"Bars Fight" is a ballad poem written by Lucy Terry about an attack upon two white families by Native Americans on August 21, 1746.
[1] The poem was preserved orally and not published until 1855, in Josiah Gilbert Holland's History of Western Massachusetts.
The text of the ballad from Holland's History of Western Massachusetts, 1855:[3] August 'twas the twenty-fifth, Seventeen hundred forty-six; The Indians did in ambush lay, Some very valient men to slay, The names of whom I'll not leave out.
Eunice Allen see the Indians coming, And hopes to save herself by running, And had not her petticoats stopped her, The awful creatures had not catched her, Nor tommy hawked her on her head, And left her on the ground for dead.
After the word "slay," an alternate oral transmission of the poem offers an accurate location and body count: "Twas nigh unto Sam Dickson's mill / The Indians there five men did kill.