american-holocaust

114 AMERICAN HOLOCAUSTof their Men could find their Hands: Thus did the Lord judge among theHeathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies! 62It was a ghastly sight-especially since we now know, as Francis Jenningsreminds us, that most of those who were dying in the fires, and whowere "crawling under beds and fleeing from Mason's dripping sword werewomen, children, and feeble old men." 63 Underhill, who had set fire tothe other side of the village "with a traine of Powder" intended to meetMason's blaze in the center, recalled how "great and doleful was the bloudysight to the view of young soldiers that never had been in war, to see somany souls lie gasping on the ground, so thick, in some places, that youcould hardly pass along." Yet, distressing though it may have been for theyouthful murderers to carry out their task, Underhill reassured his readersthat "sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perishwith their parents." 64 Just because they were weak and helpless and unarmed,in short, did not make their deaths any less a delight to the Puritan'sGod. For as William Bradford described the British reaction to thescene:It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams ofblood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; butthe victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the praise thereof to God,who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies intheir hands and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insultingan enemy. 65Added the Puritan divine Cotton Mather, as he celebrated the event manyyears later in his Magnalia Christi Americana: "In a little more than onehour, five or six hundred of these barbarians were dismissed from a worldthat was burdened with them." Mason himself counted the Pequot deadat six or seven hundred, with only seven taken captive and seven escaped.It was, he said joyfully, "the just Judgment of God." 66The Narragansetts who had accompanied the Puritans on their marchdid not share the Englishmen's joy. This indiscriminate carnage was notthe way warfare was to be carried out. "Mach it, mach it," Underhillreports their shouting; "that is," he translates, "It is naught, it is naught,because it is too furious, and slays too many men." 67 Too many Indians,that was. Only two of the English died in the slaughter.From then on the surviving Pequots were hunted into near-extermination.Other villages were found and burned. Small groups of warriors were interceptedand killed. Pockets of starving women and children were located,captured, and sold into slavery. If they were fortunate. Others were boundhand and foot and thrown into the ocean just beyond the harbor. And stillmore were buried where they were found, such as one group of threehundred or so who tried to escape through a swampland, but could make