King Philip Part 17

A stout Indian sprang forward and endeavored to wrest the weapon from Waldron's hand. Immediately a scene of terrible confusion ensued. All engaged in a hand to hand fight, with any weapons which could be grasped. The Indians were soon overcome, and fled, some to the woods and others to their canoes. Eleven Indians were killed in this fray, and five were taken captive. The expedition then returned to Arrowsic, where they put on board their vessels some guns, anchors, and other articles which had escaped the flames, and then set sail for Boston.

As soon as the snow melted, the savages renewed their depredations, but Maine was now nearly depopulated. With the exception of the garrison opposite Arrowsic, there was no settlement east of Portland.

There was a small fort at Casco, and a few people in garrison at Black Point and Winter Harbor. A few intrepid settlers still remained in the towns of York, Wells, Kittery, and South Berwick. The Indians hara.s.sed them during the whole summer with robberies, conflagrations, and murders. Winter again came with its storms and its intensity of cold. The united sagamores now, with apparent sincerity, implored peace. On the 12th of February, 1678, Squando, with all the sachems of the tribes upon the Androscoggin and the Kennebec, met the commissioners from Ma.s.sachusetts at the fort at Casco. The English were so anxious for peace that they agreed to the following terms, which many considered very humiliating, but which were nevertheless vastly preferable to the longer continuance of this horrible warfare.

1. The captives were to be immediately released, without ransom.

2. All offenses on both sides, of every kind, were to be forgiven and forgotten.

3. The English were to pay the Indians, as rent for the land, a peck of corn for every English family, and for Major Phillips, of Saco, who was a great proprietor, a bushel of corn.

Thus this dreadful war was brought to a close. It is estimated that during its continuance six hundred men lost their lives, twelve hundred houses were burned, and eight thousand cattle destroyed. But the amount of misery created can never be told or imagined. The midnight a.s.sault, the awful conflagration, the slaughter of women and children, the horrors of captivity in the wilderness, the impoverishment and moaning of widows and orphans, the diabolical torture, piercing the wilderness with the shrill shriek of mortal agony, the terror, universal and uninterrupted by day or by night--all, all combined in composing a scene in the awful tragedy of human life which the mind of Deity alone can comprehend.