Anne Hutchinson - New Netherland - Massacre

Massacre

The Hutchinsons were unfortunate in the timing of their settlement in this area, and soon became victims of the local unrest. The Dutch governor, Willem Kieft, had aroused the ire of the natives with his inhumanity and treachery. Mrs. Hutchinson, who had a favourable relationship with the Narragansett people in Rhode Island, likely felt a false sense of safety among the Siwanoy of New Netherland. The Hutchinsons had been friendly to them but following their mistreatment by the Dutch, these natives ravaged the New Netherland colony in a series of incidents known as Kieft's War. The fate of the Hutchinson family was aptly summarised by LaPlante:

The Siwanoy warriors stampeded into the tiny settlement above Pelham Bay, prepared to burn down every house. The Siwanoy chief, Wampage, who had sent a warning, expected to find no settlers present. But at one house the men in animal skins encountered several children, young men and women, and a woman past middle age. One Siwanoy indicated that the Hutchinsons should restrain the family's dogs. Without apparent fear, one of the family tied up the dogs. As quickly as possible, the Siwanoy seized and scalped Francis Hutchinson, William Collins, several servants, the two Annes (mother and daughter), and the younger children—William, Katherine, Mary, and Zuriel. As the story was later recounted in Boston, one of the Hutchinson's daughters, "seeking to escape," was caught "as she was getting over a hedge, and they drew her back again by the hair of the head to the stump of a tree, and there cut off her head with a hatchet.

The warriors then dragged the bodies into the house along with the cattle, and set fire to the place, which burned to the ground. During the attack, Hutchinson's nine-year old daughter, Susanna, is said to have been out picking blueberries, and was found, according to legend, hidden in the crevice of Split Rock, nearby. She is believed to have had red hair, unusual to the attackers, and perhaps because of this curiosity her life was spared. She was taken captive and by one account was named "Autumn Leaf", and lived with the Native Americans for two to six years (accounts vary) until ransomed back to her family members, most of whom were living in Boston.

The exact date of the Hutchinson massacre is not known. The first definitive record of the occurrence was in John Winthrop's journal, where it was recorded as the first entry made for the month of September, though not dated. Since it took days or even weeks for Winthrop to receive the news, the event almost certainly occurred in August 1643, and this is the date found in most sources. While some accounts offer an exact date for the massacre, they provide no source or evidence.

The reaction in Massachusetts to Hutchinson's death was predictably harsh. The Reverend Thomas Weld wrote, "The Lord heard our groans to heaven, and freed us from our great and sore affliction ... I never heard that the Indians in those parts did ever before this commit the like outrage upon any one family or families; and therefore God's hand is the more apparently seen herein, to pick out this woeful woman ..." Peter Bulkley, the pastor at Concord wrote, "Let her damned heresies, and the just vengeance of God, by which she perished, terrify all her seduced followers from having any more to do with her leaven." Winthrop wrote, "Thus it had pleased the Lord to have compassion of his poor churches here, and to discover this great imposter, an instrument of Satan so fitted and trained to his service for interrupting the passage kingdom in this part of the world, and poisoning the churches here..." Further, he wrote, "This American Jezebel kept her strength and reputation, even among the people of God, till the hand of civil justice laid hold on her, and then she began evidently to decline, and the faithful to be freed from her forgeries ..."

After the massacre, Wampage, the warrior who claimed to have slain Hutchinson, had assumed her name, calling himself "Anne Hoeck," thus being honoured by using the name of his most famous victim. Eleven years after the event, Wampage confirmed a deed transferring the Hutchinson's former property to Thomas Pell, with his name on the document being given as "Ann Hoeck alias Wampage."