Some of their victims
were flayed alive, or impaled on sharp stakes, or roasted over slow
fires. Similar horrors were wrought at Middleborough and Taunton; and
now the misery spread to Massachusetts, where on the 14th of July the
town of Mendon was attacked by a party of Nipmucks. [Sidenote: Massacres
at Swanzey and Dartmouth, June, 1675]
At that time the beautiful highlands between Lancaster and the
Connecticut river were still an untrodden wilderness. On their southern
slope Worcester and Brookfield were tiny hamlets of a dozen houses each.
Up the Connecticut valley a line of little villages, from Springfield
to Northfield, formed the remotest frontier of the English, and their
exposed position offered tempting opportunities to the Indians. Governor
Leverett saw how great the danger would be if the other tribes should
follow the example set by Philip, and Captain Edward Hutchinson was
accordingly sent to Brookfield to negotiate with the Nipmucks. This
officer was eldest son of the unfortunate lady whose preaching in Boston
nearly forty years before had been the occasion of so much strife. Not
only his mother, but all save one or two of his brothers and sisters
--and there were not less than twelve of them--had been murdered by
Indians on the New Netherland border in 1643; now the same cruel fate
overtook the gallant captain.
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