and going over longer space. The spring of 1636-7 brought still
more stringent care. Watches were kept and no one allowed to
travel without arms. The Pequot war was the culmination for the
time, the seed of other and more atrocious conflicts to come, and
whatever the judgment of to-day may be on the causes which brought
such results, the terror of the settlers was a very real and well-
grounded fact. As with Deerfield at a later date, they were
protected from Indian assaults, only by "a rude picketted fort.
Sentinels kept guard every night; even in the day time, no one
left his door-steps without a musket; and neighborly communication
between the houses was kept up principally by underground passages
from cellar to cellar."

Mr. Daniel Dennison, who had married Anne Bradstreet's sister, was
chosen captain for Ipswich and remained so for many years. As the
Indians were driven out, they concentrated in and about New
Hampshire, which, being a frontier colony, knew no rest from peril
day and night, but it was many years before any Massachusetts
settler dared move about with freedom, and the perpetual
apprehension of every woman who dreaded the horrible possibilities
of Indian outrage, must have gone far toward intensifying and
grinding in the morbid sensitiveness which even to-day is part of
the genuine New England woman's character. The grim details of
expeditions against them were known to every child. The same
impatience of any word in their favor was shown then, as we find
it now in the far West, where their treachery and barbarity is
still a part of the story of to-day, and Johnson, in his "Wonder-
Working Providence," gives one or two almost incredible details of
warfare against them with a Davidic exultation over the downfall
of so pestilent an enemy, that is more Gothic than Christian.