"This [the killing of prisoners] is not mentioned as an instance
of savage barbarity. Their own preservation often depends upon
their destroying their prisoners. Henry the fifth of England
killed in cold blood, the flower of France, when he supposed his
own little army to be in danger. The Indians after these onsets,
always suspected to be pursued. If they left their grown
captives in the woods, they would discover them to the pursuers,
if such captives should be found by them. To leave young
children to die would be more cruel than to kill them outright.
Their barbarities were committed, when they were intoxicated with
liquor or enraged with passion. Some of the children who were
taken at Deerfield, they drew upon slays; at other times they
have been known to carry them in their arms or upon their backs
to Canada. This tenderness has occasioned the beginning of an
affection which in a few years has been so rivetted, that the
parents of the children, who have gone to Canada to seek them,
could by no means prevail upon them to leave the Indians and
return home." (p. 104)
Reference:
Mayo, L.S. 1936. The History of the Colony and Province of
Massachusetts-Bay
by Thomas Hutchinson. Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA.
