United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
The Indian fort was situated in a swamp to the east of the Connecticut
on the Mystic River; but instead of landing at the Pequot River, as he
had been ordered, Mason completely deceived the Indian spies by
sailing past it away from the intended prey. Near Point Judith,
however, in the Narragansett country, Mason disembarked his men; and,
accompanied by eighty Mohegans and two hundred Narragansetts, turned
on his path and marched by land westward towards the Pequot country.
So secretly and swiftly was this movement executed that the Indian
fort was surrounded and approached within a few feet before the
Indians took alarm.[9]
The victory of Mason was a massacre, the most complete in the annals
of colonial history. The English threw firebrands among the wigwams,
and in the flames men, women, and children were roasted to death.
Captain Underhill, who was present, wrote that "there were about four
hundred souls in this fort, and not above five of them escaped out of
our hands." Only two white men were killed, though a number received
arrow wounds.[10]
Mason, as he went to the Pequot harbor to meet his vessels, met a
party of three hundred Indians half frantic with grief over the
destruction of their countrymen, but contented himself with repelling
their attack. Finally, he reached the ships, where he found Captain
Patrick and forty men come from Massachusetts to reinforce him.
Placing his sick men on board to be taken back by water, Mason crossed
the Pequot River and marched by land to Fort Saybrook, where they were
"nobly entertained by Lieutenant Gardiner with many great guns," and
there they rested the Sabbath. The next week they returned home.[11]
The remnant of the Pequots collected in another fort to the west of
that destroyed by Mason. Attacked by red men and white men alike, most
of them formed the desperate resolve of taking refuge with the Mohawks
across the Hudson. They were pursued by Mason with forty soldiers,
joined by one hundred and twenty from Massachusetts under Captain
Israel Stoughton. A party of three hundred Indians were overtaken and
attacked in a swamp near New Haven, and many were captured or put to
death. Sassacus, the Pequot chief, of whom the Narragansetts had such
a dread as to say of him, "Sassacus is all one God; no man can kill
him," contrived to reach the Mohawks, but they cut off his head and
sent it as a present to the English.[12]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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