King Philip's War

 

King Philip’s War was one of the most destructive Native conflicts on the continent, even if the numbers don’t seem significant by current standards.

Historian Samuel Drake estimated that the entire white population on the continent in 1675 numbered between 30,000 and 40,000, of which 6,000 to 8,000 men could bear arms. Some 600 to 800 colonists, or roughly two percent of the population, died during the conflict. Native American casualties ranged from a low of 910 killed to 3,000 out of a population of 20,000. That means as much as fifteen percent of the native population perished in the conflict.

The exact cause of the war is hard to explain. The evidence suggests that Philip (Metacom) was worried his people had been contaminated by contact with the colonists. Many of them prayed to the white man’s god. Some had even learned to read and write, but Philip’s biggest concern was land. The Englishmen kept demanding more of it until he was finally convinced something needed to be done before the colonists took it all.

The colonists had similar concerns. Cotton Mather feared his parishioners were becoming too much like the native tribes surrounding them, taking on many of their savage traits. More than anything, the colony needed land to support its growing numbers, and the only way to get it was to take it from the native inhabitants.

As a result, an uneasy peace existed between the colonists and the natives. The only thing missing was a spark to upset the delicate balance.

An uneasy peace begins to unravel

King Phillip’s father, Massasoit, befriended William Bradford and the Pilgrims shortly after they landed at Plymouth Harbor.

The Pilgrims signed a pact with Massasoit and the Wampanoags in 1621, promising to come to each other’s aid if they were attacked. The peace lasted for over forty years until the death of Massasoit in 1661. The decade before that, most of the Pilgrim founders had passed—Edward Winslow (1655), Miles Standish (1656), and William Bradford (1657).

Upon Massasoit’s death, his eldest son, Wamsutta, became sachem of the Pokanoket. Not long after that, Wamsutta changed his name to Alexander. His brother Metacom took the name Philip.

Massasoit’s sons had a different perspective on the whites. Their father worried about the English and their constant need for more land, but he also understood that his people weren’t strong enough to stop them, so whenever the English came to him with a request for more land, Massasoit gave it to them. At first, Alexander (Wamsutta) followed his father’s policy, but the colonists soon noted a subtle change in the Indians. Rumors circulated the natives intended to attack the English.

The colonists confronted Alexander in 1662. They sent soldiers to bring him to Plymouth for questioning. On his way home, Alexander took sick and died. Although no one could prove it, rumors persisted that the colonists had poisoned him.

Philip became sachem in 1662 after his brother’s death. He visited Plymouth that same year and reaffirmed his desire to maintain peace with the colony and continue trade with them. Every time the colonists asked, he sold them more of his land until all that remained to the Pokanoket was a small parcel surrounding Mount Hope.

Rumors of war surfaced again in 1671. This time, the Plymouth authorities forced Philip and his counselors to acknowledge they were subjects of the King of England and ruled by the government of New Plymouth and its laws.

A murder pushes the colonies towards war

Three of Philip’s followers murdered John Sassamon (Wussausmon), a Native priest, in January 1675.

Sassamon was an anomaly in Plymouth society. He was well educated, had spent at least a year studying at Harvard College, and could read and write English. As a result, he lived between the two worlds, ministering to the local tribes from his church at Namasket and acting as a go-between for the whites and native tribes.

Sassamon had even translated the Bible into his native language, making it more accessible to his people. He also worked as a secretary to King Philip and his predecessor, Alexander (Wamsutta).

A few weeks before his death, Sassamon visited Josiah Winslow, the governor of Plymouth Colony, warning him that Philip planned to kill him and attack the English settlements. The governor dismissed Sassamon, saying he doubted Philip would murder him.

The crowd watched as the nooses tightened around the necks of Sassamon's killers

Sassamon’s prophecy was fulfilled the following month when his beaten, bloated body was found under the ice in Assawompset Pond. His rifle and hat lay nearby, so investigators assumed Sassamon slipped and fell through the ice.

His body was buried, and the matter was quickly forgotten until Sassamon’s friends questioned the circumstances of his death. Whatever happened to John Sassamon, there were plenty of questions but few answers. Did Philip kill him for exposing his plot? Did the Wampanoags intend to attack the settlements? No one knew for sure.

Finally, the authorities ordered Sassamon’s body exhumed. The evidence suggested he had been murdered. His “neck was broken, which is one of the Indian ways of murdering,” explained Cotton Mather. “His head was extremely swollen...and he had several other wounds upon him.” Perhaps more telling was that when Sassamon’s body was taken from the pond, “no water issued out of him.” That meant he was dead before going into the water.

On June 1, the colony empaneled a jury of twelve colonists and four to six Native Americans. Suspicion centered on three native men—Tobias, one of King Philip’s counselors, Wampapaquan (Tobias’s son), and Mattashunannamo.

One native testified he saw the suspects near where Sassamon’s body was found. Another native, Pawtuckson, said he saw Tobias and several other Indians kill Sassamon.

It eventually came out that the Indians cut a hole in the ice and shoved Sassamon’s body under it. Then, they left his hat and gun on the ice so that people would suspect it was an accident—that he slipped on the ice and fell in. Their ruse worked for a while.

The three men were sentenced to hang on June 8. The rope slipped off Wampapaquan at the hanging, and he fell to the ground. Before the hangman could string him up again, Wampapaquan confessed. He said his companions had killed John Sassamon. He had no part in it. He just watched. Perhaps the colonists had had enough blood for the day, or they agreed to free him if he confessed. Whatever happened, Wampapaquan received a one-month reprieve. However, the colonists quickly changed their minds. Wampapaquan was shot before the month was up.

The last chance for peace

The burning of Swansea. John Salisbury fires on a Pokanoket warrior

Over the next several weeks, both sides busied themselves preparing for war.

On June 16, 1675, the colonists made a last-ditch effort to preserve the peace. Deputy Governor Easton from Plymouth Colony met with Philip and several of his advisors at Bristol Neck Point.

The Wampanoags aired their grievances, but nothing came of it. “They said they had been the first to do good, the English the first to do wrong,” said Philip. “When the English first came, the King’s father was as a great man and the English as a little child. He constrained other Indians from raiding the English, gave them seed, showed them how to plant and was free to do them good, and let them have one hundred more times land than now the King has for his own.”

When Alexander became king, he was treated miserably and poisoned. Now that the situation was reversed, the English did not treat them as they had been treated.

Two weeks later, the situation turned deadly.

The Indians raided Job Winslow’s house at Swansea on June 18 or 19. Then, on Sunday, June 20, while the citizens of Swansea attended church services, a band of Pokanoket warriors ransacked twelve homes on the outskirts of town. They laid siege to the city and, three days later, burned several houses. Either that day or the next, John Salisbury shot and killed one of Philip’s warriors. The Wampanoags retaliated, killing Salisbury and six other men near Swazey Corner. Two other men were killed later that day as they sought help. Then the Wampanoag burned much of the town.

Pokanonet wariors race through Swansea firing the town

Philip expanded the war in the days following the attack on Swansea, launching raids on the frontier towns of Taunton and Rehoboth.

The Massachusetts troops marched on Mount Hope (near present-day Bristol, Rhode Island). They won a bloodless victory, as Philip’s men had abandoned the town. Still, the victory was symbolic. Mount Hope was Philip’s stronghold and the only remaining land held by the Wampanoag. Taking it bolstered the colonists’ spirits and sent a message to the Native Americans that the colonists meant business.

Battles quickly followed at Pocasset, Brookfield, Hadley, and Hatfield. As the war dragged on, the three principal colonies formed an alliance in September 1675. The New England Confederation officially declared war against the tribes on September 9, 1675. Then, one thousand troops were raised, and three men—one from each colony, were appointed commander-in-chief. The command was given based on which colony the fighting occurred in. Each man was to command when the fighting took place in his home colony.

Unfortunately, the native tribes wound up losers no matter which side they chose. The Christian Indians who stayed out of the conflict didn’t fare any better than the warring tribes. On August 13, the Massachusetts Council ordered all Christian Indians to remain in their Praying Towns. Then, on October 13, they issued a more restrictive order forcing the Christian Indians to move to Deer Island.

The Narragansetts came under suspicion

In October, the Narragansetts signed a treaty with the Massachusetts Bay Colony, agreeing to remain neutral. However, the colony’s leaders had lingering doubts about the native’s intentions. They believed the Narragansetts harbored some of Philip’s followers on their lands and that they would eventually join Philip.

Colonial soldiers attack the Narragansett fort

Cotton Mather explained that although the Narragansett had “not as yet appeared in open hostility.” Nevertheless, “when they appeared before the commissioners of the United Colonies...they pretended nothing but goodwill toward the Englishmen.” They promised that “those enemies of ours who had committed so many murders and had fled to them for refuge should be delivered up by the latter end of October.” When the time came, they made excuses and said they would do it in the spring.

Every time a settlement was attacked, the Wampanoags were spotted moving their wounded into Narragansett lands. Also, several Indians had told the colonists that the Narragansetts wanted to attack the English but not until spring, “when they should have the leaves of the trees and the swamps to befriend them.”

George Ellis and John Morris described the colonists’ state of mind best in their history of King Philip’s War. “If the friendly Indians were objects of strong distrust and suspicion, a neutral tribe could only be regarded as hostile, harboring evil intentions and waiting only a favorable opportunity for war and massacre.” Based on that mindset, something needed to be done—quickly.

As a result, in early November, the New England Confederation, comprising Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Connecticut, made a preemptive strike on the “perfidious and bloody heathen.”

Bloodshed at the great swamp

On December 19, John Winslow led a force of 1,000 colonials and 150 Pequot warriors against the Narragansett at the Great Swamp in South Kingston, Rhode Island.

The Narragansett had erected a great fort on a small piece of upland surrounded by water. It covered a five-or six-acre area and was surrounded by high palisades. I

It was encircled with an impenetrable hedge, “on the outside of which was a deep ditch filled with water,” said Captain Benjamin Church. “The only pathway from the mainland to the fort was over the body of a huge tree.” Men had to pass over it single file to get to the fort. Next to it stood a log blockhouse.

A disaffected Christian Indian named Indian Peter Freeman guided the army through the swamps to the Narragansett fort. And then, when the fort looked invincible, Peter led them to a weak spot in the structure’s defenses where the Narragansetts had not finished construction.

Dozens of soldiers died charging the blockhouse. Undiscouraged, they reformed and tried again. “A desperate struggle ensued. The Indians poured from the house, the hedge, the palisade, an uninterrupted stream of death,” said Benjamin Church. Finally, they were driven from the enclosure “after fighting inch by inch.”

Captain Church led a squad of thirty men into the swamp. When he spotted a group of warriors inching their way to the fort, Church ordered his men to crouch behind a nearby log. When the Indians stood up to attack, Church ordered his men to fire. Fourteen warriors fell dead. The rest turned and ran.

Capture of Mary Rowlandson

Soldiers charged the fort in another section, firing their guns and throwing lighted brands into the structure. Hundreds of Narragansetts were “roasted to death” in the ensuing fire. “The screams of women and children roasting in the flames” mixed with the sounds of battle. Seven hundred wigwams and the tribe’s entire winter food supply were burned.

Captain Church estimated that 300 Narragansetts, mainly women, children, and older adults, died in the fighting. Another 700 were wounded. Many more died from the cold weather and the frozen waters of the swamps. Eighty colonists died, and another 150 were wounded. Many more soldiers died on the seventeen-mile march back to their camp. The injured who survived “were frozen stiff as the dead,” while others suffered from frostbite.

No matter what the Narragansett’s intentions were at the time of the attack, the battle at the Great Swamp drew them into the war on Philip’s side. As a result, hundreds of colonists died at their hands before the colonists destroyed them.

A quick word about Benjamin Church is necessary here. Church lived on the fringe of Puritan society. His book portrays him as someone the colonists tolerated but never really trusted. His sympathetic attitude toward the native tribes ran contrary to that of the colony, but his knowledge of the land and native ways of fighting made him indispensable during the war.

Church was the original frontiersman. He could have been the model for James Fenimore Cooper’s Hawkeye or Natty Bumppo. He was as at home in the woods as he was in Plymouth society. He was adept in native fighting methods and knew the forest trails as well as any savage. When he wrote his book about the war, Church portrayed the Wampanoag and their allies as noble savages. He cried for the native women and children as they roasted to death in the conflagration at the Great Swamp.

Soon after the battle at the Great Swamp, Canonchet led the surviving Narragansetts to Wachusett Hills, where they joined forces with the Nipmucks.

The attack on Lancaster and Mary Rowlandson's captivity

Early on February 16, Lancaster, Massachusetts, came under attack by 1500 warriors led by Sagamore Sam. The warriors snatched people from their homes, killing some and taking others prisoner. In a short time, the city was turned into a blazing inferno. Muskets popped amongst the screams of the dying.

Native dance around the captives

Forty-two people sought shelter in Reverend Joseph Rowlandson’s fortified house, but the colonists quickly learned it wasn’t the haven they had hoped for. The natives hid behind trees, barns, fences, and whatever cover was available. They poured a shower of musketry on the house “so that the bullets seemed to fly like hail.”

Then they charged the house, throwing bundles of burning straw on it. Soon, “every avenue of escape was closed.” The savages danced around the house, mocking the cries of those caught inside.

Mary Rowlandson took her children to the door, but “the Indians fired so fast that the bullets rattled against the house as if one had taken a handful of stones and thrown them.”

Mary took a ball to the side as she emerged from the building. Another ball passed through the hand and bowels of her daughter Sarah, who she held in her arms. All around her, people fell dead in pools of blood. First, Mary watched her nephew Thomas get knocked on the head and killed. Then, her older sister, Elizabeth Kerley, was shot and killed while leaving the house.

Outside, the “red hellions” danced around, desecrating the dead bodies. The corpses “were stripped naked by a company of hellhounds,” said Mary Rowlandson, “singing, ranting, and insulting, as if they would have torn our very hearts out.”

When it was over, twelve people in the house died, one escaped, and twenty-nine others were taken captive.

Mary was held captive for nearly twelve weeks, traveling with the natives. She knitted socks and made shirts and pants for those who asked. Often, she was paid in food. Once she made a shirt for King Philip’s son. In return, Philip paid her a shilling. Along the way, she met her son and daughter, who were held captive in different villages.

In their travels, the natives took detours, sometimes racing ahead of the English army. Other times, the warriors broke off from the band to raid a nearby village. When they returned, they brought fresh captives and plunder. At night, they danced and celebrated their kills.

Soldiers storming the fishing camp at Turner's Falls

Finally, some Boston women raised twenty pounds to redeem Mary Rowlandson from captivity. Her son was exchanged for seven pounds, and the governor of Rhode Island bought her daughter out of captivity.

The tide turns against Philip

Mary Rowlandson was free and back with her family. However, many other captives taken with her weren’t so fortunate.

The colonists launched a string of attacks in the spring of 1676 that crippled Philip’s forces.

On May 18, Captain William Turner and 150 Massachusetts militiamen attacked Peskeopscut (present-day Turner Falls), an Indian fishing village on the Connecticut River. They killed 100 to 200 native people, primarily women and children. The surviving warriors across the river and on Smead’s Island chased the soldiers down, killing forty, including Turner.

Philip attacked Scituate and Hatfield, Massachusetts, killing seven people the following month. He launched another attack on Hadley, Massachusetts, on June 12. However, that action quickly fell apart when a band of Mohawks ambushed his party.

The following week, on June 19, Massachusetts issued an amnesty for any Indians who surrendered. That was the beginning of the end for Philip. His followers had been at war for over a year. They’d watched many of their friends and family die, seen most of their towns and food supplies destroyed, and looked on helplessly as the captured were sold into slavery.

Even Philip’s most devoted followers knew nothing good would come from continued fighting. If they won, the colonists would probably regroup at some future point and finish them. If the Native Americans lost, which was more likely, they faced execution or being sold into slavery.

King Philip’s War had become a lose-lose proposition for the Native tribes.

Whether either side knew it, the war was winding down in the summer of 1676.

On July 2, Quaiapen, a Narragansett sachem, and a group of her followers, primarily women, set out to plant corn. A colonial force slaughtered many of the survivors, then rounded up the rest and sold them into slavery.

Philip attacked Bridgewater on July 30, 1676. Unfortunately for him, the townspeople were waiting. As his warriors crossed a log bridge outside town, the colonists rose and swept their line with a heavy fire. Several of Philip’s chiefs fell, including Akompoin.

The following day, Benjamin Church’s rangers arrived outside Bridgetown. Church took aim at an Indian seated on a stump across the river, and then, just as he was about to fire, one of his Indians stopped him, believing it was one of their own men.

When the man looked up, Church recognized him as Philip, but he disappeared along the riverbank before Church could get off a shot.

Philip’s men were gone when the colonists crossed the river. Just a scattering of women and children remained, among them King Philip’s wife and son. The rangers took them, and many others, prisoner and then returned to Plymouth. Philip’s wife and child were sold into slavery in the West Indies when the war ended.

The hunt for King Philip

After their capture, Philip returned to his home at Mount Hope, hiding in the nearby swamps and forests. On August 6, an Indian informant offered to lead the residents of Taunton to Philip’s hideout if they agreed to spare his life. Captain Church set off in pursuit with twenty men.

On August 12, Church cornered Philip’s men in a swamp that one book described as “the valley of the shadow of death—well-suited to awake all the terrors of the imagination.”

Death of King Philip

The warriors scattered at the first shot. Philip was the first up, running as fast as possible, “without any more clothes than his small breeches and stockings.”

He ran right into Church’s ambush. An Englishman and an Indian fired at him said Cotton Mather. “The Englishman missed, but the Indian shot him so that he fell down dead.” One bullet went through Philip’s heart, and another above it. Philip fell face down in the mud and water with his gun under him.

Afterward, Church ordered Philip’s head chopped off and his body drawn and quartered. Before he dissected him, the Indian executioner offered a brief prayer. Philip “had been a very great and special man,” he said. He “had made many men afraid of him, but so big as he was, he would now chop his arse for him.”

Church gave Philip’s hands to John Alderman, the native who had killed him. The four-quarters of his body were hung from nearby trees and left to rot as a “monument of revenging justice.” The head was stuck on a pole and paraded through Plymouth, where it remained for nearly two decades.

The war drags on after Philip's death

The fighting continued for nearly two years after Philip’s death, with most of the action taking place in New Hampshire and Maine.

King Philip's head was paraded through town on a pole

The Treaty of Casco, signed on April 12, 1678, officially ended the fighting. It stipulated that the settlers could return to their homes. In return, they were to pay the native inhabitants rent—one peck of corn annually for each family.

“The terms of the peace were disgraceful but not unjust,” reported Jeremy Belknap, a contemporary historian, writing just thirty years after the war’s end. “Considering the irregular conduct of many of the eastern settlers and the native propriety of the Indians in the soil. Certainly, they were now Master of it, and it was entirely at their option whether the English should return to their habitations or not.”

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