The Death of King Philip: Indian

Captain Church ordered his body to be pulled out of the mire to the upland. So some of Captain Church's Indians took hold of him by his stockings, and some by his small breeches (being otherwise naked), and drew him through the mud to the upland; and a doleful, great, naked, dirty beast he looked like. Captain Church then said that forasmuch as he had caused many an Englishman's body to be unburied, and to rot above ground, that not one of his bones should be buried. And calling his old Indian executioner, bid him behead and quarter him. Accordingly he came with his hatchet and stood over him, but before he struck he made a small speech, directing it to Philip, and said "he had been a very great man, and had made many a man afraid of him, but so big as he was, he would now chop him in pieces." And so he went to work and did as he was ordered.

Philip having one very remarkable hand, being much scarred, occasioned by the splitting of a pistol in it formerly, Captain Church gave the head and that hand to Alderman, the Indian who shot him, to show to such gentlemen as would bestow gratuities upon him; and accordingly he got many a penny by it.

All this is brutal enough to have been the action of Indians instead of whites, and shows that disposition to insult a fallen foe which is a characteristic of the warfare of barbarous peoples, but has happily died out in civilized nations. There was a strong spice of savagery in the Indian-fighters of the pioneer days of America, who looked upon the Indians as little better than wild beasts. The fall of Philip ended the war in southern New England, the tribes suing for peace. But hostilities were continued in Maine and New Hampshire till 1678, when a treaty of peace was concluded with the tribes of this locality. The forces of the Indians, and the results of the war, are summarized by Trumbull in the following statement: "When Philip began the war, he and his kinswoman, Wetamoe, had about five hundred warriors, and the Narragansetts nearly two thousand. The Nipmuck, Nashawa, Pocomtock, Hadley, and Springfield Indians were considerably numerous. It is probable, therefore, that there were about three thousand warriors combined for the destruction of the New England colonies, exclusive of the eastern Indians. The war terminated in their entire conquest and almost total extinction. At the same time, it opened a wide door for extensive settlement and population. This, however, in its connection with the war with the eastern Indians, was the most impoverishing and distressing of any that New England has ever experienced from its first settlement to the present time.. About six hundred of the inhabitants of New England, the greatest part of whom were the flower and strength of the country, either fell in battle or were murdered by the enemy. A great part of the inhabitants of the country were in deep mourning. There were few families or individuals who had not lost some near relative or friend. Twelve or thirteen towns, in Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Rhode Island, were utterly destroyed, and others greatly damaged. About six hundred buildings, chiefly dwelling-houses, were consumed with fire. An almost insuperable debt was contracted by the colonies, when their numbers, dwellings, goods, cattle, and all their resources were greatly diminished."