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 Lancaster was followed by a shocking massacre at Medfield.  They sacked and destroyed the towns of Worcester, Marlborough, Mendon, and Groton, and even burned some houses in Weymouth, within a dozen miles of Boston.  Murderous attacks were made upon Sudbury, Chelmsford, Springfield, Hatfield, Hadley, Northampton, Wrentham, Andover, Bridgewater, Scituate, and Middleborough.  On the 18th of April Captain Wadsworth, with 70 men, was drawn into an ambush near Sudbury, surrounded by 500 Nipmucks, and killed with 50 of his men; six unfortunate captives were burned alive over slow fires.  But Wadsworth’s party made the enemy pay dearly for his victory; that afternoon 120 Nipmucks bit the dust.  In such wise, by killing two or three for one, did the English wear out and annihilate their adversaries.  Just one month from that day Captain Turner surprised and slaughtered 300 of these warriors near the falls of the Connecticut river which have since borne his name, and this blow at last broke the strength of the Nipmucks. [Sidenote:  Virtual exterminations of the Indians, February—­August, 1676]

Meanwhile the Narragansetts and Wampanoags had burned the towns of Warwick and Providence.  After the wholesale ruin of the great “swamp fight,” Canonchet had still some 600 or 700 warriors left, and with these, on the 26th of March, in the neighbourhood of Pawtuxet, he surprised a company of 50 Plymouth men under Captain Pierce and slew them all, but not until he had lost 140 of his best warriors.  Ten days later Captain Denison, with his Connecticut company, defeated and captured Canonchet, and the proud son of Miantonomo met the same fate as his father.  He was handed over to the Mohegans and tomahawked.  The Narragansett sachem had shown such bravery that it seemed, says the chronicler Hubbard, as if “some old Roman ghost had possessed the body of this western pagan.”  But next moment this pious clergyman, as if ashamed of the classical eulogy just bestowed upon the hated redskin, alludes to him as a “damned wretch.” [Sidenote:  Death of Canonchet]