The village, which had been carefully arranged for winter quarters, lay snugly en^ sconced in a low mountain recess, completely sheltered from the bleak northerly winds, and consisted of a large number of huts disposed in three streets, each about eighty paces long. As the Dutch approached they found the Indians prepared to receive them, whereupon Capt. Underhill gave orders to charge sword in hand. His men rushed in and tried to surround the huts ; but the savages, who seemed this time to act with some degree of military skill, deployed in small bands, and fought with such vigor that in a few moments thirteen of the soldiers were disabled.

The contest, however, did not long continue. The Dutch, though greatly inferior in numbers, were vastly superior in skill, weapons, discipline, and powers of endurance, to their brave, but weak, half-starved, and poorly armed adversaries. The Indians were soon pressed so hard as to be obliged to make for their huts, where they still kept up the fight by discharging arrows through loop holes. Nearly two hundred of

HISTORY OF THE COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER.

their number lay dead upon the snow; but the survivors still fought on with the desperation of men who understood the merciless character of their assailants, and preferred death to a captivity that might end in torture. Underhill now gave orders to fire the huts. The Indians tried every way to escape; but they were by this time completely surrounded, and, finding it impossible to break through the lines, they quietly retired with their wives and children to the blazing huts, and whole families submitted to the flames rather than die by the sword. They would not even gratify their enemies by the least sound that might betray anything like pain or terror; although more than five hundred Indians, many of whom were women and children, miserably perished on that awful night ; not one was heard to cry or scream.