King Philip: Connecticut Valley and Hadley

The Wampanoag chief entered the Connecticut Valley at Springfield, and swept northward almost to the present line between Massachusetts and Vermont like a destructive tornado, leaving desolation in his track. Near Brookfield, a party of twenty Englishmen, while on their way, at near the middle of August, to treat with the Nipmucs, fell into an ambush and were treacherously murdered. Almost every house in Brookfield was set on fire--excepting a stone one--into which the people had gathered for safety. There they were besieged two days, when the Indians set the house on fire. Just at that moment a shower of rain came like a providence and put out the flames, and at the same time a relief party of white people, under Major Willard, arrived, and drove away the savages. Early in September a hot battle was fought at Deerfield, where seven hundred Indians were defeated by one hundred and eighty Englishmen; but a week later, prowling savages laid the town in ashes. On the same day--the Sabbath--Hadley was attacked, and, as we have seen, was saved by the bravery of Goffe the regicide.

For a moment the scourge was stayed at Hadley, but it soon swept mercilessly over other settlements. The blood of many valiant young men, under Captain Beers, flowed freely in the paths of Northfield, late in September. A few days afterward a company of young men of highest character--"the flower of Essex"--under Captain Lathrop, were murdered by many hundred Indians on the banks of a little stream near Deerfield, which is yet known as Bloody Brook, when the savages were beaten off by others who came to the rescue. Springfield was burned, and Hadley was again assailed.

The Indians were masters of the situation, and Philip, encouraged by his successes, now resolved to attack Hatfield, the chief settlement above Springfield. He was joined by the natives there who, until then, had been friendly to the English. They showed much zeal, and at near the close of October, Philip gathered his warriors around a huge fire, when the braves engaged in the wild scalp-dance, chanting heroic songs. Upon long poles they exhibited trophies of their horrid work--the long shining tresses of women and even the bright curls of little maidens whom they had slain--as they whirled around the flames with fearful contortions of limbs and body. Then, with almost a thousand warriors, the Wampanoags fell upon the settlement. The people were prepared for the onslaught. They had palisaded their houses with heavy timber standing upright in the ground bound close together with green withes, and the upper ends sharpened. Behind these stood armed men and resolute women waiting for the approach of the Indians, and when they came they were repulsed with such slaughter that Philip left the Connecticut Valley, with his shattered forces, and fled to Rhode Island. The Narragansets, in violation of their recent treaty with the English, received him with open arms, became his allies, and, late in the year, went out upon the war-path with him.

This perfidy of Canonchet and his people was terribly punished by the English at the close of the year. Fifteen hundred armed men from Massachusetts, Plymouth and Connecticut, under Captain Josiah Winslow, marched into the Narraganset country. The Indians, three thousand strong, had gathered in their wigwams within a large fort in the bosom of a dark swamp near the present village of Kingston, Washington county, Rhode Island, with their store of winter provisions. Snow had fallen to a great depth, and the savages felt secure for the season. Suddenly, at near the end of December, Winslow and his little army appeared before the fort in the frozen swamp. They soon beat down the feeble palisades, and in the course of a few hours hundreds of men, women and children, with all the provisions, perished in the fire. About a thousand warriors were killed or wounded, and several hundreds were made prisoners. Among the latter was Canonchet, who was put to death. Philip, and a remnant of the Narragansets, escaped, and took refuge with the Nipmucs. Eighty Englishmen were killed, and one hundred and fifty were wounded. The surviving savages suffered fearfully. Hiding in a cedar swamp, with no shelter but evergreen boughs, no food but nuts and roots which they might find beneath the deep snow, many of them perished. So disappeared the dominion of the Narragansets.

Philip was not idle during the winter. He tried in vain to induce the Mohawks to join him. Some of the exasperated Indians eastward of Massachusetts flocked to his standard, and early in the spring of 1676 the work of destruction began. In the course of a few weeks, the war spread over an area of almost three hundred miles. Villages and isolated dwellings were burned, and their inmates were destroyed. Weymouth, Groton, Medford, Lancaster and Marlborough, in Massachusetts, were laid in ashes; and Warwick and Providence, in Rhode Island, were given to the flames.