Defeated, and left without resources, the savage king was then hunted
from one place to another, finally seeking refuge in his eyrie on
Mount Hope, with a handful of followers. Here Captain Church attacked
him, and on August 12, 1676, he was killed by a bullet fired by an
Indian. In Church's annals of that terrible war the story is told of
the death of this chief, the last of his line. Philip was ambushed and
completely surprised on the mountain, and running away, rolled down
its side, the Indians trying to escape through a swamp at the foot.
The attacking party was posted around the swamp in couples, hidden
from view. Philip, partly clad, ran directly towards two of the
ambush, an Englishman and an Indian. The former fired, but missed him;
then the Indian fired twice, sending one bullet through his heart and
the other not more than two inches from it. Philip fell dead upon his
face in the mud and water; most of his companions escaped. In Church's
recital is told what followed:
"Captain Church ordered Philip's body to be pulled out of the mire on
to the upland. So some of Captain Church's Indians took hold of him by
his stockings, and some by his small breeches, being otherwise naked,
and drew him through the mud to the upland; and a doleful, great,
naked, dirty beast he looked like. Captain Church then said that,
forasmuch as he had caused many an Englishman's body to lie unburied
and rot above ground, not one of his bones should be buried. And,
calling his old executioner, bid him behead and quarter him.
Accordingly he came with his hatchet and stood over him, but before he
struck, he made a small speech, directing it to Philip, and said 'he
had been a very great man, and had made many a man afraid of him, but
so big as he was, he would now chop him in pieces.' And so went to
work and did as he was ordered. Philip having one very remarkable
hand, being very much scarred, occasioned by the splitting of a pistol
in it formerly, Captain Church gave the head and that hand to
Aldermon, the Indian who shot him, to show to such gentlemen as would
bestow gratuities upon him, and accordingly he got many a penny by it.
This being on the last day of the week, the Captain with his company
returned to the island (Aquidneck), tarried there until Tuesday, and
then went off and ranged through all the woods to Plymouth, and
received their premium, which was 30 shillings per head for the
enemies which they had killed or taken, instead of all wages, and
Philip's head went at the same price. Methinks it is scanty reward and
poor encouragement, though it was better than what had been some time
before. For this much they received four shillings and sixpence a man,
which was all the reward they had, except the honor of killing
Philip."
When the party brought Philip's head to Plymouth, the Puritan meeting
was celebrating a solemn thanksgiving, and quoting, again, the words
of old Cotton Mather, "God sent them in the head of a leviathan for a
thanksgiving feast." This head was exposed on a gibbet at Plymouth for
twenty years, as the arch-enemy of the colony. But things were
different afterwards. The "monster" of the seventeenth century became
a martyr in the nineteenth century. Irving wrote King Philip's
biography; Southey was his bard; and Edwin Forrest nobly impersonated
him. Thus the great Metacomet, in the light of history, is regarded as
sinned against as well as sinning, for he was trying to drive the
invader from his native land. The resistless westward march of the
white man overcame him, the first of a long line of famous Indians to
fall in front of American colonization.