Mayflower

Mather in HKPW writes of the “sword having marched eastward and westward and northward, now beginneth to face toward the south again,” p. 102. William Harris claims that if a pan-Indian force had struck a coordinated blow against the English in the beginning “in an hour or two the Indians might have slain five thousand souls, small and great. And before the English could have been in any good capacity to defend themselves, and begun to fight, the enemy regrettably might have killed another five thousands souls, so uncertain is our safety here,” A Rhode Islander Reports, edited by Douglas Leach, p. 65.
    In my account of the Great Swamp Fight and the Hungry March, I have relied primarily on Benjamin Church’s EPRPW, pp. 48–64; Hubbard in HIWNE, pp. 137–65; Increase Mather in HKPW, pp. 102–17; Saltonstall in OIC, pp. 178–98; Welcome Green’s “The Great Battle of the Narragansetts,” Narragansett Historical Register, December 1887, pp. 331–43, and George Bodge in Soldiers in King Philip’s War, pp. 179–205. Increase Mather speaks of “the God of armies” in HKPW, p. 104. Hubbard credits Moseley with capturing thirty-six Indians on December 12, p. 139; however, Church claims to have brought in eighteen that same night, indicating that Hubbard’s number probably included the Indians brought in by both Moseley and Church. James Oliver’s December 26, 1675, letter describing the night spent sleeping “in the open field” the night before the attack on the Narragansetts is in Bodge, pp. 174–75. Hubbard refers to the companies of Johnson and Davenport charging “without staying for word of command,” in HIWNE, p. 144; Hubbard claims that God “who as he led Israel sometime by the pillar of fire…through the wilderness; so did he now direct our forces upon that side of the fort where they might only enter,” p. 145. Eric Schultz and Michael Tougias argue that what the Puritans took to be an unfinished feature of the fort “was intentionally planned by the Narragansett…to ensure that the English would attack at a well-defended point…. Had the Narragansett not run out of gunpowder during the fight…this contrived entrance might have been viewed not as a weakness but as a brilliant military tactic…in a smashing Narragansett victory,” p. 260. In a note to his edition of Hubbard’s HIWNE, Samuel Drake writes of Captain Davenport: “Being dressed in a full buff suit, it was supposed the Indians took him for the commander-in-chief, many aiming at him at once,” p. 146. Hubbard in HIWNE claims that “the soldiers were rather enraged than discouraged by the loss of their commanders,” p. 148. Benjamin Church does not mention Samuel Moseley by name, but as several commentators have noted, there is no mistaking the identity of the Massachusetts captain who arrogantly refused to allow General Winslow to enter the Narragansett fort. Concerning the decision to burn the fort and march that night to Wickford, Hubbard writes in HIWNE, “[M]any of our wounded men perished, which might otherwise have been preserved, if they had not been forced to march so many miles in a cold and snowy night, before they could be dressed,” p. 151. Bodge, on the other hand, feels that “from the standpoint of military strategy, the immediate retreat to Wickford was best,” p. 189. My thanks to Michael Hill for providing me with the comparative casualty rates at D-day and Antietam. Hubbard writes of the supply vessels frozen in at Cape Cod, HIWNE, p. 154. Saltonstall in OIC talks of the mounting fears back in Boston when it took five days for word of the fighting to reach the settlement: “[M]any fears arose amongst us that our men were lost either by the enemy or the snow, which made many a heartache among us,” p. 185. Bodge’s reference to the Great Swamp Fight as a “glorious victory” is from Soldiers of King Philip’s War, p. 189. Hubbard in HIWNE tells of how the English soldiers found the treaty in a wigwam of the fort and how it proved that the Indians “could not be ignorant of the articles of agreement,” p. 160. Most of what we know about Joshua Tefft comes from a January 14, 1676, letter from Roger Williams to Massachusetts governor John Leverett, in which Williams recounts in great detail Tefft’s testimony, Correspondence, vol. 2,