344
Intercolonial Wars
[1724
of them Prisoners, a Law was passed to give them Five Pounds Proclamation Money for every one they should bring in alive ; and accordingly a great Number of the Spaniards, by that Means, were brought in alive, and the Reward paid for them.
B. R. Carroll, compiler, Historical Collections of South Carolina (New York, 1836), II, 351-359 passim.
119. A Ballad of Pigwacket (1725)
ANONYMOUS
This lively poem is a reasonably accurate account of one of the skirmishes in which the frontier wars abounded. The fight occurred May 8, 1725. — Bibliography: Thomas Symmes, Historical Memoirs of the Late Fight at Piggwackett (Boston, 1725). — For other colonial verse, see Contemporaries, I, Nos. 82, 138, and below, Nos. 159, 164, 171, 182.
- OF worthy Captain Lovewell, I purpose now to sing,
How valiantly he served his country and his King ;
He and his valiant soldiers, did range the woods full wide,
And hardships they endured to quell the Indian's pride. - 'Twas nigh unto Pigwacket, on the eighth day of May,
They spied a rebel Indian soon after break of day ;
He on a bank was walking, upon a neck of land,
Which leads into a pond as we're made to understand. - Our men resolv'd to have him, and travell'd two miles round,
Until they met the Indian, who boldly stood his ground ;
Then speaks up Captain Lovewell "take you good heed," says he,
"This rogue is to decoy us, I very plainly see. - "The Indians lie in ambush, in some place nigh at hand,
In order to surround us upon this neck of land ;
Therefore we ll march in order, and each man leave his pack,
That we may briskly fight them when they make their attack." - They came unto this Indian, who did them thus defy,
As soon as they came nigh him, two guns he did let fly,
Which wounded Captain Lovewell, and likewise one man more,
But when this rogue was running, they laid him in his gore.
