Meanwhile the depredations still went on, and the Indians grew more and more aggressive. They took by force from the settlers what they pleased, and if they remonstrated, threatened them with their knives. Apparently they treated the poor wretches like dogs; regarding them much as they had four unfortunate Frenchmen whom they had taken prisoners some years before, after destroying their vessel, killing them at last through ill usage.[16] Finally, one unfortunate but peculiarly skillful thief was detected and bitter complaint made against him. The terror-stricken settlers offered to give him up to the savages, to be dealt with as they saw fit. The savages, however, declined to receive him, upon which his companions hung him themselves in their sight. This execution has since been very famous. That the settlers of Wessagusset hung the real culprit does not admit of question, for it is so stated both by those who were present and by the Plymouth authorities of the time, who were perfectly familiar with all the facts.[17] But the humorous Mr. Thomas Morton of Merry Mount, in the New English Canaan, published in London in 1632, reclad the Wessagusset hanging of ten years previous in this new and fantastic garb: * * * * * “One amongst the rest an able bodied man, that ranged the woodes, to see what it would afford, lighted by accident on an Indian barne, and from thence did take a capp full of corne; the Salvage owner of it, finding by the foote some English had bin there came to the Plantation, and mad complaint after this manner.