Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1916 — HISTORIC SCENES IN OLD NEW ENGLAND [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HISTORIC SCENES IN OLD NEW ENGLAND

In passing through South Deerfield, Mass., autoists cross the historic old stream called Bloody Brook, a tame derived from the freightful massacre by Indians which occurred there on the 18th of September, 1675. In those days King Philip, sachem of the Pokanoket tribe of Indians, was on the warpath. He had so terrified the settlers of the Connecticut River Valley that the northernmost towns of Northtteld and Deerfield were ordered abandoned. In abandoning Deerfield the settlers had left large stores- of newly harvested grain, and it was in quest of these needed stores that Captain Lathrop, with a picked troop of eighty men, proceeded to Deerfield from the town of Hadley, twenty miles south. The grain had been successfully procured and the party was some six miles out of the settlement of Deerfield when it prepared to ford a stream. The stream was bordered by thick woods, and tradition relates- that the men imprudently placed their weapons in the wagons and scattered to gather the wild graces which abounded. Thus disarmed, they were quickly and completely overwhelmed by the hordes of Indians estimated at ?00 strong, by. whom they had been ambushed. Of the eighty or more men in Captain Lathrop’s command not more than eight escaped alive. Two other scouting squads of Englishmen which were in the vicinity hurried to the scene upon hearing battle, but could do nothing except drive the Indians away so that the bodies of their comrades might be decently buried. A monument now marks the scene of this horrible massacre, and the stream where the disaster occurred is known to this day as Bloody Brook.

Scene of the Battle at Bloody Brook in Deerfield. Mass.