This account of the “Falls Fight,” a massacre of Indigenous people by English soldiers from Deerfield and Hatfield, Massachusetts, comes from a 1906 history of King Philip’s (or Metacom’s) War (1675-76). At the time of the attack, Capt. William Turner’s actions were seen as justified and reasonable. However, later historians have called his actions “amateurish” and reprehensible. The incident came after a long winter when the towns of the mid-Connecticut River Valley had suffered a series of raids by Native warriors without being able to strike back effectively. When they heard about the encampment at Peskeompscut (just across the river from the current site of Turners Falls, Massachusetts), Turner mustered a party of 150 volunteers- “single men, boys, and servants,” almost all of whom were entirely untrained in warfare. They struck at dawn, “pointing their muskets through the wigwam doors,” and slaughtered women, the elderly, and children, as they lay sleeping. There were no Native warriors in the encampment when it was attacked.
Bodge, George M. Soldiers in King Philip’s War…. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, American Centuries. https://americancenturies.org/collection/l01-118/. Accessed on October 16, 2024.
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