Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs/Chapter 17
XVII
SUDBURY MONUMENT
AT the session of 1851 the Legislature made an appropriation of five hundred dollars to aid the town of Sudbury in building a memorial to Captain Wadsworth and the men of his command who were cut off at Sudbury in the year 1676 in the war known as King Philip’s War.
As Governor I was made a member of the committee for the erection of a monument. The first subject was the style of the memorial. The artists of Boston and vicinity sent designs and plans. Some of these were very attractive. It happened, however, that a member of my Council, the Hon. Isaac Davis, of Worcester, had returned recently from a visit to Europe. He informed me that he had seen at Lucca in Italy, a pyramidal structure which was considered the finest monument of its sort to be found in Europe. I sent immediately for the proportions of the pyramid and the Sudbury monument was modeled upon the same plan. I am of the opinion that it fully justifies the claim made in behalf of the original.
A serious difficulty occurred in regard to the inscription upon the Sudbury monument. The original slab was erected in the year 1692 by Benjamin Wadsworth, a son of Captain Wadsworth. The son was then President Wadsworth of Harvard College. The inscription stated that the fight took place April 18, 1676. In later times it was discovered that two old almanacs, one kept by Minister Hobart of Hingham and one by Judge Sewall, contained entries of the fight on the 21st of April, 1676. I examined the question and became satisfied that those entries were made on the day when the intelligence was received by the writers. Accordingly I followed President Wadsworth as to the date. The Genealogical Register, under the charge of a Mr. Drake, in two articles criticized my inscription. I replied in the Register and ended my article with a sentence which Drake struck out. The sentence was this: “The testimony of President Wadsworth as to the time of his father’s death is of more value than all the theories of all the genealogists who have existed since their vocation was so justly condemned by St. Paul.”
A few months later I appeared in the court to try a case which involved my client’s reputation for truth, and a thousand dollars in money. To my dismay I saw that Drake was foreman of the jury. I lost my case, but I think justly upon the evidence. My principal witness failed to make good upon the stand the statement that he had made to me in my office. One of the perils in the practice of law is that clients and clients’ witnesses either make misstatements or fail to make full statements of the facts.
In the middle-third part of the nineteenth century, the date of Sudbury Fight was a topic of serious controversy by genealogists and historians. I was responsible for the date that appears upon the monument that was erected in the year 1852. The conclusion that I had reached was condemned by the Genealogical Register and by a committee of the Society. In the year 1866 I reviewed the evidence, on which my opponents relied, and I marshaled the evidence in support of the accuracy of the date that appeared upon the monument. In the year 1876 the town of Sudbury observed the bi-centennial on the 18th day of April, thus giving sanction to the date on the monument.
At the dedication of the Sudbury monument I made the following address:
ADDRESS
Families, races and nations of men appear, act their respective parts, and then pass away. Political organizations are dissolved by the influence of time. At some periods and in some portions of the world, barbarous races appropriate to their use the former domain of civilization, while at other points of time and space nations are rapidly advancing in wealth and refinement. If savage communities have been exterminated by superior races of men, so have the arts and civilities of the most enlightened people been displaced by the rude passions and rugged manners of barbarism. As in the natural world there is a slow revolution of thousands of years, by which every part of this globe is brought within the tropics and beneath the poles, so there appears to be a great cycle of humanity, whose law is that every portion of the race shall pass through each condition of social, intellectual and moral existence.
But whatever may be the fate of families, races and nations, their influence is in some sense perpetual. The Past is not dead. By a mysterious cord it is connected with the Present. Could we analyze our life, we should perhaps find that but few of the emotions we experience are to be traced to events and circumstances which have occurred in our own time.
We admire the heroes of Grecian history and even of Grecian fable. We are inspired by ancient poetry and eloquence, as well as by the bards and orators of modern times. Painting and sculpture are the equal admiration of every refined age. The virtue of patriotism has been illustrated by savage as well as civilized life. Thus every recorded event of the past has somewhat of value for us. Hence men seek to connect themselves by blood and language with Europe, or even with Asia, and delight to trace their family and name into the dark centuries of the Past. We search for the truth amid the myths and fables of Grecian and Roman history, and have faith that the ruins of Nineveh, Memphis and Palmyra shall yet declare the civilities, learning and religion of ancient days.
Few nations have had a perfect history. Valuable history can be derived only from the continued record of the transactions of a people. Wherever governments have existed in fact before they have existed in form, or wherever the proceedings of a government have not been matters of record, there can be no trustworthy history. In these respects Massachusetts has been fortunate. Her government is older than her existence as colonies, and from the first a faithful record of her proceedings has been made. The foundations of New Plymouth and Massachusetts were laid more than two centuries ago; the circumstances of this occasion lead us to consider the least defensible portions of their history; yet the world cannot charge them with suppressing any fact necessary to a true appreciation of their policy and character. Whatever they did was in the fear of God and without the fear of man. Conscious of their own integrity of purpose, they shrunk not from the judgment of posterity. And though in this hour we may not always approve their policy, so neither can we comprehend their principles or appreciate their trials. The human family has ever been subject to one great law. It is this: Inferior races disappear in the presence of their superiors, or become dependent upon them. Now, while this law shall not stand as a defence for our fathers, it is satisfactory to feel that no policy could have civilized or even saved the Indian tribes of Massachusetts. The remnants that linger in our midst are not the representatives of the native nobility of the forest two centuries ago. Nor did Williams or Eliot, by kindness or religion, ever command the fierce spirits of Miantonomo, Canonchet and Philip. Nevertheless, let history exalt these men. Let it speak truly of their genius, their courage, their patriotism, their devotion to their race; and, as for Massachusetts, she shall be known and read of all from the dark day when the colony of Plymouth had not ten efficient men, to this auspicious moment when within our borders a million of free and happy people speak the language and glory in the descent of the Pilgrim Fathers!
The existence of Massachusetts is properly divided into three parts.
First, as a colony from the settlement of Plymouth in 1620, to the loss of the Massachusetts charter in 1684. Second, as a province from the charter for the Province of William and Mary in 1691, to the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Third, as a State from 1780 to the present time. As a colony, the civil rights of our ancestors were those of British subjects, but their political and religious privileges were much greater: As a province their civil rights remained, religious freedom was extended, while their political privileges were materially limited.
The occasion, these services, this monument and inscription, connect us with the colony. We are not here so much reminded of the men who fell, as of the sacrifices and sufferings of the colonies in 1675 and ’76. The period of King Philip’s War was the most trying and perilous in our history. The Revolution was a struggle for freedom; the contest with Philip was for existence. Philip contemplated the extermination of the English in America, while King George only desired their subjugation to his authority. Nor was the latter ever so near the accomplishment of his design as was the former in the autumn of 1675.
Massachusetts has seen no such other winter as that which followed.
“Morn came, and went—and came, and brought no day,
“And men forgot their passions in the dread
“Of this their desolation.”
As late as March, 1676, says Hubbard, “it was full sea with Philip’s affairs.” And even on the 26th of April, the Plymouth colony writes thus to Massachusetts:
“The Lord undertake for us, for we are in a very low condition; and the spirits of our people begin to run low, also being now averse to going forth against the enemies. The Lord have us patient to wait God’s time, although our salvation seems still to be far from us.”
The war commenced on the 24th day of June, 1675, and ended on the 12th of August, 1676, by the death of Philip.
The colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven were united, and Governor Josiah Winslow of Plymouth was appointed commander-in-chief.
Neither the population nor the available force of the colonies is now known. Some writers have estimated the population of New England at a hundred and twenty thousand. This is plainly an exaggeration. From a few scattered fragments and facts we may conclude that Massachusetts had a force of about 4,500 men, New Haven and Connecticut about 2,000, and Plymouth about 1,300; in all about 8,000 men. Of these Massachusetts had a cavalry force seven hundred strong. Upon this basis the entire population could not have exceeded 60,000, and some writers, on the other hand, have estimated it at only forty thousand souls. But, whatever may have been the number of able-bodied men in the colonies, the available force for active service must have been small. A large number of towns were to be garrisoned, and many men were necessarily employed in the customary duties of life.
Still less is known of the strength of Philip’s confederated tribes. Pestilence and war had depopulated New England previous to the arrival of the Pilgrims. In 1675 the Pokanokets and Narragansets were the most powerful, and together mustered three or four thousand warriors. Philip was sachem of the Pokanokets and Canonchet of the Narragansets. These tribes constituted Philip’s reliable strength, but he had confederated with him and pledged to the common cause the smaller chiefs of the Piscataqua and Merrimack, of central Massachusetts and the valley of the Connecticut. The Narragansets occupied what is now Rhode Island and the islands adjacent thereto, while Philip as the chief of the Pokanokets or Wampanoags had his seat at Montaup or Mount Hope. It was not, however, expedient or possible for him to concentrate a large force upon any one point. With his forces divided into war parties as necessity or circumstances dictated, he was able in the space of thirteen months to attack and partially or entirely destroy a great number of towns, among which were Brookfield, Lancaster, Marlboro’, Sudbury, Groton, Deerfield, Springfield, Hatfield, Northfield, Northampton, Chelmsford, Andover, Medfield, Rehoboth, Plymouth, Scituate, Weymouth, and Middleborough in Massachusetts, and New Plymouth, Providence and Warwick in Rhode Island. Of these, twelve or thirteen were entirely destroyed.
Six hundred dwellings were burned, and sixteen hundred persons slain or carried into captivity. There was not a house standing between Stonington and Providence. It was as destructive as a war would now be to Massachusetts which should send twenty thousand able-bodied men to the grave, and render twenty thousand families houseless, and for the most part destitute. Had all the events of the Revolution been crowded into twelve months, the conflict would have been less terrible than was the war with Philip. His operations menaced and endangered the existence of the colony. There was a probability that the taunting threat of John Monoco, the leader of the party which burned Groton, that he would burn Chelmsford, Concord, Watertown, Cambridge, Charlestown, Roxbury and Boston, might even be executed. Hardly anything else remained of the Massachusetts colony on which the power and vengeance of Philip could fall. Points of the interior, to be sure, were garrisoned, but for the most part it was an unbroken forest, or marked only by heaps of smouldering ruins.
And here may we well pause and reflect, that however we or posterity may judge the Indian policy of our ancestors, the scenes through which they passed were not calculated to mitigate the horrors of war, or in the hour of triumph to awaken emotions of pity for the fallen.
As for the Indians, they were destroyed. Their great sachems had fallen. Anawon, Canonchet, Philip, were no more. Nor had their fighting men survived them. Their towns, of which they had many, were burned. And why should the humble wigwam remain when the heroic spirit of its occupant had departed?
And, worse than all, the women and children had been massacred or sold into slavery.
—“few remain
To strive, and those must strive in vain.”
Peace came; but—sad thought—there was no treaty of peace. It was a war of extermination. Not often in the history of the world has it happened thus. The colonists believed that they had been fighting the battles of God’s chosen people. Mather says, “the evident hand of Heaven appearing on the side of the people, whose hope and help were alone in the Almighty Lord of Hosts, extinguished whole nations of savages at such a rate, that there can hardly any of them now be found under any distinction upon the face of the earth.”
At some points in New Hampshire and the district of Maine, the fires of war flickered ere they went forever out. Omitting comparatively unimportant incursions, the Indian wars of Massachusetts and New Plymouth were ended. The existence of these hitherto feeble settlements was rendered certain. Although political and religious controversies occupied the attention of the settlers, they yet found means to cultivate the arts of peace. The forest was broken up, commerce was increased, agriculture flourished, new settlements were made, confidence was created, men saw before them a future in which they had hope. As our fathers passed from war to peace they forgot not their religious duties, and the 29th of June in Massachusetts, and the 17th of August in Plymouth, were set apart as days of public thanksgiving and praise. Days of sadness, too, they must have been; days of woe as well as of triumph. The colonies were bereaved in the loss of brave and valuable men,—families were bereaved in the loss of homes,—and all were bereaved in the fall or captivity of kindred and friends. And could our ancestors have seen that this was the first great step in the red man’s solemn march to the grave, a tear of sympathy would have fallen in behalf of a noble and heroic race.
The war was brief; its operations were rapid. In the space of less than fourteen months the Indians were exterminated and the whites reduced to the condition I have faintly portrayed. Yet, until the 19th of December, 1675, when the colonists made a most destructive attack upon the Indians at what is now South Kingston, the war had been confined chiefly to the valley of the Connecticut. But from that moment Philip was like a hungry tiger goaded in confinement, suddenly let loose upon his prey. The destruction of villages and the deadly ambuscade of bodies of men followed each other in quick succession. In the space of sixty days his forces attacked Lancaster, Medfield, Weymouth, Groton, Warwick, Marlboro’, Rehoboth, Providence, Chelmsford, Andover and Sudbury. At least one half of the death and desolation of the war was crowded into this short period of time.
There was no security except in garrisons defended by armed men. The Indian marches exceeded in celerity the movements of well-furnished cavalry in civilized countries. Their women even aided in the march and in the camp. Accustomed to hardship and famine, they subsisted in a manner incredible to our time and race. And with one or two exceptions, when the colonists came upon the Indians unexpectedly, the latter were superior in the strategic arts of war, though in open fight their fire was much less destructive. It must be confessed that Captain Lathrop at Bloody Brook, and Captain Wadsworth at Sudbury, were, in a degree, incautious. Hubbard closes his account of the disaster with these words:
“Thus, as in former attempts of like nature, too much courage and eagerness in pursuit of the enemy hath added another fatal blow to this poor country.”
For a long period a feeling of insecurity oppressed the settlers. Each town was furnished with a garrison. The Indian trail was the signal for alarm, and through long years the events of Philip's war were borne by tradition and history to itching ears and timid hearts in the garrison and family circle.
Passing from the principal features of this bloody contest, we feel that its details are less certain.
In 1676, Sudbury was a frontier town, although settled as early as 1638. Marlboro’ was attacked and nearly destroyed the 26th of March, 1676. Captain Sam’l Brocklebank, of Rowley, with a company of Essex men, was stationed at Marlboro’; but his apprehensions of danger were so slight that he asked to be relieved from the service. On the 27th of March, Lieutenant Jacobs, of Captain Brocklebank’s company, with forty soldiers, one half of whom were Sudbury men, attacked a party of 300 sleeping Indians, and disabled thirty of them without the loss of a man. The news of the attack upon Marlboro’ early furnished by Captain Brocklebank, induced the Council to order Captain Wadsworth of Milton, with about fifty men, to its relief. At or near Marlboro’ he was informed that Sudbury was the besieged town. It is certain that he left his young men in the garrison at Marlboro’ under command of Lieutenant Jacobs, and he was probably joined by Captain Brocklebank with a part or the whole of his command. It is said that Wadsworth had marched from Boston that day, yet he moved immediately for the relief of Sudbury. Presuming that the hill where this monument stands is that to which Captain Wadsworth was forced by the Indians, their decoy-outposts must have been a mile or a mile and a half on the way to Marlboro’.
Captain Wadsworth estimated the number of Indians first discovered at one hundred. These he pursued about a mile, when he found himself surrounded by a body of savages four or five hundred strong. Captain Wadsworth was probably at the bloody fight of the 19th of December, he was in the Narraganset country about the 1st of January, and he had marched at the head of forty men to the relief of Lancaster, yet he appears from the little truth within our reach, to have neglected those precautions essential to safety in Indian warfare. But it should be remembered that Captain Wadsworth and Captain Brocklebank were born about the time of the Pequot War, and could have had no experience in similar service previous to hostilities with Philip.
The loss of men is not certainly known, nor do writers agree that the fight took place on the 18th of April.
The inscription upon the monument follows the authority of President Wadsworth of Harvard College, son of Captain Wadsworth, and for a portion of his life minister of the first church in Boston. He had superior facilities for ascertaining the truth and strong motives for stating it. He puts the loss at twenty-nine officers and men, and fixes upon the 18th of April as the day of the fight.
His statement is sustained by the evidence I have gathered. Some writers have put the loss at fifty, and others as high as seventy men, but these numbers exceed the truth. Wadsworth had fifty men; Brocklebank may have had as many more. We can account for about ninety-six. On the 24th of April, Lieutenant Jacobs acknowledges the receipt of his charge as Captain, in place of Captain Brocklebank, and informs the Governor and his Council that his company consists of about forty-six men, a portion of whom were left at Marlboro’ by Captain Wadsworth.
Hubbard says, that of Wadsworth’s company, not above twenty escaped, and Daniel Warren and Joseph Pierce, who buried the dead, say that fourteen or fifteen of Captain Wadsworth’s men were concealed at Mr. Noist’s mill. Taking the statements of Hubbard and Jacobs, we account for ninety-six officers and men, viz.: forty-seven left at Marlboro’, twenty-nine killed, and twenty escaped.
Some writer has stated that the battle was fought on the 21st, instead of the 18th of April. It may not be proved that the battle was fought on the 18th, but it is determined that it was fought previous to the 21st.
On the 21st of April, the Massachusetts Council communicated the fact in writing to the Plymouth Colony. It is true that Lieutenant Jacobs does not mention the loss of Wadsworth and Brocklebank in a letter to the Governor and Council, dated at Marlboro’ on the 22d of April; but in his letter of the 24th, he refers to the subject as he might have done, had he received the intelligence when he received his authority to take the command of the fort and men at Marlboro’. And this was probably the case. That communication between the two towns was suspended, is apparent from Jacobs’ letter of the 22d of April, to which I have referred. The conclusion, I think, is that, under the circumstances, there is a reasonable amount of evidence in support of the statement of President Wadsworth.
The loss of Wadsworth and Brocklebank was severely felt by the colony. Hubbard says, “Wadsworth was a resolute, stout-hearted soldier, and Brocklebank a choice, spirited man.” Mather says, “but the worst part of the story is, that Captain Wadsworth, one worthy to live in our history under the name of a good man, coming up after a long, hard, unwearied march with seventy men unto the relief of distressed Sudbury, found himself in the woods on the sudden, surrounded with about five hundred of the enemy, whereupon our men fought like men, and more than so.”
Capt. Samuel Wadsworth was the youngest son of Christopher Wadsworth, one of the early Plymouth Pilgrims, who settled at Duxbury with Capt. Miles Standish. Samuel Wadsworth was born at Duxbury about 1630, and was therefore forty-five or six years of age when he died. He first appears at Milton, in 1656, where he took up three hundred acres of land near the center of the town. He was interested in obtaining the separation of the town from Dorchester and in its incorporation in 1662. In the new town he was the first captain of the militia, one of the selectmen, a member of the House of Representatives, a trustee of the church and active in church affairs. That he was highly esteemed in the town is apparent from these facts as well as from a memorial of Robert Babcock, one of the selectmen of Milton. He feelingly alludes to the loss in these words: “Captain Wadsworth being departed from us, whose face we shall see here no more.”
Capt. Samuel Brocklebank, of Rowley, was born in England, and was also about forty-six years of age at the time of his death. In November, 1675, he informed Governor Leverett that he had impressed twelve men for the war. Of these, seven returned to Rowley. His correspondence with the Council shows him to have been a man of respectable attainments.
As then the colonies and the town shared a common grief in the loss of these devoted men, so now it is appropriate that the State and town should unite in the erection of this unpretending memorial of their names and virtues.
In April, 1676, Philip’s power was at its height. But his successes had weakened him. His warriors were slain or scattered over the country, his provisions and ammunition were exhausted, and Canonchet, his most valuable ally, had planned his last ambuscade, and rallied his Narragansets for the last time. The rapidity of Philip’s movements, and the fierceness of his attacks, had deprived his warriors of the moral power to withstand reverses. His operations for two months had been those of a desperate man; and when desperation is followed by misfortune there is no hope of recovery.
The winter campaign of 1675-6 was opened and conducted with great vigor on the part of the colonies.
The second of December was appointed and set apart as a day of solemn humiliation for the imploring of God’s special grace and favor to appear for his poor people. Then the treasurer was clothed with unlimited power to borrow money, and authorized to pledge the public lands acquired and to be acquired for the payment of the war debt; one thousand stands of arms and a corresponding quantity of ammunition were ordered; men were impressed for active service in the field, for the erection and defence of garrisons, and for the tillage of the soil; the women and children of the frontier towns were sent towards the coast; the Indian trading houses were abolished; and even the members of Harvard College were required to pay their proportion of rates, and to serve in the army either personally or by substitute.
The Council were instructed to use their “utmost endeavors, with promise of such rewards as they judge meet, to get the Mohegans and Pequots” to cut off the Indians of Philip. Governor Winslow was commander-in-chief, and was instructed by “care, courage, diligence, policy and favor, to discover, pursue and encounter, and by the help of God to vanquish and subdue the cruel, barbarous and treacherous enemy, whether Philip Sachem and his Wampanoags, or the Narraganset and his undoubted allies, or any other their friends and abettors.”
Canonchet, son of Miantonomo and grand nephew of Canonicus, was chief of the Narragansets. When the colonists first became acquainted with this tribe, Canonicus was their sachem, but his nephew Miantonomo was associated with him in the government. This sachem was never a friend to the English, and he early sent to Plymouth a bundle of arrows bound in a rattle-snake’s skin as a war challenge. Miantonomo was less hostile, but Canonchet manifested the spirit of his grand uncle. Immediately after hostilities commenced with Philip the English demanded of Canonchet the surrender of certain Pokanokets alleged to be within his dominions. This was his reply: “Deliver the Indians of Philip! Never. Not a Wampanoag will I ever give up. No. Not the paring of a Wampanoag’s nail.”
He was of course charged with being in alliance with Philip. A force of a thousand men with such Indian allies as could be mustered, was marched immediately into his country. This was the force engaged on the 19th of December in the famous Swamp Fight, the most sanguinary battle of Philip’s War. Six hundred warriors were slain, six hundred wigwams were burned, and an unknown number of women, children and old men perished in the flames. The English loss exceeded two hundred, among whom were several brave officers. From this moment the fortunes of Canonchet were identified with Philip’s, and he is supposed to have commanded in many of the attacks upon the frontier towns. About the last of March, 1676, he visited the Connecticut River to urge, if not to superintend, the planting of corn. Finding his people destitute of seed, he returned to obtain a supply, but was arrested at Seekonk and executed at Stonington. His death was a sad blow to Philip, and the occasion of great joy in the colonies. When told that he must die, he said:
“It is well. I shall die before my heart is soft. I will speak nothing which Canonchet should be ashamed to speak. It is well.”
Thus fell Canonchet, the last great chief of the Narragansets. A man so noble and chivalric in his spirit that his life and death commanded the admiration of his worst enemies. They vainly imagined that some disembodied spirit of Greece or Rome had revisited the earth in the vast physical and mental proportions of Canonchet.
Forty years before, the friendship of his father, Miantonomo, and the qualified hostility he assumed towards Sassacus and the Pequots had saved the infant colonies from destruction. Sassacus, the Pequot chief, had proposed to Canonicus an alliance against the English, but in consequence of the advice of Roger Williams, Miantonomo visited Governor Winthrop at Boston, was received and entertained with great ceremony, and finally concluded with the colonies a treaty of peace and alliance. Its main provisions were these:
1st. Peace with Massachusetts and the other English plantations.
2d. Neither party to make peace with the Pequots without the consent of the other.
3d. Neither party to harbor Pequots.
4th. Murderers escaping from either party to be put to death or delivered up to the other.
5th. Fugitive servants to be returned.
This treaty rendered the cause of the Pequots hopeless, and secured the safety of the English.
It was in the main observed by the Narragansets. They allowed the colonial army to pass through their territories, and furnished five hundred men for the war.
Uncas, the chief of the Mohegans, had also been an ally of the English against the Pequots. After the destruction of this tribe, the three parties declared a peace, and the spoils of the war were divided between the allies. But the Narragansets and Mohegans were naturally enemies. The latter were of the Pequot race, and Uncas himself, having married the daughter of Sassacus, was but a revolted subject of that great chief. It is said that one of Uncas’ dependent sachems attacked Miantonomo, who referred the matter to the English, and was told to take his own course. However this may be, he did take his own course, and invaded the Mohegan country with a thousand warriors. The fortunes of war were against him and he fell into the hands of Uncas. The victor now referred the fate of the victim to the English. They decided that the rules of war permitted, and the safety of Uncas required, the death of Miantonomo. They were careful, however, not to permit his execution within their jurisdiction. The colonies were responsible for the death of this chief. Uncas was nominally their ally, but really their subject. From first to last he did their bidding with a spirit so craven and a manner so treacherous that he was neither trusted nor respected by them. But the English in their death-warrant voluntarily offered to protect Uncas from the consequences of Miantonomo’s death. This was in 1643, and thus did the English observe the treaty of peace made seven years before under circumstances of extraordinary solemnity. Miantonomo died the victim of rivalry, jealousy and fear, yet with a spirit so heroic that he scorned to ask the precious boon of life from those whom he had served rather than wronged. His death was the seed of the war of 1675,—for how, under these circumstances, could Canonchet, his son and successor, be other than the enemy of the English, the ready and efficient ally of Philip.
But aside from particular incidents in the relations of the English to the Indians there were three ever-operating causes of hostility.
1st. The mutual disposition of the English and the Indians to traffic with each other. The colonies passed the most stringent laws for the suppression of this traffic, or to make it a monopoly in their own hands, and the government at home issued two or more proclamations. These laws and proclamations had no great practical value, and the Indians were constantly supplied with spirits, clothing, munitions and weapons of war, either by the English, French, or Dutch. Thus trade furnished an occasion for hostility, and the means of gratifying the spirit of war.
2d. There was a universal tendency in the people and governments of the colonies to acquire land.
There was, however, a settled purpose on the part of the company in England and the governments here to make this spirit conform to the principles of honor and justice. In the company’s letter of instruction of April 17, 1629, Endicott and his Council were told that “If any of the savages pretend right of inheritance to all or any part of the lands granted in our patent, we pray you endeavor to purchase their title, that we may avoid the least scruple of intrusion.” And in a second letter of the 28th of May following, the same injunction is imposed upon the settlers. Attempts were made to pursue the course pointed out by the company, and a penalty of five pounds per acre was imposed upon any person who should receive an Indian title without the consent of the government. Governor Winslow, in 1676, writes thus: “I think I can clearly say, that before the present trouble broke out, the English did not possess one foot of land in this colony but what was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian proprietors.”
It is no doubt true that for the most part the lands were purchased, and, according to the idea of the English, honorably purchased, yet the natives could not fail to foresee the result of these cessions of territory. There were English settlements at Bridgewater, Middleboro’, Taunton, Rehoboth, Seekonk, and Swanzey, all within the ancient jurisdiction of Massasoit. And as a perpetual monitor to Philip of his limited domains, though in obedience to a different and highly honorable motive, the people erected a fence quite across the neck of land on the south of Swanzey, and thus confined the Pokanokets by metes and bounds.
That Philip was annoyed by applications for land is evident from his letter, without date, addressed to Governor Prince of Plymouth:
“Philip would intreat that favor of you, and any of the magistrates, if any English or Indians speak about any land, he pray to give them no answer at all. This last summer he made that promise with you, that he would sell no land in seven years’ time, for that he would have no English trouble him before that time. He has not forgot that you promise him.”
The apostle Eliot, in a letter to the Massachusetts government, dated in 1684, asking that certain fraudulent purchases of the Indians might be annulled, puts this suggestive inquiry: “Was not a principal cause of the late war about encroachments on Philip’s lands at Mount Hope?”
The third disturbing cause was the desire of our ancestors to convert the Indian chiefs and tribes to Christianity. This was a primary and chief object of the settlement of the country. Governor Craddock, in a letter of February, 1629, to Endicott and his Council, says: “You will demean yourselves justly and courteous towards the Indians, thereby to draw them to affect our persons, and consequently our religion.” And the Governor of Massachusetts colony by his oath was required to use his “best endeavor to draw on the natives of New England to the knowledge of the true God.” The company in England also expressed the hope that the ministers who were sent out would, by faithful preaching, godly conversation and exemplary lives, in God’s appointed time, reduce the Indians to the obedience of the Gospel of Christ. And there is no fact in the history of the colonists inconsistent with an earnest purpose to accomplish so desirable a result. But the most formidable and warlike of the Indian tribes resisted the introduction of Christianity, not on account of its doctrines,—these they never comprehended; but its acceptance was regarded by them as an acknowledgment of political inferiority. When Philip protests against the jurisdiction of the English, he thinks to establish his independence by asserting that he was never a praying Indian. It naturally happened that those Indians who embraced Christianity were more or less attached to the English, and soon assumed the position of dependent inferiors. They were consequently despised by such fierce spirits as swayed the Narraganset and Pokanoket tribes. But the English were instant in season and out of season in securing assent to their doctrines, though they must often have known that there was neither conviction of the head nor conversion of the heart. The colonists on some occasions even made a formal assent to the Christian faith a condition of alliance.
Although Uncas never received the Christian religion, his friendly relations with the English gave him an importance and power which were offensive to the neighboring tribes; and there is reason to suppose that a desire to humble him was an element of the war.
The attack upon the Pequots, whether necessary or not, must have produced an unfavorable impression upon the neighboring tribes; but the death of Miantonomo was the cause of the undying hostility of the Narragansets, and made Canonchet the ready coadjutor of King Philip,— and without Canonchet Philip could never have been formidable to the English.
But passing by all the occasions or causes of war to which I have referred, we may presume from our knowledge of Philip’s character, that he considered his personal injuries a sufficient ground for hostilities. Massasoit, his father, had been the firm friend but never the subject of the English. He was rather their protector, and the colonists ever manifested towards him the kindest feelings.
His son Alexander succeeded him. A suspicion was early entertained by the English that he was plotting with the Narragansets. He was summoned to appear at Plymouth, but he avoided the summons upon some pretence, which probably had no real foundation. The Governor of Plymouth with about ten men proceeded to compel his attendance. Alexander was then upon a hunting excursion with a small party of warriors. He was found in Middleboro’, refreshing himself in a tent after the fatigues of the chase. His arms, having been left outside, were seized by the English. Some accounts state that Alexander went voluntarily towards Plymouth, others say that the Governor told him if he did not go he was a dead man. But all accounts agree that he was soon violently sick, and that the efforts to relieve him were unavailing. He was allowed to return home and was borne away upon the shoulders of his faithful warriors. Hubbard says, “Such was the pride and height of his spirit, that the very surprisal of him so raised his choler and indignation, that it put him into a fever, which, notwithstanding all possible means that could be used, seemed mortal.” And so it proved.
Philip witnessed this unjust arrest of his brother, chief of a proud and free race; he remembered his father’s services and fidelity; he saw his people dispossessed of their hunting grounds, and an unknown religion zealously pressed upon them. To him there was in the present only humiliation and disgrace, in the future only ignominy and death. With this history and these gloomy anticipations of the future, Philip became the sachem of the Pokanokets. He had never been a favorite with the English, yet early in life they had named him Philip, and his brother Wamsutta, Alexander; a singular yet just appreciation of their high spirit and warlike character. The colonists justly regarded these young men as dangerous to the public peace, and there was never a moment of true friendship after the death of Massasoit.
The particular occasion of the war was the murder by Philip’s agents of one Sassamon, an educated Indian, who had been his private secretary. Having in this confidential station obtained a knowledge of Philip’s plans, he went to the English, by whom he had been educated, and probably disclosed his master’s secrets. Philip secured his death, and of all who fell in fight or fray, or on the gallows swung, none deserved death before Sassamon. The comprehensive mind of Philip saw at once the terrible nature and probable consequences of the war thus brought upon him. It is said that he wept, and that from that time forth he never smiled. But he laid new sacrifices upon the altar of his people’s liberty, invoked the spirit of his ancestors, and exhibited resources and courage worthy a heroic age.
He stood in a position of great and manifest peril. The English were superior in numbers, comparatively well equipped, and above all united. They had garrisoned towns to which they could fly. Philip’s own tribe was comparatively weak, but he easily associated the Narragansets with him. But this combined force was inadequate to the emergency. He united many of the tribes of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut, and as far as possible animated them with his own unconquerable will. You may imagine him standing among the dark men of the forest and with a rugged yet burning eloquence reciting the history of their common wrongs, or with prophetic power lifting the veil from the shadowy, though not to him uncertain, future.
He was continually subject to great personal dangers. A price was set upon his head, the Christian Indians were allies of the English and continually employed against him, while above all Uncas and the Mohegans were his deadly enemies. Hunted by English and Indians, assailed by famine and treachery, weakened by death and desertion, his fate was inevitable. When his warriors had fallen in battle, been sold into slavery or corrupted by bribes, when his old men and women, and children had perished, when the fires of the enemy had laid in ashes the wigwams and villages of the Pokanokets and their allies, when to his race there was neither seed-time nor harvest, he came to the home of his ancestors, and there his troubled spirit, contrasting sadly in death as in life with the placid scenes of nature around, passed forever away. He fell by the hand of his own race,—
“Darkly, sternly, and all alone,
“A spoil—the richest and the last.”
Philip’s son, a boy nine years of age, was sold into slavery, and the royal race of Massasoit was extinct.
As all our information of Carthage and the Punic wars has been transmitted by Roman authors, so our knowledge of Philip and the war of 1675-6, is derived from partial and in some instances prejudiced sources. Yet it is just to say that our ancestors made no concealment of the facts, although the comments of Mather and Hubbard are often strangely barbarous in spirit. And further, we may be certain that our Pilgrim Fathers were true to the light that was in them; and that their memory will grow green with years and blossom through the flight of ages.
If to-day we have seen the bright side of Indian character contrasted with the few harsh features of the New England colonists, it is that this occasion, while it calls forth feelings of gratitude and reverence for the men and history of the Past may have somewhat of a practical value in the Present and the Future. The men of the forest have not disappeared entirely, though
“They waste—they shrink away;
“And fast we follow, as they go
“Towards the setting day.”
And if in the Providence of God the race is soon to be extinct, let not injustice, oppression, or war, increase their woes or hasten their decay.