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during a time of religious service, was saved only by the
daring of
Goffe, the regicide, now bowed with years, a heavenly messenger of rescue, who darted from his hiding-place, rallied the disheartened, and, having achieved a safe defence, sunk away into his retirement, to be no more seen.
The plains of
Northfield were wet with the blood of
Beers, and twenty of his
valiant associates.
As
Lathrop's company of young men, the very flower of the young men of
Essex, all ‘culled’ out of the towns of that county, were conveying the harvests of
Deerfield to the lower towns,
they were suddenly surrounded by a horde of
Indians; and, as each party fought from behind trees, the victory was with the far more numerous savages.
Hardly a white man escaped; the little stream that winds through the tranquil scene, by its name of blood, commemorates the massacre of that day.
1 Springfield was burned, and
Hadley once more assaulted.
The re-
moter villages were deserted; the pleasant residences, that had been won by hard toil in the desert, the stations of civilization in the wilderness, were laid waste.
But the
English were not the only sufferers.
In winter, it was the custom of the natives to dwell together in their wigwams; in spring, they would be dispersed through the woods.
In winter, the warriors who had spread misery through the west, were sheltered among the Narragansetts; in spring, they would renew their devastations.
In winter, the absence of foliage made the forests less dangerous; in spring, every bush would be a hiding-place.
It was resolved to regard the Narragansetts as enemies; and a little before the winter solstice, a thousand men, levied by
