A body of Connecticut volunteers, under Captain Denison, and of Mohegan and other friendly Indians, Pequots and Niantics, swept the entire country of the Narragansets, who suffered, as spring advanced, the last extremities of famine. Canonchet, the chief sachem, said to have been a son of Miantonimoh, but probably his nephew, had ventured to his old haunts to procure seed-corn with which to plant the rich intervals on the Connecticut, abandoned by the colonists. Taken prisoner, he conducted himself with all that haughty firmness esteemed by the Indians the height of magnanimity. Being offered his life on condition of bringing about a peace, he scorned the proposal. His tribe would perish to the last man rather than become servants to the English. When ordered to prepare for death, he replied, “I like it well; I shall die before my heart is soft, or I shall have spoken anything unworthy of myself.” Two Indians were appointed to shoot him, and his head was cut off and sent to Hartford. The colonists had suffered severely. Men, women, and children had perished by the bullets of the Indians, or fled naked through the wintry woods by the light of their blazing houses, leaving their goods and cattle a spoil to the assailants. Several settlements had been destroyed, and many more had been abandoned; but the oldest and wealthiest remained untouched. The Indians, on the other hand, had neither provisions nor ammunition. On May 12, while attempting to plant corn and catch fish at Montague Falls, on the Connecticut River, they were attacked with great slaughter by the garrison of the lower towns, led by Captain Turner, a Boston Baptist, and at first refused a commission on that account, but as danger increased, pressed to accept it. Yet this enterprise was not without its drawbacks. As the troops returned, Captain Turner fell into an ambush and was slain, with thirty-eight men. Hadley was attacked on a lecture day, June 12, while the people were at meeting; but the Indians were repulsed by the bravery of Goffe, one of the fugitive regicides, long concealed in that town. Seeing this venerable unknown man come to their rescue, and then suddenly disappear, the inhabitants took him for an angel. Major Church, at the head of a body of two hundred volunteers, English and Indians, energetically hunted down the hostile bands in Plymouth colony. The interior tribes about Mount Wachusett were invaded and subdued by a force of six hundred men, raised for that purpose. Many fled to the north to find refuge in Canada--guides and leaders, in after years, of those French and Indian war parties by which the frontiers of New England were so terribly harassed. Just a year after the fast at the commencement of the war, a thanksgiving was observed for success in it.