The Pequot War: Pequots and Patrick

Some suggested that they should cut down the swamp with the hatchets that they had brought with them; others, that they should surround it with palisades. Neither of these propositions was adopted. They finally hit upon a plan that was more easily executed. They cut down the bushes the bushes that grew upon a little neck of firm upland that almost divided the swamp into two parts. In this way they so lessened the area occupied by the Pequots that, by stationing men twelve feet apart, it could all be surrounded by the troops. This was done, and the sentinels all stationed, before nightfall. Thus keeping watch on the borders of the morass, wet, cold, and weary, the soldiers passed the night under arms. Just before day a dense fog arose, that shrouded them in almost total darkness. A friendly mist it proved to the Pequots, for it doubtless saved the lives of many of them. At a favorable moment they rushed upon the English. Captain Patrick's quarters were first attacked, but he drove them back more than once. Their yells, more terrible from the darkness that engulfed the scene of the conflict, were so unearthly and appalling, the attack was so sudden and so well sustained, that, but for the timely interference of a party sent by Mason to relieve him, Patrick would doubtless have been driven from his station or cut to pieces. The siege had by this time given place to a hand-to-hand fight. As Mason was himself marching up to aid Patrick, the Pequots rushed upon him from the thicket. He drove them back with severe loss. They did not resume the attack upon the man who had recently given them such fearful proofs of his prowess, but turned upon Patrick, broke through his ranks, and fled. About sixty of the Pequot warriors escaped. Twenty lay dead upon the field. One hundred and eighty were taken prisoners. Most of the property that this fugitive remnant of the tribe had attempted to carry with them fell into the hands of the English. Hatchets of stone, beautiful wampum-belts, polished bows, and feathered arrows, with the utensils employed by the women in their rude domestic labors, became at once, as did the women themselves, the property of the conquerors. The captives and the booty were divided between Massachusetts and Connecticut. Some were sent by Massachusetts to the West Indies, and there, as slaves, dragged out a wretched but brief existence.. Those who fell to the colony of Connecticut found their condition more tolerable. Some of them, it is true, spent their days in servitude; yet its rigors softened as the horrors of the war faded from the recollections of the English.

Sassacus seems not to have been present at this battle. Foiled and discomfited at every turn, he fled far to the westward, and sought a refuge among the enemies of his tribe, the Mohawks. But he looked in vain for protection at their hands. He had defied them in his prosperity, and in his evil days they avenged themselves. They beheaded him, and sent his scalp as a trophy to Connecticut. A lock of his black, glossy hair was carried to Boston in the fall of the same year, as a witness that the proud sachem of the Pequots was no more.

So ended the first Indian war in New England. About two hundred of the vanquished tribe still survived. These were divided between the Mohegans and Narragansetts, and the tribal organization completely broken up. The bow and arrow and stone axe had been tried against the sword and musket, and had signally failed. In the future wars, of musket against musket, the suppression of the Indians was not to prove so easy a task. It may be said here that this was one of the most justifiable wars ever waged by the settlers against the Indians. The murderous incursions of the Pequots upon the peaceful settlers had become so unbearable that annihilation of one side or the other seemed the only solution of the problem.