The Pequot War: Pequots and Sassacus

The English, however, were in no enviable situation. Two of them had been killed, and about twenty wounded. They were without provisions, in the midst of an unfamiliar country, and within a short distance of the fort of Sassacus, tenanted by hundreds of fierce warriors. Fortunately, the vessels were now seen gliding into the Pequot harbor.

By this time the news of the destruction that had fallen upon his tribe at Mistick, heralded, no doubt, not only by the handful of men who had escaped from the fort, and by the clouds of smoke that floated from the fatal scene, but by the dismal cries that attended this exterminating sacrifice, had reached the fort of Sassacus, and three hundred warriors came rushing towards the English with the determination to revenge themselves for an injury not yet half revealed to them. Mason led out a file of his best marksmen, who soon gave the Pequots a check. Seeing that they could not stand his fire, he commenced his march towards Pequot harbor. Of the twenty wounded men, four or five were so disabled that it was necessary to employ about twenty other men to carry them; so that he had but about forty men who could engage in battle, until he succeeded in hiring some Indians to take charge of the wounded. They had marched about a quarter of a mile, when the Pequot warriors, who had withdrawn out of the range of their muskets, reached the spot where, not two hours before, their fort had sheltered so much that was sacred to them. When they came to the top of the hill, venerable to them from so many associations connected with the history and glory of their tribe,--when they saw the smoking palisades, the flames of their wigwams, not yet extinguished, the blackened bodies that lay scattered where death had overtaken them,--in their grief and rage they stamped upon the ground, tore the hair from their heads, and then rushed madly down the hill, as if they would have swept the enemy from the face of the earth. Captain Underhill, with a file of the bravest men, was ordered to defend the rear. This he did with such efficiency that the Indians were soon compelled to fall back. Yet such was their resolve to have their revenge upon the English that during their march for the next six miles they pursued them, sometimes hanging upon their rear, sometimes hidden behind trees and rocks in front, discharging their arrows in secret, at others making desperate attacks, that could be repelled only by the too deadly use of the musket. They fought at fearful odds, as was evinced by the dead bodies of their warriors picked up by the Mohegans who followed in their train, while not an Englishman was injured during the whole line of their march. At last, wearied with a pursuit that only brought harm to themselves, they abandoned it, and left the English to continue their march unmolested, with their colors flying, to Pequot harbor. Here they were received on board their vessels with many demonstrations of joy.

This disaster utterly disheartened the Pequots. They accused Sassacus of having brought ruin upon them, and in dismay burned their remaining fort and fled for safety. Sassacus and about eighty of his principal warriors made their way towards the Hudson. They were rapidly followed, and at length traced to a swamp within the limits of the old town of Fairfield.

In this swamp were hidden about eighty Pequot warriors, with their women and children, and about two hundred other Indians. A dismal, miry bog it was, covered with tangled bushes. Dangerous as it was, Lieutenant Davenport rushed into it with his men, eager to encounter the Pequots.

The sharp arrows of the enemy flew from places that hid the archers, wounding the soldiers, who, in their haste to retreat, only sunk deeper in the mire. The Indians, made bold by this adventure, pressed hard upon them, and would have carried off their scalps had it not been for the timely aid of some other Englishmen, who waded into the swamp, sword in hand, drove back the Pequots, and drew their disabled friends from the mud that had threatened to swallow them up. The swamp was now surrounded, and a skirmish followed that proved so destructive to the savages that the Fairfield Indians begged for quarter. They said, what was probably true, that they were there only by accident, and had never done the English any harm.

They were permitted to withdraw, with their women and children.

But the Pequot warriors, made up of choice men, and burning with rage against the enemy who had destroyed their tribe and driven them from their old haunts, fought with such desperate bravery that the English were glad to confine themselves to the borders of the swamp.