Before daybreak the English were again on the march. Two miles of an Indian trail brought them to a palisaded fort on what is still known as Pequot Hill near the Mystic River. A part of the English stole up the hill from the south and the rest from the north. There were no sentinels, and the garrison was sound asleep. When within a rod of the palisade an Indian cur barked, and

a Pequot warrior shouted, "Englishmen ! Englishmen !"

At once the assaulting party fired a volley through the log defences. This

On Pequot Hill. Here the Indians had a fort that the whites assailed and destroyed

was answered by a terrific yell. The English tore down the piles of brush that served for gates and swarmed into the fort. But the Pequots remained in their wigwams, and some of them shot from the doors. Mason drove them out of one wigwam, caught up a brand from the fire inside, and applied it to the mats which covered the framework. Instantly the wigwam was ablaze. A rising wind fanned the flames and caused them to spread rapidly through the fort.

Soon the heat was so intense that the English withdrew from the enclosure. But no such privilege was

allowed the Indians. All were killed or burned to death except seven who broke through the English lines, and seven who were captured. There were four or five hundred of them - men, women, and children.

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Two of Mason's party were killed and about twenty wounded. Some of them were saved from arrow wounds by their neck-cloths. A piece of cheese in the pocket of another stopped an arrow. One of the officers, who saw the warriors of two hostile tribes engaged in a battle, on a later occasion, said they fought in such a manner that neither party would have killed seven men in seven years. Each combatant shot his arrow into the air at such an elevation that it would drop on an adversary, but the person aimed at usually took the precaution to step aside.

The English carried their wounded to New London harbor, half a dozen miles away. Their vessels met them, and then they made their way to the mouth of the Connecticut where Lion Gardiner greeted them with a salute of the guns of his fort.

When the whites departed from the Pequot country the surviving members of the tribe gathered at the ruins of their stronghold and shrieked and tore their hair. The next day they held a council and decided that it was impossible for them to resist the power of the strangers, and they concluded their only recourse was to all emigrate beyond the Hudson.

They therefore burned their villages and supplies,

and set out on this desperate venture.

Some soon

turned back, but were later all killed or captured by whites and friendly Indians. The main body of the tribe, after crossing the Connecticut River far enough north to avoid the English at Saybrook, continued along the shore of the Sound in order to get a daily supply of food by digging shellfish. They travelled very slowly.

The English and Mohegans set forth to follow them, the former on their ships, the latter on land. From time to time they overtook stragglers and destroyed or captured them. Near Guilford a Pequot chief and some companions, when closely pressed by

their pursuers, swam across the harbor from the end of the cape on its eastern side. But they were shot

as they landed by some Mohegans in ambush. The victors cut off the head of the Pequot chief and lodged it in the branches of an oak, where it stayed for years. Since then the spot has been called "Sachem's Head."

The remnant of the fugitive tribe at length took refuge with some local Indians whose village was in a swamp a few miles west of Bridgeport. Their pursuers surrounded the swamp and sent in a call for surrender. In response the Indian villagers and the Pequot women and children gave themselves up. About one hundred warriors remained in the swamp, and they crept to its borders and shot forth their ineffectual arrows at the besiegers all the following night. In the early morning they made a burst for freedom. A heavy fog favored them, and three-fourths of them broke through their enemy's line and got away. They were pursued, and many of them were found dead. The fate of the rest is unknown.

The prisoners were made slaves, some of them in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and others in the West Indies. They were not very satisfactory in servitude to their masters, and they seemed to be physically unfitted for it, for few of them survived long.

Connecticut's other tribes deeded away their land with more or less celerity, and when it was all gone they drifted off to other parts of the country, or became town charges.

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Industry in Connecticut

EARLY all the interests of the population of Connecticut until after 1800 were agricultural. By that time the whole commonwealth was dotted with towns; and in the heart of each was a common, a church, and a group of wooden houses, usually com