Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/204

Rh certain. Although political and religious controversies occupied the attention of the settlers, they yet found means to cultivate the arts of peace. The forest was broken up, commerce was increased, agriculture flourished, new settlements were made, confidence was created, men saw before them a future in which they had hope. As our fathers passed from war to peace they forgot not their religious duties, and the 29th of June in Massachusetts, and the 17th of August in Plymouth, were set apart as days of public thanksgiving and praise. Days of sadness, too, they must have been; days of woe as well as of triumph. The colonies were bereaved in the loss of brave and valuable men,—families were bereaved in the loss of homes,—and all were bereaved in the fall or captivity of kindred and friends. And could our ancestors have seen that this was the first great step in the red man’s solemn march to the grave, a tear of sympathy would have fallen in behalf of a noble and heroic race.

The war was brief; its operations were rapid. In the space of less than fourteen months the Indians were exterminated and the whites reduced to the condition I have faintly portrayed. Yet, until the 19th of December, 1675, when the colonists made a most destructive attack upon the Indians at what is now South Kingston, the war had been confined chiefly to the valley of the Connecticut. But from that moment Philip was like a hungry tiger goaded in confinement, suddenly let loose upon his prey. The destruction of villages and the deadly ambuscade of bodies of men followed each other in quick succession. In the space of sixty days his forces attacked Lancaster, Medfield, Weymouth, Groton, Warwick, Marlboro’, Rehoboth, Providence, Chelmsford, Andover and Sudbury. At least one half of the death and desolation of the war was crowded into this short period of time.

There was no security except in garrisons defended by