Note 172 — Chapter X
Reading edition
“It was judged,” says Dr. Holmes, (Annals, vol. i. p. 241) “that, during the summer, seven hundred Pequods were destroyed, among whom were thirteen sachems. About two hundred, besides women and children, survived the swamp fight. Of this number, the English gave eighty to Miantinomo, and twenty to Ninigret, two sachems of Narraganset, and the other hundred to Uncas, sachem of the Mohegans, to be received and treated as their men. A number of the male children were sent to Bermuda. However just the occasion of this war, humanity demands a tear on the extinction of a valiant tribe, which preferred death to what it might naturally anticipate from the progress of English settlements—dependence, or extirpation.
‘Indulge, my native land! indulge the tear,
That steals, impassion’d, o’er a nation’s doom;
To me each twig from Adam’s stock, is dear,
And sorrows fell upon an Indian’s tomb.’”
Dwight’s Greenfield Hill.