Documentary History of the State of New York, Vol. IV
The settlers were not so much as thoughtof. The secretary himself went to reconnoitre the camp of the savages the day before the attack, andif the settlers had known what was intended, supposing there had been reasons for it, not one of the savages would have escaped ; but if, as was really the case, there had been no reasons, the director would never have been able to commit such a murder, if even he had such traitors as secretaries.
J. By what JI understand of the affair, the secretary is the principal cause of what followed. But how did they proceed ?
B. Between the 25 and 26 Febr. 1643, at midnight 80.and odd savages were murdered at Pavonia, by 80 soldiers. Young children, some of them snatched from their mothers, were cutin pieces before the eyes of their parents, and the pieces were thrown into the fire or into the water ; other babes were bound on planks and then cut through, stabbed and miserably massacred, so that it would break a heart of stone; some were thrown into the river and when the fathers and mothers soxght to
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save them, the soldiers would not suffer them to come ashore but caused both old and young to bedrowned. Some children of from 5 to 6 years of age, as also some old infirm persons, who had managed to hide themselves in the bushes and reeds, came out in the morning to beg for a piece of bread and for permission to warm themselves, but were all murdered in cold blood and thrown into the fire or the water. A few escaped to our settlers, some with the loss of a hand, others of a leg, others again holding in their bowels with their hands, and all so cut, hacked and maimed, that worse could not be imagined ; they were indeed in such a state that our people supposed they had been surprised by their enemies, the tribe of the Maquaes.