a heavy ransom,
and so they treated Mrs. Rowlandson unusually well. She had been
captured when escaping from the burning house, carrying in her arms her
little six-year-old daughter. She was stopped by a bullet that grazed
her side and struck the child. The Indian who seized them placed the
little girl upon a horse, and as the dreary march began she kept moaning
"I shall die, mamma." "I went on foot after it," says the mother, "with
sorrow that cannot be expressed. At length I took it off the horse, and
carried it in my arms till my strength failed me, and I fell down with
it .... After this it quickly began to snow, and when night came on they
stopped. And now down I must sit in the snow, by a little fire, and a
few boughs behind me, with my sick child in my lap, and calling much for
water, being now, through the wound, fallen into a violent fever ....
Oh, may I see the wonderful power of God that my spirit did not utterly
sink under my affliction; still the Lord upheld me with his gracious and
merciful spirit." The little girl soon died. For three months the weary
and heartbroken mother was led about the country by these loathsome
savages, of whose habits and manners she gives a vivid description. At
first their omnivorousness astonished her. "Skunks and rattlesnakes, yea
the very bark of trees" they esteemed as delicacies. "They would pick up
old bones and cut them in pieces at the joints, ... then boil them and
drink up the liquor, and then beat the great ends of them in a mortar
and so eat them." After some weeks of starvation Mrs. Rowlandson herself
was fain to partake of such viands. One day, having made a cap for one
of Philip's boys, she was invited to dine with the great sachem. "I
went," she says, "and he gave me a pancake about as big as two fingers.
It was made of parched wheat, beaten, and fried in bear's grease; but I
thought I never tasted pleasanter meat in my life." Early in May she was
redeemed for 20 pounds, and went to find her husband in Boston, where
the Old South Church society hired a house for them. [Sidenote: Mrs.
Rowlandson's narrative]

Such was the experience of a captive whose treatment was, according to
Indian notions, hospitable. There were few who came off so well. Almost
every week while she was led hither and thither by the savages. Mrs.
Rowlandson heard ghastly tales of fire and slaughter. It was a busy
winter and spring for these Nipmucks. Before February was over, their
exploit at