124 



THE BOROUGH OF THE BRONX 



A party of Indians came to Mrs. Hutchinson on a friendly 

 visit, as was their wont. After discoursing with her they asked 

 that she tie up her dogs lest they bite. She did not suspect the 

 Indians' guile and granted their request; whereupon they gave 

 vent to the rancor against the whites burning in their hearts. They 

 brutally butchered Mrs. Hutchinson and her family, sparing only 

 her eight-year-old daughter Frances, whom they took captive. 

 Another daughter, just as she was about to escape over a hedge, 

 was seized by the hair and heartlessly put to death. In all, sixteen 

 persons were murdered, while Throckmorton and his followers 



Massacre of Anne Hutchinson Colony 



escaped on a vessel which had just then so opportunely arrived. 

 The Indians then placed all the cattle into the houses and applied 

 the torch to them. 



Mrs. Hutchinson's old Puritan acquaintance took her tragic 

 death as evidences of Divine wrath against the woman's heresies. 

 One of them, remarking that outrages by the Indians were rare, 

 says, "God's hand is the more apparently seen herein to pick out 

 this woeful woman to make her an unheard-of heavy example of 

 their cruelty above others." 



Four years after the massacre, a treaty of peace was concluded 

 between the Dutch and the Indians, one of the conditions of which 

 was that Mrs. Hutchinson's daughter be surrendered and sent to 

 her friends in Boston. Long association with the Indians had en- 

 deared them to her; she had forgotten her own language, and she 



