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Warriors Past

King Philip's War 1675

Metacomet, known as King Philip, succeeds his brother Wamsutta. The Pokanoket suffer uncounted abuses from their English neighbors: settlers encroach on their lands; they cannot practice their customs without insult; their guns are taken and broken; their livestock stolen and killed. With hunting lands shriveling up, many Pokanoket are forced into domestic servitude at the homes of English planters, where they work alongside Indian slaves.

A Christian Massachusett Indian named John Sassamon warns the English of a plot afoot against them. The Pokanoket brand him a traitor. In the winter, Sassamon's body is found floating beneath the ice of Assawomset Pond. As a result, three of Philip's men are charged by Plimouth with murder and executed. Philip reacts with vehemence: his nation alone has legal right to try the accused. Pokanoket sovereignty is breached.

His complaints unheeded, and feeling that the English are bent upon his people's destruction, Philip is left with little choice but to defend the integrity of his nation. War begins. Pokanoket victories are swift. The towns of Swansey, Taunton, Middleborough, and Dartmouth fall in quick succession. An eyewitness writes that Indian people congregate at the outskirts of the settlements "like the lightening on the edge of the clouds." By the following summer, fifty-two of New England's ninety villages will feel the Wampanoag strength.

Indian nations flock to the side of Philip. Weetaqmoo, Alexander's widow and leader of the Pocasset, brings three hundred men to the field in support. Other bands of Wampanoag follow suit, along with the Nipmuc, Pocumtuck, and Sokoki. The war spreads to Maine when English soldiers toss a Saco chief's baby into the water to see "if young Indians could swim naturally like animals of the brute creation." The baby drowns, and the war advances up the coast and into the interior to nations who have their own grievances against the English. Only the powerful Narragansett have yet to commit.


"Brothers ... You see this vast country before us, which the [Creator] gave to our fathers and us; you see the buffalo and deer that now are our support. Brothers, you see these little ones, our wives and children, who are looking to us for food and raiment; and you now see the foe before you, that they have grown insolent and bold; that all our ancient customs are disregarded; that treaties made by our fathers and us are broken, and all of us insulted; our council fires disregarded, and all the ancient customs of our fathers; our brothers murdered before our eyes, and their spirits cry to us for revenge. Brothers, these people from the unknown world will cut down our groves, spoil our hunting and planting grounds, and drive us and our children from the graves of our fathers, and our council fires, and enslave our women and children."

- King Philip, Wampanoag.

"I understand the captain is come to kill me and the rest of the Indians here. Tell him we know it, but fear him not, neither will we shun him; but let him begin when he dare, he will not take us unawares."

- Peksuot, Wampnoag.