icon for Home page
icon for Kid's Home page
icon for Digital Collection
icon for Activities
icon for Turns Exhibit
icon for In the Classroom
icon for Chronologies
icon for My Collection

Online Collection
Select a page:

Title page
(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
Contact us for information about using this image.



label levels:

This account of the "Falls Fight," a massacre of Indians by English settlers from Deerfield and Hatfield, comes from a 1906 history of King Philip's War (1675-76). The interpretation presented here presents Capt. William Turner's actions as justified and reasonable, and for many of the time they seemed so. However, later historians have seen Turner's actions as "amateurish," even reprehensible. The incident came after a long winter where the towns of the mid-Connecticut Valley had suffered a series of raids by Indians without being able to strike back effectively. By early May, they were frenzied with frustration. When they heard that a peaceful encampment of Indians could be found nearby, at Peskeompscut (just across the river from the current site of Turners Falls, Massachusetts), Turner mustered a party of 150 volunteers, "single men, boys, and servants," almost all of whom were entirely untrained in warfare. The encampment was not guarded, and some historians have questioned why. One answer is that by the Indians' cultural standards, the war was over: when they fought, they usually did not fight long-term, sustained wars. At any rate, as the account here attests, the English were able to surprise them and "shot them by the scores." The English killed many women and children in their homes by "pointing their muskets through the wigwam doors." They took no prisoners. The attack did have one point of military significance, not noted here: Turner's men destroyed a forge that could have repaired muskets, and a large quantity of lead for shot. The account was correct in that the massacre tore the heart out of Indian resistance in the Connecticut Valley. Perhaps the loss of so many of their wives and children decisively changed the minds of the survivors, who fled northward to Canada. But many of the survivors of the "Falls Fight" and the other events of King Philip's War lived and remembered from their refuges in Canada. They continued to raid their old home lands for many years after, raids that included the 1704 Deerfield Raid.

 

top of page

"Soldiers in King Philip's War..."

author   George M. Bodge (1841-1914)
date   1906
location   Boston, Massachusetts
height   9.75"
width   6.5"
process/materials   printed paper, ink
item type   Books/Book
accession #   #L01.118


Look Closer icon My Collection icon Transcription icon Detailed info icon


ecard icon Send an e-Postcard of this object



See Also...

"Peske-ompsk-ut; or, The Falls Fight"

"Map of New-England"

"Eulogy on King Philip as Pronounced at the Odeon"


button for Side by Side Viewingbutton for Glossarybutton for Printing Helpbutton for How to Read Old Documents

 

Home | Online Collection | Things To Do | Turns Exhibit | Classroom | Chronologies | My Collection
About This Site | Site Index | Site Search | Feedback