tom than slow torture or burning, which would hinder pursuit of the fugitives. It also seems very unlikely that they should waste much time in "assorting and dividing" the arms and clothing of the eight men killed, when the town lay within their reach, with much richer and more abundant plunder.

The "relation of James Quannapaquait, allias James Rumny Marsh beeing one of the chtian Indians belonging to Natick; taken the 24th of Jany 16756" has been supposed to furnish evidence that the conflict was in the Sucker Brook defile. Having been sent out as a spy, with another friendly Indian, he stated, on his return, that he left Cambridge on the 30th day of December, 1675, and soon afterwards arrived at a place called Menemesseg, wch is about 8 miles north where Capt. Hutchison & Capt. Wherler was woonded & sevel men wth them slayn (in the begining of August last) as these indians informed them." I copy from the History of North Brookfield, pp. 112, 113, not having seen the original "relation" in the Connecticut Archives. James is supposed to have obtained this information at the upper Winnimisset, in Barre; and it is said that measuring southward from the upper Indian village site, on the Woodbury place, eight miles on the Indian trail, the scale touches a point in the Sucker Brook valley, near the dividing line between New Braintree and Brookfield, and about five miles from the old Brookfield town site." p. 95. In regard to this "relation" I observe that in the printed copy, and doubtless in the original also (as the copy purports to be verbatim et literatim), the distance between the two places is indicated not by a word, but by an Arabic numeral. The two numerals, 8 and 3, are so similar in form that I vehemently suspect the copyist mistook the one for the other, and that the numeral in the original manuscript is actually 3 instead of 8. If this be the fact, the "relation" by James corresponds with Wheeler's "narrative," indicating a point three miles south

of the Woodbury place, and ten miles northerly from Foster Hill. But if the numeral is really 8, then the two accounts contradict each other; in which case I should have less confidence in the hearsay testimony of James, that the place of conflict was in the Sucker Brook valley, "about five miles from the old Brookfield town site," than in the positive statement of Wheeler, on his personal knowledge, that he was "ten miles from it," when he began his retreat.

One more witness remains to be examined. A "manuscript narrative of George, a christian Indian, taken prisoner in the ambushment of Capt. Hutchinson, etc." is quoted in Hutchinson's Hist. of Mass. Bay, i. 293, 294, in which he says that "upon Friday being the 5th of this instant (August) Philip and his company came to us at this swamp, six miles from the swamp where they killed our men." It has been assumed that George was one mile above Winnimisset when Philip arrived, and that he referred to the Sucker Brook valley as the "swamp where they killed our men." The argument is this: "As the 'remains' attest, the stronghold' and 'store-town' of the Indians at this time was the second of the Menamesets-where prisoners would naturally be kept, and where Philip with his broken band would naturally resort for safety and food. Measuring southward on the Indian trail aforesaid, the 'six miles' touches the same point as the eight miles' named by Quanapohit touched, viz. near the dividing line between New Braintree and Brookfield." p. 95. My estimate of the probabilities is somewhat different. It is to be observed

that George does not say he was then at Winnimisset. He gives no name to the swamp; but he merely says it was "six miles from the swamp where they killed our men." Again, he makes a mistake in the date; Friday was the sixth day of August, "the Lord's day" being "August 1."1 The Indians retreated from Brookfield "towards the break

1 Narrative, p. 6.

ing of the day, August the fifth" and Philip did not visit them until the next day, Friday, the sixth of August. It seems to me not very probable that they remained in their known dwelling-place more than twenty-four hours, awaiting an attack by the English cavalry; on the contrary, it does seem probable that, according to their usual custom, they speedily sought concealment and safety elsewhere. Such was their conduct, six months later, when, having destroyed Lancaster and retired to this same Winnimisset, Mrs. Rowlandson tells us that, apprehending an attack by an armed force, then gathering at Brookfield, they suddenly left that place, and "went as if they had gone for their lives for some considerable way;" and, after a short rest, "like Jehu, they marched on furiously," until they had put Miller's River between them and their pursuers. So in this case fleeing from Brookfield before day-light on Thursday morning, there is a violent presumption that before Friday evening they were at least "six miles from the swamp where they killed our men," leaving Ware River behind them, as an obstacle against pursuit. And as a matter of fact, it is understood that, two days later, "on Sunday the 8th, a force marched northward to the Menameset country, but found no Indians."

"3

That there was an Indian village about "six miles" from Winnimisset, we are informed by Mrs. Rowlandson, who tells us that when she was visited at Winnimisset by her son Joseph, he said that he was among a smaller parcel of Indians, whose place was about six miles off."4 I know not precisely where that "place" was; it may have been on the border of Pottapaug Pond, in Dana, which bears traces of Indian occupancy, is about six miles from Winnimisset, and near the track by which the Indians would naturally retreat if, as many suppose, they "fled northerly

1 Narrative, p. 20.

2 Indian Captivities, p. 30.

Narrative, p. 102. See also Judd's History of Hadley, p. 140.

4 Indian Captivities, p. 27.

to Paquayag, now Athol, and other places in that neighborhood." Or it may have been at Nichewaug (Petersham), which is on the same route, and at not much greater distance. According to the well-known custom of the Indians, it seems altogether more probable that Philip visited them at this place," wherever it was, than that he and they should have ventured to remain, two whole days, at their known dwelling-place, or not more than one mile from it, within easy reach of an armed force by whom they had been already repulsed and might confidently expect to be pursued.

66

On the whole, in consideration of the ascertained facts and reasonable probabilities in the case, I still adhere to the opinion which I publicly expressed,2 half a century ago, that Captain Wheeler suffered his disastrous defeat on the easterly side of the Winnimisset meadows, at some point within the distance of one mile southerly from the homestead on what was formerly known as the Fay Farm, in New Braintree.

1 Judd's History of Hadley, p. 140.

2 Centennial Address at Hardwick, 1838, p. 6.

THE EARLY AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE IN NEW

ENGLAND.

BY WILLIAM B. WEEden.

THE deportation of African negroes-commonly called the slave-trade—was a movement of importance in the commerce of the latter seventeenth and of the eighteenth century. Perhaps the most momentous and effective change instituted in the minds of men, by this nineteenth century, is in the general conception and treatment of human slavery. The seventeenth century organized the new western countries and created an immense opportunity for labor. The eighteenth coolly and deliberately set Europe at the task of depopulating whole districts of western Africa, and of transporting the captives by a necessarily brutal, vicious and horrible traffic to the new civilizations of America. The awakened conscience of the nineteenth century checked the horrid stream of forced migrations; but an enormous social structure had been reared on servitude and enforced labor; its overthrow imperilling one of the fairest civilizations of the earth convulsed the great territory and the greater society of the United States of America.

North American slavery fell, and with it a vast structure of ideas, political, social and philanthropic, proceeding from the economic force of slavery on the one hand, and the humanitarian, ameliorating passion of mankind for freedom, on the other. Looking backward one and a half or two and a half centuries, we are amazed and humiliated, when we consider how little people knew what they were doing. When the old and enlightened countries sought eagerly for slaves