"Captain Beer's Last Stand" Traditional Geocache
"Captain Beer's Last Stand"
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Memorial marker of historic battle located in Northfield, Massachusetts. A New Cache Where One Once Was.
"On the morning of September 2, 1675, the inhabitants of Northfield, Massachusetts went about their daily tasks. Only this year they were accompanied by soldiers. The long summer had been filled with tales of attacks on villages throughout the colony by King Philip and his warriors. Northfield had sent an appeal for more soldiers to the military garrison in Hadley; so far no soldiers had been sent. Would Hadley respond to their appeal or were they on their own?
Suddenly shots rang out! Women and children ran for the safety of the fort. In the meadows, where the men were harvesting grain, accompanied by the few soldiers assigned to the settlement, men lay dead. In total 8 settlers were killed, cattle slaughtered, grain destroyed and a few houses outside the stockade burned. The surviving villagers crowded together, listening to the noises outside -- the crackle of fire, the yells of the attackers and the moans of the cattle.
What should the settlers do? If they stayed inside the stockade, it was probably only a matter of time before they were slain. If they left the fort, death was a certainty. Why hadn't Hadley responded to their earlier request? Now, even if Hadley heard about the attack, it would take 24 hours to get troops to Northfield.
Unbeknownst to the terrified villagers, Hadley had responded to their August pleas. A troop of 38 soldiers under the command of Captain Richard Beers was on its way. They chose a route on the east side of the Connecticut River, through almost continuous forest via Sunderland, Montague and Erving, hoping to stay out of the sight of the Amerindians they assumed were on the west side of the river.
When the relief troop came to within 4 miles of Northfield, the decision was made to stop for the night. Early the next morning the troops continued on foot, leaving a guard behind with the horses. Suddenly shots were fired - ambush! In the course of the melee, 22 soldiers, including Captain Beers, lost their lives. The survivors made it back to Hadley to spread the alarm.
On September 5, 1675, a relief troop of 100 soldiers rushed to Northfield with orders to bring all the settlers back to Hadley. Despite protests from some of the settlers, it was decided to abandon Northfield for the time being, leaving the cattle behind and the crops unharvested.
After the settlers left, the warriors burned the village of Northfield. King Philip used the site during the next several months as a rendezvous with various River tribes.
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Editor's note: Go find Geocache "King Phillip's Hill" at that location off RT 10!
Historical Background and another account of the massacre:
The Wampanoag chief entered the Connecticut Valley at Springfield, and swept northward almost to the present line between Massachusetts and Vermont like a destructive tornado, leaving desolation in his track. Near Brookfield, a party of twenty Englishmen, while on their way, at near the middle of August, to treat with the Nipmucs, fell into an ambush and were treacherously murdered. Almost every house in Brookfield was set on fire--excepting a stone one--into which the people had gathered for safety. There they were besieged two days, when the Indians set the house on fire. Just at that moment a shower of rain came like a providence and put out the flames, and at the same time a relief party of white people, under Major Willard, arrived, and drove away the Indians. Early in September a hot battle was fought at Deerfield, where seven hundred Indians were defeated by one hundred and eighty Englishmen; but a week later, prowling Indians laid the town in ashes. On the same day--the Sabbath--Hadley was attacked, and, as we have seen, was saved by the bravery of Goffe the regicide.
For a moment the scourge was stayed at Hadley, but it soon swept mercilessly over other settlements. The blood of many valiant young men, under Captain Beers, flowed freely in the paths of Northfield, late in September. A few days afterward a company of young men of highest character--"the flower of Essex"--under Captain Lathrop, were murdered by many hundred Indians on the banks of a little stream near Deerfield, which is yet known as Bloody Brook, when the Indians were beaten off by others who came to the rescue. Springfield was burned, and Hadley was again assailed.
The Indians were masters of the situation, and King Philip, encouraged by his successes, now resolved to attack Hatfield, the chief settlement above Springfield. He was joined by the natives there who, until then, had been friendly to the English. They showed much zeal, and at near the close of October, Philip gathered his warriors around a huge fire, when the braves engaged in the wild scalp-dance, chanting heroic songs. Upon long poles they exhibited trophies of their horrid work--the long shining tresses of women and even the bright curls of little maidens whom they had slain--as they whirled around the flames with fearful contortions of limbs and body. Then, with almost a thousand warriors, the Wampanoags fell upon the settlement. The people were prepared for the onslaught. They had palisaded their houses with heavy timber standing upright in the ground bound close together with green withes, and the upper ends sharpened. Behind these stood armed men and resolute women waiting for the approach of the Indians, and when they came they were repulsed with such slaughter that Philip left the Connecticut Valley, with his shattered forces, and fled to Rhode Island. The Narragansets, in violation of their recent treaty with the English, received him with open arms, became his allies, and, late in the year, went out upon the war-path with him.
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On September 3, 1675 some 9 or 10 persons were slain by the Indians in the woods of Northfield, Mass., and some escaped to a garrisoned house. The day after this took place, and while it was yet unknown at Hadley, Capt. Beers, with 36 mounted infantry, were sent by Major Robert Treat to convey provisions to the garrisoned house in Northfield. Capt. Beers route was through the present towns of Sunderland and Montague, and the tract called Erving's Grant, then a continued forest through which was an imperfect road, a distance of nearly 30 miles, and though continually exposed to attacks, he passed several difficult places without seeing an Indian. At a distance of about two miles from the garrison house in Northfield, the route lay over a deep swampy ravine, through which ran a brook emptying into the Connecticut river. Capt. Beers had caused his men to dismount, so difficult was the passage for the soldiers and accompanying baggage. The approach of Beers being discovered by the Indians, they formed an ambuscade consisting of a large body, and lay waiting to attack him both in front and flank, and quite a portion of the English fell at their first fire. Capt. Beers with his remaining men fell back to a hill about three fourths of a mile, where, for some time, they bravely maintained the ground against the overwhelming force of the Indians, till Beers was slain and the survivors, save one, made good their escape.
Two days later, Major Robert Treat, with one hundred men, arrived on the ground where Capt. Beers was defeated, when the bodies of some of the slain were found to have been beheaded and the heads elevated on poles, and one corpse was suspended to the limb of a tree by a chain hooked into the under jaw, the scene being heart chilling, soul sickening, and appalling.
Major Treat proceeded to the garrison house at Northfield, found its inmates unharmed, but brought off these with all other English inhabitants of the town. The Indians soon after destroyed all the houses and almost or quite everything valuable.
The place where Capt. Beers fell is a sandy knoll on the west side of the road, and is called Beers Mountain. The bones of the slain in this action were a few years since found bleaching in the sun on "Beers Plain," where the battle began.
The fort and houses were soon after destroyed. The settlement was again broken up in 1690, but again commenced in 1713. It went on prosperously until Aug. 13, 1723, when two men were killed by the Indians; and in October of the same year, in their attack on the block-house, several more were slain. Aaron Belding was killed in the village by the Indians as late as 1748. There is an Indian burial-place in the town.
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Indian Council Fires
Two hundred and fifty yards eastward are the sites of three large Indian council fires. The Beers Massacre of September 4, 1675, took place in a gorge one-quarter mile to the northeast."
Captain Beer's Grave marker is located at N42 39.496 x W72 27.683
There Is A Letterbox Near The Marker!!!!!!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Va gur Ohfu ba gur evtug.