Thomas Chambers, to which they answered--" If peace were to be renewed with them, the Honble Heer Director General should, with some unarmed persons, sit with them in the open field, without the gate, as it was their own custom to meet unarmed when renewing peace or in other negotiations." But they, unmindful of the preceding statement, surprized and attacked us between the hours of 11 and 12 o'clock in the forenoon on Thursday the 7th instant. Entering in bands through all the gates, they divided and scattered themselves among all the houses and dwellings in a friendly manner, having with them a little maize and some few beans to sell to our Inhabitants, by which means they kept them within their houses, and thus went from place to place as spies to discover our strength in men. And after they had been about a short quarter of an hour within this place, some people on horseback rushed through the Mill gate from the New Village, crying out-- The Indians have destroyed the New Village!" And with these words, the Indians here in this Village immediately fired a shot and made a general attack on our village from the rear, murdering our people in their houses with their axes and toma-

40 ; JOURNAL OF THE

hawks, and firing on them with guns and pistols; they seized whatever women and children they could catch and carried them prisoners outside the gates, plundered the houses and set the village on fire to windward, it blowing at the time from the South. The remaining Indians commanded all the streets, firing from the corner houses which they occupied and through the curtains outside along the highways, so that some of our inhabitants, on their way to their houses to get their arms, were wounded and slain.