Upon the western shore of Mount Hope Bay is the town of Bristol,
quiet, with wide, grassy, tree-shaded streets leading down to the
waterside, now a pleasant summer-resort, having a ferry over to Fall
River. Farther up the peninsula is Warren, with its factories. In
Bristol rises the splendid isolated eminence of Mount Hope, which
gives the bay its name. Its rounded summit is a mass of quartzite
rock, almost covered by grass. It is hardly three hundred feet high,
but being the most elevated spot anywhere around, has a grand outlook,
every town in Rhode Island being visible from it, and all the islands
of Narragansett Bay, while far to the southward, upon distant
Aquidneck, Newport gleams in the sunlight. Eastward, across Mount Hope
Bay, the city of Fall River, with its rising terraces of huge granite
mills, is built apparently into the sloping side of a ledge of rocks.
Upon this mountain lived the famous chief, King Philip, and from it,
with his warrior band, he sallied forth to carry slaughter and rapine
among the Puritan settlements. The eastern side of Mount Hope falls
off precipitously to the bay, and when he was finally surprised by the
colonists in his lair, he is said to have rolled down this steep
declivity like a barrel. The mountain top is now known as "King
Philip's Seat;" there is a natural excavation in the mountain side,
called "King Philip's Throne;" and from the foot the waters of
"Philip's Spring" flow away, a little purling brook, out to Taunton
River. One disgruntled early colonial annalist described the place as
"Philip's Sty at Mount Hope." The greatest tradition of this region
tells of the ambush, surprise and death of this famous sachem, the
"Last of the Wampanoags."
The name of Wampanoag means "the men of the East Land," or the Indians
to the eastward of Narragansett Bay. When the Pilgrims landed at
Plymouth, the noted Massasoit was the Grand Sachem of the Wampanoags,
or Pokanokets, whose territory embraced most of the country from
Narragansett Bay to Cape Cod. The tribe had previously numbered thirty
thousand, but a pestilence had reduced them to a small figure, barely
three hundred, not long before the arrival of the "Mayflower."
Massasoit felt his weakness and made friends with the colonists, his
treaties of peace being faithfully kept for a half-century. The old
sachem lived north of Mount Hope, at Sowamset, now the town of Warren,
where his favorite "Massasoit Spring" still pours out its libations.
He died in 1661, at the age of eighty, leaving two sons, Mooanum and
Metacomet. Shortly after his death, these sons went to Plymouth to
confirm the treaties with the whites, and were so much pleased with
their reception that they asked to be given English names. The
colonial court accordingly conferred upon them the names of Alexander
and Philip. The former was chief sachem, but died within a year,
Philip succeeding. During the next decade he lived in comparative
friendliness, but was always unsatisfied and restless. He grew to
distrust the colonists, and never could be made to comprehend their
religion. When John Eliot, the Indian apostle, who converted so many,
preached before him, Philip pulled a button off Eliot's doublet,
saying in contempt that he valued it more than the discourse, a remark
which led pious old Cotton Mather to exclaim, in horror, "the
monster!" It was not long before the peaceful relations were broken,
and, after 1671, Philip travelled among the tribes throughout New
England, exciting them to a crusade against the colonists, and forming
a powerful league, including the Narragansetts, who had been friendly.
The result was the most desolating Indian war from which the colonies
ever suffered. The whites were everywhere attacked, but made heroic
defense, and in 1675-6 they defeated all the tribes, the Narragansetts
and Wampanoags being practically annihilated.