part of the Bible could be less authoritative than another would have been to him an incomprehensible heresy; and bound between the same covers that included the Sermon on the Mount were tales of wholesale massacre perpetrated by God’s command.  Evidently the red men were not stray children of Israel, after all, but rather Philistines, Canaanites, heathen, sons of Belial, firebrands of hell, demons whom it was no more than right to sweep from the face of the earth.  Writing in this spirit, the chroniclers of the time were completely callous in their accounts of suffering and ruin inflicted upon Indians, and, as has elsewhere been known to happen, those who did not risk their own persons were more truculent in tone than the professional fighters.  Of the narrators of the war, perhaps the fairest toward the Indian is the doughty Captain Church, while none is more bitter and cynical than the Ipswich pastor William Hubbard. [Sidenote:  Warfare with savages likely to be truculent in character]

While the overthrow of the Narragansetts changed the face of things, it was far from putting an end to the war.  It showed that when the white man could find his enemy he could deal crushing blows, but the Indian was not always so easy to find.  Before the end of January Winslow’s little army was partially disbanded for want of food, and its three contingents fell back upon Stonington, Boston, and Plymouth.  Early in February the Federal Commissioners called for a new levy of 600 men to assemble at Brookfield, for the Nipmucks were beginning to renew their incursions, and after an interval of six months the figure of Philip again appears for a moment upon the scene.  What he had been doing, or where he had been, since the Brookfield fight in August, was never known.  When in February, 1676, he re-appeared it was still in company with his allies the Nipmucks, in their bloody assault upon Lancaster.  On the 10th of that month at sunrise the Indians came swarming into the lovely village.  Danger had already been apprehended, the pastor, Joseph Rowlandson, the only Harvard graduate of 1652, had gone to Boston to solicit aid, and Captain Wadsworth’s company was slowly making its way over the difficult roads from Marlborough, but the Indians were beforehand.  Several houses were at once surrounded and set on fire, and men, women, and children began falling under the tomahawk.  The minister’s house was large and strongly built, and more than forty people found shelter there until at length it took fire and they were driven out by the flames.  Only one escaped, a dozen or more were slain, and the rest, chiefly women and children, taken captive.  The Indians aimed at plunder as well as destruction; for they were in sore need of food and blankets, as well as of powder and ball.  Presently, as they saw Wadsworth’s armed men approaching, they took to flight and got away, with many prisoners and a goodly store of provisions. [Sidenote:  Attack upon Lancaster, February 10, 1676]