Soldiers in King Philip's war. Containing lists of the soldiers of ...

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Pennacook to Wannalancet, and wrote to Lieut. Henchman commanding
at Chelmsford garrison, a letter explaining their flight.
It was by such outrages as these that those Indians who inclined
to peace were alienated, and those already inclined to war embitter-
ed, and many of the young men of the Wamesits undoubtedly joined
the hostile Indians, and passed to the eastward to swell the ranks
and increase the efficiency of those bands of Ammoscoggins and Pequakets,
who, with the " strange Indians " from the Nip mucks and
western tribes, were carrying destruction to the eastward settlements.
The Indians were said to be led in general by "Squando," sagamore
of Saco, formerly a great friend of the English, but, outraged by the
treatment of his wife and child by some English sailors, became
filled with vengeful hatred towards all the English. These sailors,
it is said, seeking to test the common report that Indian children
could swim naturally, like the young of beasts, maliciously upset
the canoe containing the woman and child ;
the child sank in the river,
but the mother diving to the bottom saved it, which, however, soon
after dying, its death was imputed to this treatment. Squando was
said to be a great powow or wizard, and was probably the most in-
fluential chief from the Penobscot to the Piscataqua. It was not
Philip's, but his own war that he was fighting against these eastern
settlements. Major Walderne's letter and Gen. Denison's appeals
seem to have moved the United Commissioners to the following
action :
Boston Octob: 1 st 1675
The Commissioners understanding that the Inhabitants of Pascataque,
and so Eastward, are under great Distress, by Reason of the Rage of the
Common Enemy, Doe commend it to the honourable Governor and Councill
of the Mattachusets, that some present Releife may be sent unto them
according to the present Exigent ; the charges whereof shall be allowed in
the general Account of the Colonyes. Thomas Danforth, Presid'.
In the name and by the order of the Commissioners.
As the people gathered more and more into the garrisons, the
Indians gathered into larger bodies, with the evident design to reduce
these garrisons one by one, while they warily watched to cut off all
stragglers who attempted to pass from one to another. October 7th
was observed as a day of public humiliation, and on that day three
men were killed near Newichewannock, and soon after a garrison was
assaulted and an old man named Beard was killed just outside the
house, and other houses were burnt. On October 16th a large body
of Indians, said to be a hundred, gathered towards the settlement of
Salmon Falls, and surprising Richard Tozer at his house half a mile
from the garrison, killed him and captured his son. Lieut. Roger
Plaisted, who was in command at the garrison, hearing the guns of
this attack, immediately sent seven men to find out the cause, when
they were ambushed, and two or three were killed, and the others