Kieft gloried in this detestable slaughter, and welcomed back his troops as from a great victory; the colonists, however, with sentiments of common humanity, held it in abhorrence, and finally deposed their governor, and sent him back to Holland. But before they performed this act of justice, the consequences of his barbarity had fallen terribly on the colony. As soon as it was perceived that the midnight slaughter was not caused by the Mohawks, but by the Dutch, every Algonquin tribe around Manhattan joined in a league of vengeance. They thronged in from all sides; and, making swamps their hiding-places, rushed forth for sudden attacks, equally remorseless and wholesale as that of the Dutch had been. Every village was destroyed; every plantation laid waste; men and women murdered, and children carried off captive. Long Island was a desert; “from the shores of the Jersey to the boundaries of Connecticut not a bowery (farm) was safe.” It was in this awful Indian war of reprisals that that noble woman, Anne Hutchinson and her family, perished. Total ruin threatened New Netherlands. Numbers fled. “Mine eyes,” says Roger Williams, “saw the flames of their towns, the frights and hurries of men, women, and children, and the present removal of all who could to Holland.” Kieft, who was a coward as well as a ruffian, threw the blame of this Indian massacre on an old freebooter named Adriensen, and he, enraged at the accusation, drew his cutlass and would have killed the governor, but that he was disarmed and sent prisoner to Holland. The remains of the colonists were enrolled into service, and a solemn fast was appointed. Happily for them the vengeance of the tribes was satisfied, and a deputation of the Dutch, headed by De Vries, met a convention of sixteen sachems in the woods of Rockaway, on the 5th of March, to treat of peace. De Vries was led into the centre of the group, when one of the chiefs arose, and holding in one hand a bundle of sticks, thus addressed him: “When you first arrived on our shores, you were destitute of food; we gave you our beans and our corn; we fed you with oysters and fish; and now for our recompence you murder our people.” This was his first accusation, and laying down one stick he proceeded: “The traders whom your first ships left upon our shore to traffic till your return, were cherished by us as the apple of our eye; we gave them our daughters for their wives; among those whom you murdered were children of your own blood.” Here he laid down a second stick, and so continued his accusations till the whole bundle was exhausted.