Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| caused bodies of troops to fall on two parties of these helpless and unsuspecting fugitives, and butchered over a hundred. |
| This inhuman outrage at once roused every Indian to take a terrible vengeance, and to wipe out his wrongs in fire and blood. All the tribes fell on the Dutch at once, and in a short time destroyed every outlying farm and all the smaller settlements, bringing ruin and desolation upon the entire province, while the surviving settlers gathered in New Amsterdam and in a few of the best fortified smaller villages. The Indians put their prisoners to death with dreadful tortures, and in at least one instance the Dutch retaliated in kind. Neither side spared the women and children. The hemmed-in Dutch sent bands of their soldiers, assisted by parties of New England mercenaries, under a famous woodland fighter, Capt. John Underhill, against the Indian towns. They were enabled to strike crippling blows at their enemies, because the latter foolishly clung to their stockaded villages, where the whites could surround them, keep them from breaking out by means of their superiority in firearms, and then set the wooden huts aflame and mercilessly destroy, with torch or bullet, all the inmates, sometimes to the number of several hundred souls. These Indian stockades offered the best means of defense against rival savages; but they were no |