The young Puritans in captivity

Front matter

Young puritans Series

THE

YOUNG PURITANS

Preface

HIS book is so arranged as to be a complete

A story in itself, although its narrative continues the two previous volumes in the Young Puritans Series. It tells the story of three English children’s experiences as captives among the Indians during King Philip’s War. Incidentally it gives many details of Indian customs. The worst barbarities of the Indians’ treatment of prisoners are not pictured. Those who wish to know such details will find them in abundance in Parkman’s Histories, in the Jesuit Relations, in Drake’s “ Tragedies of the Wilderness,” in Colonel Smith’s “ Captivity with the Indians;” in short, in all the narratives of returned captives. I commend these histories strongly to the older among my young readers. The quaint words of the old narratives make the tragic, heroic times live again, and these true stories are infinitely more thrilling and interesting than any fiction.

Vlll

PREFACE.

The endurance, the fortitude shown, even by young children, seem to surpass the powers of human nature. In horrors and sufferings incredible, the Puritans were sustained by their indomitable religious faith. God, heaven, hell, were vivid realities even to the Puritan children; the great realities. Many illustrations might be quoted from the old narratives. In Mrs. Rowlandson’s Narrative, she says of her son, a young boy, taken captive at Lancaster with her, but separated from her, and alone among the savages : —

“ Hearing that my son was come to this place, I went to see him, and found him lying flat on the ground. I asked him how he could sleep so. He answered me that he was not asleep, but at prayer, and that he lay so that they might not observe what he was doing.”

In Colonel Smith’s Narrative, he says of a fellow prisoner, Campbell, like Smith, then a youth of about sixteen : —

“ He borrowed my Bible, and made some pertinent remarks on what he had read. One passage was where it said : It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.’ He said we ought to

PREFACE.

ix be resigned to the will of Providence, as we were now bearing the yoke in our youth.”

Many similar instances might be quoted as evidence that the basis of the heroic quality animating both old and young Puritans was the religious faith in which their natures were imbued from earliest childhood.

Greenfield, Mass.,

Contents

Chapter Page

I. Jonathan’s Experiences 1

II. Another Alarum 23

CHAPTER I. Jonathan’s experiences

I T may be well to open this story with a brief resume of the events of King Philip’s War, in the midst of which its scenes are laid.

This bloody conflict began June 24, 1675, with an attack on Swanzey. Philip and his Wampanoags, after doing other mischief in Plymouth County and vicinity, fled to Hampshire County, where they joined the Nipmucks in an attack on Quabaug, or Brookfield, 1 wholly destroying that settlement. From this time until February, 1676, the handful of frontier settlements in the Connecticut Valley bore the whole brunt of the war, Philip and his forces venting all their fury upon them, aided by the local tribes, whom Philip had incited against their old neighbors. The Colony of Connecticut, realizing the imminent danger to her own plantations should those above

1 Hampshire County at this time included Brookfield.

be destroyed, hastened to send up troops to the aid of the harassed settlers.

Hadley, the military head-quarters, was attacked by a large force of Indians on a fast day, September 1st. The panic-stricken people were rallied and led to repel this assault by the sudden appearance in their midst of a mysterious stranger, an old man of military bearing, called afterwards all over New England, for this timely deliverance, “ the Angel of Hadley.” A few inhabitants of Hadley knew that this mysterious old man was living concealed in the house of their venerated minister, Mr. John Russell. Northfield was destroyed by the Indians September 6th. On September 18th a force o-f seventy soldiers under Captain Lothrop was despatched from Hadley by Major Pynchon, commander-in-chief, to escort sundry wheat-carts from Pocumtuck, or Deerfield, to Hadley. This force was surprised in crossing a little stream 1 flowing under the shadow of Mt. Wequamps, 2 and Lothrop and most of his men were slain. Over sixty soldiers were buried in one vast grave, on the spot where they fell. Deerfield was now abandoned, the third settlement in Hampshire County thus desolated. October 5th Springfield was attacked, and nearly destroyed. October 19th a desperate attack was made by several hundred Indians upon Hatfield, but, as

1 Bloody Brook, South Deerfield. 2 Sugarloaf Mountain.

Jonathan’s experiences.

Hubbard says, “ they were so well entertained on all hands that they found it too hot for them,” and, after burning some buildings, “ the enemy hasted away as fast as they came on.”

The settlers in the Connecticut Valley passed an anxious winter, busily fortifying their towns with palisades against the Indian assaults which they well knew might be expected with the melting of the snow. Spring brought them the disastrous tidings of the destruction of the Narragansett fort by the English, and the bloody revenge wrought by the Indians in the eastern settlements, at Lancaster, Medfield, Mendon, Weymouth, and other places. To their alarm, they learned that this large force of maddened savages was even then being pursued by Major Savage’s army into the wilderness along the Connecticut north of Hadley. March 8th Major Savage and his forces marched into Hadley. Philip and his band and many of the routed Indians to the east were now gathered at Squakeag 1 and vicinity. Unaware that Major Savage’s forces had reached Hadley, a large body of these Indians made a desperate assault on Northampton, being repulsed with considerable loss. The people of the valley, exasperated at the repeated bloody assaults upon them, the destruction of their property, and the growing boldness of the Indians, realized that active measures

1 Northfield.

must speedily be taken against the enemy, would they save the remaining settlements. Learning from escaped captives that large bodies of Indians were encamped at Peskeompskut Falls 1 on the Connecticut for the fishing, and at Pocumtuck, on whose fertile meadows they had confidently planted large fields of grain, and that, made bold by past successes, they rested in entire security from apprehensions of attack by the despised English, the settlers resolved to fall upon the Indians, dealing a destructive blow, and preventing their gathering stores of food for the winter.

On the night of Thursday, May 18th, Captain William Turner of Boston with one hundred and fifty «men marched to the north. At break of day they fell on the Indians at Peskeompskut Falls, wholly destroying the encampment. Delaying too long, Indians from neighboring camps came to the rescue, falling on the victorious English while in the act of mounting their horses. In the disastrous retreat Captain Turner and many others were slain. Captain Holyoke, with a brave handful of men, helped cover the retreat, and led the shattered remnant of the little army back into Hatfield. Here it was found that over forty-five men were missing.

Among the missing were Mr. Hope Atherton, the godly and beloved young minister of Hatfield,

1 Turner’s Falls.

Jonathan’s experiences.

who had volunteered as chaplain of the expedition, and Jonathan Wells and John Ellis of Hadley, boys barely sixteen years old, who had insisted upon volunteering, and who had borne their part valiantly throughout. They were last seen by their returned comrades fighting in a small party which had bravely offered to hold back a body of Indians crossing the river in canoes. Their fate was unknown. Jonathan Wells was a scion of one of the pioneer families of Hadley ; John Ellis, the son of a pious nonconformist who had moved from England to Hadley the year before the outbreak of King Philip’s War. Goodman Ellis had four children, — John, Prudence, and two little children, Nathan and Abigail.

A terrible blow had fallen upon the Ellises the previous September in the capture of their dear young daughter Prudence, aged about thirteen. She and her friend Submit Carter, venturing outside Pladley on a rush-gathering expedition with a careless maidservant, had been captured and borne away to the north by two prowling Indians, Petomanch and Wadnummin, who before the war had lived in the Norwottuck fort at Hatfield, now abandoned.

Submit’s real name was Francesca Cartier. Her mother, a French woman, was dead. Her father, a sailor, had never returned from his last voyage. Francesca had been “ bound out” in hard service to

THE YOUNG PURITANS IN CAPTIVITY.

the Widow Burnham, who had changed her name to Submit, as more appropriate for a bound girl.

This book recounts the adventures among the Indians of the captive girls and John Ellis. But, first, as to the fate of John’s gallant friend and comrade, young Jonathan Wells.

The party of men whom Jonathan Wells had joined after the battle of Peskeompskut Falls soon ran upon a band of Indians near the edge of the swamp, and were nearly all killed or captured. Jonathan escaped. His wounded horse being unable to keep up with the others, he pushed on at random into the woods, anywhere away from the wild uproar sweeping on where the Indians hung close on the trail of the retreating soldiers.

Faint and dizzy from his wound and lack of food, he remembered that his grandmother Coleman, in saying good-by, had handed him a nutmeg, saying, —

“ Put this in thy pouch, Jonathan. ’T will take little room, and a bite of it may revive thee.”

So Jonathan nibbled his nutmeg, feeling its spicy taste and familiar odor a sort of link with far-away home. Should he ever see that home again ? Small, indeed, seemed the possibility.

A little revived by the nutmeg, he pressed on until he came out on the shore of Green River. The whole region was entirely unknown to him. The march up under Captain Turner had been in

Jonathan’s experiences.

the thick darkness of a rainy night. He did not recognize this as the river he had then forded. Lost and turned about in the trackless wilderness, he had simply come to an unknown stream, running he knew not whither.

Uncertain which way to go, he followed the river up for a mile or two. Crossing it where the western mountains narrow in towards the stream, he began to ascend the mountain, hoping thus to get a view of the surrounding country, and so perhaps some clue to his locality.

When partly up the hill, he fainted and fell from his horse. How long he lay unconscious he could not tell. When he revived, he found his horse’s bridle still hanging on his hand, and the faithful beast standing over him. He managed to tie the horse, and then threw himself down on the dead leaves strewing the ground in the woods.

As the wounded boy, pale with suffering, lay there alone on the mountain’s side, nature’s unconscious joy contrasted painfully with his feelings. The dogwood raised its starry, spiritual blossoms radiantly on high ; the wild columbine nodded gayly from the rocks ; squirrels scampered up and down tree-trunks for pure fun., it seemed, and the woods rippled with the gladness of birds’ songs. Far up on high an eagle soared and dipped and curved, now but a speck in the deep blue above, now flashing down so near that Jonathan’s lan-

THE YOUNG PURITANS IN CAPTIVITY.

guid eye caught the silvery reflection from its body beneath the long, dark wings, as away it soared again.

“ Oh that I had yon eagle’s wings ! ” thought Jonathan. “ How speedily would I fly home ! ”

The sun, high overhead, glinting through the tender green leaves, told him it was noon, — Friday noon.

“ Is it worth while to struggle on, or shall I give up and die here in the wilderness alone ?” he pondered. 66 Nay,” he thought, “ I ’ll not give up till I must. I ’ll try again for life.”

Staggering to his horse, he untied it, and tried to climb into the saddle, but found himself too weak. After several vain attempts, he sank back, shaking loose the bridle of his horse, saying as he did so, —

“ Go, poor nag. ’T will do no good to keep thee here to perish too. Perchance thy instinct may yet bring thee home.”

The horse seemed to understand. He' turned and limped down hill towards the river ; Jonathan despairingly lying watching this last link with home and life vanish until the woods hid the horse from view. Only then did it occur to him, —

“ Why did not I bethink myself to take the rations from his back? All is o’er with me now.”

Jonathan’s experiences.

He lay utterly forlorn on the hillside, as the sun slowly sank, hardly conscious. At length the swarms of flies and gnats abounding in the woods so tormented him that he was roused to exert himself against these pests. Remembering his old trick, by great exertion he managed to pull together a pile of dead leaves, dry sticks, and pine cones, and stopping the touch-hole of his gun, struck fire, and so kindled a blaze, which to his dismay, once started, spread literally like “ wild fire” over the ground, threatening to burn Jonathan, he not having strength to escape.

Again his quick wit and woodman’s skill came to his aid. Although his hair and hands were badly burned in the effort, he contrived to scrape a spot bare of leaves and brush large enough in which to lie safely. Here, spent and panting, he lay, watching the fire creeping out along the ground into the woods.

The night wind blew cool and damp upon him, chilled as he was from faintness and loss of blood. Both for warmth and protection from the wild beasts which he heard howling in the woods around, as night fell, he dragged some pine sticks and cones together on the scorched ground, and making a fire, threw himself down close beside it.

Then a new terror beset him. The blaze of this fire in the night might — nay, probably would — direct the savages to him!

“ 1 ’m too weak and spent to stand, say naught of fighting,” thought he. “ I can do naught. ’T is plain my end draweth nigh. I ’ll save enough powder for one last shot at the savages, and throw the rest where they ’ll not lay hands on it.”

Saving one charge, with all his remaining force he threw his powder-horn one way into the surrounding forest, his bullet-pouch the other, lying down to await what he felt must be the certain end.

The dry pine branches snapped and blazed, lighting up the sombre, lonely aisles of the woods for a little way with its ruddy glare. Beyond was darkness, darkness out of which might any instant leap a bloodthirsty Indian. High overhead shone down the stars, — the same stars at which Jonathan had so often gazed when pacing Hadley’s quiet street as one of the night watch.

“ Doubtless they at home are mourning me as dead to-night,” thought Jonathan, gazing up at the stars.

But now he noticed that the fire had spread wide in the woods around, and was as likely to direct the Indians somewhere else as to him. Courage and hope revived at seeing this. Drawing some tow from his pouch, and laying it on his wounded thigh, he managed to bind it on with his handkerchief and neck-cloth. This stanched the bleeding. Then this thought came into his mind :

“ God is here. He is as near me now as in Hadle} 7 palisades. I will commend myself to His mercy. Perchance it may be His will yet to save me.”

Every word of the desolate boy’s prayer came from his heart. Comforted by his faith in a watchful, overruling Love, he lay down by his fire and slept the deep sleep of utter exhaustion.

In this sleep a strange dream, if it were a dream, came to him. An old man seemed to stand over the boy, looking pityingly down upon him. Although Jonathan had never seen his grandfather, Hugh Wells, he having died in Wethersfield long years before Jonathan’s birth, yet he knew at once that this was his grandfather Wells.

“ Grandson,” said the vision, “ thou art lost and pursuing the wrong way. Turn thee about, and journey down this river until thou readiest the end of the mountain. Then turn away upon the plain, and so thou wilt reach home.”

So vivid was this dream that Jonathan awoke, looking around, bewildered, for the grandsire whose voice he seemed still to hear. But he was alone, so far as human eye in its feeble stretch of vision could see. It was the dim, early dawn of another day. His deep sleep and the fact that his bleeding had stopped had given him fresh strength. Cheered, too, by the influence of the morning and his remarkable dream, hope revived, and he resolved to make another effort to save himself.

“Verily,” he thought, “that was a strange dream. I could take my oath that my grandsire stood o’er me but now. ’T was a dream of fair omen, methinks. Yet its directions must be wrong, for yonder lieth the west, unless I am sorely mistaken and turned about.”

Stiff and lame, he rose with difficulty, limping about in the bushes, searching for his powder-horn and bullet-pouch. When at last he found them, he could but feel this another good omen.

The red rim of the sun now peeped up over what Jonathan had been sure were the western hills.

“There’s no gainsaying that witness,” thought Jonathan. “’Tis plain as a pikestaff now that I was completely turned about. I will follow the directions of my dream, which I cannot doubt was a vision sent from God.”

Painfully he hobbled down to, and then along, the banks of Green River, using his gun as a staff to support his feeble steps. He made but slow progress, being often forced to stop and throw himself on the ground to rest. Then again he struggled up, hobbling on as far as his strength would carry him. Not a mouthful had he eaten since the day before the battle. He had no strength to dig for roots or search for bark, even had be not felt that Indians might fall upon him at any instant. He simply dragged himself on by sheer force of will, inch by inch, foot by foot, rod by rod.

Crawling along thus painfully, he at last reached the end of the high ledge of trap rock 1 rising abruptly near the shore of • Green River on his left. Above him on his right he saw high land. Might it be the plain his dream had mentioned ?

“At least, there’s rio harm in trying it,” he thought, as he struggled up the steep bank, coming out on a sandy plain covered with a thick growth of pines . 2 A few moments more, and to his joy he came into a path much trampled with recent tracks of horses’ hoofs, trending southward. Nor were moccasin prints lacking.

“Thanks be to God,” thought Jonathan, “this is plainly the path up and down which our army journeyed to the Falls ! With this guide I cannot fail to reach home, an my strength hold out, if I encounter no Indians. Now I know that my dream was verily sent of God for my guidance.”

Much cheered by these thoughts, he followed the path across the plain and down the hill, until it brought him to the bank of the Pocumtuck River, winding through its solitary green meadows, wild, free, beautiful. Was it possible for him to i Rocky Mountain, in Greenfield.

2 Petty’s Plain.

ford the broad stream, full now after the recent rain ?

“ I can but try,” thought Jonathan, as he waded in. The swift current bore his useless lame leg across the other, nearly throwing him down. Forced to use his gun for a staff, he put the muzzle down, determined not to wet the lock, and leaning on it, at last succeeded in wading across and struggling up the farther bank.

Much exhausted by this effort, he lay down under a walnut bush on the bank and fell into a heavy sleep. How long he slept he knew not. Suddenly he woke with a presentiment of danger near. To his horror he saw an Indian in a canoe paddling directly towards him.

The muzzle of Jonathan’s gun was filled with wet sand. What could he do? The mind works rapidly in such emergencies. Starting up, Jona,- than aimed his gun resolutely at the Indian, as if about to fire. The Indian leaped from his canoe, leaving it to float off down stream, and bounding up the bank, disappeared.

Jonathan well knew that, although he had escaped this Indian, probably many more would soon be on his track. Wildly he looked about for some hiding-place.

Near by was a swampy thicket. Hobbling towards it, by good fortune he found two tree-trunks that had washed down in the spring

Jonathan’s experiences.

freshets, lodged half on the bank, half in the water, lying slightly apart, but covered with a loose mass of driftwood and brush. Wading down to these logs in the water from above, thus leaving no telltale footprints for the Indians’ sharp eyes, Jonathan ducked under the tree-trunks, and found he could stand up between them, his head out of water yet wholly hidden by the driftwood above.

With fast-beating heart he waited. Soon he heard the sound of footsteps running up and down the bank above, footsteps of Indians in search of him. Several times the Indians actually stood above him on the logs, sinking them, so that Jonathan was forced to duck his head under water. Taking a long breath, as of old when swimming with the Hadley boys, he dived down, being nearly drowned before he could come up again to breathe.

He heard plainly the Indians’ grunts of disappointment when at last they gave up the vain search. The Indian who had seen him was evidently a Narragansett, for Jonathan heard an Indian say, in a tone of disgust, —

“ Huh, the Narragansett is no brave ! He is an old squaw. He ran for a musquash ! ”

Although the Indians now went away, yet, knowing their craftiness, it was long ere Jonathan ventured to crawl forth from his hiding-place, so benumbed and chilled by standing long in the cold water with his wounded leg that it was almost impossible to drag himself on. Yet on he must struggle. It was his only chance for life.

He hobbled along the path through Pocumtuck north meadow in the waning sunlight of that dreary Saturday afternoon, his ears strained for the slightest sound that might give warning of Indians. The call of a wild turkey coming from Mt. Pocumtuck startled him. With heart beating as if it would stifle him, he stopped. Was this an Indian signal ?

No answering call being given, he ventured on, often obliged to stop and lie down. Not a morsel to eat had he yet come upon. But here beside the meadow path lay the skeleton of a horse, killed no doubt in some bygone Indian raid on Pocumtuck settlement. Searching the bones, Jonathan found a few shreds of dried flesh still clinging to them that crows and turkey buzzards had overlooked. And a little farther on, coming to a spot where the Indians had evidently threshed out their beans the previous autumn, he found two half-rotten beans. Gladly he ate this refuse, as well as two birds’ eggs he found later.

Even these wretched morsels of food somewhat revived his strength. He needed all his courage to keep up heart as he slowly limped through the desolate ruins of Pocumtuck settlement. The sun had sunk behind the Shelburne hills. In the gathering shadows of the silent evening the

Jonathan’s experiences.

densely wooded steep of Mt. Pocumtuck loomed up above him grand and wild, in the dim light seeming not unlike some huge monster couched beside the way. Past blackened cellar-holes where the scorched skeletons of trees stretched out their bare, black arms threateningly above him, the pale suffering boy hobbled on, alone in this deserted, gloomy spot, alone in the vast wilderness ; the croaking of frogs in the swamps, the snarl of wild beast or moan of pines borne by the evening wind from the mountain side, only making more keen his sense of utter desolation and forlornness.

He resolved to push on all night, only lying down when absolutely unable to take another step.

“ Every rod I get on tells,” he thought.

But now he could limp only a short distance before he was forced to stop, when he always instantly dropped asleep. Twice, on waking, he discovered to his dismay that he had lost his bearings, and returned on his path. Once he found himself back again to the bars of the common fence in the south meadow, and again he recognized landmarks passed sometime before. On discovering how much ground he had lost, how much time and strength wasted, overcome with despair, he cried out, —

“ *T is useless ! I may as well give up and lie down to die. I can ne’er regain the lost ground, I am so weak.’’

After lying awhile prone on the ground under the stars, his will revived, and again he renewed the struggle. But hereafter, when lying down, he was careful to place the muzzle of his gun pointing towards the direction he must take on waking.

In this way he toiled on during the whole night. In the gray of the dawn he saw Mt. Wequamps rising in grim grandeur close before him. The path led him through Bloody Brook, where the trees of the swamp were still torn and scarred by bullets. He toiled feebly up the slope to the spot where beside the footpatli rose a great bare mound close under Wequamps’ shadow.

Jonathan well knew what sorrowful loss that mound represented, and where he must now be, although he had never passed the spot in daylight. With horror he saw that wild beasts had dug into the edge of the mound, dragging out the head of a man.

Exhausted and suffering as Jonathan was, he yet stopped, by great effort digging a cavity in the mound, and reburied the head.

“ Poor fellow ! ” he thought, as he dragged himself on. “ Perchance erelong some kind hand will be throwing earth o’er my bones here beside the path in the wilderness. I doubt if I can crawl much farther.”

Sunday noon meeting was just out in Hatfield.

The service had been one of unusual solemnity and feeling. Nothing had yet been heard of the beloved young minister, Mr. Atherton, and his sad fate was considered certain. Yet fervent had been the prayers, the entreatings of God to spare, if still in the flesh, this godly servant of His, and bring him home in safety.

Lieutenant Allis and wife, pale and griefstricken, had come seeking comfort in the house of God for the loss of their brave son William, only twenty years old, slain at the battle of the falls soon to be known as “ Turner’s Falls,” in memory of the patriotic officer who had there lost his life. Noah Coleman, ghastly with the sufferings of the battle from which he died but two months later, Benjamin Waite, Robert Bard well, and others of the surviving soldiers, had appeared at this service to render heartfelt thanks to God for their merciful deliverance.

As the meeting broke up, and the sad, serious concourse of people slowly came down the steps of the meeting-house, which stood in the middle of Hatfield’s wide street, two men were seen coming from the north. Who were these not in the house of God, venturing to walk abroad on the Lord’s day ?

On nearer approach the frowns of disapproval were changed to looks of eager interest, as people recognized one of the guard stationed at the north gate of the palisades. He came slowly, supporting in his arms a tottering form, sinking with weakness.

“ Who is ’t ? Whom bringeth he ? Is it Mr. Atherton ? Nay, ’t is one of our poor soldiers ! ” were the excited comments.

Even when he was brought near, his acquaintances with difficulty recognized young Jonathan Wells, wont to carry himself so jauntily with his bright, flowing locks, his trim dress and gallant air, in the ghastly pale, hollow-cheeked, sunkeneyed form hanging limply in the guard’s arms, his clothes torn, dirty, blood-stained.

“ Praise be to God ! ’T is young Jonathan Wells come safely home ! ” cried some.

Others, pressing around him, asked eagerly, —

“ Saw or know you aught of Mr. Atherton ? ”

A feeble shake of the head was Jonathan’s only reply.

“ The poor boy is near gone. He cannot speak. He must have nourishment speedily,” said Goodwife Allis.

The good woman, tears filling her eyes at thought of the boy who had nob come back, yet rejoicing sincerely with the more favored mother, hastened home, soon returning with a porringer of the warm broth simmering before the fire at home for her Sunday dinner. After taking this, a few sips at a time, and resting awhile, Jonathan was

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