Charles H. Lincoln, ed., Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675-1699 (New York, 1913): Cotton Mather, Decennium Luctuosum (1699)

Read in the archive.org full text for the Hatten research (research/hatten/Browne_Chapin_Cumins.md, October 2026). Mather wrote within a few years of the events; the editor’s notes identify the people.

• p. 227 (1691): the garrison at Wells “were left, with Captain Converse, and Lieutenant Plaisted”; the editor’s note: “James Converse of Woburn; Ichabod Plaisted of Kittery.”
• pp. 232-238, the defence of Storer’s garrison at Wells (the editor dates it “June 10 and 11, 1692, old style; June 20 and 21, new style”): “But now, Reader, the Longest Day [of] the Year is to come on, and if I mistake not, the Bravest Act in the War, fell out upon it … Captain Converse was lodged in Storer’s Garrison at Wells, with but Fifteen men … The Army made up in all, about Five Hundred Men, or Fierce Things in the Shape of Men, all to Encounter Fifteen Men in one little Garrison, and about Fifteen more Men … in a Couple of open Sloops.”
• In the night the besiegers called to the sloops, “Who were their Commanders? … the Indians Replied, You ly, you have none but Converse, and we will have him too before Morning!”
• When “one of the Soldiers began to speak of Surrendring … the captain Vehemently protested, That he would lay the man Dead, who should so much as mutter that base word any more!”
• At the end, offered terms under a flag of truce, “the Captain sent ’em word, That he wanted for nothing, but for men to come, and Fight him.” Challenged to fight “in the open Field, like a Man, and not … in a Garrison, like a Squaw,” he answered: “what a Fool are you? do you think, Thirty men a Match for Five Hundred? … Come with your Thirty men upon the Plain, and I’le meet you with my Thirty, as soon as you will.”