A Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

On the tenth of February 1675, the Indians came in great numbers upon Lancaster. Their first coming was about sunrise. Hearing the noise of some guns, we looked out: several houses were burning, and the smoke was rising to heaven. There were five people taken in one house. The father, the mother, and a nursing baby they knocked on the head; the other two they took and carried away alive. There were two others who, being out of their garrison house on some errand, were set upon; one was knocked on the head, and the other escaped. There was another who was shot and wounded as he ran along, and he fell down. He begged them for his life, promising them money (as they told me), but they would not listen to him. They knocked him on the head, stripped him naked, and split open his bowels. Another man, seeing many of the Indians about his barn, ventured out, but was quickly shot down. There were three others belonging to the same garrison who were killed; the Indians had climbed up on the roof of the barn, and from there they had the advantage to shoot down on them over their fortification. So these murderous wretches went on, burning and destroying everything before them.

At length they came and surrounded our own house, and quickly it became the most sorrowful day my eyes ever saw. The house stood on the edge of a hill. Some of the Indians got behind the hill, others into the barn, and others behind anything that could shelter them, and from all these places they shot at the house, so that the bullets seemed to fly like hail. Quickly they wounded one man among us, then another, and then a third. They had been about the house for about two hours (according to my reckoning in that bewildering time) before they managed to set it on fire. They did it with flax and hemp, which they brought out of the barn, and there was no defense about the house except two flanking towers at two opposite corners, and one of them was not finished. They set it on fire once, and one man ventured out and put it out, but they quickly set it on fire again, and that time it took.

Now the dreadful hour has come that I had often heard of in time of war, when it was happening to others; but now my own eyes see it. Some in our house were fighting for their lives, others were wallowing in their blood, the house was on fire over our heads, and the bloody heathen were ready to knock us on the head if we stirred out. Now we could hear mothers and children crying out for themselves and for one another, “Lord, what shall we do?” Then I took my children (and one of my sister’s) to go out and leave the house. But as soon as we came to the door and showed ourselves, the Indians shot so thick that the bullets rattled against the house as if someone had taken a handful of stones and thrown them, so that we were forced to fall back.

We had six strong dogs belonging to our garrison, but not one of them would stir, though at any other time, if an Indian had come to the door, they would have been ready to fly at him and tear him down. By this the Lord would make us acknowledge his hand all the more, and see that our help is always in him.

But out we had to go, with the fire growing and roaring along behind us, and the Indians gaping before us with their guns, spears, and hatchets to devour us. No sooner were we out of the house than my brother-in-law, who had already been wounded in or near the throat while defending the house, fell down dead. At this the Indians shouted and whooped in scorn, and were on him at once, stripping off his clothes. The bullets were flying thick. One went through my side, and the same one (as it seemed) went through the bowels and hand of my dear child in my arms. One of my elder sister’s children, named William, had his leg broken just then, and when the Indians saw it, they knocked him on the head. So we were butchered by those merciless heathen, standing there stunned, with the blood running down to our heels.

My eldest sister was still in the house, and she saw those woeful sights: the infidels dragging mothers one way and children another, and some wallowing in their blood. When her elder son told her that her son William was dead and that I was wounded, she said, “And, Lord, let me die with them.” No sooner had she said it than she was struck with a bullet and fell down dead over the threshold. I hope she is reaping the fruit of her good labors, for she was faithful in the service of God in her place. In her younger years she was in great trouble over the state of her soul, until it pleased God to make that precious Scripture take hold of her heart, “And he said unto me, my grace is sufficient for thee” (2 Cor 12:9). More than twenty years afterward I have heard her tell how sweet and comforting that passage was to her.

But to return: the Indians took hold of us, pulling me one way and the children another, and said, “Come, go along with us.” I told them they would kill me. They answered that if I were willing to go along with them, they would not hurt me.

Oh, the sorrowful sight that was now to be seen at this house! “Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he has made in the earth” (Ps 46:8). Of the thirty-seven people who were in this one house, none escaped either immediate death or a bitter captivity, except one, who might say as Job’s servant did, “And I only am escaped alone to tell the news” (Job 1:15). Twelve were killed, some shot, some stabbed with their spears, some knocked down with their hatchets. When we are prospering, oh, how little we think of such dreadful sights, of seeing our dear friends and relatives lie bleeding out their heart’s blood upon the ground! There was one who had been chopped in the head with a hatchet and stripped naked, and yet he was crawling up and down. It is a solemn sight to see so many Christians lying in their blood, some here and some there, like a flock of sheep torn by wolves, all of them stripped naked by a pack of hell-hounds, roaring, singing, ranting, and insulting, as if they would have torn our very hearts out. Yet the Lord by his almighty power preserved a number of us from death, for twenty-four of us were taken alive and carried captive.

I had often said before this that if the Indians should come, I would rather be killed by them than taken alive. But when it came to the trial, my mind changed. Their glittering weapons so daunted my spirit that I chose to go along with those (as I may call them) ravenous beasts rather than end my days at that moment. And so that I may better declare what happened to me during that grievous captivity, I will speak in detail of the several removes we made up and down the wilderness.

Now away we must go with those barbarous creatures, with our bodies wounded and bleeding, and our hearts no less than our bodies. We went about a mile that night, up onto a hill within sight of the town, where they intended to spend the night. Close by stood a vacant house, which the English had deserted earlier for fear of the Indians. I asked them whether I might not stay in the house that night. They answered, “What, will you love Englishmen still?” This was the most doleful night my eyes ever saw. Oh, the roaring and singing and dancing and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a vivid picture of hell! And just as miserable was the waste they made there of horses, cattle, sheep, swine, calves, lambs, roasting pigs, and fowl (which they had plundered in the town). Some were roasting, some lying and burning, and some boiling to feed our merciless enemies, who were joyful enough, though we were disconsolate.

To add to the dolefulness of the day before and the dismalness of the present night, my thoughts ran on my losses and my sad, bereaved condition. All was gone. My husband was gone (at least separated from me, for he was in the Bay; and to add to my grief, the Indians told me they would kill him as he came homeward). My children were gone, my relatives and friends gone, our house and home and all our comforts, indoors and out. All was gone except my life, and for all I knew the next moment that might go too. Nothing remained to me but one poor wounded babe. It seemed to me then worse than death that it was in such a pitiful condition, pleading for compassion, and I had nothing to refresh it and nothing suitable to revive it. Little do many people imagine the savageness and brutishness of this barbarous enemy, even of those among them who seem to profess more than others, once the English have fallen into their hands.

Those seven who were killed at Lancaster the summer before on a Sabbath day, and the one who was killed afterward on a weekday, were slain and mangled in a barbarous manner by One-Eyed John and Marlborough’s Praying Indians, whom Captain Moseley brought to Boston, as the Indians told me.

But now, the next morning, I had to turn my back on the town and travel with them into the vast and desolate wilderness, without knowing where we were going. Neither my tongue nor my pen can express the sorrows of my heart and the bitterness of my spirit that I felt at this departure. But God was with me in a wonderful way, carrying me along and bearing up my spirit, so that it did not entirely fail.

One of the Indians carried my poor wounded babe on a horse, and all along the way she kept moaning, “I shall die, I shall die.” I went on foot after her, with sorrow that cannot be expressed. At last I took her off the horse and carried her in my arms until my strength failed, and I fell down with her. Then they set me on a horse with my wounded child in my lap. There was no saddle or harness on the horse’s back, and as we were going down a steep hill, we both fell over the horse’s head. At this they laughed like inhuman creatures and rejoiced to see it, though I thought we would have ended our days there, overcome as we were by so many difficulties. But the Lord still renewed my strength and carried me along, so that I might see more of his power; yes, so much more than I could ever have imagined, had I not experienced it.

After this it quickly began to snow, and when night came on, they stopped. And now I had to sit down in the snow by a little fire, with a few boughs behind me and my sick child in my lap. The child kept calling for water, for through the wound she had now fallen into a violent fever. My own wound had also grown so stiff that I could scarcely sit down or get up. Yet so it had to be: I must sit through this whole cold winter night on the cold, snowy ground with my sick child in my arms, expecting every hour to be the last of her life, and with no Christian friend near me either to comfort me or to help me. Oh, I can see the wonderful power of God in this, that my spirit did not utterly sink under my affliction! Still the Lord upheld me with his gracious and merciful Spirit, and we were both alive to see the light of the next morning.

When morning came, they got ready to go on their way. One of the Indians got up on a horse, and they set me up behind him, with my poor sick babe in my lap. I had a very wearisome and tedious day of it, what with my own wound, and my child being so exceedingly sick and in such a pitiful condition with her wound. It may easily be judged what a poor, feeble condition we were in, since not the least crumb of food came into either of our mouths from Wednesday night to Saturday night, except only a little cold water.

This day in the afternoon, about an hour before sunset, we came to the place they intended: an Indian town called Wenimesset, north of Quabaug. When we arrived, oh, the number of pagans (now merciless enemies) who came crowding around me! I may say, as David did, “I had fainted, unless I had believed…” (Ps 27:13).

The next day was the Sabbath. I then remembered how careless I had been of God’s holy time; how many Sabbaths I had lost and misspent, and how wickedly I had walked in God’s sight. This lay so close to my spirit that it was easy for me to see how righteous it would be for God to cut off the thread of my life and cast me out of his presence forever. Yet the Lord still showed mercy to me and upheld me; and as he wounded me with one hand, so he healed me with the other.

This day there came to me one Robert Pepper, a man from Roxbury, who had been taken in Captain Beers’s fight and had now been a considerable time with the Indians. He had gone up with them almost as far as Albany to see King Philip, as he told me, and had only very lately come into these parts. Hearing, I say, that I was in this Indian town, he obtained leave to come and see me. He told me that he himself had been wounded in the leg at Captain Beers’s fight, and for some time was not able to walk except as they carried him. But he took oak leaves and laid them on his wound, and through the blessing of God he was able to travel again. Then I took oak leaves and laid them on my side, and with the blessing of God they cured me also. Yet before the cure was worked, I may say, as it is in the Psalm, “My wounds stink and are corrupt, I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly, I go mourning all the day long” (Ps 38:5-6).

I sat much alone with my poor wounded child in my lap, who moaned night and day. I had nothing to revive her body or cheer her spirits. Instead, sometimes one Indian would come and tell me one hour, “Your master will knock your child on the head,” and then a second, and then a third: “Your master will quickly knock your child on the head.”

This was the comfort I had from them. “Miserable comforters are ye all,” as Job said (Job 16:2). So for nine days I sat upon my knees, with my babe in my lap, until my flesh was raw again. When my child was just about ready to depart this sorrowful world, they told me to carry her out to another wigwam (I suppose because they did not want to be troubled with such sights). There I went with a very heavy heart, and down I sat with the picture of death in my lap. About two hours into the night, my sweet babe, like a lamb, departed this life, on February 18, 1675, being about six years and five months old. It was nine days from her first wounding that she lay in this miserable condition, without any nourishment of one kind or another, except a little cold water.

I cannot help taking notice how at another time I could not bear to be in the room where any dead person was, but now the case was changed: I had to, and could, lie down by my dead babe, side by side, all the night after. I have thought since of the wonderful goodness of God to me in preserving me in the use of my reason and senses in that distressed time, so that I did not use wicked and violent means to end my own miserable life.

In the morning, when they understood that my child was dead, they sent for me to come home to my master’s wigwam. (By “my master” in this writing must be understood Quinnapin, who was a sagamore and married King Philip’s wife’s sister. Not that he first took me; I was sold to him by another Narragansett Indian, who took me when I first came out of the garrison.) I went to take up my dead child in my arms to carry her with me, but they told me to let her alone. There was no resisting; I had to go and leave her.

After I had been at my master’s wigwam, I took the first opportunity I could get to go and look for my dead child. When I came, I asked them what they had done with her. They told me she was up on the hill. Then they went and showed me where she was, where I saw the ground freshly dug, and there they told me they had buried her. There I left that child in the wilderness, and must commit her, and myself also in this wilderness condition, to him who is above all.

God having taken away this dear child, I went to see my daughter Mary, who was in this same Indian town, at a wigwam not very far off, though we had little liberty or opportunity to see one another. She was about ten years old, and had been taken from the door at first by a Praying Indian and afterward sold for a gun. When I came in sight, she would fall to weeping. This provoked them, and they would not let me come near her, but told me to be gone, which was a heart-cutting word to me. I had one child dead, another in the wilderness, I knew not where, and the third they would not let me come near. As Jacob said, “Me have ye bereaved of my children, Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin also, all these things are against me” (Gen 42:36).

I could not sit still in this condition, but kept walking from one place to another. And as I was going along, my heart was utterly overwhelmed with the thoughts of my condition, and that I should have children, and a nation I did not know ruling over them. At this I earnestly begged the Lord that he would consider my low estate and show me a token for good, and, if it were his blessed will, some sign and hope of some relief.

And indeed the Lord quickly answered my poor prayers in some measure. For as I was going up and down mourning and lamenting my condition, my son came to me and asked me how I was. I had not seen him since the destruction of the town, and I did not know where he was until he told me himself that he was among a smaller group of Indians, whose place was about six miles off. With tears in his eyes, he asked me whether his sister Sarah was dead, and told me he had seen his sister Mary, and begged me not to be troubled on his account.

The occasion of his coming to see me at this time was this. There was, as I said, about six miles from us, a small settlement of Indians, where it seems he had been during his captivity. At this time some forces of the Indians were gathered out of our company, and some also from them (among whom was my son’s master), to go and assault and burn Medfield. During this absence of his master, his mistress brought him to see me. I took this to be a gracious answer to my earnest and sincere desire.

The next day after this, the Indians returned from Medfield, the whole company, for those who belonged to the other small company came through the town where we now were. But before they came to us, oh, the outrageous roaring and whooping there was! They began their din about a mile before they reached us. By their noise and whooping they signified how many they had killed (which at that time was twenty-three). Those who were with us at home gathered together as soon as they heard the whooping, and every time the others counted over their number, those at home gave a shout, so that the very earth rang again. And so they continued until those who had been on the expedition had come up to the sagamore’s wigwam. And then, oh, the hideous insulting and triumphing there was over some Englishmen’s scalps that they had taken (as their manner is) and brought with them.

I cannot help taking notice of the wonderful mercy of God to me in those afflictions, in sending me a Bible. One of the Indians who came from the Medfield fight had brought some plunder. He came to me and asked whether I would have a Bible; he had got one in his basket. I was glad of it, and asked him whether he thought the Indians would let me read. He answered yes. So I took the Bible, and in that melancholy time it came into my mind to read first Deuteronomy 28. I did so, and when I had read it, my dark heart reasoned in this way: that there was no mercy for me, that the blessings were gone and the curses had come in their place, and that I had lost my opportunity. But the Lord helped me still to go on reading until I came to the first seven verses of chapter 30 (Deut 30:1-7). There I found that mercy was promised again if we would return to him by repentance; and that though we were scattered from one end of the earth to the other, yet the Lord would gather us together and turn all those curses upon our enemies. I do not wish to live long enough to forget this Scripture, and what comfort it was to me.

Now the Indians began to talk of moving from this place, some one way and some another. There were now nine English captives in this place besides myself, all of them children except one woman. I got an opportunity to go and take my leave of them, since they were to go one way and I another. I asked them whether they were earnest with God for deliverance. They told me they did as they were able, and it was some comfort to me that the Lord stirred up children to look to him. The woman, Goodwife Joslin, told me she would never see me again, and that she could find it in her heart to run away. I urged her not to run away by any means, for we were nearly thirty miles from any English town, and she was very big with child, with only one week to go before her time, and had another child in her arms, two years old. There were bad rivers to cross, and we were feeble from our poor and coarse fare. I had my Bible with me. I pulled it out and asked her whether she would read. We opened the Bible and lighted on Psalm 27, in which we especially took notice of the last verse: “Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart, wait I say on the Lord” (Ps 27:14).

And now I must part with that little company I had. Here I parted from my daughter Mary (whom I never saw again until I saw her in Dorchester, returned from captivity), and from four little cousins and neighbors, some of whom I never saw afterward. The Lord alone knows what became of them.

Among them also was that poor woman I mentioned before, who came to a sad end, as some of the company told me during my travels. She had much grief on her spirit about her miserable condition, being so near her time, and she would often ask the Indians to let her go home. They were not willing to allow that, and yet they were vexed by her constant pleading. So they gathered a great company together around her, stripped her naked, and set her in the middle of them. When they had sung and danced around her (in their hellish manner) as long as they pleased, they knocked her on the head, and the child in her arms with her. When they had done that, they made a fire and put them both into it. Then they told the other children who were with them that if they attempted to go home, they would serve them the same way. The children said she did not shed one tear, but prayed the whole time.

But to return to my own journey. We traveled about half a day, or a little more, and came to a desolate place in the wilderness, where there had been no wigwams or inhabitants before. We came to this place about the middle of the afternoon, cold and wet, and snowy, and hungry, and weary, with no refreshment for anyone but the cold ground to sit on and our poor Indian fare.

Heart-aching thoughts I had here about my poor children, who were scattered up and down among the wild beasts of the forest. My head was light and dizzy (whether from hunger, or hard lodging, or trouble, or all of them together), my knees were feeble, and my body was raw from sitting doubled up night and day. I cannot express to anyone the affliction that lay on my spirit, but the Lord helped me at that time to express it to him. I opened my Bible to read, and the Lord brought that precious Scripture to me: “Thus saith the Lord, refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy” (Jer 31:16). This was a sweet cordial to me when I was ready to faint. Many and many a time I have sat down and wept sweetly over this Scripture.

We stayed at this place about four days.

The reason for their moving at this time, as I thought, was the English army, which was near and following them. For they went a considerable way as if they were running for their lives, and then they made a stop. They chose some of their strongest men and sent them back to keep the English army engaged while the rest escaped. And then, like Jehu, they marched on furiously, with their old and with their young. Some carried their old, decrepit mothers; some carried one, and some another. Four of them carried a great Indian on a litter, but going through a thick wood with him, they were hindered and could make no haste. So they took him on their backs and carried him, one at a time, until they came to the Baquaug River.

On a Friday, a little after noon, we came to this river. When the whole company had come up and gathered together, I thought I would count them, but they were so many, and somewhat in motion, that it was beyond my skill. On this journey I was somewhat favored in my load because of my wound; I carried only my knitting and two quarts of parched meal. Being very faint, I asked my mistress to give me one spoonful of the meal, but she would not give me a taste.

They quickly set to cutting dry trees to make rafts to carry them over the river, and soon my turn came to go over. Thanks to some brush they had laid on the raft to sit on, I did not wet my foot, though many of them at the other end were in water to the middle of the leg. This cannot but be acknowledged as a favor of God to my weakened body, for it was a very cold time. I had never before been acquainted with such doings or such dangers. “When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee” (Isa 43:2). A certain number of us got over the river that night, but it was the night after the Sabbath before the whole company was across. On the Saturday they boiled an old horse’s leg that they had gotten, and so we drank the broth as soon as they thought it was ready; and when it was almost all gone, they filled it up again.

The first week I was among them, I hardly ate anything. The second week I found my stomach growing very faint for want of something, and yet it was very hard to get their filthy trash down. But by the third week, though I could remember how my stomach used to turn against this or that, and how I would have starved and died before I could eat such things, yet they were sweet and savory to my taste.

At this time I was knitting a pair of white cotton stockings for my mistress, and I had not yet worked on a Sabbath day. When the Sabbath came, they told me to go to work. I told them it was the Sabbath day and asked them to let me rest, and I told them I would do that much more tomorrow. To this they answered that they would break my face.

And here I cannot help taking notice of the strange providence of God in preserving the heathen. They were many hundreds, old and young, some sick and some lame, and many had papooses on their backs. Most of those with us at this time were squaws, and they traveled with everything they had, bag and baggage. And yet they got over this same river, and on Monday they set their wigwams on fire, and away they went. On that very day the English army came after them to this river and saw the smoke of their wigwams, and yet this river stopped them. God did not give them the courage or the vigor to cross after us. We were not ready for so great a mercy as victory and deliverance. If we had been, God would have found a way for the English to cross this river, as well as for the Indians with their squaws and children and all their luggage. “Oh that my people had hearkened to me, and Israel had walked in my ways, I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries” (Ps 81:13-14).

On Monday (as I said) they set their wigwams on fire and went away. It was a cold morning, and before us there was a great brook with ice on it. Some waded through it, up to the knees and higher, but others went on until they came to a beaver dam, and I was among them; there, through the good providence of God, I did not wet my foot. I went along that day mourning and lamenting, leaving my own country ever farther behind and traveling into the vast and howling wilderness, and I understood something of Lot’s wife’s temptation, when she looked back. We came that day to a great swamp, and by the side of it we took up our lodging that night.

When I came to the brow of the hill that looked toward the swamp, I thought we had come to a great Indian town (though there were none there but our own company). The Indians were as thick as the trees: it seemed as if a thousand hatchets were going at once. If one looked ahead, there was nothing but Indians; behind, nothing but Indians; and so on either side, with me in the midst and no Christian soul near me. And yet how the Lord has preserved me in safety! Oh, the experience I have had of the goodness of God, to me and mine!

After a restless and hungry night there, we had a wearisome time of it the next day. The swamp by which we lay was, as it were, a deep dungeon, and there was an exceedingly high and steep hill in front of it. Before I got to the top of the hill, I thought my heart and legs and all would have broken down and failed me. What with faintness and soreness of body, it was a grievous day of travel for me. As we went along, I saw a place where English cattle had been. That was a comfort to me, such as it was. Soon after that we came to an English path, which so moved me that I thought I could gladly have lain down and died.

That day, a little after noon, we came to Squakheag, where the Indians quickly spread themselves over the deserted English fields, gleaning what they could find. Some picked up ears of wheat that had crumpled down; some found ears of Indian corn; some found groundnuts; and others found sheaves of wheat that were frozen together in the shock, and set to threshing them out. I myself got two ears of Indian corn, and while I merely turned my back, one of them was stolen from me, which troubled me greatly.

An Indian came to them at that time with a basket of horse liver. I asked him to give me a piece. “What,” he said, “can you eat horse liver?” I told him I would try, if he would give me a piece. He did, and I laid it on the coals to roast. But before it was half ready they got half of it away from me, so that I was forced to take the rest and eat it as it was, with the blood about my mouth. And yet it was a savory bite to me: “For to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet” (Prov 27:7).

It seemed to me a solemn sight, to see fields of wheat and Indian corn forsaken and spoiled, and what remained of them to be food for our merciless enemies. That night we had a dish of wheat for our supper.

The next morning we had to go over the river, that is, the Connecticut, to meet with King Philip. They had carried two canoes full across, and on the next turn I myself was to go. But as I had my foot on the canoe to step in, there was a sudden outcry among them, and I had to step back. Instead of going over the river, I had to go four or five miles farther north up the river. Some of the Indians ran one way and some another. The cause of this rout, as I thought, was that they had spotted some English scouts who were in the area.

On this march up the river, about noon, the company made a stop and sat down, some to eat and others to rest. As I sat among them, brooding over things past, my son Joseph unexpectedly came to me. We asked about each other’s welfare, lamenting our miserable condition and the change that had come upon us. We had had husband and father, and children, and sisters, and friends, and relations, and house, and home, and many comforts of this life. But now we may say, as Job did, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

I asked him whether he would like to read. He told me he earnestly wanted to, so I gave him my Bible, and he lighted upon that comforting Scripture: “I shall not die but live, and declare the works of the Lord: the Lord hath chastened me sore, yet he hath not given me over to death” (Ps 118:17-18). “Look here, Mother,” he said, “did you read this?”

And here I may take the occasion to mention one principal reason for my setting down these lines. It is, as the psalmist says, “to declare the works of the Lord” (Ps 118:17), and his wonderful power in carrying us along, preserving us in the wilderness while we were under the enemy’s hand, and bringing us back in safety again; and his goodness in bringing to my hand so many comforting and fitting Scriptures in my distress.

But to return: we traveled on till night, and in the morning we had to go over the river to Philip’s crew. When I was in the canoe, I could not help being amazed at the great crowd of pagans on the bank on the other side. When I came ashore, they gathered all around me, while I sat alone in the middle. I watched them ask one another questions, and laugh, and rejoice over their gains and victories. Then my heart began to fail, and I broke down weeping, which was the first time, as far as I can remember, that I wept in front of them. Although I had met with so much affliction, and my heart was many times ready to break, yet I could not shed one tear in their sight. Instead, I had been in a daze all this while, like someone stunned. But now I may say, as in Psalm 137:1, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down: yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.”

Then one of them asked me why I was weeping. I could hardly tell what to say, yet I answered that they would kill me. “No,” he said, “none will hurt you.” Then one of them came and gave me two spoonfuls of meal to comfort me, and another gave me half a pint of peas, which was worth more than many bushels at another time.

Then I went to see King Philip. He told me to come in and sit down, and he asked me whether I would smoke (a usual courtesy nowadays among saints and sinners alike), but this in no way suited me. For though I had used tobacco in the past, I had given it up ever since I was first taken. It seems to be a bait the devil lays to make people waste their precious time. I remember with shame how, in the past, when I had smoked two or three pipes, I was immediately ready for another, such a bewitching thing it is. But I thank God that he has now given me power over it. Surely there are many who could be better employed than lying around sucking on a stinking tobacco pipe.

Now the Indians gathered their forces to go against Northampton. The night before, one of them went around yelling and hooting to announce the plan. At that, they set to boiling groundnuts and parching corn (as many as had any) for their provisions, and in the morning away they went.

During my stay in this place, Philip asked me to make a shirt for his boy. I did, and he gave me a shilling for it. I offered the money to my master, but he told me to keep it, and with it I bought a piece of horseflesh. Afterward he asked me to make a cap for his boy, and for that he invited me to dinner. I went, 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 had never tasted more pleasant food in my life.

There was a squaw who asked me to make a shirt for her sannup, and for it she gave me a piece of bear. Another asked me to knit a pair of stockings, and for that she gave me a quart of peas. I boiled my peas and bear together and invited my master and mistress to dinner. But the proud dame would eat nothing, because I served them both in one dish, except one bite that he gave her on the point of his knife.

Hearing that my son had come to this place, I went to see him, and found him lying flat on the ground. I asked him how he could sleep like that. He answered that he was not asleep but praying, and that he lay that way so they would not notice what he was doing. I pray God he may remember these things now that he has returned in safety.

At this place (the sun now getting higher), what with the rays and heat of the sun and the smoke of the wigwams, I thought I would go blind. I could hardly tell one wigwam from another. There was one Mary Thurston of Medfield here, who, seeing how it was with me, lent me a hat to wear. But as soon as I was gone, the squaw who owned that Mary Thurston came running after me and took it back again.

Here was the squaw who gave me one spoonful of meal. I put it in my pocket to keep it safe, yet somebody stole it anyway, but put five kernels of Indian corn in its place. Those kernels were the most food I had for one day of my travels.

The Indians returning from Northampton brought with them some horses and sheep and other things they had taken. I asked them to carry me to Albany on one of those horses and sell me for gunpowder, for they had sometimes talked of doing that. I had utterly lost hope of getting home on foot the way I had come. I could hardly bear to think of the many weary steps I had taken to come to this place.

But instead of going either to Albany or homeward, we had to go five miles up the river and then cross over it. Here we stayed a while. A sorry Indian lived here who asked me to make him a shirt. When I had made it, he would pay me nothing. But since he lived by the riverside, where I often went to fetch water, I kept reminding him and asking for my pay. At last he told me that if I would make another shirt, for a papoose not yet born, he would give me a knife, which he did when I had finished it. I carried the knife in, and my master asked me to give it to him. I was not a little glad that I had anything they would accept and be pleased with.

While we were at this place, my master’s maid came home. She had been gone three weeks into the Narragansett country to fetch corn, where they had stored some up in the ground. She brought home about a peck and a half of corn. This was about the time that their great captain, Naananto, was killed in the Narragansett country.

My son was now about a mile from me, so I asked permission to go and see him. They told me to go, and away I went. But I quickly lost my way, traveling over hills and through swamps, and could not find the way to him. And I cannot help marveling at the wonderful power and goodness of God to me in this: though I was away from home and met with all sorts of Indians, and ones I had no knowledge of, and there was no Christian soul near me, yet not one of them offered me the least imaginable wrong. I turned homeward again and met my master, and he showed me the way to my son. When I came to him, I found him unwell, and besides that he had a boil on his side which troubled him greatly. We grieved together a while, as the Lord helped us, and then I went back again.

When I had returned, I found myself as unsatisfied as I was before. I went up and down mourning and lamenting, and my spirit was ready to sink with the thoughts of my poor children. My son was ill, and I could not stop thinking of his mournful looks, with no Christian friend near him to do any office of love for him, either for soul or body. And my poor girl: I did not know where she was, nor whether she was sick or well, alive or dead. With these thoughts I went to my Bible (my great comfort at that time), and this Scripture came to my hand: “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee” (Ps 55:22).

But I had to go and look for something to satisfy my hunger. Going among the wigwams, I went into one and found a squaw there who showed herself very kind to me and gave me a piece of bear. I put it into my pocket and came home, but I could find no opportunity to broil it, for fear they would take it from me. So there it lay all that day and night in my stinking pocket. In the morning I went to the same squaw, who had a kettle of groundnuts boiling. I asked her to let me boil my piece of bear in her kettle, which she did, and she gave me some groundnuts to eat with it. I cannot help thinking how pleasant it was to me. I have at times seen bear baked very handsomely among the English, and some people like it, but the very thought that it was bear made me tremble. Yet now something was savory to me that one would think was enough to turn the stomach of a brute beast.

One bitterly cold day I could find no room to sit down before the fire. I went out and did not know what to do, but I went into another wigwam, where they were also sitting around the fire. The squaw there laid down a skin for me, told me to sit down, gave me some groundnuts, and told me to come again. She also told me they would buy me if they were able. And yet these were strangers to me whom I had never seen before.

That day a small part of the company moved about three-quarters of a mile, intending to go farther the next day. When they came to the place where they meant to lodge and had pitched their wigwams, I was hungry, so I went back again to the place where we had been before, to get something to eat. I was encouraged by the squaw’s kindness, for she had told me to come again. While I was there, an Indian came looking for me, and when he had found me, he kicked me all the way along. I went home and found venison roasting that night, but they would not give me one bit of it. Sometimes I met with favor, and sometimes with nothing but frowns.

The next morning they set out on their travels, intending a day’s journey up the river. I took my load on my back, and we soon came to wade over the river, and then passed over tiresome and wearisome hills. One hill was so steep that I had to creep up on my knees and hold on to the twigs and bushes to keep myself from falling backward. My head was also so light that I usually reeled as I went. But I hope all these wearisome steps that I have taken are only a forewarning to me of the heavenly rest. “I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me” (Ps 119:75).

It was on a Sabbath morning that they got ready to travel. That morning I asked my master whether he would sell me to my husband. He answered me, “Nux” (yes), which greatly rejoiced my spirit. Before we set out, my mistress had gone to the burial of a papoose. When she came back, she found me sitting and reading in my Bible. She snatched it out of my hand and threw it out of doors. I ran out, caught it up, and put it into my pocket, and I never let her see it again.

Then they packed up their things to be gone, and gave me my load. I complained that it was too heavy, and at that she slapped me in the face and told me to go. I lifted up my heart to God, hoping that redemption was not far off, all the more because their insolence grew worse and worse.

But the thought of going homeward (for that was the way we were heading) cheered my spirit greatly, and made my burden seem light, almost nothing at all. But, to my amazement and great perplexity, the scale soon turned. When we had gone a little way, my mistress suddenly announced that she would go no farther, but would turn back, and said I must go back with her. She called her sannup, her husband, and wanted him to go back too. But he would not. He said he would go on and come back to us in three days.

At this, I confess, my spirit was very impatient and almost raging. I felt I would as soon have died as gone back. I cannot describe the trouble I was in over it; but back I had to go all the same. As soon as I had the chance, I took my Bible to read, and this quieting Scripture came to hand: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps 46:10). It stilled my spirit for the present. But I concluded that I had a sore time of trial to go through, now that my master was gone, for he seemed to me the best friend I had among the Indians, both in cold and in hunger. And it quickly proved so.

Down I sat, with my heart as full as it could hold, and yet I was so hungry that I could not sit still either. So I went out to see what I could find, and walking among the trees I found six acorns and two chestnuts, which were some refreshment to me. Toward night I gathered some sticks for my own comfort, so that I would not lie cold. But when we came to lie down, they told me to go out and lie somewhere else, for they had company come in besides their own people (so they said). I told them I did not know where to go. They told me to go and look. I told them that if I went to another wigwam, the people there would be angry and send me home again. Then one of the company drew his sword and told me he would run me through if I did not go at once. So I had no choice but to give in to this rude fellow and go out into the night, not knowing where.

My own eyes have since seen that fellow walking up and down Boston, posing as a friendly Indian, along with several others of the same sort.

I went to one wigwam, and they told me they had no room. Then I went to another, and they said the same. At last an old Indian told me to come to him, and his squaw gave me some groundnuts. She also gave me something to lay under my head, and we had a good fire. Through the good providence of God, I had a comfortable lodging that night. In the morning another Indian told me to come at night and he would give me six groundnuts, which I did.

At this place and time we were about two miles from the Connecticut River. In the morning we went to the river to gather groundnuts, and came back again that night. I went with a good load on my back, for whenever they went anywhere, even a little way, they would carry all their clutter with them. I told them the skin was off my back, but the only comforting answer I had from them was this: that it would be no matter if my head were off too.

Instead of going toward the Bay, which was what I wanted, I had to go with them five or six miles down the river into a mighty thicket of brush, where we stayed almost a fortnight. Here a woman asked me to make a shirt for her papoose, and for it she gave me a bowl of broth thickened with meal made from the bark of a tree; and to make it better, she had put into it about a handful of peas and a few roasted groundnuts.

I had not seen my son for quite a while, and here was an Indian whom I asked about him, asking when he had seen him. He answered that at such a time his master had roasted him, and that he himself had eaten a piece of him as big as his two fingers, and that he was very good meat. But the Lord upheld my spirit under this discouragement, and I considered their horrible addiction to lying, and that there is not one of them who makes it the least matter of conscience to speak the truth.

In this place, on a cold night, as I lay by the fire, I moved away a stick that was keeping the heat from me. A squaw moved it back down again, and when I looked up at that, she threw a handful of ashes in my eyes. I thought I would be completely blinded and never see again. But as I lay down, the water ran out of my eyes and carried the dirt with it, so that by morning I had recovered my sight. Yet on this and similar occasions, I hope it is not too much to say with Job, “Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends, for the hand of the Lord has touched me” (Job 19:21).

And here I cannot help remembering how many times, sitting in their wigwams and musing on things past, I would suddenly leap up and run out as if I had been at home, forgetting where I was and what my condition was. But when I was outside and saw nothing but wilderness and woods and a company of barbarous heathens, my mind quickly came back to me. That made me think of what is spoken concerning Samson, who said, “I will go out and shake myself as at other times,” but “he wist not that the Lord was departed from him” (Judg 16:20).

About this time I began to think that all my hopes of restoration would come to nothing. I thought of the English army, and hoped for their coming and for being taken by them, but that failed. I hoped to be carried to Albany, as the Indians had talked of before, but that failed too. I thought of being sold to my husband, as my master had said, but instead of that my master himself was gone and I was left behind, so that my spirit was now quite ready to sink.

I asked them to let me go out and pick up some sticks, so that I might get alone and pour out my heart to the Lord. Then I also took my Bible to read, but I found no comfort in it either, though many times I used to find it there. That is how easily God can dry up the streams of Scripture comfort from us. Yet I can say that in all my sorrows and afflictions, God did not leave me to let my impatience work against him, as if his ways were unrighteous. But I knew that he laid upon me less than I deserved.

Afterward, before this dismal time ended for me, I was turning the leaves of my Bible, and the Lord brought me some Scriptures that revived me a little, such as Isaiah 55:8: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.” And also Psalm 37:5: “Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass.”

About this time they came yelping from Hadley, where they had killed three Englishmen, and they brought one captive with them, namely Thomas Read. They all gathered around the poor man, asking him many questions. I wanted to go and see him too, and when I came, he was crying bitterly, supposing they would soon kill him. So I asked one of them whether they intended to kill him. He answered that they would not. Thomas Read being a little cheered by that, I asked him about the welfare of my husband. He told me he had seen him at such a time in the Bay, and he was well, but very melancholy.

By this I understood for certain (though I had suspected it before) that whatever the Indians had told me about him was vanity and lies. Some of them told me he was dead and they had killed him. Some said he had married again, that the governor had wished him to marry and told him he could have his choice, and that everyone was persuaded I was dead. So like were these barbarous creatures to him who was a liar from the beginning.

As I was sitting once in the wigwam here, Philip’s maid came in with the child in her arms and asked me to give her a piece of my apron to make a flap for it. I told her I would not. Then my mistress told me to give it, but still I said no. The maid told me that if I would not give her a piece, she would tear a piece off it. I told her I would tear her coat, then. With that my mistress rose up, took up a stick big enough to have killed me, and struck at me with it; but I stepped out of the way, and she struck the stick into the mat of the wigwam. While she was pulling it out, I ran to the maid and gave her my whole apron, and so that storm blew over.

Hearing that my son had come to this place, I went to see him and told him his father was well, but very melancholy. He told me he was as much grieved for his father as for himself. I wondered at his words, for I thought I had enough on my spirit concerning myself to make me forget my husband and everyone else, they being safe among their friends. He also told me that a while before, his master (together with other Indians) had been going to the French for powder, but on the way the Mohawks met them and killed four of their company, which made the rest turn back again. For this I wish that he and I may bless the Lord, for it might have gone worse with him had he been sold to the French than it proved to be in his remaining with the Indians.

I went to see an English youth in this place, one John Gilbert of Springfield. I found him lying outdoors on the ground. I asked him how he was. He told me he was very sick with diarrhea from eating so much blood. They had turned him out of the wigwam, and with him an Indian papoose, almost dead (whose parents had been killed), on a bitter cold day, without fire or clothes. The young man himself had nothing on but his shirt and waistcoat. This sight was enough to melt a heart of flint. There they lay quivering in the cold, the youth curled round like a dog, the papoose stretched out with his eyes and nose and mouth full of dirt, and yet alive and groaning. I advised John to go and get to some fire. He told me he could not stand, but I kept urging him, for fear he would lie there and die, and with great difficulty I got him to a fire and went home myself.

As soon as I got home, his master’s daughter came after me to find out what I had done with the Englishman. I told her I had got him to a fire in such a place. Now I had good need to pray Paul’s prayer, “That we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men” (2 Thess 3:2). To satisfy her I went along with her and brought her to him. But before I got home again, word had spread that I was running away and taking the English youth along with me. So as soon as I came in, they began to rant and domineer, asking me where I had been and what I had been doing, and saying they would knock him on the head. I told them I had been seeing the English youth, and that I would not run away. They told me I lied, and taking up a hatchet, they came to me and said they would knock me down if I stirred out again; and so they confined me to the wigwam.

Now I may say with David, “I am in a great strait” (2 Sam 24:14). If I keep in, I must die of hunger, and if I go out, I must be knocked on the head. This distressed condition lasted that day and half the next. And then the Lord remembered me, whose mercies are great. Then an Indian came to me with a pair of stockings that were too big for him, and he wanted me to unravel them and knit them to fit him. I showed myself willing, and told him to ask my mistress if I might go along with him a little way. She said yes, I might, and I was more than a little refreshed by that news, that I had my liberty again. Then I went along with him, and he gave me some roasted groundnuts, which revived my feeble stomach again.

Once out of her sight, I had time and liberty again to look into my Bible, which was my guide by day and my pillow by night. Now that comforting Scripture presented itself to me: “For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee” (Isa 54:7). So the Lord carried me along from one time to another, and made good to me this precious promise and many others.

Then my son came to see me, and I asked his master to let him stay with me a while, so that I might comb his head and look him over, for he was almost overcome with lice. When I had finished, he told me he was very hungry, but I had nothing to relieve him. I told him to go into the wigwams as he went along and see if he could get anything among them. He did, and it seems he stayed a little too long, for his master was angry with him, beat him, and then sold him. Then he came running to tell me he had a new master, and that this master had already given him some groundnuts. Then I went along with him to his new master, who told me he loved him and that he would lack nothing. So his master carried him away, and I never saw him afterward until I saw him at Piscataqua in Portsmouth.

That night they told me to go out of the wigwam again. My mistress’s papoose was sick, and it died that night, and there was one benefit in it: there was more room. I went to a wigwam, and they told me to come in, and gave me a skin to lie on and a bowl of venison and groundnuts, which was a choice dish among them. The next day they buried the papoose, and afterward, both morning and evening, a company came to mourn and howl with her, though I confess I could not grieve much along with them.

Many sorrowful days I had in this place, often getting alone: “Like a crane, or a swallow, so did I chatter; I did mourn as a dove, mine eyes fail with looking upward. Oh, Lord, I am oppressed; undertake for me” (Isa 38:14). I could tell the Lord, as Hezekiah did, “Remember now, O Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth” (Isa 38:3). Now I had time to examine all my ways. My conscience did not accuse me of unrighteousness toward anyone; yet I saw how careless a creature I had been in my walk with God. As David said, “Against thee, thee only have I sinned” (Ps 51:4); and I might say with the poor publican, “God be merciful unto me a sinner” (Luke 18:13).

On the Sabbath days I could look at the sun and think how people were going to the house of God to have their souls refreshed, and then home to have their bodies refreshed too; but I was destitute of both. I might say, as of the poor prodigal, “He would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat, and no man gave unto him” (Luke 15:16). For I must say with him, “Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and in thy sight” (Luke 15:21).

I remembered how, on the night before and after the Sabbath, when my family was around me, and relatives and neighbors with us, we could pray and sing, and then refresh our bodies with God’s good provisions, and then have a comfortable bed to lie down on. But instead of all this, I had only a little swill for the body, and then, like a swine, must lie down on the ground. I cannot express to anyone the sorrow that lay upon my spirit; the Lord knows it. Yet that comforting Scripture would often come to my mind: “For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee” (Isa 54:7).

Now we had to pack up and leave this thicket, bending our course toward the Bay towns. I had nothing to eat along the way that day but a few crumbs of cake that an Indian had given my girl the same day we were taken. She gave it to me, and I put it in my pocket. There it lay until it was so moldy (for want of good baking) that no one could tell what it was made of. It fell all to crumbs and grew so dry and hard that it was like little flints. And this refreshed me many times when I was ready to faint. It was in my thoughts when I put it into my mouth that if I ever returned, I would tell the world what a blessing the Lord gave to such humble food.

As we went along, they killed a deer with a young one in her. They gave me a piece of the fawn, and it was so young and tender that one could eat the bones as well as the flesh, and yet I thought it very good. When night came on we sat down. It rained, but they quickly put up a bark wigwam, where I lay dry that night. I looked out in the morning and could tell by the steam rising off them that many of them had lain in the rain all night. Thus the Lord dealt mercifully with me many times, and I fared better than many of them.

In the morning they took the deer’s blood, put it into its stomach, and boiled it that way. I could eat none of that, though they ate it with relish. And yet they were so particular in other things that when I had fetched water and put the dish I dipped the water with into the kettle of water I had brought, they would say they would knock me down, for they said it was a slovenly trick.

We went on our way. I had got one handful of groundnuts to sustain me that day. They gave me my load, and I went on cheerfully (with the thought of going homeward), my burden weighing more on my back than on my spirit. We came to the Baquaug River again that day, and we stayed near it for a few days. Sometimes one of them would give me a pipe, another a little tobacco, another a little salt, and I would trade these for a little food.

I cannot help thinking what a wolfish appetite people have when they are starving. Many times, when they gave me something hot, I was so greedy that I would burn my mouth, and it would hurt for hours afterward; and yet I would soon do the same thing again. And once I had become thoroughly hungry, I was never satisfied again. For though it sometimes happened that I got enough, and ate until I could eat no more, I was still as unsatisfied as I was when I began. And now I could see that Scripture fulfilled (for there are many Scriptures that we do not notice, or do not understand, until we are afflicted): “Thou shalt eat and not be satisfied” (Mic 6:14).

Now I could see more than ever before the miseries that sin has brought upon us. Many times I was ready to burst out against the heathen, but the Scripture would quiet me again: “Shall there be evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it?” (Amos 3:6). May the Lord help me to make right use of his Word, and may I learn that great lesson: “He hath showed thee (Oh man) what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God? Hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it” (Mic 6:8-9).

We began this remove by wading across the Baquaug River. The water was up to our knees, and the current was very swift, and so cold that I thought it would have cut me in two. I was so weak and feeble that I reeled as I went along, and I thought that there I must end my days at last, after bearing so much and getting through so many difficulties. The Indians stood laughing to see me staggering along. But in my distress the Lord gave me experience of the truth and goodness of that promise: “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee” (Isa 43:2). Then I sat down to put on my stockings and shoes, with the tears running down my eyes and many sorrowful thoughts in my heart, but I got up to go along with them.

Quickly an Indian came up to us and told them that I must go to Wachusett to my master, for a letter had come from the Council to the sagamores about redeeming the captives, and there would be another in fourteen days, and I must be there ready. My heart had been so heavy before that I could scarcely speak or walk along the path; and yet now it was so light that I could run. My strength seemed to come back to me and to revive my feeble knees and aching heart. Yet it pleased them to go only one mile that night, and there we stayed two days.

In that time a company of Indians came to us, nearly thirty, all on horseback. My heart skipped within me, for at first sight I thought they were Englishmen, since they were dressed in English clothes, with hats, white neckcloths, and sashes about their waists, and ribbons on their shoulders. But when they came near, there was a vast difference between the lovely faces of Christians and the foul looks of those heathens, which greatly dampened my spirit again.

This was a comfortable remove for me, because of my hopes. They gave me a pack, and along we went cheerfully. But my will quickly proved greater than my strength. Having little or no refreshment, my strength failed me, and my spirits were almost entirely gone. Now I may say with David, “I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me. I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down like the locust; my knees are weak through fasting, and my flesh faileth of fatness” (Ps 109:22-24).

At night we came to an Indian town, and the Indians sat down by a wigwam talking, but I was almost spent and could hardly speak. I laid down my load and went into the wigwam, and there sat an Indian boiling horses’ feet. (They were accustomed to eat the flesh first, and when the feet were old and dried, and they had nothing else, they would cut off the feet and use them.) I asked him to give me a little of his broth, or the water they were boiling them in. He took a dish and gave me one spoonful of samp, and told me to take as much of the broth as I wanted. Then I put some of the hot water into the samp and drank it up, and my spirit came back again.

He also gave me a piece of the ruff, or lining, of the small guts, and I broiled it on the coals. And now I may say with Jonathan, “See, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlightened, because I tasted a little of this honey” (1 Sam 14:29). Now my spirit is revived again. However slight the means may be, yet if the Lord bestows his blessing on them, they will refresh both soul and body.

We took up our packs and along we went, but a wearisome day I had of it. As we went along I saw an Englishman stripped naked and lying dead on the ground, but I did not know who it was. Then we came to another Indian town, where we stayed all night. In this town there were four English children, captives, and one of them was my own sister’s child. I went to see how she was doing, and she was well, considering her condition as a captive. I would have stayed that night with her, but the people who owned her would not allow it.

Then I went into another wigwam, where they were boiling corn and beans. It was a lovely sight to see, but I could not get a taste of it. Then I went to another wigwam, where there were two of the English children. The squaw was boiling horses’ feet, and she cut me off a little piece, and gave one of the English children a piece as well. Being very hungry, I had quickly eaten mine up. But the child could not bite into it, it was so tough and sinewy; the child just lay there sucking, gnawing, chewing, and slobbering on it in mouth and hand. Then I took it from the child and ate it myself, and savory it was to my taste. Now I may say, as Job did, “The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat” (Job 6:7). So the Lord made that a pleasant refreshment which at another time would have been an abomination.

Then I went home to my mistress’s wigwam, and they told me I had disgraced my master by begging, and that if I did it any more, they would knock me on the head. I told them they might as well knock me on the head as starve me to death.

They said, when we set out, that we must travel to Wachusett that day. It was a bitter, weary day for me, for I had now been traveling three days in a row without resting any day between. At last, after many weary steps, I saw the Wachusett hills, though they were many miles off. Then we came to a great swamp, and we traveled through it up to our knees in mud and water, which was heavy going for one already worn out. I was almost spent, and I thought I would sink down at last and never get out. But I may say, as in Psalm 94:18, “When my foot slipped, thy mercy, O Lord, held me up.”

As we went along, I had my life indeed, but little spirit left. Philip, who was in the company, came up and took me by the hand and said, “Two weeks more and you shall be mistress again.” I asked him if he was telling the truth. He answered, “Yes, and quickly you shall come to your master again.” My master had been gone from us three weeks.

After many weary steps we came to Wachusett, where my master was, and I was glad to see him. He asked me when I had last washed. I told him not this month. Then he fetched me some water himself and told me to wash, and he gave me the looking glass to see how I looked. He also told his squaw to give me something to eat, so she gave me a dish of beans and meat and a little groundnut cake. I was wonderfully revived by this favor shown me: “He made them also to be pitied of all those that carried them captives” (Ps 106:46).

My master had three squaws, and he lived sometimes with one and sometimes with another. One was this old squaw at whose wigwam I was, and with whom my master had been those three weeks. Another was Weetamoo, with whom I had lived and served all this while. A severe and proud dame she was. Every day she spent as much time dressing herself neatly as any of the gentry of the land: powdering her hair and painting her face, going about with necklaces, with jewels in her ears and bracelets on her hands. When she had dressed herself, her work was to make girdles of wampum and beads. The third squaw was a younger one, by whom he had two papooses.

By the time the old squaw, with whom my master was staying, had refreshed me, Weetamoo’s maid came to call me home, and at that I began to weep. Then the old squaw told me, to encourage me, that if I needed food I should come to her, and that I could sleep there in her wigwam. Then I went with the maid, and quickly came back again and lodged there. The squaw laid a mat under me and a good rug over me. It was the first time any such kindness had been shown me. I understood that Weetamoo thought that if she let me go and serve with the old squaw, she would be in danger of losing not only my service but the ransom money as well. And I was not a little glad to hear this, for it raised my hopes that in God’s due time there would be an end of this sorrowful hour.

Then an Indian came and asked me to knit him three pairs of stockings, for which I got a hat and a silk handkerchief. Then another asked me to make her a shift, for which she gave me an apron.

Then Tom and Peter came with the second letter from the Council about the captives. Though they were Indians, I took them by the hand and burst into tears. My heart was so full that I could not speak to them. But when I had recovered myself, I asked them how my husband was, and all my friends and acquaintances. They said, “They are all very well but melancholy.” They brought me two biscuits and a pound of tobacco. The tobacco I quickly gave away.

When it was all gone, one of them asked me to give him a pipe of tobacco. I told him it was all gone. Then he began to rant and threaten. I told him that when my husband came I would give him some. “Hang him, rogue,” he said, “I will knock out his brains if he comes here.” And then again, in the same breath, they would say that if a hundred men should come without guns, they would do them no harm. So unstable and like madmen they were. And so, fearing the worst, I did not dare send word to my husband, though there was some thought of his coming to redeem me and fetch me home, because I did not know what might follow. For there was little more trust to be put in them than in the master they served.

When the letter had come, the sagamores met to consult about the captives, and they called me to them to ask how much my husband would give to redeem me. When I came, I sat down among them, as I was accustomed to do, as their manner is. Then they told me to stand up, and said they were the General Court. They told me to say what I thought he would give. Now, knowing that everything we had was destroyed by the Indians, I was in a great strait. I thought that if I named only a little, it would be scorned and would hinder the matter; and if I named a great sum, I did not know where it could be found. Yet, taking a chance, I said, “Twenty pounds,” but asked them to take less. They would not hear of that, but sent the message to Boston that I could be redeemed for twenty pounds.

It was a Praying Indian who wrote their letter for them. There was another Praying Indian who told me that he had a brother who would not eat horse. His conscience was so tender and scrupulous (though it was as large as hell when it came to the destruction of poor Christians). Then he told me he had read his brother this Scripture: “There was a famine in Samaria, and behold they besieged it, until an ass’s head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a kab of dove’s dung, for five pieces of silver” (2 Kgs 6:25). He explained this passage to his brother and showed him that it was lawful to eat in a famine what is not lawful at another time. “And now,” he said, “he will eat horse with any Indian of them all.”

There was another Praying Indian who, when he had done all the mischief he could, betrayed his own father into English hands, to buy his own life by it. Another Praying Indian was at the Sudbury fight, though, as he deserved, he was afterward hanged for it. There was another Praying Indian so wicked and cruel as to wear a string around his neck strung with Christians’ fingers.

Another Praying Indian, when they went to the Sudbury fight, went with them, and his squaw went with him too, with her papoose on her back. Before they went to that fight, they gathered a company together to powwow. The manner of it was as follows. There was one man who knelt on a deerskin, with the company kneeling in a ring around him, striking the ground with their hands and with sticks, and muttering or humming with their mouths. Besides him who knelt in the ring, there also stood one man with a gun in his hand. Then the man on the deerskin made a speech, and they all showed their assent to it, and they did this many times over. Then they told the man with the gun to go out of the ring, which he did. But when he was out, they called him in again. He seemed to hold back, so they called him more earnestly, until he came back in. Then they all sang.

Then they gave him two guns, one in each hand. And so the man on the deerskin began again, and at the end of every sentence of his speech they all assented, humming or muttering with their mouths and striking the ground with their hands. Then they told the man with the two guns to go out of the ring again, which he did, a little way. Then they called him in again, but he held back. So they called him with greater earnestness. But he stood reeling and wavering, as if he did not know whether he should stand or fall, or which way to go. Then they all called him, one after another, with exceedingly great vehemence. After a little while he turned in, staggering as he went, with his arms stretched out and a gun in each hand. As soon as he came in, they all sang and rejoiced exceedingly for a while. And then the man on the deerskin made another speech, to which they all assented in a rejoicing manner. And so they ended their business, and went straight off to the Sudbury fight.

To my thinking, they went without any doubt that they would prosper and gain the victory. And though they did not go out so rejoicing, they came home with as great a victory. For they said they had killed two captains and almost a hundred men. They brought one Englishman along with them, and he said it was too true, for they had done sad work at Sudbury, as indeed it proved. Yet they came home without the rejoicing and triumphing over their victory that they were accustomed to show at other times, but rather like dogs (as they say) that have lost their ears. Yet I could not see that it was because of their own loss of men. They said they had not lost more than five or six, and I missed none, except in one wigwam.

When they went out, they acted as if the devil had told them they would gain the victory; and now they acted as if the devil had told them they would have a fall. Whether it was so or not, I cannot tell, but so it proved, for they quickly began to fall, and went on falling all that summer, until they came to utter ruin. They came home on a Sabbath day, and the powwow who had knelt on the deerskin came home (I may say it without slander) as black as the devil.

When my master came home, he came to me and told me to make a shirt for his papoose out of a lace-trimmed pillowcase of holland linen. About that time an Indian came to me and told me to come to his wigwam at night, and he would give me some pork and groundnuts. I did, and as I was eating, another Indian said to me, “He seems to be your good friend, but he killed two Englishmen at Sudbury, and there lie their clothes behind you.” I looked behind me, and there I saw bloody clothes with bullet holes in them. Yet the Lord did not allow this wretch to do me any harm. Yes, instead of that, he refreshed me many times. Five or six times he and his squaw refreshed my feeble carcass. If I went to their wigwam at any time, they would always give me something, and yet they were strangers I had never seen before. Another squaw gave me a piece of fresh pork and a little salt with it, and lent me her pan to fry it in. And I cannot help remembering, to this day, what a sweet, pleasant, and delightful relish that bit had for me. So little do we prize common mercies when we have them to the full.

It was their usual practice to move on after they had done any mischief, lest they should be found out, and so they did this time. We went about three or four miles, and there they built a great wigwam, big enough to hold a hundred Indians, which they did in preparation for a great day of dancing. They would say among themselves now that the governor would be so angry over his loss at Sudbury that he would send no more about the captives, which made me grieve and tremble.

My sister was not far from the place where we now were, and when she heard that I was here, she asked her master to let her come and see me. He was willing, and said he would go with her. But she was ready before him, and told him she would go on ahead, and she had come within a mile or two of the place. Then he overtook her and began to rant as if he had gone mad, and made her go back again in the rain, so that I never saw her until I saw her in Charlestown. But the Lord repaid many of their evil deeds, for this Indian, her master, was hanged afterward at Boston.

The Indians now began to come in from all quarters for their merry day of dancing. Among some of them came one Goodwife Kettle. I told her my heart was so heavy that it was ready to break. “So is mine,” she said; but she added, “I hope we shall hear some good news shortly.” I could hear how earnestly my sister wanted to see me, and I wanted just as earnestly to see her, and yet neither of us could get the chance. My daughter was also now about a mile off, and I had not seen her in nine or ten weeks, just as I had not seen my sister since we were first taken. I earnestly asked them to let me go and see them. Yes, I pleaded, begged, and tried to persuade them, if only to let me see my daughter; and yet they were so hard-hearted that they would not allow it. They made use of their tyrannical power while they had it; but through the Lord’s wonderful mercy, their time was now short.

On a Sabbath day, with the sun about an hour high in the afternoon, Mr. John Hoar came (the Council permitting him, and his own eager spirit inclining him to it), together with the two Indians I mentioned before, Tom and Peter, bringing their third letter from the Council. When they came near, I was outside. Though I did not see them, the Indians at once called me in, and told me to sit down and not stir. Then they snatched up their guns and away they ran, as if an enemy had been at hand, and the guns went off rapidly. I showed great distress, and they asked me what was the matter. I told them I thought they had killed the Englishman (for in the meantime they had told me that an Englishman had come). They said no. They had shot over his horse, and under it, and in front of it, and they pushed him this way and that at their pleasure, showing what they could do. Then they let them come to their wigwams.

I begged them to let me see the Englishman, but they would not. There I had to sit and wait on their pleasure. When they had talked their fill with him, they allowed me to go to him. We asked each other how we were, and I asked how my husband was, and all my friends. He told me they were all well and would be glad to see me. Among other things my husband sent me there came a pound of tobacco, which I sold for nine shillings in money; for many of the Indians, for want of tobacco, smoked hemlock and ground ivy. Anyone who thought I had sent for tobacco for myself was greatly mistaken, for through the favor of God that craving had been overcome.

I now asked them whether I should go home with Mr. Hoar. They answered no, one after another, and since it was night, we lay down with that answer. In the morning Mr. Hoar invited the sagamores to dinner. But when we went to get it ready, we found that in the night they had stolen the greater part of the provisions Mr. Hoar had brought, right out of his bags.

And we may see the wonderful power of God in that one incident. There was such a great number of Indians together, and so greedy for a little good food, and no English there but Mr. Hoar and myself; and yet they did not knock us on the head there and take what we had, though there was not only some food but also trading cloth, part of the twenty pounds agreed upon. Instead of doing us any harm, they seemed to be ashamed of the deed, and said it was some bad Indian who had done it. Oh, that we could believe that there is nothing too hard for God! God showed his power over the heathen in this, as he did over the hungry lions when Daniel was cast into the den.

Mr. Hoar called them early to dinner, but they ate very little, they were so busy dressing themselves and getting ready for their dance. It was performed by eight of them, four men and four squaws, my master and mistress being two of them. He was dressed in his holland shirt, with great laces sewn at the tail of it. He had his silver buttons and his white stockings; his garters were hung round with shillings, and he had girdles of wampum on his head and shoulders. She had a kersey coat, and was covered with girdles of wampum from the waist up. Her arms from her elbows to her hands were covered with bracelets; there were handfuls of necklaces about her neck, and several sorts of jewels in her ears. She had fine red stockings and white shoes, her hair was powdered, and her face was painted red that had always been black before. And all the dancers were dressed in the same manner.

There were two others singing and knocking on a kettle for their music. They kept hopping up and down one after another, with a kettle of water in the middle, standing warm on some embers, to drink from when they were thirsty. They kept on until it was almost night, throwing out wampum to the bystanders.

At night I asked them again whether I should go home. They all said no, as one, unless my husband would come for me. When we had lain down, my master went out of the wigwam, and by and by sent in an Indian called James the Printer, who told Mr. Hoar that my master would let me go home tomorrow if Mr. Hoar would let him have one pint of liquor. Then Mr. Hoar called his own Indians, Tom and Peter, and told them to go and see whether my master would promise it in front of the three of them; and if he would, he should have the liquor. He did promise, and he had it.

Then Philip, smelling out the business, called me to him and asked me what I would give him to tell me some good news and to speak a good word for me. I told him I could not tell what to give him; I would give anything I had; and I asked him what he would have. He said two coats and twenty shillings in money, and half a bushel of seed corn, and some tobacco. I thanked him for his love; but I knew the good news as well as the crafty fox did.

My master, after he had had his drink, soon came ranting into the wigwam again and called for Mr. Hoar, drinking to him and saying he was a good man; and then again he would say, “Hang him, rogue!” Being almost drunk, he would drink to him, and yet a moment later say he should be hanged. Then he called for me. I trembled to hear him, yet I had to go to him, and he drank to me, showing no incivility. In all the time I was among them, he was the first Indian I saw drunk. At last his squaw ran out, and he after her, round the wigwam, with his money jingling at his knees. But she escaped him. He had an old squaw as well, and he ran to her; and so, through the Lord’s mercy, we were troubled no more that night.

Yet I did not have a comfortable night’s rest, for I think I can say I did not sleep for three nights together. The night before the letter came from the Council, I could not rest, I was so full of fears and troubles, God many times leaving us most in the dark when deliverance is nearest. Yes, at this time I could not rest night or day. The next night I was overjoyed, Mr. Hoar having come, and with such good news. The third night I was utterly swallowed up with the thought of it all, namely, that I should ever go home again, and that I must go leaving my children behind me in the wilderness; so that sleep had now almost departed from my eyes.

On Tuesday morning they called their General Court (as they call it) to consult and decide whether I should go home or not. And they all, as one man, did seemingly consent that I should go home, except Philip, who would not come among them.

But before I go any further, I would like to mention a few remarkable passages of providence that I took special notice of in my time of affliction.

1. There was the fair opportunity lost in the long march, a little after the fort fight, when our English army was so numerous and in pursuit of the enemy, and so near as to take several of them and destroy them, and the enemy was in such distress for food that our men could track them by their rooting in the earth for groundnuts while they were fleeing for their lives. I say that just then our army ran short of provisions and was forced to give up the pursuit and return homeward; and the very next week the enemy came upon our town like bears robbed of their cubs, or so many ravenous wolves, tearing us and our lambs to death. But what shall I say? God seemed to leave his people to themselves and to order all things for his own holy ends. “Shall there be evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it?” (Amos 3:6). “They are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph, therefore shall they go captive, with the first that go captive” (Amos 6:6-7). It is the Lord’s doing, and it should be marvelous in our eyes (Ps 118:23).

2. I cannot help remembering how the Indians mocked the slowness and dullness of the English army in setting out. For after the destruction at Lancaster and Medfield, as I went along with them, they asked me when I thought the English army would come after them. I told them I could not tell. “Maybe they will come in May,” they said. So they scoffed at us, as if the English would take a quarter of a year getting ready.

3. This too I have mentioned before: that when the English army was sent out with new supplies to pursue the enemy, and the enemy, learning of it, fled before them until they came to the Baquaug River, where they immediately went over safely, that very river should prove impassable to the English. I cannot help marveling to see the wonderful providence of God in preserving the heathen for further affliction to our poor country. They could go over in great numbers, but the English had to stop. God had an overruling hand in all these things.

4. It was thought that if their corn were cut down, they would starve and die of hunger. And all their corn that could be found was destroyed, and they were driven from the little they had in store into the woods in the middle of winter. And yet how marvelously the Lord preserved them for his holy ends, and for the destruction of many still among the English! Strangely did the Lord provide for them, so that in all the time I was among them I did not see one man, woman, or child die of hunger.

Though many times they would eat what a hog or a dog would hardly touch, yet by that God strengthened them to be a scourge to his people.

Their chief and most common food was groundnuts. They also ate nuts and acorns, artichokes, lily roots, ground beans, and several other weeds and roots that I do not know.

They would pick up old bones and cut them into pieces at the joints, and if they were full of worms and maggots, they would scald them over the fire to make the vermin come out, and then boil them and drink up the broth, and then beat the great ends of them in a mortar, and so eat them. They would eat horses’ guts and ears, and all sorts of wild birds they could catch; also bear, venison, beaver, tortoise, frogs, squirrels, dogs, skunks, rattlesnakes; yes, the very bark of trees; besides all sorts of creatures, and provisions that they plundered from the English.

I cannot help standing in wonder to see the wonderful power of God in providing for such a vast number of our enemies in the wilderness, where there was nothing to be seen but from hand to mouth. Many times in a morning most of them would eat up all they had, and yet they would have some further supply by the time they needed it. It is said, “Oh, that my people had hearkened to me, and Israel had walked in my ways, I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries” (Ps 81:13-14). But now our perverse and evil conduct in the sight of the Lord has so offended him that, instead of turning his hand against them, the Lord feeds and nourishes them up to be a scourge to the whole land.

5. Another thing I would point out is the strange providence of God in turning things around when the Indians were at their highest and the English at their lowest. I was with the enemy eleven weeks and five days, and not one week passed without the fury of the enemy, and some destruction by fire and sword on one place or another. They mourned (with their blackened faces) for their own losses, yet they triumphed and rejoiced in their inhuman, and many times devilish, cruelty to the English. They would boast much of their victories, saying that in two hours’ time they had destroyed such a captain and his company at such a place, and such a captain and his company in such a place, and such a captain and his company in such a place; and they would boast how many towns they had destroyed, and then scoff, and say they had done them a good turn to send them to heaven so soon.

Again, they would say that this summer they would knock all the rogues on the head, or drive them into the sea, or make them flee the country, thinking surely, like Agag, “The bitterness of death is past” (1 Sam 15:32). Now the heathen begin to think everything is theirs, and the poor Christians’ hopes begin to fail (as far as man is concerned); and now their eyes are turned more to God, and their hearts sigh heavenward, and they say in good earnest, “Help, Lord, or we perish.” When the Lord had brought his people to this, that they saw no help in anything but himself, then he takes the quarrel into his own hand. And though in their own imaginations they had dug a pit as deep as hell for the Christians that summer, yet the Lord hurled them into it themselves. As many ways as the Lord had before to preserve them, now he has just as many to destroy them.

But to return to my going home, where we may see a remarkable change of providence. At first they were all against it, unless my husband would come for me; but afterward they agreed to it, and seemed to rejoice in it greatly. Some asked me to send them some bread, others some tobacco, others shook me by the hand, offering me a hood and scarf to ride in; not one of them moved a hand or a tongue against it. So the Lord has answered my poor desire, and the many earnest requests that others put up to God for me.

In my travels an Indian came to me and told me that, if I were willing, he and his squaw would run away and go home along with me. I told him no. I was not willing to run away, but wanted to wait for God’s time, so that I might go home quietly and without fear. And now God has granted me my desire.

Oh, the wonderful power of God that I have seen, and the experience that I have had! I have been in the midst of those roaring lions and savage bears that feared neither God, nor man, nor the devil, by night and day, alone and in company, with all sorts sleeping together; and yet not one of them ever offered me the least abuse of unchastity, in word or action. Some are ready to say I speak this for my own credit; but I speak it in the presence of God, and to his glory. God’s power is as great now, and as sufficient to save, as when he preserved Daniel in the lions’ den, or the three children in the fiery furnace. I may well say, as in Psalm 107:1-2, “Oh give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy”; especially that I should come away in the midst of so many hundreds of enemies, quietly and peaceably, and not a dog moving his tongue.

So I took my leave of them, and as I came along, my heart melted into tears, more than in all the time I was with them, and I was almost swallowed up with the thought that I should ever go home again. About sunset Mr. Hoar, myself, and the two Indians came to Lancaster, and a solemn sight it was to me. There I had lived many comfortable years among my relatives and neighbors, and now not one Christian was to be seen, nor one house left standing. We went on to a farmhouse that was still standing, where we lay all night; and a comfortable lodging we had, though we had nothing but straw to lie on. The Lord kept us safe that night, and raised us up again in the morning, and carried us along, so that before noon we came to Concord.

Now I was full of joy, and yet not without sorrow: joy to see such a lovely sight, so many Christians together, and some of them my neighbors. There I met my brother, and my brother-in-law, who asked me if I knew where his wife was. Poor heart! He had helped to bury her and did not know it. She had been shot down by the house and partly burned, so that those who were at Boston when the town was destroyed, and came back afterward and buried the dead, did not recognize her. Yet I was not without sorrow, to think how many were looking and longing, my own children among the rest, to enjoy the deliverance that I had now received; and I did not know whether I should ever see them again.

Refreshed with food and clothing, we went to Boston that day, where I met my dear husband; but the thought of our dear children, one being dead, and the other we could not tell where, lessened our comfort in each other. As much as I had been hemmed in before by the merciless and cruel heathen, I was now just as much surrounded by pitying, tender-hearted, and compassionate Christians. In the poor, and distressed, and beggarly condition in which I was received, I was kindly entertained in several houses. So much love I received from several people (some of whom I knew, and others I did not) that I am not able to describe it. But the Lord knows them all by name. May the Lord reward them sevenfold into their bosoms, with his spiritual blessings for their material ones.

The twenty pounds, the price of my redemption, was raised by some Boston gentlemen and Mrs. Usher, whose generosity and Christian charity I would not forget to mention. Then Mr. Thomas Shepard of Charlestown received us into his house, where we stayed eleven weeks, and a father and mother they were to us. And we met many more tender-hearted friends in that place. We were now in the midst of love, yet not without much and frequent heaviness of heart for our poor children and other relatives, who were still in affliction.

The week after I came in, the governor and Council sent out to the Indians again, and not without success, for they brought in my sister and Goodwife Kettle. Not knowing where our children were was still a sore trial to us, and yet we were not without secret hopes that we would see them again. The child who was dead lay heavier on my spirit than those who were alive and among the heathen, as I thought how she had suffered with her wounds, and I was in no way able to relieve her, and how she was buried by the heathen in the wilderness, away from all Christians. We were tossed up and down in our thoughts. At one time we would hear a report that they had gone this way, and at another time that way; and that they had come in, at this place or that. We kept inquiring and listening for news of them, but no certain news came as yet.

About this time the Council had ordered a day of public thanksgiving. Though I thought I still had cause for mourning, and since we were unsettled in our minds, we thought we would ride toward the east, to see if we could hear anything about our children. And as we were riding along (God is the wise disposer of all things), between Ipswich and Rowley we met Mr. William Hubbard, who told us that our son Joseph had come in to Major Waldron’s, and another with him, who was my sister’s son. I asked him how he knew it. He said the major himself had told him so.

So along we went until we came to Newbury; and since their minister was away, they asked my husband to preach the thanksgiving for them. But he was not willing to stay there that night, but would go over to Salisbury to hear more, and come back in the morning; which he did, and preached there that day. At night, when he had finished, someone came and told him that his daughter had come in at Providence. Here was mercy on both hands.

Now God has fulfilled that precious Scripture which was such a comfort to me in my distressed condition. When my heart was ready to sink into the earth (my children being gone, I could not tell where) and my knees trembled under me, and I was walking through the valley of the shadow of death, then the Lord brought that reviving word to me, and now he has fulfilled it: “Thus saith the Lord, Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy” (Jer 31:16).

Now we were between them, the one on the east, and the other on the west. Since our son was nearest, we went to him first, to Portsmouth, where we met him, and the major as well, who told us he had done what he could but could not redeem him for less than seven pounds, which the good people thereabouts were pleased to pay. The Lord reward the major, and all the rest, though they are unknown to me, for their labor of love. My sister’s son was redeemed for four pounds, which the Council ordered to be paid. Having now received one of our children, we hurried toward the other. Going back through Newbury, my husband preached there on the Sabbath day, for which they rewarded him many times over.

On Monday we came to Charlestown, where we heard that the governor of Rhode Island had sent over for our daughter, to take care of her, since she was now within his jurisdiction; this kindness should not pass without our thanks. But since she was nearer Rehoboth than Rhode Island, Mr. Newman went over and took care of her and brought her to his own house. And the goodness of God to us in our low estate was wonderful, in that he raised up compassionate friends for us on every side when we had nothing with which to repay anyone for their love. The Indians had now gone in that direction, so that it was thought dangerous to go to her. But the carts that carried provisions to the English army, being under guard, brought her with them to Dorchester, where we received her safe. Blessed be the Lord for it, for great is his power, and he can do whatever seems good to him.

Her coming in happened in this way. She was traveling one day with the Indians, with her basket on her back. The company of Indians had gotten ahead of her and gone out of sight, all except one squaw. She followed the squaw until night, and then both of them lay down, having nothing over them but the heavens and nothing under them but the earth. So she traveled three days together, not knowing where she was going, having nothing to eat or drink but water and green whortleberries. At last they came into Providence, where she was kindly entertained by several people of that town. The Indians often said that I should never have her for less than twenty pounds. But now the Lord has brought her in free of cost, and given her to me the second time. The Lord make us a blessing indeed, each to the others.

Now I have seen that Scripture also fulfilled: “If any of thine be driven out to the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee. And the Lord thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them which hate thee, which persecuted thee” (Deut 30:4; Deut 30:7). So the Lord has brought me and mine out of that horrible pit, and has set us in the midst of tender-hearted and compassionate Christians. It is the desire of my soul that we may walk worthy of the mercies we have received, and which we are receiving.

Our family being now gathered together (those of us who were living), the South Church in Boston rented a house for us. Then we moved from Mr. Shepard’s, those warm-hearted friends, and went to Boston, where we stayed about three-quarters of a year. Still the Lord went along with us and provided graciously for us. I thought it somewhat strange to set up housekeeping with bare walls; but as Solomon says, “Money answers all things” (Eccl 10:19); and money we had, through the kindness of Christian friends, some in this town, and some in that, and others, and some from England, so that in a little while we could look and see the house furnished with love.

The Lord has been exceedingly good to us in our low estate, in that when we had neither house nor home nor other necessities, the Lord so moved the hearts of these people and those toward us that we lacked neither food nor clothing for ourselves or ours. “There is a friend which sticketh closer than a brother” (Prov 18:24). And how many such friends we have found, and are now living among! And truly we have found such a friend in him in whose house we lived, namely Mr. James Whitcomb, a friend to us both near at hand and far off.

I can remember the time when I used to sleep quietly, without my thoughts working, whole nights together; but now it is otherwise with me. When everyone around me is fast asleep, and no eye is open but his who is ever awake, my thoughts are on things past: on the awesome dealings of the Lord toward us, on his wonderful power and might in carrying us through so many difficulties, in bringing us back in safety, and in letting no one hurt us.

I remember in the night season how, just the other day, I was in the midst of thousands of enemies, with nothing but death before me. It was hard work then to persuade myself that I would ever be satisfied with bread again. But now we are fed with the finest of the wheat, and, as I may say, with honey out of the rock (Ps 81:16). Instead of the husk, we have the fatted calf. The thought of these things in all their particulars, and of the love and goodness of God toward us, makes true of me what David said of himself: “I watered my couch with my tears” (Ps 6:6). Oh, the wonderful power of God that my eyes have seen, giving my thoughts matter enough to run on, so that when others are sleeping, my eyes are weeping.

I have seen the extreme vanity of this world. One hour I have been in health and wealth, wanting nothing; but the next hour in sickness and wounds and death, having nothing but sorrow and affliction.

Before I knew what affliction meant, I was sometimes ready to wish for it. When I lived in prosperity, having the comforts of the world about me, my relatives near me, my heart cheerful, and taking little care for anything, and yet seeing many whom I thought better than myself under many trials and afflictions, in sickness, weakness, poverty, losses, crosses, and cares of the world, I would sometimes fear that I was having my portion in this life. And that Scripture would come to my mind: “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (Heb 12:6).

But now I see that the Lord had his time to scourge and chasten me. The portion of some is to have their afflictions by drops, now one drop and then another; but the dregs of the cup, the wine of astonishment, like a sweeping rain that leaves no food, the Lord prepared to be my portion. Affliction I wanted, and affliction I had, full measure (I thought), pressed down and running over. Yet I see that when God calls a person to anything, through ever so many difficulties, he is fully able to carry them through, and to make them see and say that they have been gainers by it.

And I hope I can say in some measure, as David did, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted” (Ps 119:71). The Lord has shown me the vanity of these outward things: that they are the “vanity of vanities, and vexation of spirit” (Eccl 1:2; Eccl 1:14); that they are but a shadow, a blast, a bubble, and things of no continuance; that we must rely on God himself, and our whole dependence must be on him. If trouble over smaller matters begins to arise in me, I have something at hand to check myself with, and I say, “Why am I troubled?” It was only the other day that, if I had had the world, I would have given it for my freedom, or to have been a servant to a Christian. I have learned to look beyond present and smaller troubles, and to be quieted under them, as Moses said, “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord” (Exod 14:13).