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DESTRUCTION OF THE MYSTIC FORT.

233

brand from a wigwam and applied it to the light fabric. In an instant the huts of basket-work, covered with dry mats, were in a blaze. Underhill followed his example. In half an hour the two streams of fire met and the whole village was in ruins. Underhill's narrative rises into dignity and pathos as he tells us how great and doleful was the bloody sight to the view of young soldiers that had never been in war, to see so many souls lie gasping on the ground, so thick in some places that you could hardly pass along.' We may feel too that he has summed up the merits of the case when he says, Mercy they did deserve for their valour, could we have had opportunity to bestow it.' A needless war against savages is just as great a crime as a needless war against a civilized nation. But if once the necessity arises, then it is impossible that such a war should be carried out on the principles which govern civilized nations. A civilized community is amenable to penalties and restraints which have no force against savages. It can be mulcted of a share of its territory; its commerce can be destroyed by a blockade. As life becomes more complex the need for direct penalties grows less. In primitive times an individual is rendered harmless by blinding or mutilation. A community is bound over to keep the peace by giving hostages. To endeavour to restrain a fierce, proud, and vindictive nation like the Pequods would have been striving to bind the unicorn in the furrow. In such a case the grim maxim of Essex holds good: Stone-dead hath no fellow.' That such a necessity exists is the best reason why a civilized power should avoid war with savages. It is no reason. for refusing to face facts when war becomes needful. More than six hundred Pequods had perished, and only two of the assailants. But of the latter more than

1 P. 25.

2 The estimates vary very widely; I have taken Mason's.

one in every four was wounded, and the task of bearing them to the vessels which were lying at the mouth of the Mason's Pequod river was a sore tax on the exhausted return. troops. The surgeon, who was no soldier, had fled to the ships, and the raw air of the early morning was telling on the sufferers. Fortunately, however, the Mohican and Narragansett allies, who had rendered no other service, were able to help in carrying the wounded. As the little force was making its way to the sea a fresh party of the enemy, numbering over two hundred, came in sight. When they found the charred remains of the village, strewed with the corpses of their countrymen, they raised a howl of grief and rage and rushed upon the retiring enemy. It was no part of Mason's scheme of campaign to turn upon this second force. He contented himself with keeping the foe in check till his troops had reached the shore. There they found a vessel with Patrick and his forty men from Massachusetts. Though too late to bear a hand in the campaign, he might now have been of service in transporting the English soldiers or the Indian allies by sea, and saving the exhausted force from the fatigue and danger of a land march. But Patrick's contentious and impracticable temper made him utterly useless, so that, in the words of Mason, we did not desire or delight in his company, and so we plainly told him.'1

Reception of the

On Saturday, three days after the victory, the little army reached Saybrook. There it was 'nobly entertained by Lieutenant Gardiner with many great guns,' and with courtesy which must have contrasted pleasantly with the gloomy forebodings with which he had witnessed their departure." Of their reception by their fellow-citizens Mason is content to tell

troops in Connecti

cut.

1 Mason, p. 144.

2 Ib. Gardiner himself (p. 149) says, 'They returned with victory, to the glory of God and honour of our nation.'

1637

us that they were entertained with great triumph and rejoicing and praising God for His goodness.' We learn from the records of the colony that the gratitude of the citizens showed itself in act by a grant of five hundred acres of land to Mason and of the like amount to be

distributed among his men. Well might Connecticut be triumphant and thankful at the return of her deliverers. They had saved her from destruction, from horrors which we may describe in words, but can hardly even shadow to our own minds. own minds. They had shown too that the little community of three villages, which had not yet fully taken the forms of civic existence, had within it the spirit by which commonwealths are kept alive. The safety of the state had been staked on the courage and good conduct of the citizens, and they had borne the test. The daughter had shown that she could dispense with the tardy and grudging help which the parent offered her. Her very success was a rebuke to that parent. The slur which had been cast on New England soldiership by the failure of Endicott, was wiped out by the skill and daring of Mason and his followers.

Further

operations against

the

Pequods.

The victory by the Mystic had practically annihilated the power of the Pequods and decided their fate. The task of subjugation had yet to be carried out in detail. When the result of the campaign became known at Boston the Council resolved only to send half the number of men that had been originally voted. A deputation, headed by three ministers, waited on Winthrop and remonstrated with him. The arrogant claims of the priesthood to interfere in secular affairs met with less toleration from Winthrop than from any other of the statesmen of New England. A private remonstrance, he told them, might have been heard, but to come. . . in a public and popular way .

...

3

would bring authority into contempt.' As a concession, however, a hundred and forty men were sent.' Though the Pequods had endeavoured to strike a parting blow at Mason's force before it embarked, yet the defeat by the Mystic had utterly destroyed all unity and discipline among them. In their wrath they turned on their leader, Sasacus, and denounced him as one whose ambition had brought about the ruin of his nation. The chief, finding his life in danger, fled with seventy of his chosen followers to the country of the Mohawks.2 With his flight all thought of resistance was at an end. The remnant of the natives broke up into scattered bands, which took refuge separately in the swampy recesses of the forest. One of these, numbering eighty, was surrounded and captured by the force from Massachusetts. The largest party escaped across the Connecticut and took refuge with some friendly Indians. At the end of June the force from Massachusetts was joined by forty men from Connecticut under the command of Mason. For a while it was impossible to ascertain where the main body of the surviving Pequods was. At length a deserter, who acted as spy for the English, told them that his countrymen were in a fortified village near the shore, forty miles beyond Saybrook. There the English surrounded them. The evils of a divided command were strikingly illustrated by the contrast between the vigorous and efficient operations of the late campaign and the hesitation and delays now. Some were for cutting down the trees round the village to clear a space for an assault, others were for blockading it with a palisade. Some again wished to attack at once; others would wait till the next morning. At last it was decided to send an interpreter and demand a surrender. Old men, women, and children, two hundred in all, obeyed the summons and 1 Winthrop, vol. i. P. 226.

2 Mason, p. 145; Winthrop, vol. i. p. 233.

3 lb.

1637-8

FATE OF THE PEQUODS.

237

gave themselves up prisoners. Of the fighting men who stayed behind, seventy made a sortie, and were suffered to escape through the incompetence of Patrick. The remainder, a hundred and eighty in number, seemingly made no attempt at resistance and were led off as captives.1 The Mohawks, to whom Sasacus had fled, killed him and sent his scalp-lock as an offering to Boston.2 All that remained of the nation, lately so terrible, was a few scattered bands of fugitives, who were hunted down by the English and their savage allies.

and Narra

gansetts both wish

rate the

A difficulty now arose with the friendly Indians. The adoption of a prisoner was a familiar usage among the Mohicans savages. It is clear that the ties of political union and allegiance sat lightly on them, and to incorpo- that where community of blood and speech Pequods. existed, the members of one tribe were readily absorbed into another. The Pequods who had been actually taken during the war were allowed to be the bondslaves of the English, though it would seem as if they were no very profitable acquisition. But those who were yet at large, nearly two hundred in number, were coveted as adoptive tribesmen both by the Mohicans and the Narragansetts. Uncas, it is clear, thought by acquiring this addition to build up the power of his tribe, to oust the Narragansetts from their position of supremacy, and possibly to undermine their alliance with the English. Roger Williams threw himself into this dispute with characteristic eagerness. His kindly sympathy with the Indians never degenerated into irrational sentiment, nor blinded him to their vices. There is something of apology in the tone in which he

This last attack is described fully by Mason (pp. 146-148), and by Winthrop (vol. i. p. 233). Mason, oddly enough, does not mention the place. Winthrop describes it as within twenty or thirty miles of the Dutch.

2 Winthrop, vol. i. p. 235; Gardiner, p. 151.

3 Gardiner, p. 151.

4 Williams' letters are full of references to this.