1675 Storming of the Narragansett Fort.

Storming of the

Fort.

77

had been destroyed by the force under Captain Mason, forty years before. According to information afterwards received from a captive, the Indian warriors here collected were no fewer than three thousand and five hundred. They were on their guard, and had fortified Narragansett their hold to the best of their skill. It was on a solid piece of upland of five or six acres, wholly surrounded by a swamp. On the inner side of this natural defence, they had driven rows of palisades; and the only entrance to the enclosure was over a rude bridge consisting of a felled tree.

46. Having passed without shelter a very cold night, the English had made a march of eighteen miles through deep snow, scarcely halting to refresh themselves with food. In this condition they immediately advanced to the attack. The Massachusetts troops were in the van of the storming column, next came the two Plymouth companies, and then the force from Connecticut. The foremost of the assailants were received with a well-directed fire. Captain Johnson, of Roxbury, was shot dead on the bridge, as he was rushing over it at the head of his company. Others shared his fate; but, nothing discouraged by the fall of their leaders, the men pressed on, and a sharp conflict followed, which, with fluctuating success, lasted for two or three hours. There was

nothing for either party but to conquer or die, enclosed together as they were. At length victory declared for the English, who finished their work by setting fire to the wigwams within the fort. The military strength of the formidable Narragansett tribe was irreparably broken.”

Death

47. "Philip was hunted from spot to spot. At last, with a scanty band of followers, who still remained true to his desperate fortunes, the unhappy man wandered back to Mount Hope, the ancient dwelling of his fathers. Here he lurked about, like a spectre, among scenes of former power and prosperity, now bereft of home, of family, and friends. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above it. The very idea of

of Philip.

submission awakened the fury of Philip, and he smote to death one of his followers who proposed an expedient of peace. The brother of the victim made his escape, and, in revenge, betrayed the retreat of his chieftain.

48. A body of white men and Indians were immediately dispatched to the swamp where Philip lay crouched, glaring with fury and despair. Before he was aware of their ap proach they had begun to surround him. In a little while he saw five of his trustiest followers laid dead at his feet. All resistance was vain. He rushed forth from his cover and made a headlong attempt to escape; but was shot through the heart by a renegade Indian of his own nation. Such is the scanty story of the brave but unfortunate King Philip." His body was cut in quarters, and his head was sent to Plymouth, where it was exposed on a gibbet for twenty years. His captive child was sold as a slave in Bermuda.

49. In the year 1692, Sir William Phipps, a native of Maine, came from England with

a commission from King William, as governor of Massachusetts. Within the Salem limits of his province were the old colony

Witchcraft.

of Plymouth and the territories of Maine and Nova Scotia. All

this region, not including New

66

THE STOCKS. 1

Hampshire, was now called Massachusetts. Phipps was a ship carpenter and a fortune-seeker. Accustomed from boyhood to the axe and the oar, he had gained distinction

"The stocks and pillory were movable machines on wheels, and had no fixed position. Both were used as a means of enforcing attendance at church meetings, or punishing offences against the church, and their location at its very portal served no doubt as a gentle reminder to the congregation. It is related that in the year 1753 a woman stood for an hour in the pillory of the Town House, Boston, amid the scoffs and jeers of the multitude."-Drake's Old Landmarks,

1692

The Salem Witchcraft.

79

only by his wealth, the fruits of his enterprise with the diving-bell in raising treasures from a Spanish wreck." Almost as soon as he assumed the government he became engaged in a very frightful business.

50. In the little village of Salem, now Danvers, were two young girls, in the family of a clergyman, who "began to have strange caprices. They complained of being pinched and pricked with pins; and often would pretend to be seized with strange convulsions, and would cry out that witches were afflicting them." This led to a strange excitement and alarm. Numbers of persons were accused of the crime of witchcraft, and, to escape torture, con

fessed that they were guilty. More than fifty, in this way, were compelled to make such a confession. Twenty persons were put to death, and many others were cast into prison. This dreadful delusion lasted more than six months; and it was not until some of the magistrates themselves, and even the governor's wife, were accused, that the people began to see how terribly they had been deceived. All the prisoners were set at liberty; "but the innocent dead could not be restored to life; and the hill where they were executed will always remind people of the saddest and most humiliating passage in our history."

THE PILLORY.

Witchcraft

51. "It is well known that no exclusive reproach can with justice be cast upon any part of New England on ac count of a delusion which equally prevailed in the most enlightened countries of Europe, and received the countenance of the most learned and intelligent men and upright magistrates. In contemplating this sorrowful page in the history of our ancestors, we must bear in mind that, as I have already intimated, no

in

Europe.

peculiar reproach attaches to them. They acted upon principles which all professed, and in which the sincere in all parts of Christendom reposed an undoubting faith."

New York and New Jersey.

1. Two years after Smith and his companions had begun to fell the trees for the settlement of Jamestown, but eleven years before the Mayflower landed the Pilgrims at Plymouth, the Half-Moon, a Dutch

river.

ship, entered the harbor of New York (1609).1 Its Discovery of the Hudson commander, Henry Hudson, was an Englishman. In the service of his countrymen, Hudson had twice tried to find a shorter passage by water from the Atlantic to the Pacific than the one discovered by Magellan around the southern part of the American continent. Now, in the service of a Dutch company, he was making his third attempt. 2. "The ship was soon visited by canoes full of native warriors; but no one was suffered to come on board, though their oysters and beans were gladly purchased. The first of Europeans, Hudson, now began to explore the Half-Moon great river which stretched before him to the ascending north, opening, as he hoped, the way to eastern seas. Slowly drifting upward with the flood-tide, be anchored one night just above Yonkers, in sight of

The

the Hudson.

HENRY HUDSON.

a

In behalf of the French, it has been claimed, and the claim has been very generally allowed, that Verrazzani explored a part of the eastern coast of North America in 1524, and then discovered the Hudson river. But this claim has been disputed (See the works on the subject by H. C. Murphy and J. C. Brevoort),

1609 The Half-Moon Ascending the Hudson.

81

high point of land, which showed out' five leagues off to the north. The next day, a southeast wind carried him up rapidly through the majestic pass guarded by the frowning

Donderberg. At nightfall he anchored his yacht near West Point, in the midst of the sublimest scenery of the mountains.

3. The next morning was misty until the sun arose, and the grandeur of the overhanging highlands was again revealed. A fair south wind sprung up as the weather became clear, and a bright autumnal day succeeded. Running sixty miles up along the varied shores which lined the deep channel, and delighted every moment with the ever-changing scenery and the magnificent virgin forests which clothed the river-banks with their gorgeous autumnal hues, Hudson arrived towards evening opposite the loftier mountains which lie from the river's side,' and anchored the Half-Moon near

6