s.

In this state of things, Massachusetts sent two hundred men, with
forty Natick Indians, to Dover, then called Cocheco, from whence they
were to march into Maine and New Hampshire, wherever they could be
most serviceable. Here they met unexpectedly about four hundred
Indians, who had come from friendly tribes professedly to join them
in friendly coalition. The English had offered to receive all who in
good faith would become their allies. Many, however, of these men were
atrocious wretches, whose hands were red with the blood of the
English. Others were desperate fellows, who had ravaged Plymouth,
Connecticut, and Massachusetts under King Philip, and, upon his
discomfiture, had fled to continue their barbarities in the remote
districts of New Hampshire and Maine.

Major Waldron, who had command of the English troops, was in great
perplexity. Many of the Indians of this heterogeneous band had come
together in good faith, relying upon his honor and fidelity. But the
English soldiers, remembering the savage cruelties of perhaps the
majority, were impatient to fall upon them indiscriminately with gun
and bayonet. In this dilemma, Major Waldron adopted the following
stratagem, which was by some applauded, and by others censured.

He proposed a sham fight, in which the Indians were to be upon one
side and the English upon the other. In the course of the
manoeuvres, he so contrived it that the Indians gave a grand
discharge. At that moment, his troops surrounded and seized their
unsuspecting victims, and took them all prisoners, without the loss of
a man on either side. He then divided them into classes with as much
care as, under the circumstances, could be practiced, though doubtless
some mistakes were made. All the fugitives from King Philip's band,
and all the Indians in the vicinity who had been recently guilty of
bloodshed or outrage, were sent as prisoners to Boston. Here they were
tried; seven or eight were executed; the rest, one hundred and
ninety-two in number, were transported to the West Indies and sold as
slaves.

This measure excited very earnest discussion in the colony. Many
condemned it as atrocious, others defended it as a necessity; but the
Indians universally were indignant. Even those, two hundred in number,
who were set at liberty as acting in good faith, declared that it was
an act of infamy which they would never forget nor forgive. The next
day these troops proceeded by water to Falmouth, touc