Battles
News of Oldham's death became the subject of sermons in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In August, Governor Vane sent John Endecott to exact revenge on the Indians of Block Island. Endecott's party of roughly 90 men sailed to Block Island and attacked two apparently abandoned Niantic villages. Most of the Niantic escaped, while two of Endecott's men were injured. The English claimed to have killed 14, but later Narragansett reports claimed only one Indian was killed on the island. The Puritan militia burned the villages to the ground. They carried away crops which the Niantic had stored for winter, and destroyed what they could not carry. Endecott went on to Fort Saybrook.
The English at Saybrook were not happy about the raid, but agreed that some of them would accompany Endecott as guides. Endecott sailed along the coast to a Pequot village, where he repeated the previous year's demand of payment for the death of Stone and more for Oldham. After some discussion, Endecott concluded that the Pequot were stalling and attacked. The Pequot ruse had worked, and most escaped into the woods. Endecott had his forces burn down the village and crops before sailing home.
Read more about this topic: Pequot War
Famous quotes containing the word battles:
“Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“These battles sound incredible to us. I think that posterity will doubt if such things ever were,—if our bold ancestors who settled this land were not struggling rather with the forest shadows, and not with a copper-colored race of men. They were vapors, fever and ague of the unsettled woods. Now, only a few arrowheads are turned up by the plow. In the Pelasgic, the Etruscan, or the British story, there is nothing so shadowy and unreal.”
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“Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.”
—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)