CHAPTER VIII.

A Crisis-"The Pequoitt Potencie "-Indian Atrocities-Declaration of War-Civilization vs. Barbarism-Mason's ExpeditionThe Fort Fight-Stone's Thanksgiving — Mason's BattleLudlow's Foresight-His Letter to Pynchon-The Swamp Fight Uncas and Miantonomo-Fair Unquowa-Ludlow's Services 1635-1639

SCARCELY had the colonists in the three settlements on the river-Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield-made good their claims to ownership and occupancy under Ludlow's leadership, and set up their standards of independence under exigent laws and orders of their own making, when a crisis came that threatened their destruction. Only instant, resolute action saved them. It was taken May 1, 1637.

"It is ordered that there shalbe an offensive warr agt the Pequoitt, and that there shalbe 90 men levied out of the 3 Plantacons, Hartford, Weathersfield and Windsor (viz'), out of Hartford 42, Windsor 30, Weathersfield 18: under the Comande of Captain Jo: Mason."

In this order of the General Court held at Hartford is written the story of a great

tragedy, itself the outcome of lesser tragedies more poignant and terrible to their victims. The Pequots, enraged at the sale of lands on the river by the tribes they had conquered, resolved upon a war of extermination against the settlers. They had already opened their campaign of murder and assassination, arson, captivity, and torture. Ambush and surprise, torch, tomahawk, and scalping knife were the instruments of their hellish vengeance.

This is but a partial record of Indian atrocities before the declaration of war:

Murder of Captain Stone, and crew of twelve men, when going up the river to trade.

Murder of two men above Saybrook, one, Brookfield, dying by torture.

Murder of John Oldham, the founder of Wethersfield, at Block Island.

Murder of Mitchell, brother of the Cambridge minister; burned at the stake.

Murder of two soldiers in the Saybrook cornfield; bodies cut in halves and hung on

trees.

Attack on Gardiner's fort at Saybrook, in which he and two others were wounded, and two were killed.

Massacre at Wethersfield, April 23, 1637,

when one hundred Indians fell on the settlers at work in the fields, and killed one woman, one child, and seven men, and carried two young women into captivity.

More than thirty English lives were sacrificed before the famous order was written.

In the presence of such horrors, who values the sentimental charge that the war was cruel and unrighteous? It was civilization against barbarism. It was a mighty blow struck in self-defence, by a handful of settlers against a horde of demons; sachem and sagamore against soldier and legist, sannup and squaw against husbandman and housewife; war-drum against church-bell; wickiup against meetinghouse; war-whoop against psalm; savagery, squalor, devilish rites and incantations, against prayers, and hymns, and exhortations; the native in his paint and feathers against the Englishman of sand with his pike and musket; Sassacus and Sowheag, Tatobam and Sunckquasson, against Ludlow and Hooker, Stone and Mason; warfare, rapine and desolation against peace and plenty, enlightenment and culture, and all the social forces that bear fruitage under the sunlight of civilization.

Down the river in "a pink a pinnace and a

shallop" went the little company (seventy-seven in all when they went into action), and sailing eastward to Narragansett Bay, they landed, and after a wearisome and perilous march through the Narragansetts' country, with some scared and useless Indian auxiliaries and guides, in the early morning of May 26, 1637, they fell upon the sleeping Pequots in their fort on Pequot Hill, smote them hip and thigh, and wiped out between six and seven hundred warriors- the flower of their race, according to the Indians' own admission. It was courage and endurance that wrought the great deliverance.

Ludlow presided at the court which declared the "offensive warr." It was chiefly due to him that the desperate task was undertaken. He knew the Indians in Massachusetts and Connecticut; he had studied their character, had a personal acquaintance with some of the chiefs, and was alive to the vital necessity of prompt action, of destroying the conspiracy at one bold stroke; and it was done.

Upon Ludlow chiefly fell the duty of defence of the settlers and their families, in the stockade at Windsor and along the river, while the soldiers were away on the Pequot expedition. More than one-half of the fighting men

had gone.

Watch and ward night and day, anxiety and alarm, waited on the little companies in their villages until news of the victory brought relief.

Deep are the pathos and devotion in his letter of those days to his friend Pynchon, in a like stress at Agawam, May 17, 1637.

"I have received your letter, wherein you express that you are well fortified, but few hands. I would desire you to be careful and watchful that you be not betrayed by friendship. For my part, my spirit is ready to sink within me, when upon alarms which are daily I think of your condition; that if the case be never so dangerous, we can neither help you nor you us. But I must confess both you and ourselves do stand merely by the power of our God therefore he must and ought to have all the praise of it. I can assure you it is our great grief we can not, for our plantations are so gleaned by that small fleet we sent out that those that remain are not able to supply our watches, which are day and night, that our people are scarce able to stand upon their legs; and for planting, we are in like condition with you; what we plant is before our doors, little anywhere else. Our fleet went away tomorrow will be seven night."

Westward, toward the Mohawk country, in the following July, fled the remnant of the Pequots, after the battle at their stronghold; and they finally stood at bay in a dense thicket