Part 10

Church was a stout soldier and as ready with his broadsword, as he was with his hammer and saw. His spirit was burning for a fight, and, joined next day by numbers of friendly Indians and troops, under Major Cudworth and Bradford, he pressed on to Swansea, meeting people fleeing from their homes, wringing their hands, and bewailing the losses of their houses and their herds. A part of his force was sent to escort a guide called Brown to his home at Wanamoiset, on June 23rd, and, meeting a part of the garrison going out to bring in corn from some deserted houses, they told the drivers not to go on as Indians were near. "We do not fear them," said the foragers, "for we could handle King Philip's whole army," and thus boasting and laughing, they proceeded onward. But scarcely had they gone more than two miles, when loud war-cries sounded from either side of the forests, accompanied by the sharp crack of rifles, and, to their dismay, they found themselves in an ambuscade. "Turn, men, back to the town," shouted the head of the force, but, although they quickly retreated, six of their number were shot and fell into the roadway, where the skulking braves soon made short work of them. In the following week this settlement, for which they gathered provisions, was abandoned to its fate, and the inhabitants sought refuge in Rhode Island.

Meanwhile two hundred and fifty fighting men of Boston had joined the intrepid Church at Swansea, where there was skirmishing with lurking Indians in the brush, but no battle with any great numbers of King Philip's men. "On, on, to Mount Hope!" was the slogan of the eager Puritans, as, with over five hundred warriors, the angry settlers crossed over the bridge at Swansea, and, with horsemen upon the flanks to prevent an ambuscade, pushed on towards the home of King Philip. They passed by groups of empty wigwams, the smoking ruins of the homes of settlers, Bibles torn to pieces and thrown into the roads in defiance of their Christian teachings; while the heads of men and women stuck on stakes bore full witness of the fury of the savages. The rain fell in torrents as they pressed forward to the Indian town, but, when they rushed exultantly amid the homes of the Wampanoags, not a savage was to be seen, and a heavy trail towards the shore showed that all had escaped to the inland country. Disgusted, but not disheartened, the white men camped for the night in the drenching mist and rain, and, leaving a force to build a fort, after a few days of fruitless search for the savages, the soldiers retired to Swansea and Rehoboth.

Philip had been too clever to be caught at his own home, which was without strong defenses, and had crossed the mouth of the Taunton River to the Pocasset swampland, where he and his men had hidden themselves. He was too wise to engage in open battle with the English, his tactics being those of defense and quick forage, rather than that of meeting the whites upon even terms. Furthermore, he hoped to prolong the war until he could get other western tribes to join with him and thus eventually drive the English into the sea. Should he have some great victory, he expected to gain the assistance of the powerful Mohawks of New York State, and with these to aid him in battle, the Colonists would have little chance for success. So--sullenly and craftily--he lay in the dense undergrowth, waiting for the English to find him in his lair, while he dispatched numerous messengers to the surrounding tribes, asking for the aid in this desperate war.

And he did not have long to wait for the enemy, as Captains Church and Fuller were soon upon his trail, with thirty-six men who were burning for a shot at the despoilers of their homesteads. They crossed the river and penetrated the dense Pocasset swamp, where suddenly a few of their number in advance ran into a small body of the savages. These fled, without offering to fight, and so the rest pushed forward upon the track which the great body of Indians had left as they had retreated into a dense pine swamp. But, suddenly, the sharp rattle of a snake sounded from the undergrowth. Another and still another was heard, and, more terrified by this enemy than by the savages, Church turned to his men to say:

"Back, boys! These serpents are worse than the Black Serpents whom we search for. We must out of this and look for the cunning varmints by a different route."

So they retreated from the wood, passed down the shore towards a neck of land called Punkatee, and soon came upon fresh Indian signs and a wigwam full of plunder. This made them push on much faster, and suddenly they were overjoyed to see two of the enemy in a field of ripening peas. Church and his men immediately fell flat upon their faces, hoping to surprise the two savages, but the eyes of the braves were keen. They saw the glint upon the steel breastplates of the English, and so took to their heels. A fence lay in their path, and as they climbed it, one turned around to discharge his gun. As he did so, a Puritan hit him with a bullet, so that he dropped into the thicket upon the other side, with a great yell of rage and pain. The English rushed forward, hoping to capture him, but, like a cat with nine lives, he wriggled away in the thick underbrush and disappeared.

The Puritans pressed forward, but the sharp ping! ping! from fifty Indian rifles spoke from the silent forest, which warned them that they were surrounded. Blood-curdling yells of defiance sounded in hideous unison as they advanced, and, perceiving that they were in an ambush, Captain Church cried out: "Retreat! Retreat to the fence, lie down behind it, and stand off these yelping wolves." The soldiers obeyed, and, as they reached this friendly shelter, the hill in front of them was fairly black with the swarming warriors of King Philip, whose bright guns glittered in the sun. As they spread out to surround the small band of Puritans, the rattle of bullets in the grass warned the gallant Church that he must retreat, or else all would be lost.

Giving the order to fall back to the beach, the intrepid Captain soon had his men near the water's edge, where they protected themselves behind fallen boulders and stripped off their coats, so as to let their friends see them from the opposite shore. The soldiers were so hungry that they stopped to gather some raw peas upon the way, being peppered by the Indian bullets as they did so, and losing one of their number. At last they all tumbled down behind an old hedge where Captain Church lay, and remained quiet under a withering fire from the Indians, who took possession of the ruins of an old stone house that overlooked them, and endeavored to pick off as many as they could. A hot fight went on. Things began to look black for the small band of Puritans, who were now outnumbered ten to one, and whose powder and ball began to grow very scarce.

In this situation, a sail boat approached from the opposite shore, with a canoe trailing at the stern, but the Indians kept up such a warm fusillade at her that they made her keep some distance away. "Send your canoe ashore," shouted the men, "and take us off, for our ammunition is near gone and we will be overpowered."

But the fellows upon the boat were afraid to venture nearer and kept a safe distance away.

"If you don't send your canoe ashore," roared Church, "I will fire upon you myself. Come--paddle in so that some of my men can get away."

The angry tones of the Captain apparently made the master of the boat lose all desire to aid the band of fighters, and away he sailed, leaving the men to shift for themselves. The Indians, seeing the boat go away, fired thicker and faster than ever, so that a few of the Puritans, who were good runners, began to talk of escaping by flight. But the courageous Captain Church exhorted them to keep up a bold front, to save their ammunition until they saw the head of an enemy, and to be of good cheer, because he was certain that help would soon be at hand. Thus he kept up the spirits of his followers until, just at nightfall, a sloop was seen approaching.

Cheer after cheer came from the throats of the tired men, as a canoe touched upon the bank, and, two at a time, they were paddled off to the ship. Church was the last to come off, for he had left his cutlass near an old well in front of the Indians, and he refused to go until he had found it. As he climbed aboard the sloop, he took one parting shot at the savages with his last bit of powder, which was only sufficient to send the bullet half way to the shore. Two balls from King Philip's men struck the canoe as he went aboard, one grazed the hair of his head, and another partly penetrated a stout, leather girdle right in the middle of his breast, which was fortunately of sufficient thickness to turn the leaden missile aside. Thus ended the first actual skirmish of the war.

Philip was now safe in the swamp, so the pursuit of his wary men was left to some Massachusetts troops who were back from the Narragansett County, where they had gone to secure the friendship of the Narragansett warriors. Church's men--the soldiers from Plymouth--were hurriedly dispatched to the town of Dartmouth, where the savages had burned most of the houses, had stolen cattle, sheep, and horses, and had murdered a number of the inhabitants. Here some two hundred Wampanoags came in and gave themselves up to the troops, upon the strength of promises made by the Captain of the garrison that they would receive kind treatment and would not be harmed. But, in spite of this, the town council voted that, inasmuch as several of these savages had been actors in the late uprising against the whites, and, as the rest had been compliers in the insurrection, that they should be sold into slavery for the good of the country. The soldiers loudly protested against this decision, but sold they were, and shipped to Cadiz, Spain, under one Captain Sprague, who treated them in a rough and brutal manner. Is it any wonder that the rest of the Indians continued the war and refused to end it, to give any quarter to the whites, or to sign any truce, until their last resource had been exhausted?

Meanwhile the Massachusetts forces had surrounded the Pocasset cedar swamp where Philip hid with Wetamoo (his dead brother's wife) and her men, who had fastened bushes about themselves, so that they could steal about undetected among the leaves and shoot down their pursuers. Some of the Puritan troops pushed into the undergrowth in a courageous attempt to be the first to capture the wily chief, but they were ambuscaded, shot at by an unseen enemy, and eight were killed. This proved that discretion was the better part of valor, and so the troops decided to starve out King Philip, as the point of land on which the swamp lay was surrounded upon all sides but one by water. So sure, indeed, were the whites of effecting the capture of all the Indians that a part of the troops returned to Boston, leaving but one hundred men behind them to finish the work and end the war with one blow. But they little gauged the ability of King Philip as a campaigner, for he had rather different ideas of fighting than his opponents. Quietly getting together enough drift wood to make a stout raft, he launched it upon the shore (not watched by the Puritans), paddled across to the other side of the river, and departed for the country of the friendly Nipmucks, leaving his women and sick to be captured by the Massachusetts troops.

At daybreak, he and his men were seen by various farmers as they passed through the open country which lay between them and the land of the Nipmucks. At Rehoboth, the settlers, reinforced by some fifty Mohegan warriors, attacked him without serious loss to the whites, although thirty of King Philip's men were soon weltering in their own blood. The Wampanoag Chief was fighting for his life, and he fought well, urging on his hardy braves by word and gesture, and animating them to deeds of daring by exposing himself freely upon the firing line. The whites and friendly Indians were unable to capture his devoted band and soon they were lost in the thick forest, into the gloomy depths of which the attackers dared not follow.

In a short time Philip was among the friendly Nipmucks, uncaught, unawed by the show of English force, and bent upon forcing the fighting to the extent of his ability. About a fortnight before his escape from Pocasset swamp, as the good minister in the First Parish Church in Boston was delivering his sermon, a courier rushed into the building, with the startling information that the little town of Mendon had been attacked, and that about six of the inhabitants had been slain. The congregation left the place of worship in the greatest alarm, for they now saw that all the Indians in Massachusetts had risen against them, and that, if a treaty of peace were not soon effected, a large army would have to be sent against the savages. So a Captain Hutchinson, escorted by a Captain Wheeler, with twenty horsemen, was sent towards the Indian settlement, with directions to patch up a peace. The messenger, travelling in advance, requested the Indians to meet the English at a certain spot, and this the Indians agreed to do, but when Hutchinson and his men arrived there, not a red warrior was to be seen.

The good Hutchinson was well known in these parts, as he had a large farm near by, where he employed many of the Indians in the fields, and so, hardly thinking that they could be attacked, the men went carelessly through the forest, whistling, laughing and singing songs of gayety and mirth. But suddenly a shot sounded from the gloomy depths of the wood; another and another followed; while blood-curdling yells showed that the Indians were near by, and had ambuscaded the unthinking white troops. They were thrown into terrible confusion. After a short stand they retreated as fast as possible, taking aim at the unseen enemy from the tree stumps and fallen timber, but, as the little band emerged from the shadow of the trees, eight of their number fell dead and a dozen were wounded. Wheeler was shot clean through the body and his horse was killed underneath him, while brave Hutchinson was so badly injured that he died shortly afterwards. Thus, defeated and dismayed, the troops retreated to Brookfield, under the guidance of two friendly Praying Indians, who knew every inch of the country, and, under their direction, they took a bypath which led them in the rear of a large force of redskins who had closed in on their rear, during the skirmish in the forest, thus hoping to annihilate them. When the disorganized band reached the town (a settlement of twenty houses) they took refuge in the Inn, the strongest house in the place and there they were immediately joined by all the inhabitants.

Two messengers were now dispatched on horseback to hasten to the nearest settlements for aid, but, as they reached the edge of the town clearing, shots rang out from the underbrush, yells of defiance told them that the Nipmucks were advancing, and so they returned, at full speed, to join their friends. That evening, one of these was peering out of a garret window, when a bullet from the watchful enemy struck him in the forehead and caused instant death, thus warning the defenders of the Inn that an attempt to escape would be fruitless, and that they must now fight to the last ditch. There were twenty-six fighting Puritans in the fortified dwelling, the women and children were in one room; the wounded in another. Outside, the Indians kept up a continual yelling and shouting as they poured volley after volley of shot, which came against the walls like hail. They set fire to the deserted dwellings of the town and the crackling flames and black smoke warned the inhabitants of Brookfield that their homes would be no longer standing at the end of this unequal battle. The fate that was to befall them was evident, for one rash man, venturing out of the Inn to run to his father's house not far away, was caught by the cruel redskins, his head was cut off and, after kicking it about like a football, it was placed upon a pole and set up in full view of the surrounded Englishmen, with fierce yells and cheers of defiance from the red demons who had killed him.

In the night the savages roared like so many bulls, sang weird songs of war, and fired against the walls of the Inn until three o'clock in the morning, when they attempted to set fire to the house by means of hay and other combustibles which they brought to one corner and touched off with a firebrand. But the brave white men dashed out into the open under a murderous fire from the Indians, which wounded only two, and with great exertion put out the blaze before the Inn itself had ignited. Meanwhile, one Ephraim Curtis, a swiftfooted youth, crawled by the savages in the early gray of the morning, and, eluding the vigilance of the sentinels, made all haste for Marlborough, the nearest settlement. His comrades grimly sat down to wait for what Providence should bring them, determined that they would sell their lives dear, and, if they were to die, it would not be until after they had sent many a redskin to the next world before them.

Among these Nipmucks were several renegade Praying Indians, and, as the shot continued to pour in upon the garrison, next morning, they collected in great numbers near the church--only a gunshot away--and scoffed, blasphemed and joined in a hideous attempt to sing a mocking hymn. The garrison, with religious anger, fired upon this ribald crew with vigor and soon saw them retreating in confusion, carrying several dead and wounded with them. All during the afternoon fresh hordes of warriors came in to join the foe, while the yelling braves redoubled their efforts to burn the Inn. Arrows, tipped with burning rags dipped in brimstone, were shot upon the roof, while the men within cut away the shingles under them and put out the blaze. The yelling braves piled hay and flax against the walls, for a second time, which they set on fire, as they crowded around the door in order to shoot down anyone who came out or force an entrance should anyone open it. A ball of fire was shot into the garret which fell in a great mass of tow, but was fortunately extinguished immediately by one of the soldiers, and in these fearful straits the garrison broke down the house wall and put out the flames from the inside.

"Merciful Providence, what shall we do?" shouted a stout Puritan at this moment. "Our water has given out!"

"I will get more," cried one Thomas Wilson, running into the yard, but he was shot in the upper jaw and in the neck so painfully that he cried out in his anguish; whereupon the Indians set up a great shout of triumph, thinking they had killed him. Fortunately his wound was not serious and he recovered in a short time; but he got no water, and thus the beleagured men and women were in desperate straits indeed. The Indians had barricaded the end of the meetinghouse and the barn belonging to the garrison, with boards and hay, and so, protected from the bullets of the settlers, they fought at close quarters and kept up an incessant fire. But, seeing that their only hope for success was in burning the house, they now brought up a cart which was made from a barrel and piled with hemp, flax, hay and other inflammable materials, and set it on fire, as they rolled it towards the mansion. Nothing, it seemed, could now save the Colonists, for the poles on the cart were of such a length that the whites could not hit the Indians who pushed it. At this awful moment, Heaven came to the aid of the courageous English. A heavy thunder shower suddenly fell, and, as the burning cart was extinguished by the raindrops, the Indians set up a wail of disappointment, as they heard the cheers from the interior of the Inn.

Two days and a night had now elapsed since the messenger to the settlements had passed through the lines of hostile Indians, and, whether he had reached the friends of the settlers or not, was unknown to the now worn-out defenders of the last house in Brookfield. They gloomily fired at the savages as they cautiously showed themselves, and, as the darkness of another night began to fall, you can well imagine their feelings of excitement, when, above the howlings of the Nipmucks, was heard the tramp of a column of horse. The Indians began to withdraw--they suddenly disappeared altogether--and, to the joy of all, a gray-haired Puritan at the head of some forty-six stout Massachusetts yeomen rode into the streets of the town and rescued the half-starved garrison. Cheer after cheer rent the air, as the danger was known to be past. By the lurid light of some burning barns, the Nipmucks retreated into the blackness, firing desultory and random shots at the reinforcements as they did so. The garrison was saved. Women sobbed aloud; strong men wept like babies; and tears of cheerfulness were intermingled with those of sorrow for the brave fellows who had fallen in the fray. Brookfield was soon abandoned by all, and the cattle of the once prosperous settlers grazed among the ruined walls and charred timbers of the homes of their masters. King Philip's men had well begun their awful work upon the people of New England.

And this dread destruction continued, for the settlers were few, their homes were without stockades, and they were thoroughly unprepared for making a decent resistance against the overwhelming numbers of the Indians. The Nipmucks, with King Philip as director of affairs, had moved westward towards the town of Hadley, where was a large Indian encampment of supposedly friendly red men. "We will go out and fight Philip," they told the English. "We are your friends, not his." But the friendly Mohegan warriors gathered about the Puritan leaders. "Do not believe them," said they, "for they will give the enemy warning, when on the warpath, by shouting. Do not believe them." So, it was ordered that these warriors should come to the English troops and give up their arms, in token of their friendship. But the Indians left their village in a body (it was a group of wigwams with a stockade about it) and fled. The English pursued, next day, and overtook them in a swamp ten miles distant, where they attacked with vigor, firing from behind trees and boulders in true frontier fashion. The fight was sharp and bloody. It lasted for three hours, and in the end, the savages made good their retreat, leaving twenty-six warriors upon the field, while nine of the Englishmen died in the arms of their comrades, who were unable to capture a single red man.

Not far off was the little settlement of Deerfield, with about one hundred and twenty-six sturdy settlers living there. Three of the houses had palisades about them, but the rest were thoroughly unprotected. Philip's emissary had stirred up all the Indians hereabouts, and men went to meeting with their arms over their shoulders; ammunition was stored in the meetinghouse and each man furnished himself with at least five charges of powder and shot. In spite of this, the Indians found them thoroughly unprepared, when, a week later, they fell upon the little settlement, and, although the settlers rallied together in the centre of the village, the redskins soon set fire to all the houses and barns beyond range of the white men's trusty flintlocks. Not daring to leave the protection of their palisades, they saw the labor of long years of patient toil go up in smoke, while their sheep, oxen, and cows were driven off by their enemies. A few days later, Squakeog, a town fifteen miles distant, met the same fate, while some nine or ten settlers, who did not reach the garrison house soon enough, were easily slain by the crafty Indian braves. The red hand of war lay heavy upon the Massachusetts frontier.