold its assent from the justice of the verdict, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." The English made all their captives slaves, and women and children were sold to all the horrors of West Indian plantation bondage. The Narraganset Indian who owned Mrs. Rowlandson soon sold her to a celebrated chieftain named Quinnapin, a Narraganset sachem, who had married, for one of his three wives, Wetamoo, of whom we have heretofore spoken. Quinnapin is represented as a "young, lusty sachem, and a very great rogue." It will be remembered that Wetamoo, queen of the Pocasset Indians, was the widow of Alexander and sister of Wootonekanuske, the wife of Philip. The English clergyman's wife was assigned to Queen Wetamoo as her dressing-maid. The Indian slaveholders paid but little regard to family relations. Mrs. Rowlandson's daughter Mary was sold for a gun by a praying Indian, who first chanced to grasp her. The Christian Indians joined in this war against the whites, and shared in all the emoluments of the slave traffic which it introduced. Mary was ten years of age, a child of cultured mind and lovely character. She was purchased by an Indian who resided in the town where the Indian army was now encamped. When the poor slave mother met her slave child, Mary was so overwhelmed with anguish as to move even the sympathies of her stoical masters; their several owners consequently forbade their meeting any more.