Part 4 (2/2)
Roger Williae in Rhode Island to escape froreatly beloved by the Indians He had becoe, and by his honesty, disinterestedness, and courtesy, had particularly won the esteeovernor and council of Connecticut i hiansets, and exert his influence to dissuade theooda hurried farewell to his wife, he started alone in a dilapidated canoe to sail along the shores of Narraganset Bay upon his errand ofin such a surf upon the shore that he could not land, while he was everysed up in the abysses which were yawning around hi encountered much hardshi+p and surmounted many perils, he arrived at the imperial residence of Canonicus The barbarian chieftain was at home, and it so happened that some Pequot embassadors had but a short tiansets in reference to the coalition All the arts of diploe life, of the wily Indian and of the sincere and honest Christian, were now brought into requisition With heroisnal in that it was entirely unostentatious, this bold es, encountering the threats of the Pequots, and expecting every night that they would take his life before
Grandeur of character alins applause The Indians marveled at his calm, unboastful intrepidity, and Canonicus, as also a uments, that he finally not only declined to enter into an alliance with the Pequots, but pledged anew his friendshi+p for the English, and engaged to co-operate with the the threatened assault
This was an achievement of immensethe coalition, intiansets, and by their co-operation with the English, also refused to take part in the war, and thus the Pequots were left to fight the battle alone But the Pequots, with their four thousand merciless warriors, were a fearful foe to rush from their inaccessible retreats, with torch and tomahawk, upon the sparse and defenseless settle the banks of the Connecticut River
Various acts of individual violence were perpetrated by the savages before war broke out in all its horrors The English were anxious to avert hostilities, if possible, as they had nothing to gain from ith the natives, and their helpless families would be exposed to inconceivable misery from the barbarism of the foe
The colonists now learned that the excuse which had been offered for the assault upon Captains Norton and Stone was a fabrication, and false in all its particulars These ed several Indians to pilot them up the river They often stopped to trade with the natives
One night, as they were one upon the land, and the captain was asleep in the cabin, a large number of Indians made a premeditated assault, and murdered all on board The rest, as they returned in the darkness and unsuspicious of danger, were easily dispatched
This new evidence of the treachery of the Pequots exasperated the colonists Still, they did not think it best to usher in a ith such powerful foes by any retaliation The Pequots, encouraged by this forbearance, became more and more insolent In July, 1635, John Oldha expedition to the Pequot country; for the Pequots, notwithstanding all the appearances against them, still pretended to friendshi+p, and solicited trade One object of sending Captain Oldham upon this expedition was to ascertain es
A few days after his departure, a man by the name of John Gallop was in a se fro northerly wind drove him near Manisses, or Block Island This island is about fourteen , and from two to four wide
To his surprise, he saw near the shore an English vessel, which he inized as Captain Oldham's, filled with Indians, and evidently in their possession Sixteen savages, well aruns and swords which they had taken frolish, crowded the boat
Captain Gallop was a man of lion heart, inspirited by that Puritan chivalry which ever displayed itself in the htest apparent consciousness that there was any thing extraordinary in the exploit His little vessel was considerably larger than the boat which the Indians had captured His creever, consisted of only one htest hesitancy, he iht with the Indians Loading hisall sail, he bore down upon his foe The as fair and strong, and, standing firmly at the helm, while his creere protected by the bulwarks from the arrows and bullets of the Indians, and were ready with their uided his vessel so skillfully as to strike the smaller boat of the foe fairly upon the quarter The shock was so severe that the boat was nearly capsized, and six of the Indians were knocked into the sea and drowned
Captain Gallop immediately stood off and prepared for another similar broadside In the mean time, he lashed the anchor to the bows of the vessel in such a way that the fluke should pierce the side of the boat, and serve as a grappling iron As there were now only ten Indians to be attacked, he decided to board the boat in case it should be grappled by the fluke of his anchor Havingdown before a brisk gale, and, striking the boat again, tore open her side with his anchor, while at the sae of buckshot upon the terrified savages Most of theed into the hold of the little pinnace, and the shot effected but little execution A third time he ran down upon the pinnace, and struck her with such force that five more, in their turn, leaped overboard and were drowned There were now but five savages left, and the intrepid Gallop ies retreated to a small cabin, where, with swords, they defended the no place where he could keep these two Indians apart, and fearing that they es who had fortified themselves in the cabin, rise successfully upon him, Captain Gallop threw one of the Indians overboard, and he was drowned This was rough usage; but the savages, who had apparently rendered it necessary by their previous act of robbery and murder, could not co and of all the goods which remained The body of Captain Oldham was found, awfully mutilated, beneath a sail The rest of the crew, but two or three in nues on the shore
Captain Gallop buried the corpse as reverently as possible in the sea, and then took the pinnace in toith the three savages barricaded in the cabin Night came on, dark and stormy; the wind increased to a tempest, and it was necessary to cut the pinnace adrift She was never heard of ed to the Narragansets; but eance of Canonicus, their own chieftain, fled across the Sound to the Pequot country, and were protected by them The Pequots thus became implicated in the crime Canonicus, on the other hand, rescued the captives taken frolish now decided that it was necessary for thees could no longer be coeance which was resolved upon An army of one hundred men was raised, cowam, destroy all the corn, shoot every man, and take the women and children captive Thus the island was to be left a solitude and a desert
On the 25th of August, 1636, the detachment sailed from Boston The Indians were aware of the punishment hich they were threatened, and were prepared for resistance Captain John Endicott, as in com a solitary Indian wandering upon the beach, who, it afterward appeared, had been placed there as a decoy, took a boat and a dozen armed men, and rowed toward the shore When they reached within a few rods of the beach, suddenly sixty warriors, pickedup froe, and poured in upon the boat a volley of arrows
Fortunately, the boat was so far froh tere seriously wounded As the water was shoal, the colonists,fro their foes with a well-directed volley of bullets
Had the Indians possessed any ht have closed upon the twelve colonists, and easily have destroyed thee which would enable thee With awful yells of fury and despair, they broke and fled into the forests and the swamps
Captain Endicott now landed his force and coes upon the island, containing about sixty ams each The torch was applied, and they were all destroyed Every canoe that could be found was staved There were also upon the island about two hundred acres of standing corn, which the English trampled down But not an Indian could be found The women and children had probably been removed from the island, and the warriors who relish sought the two days upon the island, the expedition again embarked, and sailed across the Sound to the mouth of the Thames, then called Pequot Harbor As the vessel entered the harbor, about three hundred warriors assembled upon the shore
Captain Endicott sent an interpreter to inforlish, and to obtain compensation for the injuries which the Indians had inflicted To this the Pequots defiantly replied with a shower of arrows Captain Endicott landed on both sides of the harbor where New London now stands The Indians sullenly retired before hi it necessary for the English to keep in a coainst assault Two Indians were shot, and probably a few others wounded The a the shore were burned, and the canoes destroyed, and then the expedition again spread its sails and returned to Boston, having done infinitely hty foes They had but struck the hornets' nest with a stick The Connecticut people were in exceeding terror, as they knew that savage vengeance would fall mercilessly upon them
Sassacus was a stern hed to scorn this ireat calamity The huts were reared anew before the expedition had arrived in Boston The Pequots now despised their foes, and, gathering around their council fires, they clashed their weapons, shrieked their hoop, and excited thee The defenseless settlers along the banks of the Connecticut were now at the es, ere roused to the commission of every possible atrocity No pen can describe the scenes of hich, during the autumn and winter of 1636 and 1637, transpired in the solitudes of the wilderness The Indians were every where in ht, startled by the yell of the savage, the lonely settler sprang to his door but to see his building in flames, to be pierced with innu in blood, and to see, as death was stealing over him, his wife and his children brained by the toes upon their captives were too horrible to be narrated Even the recital almost causes the blood to chill in one's veins
Sassacus was indefatigable in his endeavors to rouse all the tribes to combine in a war of extermination
”Now,” said he, ”is our tilish, they will soon prove too powerful for us, and they will obtain all our lands We need not meet them in open battle We can shoot and poison their cattle, burn their houses and barns, lay in ambush for them in the fields and on the roads They are no We are numerous We can thus soon destroy them all”
Why did they not succeed in this plan? The only answer is that God willed otherwise The Indians planned their caor Not a boat could pass up or down the river in safety The colonists were coether in block-houses, and could never lie down at night without the fear of being ht the flas reddened the sky, and the shriek of the captives expiring under dees