company officers, one of whom, Captain John Underhill, has written an account of this expedition, and of the more important one which followed. A sort of Friar Tuck, devotee, bravo, libertine, and buffoon in equal parts, Underhill takes a memorable place among the eccentric characters who from time to time break what is altogether too easily assumed to have been the dead level of NewEngland gravity in those days. He had been a soldier in Ireland, in Spain, and more recently in the Netherlands, where he "had spoken freely to Count Nassau." He was brought over by Governor Winthrop to train the people in military exercises, and was one of the Deputies from Boston in the first General Court. It was Endicott's earliest trust of this kind, and the manner in which he acquitted himself of it does not constitute one of the most creditable portions of his history. He killed or wounded some of the Block-Islanders, burned their houses, staved their canoes, and cut down their corn.2 1 Antinomians and Familists, &c., 41. 2 Underhill says (Newes from America, 8) that fourteen of the BlockIslanders were killed. But perhaps he was romancing. According to Winthrop (I. 194), "they could not tell what men they killed, but some were wounded, and carried away by their fellows." He afterwards learned (Ibid., 196) that only one Block-Islander was killed outright. Underhill (Newes, &c., 5, 6) relates his own experiences on this occasion: Myself received an arrow through my coat-sleeve, a second against my helmet on the forehead, so as if God in his providence had not moved the heart of my wife to persuade me to carry it along with me (which I was unwilling to do), I had been slain. Give me leave to observe two things from hence: first, when the hour of death is not yet come, you see God useth weak means to keep his purpose unviolated; secondly, let no man despise advice and counsel of his wife, though she be a woman. It was strange to nature to think a man should be bound to fulfil the humor of a woman, what arms he should carry; but you see God will have it so, that a woman should overcome a man. What with Delilah's flattery, and with her mournful tears, they must and will have their desire, when the hand of God goes along in the matter. .. Therefore let the clamor be quenched I daily hear in my ears, that New-England men usurp over their wives, and keep them in servile subjection. The country is wronged in this matter, as in many things else. Let this precedent satisfy the doubtful, for that comes from the example of a rude soldier. If they be so courteous to their wives as to take their advice in warlike matters, how much more kind is the tender, affectionate husband to honor his wife as the weaker vessel. Yet mistake not. I say not that they are bound to call Expedition Pequots. Re-embarking, he proceeded westward, and delivered his message to the Pequots, including a demand for against-the the surrender of the murderers of Stone, the payment of a thousand fathoms of wampum, and the delivery of hostages for future good conduct. He was answered with what he thought treacherous excuses, and could get no hearing from the chiefs. When the party with whom he conferred had thus gained the time they wanted for preparation, they discharged their arrows at his men, and took to flight. He burned some wigwams and canoes, collected a quantity of corn, and returned to Boston without loss. It was afterwards reported by the Narragansetts "that thirteen of the Pequots were killed, and forty wounded." 1 The movement, instead of intimidating, as had been hoped, did but irritate that warlike nation. Both the Connecticut and the Plymouth people complained of it, as having been ill-conducted. Sassacus made the most vigorous endeavors to engage the Narragansetts, the hereditary enemies of his tribe, in an alliance for exterminating the English in all their settlements. There was great probability that these endeavors would succeed; and, had he been able to conciliate the Narragansetts, and to enlist or overawe the Mohegans, there was no power in the colonists to make head against him, and the days of civilized New England would have been numbered and finished near their beginning. The ancient hostility of the Narragansetts to their savage rivals prevailed, enforced by the diplomacy of Roger Williams, who, at the hazard of his life, visited their settlements to counteract the solicitations with which they were addressed.2 Determined by his their wives in council, though they are bound to take their private advice (so far as they see it make for their advantage and their good); instance Abraham." The parenthesis leaves a pretty wide margin for domestic insubordination. 1 Winthrop, I. 196. 2 "Three days and nights my business forced me to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequot ambassadors, whose hands and arms, methought, reeked with the blood of my countrymen, murdered and massacred by them on Con influence, some of the Narragansett chiefs came to Boston in the autumn, and concluded a treaty of peace and alliance with the colonists. The furious and formidable Pequots were to fight their battle alone. They spared no measures of a nature to spread consternation and provoke resentment. In the autumn, they caught one Butterfield near Gardiner's garrison, October. and he was never heard of more. A few days 1 the Pequots. 1637. after, they took two men out of a boat, and murdered them with ingenious barbarity, cutting off first the hands of one of them, then his feet. All winter, a marauding party kept near the fort, of which they burned Hostilities of the out-buildings and the hay, and killed the cattle. Towards spring, Gardiner went out with Feb. 22. ten men for some farming work. They were waylaid by the Indians, and three of them were slain.3 Soon after, two men, sailing down the river, were stopped and horribly mutilated and mangled; their bodies were cut in two lengthwise, and the parts hung up by the river's bank." A man who had been carried off from Wethersfield was roasted alive. All doubt as to the necessity of vigorous action was over when a band of a hundred Pequots 5 necticut River, and from whom I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my own throat also." (Roger Williams's Letter to Major Mason, in Mass. Hist. Coll., I. 277.) — In Mass. Hist. Coll., XXI. 159-161, is a letter from Williams to Winthrop, communicating to him the views of the Narragansetts respecting the best manner of conducting a campaign against the Pequots. 66 1 The victim was John Tilley, formerly overseer for the Dorchester Company at Cape Ann; a very stout man, and of great understanding.” (Winthrop, I. 200.) "He lived three days after his hands were cut off." (Ibid.) Tilley's companion fared yet 4 worse. His captors "tied him to a stake, flayed his skin off, put hot embers between the flesh and skin, cut off his fingers and toes and made hatbands of them." (Underhill, Newes, &c., 23.) "Many honest men had their blood shed, yea, and some flayed alive, others cut in pieces, and some roasted alive." (Lion Gardiner, Relation of the Pequot Wars, in Mass. Hist. Coll., XXIII. 151.) 2 Winthrop, I. 198. 3 Gardiner, Relation, &c., in Mass. Hist. Coll., XXIII. 143. 4 Trumbull, History of Connecticut, I. 76. 5 Gardiner, Relation, &c., in Mass. Hist. Coll., XXIII. 143. attacked that place, killed seven men, a woman, and a child, and carried away two girls. They had now put to death no less than thirty of the English. The two hundred and fifty men in the Connecticut towns were surrounded by Indian tribes, who, from their hunting-grounds between Hudson River and Narragansett Bay, could, if united, have fallen upon them with a force of at least four or five thousand warriors. The Pequots, already engaged in open hostility against them, numbered not fewer than a thousand fighting-men. It was but too probable that the friendship of the other tribes would not long be proof against the seductions by which they continued to be plied. There seemed no alternative for the distressed colonists except their own speedy extermination or a sudden exercise of courage and conduct that should crush the assailant. Women and children were not to be abandoned to savage cruelty, the new light of civilization in Connecticut was not to be extinguished, if the desperate valor of a few stout men could save them. And, if a bold movement should succeed, it might be expected to impress a salutary lesson, to break up the dangerous negotiations which had been on foot, to settle for the future the relations of the parties, and to entail a lasting enjoyment of security and peace. April 18. Massachusetts and Plymouth were solicited for aid. At an extraordinary session of the General Court of Massachusetts, "assembled for the special occasion of prosecuting the war against the Pequots, it was agreed and ordered, that the war, having been undertaken on just ground, should be seriously prosecuted," and that for this purpose there should be a levy of a hundred and sixty men, and the sum of six hundred pounds.1 Plymouth in like manner determined to make a levy of forty men. But no time could be spared for waiting till these troops should come up. A Connecticut force of ninety 2 1 Mass. Col. Rec., I. 192. 2 Plym. Col. Rec., I. 60-62. May 1. John Mason. men, forty-two of whom were furnished by Hartford, thirty by Windsor, and eighteen by Wethersfield, was placed under the command of Captain John Mason.1 This officer had served in the Netherlands under Sir Captain Thomas Fairfax, who had such esteem for him, that, when he was General, several years after, of the forces of Parliament, he wrote to urge him to return to England, and help the patriot cause.2 Coming over to Massachusetts and joining Ludlow's settlement, he was employed with Gallup, who has just been mentioned, in an unsuccessful cruise after a piratical vessel, and was a member of a committee to direct fortifications at Boston, Charlestown, Dorchester, and Castle Island.3 He was two years a Deputy from Dorchester to the General Court, before he accompanied his fellow-townsmen to the bank of the Connecticut. 4 1632. Mason was first despatched with twenty men to reinforce the garrison at the river's mouth; but meeting Underhill there, who had just arrived with an equal force from Massachusetts, he returned with his detachment to Hartford, whence he proceeded down the river a 1636. second time, taking with him now all his levy, May 10. besides seventy friendly Indians. The whole were embarked in three small vessels. The Reverend Mr. Stone, chaplain of the expedition, acted a part in it second only in importance to that of the commander. Uncas, the Mohegan chief, led the Indian allies. An apprehension of their treachery weighed heavily on the spirits of the troops; but they proved faithful, though they rendered no effective service. From the fort, Mason took along with him Underhill with his twenty men, sending back twenty of his own 1 The preparations for this war constituted the business of the first General Court held in Connecticut. (Conn. Col. Rec., 9, 10.) 2 Prince's Introduction to Mason's History of the Pequot War. 3 Mass. Col. Rec., I. 106, 124. |
