Mayflower (34 page)

Studying the wound, Church realized that the bullet had come from the upland side of the swamp and therefore must have come from an English musket. As soldiers pulled Gardner’s body from the fort, Church sent word back to Winslow that English soldiers were being killed by their comrades behind them. Now that the tide had turned in the direction of the English, it was time for General Winslow to apply some method to his army’s advance. With between three hundred and four hundred soldiers inside this extremely confined space, the English posed as much a threat to themselves as did the Narragansetts, who after several hours of fighting were beginning to run out of gunpowder.

Church could see that many of the warriors had started to abandon the fort, leaving large numbers of Native women, children, and elderly trapped in their wigwams. Instead of running away, the warriors had taken up positions amid the bushes and trees of the swamp and were firing on the English soldiers inside the fort. It was clear to Church that the fort had been effectively taken. It was time for him to take care of the Indians in the swamp. Church led his men out of the fort, and they soon found “a broad bloody track,” where the Indians had dragged away their dead and dying men. They came upon an Indian who, instead of firing on them, pulled his gun across his chest in a sign of peace. Hoping to acquire some useful information, Church ordered his men not to hurt the Indian, but to Church’s “great grief and disappointment,” a soldier coming up from the rear killed the Indian before he had a chance to speak with him.

A shout erupted from the swamp, somewhere between them and the fort. It was a group of Narragansetts “running from tree to tree” as they fired on the English. Now the trick was to attack the Indians without being killed by the soldiers inside the fort. After alerting a sergeant to their presence, Church led his men to a dense clump of bushes just a few yards behind the Indians, who were preparing to fire a coordinated volley at the fort. Church and his men were about to attack them when the sergeant cried out to hold their fire; they were about to kill “friend Indians.”

But as Church soon realized, these were not Mohegans and Pequots; these were Narragansetts, and there was now, in Church’s words, “a formidable black heap of them” preparing to fire on the unwitting sergeant and anyone else unlucky enough to be near him. “Now brave boys,” Church whispered to his men, “if we mind our hits, we may have a brave shot. [L]et our sign for firing on them be their rising up to fire into the fort.” Soon after, the Indians stood up in a group to fire, but not before Church and his men gave them such an “unexpected clap on their backs” that those who were not dead were soon running in confusion. About a dozen of them even ran back
into
the fort and took refuge in the blockhouse.

Church and his men quickly followed and approached the blockhouse. The structure appeared to be quite rickety—Church described it as “a sort of hovel that was built with poles, after the manner of a corn crib”—and he decided that the best strategy was simply to topple it over with the Indians still inside. They were running toward the blockhouse when Church realized that one of the Narragansetts had pushed his musket through a gap in the poles and that the gun was pointed not just in his direction but at his groin.

The next thing Church knew, he had been hit by three pieces of lead. The first bullet buried itself harmlessly into a pair of mittens rolled up inside his pocket; the second cut through his breeches and drawers but only nicked him in the side; it was the third bullet that almost killed him—slicing into his thigh before glancing off his hipbone. As Church fell to the ground, he made sure to discharge his gun and wound the Indian who had wounded him.

His men rushed to his side and began to carry him out of the fort, but Church insisted that they first complete their mission, especially since the Indians had no charges left in their muskets. But as they prepared for another assault on the blockhouse, the Indians started to shoot at them with arrows, one of which cut into the arm of the soldier whom Church was clutching for support. Without their commander to lead them, the Plymouth soldiers became, in Church’s words, “discouraged” and abandoned their attempt to upset the blockhouse. But by this time Church’s attention was elsewhere.

It was approaching five in the evening, and with darkness coming on, some of the soldiers had begun to set fire to the wigwams inside the fort. This was a needless, potentially disastrous act. Not only did the wigwams contain hundreds of Native women and children; they possessed tons of provisions. In fact, there were so many baskets and tubs of corn and meat lining the interiors of the wigwams that Church claimed they had been rendered “musket-proof.” A former commissary general, he quickly assessed the situation. The colonial army was on the verge of starvation; it was already close to sundown, and there were at least sixteen snow-covered miles between them and the Smith garrison at Wickford. Dozens, if not hundreds, of men (himself included) were wounded, and a march of this length in subfreezing temperatures was tantamount to collective suicide. Instead of burning the Narragansett fort and the valuable food it held, they should take up residence in it for the night. After helping themselves to the Indians’ corn and meat and keeping themselves warm within the snug confines of the wigwams, they could set out the next day for Wickford. Someone must stop these men from torching the fort.

The orders to destroy the fort had just come from the general himself. Church pleaded with the soldiers to desist from firing the wigwams until he had a chance to speak with Winslow. With the assistance of at least one of his men, Church hobbled out of the fort to the low hill where the general surveyed the action from the saddle of his horse.

Winslow listened to Church’s impassioned appeal and, after conferring with some of the officers gathered around him, decided that the proposal had much merit. The army would do as Church had suggested and move into the fort for the night. Winslow had begun to ride toward the fort, when Captain Moseley suddenly appeared from the edge of the swamp and asked “[W]hither he was going.”

Winslow replied that he was about to enter the fort. Moseley grabbed the reins of the general’s horse and exclaimed, “His life was worth a hundred of theirs, and he should not expose himself.” Winslow said that “Mr. Church had informed him that the fort was taken…[and] that it was most practicable for him, and his army to shelter themselves in the fort.”

“Church lies!” Moseley thundered. The fort was not yet secure. If the general moved another inch, he would shoot his horse out from under him.

Had Church not been injured, he might have countered Moseley’s insubordination with a threat of his own, but as it was he was barely conscious from loss of blood. It was then that a doctor in the group joined the fray, insisting that Church’s proposal would “kill more men than the enemy had killed, for by tomorrow the wounded men will be so stiff that there will be no moving them.” Noticing that Church had a serious wound of his own, the doctor threatened to deny him medical attention if the general decided to follow his aide’s advice, claiming Church “should bleed to death like a dog before they would endeavor to stench his blood.”

It was almost laughably ironic. Throughout the weeks and months of the first phase of the war, the English had been obsessed with
building
forts. Now that they had a perfectly serviceable and well-stocked fort at their disposal, all they wanted to do was destroy it. The difference, of course, was that this was a Native-built structure. For Indian haters like Moseley, the idea of sleeping in a wigwam and eating the Indians’ food was abhorrent. It was far better to consume this wretched fortress in purifying fire than spend a single night living like the heathen enemy.

There was also a more justifiable fear of ambush. They had sixteen miles to cover before they reached the safety of the Smith garrison in Wickford. An Indian captive claimed that in addition to the Narragansett warriors who had survived the attack, there were another 1,500 waiting just a mile and a half away. If they did not leave immediately, before the Narragansetts had the chance to regroup, their battered and exhausted soldiers would be virtually defenseless against a well-executed Native ambush. Best to depart while the enemy was still reeling from the attack.

The Plymouth governor might have been named commander of this army, but Massachusetts-Bay was apparently in charge. Winslow once again reversed himself, and the fort, along with all its provisions and perhaps hundreds of Native women, children, and elderly, was consigned to the fire. Contemporary accounts of the battle focus on the bravery of the English officers and soldiers but make little mention of the slaughter that followed the taking of the fort. It must have been a horrendous and terrifying scene as Narragansett women and children screamed and cried amid the gunshots and the flames. Thirty-eight years before, Narragansett warriors had been sickened by the burning of the Pequot fort at Mystic, Connecticut. On this day, December 19, 1675, Pequot warriors were there to watch the Narragansetts meet a similar fate. The English later claimed that the Pequots and Mohegans had been faithless allies that day, firing their muskets up into the air rather than at the enemy. One can hardly blame them, if the claim was true.

Sometime after five o’clock, the order was given to begin the long march to Wickford. According to one account, the flames rising up from the burning fort lit the army’s way for as many as three miles through the wilderness.

It was the worst night of the soldiers’ lives. They had spent the previous night attempting to sleep on an open field in the midst of a snowstorm; that morning they had marched for eight hours and then fought for another three, and now they were slogging their way through the snow—eight hundred men lugging the bodies of more than two hundred of the dead and wounded. “And I suppose,” Church wrote, “everyone that is acquainted with the circumstances of that night’s march, deeply laments the miseries that attended them, especially the wounded and dying men.” The first ones reached the Smith garrison at 2
A.M.
Winslow and his entourage became lost and did not arrive at Wickford until seven in the morning.

Twenty-two of the army’s wounded died during the march. The next afternoon, thirty-four English corpses were buried in a mass grave; six more died over the next two days. Those wounded who survived the march, including Church and Captain Bradford (who had been injured in the eye), were shipped to Newport on Aquidneck Island for medical treatment. The Puritan historian William Hubbard had an undeniable Massachusetts-Bay bias. But after interviewing many of the participants, even he had to admit that Church had been correct: “Many of our wounded men perished, which might otherwise have been preserved, if they had not been forced to march so many miles in a cold and snowy night, before they could be dressed.”

The battle became known as the Great Swamp Fight, and more than 20 percent of the English soldiers had been either killed or wounded—double the casualty rate of the American forces at D-day. Of all the colonies, Connecticut had suffered the most. Major Treat (who was the last one out of the fort) reported that four of his five captains had been killed and that eighty of his three hundred soldiers were either dead or wounded. This makes for a casualty rate of almost 30 percent—roughly equivalent to the Confederate losses at Antietam on the bloodiest day of the Civil War. Major Treat insisted that his men return to Connecticut, and despite the outraged objections of Winslow and his staff, who were already contemplating another strike against the Narragansetts, the Connecticut forces marched for Stonington on December 28.

But as Winslow knew all too well, his army was not about to go anywhere. One supply vessel had managed to make it to Wickford, but the rest of the ships were trapped in the ice of Boston Harbor. The severity of the weather meant that it took five anxious days before Bostonians heard the news of the army’s hard-fought victory.

As late as 1906 the historian George Bodge insisted that the Great Swamp Fight “was one of the most glorious victories ever achieved in our history, and considering the conditions, as displaying heroism, both in stubborn patience and dashing intrepidity, never excelled in American warfare.” It cannot be denied that the assault struck a merciless blow at the Narragansetts. Estimates varied wildly, but somewhere between 350 and 600 Native men, women, and children were either shot or incinerated that day. And yet there were still thousands of Narragansetts left alive. If they could make their way north to Nipmuck country, the number of hostile Indian warriors would be more than doubled. Instead of saving New England, Winslow’s army had only increased the danger.

Two young sachems were left to head up the remnants of the tribe: Canonchet, who had traveled to Boston that fall to carry on negotiations with Puritan officials, and Quinnapin, who had brazenly announced his defiance of the English by marrying the Pocasset sachem Weetamoo.

Before he had abandoned the fort, Canonchet had been careful to leave a message for the English. In the final minutes of the battle, as the soldiers moved from wigwam to wigwam with firebrands in their hands, one of them had found it: the treaty Canonchet had signed in Boston. The Puritans looked to the document as proof that the Narragansetts had been fully aware of their treaty violations, but as Canonchet now knew for a certainty, it was a piece of parchment that had been worthless from the start.

In the weeks ahead, Church lay in a bed in Newport, racked with fever, as his body fought off the infections associated with his wounds. The weather outside remained brutally cold—so cold that eleven of the replacement soldiers sent from Boston during the first week of January died of exposure before they reached Winslow’s army at Wickford.

On January 14, some soldiers captured a man who they at first thought was an Indian but who proved to be an Englishman. His name was Joshua Tefft, and he claimed that he had been captured by Canonchet prior to the Great Swamp Fight and forced to become his slave. He had been present at the battle but had not fired a gun. But many soldiers said they had seen him taking part in the fighting.