Mayflower (51 page)

Concerning the state of the Pokanokets’ war plans after 1671 Samuel Drake writes, “Much…was to be done, before a war could be undertaken with any prospect of success on their part. The Wampanoags, who were to begin it, were almost without firearms, and it would require much time to obtain a supply,”
OIC,
p. 86. Jeremy Bangs describes Philip’s final sell-off of his land holdings around Mount Hope in
Indian Deeds,
pp. 162–65. Hubbard in
HIWNE
states that some Narragansett Indians later revealed that their tribe had promised “to rise [with the Pokanokets] with four thousand fighting men in the spring of this present year 1676,” p. 58. William Harris in
A Rhode Islander Reports on King Philip’s War,
edited by Douglas Leach, wrote that the Pokanokets on Mount Hope had “laid up great quantities of corn, not in the usual manner, but a year ahead of time, as a supply for the war…. The intention of the Indians is alsorevealed by their accumulation of powder, shot, and arrows. The English perceiving this and inquiring about it, the Indians pretended it was a preparation against the Mohawks, but actually it was aimed only at the English,” p. 23. Samuel Drake refers to the annulment of the order to prohibit selling powder to the Indians in the fall of 1674 in
OIC,
p. 96.

For information on the murder trial of John Sassamon, I have looked to Yasuhide Kawashima’s
Igniting King Philip’s War,
pp. 88–111; Jill Lepore’s “Dead Men Tell No Tales” in
American Quarterly,
December 1994; James P. Ronda and Jeanne Ronda’s “The Death of John Sassamon: An Exploration in Writing New England History” in
American Indian Quarterly;
and James Drake’s “Symbol of a Failed Strategy: The Sassamon Trial, Political Culture, and the Outbreak of King Philip’s War” in
American Indian Culture and Research Journal.
In a November 18, 1675, letter to John Cotton, Thomas Whalley refers to Josiah Winslow’s “weakness” and “frail body,” Curwen Papers, AAS. In addition to hearing the testimony of an Indian witness, the jurors at the Sassamon trial were told that Sassamon’s corpse had begun “a bleeding afresh, as if it had newly been slain” when it was approached by Tobias; known as “cruentation,” this ancient test of guilt in a murder case was of dubious legal value; see Kawashima’s
Igniting King Philip’s War,
p. 100.

According to William Hubbard in
HIWNE,
Philip would have lacked the courage to launch the war “if his own life had not now been in jeopardy by the guilt of the foresaid murder of Sassamon,” p. 58. In a note to William Harris’s reference to the Indians’ preference for fighting in the summer and the English preference for winter in
A Rhode Islander Reports on King Philip’s War,
Douglas Leach writes, “The English, fearing ambush, disliked fighting against Indians in the months when foliage was thick and when the swamps were miry and difficult to penetrate,” p. 63. Samuel Drake cites the traditions concerning Philip’s inability to control his warriors in June 1675, as well as his anguished response to the death of the first Englishman in
OIC,
pp. 56–57; see John Callender’s
An Historical Discourse on the Civil and Religious Affairs of the Colony of Rhode-Island
for the family traditions about Philip’s reluctance to go to war: “He was forced on by the fury of his young men, for against his own judgment and inclination; and that though he foresaw and foretold the English would in time by their industry root out all the Indians, yet he was against making war with them, as what he thought would only hurry on and increase the destruction of his people,” p. 73. Francis Baylies in
Historical Memoir of…New-Plymouth,
vol. 2, edited by Samuel Drake, writes of the Indians’ intimate knowledge of both the English and the countryside: “They knew the habits, the temper, the outgoings, the incomings, the power of defense, and even the domiciliary usages of every [English] family in the colony. They were minutely acquainted with every river, brook, creek, bay, harbor, lake, and pond, and with every local peculiarity of the country. They had their friends and their enemies amongst the English; for some they professed a fond attachment; others they disliked and avoided. In short, they seemed as much identified with the English as Greeks with Turks,” p. 17.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN-
Kindling the Flame

In this and subsequent chapters, I have relied on Henry Martyn Dexter’s edition of Benjamin Church’s
Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War (EPRPW);
Dexter’s extensive knowledge of New England history and geography makes the edition an invaluable resource. Another excellent edition is that edited by Alan and Mary Simpson and published in 1975; in addition to a solid introduction, their edition includes a wide variety of helpful illustrations. Samuel Drake collected several important contemporary accounts of King Philip’s War in the volume
The Old Indian Chronicle (OIC),
most notably Nathaniel Saltonstall’s three extended articles about the war and an account by Richard Hutchinson. Also of importance is the account by John Easton in which Easton describes the unsuccessful attempt by a delegation of Rhode Island Quakers to bring about a peaceful resolution to Philip’s difficulties with Plymouth; the account also includes much important information about the early months of the war. Two Puritan ministers wrote histories of the conflict: Increase Mather was the first out with his hastily assembled
History of King Philip’s War (HKPW),
soon followed by William Hubbard’s
History of the Indian Wars in New England (HIWNE),
which received the official blessing of the Massachusetts colonial government. I have used Samuel Drake’s editions of the two works; his edition of Mather’s history also includes that written by his son Cotton Mather. Another important contemporary source is the letters written by William Harris, which have been collected and edited by William Leach in the volume
A Rhode Islander Reports on King Philip’s War.
Daniel Gookin’s
Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England in the Years
1675–1677 is unique in that it provides a sympathetic portrayal of the plight of the Praying Indians during the conflict. Neal Salisbury has edited an excellent edition of Mary Rowlandson’s account of her capture by the Indians, titled
The Sovereignty and Goodness of God;
Rowlandson’s book, published in 1682, became one of America’s first bestsellers and invented the genre of the Indian captivity narrative. Richard Slotkin and James Folsom’s
So Dreadfull a Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip’s War
is a useful collection of contemporary accounts from the period. Large and important collections of unpublished letters from the period are located at the Massachusetts Historical Society and the American Antiquarian Society. Although authentic Native voices are tragically lacking in almost all of these sources, there is one notable exception. During the winter of 1676, two Praying Indians, Job Kattenanit and James Quanapohit, volunteered to act as spies for the English. On January 24, 1676, after his return to Boston from the western portion of the colony, where he had lived for weeks with the enemy, James was interrogated by Massachusetts officials. There are two versions of his testimony: a highly edited transcript, published by the MHS, and a much longer, unabridged version reprinted in J. H. Temple’s invaluable
History of North Brookfield,
pp. 112–18. James’s testimony provides information found nowhere else concerning Philip’s movements during the summer, fall, and winter of 1675–76. The testimony of another Praying Indian, George Memicho (also reprinted in Temple’s
History of North Brookfield,
pp. 100–101), provides additional information about Philip.

When it comes to secondary accounts of the war, the best place to start is George Ellis and John Morris’s
King Philip’s War;
published in 1906, this book contains a host of fascinating photographs of war sites. Another book published that same year is George Bodge’s
Soldiers in King Philip’s War;
in addition to listing the names of the soldiers in each colonial company, Bodge provides an excellent narrative of the war and reprints a large number of contemporary letters. Douglas Leach’s
Flintlock and Tomahawk,
first published in 1958, remains an essential resource. More recently, Richard Slotkin has written insightfully about Benjamin Church’s place in American literature and culture in
Regeneration through Violence,
pp. 146–79, and in his introduction, “Benjamin Church: King of the Wild Frontier,” to Church’s narrative reprinted in the collection
So Dreadfull a Judgment,
pp. 370–91.
The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England,
1675–1678 by Russell Bourne is an engaging narrative that integrates the findings of recent anthropological and archaeological scholarship. Michael Puglisi’s
Puritans Besieged: The Legacies of King Philip’s War in the Massachusetts-Bay Colony
examines how the effects of the war reached far beyond 1676. Jill Lepore’s
The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity
provides provocative readings of the many written texts created during and after the conflict and demonstrates how the trauma of interracial war was fundamental to forging a uniquely American identity. In addition to providing a readable and richly detailed narrative of the war, Eric Schultz and Michael Tougias’s
King Philip’s War: The History and Legacy of America’s Forgotten Conflict
identifies countless war sites across New England. In
King Philip’s War: Civil War in New England,
James Drake persuasively argues that the conflict was much more than a racial war. Jenny Hale Pulsipher’s analysis of Indian-English relations throughout the seventeenth century in
Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England
puts King Philip’s War in a complex and richly textured historical and cultural context.

There is a wealth of books on the nature of the Indian-English warfare in colonial America. One of the best is Patrick Malone’s
The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics among the New England Indians.
Malone demonstrates how the English adopted Native ways of fighting during King Philip’s War. In
Conquering the American Wilderness: The Triumph of European Warfare in the Colonial Northeast,
Guy Chet begs to disagree with Malone’s thesis, claiming that the Indians had little influence on the way war was ultimately fought in America. To my mind, John Grenier in
The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier
convincingly demonstrates that Malone’s thesis cannot be so easily dismissed. Armstrong Starkey’s
European and Native American Warfare,
1675–1815 is also useful, as is John Ferling’s
A Wilderness of Miseries: War and Warriors in Early America.

All quotations from Church’s narrative in this chapter are from
EPRPW,
pp. 1–48; the description of Philip’s warriors is from Church, who describes a dance among the Sakonnets in which Awashonks had worked herself into a “foaming sweat.” Perhaps not unexpectedly, there is much conflicting information concerning the outbreak of King Philip’s War. In November 1675 Governor Josiah Winslow and Thomas Hinckley authored “A Brief Narrative of the Beginning and Progress of the Present Trouble between Us and the Indians,” which is in vol. 10 of
PCR,
pp. 362–64; they maintain that “our innocency made us very secure and confident it would not have broke out into a war.” They were not the only ones who believed that the threat of war had passed. On June 13, 1675, Roger Williams wrote Connecticut governor John Winthrop Jr., “[P]raise be God the storm is over. Philip is strongly suspected but the honored court at Plymouth (as we hear) not having evidence sufficient, let matters sleep and the country be in quiet, etc,”
Correspondence of Roger Williams,
vol. 2, p. 691.

Patrick Malone discusses the typical modifications made to a garrison house in
The Skulking Way of War,
p. 96. Eric Schultz and Michael Tougias provide an excellent description of where the various garrisons were located in Swansea in
King Philip’s War,
pp. 98–103. John Callender in the notes to
An Historical Discourse on the Civil and Religious Affairs of the Colony of Rhode-Island,
published in 1739, writes, “I have heard from some old people, who were familiarly acquainted with the Indians, both before and after the war, that the powwows had likewise given out an other ambiguous oracle…viz., that they promised the Indians would be successful if the English fired the first gun. It is certain the Indians long delayed and designedly avoided firing on the English, and seemed to use all possible means, to provoke the English to fire first,” pp. 73–74. Saltonstall in
OIC
describes the Indians asking an Englishman to grind their hatchet on Sunday, July 20, p. 126. Increase Mather speaks of June 24 being “a day of solemn humiliation through that colony, by fasting and praying, to entreat the Lord to give success to the present expedition,” in
HKPW,
p. 54. Josiah Winslow writes of the colony’s innocence respecting the Indians and the fairness of the Sassamon trial in a July 29, 1675, letter to Connecticut governor John Winthrop Jr., MHS Collections, 5th ser., vol. 1, pp. 428–29. John Easton writes of the “old man and a lad” shooting at the Indians pilfering a house and killing one of them in “A Relation of the Indian War” in
Narratives of the Indian Wars,
edited by Charles Lincoln, p. 12. Saltonstall in
OIC
writes of the scalping and killing of the father, mother, and son, pp. 128–29. On the history of scalping, see James Axtell and William Sturtevant’s “The Unkindest Cut, or Who Invented Scalping?”
WMQ,
3rd ser., 1980, pp. 451–72. Hubbard in
HIWNE
describes the eclipse of the moon on June 26, pp. 67–68.