Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs Volume I Part 12

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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 is 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 22nd 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 22nd of April, to which I have referred. The conclusion, I think, is that, under the circ.u.mstances, 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 in 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 Babc.o.c.k, 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 all 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 G.o.d'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 quant.i.ty 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 subst.i.tute.

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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sociated 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 dest.i.tute 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 a 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sumed towards Sa.s.sacus and the Pequots had saved the infant colonies from destruction. Sa.s.sacus, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts and the other English plantations.

2nd. Neither party to make peace with the Pequots without the consent of the other.

3rd. 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 pa.s.s 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 Sa.s.sacus, 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, 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 his 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.sed 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.

2nd. 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 to endeavor to purchase their t.i.tle, 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 t.i.tle 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 Ma.s.sasoit. 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 Ma.s.sachusetts government, dated in 1684, asking that certain fraudulent purchases of the Indians might be annulled, puts this suggestive inquiry: "Was not a princ.i.p.al cause of the late war about encroachments on Philip's land 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 courteously toward the Indians, thereby to draw them to affect our persons, and consequently our religion." And the Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts 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 G.o.d." The company in England also expressed the hope that the ministers who were sent out would, by faithful preaching, G.o.dly conversation and exemplary lives, in G.o.d'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 a.s.serting 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sent 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 a.s.sent to the Christian faith a condition of allegiance.

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 pa.s.sing 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. Ma.s.sasoit, his father, had been the firm friend but never the subject of the English. He was rather their protector, and the colonists ever maintained 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 that 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 antic.i.p.ations 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 Ma.s.sasoit.

The particular occasion of the war was the murder by Philip's agents of one Sa.s.samon, 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 Sa.s.samon. 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 of 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 a.s.sociated the Narragansets with him. But this combined force was inadequate to the emergency. He united many of the tribes of Ma.s.sachusetts, 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, a.s.sailed 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 first 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, pa.s.sed forever away. He fell by the hand of his own race,--