e. The surprise was sudden, and disastrous in the extreme. The
Indians, several hundred in number, surrounded the doomed party, and,
from their concealment, took unerring aim. Captain Beers, a man of
great valor, succeeded, with a few men, in retreating to a small
eminence, since known as Beers's Mountain, where he bravely maintained
the unequal fight until all his ammunition was expended. A ball then
pierced his bosom, and he fell dead. A few escaped back to Hadley to
tell the mournful tidings of the slaughter, while all the rest were
slain, and all their provisions and baggage fell into the hands of the
exultant savages. The barbarian victors amused themselves in cutting
off the heads of the slain, which they fixed upon poles at the spot,
as defiant trophies of their triumph. One man was found with a chain
hooked into his under jaw, and thus he was suspended on the bough of a
tree, where he had been left to struggle and die in mortal agony. The
garrison at Northfield, almost destitute of powder and food, was now
reduced to the last extremity.

Major Treat was immediately dispatched with a hundred men for their
rescue. Advancing rapidly and with caution, he succeeded in reaching
Northfield. His whole company, in passing through the scene of the
disaster, were most solemnly affected in gazing upon the mutilated
remains of their friends, and appear to have been not a little
terror-stricken in view of such horrid barbarities. Fearing that the
Indians were too numerous in the vicinity to be encountered by their
small band, they brought off the garrison, and retreated precipitately
to Hadley, not tarrying even to destroy the property which they could
not bring away. It is said that Philip himself guided the Indians in
their attack upon Captain Beers.

Hadley was now the head-quarters of the English army, and quite a
large force was assembled there. Most of the inhabitants of the
adjoining towns in tumult and terror had fled to this place for
protection. At the garrison house in Deerfield, fifteen miles above
Hadley, on the western side of the river, there were three thousand
bushels of corn standing in stacks.

On the 18th of September, Captain Lothrop, having been sent from
Hadley to bring off this corn, started with his loaded teams on his
return. His force consisted of a hundred men, soldiers and teamsters.
As no Indians had for some time appeared in that immediate vicinity,
and as there was a good road between the tw