P
prisoner. The soldiers instead brutally murder every
Indian they can. The Dutch bring 30 prisoners
back to New Amsterdam and publicly torture them
to death.
In addition to avenging the murder of two Pa-
vonia settlers who were murdered by Hackensack
Indians two years before (see entry for 1641), the hor-
rible slaughter is intended to frighten other tribes into
submission. Instead, it motivates the Indians to exact
their own revenge for the Wecquaesgeek massacre in a
series of bloody attacks against Dutch settlements.
“When it was day, the soldiers
returned to the fort, having
massacred or murdered eighty
Indians, and considering they
had done a deed of Roman
valor, in murdering so many
in their sleep; where infants
were torn from their mother’s
breasts, and hacked to pieces in
the presence of their parents,
and the pieces thrown into the
fire and in the water, and other
sucklings were bound to small
boards, and then cut, stuck, and
pierced, and miserably mas-
sacred in a manner to move a
heart to stone.”
—Dutchman Willem DeVries on
the Pavonia Massacre1644The Dutch and English kill 500 Indians at
Pound Ridge.
The Dutch hire Captain John Underhill, one of the
English leaders of the Pequot massacre (see entry
for MAY 25, 1637), to lead a combined Dutch and
English force against Indian settlements in present-
day New York and Connecticut. Underhill’s men
stage a relentless and bloody campaign, culminating
in a brutal attack on an Indian settlement at Pound
Ridge. With fire and guns, the colonists kill more
than 500 Tankiteke, Wiwanoy, and Wappinger.
Worn down by the attacks, the Indians negotiate a
peace with the Dutch.SpringThe Narragansett ask the English Crown for
protection.
Fearing attack from English colonists, the Narra-
gansett leaders appeal directly to Charles I for help.
They promise to submit themselves to the king “upon
condition of His Majesties royal protection.” They
maintain, however, that they will not bow to the de-
mands of the colonists “having ourselves been the
chief Sachems, or Princes successively, of the country,
time out of mind.” (See also entry for 1645.)April 18Opechancanough leads a Powhatan uprising.
Twenty-two years after masterminding a devastating
surprise attack on the Virginia colonists (see entry
for MARCH 22, 1622), the elderly Powhatan leader
Opechancanough plans a second uprising. His war-
riors stage a series of assaults on English villages and
kill about 500 colonists. Troops led by colonial gov-
ernor William Berkeley quickly move in to retaliate.
The fighting will continue for two years (see entry
for 1646).1645August 28The Narragansett negotiate a treaty with
New England.
The Narragansett, faced with the threat of war with
the colonists of New England (see entry for spring
1644), reluctantly agree to a punishing treaty. In