Every settler on whom they laid hands was murdered -- women and children dragged into captivity ; and though the settlements around Fort Amsterdam extended, at this period, thirty English miles to the east, and twenty-one to the north and south, the enemy burned the dwellings, desolated the farms and form-houses, killed the cattle, destroyed the crops of grain, hay, and tobacco, laid waste the country all around, and drove the settlers, panicstricken, into Fort Amsterdam. ' Mine eyes saw the flames of their towns,' says Roger Williams, 'the frights and hurries of men, women and children, and the present removal of all that could to Holland.'^ The assassins, says Bancroft, were compelled to desire a peace, which was covenanted with the River Indians the 22cl of April, 164.3. " This was principally brought about by the Dutch Pairoon de Vries, and not by Roger Williams, as some of the New England historians claim."c

This peace proved unsatisfactory, for we find the Indians again taking up arms.

' Bancroft's Hist. U. S. ii. 289, 90.

b O Callaghan's Hist. N. N. p. 270. Rhode Island Hist. Rec. Lii. 156.

c O'Callaghan's Hist. N. N. p*276, note.

Vol. I. 22

170 HISTORY OF THE

*' 15tli Sept. 1643, it was resolved by the Dutch to renew the war, either by force or stratagem, ao^ainst the River Indians."^

<' A. D. 1644, some of the Stamford people having surprised an Indian village and taken some prisoners; one of them an old man, proposed to the Dutch, in hopes of obtaining a reward '• to lead any of their troops against the Weckqnaesqueecks, who are said to be entrenched in ihree casiles, at the north, liieutenant Baxter and Sergeant Cock were, thereupon, ordered to proceed under the guidance of this old man, with sixty-five men against this tribe.