Captives, 1677: The Story of Benjamin and Martha Waite

By Stuart Vaughan

A band of Indians attacked Hatfield, Massachusetts, on September 19, 1677, burning, looting, and killing. They carried off seventeen people, mostly women and children. Their destination, on foot, was Canada. Among them were Martha Waite, pregnant, and her three girls, ages two, four, and six. Captives, 1677, the story of this first Indian/Canadian kidnapping, is a stirring novel of courageous survival, love, and rescue. It follows the captives terrible ordeal and the rescue mission of Marthas husband Benjamin Waite and his friend Stephen Jennings from Hatfield, to Count Frontenacs court in Quebec, and back to Massachusetts with the captives triumphal return. A forgotten saga of American heroism is brought to vivid life in Captives, 1677.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 20, 2009
• ISBN: 9781465317148

Stuart Vaughan

Stuart Vaughan is a first time novelist, whose day (or rather night) job is as a mobile mechanic for the AA. To while away the long hours on call, he started writing a story about a man with a dream and a boat that needed a dreamer, and his book grew from there.Stuart lives and works in Auckland.

Book preview

Copyright © 2001, 2009 by Stuart Vaughan.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without

permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

57884

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

AFTERWORD

TO

ANNE

AND FOR

JOHN F. THOMPSON

IN LOVING MEMORY

CHAPTER ONE

Shafts of the noon September sun reflected off the clean boards of their new wooden floor, brightening the freshly plastered walls, making the berry dyes of Martha’s linen window curtains glow. Now that peace had come and the fear of destruction by Indian war parties was past, Ben and Martha had found the time to promote the cabin into a house. Indeed, the whole of Hatfield, housing families of the young and hopeful, had pushed beyond its stockade, sprouting dwellings with luxuries new to western Massachusetts. Ben had even built an inside stairway, replacing the ladder, turning the loft above into a proper room—with a door!

Pride is a sin, and I am such a sinner, Martha thought comfortably.

The open window brought in, along with the sun, the smell of the adjacent fields and the knock-knock of hammers against wooden beams. The bright days of the past week had provided time to get the Graves’ new house started. About now most of Hatfield’s men would be raising the roof beam, and then they would be ready for the mid-day dinner that all their wives, including Martha, would be carrying toward them through the lanes.

She inventoried the meal she had laid out—a round loaf of bread of this morning’s baking, a goodly chunk of nice ham Ben could serve out with his knife, a leather bottle of her own good ale, and a small well-wrapped cheese. Reaching up to bring down a basket from the shelf Ben had tacked up, just too high, she thought how much harder reaching would be in another month. September now, then October, November, December . . . it would be a Christmas or a New Years child. Rachel or Nathaniel, their fourth. Well, she’d rather be winter-cold than all a-sweat in the summer when her belly swelled. And, Let it be a boy this time, Ben had said.

Mine. Tah? Dolly mine! yelled two-year old Sarah, struggling to wrest a doll from her four-year-old sister, Martha, who sat beside her on the bottom step. Sarah could say Tah, not Martha, so that is what she said.

Well, you’ve pulled dolly’s arm off, said big Martha patiently, putting the basket on the long pine table and sitting on the stair above the girls, both now crying. She pulled up the sleeve on the jointed wooden figure and fastened the little arm piece back into place. We’ll put Tabitha to sleep now, and after dinner she’ll be all well again. And off she went to place the doll out of harm’s way in the toy chest against the wall. The sounds of domestic strife abated.

Where’s Mary got to? she wondered, but without concern, for the six-year-old well knew not to stray beyond the outside rail fence. Three children and another on the way! Who’d have thought Ben Waite, who’d traveled the wilds of western New York trading illegal whiskey and guns with the Iroquois for furs on behalf of wealthy John Pynchon, Ben Waite who’d been one of the most reckless and most successful of Hatfield’s fighters against the Algonquins in the late King Philip’s War, would marry little Martha Leonard from Springfield, whom he could carry under one arm, and settle down to farm and be happy! For she knew he was and knew she was, seven years happy, and more to come!

We’ll pack up now, and go eat with Father. Sarah, the youngest, and little Martha scrambled up to help, as their mother began to arrange the food inside the basket. Finally, placing napkins over the contents, she muttered again to herself, Where’s Mary got to? and, as the girls turned to the door, looked up with, Oh, there you are.

Framed by the doorway and lit from behind by those golden sunbeams was six-year-old Mary, indeed, but gripped by an Indian, one of his hands covering her mouth and the other holding a knife across her throat.

Not a sound, or she’s dead, he whispered. Martha shook her head in agreement, moving only enough to clutch Tah and Sarah to her, burying their faces against her apron. Several more Indians soundlessly filled the door behind him. With a sharp jerk of his head he gestured them inside, and padding on moccasined feet, they filled the room. One, hatchet at the ready, darted up the stairs and flung the loft door wide. Finding no one, he disappeared into the upstairs room. The others moved rapidly about, unspeaking, opening chests and hurling clothing to the floor, sweeping dishes and jars from shelves with hatchets and hands, seizing up the food basket and setting it aside, overturning the table, breaking the two armchairs into bits, and piling all the wreckage together in the center of the room. The man who had gone upstairs returned to add an armful of bedding to the mound.

While this silent orgy of destruction swirled around her, Martha stood frozen, crushing Tah and Sarah against her, eyes firmly meeting the challenge of the Indian leader’s intent gaze. Who was he, speaking English as he did? Who were his followers, in their ragged mix of settlers’ clothing and filthy buckskins, with their greasy hair worn long and not in the scalp lock of the Mohawks? Over a year had passed since hostiles had been seen near Hatfield, a year without slaughter and scalpings and the burning of houses, a year with the war over and Ben at home, at peace. Why now? She listened past the breaking of furniture and the ripping of curtains. No sound of gunfire. Why? No houses near enough for any outcries to carry. Was the whole village under attack? Where was Ben? How was he? What did these monsters intend? Time seemed stopped for her, for her girls, for the devil with his knife at Mary’s throat. What next, after everything they owned was finally just a pile of sticks and shreds? She had been at Springfield when the Indians had burned it. She knew about babies’ brains knocked out against andirons. She had helped to wash and bury victims’ bodies, whole families slaughtered in their beds or yards or barns. Were she and her girls about to meet their God? Well, not yet, not yet. Not while time seemed stopped. She held her breath and held Sarah to her.

The man holding Mary spoke, sharp and quick, in his own language. Time moved again. One of his crew seized the hearth broom, thrust it into the always-smoldering coals in the fireplace till it flared up, and set fire to the pile in the center of the room. Martha gasped.

Come, said the leader, swinging Mary over to one of his people. Striding across, he put his free arm around Tah’s waist and picked her up like a bundle of twigs against his hip. Gesturing toward the door with his knife, he barked, We go, and threw Tah to a waiting Indian.

No, screamed Martha.

Oh, yes. Coming back toward her, he caught her by the shoulder and roughly pushed her past him toward the door, tearing Sarah from her grasp as she struggled to keep upright.

Too little, he pronounced, holding Sarah and lifting the knife.

Stop! Let me . . . Martha scrambled back to Sarah, eluding those who reached to stop her. I’ll carry her. See? She pulled the child away and perched her on her shoulder. See? I’m strong. She can ride here. We’ll come along, all four of us. We’ll be no trouble. Try us! Holding Sarah on her shoulder, she jounced a few steps, desperately singing, Ride a cock horse, to Banbury Cross . . . and Sarah, suddenly grinning, crowed, Horsie, from her high seat.

The Indian appraised the four of them steadily for a moment and then loosed a gust of laughter as he glanced around at his waiting followers.

Come on, then. And with that he strode rapidly out of the house. Someone shoved Martha from behind and she stumbled after, bearing Sarah on her shoulders. The other Indians followed, bringing Tah and Mary. The leader briskly gave his men some orders. Some dispersed to the barn with brands from the fire they had set in the house. Others dashed toward the pigsty, where they quickly cut the throats of the squealing sows and stoats. Pausing only to be sure that the hay in the barn was aflame and that the fire in the house would take hold, the leader glided off into the woods behind the fence, followed in silence by his half-dozen or so marauders, who pushed Martha and the girls before them.

Up the hill they clambered. Mary cried out as she was roughly dragged across a log. The leader stooped to shake her in reproof, and, looking up, lifted a warning finger to Martha, cautioning silence. Then he drew the finger abruptly across his throat to show the consequence of not obeying. At his whispered orders, his men tore strips of cloth from Martha’s skirt and gagged the three children, after which they caught up both Mary and Tah, slinging them over their shoulders before continuing their uphill rush. Martha still bore Sarah on her shoulder.

As yet there were no sounds of pursuit. Looking back when they reached the crest of the hill, Martha could see thick smoke rising to the south. Clearly, then, the attack was not confined to their house alone. Before she could speculate further, their captors shoved her forward, and a few minutes later they struck the regular footpath leading north to Deerfield. Making for the bushes just off the trail, the Indians forced her and the children to the ground out of sight from anyone coming uphill, concealing themselves also. Their leader slipped out of sight back the way they had come, toward Hatfield.

They waited. Then their tense silence was suddenly broken by two gunshots off to the south and west. From the direction of the Graves’ house-raising, she thought. This was followed by a fusillade of distant firing. Surely by now the attack had been discovered. Was Ben safe? Where was he?

From below them on the path came sounds of passage, as of many more than one. The men near them braced for whatever action might come. Martha caught her breath, and stretched out her arms to hold Mary and small Martha, who crawled to her. Was it rescue?

Pushed from behind, middle-aged Obadiah Dickinson, his forehead all bloodied and his wrists roped together, lurched into view and fell to his knees. Back of him came an Indian dragging Mary Foote, bound at the wrists, and carrying her three-year-old Mary. Another had her six-year-old Nathaniel in tow. Both children were gagged with strips of whatever cloth had been available. Noiselessly, but with kicks and jabs, Indians herded the newcomers over to huddle down with Martha and her girls. The only sounds were Mary Foote’s sobs and Dickinson’s harsh gasps as he struggled to get his breath. The Indians crouched motionless, waiting.

Only moments later, the Indian leader loped rapidly into view up the path, followed by more warriors, carrying bundles of loot and dragging and prodding a chain of roped-together prisoners, who, Martha realized with horror, were mostly children. These children were gagged too. Hannah Jennings was the only adult among them, and she was guarding, as far as she was able, the two Gillette children by her earlier marriage. There was Ruth Dickinson, Obadiah’s ten-year-old daughter, who seemed to be protecting the two little Coleman girls, plus three others, a boy and two girls, all old enough to walk but little Abigail Bartholomew, who rode on an Indian’s back. Why, it seemed to be half the children of the town! What was the fate of their missing parents, for the children to be taken thus? Oh, Ben, oh, Ben, how is it with you? Martha’s heart cried out.

At the sight of this woeful procession, Obadiah Dickinson, still kneeling, burst forth, Merciful God, how have we offended Thee? At the sound, the Indian leader struck him hard enough across the face to send him sprawling.

Be silent, the Indian hissed. One more word, and I will kill you all. Only in silence can we escape. Our safety is your safety! Now we go—fast! Dragging Obadiah to his feet, the Indian propelled him forward and set off up the path. The captives, seventeen in all, were herded on behind them, adults and children alike prodded with blows from fists and muskets.

*     *     *

Ben Waite and the other men involved in the house raising were caught entirely off guard by the sharp cr-rump of two almost simultaneous musket shots. John Graves, sitting astride the newly-raised roof beam of the house intended for his son’s bride-to-be, slumped and then tumbled lifeless to the bare earth below. His brother Isaac, in the act of handing across a wooden peg, pitched forward in a spraddled fall. His body caught on a crossbeam for a moment and then finished its descent almost felling Ben, frozen stock still in disbelief below. Immediately came another fusillade, and John Cooper and John Atchisson, working near the Graves men, were the next to fall. From the south and east, the sounds of more shots, piercing yells, and the screams of women brought a rush of horrid comprehension to the party of builders.

They’re at the women! bellowed John Allis, grabbing up his musket. From over east by Middle Lane, clouds of smoke were rising. The balance of Hatfield lay in that direction, most houses within the stockade. Here, outside the stockade where the new house was being built, only a few other homes had yet been placed, Ben’s among them. As his half-dozen fellow roof-raisers seized their weapons and ran toward the village, Ben Waite, gun in hand, raced the other way, north, and as he turned up Hatfield Street, he could see flames bursting from his own roof five hundred yards ahead, the last house of the town.

The fire was, clearly, already established. The shots at the house-raising must have been a parting insult rather than the beginning of the attack. The Indians could still be lurking in the underbrush or in the outbuildings. Ben, gun at the ready, moved rapidly but silently up the edge of the lane from tree to bush, approaching his burning house from the rear. A plank door opened into the lean-to area. He paused, mastering the dread of what he might find inside, and then burst in with one sharp kick, alert to spend his one shot with deadly effect before clubbing his musket to take on whatever enemies came within range.

The lean-to was empty. The door into the kitchen-parlor yawned wide. Fire rippled along the floor and walls, around the windows, up the new stairs. Smashed pottery, clothes from overturned chests, toys—all were piled in the center of the room with the split table, destroyed chairs, and the remains of whatever had been hung on the walls, where the flames were already creating a bonfire of them.

Martha! he shouted. There was no sound but the snap of the flames. Shielding his face, he dashed across the room to the foot of the smoldering stairway. The flames and smoke forced him back.

Struck by a hope, he lunged out the door toward the barn, only to see flames burst from the open haymow above as the fire took hold there too. Frantic and heedless now, he plunged through the smoke-filled loading door into the barn. Flames filled the feed bins at the sides, flames licked up the walls. The fire was now in full blast up in the hayloft, fed by the draft from below. Down where he stood, the cattle and horses were gone. The barn was empty. Of wife, of three daughters, not a sign, not a wooden doll—nor, thank God, a splatter of blood or a tangle of torn skirts and pale arms and legs, no scalp-shorn head with features masked in crimson. Martha and the three girls had been taken! The heat drove him out—out to the rail fence behind the burning barn, out to scan fields and forest edge for any movement, any sign at all of what had happened here. The sun-dappled cornstalks, the russet-turning bushes, the green-gold trees of early autumn lay serene before him. Blackbirds whistled. No one lay near, hidden in these quiet coppices, but he could clearly see signs of passage up the hill.

Follow them, find them, bring them back! his love demanded, his rage, his honor. And yet. Years of frontier war had taught him something—make use of it. Push down feeling. He could still think. There was no clue as to the number of the enemy—enough of them, clearly, to attack in silence several points in the village, before the shooting at the house-raising. Yes, he was sufficiently skilled to follow them closely without detection, but one man could do little to effect a rescue.

Turning, he looked back toward the village and stockade, out of sight behind the trees in their fall finery, but now clearly denoted by clouds of smoke roiling up from what could only be other houses ravaged like his own. No more gunfire. No war yells. The attack must have been swift and largely silent. His house was apparently the last target. The attackers would have about a quarter-hour’s start, to judge from the progress of the fire.

Still, no group could give chase undetected. At the first moment the enemy sensed pursuit, they would kill their captives. He knew, from harsh wartime experience, the Indians’ ways. Martha and the girls had been alive when they were abducted from the farmyard, that was plain. Keeping them alive came first.

He moved along the fence, scanning the underbrush. There it was, the place they had gone through. They were bound for the Deerfield path, then. They were headed north.

But what Indians were they? King Philip’s War was won. For over a year, no hostile Indian had been sighted. Farming was begun again. Why, four or five men had even, in the last few weeks, started going back up to Deerfield, which had been burned to the ground during the war, to start rebuilding. He scanned the farmyard again. No clue to the enemy’s identity was left behind, not a moccasin, not a weapon, not a scrap of clothing. His ten years trading with the Indians for furs had taught him the tribal origin of any scrap of quillwork or a quirk of weapon decoration.

Back to the village then. There would be wounded to be tended, dead to be buried—and plans to be laid for rescue. Passing his slaughtered pigs, he headed down Middle Lane, bound for where the smoke was rising.

Ahead of him, as he ran south, shouts and cries told him of the human toll he was to encounter.

What’s the damage? he called, as Stephen Jennings, gun in hand, plunged out from a side lane.

Ben, Ben! Hannah and the children are gone! Jennings shouted as they met, his gaunt face awash with tears.

Martha and mine are taken, too. The trail leads off toward Deerfield!

After, then! Jennings urged. Ben seized his arm and spun him about as he tried to pass.

No! That’s not the way—they’ll be killed when the Indians find out we’re following. Were they hurt, could you tell?

No blood, no sign of struggle.

Ben grasped Jennings’ narrow shoulders, two tall men facing eye to eye. Then they’re still alive. We’ve got to keep them that way. How goes it with the others?

Jennings shook his head. I don’t know. I just looked for the direction they’d taken Hannah and followed. Everything that’s burning is back that way, I think. Some must have died, surely.

Let’s know the worst, Ben said, leading off toward the village.

Smoke and flames rose from a dozen houses and barns, clustered just outside the wooden palisade. They could see men running in from the fields, where all but the house-raisers had been hard at their harvest labors while their women had been preparing the noontime dinner. Shouts of rage, howls of anguish, and curses against the savages began to rise, as man after man confronted his loss.

Though the stockade gate had stood open, as it had for a year now, the enemy had simply skirted the outside edge of the wooden wall and attacked the newest houses, built where the village had expanded beyond the stockade’s protection. They had then turned away from the village and surged up the road, raiding the houses scattered on both sides with stealth and knives and hatchets as weapons. Ben’s had indeed been the last house hit, and the only shots fired had been those aimed at the Graves’ rooftree.

Where’s the damage? A babble of confused replies came. Dickinson! Welles! Belden! Fire! Dead! . . .

Ben shouted through the answers. Get a bucket brigade going, someone! Before the fire spreads! He automatically took charge, and the others listened and ran to obey. He’d been sergeant of the local militia, and during the recent war many of them owed their lives to his quick thinking. Stephen, come with me, and any of you others who are able, and see who needs help.

Up the road they went, from house to house. They found Elizabeth Dickinson tended by two neighbor women, where she’d been struck on the head by a hatchet and left for dead as the house burned behind her.

Obadiah and their little Ruth are nowhere to be found, a woman said, wrapping a torn piece of linen sheeting around Elizabeth’s battered head. At John Allis’s, the barn burned as Allis frantically searched for his six-year-old Abigail. Over on the east side of the lane, Selectman Samuel Belden knelt, weeping, over the body of his wife, cast aside with her throat slit as the savages raced by. John Coleman, just above Belden’s place, had dashed in from the fields to find his house afire and his wife Hannah dead just inside, still holding their dead infant Bethiah. His young son Lem lay wounded where he’d tried to save his mother, but he was able to gasp out that little Sarah and his other sister had been dragged away. Things were little better at John Welles’ place, where his wife Sarah, now reviving and just able to speak, had been stabbed and left for dead by the same Indian she had leapt upon as he gutted their two-year-old Elizabeth. Welles had found his four-year-old lying wounded, too, behind the door as he pushed it open.

Ben detailed Stephen Jennings and two other men to start moving the dead to where they could be decently laid out and prepared for burial.

The rest of you, come with me, he ordered. We’ll follow round the stockade and make sure the bastards are gone. And Stephen, get the minister to call everybody together after the fires are out to decide what next to do.

Starting just outside the stockade gate, Ben and his party headed west, from whence the Indians seemed to have come. Behind the houses, near barns and pigpens, corpses of slaughtered sheep and pigs and cattle lay bleeding in the sun, and among them wounded animals still bleated and bellowed. As they scouted the perimeter of the stockade, men would step aside now and then to put some of the poor beasts out of their misery. Acrid smoke from the fires still fouled the air, and from behind the party the moans of the wounded blended with the shouts and cries of the villagers as new outrages were discovered. Fanned out, with muskets poised, Ben and his men inspected every hollow, each tree or bush offering any chance of concealment, but no Indians were flushed out along the whole length of the stockade. Where the house-raising had been interrupted, the bodies of John and Isaac Graves, who had been shot from the rooftree, and of John Atchisson and John Cooper, two young carpenters from Springfield, were being carried toward the meetinghouse. Ben led his group back to his own place after those first shots, back to the place behind the barn where the attackers had gone through the fence.

Making for the Deerfield Path, all agreed. How many? Well, not an army, but no one could be sure of their strength. Who? Why? What now?

The rest of the afternoon they labored, men and women, neighbors and bereft alike. The wounded needed dressings changed, food and water. Hatfield had been burned before, and they knew all too well the tasks that fell to them. These were mostly young people, out on the edge of the world, in general able bodied, people full of courage, as prepared as could be for hardship, schooled by harsh years of frontier war.

As evening drew on, some of the women cooked up a hearty stew of meat, corn and root vegetables, ready for when exhaustion set in and the autumn light began to fail. Ben told himself it was his duty to God to maintain his strength, as he spooned in his portion. God alone knew how Martha and the girls were faring now. Every moment that he was helping someone else might contain horror for his own captive family. A life could flicker out as fast as thought, he’d seen enough of that himself, and even as he obediently ate what the women set before him, he knew Martha and the girls might be meeting death itself, and were certainly drinking deep of fear.

After the meal, the men of the village assembled in their accustomed places in the meetinghouse, bringing candles, lanterns and rushlights. Young Mr. Atherton, fresh from Harvard but robed as became a minister on so solemn an occasion, voiced their prayer.

Oh, Almighty God, to your praise we have dedicated the labor of our bodies and the yearnings of our souls. How have we offended thee, that thou sendst this punishment upon us? How have we failed in our duty to thee, to our Lord Jesus Christ? We stand before thee naked in our shame, bowed down by our loss. We acknowledge that we have sinned, oh, God, in word and deed, in indulgence of the flesh. We are as worms beneath thy feet. Lift, we beseech thee, lift the burden of thy wrath from off us. Forgive us our iniquities; spare us in thy divine mercy as we tremble before thy divine anger. Once again, oh Lord of Hosts, return us to thy favor, and shine thy light upon us. Amen.

Amen, responded the men of the town.

Selectman Belden, said Atherton, if you would be so good, tally for us the extent of our losses.

Belden, whose own wife was among the dead, rose, to read from a prepared list.

Killed—Sergeant Isaac Graves and his brother John; John Atchisson; John Cooper of Springfield, both aged 18; Elizabeth, wife of Philip Russell and her son Stephen, aged 3 years; Hannah, wife of John Coleman and her babe Bethiah; Sarah, wife of Samuel Kellogg and her babe Joseph; and here his voice trembled, "Mary, wife of Samuel Belden; Elizabeth Welles, aged 2 years, daughter of John Welles. In all, 12.

Taken—Sarah Coleman, aged 4 years, and another child of John Coleman; Martha, wife of Benjamin Waite and her three daughters, Mary, aged 6, Martha, aged 4, and Sarah, aged 2; Hannah, wife of Stephen Jennings and two of her children by her previous husband; Obadiah Dickinson and one child; Samuel, son of Samuel Kellogg, aged 8; Abigail, daughter of John Allis, aged 6; Abigail, daughter of William Bartholomew, who lived at Deerfield before the war. Mary Foote and her two children. In all, 17." His voice finally breaking, he handed the list to Atherton and was helped to sit again.

The minister turned to Ben. Sergeant Waite, you headed the party that traced the path of the attackers, did you not? What did you determine?

Ben rose in place. The signs of their passage told they headed north, toward the Deerfield Path.

Why did your party not set out in pursuit? This was a question to which all needed to hear a public answer.

Ben replied, Sir, we all agreed that, first, we had no notion of the size of the enemy’s party or whether they might ambush us, and second and more important, we felt certain that the moment the savages became aware of our pursuit they would kill their captives.

The minister asked further, Did you or your party, Sergeant Waite, find any evidence as to the identity of the attackers?

None, sir, replied Ben, and sat.

Atherton turned to the whole group. Who, then, in Gods name, might the attackers have been?

A voice came from out of the middle of the room. Mohawks.

Atherton was incredulous. Iroquois? Ben Waite found this news as disturbing as it was unlikely. He shifted to see the speaker.

William Gull rose. Iroquois. Mohawks, Maquas, whatever you call ’em.

Atherton was nonplussed. But, how . . .

Gull worked his way forward to face the meeting. Last night. They stopped here. At the south of the town. Richard Morton knows. He let ’em camp on his place.

Atherton called on Morton. Richard Morton, is this true which William Gull alleges?

Morton rose. Yes, sir, but—

Tell us the manner of it, Atherton demanded severely.

There were only about fifteen of them, and a few squaws besides. They knocked on the door well after sundown. One spoke enough English to ask if they could camp out back, way down by the stream. Said they had been all the way over to beside the Charles River and were headed home now, to over by Albany, in New York colony. Well, we gave them what was left of our supper to take down there with them, because they looked so pitiful tired, so thin and hungry, and told them they could stay there overnight if they liked.

"Why didn’t