New England Prospering--Outbreak of King Philip's War--Causes of the
War--White or Indian Had to Go--Philip on the War-path--Settlements Laid
in Ashes--The Attack on Hadley--The Great Swamp Fight--Philip Renews the
War More Fiercely Than Before--His Allies Desert Him--Betrayed and
Killed--The Indians Crushed in New England.
The civil war between Charles I. and the Parliament put an end to Puritan
immigration to New England, and some of the settlers went back to
England, and gave efficient aid to their fellow Puritans in fighting
against the king. The people of New England were, on the whole,
prosperous about the middle of the seventeenth century. Nearly every head
of a family owned his house and the land which he occupied, and in the
coast towns many were engaged in profitable trade and the fisheries.
Fishing vessels from abroad were customers for the agricultural products
of the colony, and gradually the colonists built their own vessels and
absorbed the fisheries themselves. The figure of a codfish in the
Massachusetts State House was, until recently, a reminder of the
beginning of Massachusett's wealth and prosperity.
King Philip's War was a terrible blow to the colonies, and came near to
proving their destruction. The immediate provocation of the conflict was
slight enough, but the conflict itself was inevitable. There was no
longer room in New England for independent Indian tribes side by side
with English colonies. One race or the other had to give way and war
meant extermination for one or the other. King Philip, Sachem of the
Wampanoags, saw that the further progress of the colonies would involve
the extinction of his race. He was a brave man, and possessed of uncommon
ability. He did not move hastily, although his tribesmen clamored for
bloodshed to avenge three of their fellows whom the English had hanged on
a doubtful charge of murder, based on the killing of an Indian traitor.
When Philip was prepared to strike he sent his women and children to the
Narragansetts for protection, and then started on the warpath against the
settlers of Plymouth colony. Major Savage, with horse and foot from
Boston, joined the Plymouth forces, and they drove Philip back into a
swamp at Pocasset. After a siege of many days Philip made his way from
the swamp, was welcomed by the Nipmucks, a tribe in interior
Massachusetts, and with fifteen hundred warriors he hurried to attack the
white settlements in Connecticut. The colonial army meanwhile hastened to
the Narragansett country, and compelled Canonchet, chief of the
Narragansetts, upon whom King Philip had relied for aid, to make a treaty
of friendship. Philip was disappointed by the loss of this expected ally,
but disappointment made him only the more resolute and desperate.
Everywhere he excited the New England tribes against the English, and
carefully avoiding any general encounter, he waylaid the settlers,
destroyed their homes and laid ambuscades for them in field and highway,
now and then attacking some important town. The colonists suffered
fearfully; numbers were slain; whole settlements were devastated, and the
gun had to be kept at hand in church, at home and at daily toil. No one
knew when the dusky foe would suddenly spring from the forest; no woman
left her doorstep without fear that she might never enter it again, and
the settler, whom duty summoned from home, looked anxiously on his return
to see if his dwelling was there. Even the churches, with congregations
armed as they listened to the Word of God, were assailed and the
worshipers sometimes massacred. Deerfield was laid in ashes, and Hadley
was saved undoubtedly by the sudden appearance of a venerable man,
William Goffe, the regicide, who had been a major-general under Cromwell,
was one of the judges who signed the death warrant of Charles I., and had
fled to New England from the vengeance of Charles II. He was concealed in
Hadley when the Indians attacked the place, and unexpectedly appeared
among the inhabitants, most of whom took him for a supernatural being,
and animated them to repulse the savages. He then as suddenly
disappeared, going back to his place of refuge. Philip, encouraged by his
successes, made a bold attack upon Springfield, but was repulsed with
serious loss. He then retreated to the Narragansett country, and was
hospitably received by Canonchet.
Although Canonchet's sympathies were with Philip, it is not certain that
the Narragansett chief had hostile designs against the English. The
colonists had determined, however, to make a sweep of possible as well as
actual enemies, and they marched upon the Narragansetts. Then occurred
the Great Swamp fight, one of the most sanguinary of encounters in the
history of Indian warfare. The Narragansetts had their winter camp, or
fort, in the heart of a swamp, in what is now Charlestown, Rhode Island.
Successive rows of palisades protected a position of considerable extent,
accessible during the greater part of the year by a single narrow path.
This one access was guarded by a blockhouse, but the cold weather gave a
footing to the invaders on the usually impassable morasses. An attempt
was made to take the Narragansetts by surprise. The warriors, however,
detected the stealthy approach, and seizing their weapons, fired from the
security of their palisades upon the advancing enemy. A number of the
best men on the colonial side were shot down while urging on the attack.
The battle on both sides was fierce and stubborn. Assault followed
assault, only to be repulsed, and when the English had fought their way
into the fortress, they were at first driven out by an irresistible onset
of the Indians. At length the colonists made good their entrance, and the
battle continued at closer quarters, the Indians nerved to desperation by
the presence of their wives and children, whose fate would be their own,
and the colonists inspired to prodigies of valor by the thought that
their defeat would certainly involve their own destruction, and perhaps
that of New England. The invaders at length set fire to the wigwams. As
the flames spread the women and children ran out, hampering their
defenders with cries of terror and appeals for protection, and at length
the Indians were overpowered. Then followed a pitiless massacre of the
defeated Indians and their families, hundreds of whom perished in the
flames, while many were taken prisoners to be carried off into slavery.
Canonchet was slain, and the power of the Narragansetts was broken
forever.[1]
[1] In the summer of 1883 I represented the Providence _Journal_ at
the dedication of Fort Ninigret, a spot set apart from the former
Narragansett reservation in memory of the tribe which had given
welcome to Roger Williams when he fled from Puritan persecution. I
visited at the time the scene of the Great Swamp fight, and also
the burying-ground of the latter Narragansett chiefs.
The following lines which were suggested by the occasion, may
perhaps be of interest to the reader:
THE GRAVE OF NINIGRET.
A stricken pine--a weed-grown mound
On the upland's rugged crest,
Point where the hunted Indian found
At length a place of rest.
Thou withered tree, by lightning riven,
Of bark and leaf bereft,
With lifeless arms erect to heaven,
Of thee a remnant's left;
The bolt that broke thy giant pride
Yet spared the sapling green;
And tall and stately by thy side
'Twill show what thou hast been.
But of the Narragansett race
Nor kith, nor blood remains;
Save that perchance a tainted trace
May lurk in servile veins.
The mother's shriek, the warrior's yell
That rent the midnight air
When Christians made yon swamp a hell,
No longer echo there.
The cedar brake is yet alive--
But not with human tread--
Within its shade the plover thrive,
The otter makes its bed.
The red fox hath his hiding-place
Where ancient foxes ran.
How keener than the sportsman's chase
The hunt of man by man!
H. M.
King Philip escaped from the slaughter, found other Indian allies, and
renewed the war more fiercely than before. Many towns were laid in ashes,
including Providence and Warwick, in Rhode Island; Weymouth, Groton,
Medfield, Lancaster and Marlborough, in Massachusetts. About six hundred
of the colonists were killed in battle or waylaid and murdered, and the
burden of the struggle bore heavily on the survivors. Fortunately
dissensions among the savages diminished their power for harm, and
Philip's allies deserted him, or surrendered to avoid starvation. Captain
Church of Rhode Island went in pursuit of Philip who had taken refuge in
the fastnesses of Mount Hope. The wife and little son of the Indian chief
were made prisoners, and this was a final blow to him. "My heart breaks,"
he said; "I am ready to die." An Indian, who claimed to have a grievance
against Philip on account of a brother whom the sachem had killed,
betrayed the hiding-place of Philip to the English, and shot the fallen
chief. Philip's head was cut off and carried on a pole to Plymouth, and
his body was quartered. His wife and son were sold into slavery in
Bermuda. The Indians of New England were crushed, and they never again
attempted to stand against the whites.