Philip's New England
By the mid-1670s, when war broke out between New England tribes and the Euro-Americans, the non-native population of the region stood at about 36,000 to 45,000, with approximately 17,000 in Massachusetts Bay Colony, with Boston as its principal town; 5,000 in Plymouth Colony to the south; 10,000 in Connecticut; 3,000 to 4,000 in Rhode Island; and some 5,000 to the north in Maine. The New Englanders were spread out in approximately 110 towns or villages, most located near the coast or along rivers. Elsewhere, the land was heavily wooded and intersected by paths primarily known to the native population.2
At this time, Euro-Americans outnumbered Indians by two to one. In large part, this ratio emerged because of diseases that ravaged the region in the seventeenth century, reducing the Indian population from a high estimated at about 90,000 to perhaps 10,000 to 20,000 people by 1675.3 Although the native peoples belonged to a variety of tribes (including the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Niantic, Mohegan, Pequot, Massachusetts, Nipmuc, and Abenaki), they shared membership in the Algonquian language family and thus were able to communicate with and understand one another.
Euro-Americans had been trading with the Indians, especially for furs, since the early sixteenth century. When the non-native population began increasing by the middle of the seventeenth century, the Indian possession most in demand increasingly became the land itself. Native peoples were at a distinct disadvantage in land deals, as they neither engaged in private ownership of the land nor shared the Euro-American view of permanent habitations and, therefore, had difficulty fully grasping those concepts. The new arrivals wanted to establish villages and farms that would be their permanent homes. The native peoples, by contrast, saw land occupancy as temporary, moving with the seasons and shifting village sites to accommodate their needs. When Euro-Americans spoke of “owning,” the native peoples were apt to register instead the principle of temporary use.
The English were punctilious about following their moral principles, and those principles included buying rather than stealing. They generally paid for the land but seemingly were not required, within their moral code, to give fair value as it would be computed from a native point of view. As the English saw it, the land was barely being used, so its value, they mistakenly and conveniently assumed, was not great to the current inhabitants, who could simply move on to other land. Nor did the buyers always define to a fine point the precise amount of land they were buying. When Philip catalogued his grievances against the English in a conversation with John Easton, deputy governor of Rhode Island, one of his complaints was that buyers often claimed more land than the Indians had agreed to sell. That June 1675 exchange, when Easton was trying to persuade Philip to forgo war, elicited an outpouring of charges that obviously had been festering over treatment by the English, as the Pilgrims still thought of themselves. According to Philip, the English were ungrateful for the help that his father had given them, had poisoned Philip’s brother (a claim quite possibly wrong but widely believed by the Wampanoags), got Indians drunk and then cheated them, allowed cattle to destroy the Indians’ cornfields, and provided unfair treatment in the English courts. Even the fact that crimes involving native peoples were always dealt with in the newcomers’ courts demonstrated the Euro-Americans’ view of their own superiority and proprietorship of the region.4
New Names and Early Relations with the English
Wamsutta became sachem of the Pokanoket band of the Wampanoags in 1661 upon the death of his father, Massasoit. At some point shortly after his accession, he asked the local English authorities to give him and his younger brother, Metacom, English names. The precise reason for the renaming is unclear, although assuming new names at important moments in one’s life was a fairly common experience in many Indian cultures. Douglas Edward Leach states that the new names were given and received as signs of friendships.5 The renaming could, therefore, have signified a continuation of the friendly relationship that Massasoit had cultivated with the English for more than 40 years. Eric Schultz and Michael Tougias note that the names also marked the beginning of a new period in the sons’ lives and would have facilitated Wampanoag-English interaction.6 Certainly, the English would have felt more comfortable referring to “Alexander” and “Philip,” the new names for Wamsutta and Metacom respectively. These names, hearkening back to heroes of antiquity—Alexander the Great and his father, the Macedonian king— reflect the royal heritage of the brothers as well as a pre-Christian culture, the latter consistent with the newcomers’ view of native culture.
The evidence indicates that Alexander intended to continue his father’s peaceful coexistence with the English, although he lacked the lengthy relationship that his father had experienced with local leaders such as the Plymouth Colony governors Edward Winslow and William Bradford and the inevitable goodwill that Massasoit had accrued, especially for his assistance during the Pilgrims’ early years on the continent. The English in Plymouth Colony, who consistently feared Indian hostilities, heard rumors that Alexander might be discussing a military alliance with the Narragansetts and were upset at his selling land to the Rhode Island colonists. In 1635, Roger Williams had been expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony (settled by the Puritans) for affirming freedom of conscience in religion and denying the right of officials to interfere with people’s religious beliefs—ideological stances sharply at odds with those more heavily influenced by Puritan attitudes. Williams ultimately founded a settlement near Providence, secured a charter from England, and established a colony that granted its citizens political and religious freedom. By 1675, many Quakers, who were especially despised by the Puritans, also lived in Rhode Island. To the English of Plymouth and Massachusetts, then, doing business with Rhode Island seemed at least ungrateful and unfriendly, if not outright treacherous.
The new sachem, newly named, was summoned to explain his actions. Alexander refused, and a contingent of English under Major Josiah Winslow (son of Edward Winslow, the former governor of Plymouth who had died at sea in 1655) was dispatched in July 1662 to bring him in. Alexander and some companions were taken to Duxbury, Massachusetts, and interrogated. This experience of being treated like a common criminal must have been both humiliating and infuriating for a leader.
Alexander then became ill, in what would become one of the great health-related mysteries in American history. Despite his illness, he was permitted to journey north to Massachusetts Bay Colony, after which he returned and stopped at Major Winslow’s home at Marshfield. There Alexander became progressively worse but nonetheless started toward his home village, which was near present-day Bristol, Rhode Island, on Mount Hope Peninsula. Unfortunately, he died on the way.
The cause of his death remains uncertain. According to M. A. Dewolfe Howe, a Plymouth Colony physician, Dr. Fuller, treated Alexander with a “working physic.”7 If the problem had been appendicitis (one of the theories advanced to explain the illness), administering a strong laxative might have worsened Alexander’s situation considerably. Philip, however, had another, simpler explanation: His brother had been poisoned. That seems unlikely given the repercussions the English surely knew would have followed, but what especially mattered was that the new sachem, Philip, thought so, and he continued to blame Winslow for his brother’s death.
King Philip
Philip thus became his people’s third sachem in about a year. The English referred to him as King Philip, and by that name he has been remembered over the centuries. The royal title may have been an echo of the settlers’ English past, although their own troubles with kings had precipitated their departure from England. If William Hubbard, a Boston clergyman, is to be believed, the title may have reflected their dislike of kingly attitudes. Writing immediately after King Philip’s
War, Hubbard describes “Philip, commonly for his ambitious and haughty Spirit nick-named King Philip, when he came in the Year 1662, in his own Person with Sausaman his Secretary and chief Councellor to renew the former League that had been between his Predecessors and the English of Plimouth... .”8
Philip undoubtedly took on his new role in sadness and anger. After all, his brother had been treated more like a servant than a king in being taken prisoner to answer for his conduct—and possibly had been murdered. Without the old relationships that had helped to sustain his father’s friendship with the English, and with a growing list of grievances, Philip faced the challenge of leading his people and trying to maintain peace with the English while also opposing English encroachments on Wampanoag land and rights.
A key event in King Philip’s deepening distrust of the British occurred in April 1671. Hugh Cole, a resident of Swansea, a town located just north of Mount Hope Peninsula at the very edge of Plymouth Colony, charged that Philip’s Wampanoags and the Narragansetts were preparing to go to war against the English. Philip, perhaps remembering what had befallen his brother and wanting to avoid being forcibly compelled to answer English questions, agreed to meet with officials from Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies at Taunton, Massachusetts. His decision to attend the meeting was probably aided by the choice of representatives sent to invite him: James Brown, an old friend of Philip’s who lived at Swansea, and the venerable Roger Williams. Brown and Williams, in fact, agreed to remain behind as hostages while Philip went to Taunton.
At Taunton, Philip found himself surrounded by English in whom he had little trust, and he may have feared being taken prisoner. Whatever the motivation, he agreed to a document known as the Taunton Agreement. He accepted the written statement asserting that he had broken his commitment to submit himself to the King of England and Plymouth Colony and that he now repented of his actions, renewed his friendship with the English, and promised to turn over all English weapons in his people’s possession. It was a humiliating admission for someone called a king, and Philip may have put his mark to the document only to get out of the situation and return home. It is unlikely that he had any intention of turning over weapons, nor did he do so. That failure to carry out the terms of the agreement then subjected Philip in September to a fine of 100 pounds in goods.
Striking the Match
The next few years yielded no great crises but instead a steady uncertainty about each other’s intentions. With growing distrust and probably an accumulation of weapons on Philip’s part, and a constant fear of Indian attack on the part of the English, the fuel needed only a match to ignite a full-blown conflagration.
That match was struck in June 1675. Sassamon, a Christian convert who had long been close to the English—even attending Harvard College and teaching at an Indian village—was discovered apparently murdered. Sassamon had returned to his Wampanoag village in the 1660s, where he originally served Philip as something of a general assistant. Eventually, he fell out of favor with Philip and was expelled from their village. In January 1675, Sassamon warned Josiah Winslow, who had become governor of Plymoth colony in 1673, that the Wampanoags were planning to go to war against the English. A few days later, Sassamon was discovered dead in Assawompsett Pond near present-day Lakeville, Massachusetts.
Nothing might have come from the death had not Patuckson, another Christian Indian, testified in June that he had seen three Wampanoags kill Sassamon. The accused were Tobias (a counselor to Philip), Tobias’ son Wampapaquan, and an individual named Mattachunnamo. Clouding the question of Patuckson’s veracity today (but apparently not for the English then) was the accuser’s indebtedness to Tobias as a result of his gambling.
The accused maintained their innocence but were quickly convicted by a jury—not of their peers, however, but rather 12 Englishmen. An auxiliary jury consisting of a small number of Indians, almost surely chosen to convey an impression of fairness but also undoubtedly picked for their fidelity to the English, acquiesced in the guilty verdict. Tobias, Wampapaquan, and Mattachunnamo were hanged on June 8, although Wampapaquan survived when the rope tied around his neck (John Easton calls it a “halter”) broke.9 Perhaps trying to save himself and concluding that he could no longer harm people already dead, Wampapaquan admitted his guilt in the crime. Regardless of his motivation, it saved him for only about a month before he was hanged again, this time successfully.
The executions made war inevitable. If Philip were behind the murder, he would have been considered as guilty as his agents and would have had to fight to protect his own life. If he were innocent, he would have been thoroughly outraged and anxious to seek revenge. The English must have realized that Philip almost surely would have retaliated, and that knowledge was what led John Easton on his futile peace-keeping mission later that month during which he heard Philip’s long list of grievances.
Easton—a Quaker, son of a former Rhode Island governor, and himself a former attorney general, the deputy governor during the war, and a future governor of the colony—did his best to find a way out of the dilemma. Like Rhode Island colonists generally, Easton was not under the theological influence of Puritan divines. Politically, Rhode Islanders had their own problems with the other colonies and for that reason, as well as their own religious convictions, were more attuned than other English colonists to native concerns. Easton suggested a creative approach involving arbitration, with an Indian sachem chosen by the Wampanoags and the governor of New York, Edmund Andros, settling the disputes between Philip and the English. Andros’ generally positive relationships with the native peoples and strained relations with Connecticut, Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay colonies made him a figure whom Easton apparently thought Philip might trust. The suggestion had some appeal to
Philip, but the situation in New England had deteriorated too far by that point. Easton’s A Relacion of the Indyan Warre, written in 1675, is remarkably fair and balanced in assessing blame for the conflict. He clearly holds the English accountable for starting the war with the Narragansetts and is highly critical of the English clergy, chastising them for being “blinded by the spiret of persecution” and altering the gospel for their own purposes. Easton’s short history of the beginning of the war is equally remarkable for abstaining from the rhetorical harshness and demonizing of Indians so prevalent in most contemporary accounts of the conflict.10
On June 20, 1675, a group of Pokanokets looted several houses in Swansea that the inhabitants, perhaps fearing an attack, had left. They set two of the houses on fire. Three days later, some Indians were again stealing from houses in Swansea when a man and a boy saw them. The boy had a gun, and the man told him to shoot. He did, and an Indian was fatally wounded. Shortly afterward, other Indians came to a Swansea garrison (village garrisons were fortified houses) to inquire why he had been shot. The boy replied in such a manner as to indicate that the shooting was of no importance, insulting the Wampanoags by denigrating their dead companion. Any chance that full-scale violence might be averted perished with the shooting and the boy’s stated indifference to his victim’s death.
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