The Tefft Papers

"We advanced about midnight; Captain Mosely was in the vanguard, after him Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth, and Connecticut was in the rear. With the help of Indian Peter and after a tedious march, we approached the entrance to the swamp about two o'clock in the afternoon on the Sabbath. About one hundred yards within the cedar swamp we found several hundred wigwams within a fort with many blockhouses. They entertained us with a fierce fight for about an hour, when our men scaled the walls and beat them thence. In a fresh assault the Indians fell upon us and drove us back, but by the great resolve and courage of General Winslow and Major Gookin we reinforced and fired the wigwams, with many living and dead persons within. The flames consumed great piles of meat and heaps of corn. We generally suppose that the enemy lost at least two hundred men."

- Joseph Dudley

Entrance to the Cedar Swamp

Views from above the Narragansett fortress site

"The fort of the Indians, where the battle took place, was a piece of five or six acres of upland, in the middle of a swamp which had but one pricipal entrance."

Views from inside the fortress site

"The sides of the fort were surrounded by palisadoes struck upright on a hedge, of about a rod in thickness."

The past should be forever

You will also want to visit Timothy N. Tefft's great web site - Descendants of John Tefft of Rhode Island:

http://home.gwi.net/~tefft6/family/

and the Tefft Family Association:

www.geocities.com/tefft_family

For more information about the Pettaquamscutt region, please visit the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society web site at:

www.freewebs.com/pettaquamscutt/

And, Wow! Watch this rising star!!!

www.tiftmerritt.com