Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/511

 the Christian Indians.  Court, the Council ordered the taking out of some of the most suspicious Indians from the Wamesits, who did not properly belong to them, but were come in to them since the war; these being garbled out and secured in prison. The rest of the Wamesit Indians, being about twenty, were sent back to their wives and children at Wamesit. But as they passed home, being under the guard of Lieutenant James Richardson, and a file of soldiers, they were to march through a village called Woburn, at which time the trained band of that place were exercising. Lieutenant Richardson and his Indians, with their guard, before they drew near the English soldiers, made halt, and he held out his handkerchief as a flag of truce, whereupon the Captain and officers of the band sent to Richardson, who showing them his commission from the Council to conduct those Indians safely to their homes ; whereupon the Captain and officers gave very strict charge to all the soldiers not to shoot a gun until all the Indians were past and clear, nor yet to give any opprobrious words. But notwithstanding this strict prohibition, when the Indians were passing by, a young fellow, a soldier named Knight, discharged his musket and killed one of the Indians stone dead, being very near him. The person slain was a stout young man, very nearly allied to the principal praying Indians of Natick and Wamesit, whose grandfather and uncle were pious men, his father long since slain in the war with the Magues. The murderer was presently apprehended and committed to prison, and not long after tried for his life, but was acquitted by the jury, much contrary to the mind of the bench ; the jury alleged they wanted evidence, and the prisoner plead that his gun went off by accident, indeed witnesses were mealy-mouthed in giving evidence. The jury was sent out again and again by the judges, who were much unsatisfied with the jury's proceedings ; but yet the jury did not see cause to alter their mind, and so the fellow was cleared. About the beginning of November, intelligence came from Mendon, by two of the principal Christian Indians that escaped, viz. James Speen and Job Kattenanit, how the enemy had seized upon, and carried away captive, the Christian Indians that were at Hassanamesit, who were gathering, threshing, and putting up in Indian barns (as the manner is) a considerable crop of Indian corn that grew in that place and parts adjacent; these two men, and some squaws and children, being at a little distance from the rest, made a shift to get