“The spirit of Canonchet did not droop under the disasters of his tribe. ‘We will fight to the last man,’ said he, ‘rather than become servants to the English.’ In April, however, he was taken. His life was offered him if he would procure a treaty of peace. He refused with disdain; and being condemned to death, remarked, ‘I like it well; I shall die before my heart grows soft—before I speak anything unworthy of myself.’” Two Indians, in the employ of the English, shot him, and his head was sent to Hartford. The scattered remains of the Indians in the meantime pursued the work of vengeance. “We will fight,” said they, “these twenty years; you have houses, barns and corn; we have nothing to lose.” And Lancaster was burned, and forty of its inhabitants killed and taken prisoners, among the rest Mary Rolandson, the wife of the minister, whose narrative of the fearful event is still preserved. The towns of Medfield, Groton, Marlborough and Weymouth, only eighteen miles from Boston, were all laid in ashes; the neighbourhood of the Narragansett country was deserted: the towns of Rhode Island, though they had taken no part in the war, suffered; Warwick was burned, and Providence partially destroyed. Roger Williams, now an aged man, whose influence had formerly been so great with the Narragansetts, accepted a captain’s commission for the defence of Providence, and another governor was chosen in the place of Coddington, whose peaceable Quaker principles would not allow him to fight even in a war of defence. The attack on the Narragansetts, who had always been faithful allies of the English, was as unjustifiable as it was impolitic. The whole country was now filled with hostile Indians; security was at an end; every forest-path was an ambush for the day-light assault, and the silence of night was broken by the fearful war-whoop, which was followed by murder and fire. The sufferings of the Indians, also, were extreme; they had no provisions, and their ammunition was exhausted. Vain were all their attempts now to retrieve their circumstances; the English attacked them even while attempting to plant corn, or to fish for a subsistence.