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

The attack was fast, furious and conducted with great brutality.

Attacked: out of the blue

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

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

Mary was thrown into a state of panic. Her husband, 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 and Sarah.

A few of her neighbours, who were taking shelter in the same building, tried to put up resistance. But Mary realised it was 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, and the bloody heathen ready to knock us on the head, if we stirred out.’

Mary on the march

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

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

When the fighting finally came to an end, only twenty-four inhabitants remained alive. All were seized and taken hostage.

So began a terribly captivity that was to last more than eleven weeks. In the freezing chill of winter, Mary and her children were forcibly marched through the wilderness as the Indians attempted to elude the colonial militia.

The first night in captivity was one of extreme fear. ‘This was the dolefulest night that ever my eyes saw,’ wrote Mary. ‘Oh the roaring, and singing and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell.’

Spirited away - and held for eleven weeks

She was desperately worried about her daughter, Sarah, who was suffering from the two bullet wounds.

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

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

In all the time since their capture, she had swallowed nothing except a few gulps of cold water.

The prisoners were now split into groups, taken to different villages and forced to work as slaves. Mary’s surviving children were taken from her, leaving her totally distraught.

‘I had one child dead, another in the wilderness, I knew not where, the third they would not let me come near to.’

Metacomet, aka King Philip

She did, at one point, glimpse her second daughter, who had been exchanged for a gun and was now a slave. She was not allowed to talk to her.

Mary was soon on the march again, for the Indians were growing increasingly worried about being trapped by the colonial troops.

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

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

The bestseller that followed

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

After many adventures - and bitter hardships - the Indians at long last conceded to negotiate with the colonists.

The negotiations were long and complex, but on 2 May, 1675, Mary was ransomed for £20 raised by the women of Boston in a public subscription. She was finally free to return home.

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

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


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