[134] Mr. Henry Trumbull, of Connecticut, who in 1810 published a history of Indian Wars in New England, so far as he went, was much more minute than the Mathers concerning the losses suffered by the English at the Great Swamp Fight. Here are Mr. Trumbull's estimates.

MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENT.

Capt. Samuel Moseley's Company, 10 killed, 40 wounded.
Capt. James Oliver's Company, 20 killed, 48 wounded.
Capt. Isaac Johnson's Company, 18 killed, 38 wounded.
Capt. Nathaniel Davenport's Co, 15 killed, 19 wounded.
Capt. Joseph Gardner's Company, 11 killed, 32 wounded.
Total, 74 killed, 177 wounded.

He omitted altogether to notice the foot company of Samuel Appleton and the cavalry company under Thomas Prentice.

CONNECTICUT REGIMENT.

Capt. John Gallop's Company, 28 killed, 43 wounded.
Capt. Samuel Marshall's Co., 25 killed, 37 wounded.
Capt. Robert Seely's Company, 32 killed, 50 wounded.
Capt. ... Mason's Company, 40 killed, 50 wounded.
Capt. Thomas Watt's Company, 19 killed, 33 wounded.
Total, 144 killed, 213 wounded.

PLYMOUTH COLONY FORCES.

Capt. John Gorham's Company, 30 killed, 41 wounded.

Mr. Trumbull omits all notice of Bradford's company of Plymouth Colony, and this, with Appleton's and Prentice's companies of the Mass. Colony, leaves three of the 14 companies unaccounted for; and yet in the eleven companies noticed, Trumbull asserts that there were 248 killed and 431 wounded. [135] These estimates are so far removed from those made by the Mathers, that there seems to be no possible means of reconciling the one with the others. The probability is that the Mathers erred in stating it too little, and Trumbull too much; but when statements so widely differ, who shall presume to rectify the error or tell the degree of the fault and where that fault lies?

Mr. Trumbull also informs us that Oneco, the son of Uncas, with about two hundred Mohegan Indians, assisted the English at the Great Swamp Fight, Dec. 19, 1675, when fifty-one of these allies were slain and eighty-two wounded, making the loss suffered by the assailants upon the Indian fort that day two hundred and ninety-nine killed, and five hundred and thirteen wounded. Total in killed and wounded, eight hundred and twelve.

Rev. Increase Mather, writing about the time of this event, in speaking of the Indians in the fort that were slain, said: "Concerning the number of Indians slain in this Battle we are uncertain." He then continued, that some Indians, afterwards taken prisoners, confessed that three hundred of their fighting men were found in the ruins of the Indian fort, and many of their women and children were burned in the wigwams; as the English, soon after gaining possession of the fort, set it on fire, thus ending this scene of blood and carnage in a great conflagration. The loss of this fort, with the provisions that it contained, was severely felt by the Indians, who were thus compelled to leave that part of the country; and when we contemplate that, after the loss of so many of their warriors, together with the destruction of nearly all their provisions for the winter, what they were still able, in the following spring to accomplish, carrying war as they did to the hearthstones of nearly or quite every English settlement in what is now Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts [136] and Rhode Island, it requires no great stretch of the imagination to conclude that had they remained in that fort of the Narraganset country unmolested until the succeeding spring, that spring would have been the last that the European settlers would have spent in the New England portion of the country. The Great Swamp Fight was the most sanguinary battle known in the history of New England, and perhaps of greater moment in determining the future destinies of America, than any other battle ever fought upon the continent, if not indeed in the western hemisphere. Had the English suffered a defeat in the Great Swamp Fight, it would have been the beginning of a speedy end to their occupancy of New England; and the Indians were never able to retrieve the losses that they sustained in the taking of their fort.

Rev. Increase Mather Wrote: "Connecticut Forces withdrew to Stonington, there being so many killed and wounded, therefore the army lay still some weeks."

Mr. Henry Trumbull said: "The loss of the troops from Connecticut was so great that Major Treat conceived it absolutely necessary to return immediately home. Such of the wounded as were not able to travel were put on board a vessel and conveyed to Stonington."

Mr. Trumbull continued: "The Massachusetts and Plymouth forces kept the field the greater part of the winter; they ranged the country, took a number of prisoners, destroyed about three hundred wigwams, but achieved nothing brilliant or decisive."

February 10, 1676, the Indians made a second attack on the people of Lancaster (the first attack on that place having occurred Aug. 22, 1675, when eight [137] of its English inhabitants were slain). *(III-87) This second attack commenced early on the morning of Feb. 10, 1676 (Old Style, which varies eleven days from the present mode of computing time), and was led by King Philip in person. The Indian warriors present were estimated at fifteen hundred, representing Wampanoags, Narragansets, Nipmucks and Nashaways, and these in five different bodies attacked the people in as many different points at the same time. Early writers disagreed concerning the number of English slain and taken captive, one authority setting it at 55, about half of whom suffered death. The Indians took large quantities of plunder, but retired on the approach of Capt. Samuel Wadsworth from Marlborough, with a force of 40 men. Capt. Wadsworth obtained and for a time held possession of the place, with the loss of only one man. When Capt. Wadsworth and his company retired, the remaining English settlers deserted the place, and the Indians returned and burned all the buildings save two, and for more than three years Lancaster remained without a white inhabitant. The wife of Rev. Mr. Rowlandson, of Lancaster, and three of their children, one of her sisters and seven children, and another of her sisters and four children, were among those taken captive, Feb. 10, 1676. Mrs. Rowlandson was a daughter of John White, of Lancaster. On her return from captivity she wrote and published an account thereof, to which we have already referred on pages 44, 45 and 47 of this book. *(III-88)

Monday morning, Feb. 21, 1676, Medfield suffered [138] an Indian attack. The warriors seem to have arrived during the preceding night, and under cover of its darkness were placed in admirable positions in and over almost every part of the town, when at the first dawn of day, as if upon a signal previously agreed on, fifty buildings at the same instant were set into a blaze. The inhabitants, as they left their blazing dwellings, were saluted with bullets that came from the fire-arms of Indians secreted behind fences, walls, houses, barns, trees and bushes, and several were shot down before they could reach the garrison houses. One man was burned in his own dwelling. King Philip, mounted on a black horse, led his warriors in person, and history says that he never stopped to take down bars or open gates, but rode over fences to whatever part of the battle-field his presence was most required. About fifty buildings and two mills were burned, involving a loss that in the currency of our own time would be nine thousand dollars. Rev. Increase Mather, writing at the time, said that all this destruction was dealt by the Indians at Medfield, "although there were two or three hundred Souldiers there," and these soldiers finally brought a cannon to bear upon the Indians, causing them to fall back. Only about five hundred Indians are supposed to have been engaged, and if the English had from two to three hundred soldiers in fortified houses, supplied not only with small arms but also with cannon, this on the part of the Indians was in a military point of view a brilliant achievement. As the Indians fell back they burned a bridge to prevent pursuit, and then going to the top of an adjacent hill, that overlooked the scene of their operations, sat down to a feast upon the fat things they had just taken as a spoil from their enemies.

Among the English slain at Medfield, were Lieut. Henry Adams, John Bowers, John Bowers, Jr., Thomas [139] Mason, Zechariah Mason, Jonathan Wood and Elizabeth Smith, all of Medfield; William Williams and John Cooper, of Boston; and Edward Jackson, of Cambridge. John Fusell of Medfield, said to have been one hundred years old, was burned in his house. Wounded, - Margaret Thurston, Samuel Thurston, Daniel Clark and Timothy Dwight, probably of Medfield; and John Gilbert, Jr., of Boston. (See Sanders's Century Sermon, and Mass. Archives).