Battles -- United States; United States -- History, Military -- To 1900
the colonial soldiers abandoned the fort, of which the Indians resumed
possession. But their wigwams were burned; their provisions destroyed;
they had no supplies for the winter; their loss was irreparable. Of
those who survived the fight, many perished of hunger.
Even as a question of policy, this attack on the Narragansets was
more than doubtful. The starving and infuriated warriors, scattered
through the woods, revenged themselves by attacks on the frontier
settlements. On February 10, 1676, Lancaster was burned, and forty of
the inhabitants killed or taken; among the rest, Mrs. Rolandson, wife
of the minister, the narrative of whose captivity is still preserved.
Groton, Chelmsford, and other towns in that vicinity were repeatedly
attacked. Medfield, twenty miles from Boston, was furiously assaulted,
and, though defended by three hundred men, half the houses were burned.
Weymouth, within eighteen miles of Boston, was attacked a few days
after. These were the nearest approaches which the Indians made to
that capital. For a time the neighborhood of the Narraganset country
was abandoned. The Rhode Island towns, though they had no part in
undertaking the war, yet suffered the consequences of it. In March,
Warwick was burned, and Providence was partially destroyed. Most of the
inhabitants sought refuge in the islands, but the aged Roger Williams
accepted a commission as captain for the defence of the town he had
founded. Walter Clarke was presently chosen governor in Coddington’s
place, the times not suiting a Quaker chief magistrate.
The whole colony of Plymouth was overrun. Houses were burned in almost
every town, but the inhabitants, for the most part, saved themselves
in their garrisons, a shelter with which all the towns now found it
necessary to be provided. On March 26 Captain Pierce, with fifty men
and some friendly Indians, while endeavoring to cover the Plymouth
towns, fell into an ambush and was cut off. That same day, Marlborough
was set on fire; two days after Rehoboth was burned. The Indians seemed
to be everywhere. On April 18 Captain Wadsworth, marching to the relief
of Sudbury, fell into an ambush, and perished with fifty men. The alarm
and terror of the colonists reached again a great height. But affairs
were about to take a turn. The resources of the Indians were exhausted;
they were now making their last efforts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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