Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/96

72 back from the English into the very flames. Great numbers perished in the conflagration. The greatness and violence of the fire, the reflection of the light, the flashing and the roar of the arms, the shrieks and yellings of the men, women, and children, in the fort, and the shouting of the Indians without, just at the dawning of the morning, exhibited a grand and awful scene. In little more than an hour, this whole work of destruction was finished. Seventy wigwams were burnt, and five or six hundred Indians perished, either by the sword, or in the flames. A hundred and fifty warriors had been sent on the evening before, who, that very morning, were to have gone forth against the English. Of these and all who belonged to the fort, seven only escaped, and seven were made prisoners. It had been previously concluded not to burn the fort, but to destroy the enemy, and take the plunder; but the captain afterwards found it the only expedient, to obtain the victory and save his men. Thus parents and children, the sannap and squaw, the old man and the babe, perished in promiscuous ruin."

At the close of this unrelenting massacre, a new body of the Pequods from the other villages, were found to be fast approaching. Filled with rage at the sight of their ruined habitations and slaughtered companions, they rushed furiously upon the white men; but it was in vain; the destructive fire arms soon checked them, and Mason and his party easily made good their retreat to Pequod harbor, now New London. The wounded were sent by water, and Mason marched his troops to Saybrook, where he was received with a discharge of artillery.

The work of extermination thus begun by the Connecticut soldiers was, in conjunction with the Massachusetts forces, carried forward to its completion during the summer. The Pequods were hunted from their hiding places in the swamps; their forts were destroyed; the warriors were killed the women and children were distributed as slaves among the colonists: Sassacus, their head sachem, having fled to the Mohawks, was murdered by them, at the instigation of the Narragansetts; and the adult male prisoners were sold into slavery in the West Indies. It was reckoned that about nine hundred of the Pequods had been killed or taken; and the few that had escaped and were scattered among the Narragansetts and Mohegans, were forever forbidden to call themselves Pequods. The colonists regarded their successes in this war of destruction of the "bloody heathen" as ample proof of Divine approbation; and with characteristic self-complacency, they furnished numerous quotations out of the Old Testament to justify every thing which they had done. Truly, one might well here repeat the wish of pious Robinson, "Would that you had converted some to the truth before you had killed any!"

The Pequods having been exterminated, the attention of the ministers and magistrates was next turned to the