SEIZED AT DAWN: THE SHOCKING STORY OF A CAPTURED MOTHER AND CHILDREN.

The attack was fast, furious and conductedwith great brutality.

Attacked: out of the blue

Mary Rowlandson glanced out of her windowat sunrise on Thursday, 10 February, 1675, and was appalled to see dozens of native American Indiansstreaming towards her home town of Lancaster, on the Massachusetts frontier.

They attackers were wielding cudgels andmuskets and slaughtering anyone who got in their way.

Mary was thrown into a state of panic. Herhusband, Joseph, the minister to this small frontier town, was away in Boston.Mary had no one to help protect her three young children, Joseph, Mary andSarah.

A few of her neighbours, who were takingshelter in the same building, tried to put up resistance. But Mary realised itwas futile.

‘Some in our house were fighting for their lives,’ she later wrote,‘others [were] wallowing in their blood, the house on fire over our heads, andthe bloody heathen ready to knock us on the head, if we stirred out.’

Mary on the march

Mary’sbrother-in-law was fatally shot and collapsed dead. Her nephew, William, brokehis leg and had his head smashed to pieces. Mary herself got a bullet in herside, while her young daughter, Sarah, just six years of age, received a bulletin her bowels and another in her hand.

‘It is a solemnsight to see so many Christians lying in their blood…’ wrote Mary, ‘all of themstripped naked by a company of hell-hounds, roaring, singing, ranting, andinsulting, as if they would have torn our very hearts out.’

When the fightingfinally came to an end, only twenty-four inhabitants remained alive. All wereseized and taken hostage.

So began a terriblycaptivity that was to last more than eleven weeks. In the freezing chill ofwinter, Mary and her children were forcibly marched through the wilderness asthe Indians attempted to elude the colonial militia.

The first night incaptivity was one of extreme fear. ‘This was the dolefulest night that ever myeyes saw,’ wrote Mary. ‘Oh the roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling ofthose black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblanceof hell.’

Spirited away - and held for eleven weeks

She was desperatelyworried about her daughter, Sarah, who was suffering from the two bulletwounds.

The second night itsnowed heavily. Mary and the other prisoners had no shelter: she knew it wasonly a matter of time before little Sarah succumbed to her wounds.

Yet more than a weekpassed before Sarah finally died. ‘About two hours in the night, my sweet babelike a lamb departed this life,’ wrote Mary.

In all the timesince their capture, she had swallowed nothing except a few gulps of coldwater.

The prisoners werenow split into groups, taken to different villages and forced to work asslaves. Mary’s surviving children were taken from her, leaving her totallydistraught.

‘I had one childdead, another in the wilderness, I knew not where, the third they would not letme come near to.’

Metacomet, aka King Philip

She did, at onepoint, glimpse her second daughter, who had been exchanged for a gun and was now a slave. She wasnot allowed to talk to her.

Mary was soon on themarch again, for the Indians were growing increasingly worried about beingtrapped by the colonial troops.

After more days ofenforced walking, she was finally led into the settlement ruled by Metacomet,the most powerful chieftain in the region; the settlers knew him as ‘KingPhilip’.

Here, at last, shewas given food by Metacomet himself. ‘He gave me a pancake, about as big as twofingers. It was made of parched wheat, beaten, and fried in bear's grease.’

The bestseller that followed

She had by now beena captive for almost a fortnight: for the next nine weeks, she was to beconstantly on the march, eventually covering more than 150 miles. She enduredhunger, violence and the freezing weather. All the while, she was mourning herlost child and praying that her other two children would survive their ordeal.

After manyadventures - and bitter hardships - the Indians at long last conceded tonegotiate with the colonists.

The negotiationswere long and complex, but on 2 May, 1675, Mary wasransomed for £20 raised by the women of Boston in a public subscription. Shewas finally free to return home.

It was not quite the end. She had a fewmore agonising days to endure before learning that her two surviving childrenhad also been released.

Their lives could at long last return tosome sort of normality. But it would never be the same without little Sarah.


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