The Mayflower

by Rebecca Fraser

  In an echo of the Mystic massacre in the Pequot War, the English set fire to wigwams with old women and children in them. According to Connecticut historian Benjamin Trumbull, a number of the English soldiers were unhappy at this unchristian behaviour. Drawing on accounts in contemporary manuscripts, Trumbull wrote that ‘The burning of the wigwams, the shrieks and cries of the women and children, and the yelling of the warriors exhibited a most horrible and affecting scene, so that it greatly moved some of the soldiers. They were much in doubt then, and afterwards, often seriously inquired whether burning their enemies alive could be consistent with humanity and the benevolent principles of the Gospel.’ But there were not enough of such dissenters to call a halt.

  It was thought best to evacuate the swamp, in case the Indians were hidden in the trees and launched a second attack. Although some thought the wounded would be better off in sheltered surroundings, Josiah decided it was safer to march back through the deep snow to Wickford. But it was a ghastly journey. They lost their way and had to walk all night in the biting wind. Provisions arrived by boat from Boston for the weary troops but there were not enough. Josiah gave orders to local farmers to slaughter sheep.

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  Although the swamps were famously difficult to attack, under Josiah the English troops had managed to destroy the Narragansetts’ lair. At last the Indians had been defeated in straightforward battle. To the victors it seemed an extraordinary and emblematic victory over an apparently unbeatable foe, a triumph for the English way of life. The engagement was ever after called the Great Swamp Fight. (John Winthrop’s son Wait Still Winthrop’s poem ‘Some Meditations’, written ten days after the battle, pronounced Indians ‘a swarm of flies’. This line has been seen as the beginning of a dehumanisation of the Indians.)

  The Great Swamp Fight became a touchstone of New Englanders’ valour. It reversed the psychological trauma of the chosen people not having God on their side. It appeared that – after all – He was. But the Narragansetts were no longer neutral, or semi-neutral. Having now officially joined Philip they began to rain down terror on the rest of New England.

  After the Great Swamp Fight the Narragansett leader Canonchet had asked for a truce, which Josiah impatiently refused. Had the truce been given and peace terms made, New England could have been spared the warfare that now ensued. Josiah’s iron will at the beginning of the Indian insurrection had been viewed as a strength. Now flexibility was called for. Perhaps Josiah was no longer so in command of himself as he had been. His friend the secretary and historian of Plymouth Colony, Nathaniel Morton, thought he probably ruined his own health from exposure. The beginning of what appears to have been a clotting or thrombotic problem may have manifested itself and made him blinkered and short-tempered. Nevertheless he had the reputation of a ‘stout commander’.

  Since Josiah would not allow a peace parley, in the view of some critics he should have pursued the Narragansetts immediately, for Canonchet began a series of terrifying raids seizing cattle and horses. But it took two long weeks for fresh troops to come from Connecticut. Like so many farmer soldiers called up, colonists were unwilling to campaign for long periods of time. They wanted to be at home guarding their families, and sowing their crops to make sure they had a harvest and didn’t starve the next winter.

  At the end of January the army set off after Canonchet, always hoping for another pitched battle, but they never caught up with the main party of the fleet-footed Narragansetts. The English travelled north for seventy miles, always seeing the fires of the Indians in the distance. The skeletons of the animals the Narragansetts butchered lay all around, but for the colonists it was known as the Hungry March. Boats with food could not get to them because of the frozen water. The soldiers had to eat their own horses in the snow.

  Josiah finally stopped at Marlborough because he was in Nipmuck country. Despite mutterings then and after, that in one more day they would have cornered the Narragansetts, Josiah opined it was not so. He made tracks for Boston, where the army was disbanded.

  The official position was that New England still had not done enough to please the Lord. He had ‘deferred our Salvation’, wrote Increase Mather. Josiah was furious with Rhode Island, which had not allowed the army to be sheltered in their houses during the Narragansett campaign. That had added to the exhaustion and poor health of his soldiers.

  On 8 February Josiah had to stop serving through ill health. He was paid £32 for service in war. He may have gone to Salem to be nursed briefly by Penelope. But he was still governor of Plymouth so he had to return there. John Cotton junior’s wife Joanna was well known for her medical skills and may have been called on to help Josiah recover.

  Meanwhile in January the governor of the recently acquired colony of New York, Edmund Andros, had finally given the United Colonies news of Philip. The Indian king was sick but had 400–500 men within fifty miles of Albany.

  Governor Andros had only arrived in North America the year before, but he had already done a deal with the Mohawks. When the English had seized New Netherland in 1664 this had had a knock-on effect on the local system of Indian alliances and the Mohawks became allies of the English at New York. In response to Andros, they now unleashed themselves against Philip in his winter hideout, driving him away from the Hudson River.

  The English colonists continued desperately warding off the Narragansetts who were still attacking their settlements. All New England towns now enhanced their fortifications. Extra garrison houses were built with loopholes for guns to poke out of the backs of chimneys. Salem threw up a wall across the neck of the peninsula on which the town was built, an order signed by George Curwen. Refugees from Maine were driven west to Salem because it was the nearest safe town. Did Penelope learn to use a gun?

  In February 1,000 screaming Indians attacked Medfield. A helpful Indian spy who had watched the town burn came through the night on snowshoes to tell Daniel Gookin that Lancaster would be next. From then on settlers became more receptive to using friendly Indians to scout; they could slip in and out of camps; they overheard plans and secrets. As they had always been, they were priceless guides through the wilderness.

  As English soldiers began struggling to get through from Boston, several hundred Indians surrounded Lancaster. They used the town’s winter log pile to burn the garrison house. Around two dozen people were taken prisoner, including Mrs Mary Rowlandson, the wife of Reverend Joseph Rowlandson.

  She wrote a celebrated history of her captivity, which begins: ‘On the tenth of February 1676, came the Indians with great numbers upon Lancaster: their first coming was about sunrising; hearing the noise of some guns, we looked out; several houses were burning, and the smoke ascending to heaven.’ The Rowlandsons’ own house was set on fire. As Mary opened the door to leave with her children,

  the Indians shot so thick that the bullets rattled against the house, as if one had taken an handful of stones and threw them, so that we were fain to go back. We had six stout dogs belonging to our garrison, but none of them would stir, though another time, if any Indian had come to the door, they were ready to fly upon him and tear him down … But out we must go, the fire increasing, and coming along behind us, roaring, and the Indians gaping before us with their guns, spears, and hatchets to devour us. No sooner were we out of the house, but my brother-in-law (being before wounded, in defending the house, in or near the throat) fell down dead, whereat the Indians scornfully shouted, and hallooed, and were presently upon him, stripping off his clothes.

  Mrs Rowlandson was dragged away, having been wounded by a bullet. In her arms she was clutching her six-year-old daughter Sarah, who was bleeding from the bowel and the hand. Mrs Rowlandson’s mind was full of dreadful sights, her friends and relations ‘bleeding out their heart-blood upon the ground. There was one who was chopped into the head with a hatchet, and stripped naked, and yet was crawling up and down.’

  The Indians put Sarah on a horse because she was plainly dying, and after six days of tr
avelling in the woods of northern Massachusetts they buried the little girl. Mrs Rowlandson was both grieving and ill herself. Every night she heard of new Indian triumphs and fresh assaults on New England towns: ‘They began their din about a mile before they came to us. By their noise and whooping they signified how many they had destroyed.’ And though God upheld her through her ordeal she felt she was being punished for being lazy about her observance of the Sabbath. She worried about the effect on her other daughter of living with the Indians. But as she would relate, the Indians were not unkind either to her or her children.

  Mrs Rowlandson was sold to Weetamoo and her new husband the Narragansett chief Quinnapin. Mary did not like the arrogant Weetamoo, whose personal maid she became: ‘a severe and proud Dame … bestowing every day in dressing herself neat as such time as any Gentry of the land: powdering her hair, and painting her face, going with Necklaces, with Jewels in her ears, and Bracelets upon her hands’. Weetamoo was spiteful to her and slapped her face. She was a fearsome warrior queen who fought with her men.

  King Philip appeared, to coordinate campaign plans with Weetamoo. Mrs Rowlandson found herself sewing a shirt for Philip’s son. Despite the war, English clothing remained prestigious amongst the Indian community. In return Philip gave her a small cake of corn and a pancake fried with bear grease. He treated her with gentleness, offering to smoke tobacco with her, and reassured her that her ordeal would soon be over. ‘Philip came up and took my hand, and said, two weeks more and you shall be mistress again.’ Her book is full of information about the Indians: Weetamoo made ‘girdles of wampum and beads’, and her braves left women alone and neither tortured nor raped them.

  Mrs Rowlandson endured three months of captivity. A meeting was called to decide how much she could be ransomed for. Rather pathetically the Indians told her they were the ‘General Court’ and she was to stand up and say how much she was worth. Worried by the destruction of her home and all her family’s possessions when Lancaster was stormed, she said £20. That was what she was ransomed for on 3 May.

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  At the end of March, in a terrible blow for Roger Williams, his own plantation, Providence, was burned by 1,500 Narragansett warriors. He had cultivated the tribe’s friendship for over forty years.

  In an extraordinary rendezvous with the warriors – a meeting which the town and his sons begged him not to undertake – Williams confronted them. Even as he did so, his own house was torched. Pointing at it, Williams said ‘this house now burning before mine eyes hath lodged kindly some thousands of you these ten years’. Williams asked why they attacked a neighbour who had always been good to them. The Narragansetts responded that the people of Providence had helped their enemies in Plymouth and Massachusetts. They also told Williams the English God had deserted them. Williams replied that on the contrary, ‘God had prospered us’. It was an exchange that left Williams shaking. The world he had built, the friendships he had cherished, were literally going up in flames in front of his eyes.

  In the end he was numbered on the side of his own kind. But, as many of his statements show, he believed that the English greed for land bore a heavy responsibility. An articulate Indian named John Wallmaker (or Stonewall John) said, ‘You have driven us out of our own country and then pursued us to our great misery, and your own, and we are forced to live upon you.’ That was an accurate if unwelcome summing-up.

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  At the end of March from Plymouth Josiah wrote to Boston begging to be sent troops. As governor he was in a mood of utter despair. He put it baldly: ‘we are very weak and unable to defend ourselves’.

  The Indian army had returned to Plymouth Colony with force. They massacred the Eel River garrison three miles from Plymouth town. The warriors knew most people would be at the meeting house on the Sabbath. This garrison was believed to be one of the safest places in the colony. Benjamin Church had been advised to send his heavily pregnant wife there; fortunately she preferred Rhode Island. Mrs Clark, the wife of the commander of the garrison, was killed along with eleven others.

  This was followed by the grisly death of Captain Pierce of Scituate and eighty men, sixty English and twenty Wampanoag Christian Indians, who were lured into a trap on 26 March at Pawtucket Falls on Rhode Island. Surrounded by Canonchet and 500 screaming Narragansetts, they died valiantly in a circle defending one another. That same day the minister of Marlborough left church because he had a toothache. As he opened the door he saw the town was completely surrounded by Indians, who had approached silently. Marlborough was destroyed.

  In Salem Penelope had no idea whether Josiah was dead or alive. For all she knew, Careswell might have been destroyed along with the rest of Marshfield. In fact Marshfield itself was never attacked, but a number of houses were burned in an attack on Scituate just nine miles away. The minister of Bridgewater wrote: ‘We are in expectation every day of an assault here. The Lord prepare us for our trial.’ By late April the protective circle of the outlying Massachusetts towns of Lancaster, Groton, Marlborough and Medfield was no more. All their inhabitants had fled. Farmhouses were burning in an arc across New England from eastern Maine to Connecticut. Hostile Indian forces were in striking distance of New England’s main port. All the northern settlements on the Connecticut River, from Northfield to Deerfield, were ghost towns.

  New England’s international trade had come to a halt. With the whole country in a state of siege there were no men on the wharves to land goods, no merchants to commission ships, no farmers to cut down trees and make lathes to send abroad. As communications were reduced the English were largely reliant on friendly Indians for news of what was happening. And there was a constant anxiety about whether those Indians would stay friendly.

  The very bitter feeling against the English was expressed not just by murderous attacks. The Indians struggled to deliver an explicit message that they felt oppressed by English culture. Mrs Rowlandson had noticed the hatred of the Bible – Weetamoo snatched Mary’s copy out of her hand ‘and threw it out of doors’. After Medfield was burned in February 1676 a Nipmuck pinned a tragic letter to a cart which said: ‘We will fight you twenty years if you will. There are many Indians yet. You must consider the Indians lost nothing but their life; you must lose your fair houses and cattle.’ Written by a literate Indian who probably once lived in a Praying Town, it was the end of a dream.

  All over New England, in the isolated English outposts which had been havens of neat fields, the golden corn rotted. There was no one to gather in the harvest. Those who survived were too frightened to go into the fields because their Indian enemies could be waiting for them. Every tap on the window, every rustle in the bushes, could be the beginning of a shocking domestic massacre.

  On 21 April 1676 Captain Wadsworth and his men were massacred trying to relieve the burning settlement of Sudbury. Indian braves had suddenly risen up from the long grass. It was Sudbury which at last convinced the Massachusetts Council that Indians must be used as scouts. This decision made an incalculable difference. Indian scouts were sent ahead ‘to give speedy notice of the Indians’ movements and disappoint their mischievous designs’.

  The tide began to turn when Canonchet of the Narragansetts was captured. Like the citizen soldiers, the Narragansetts and the Wampanoags longed to return home. They were beginning to starve because they could not get at their food stores buried in the earth. ‘General Hunger’ was a potent weapon against them.

  Canonchet had gone to Mount Hope to find seed corn when a hunting party of English soldiers came upon him. They did not realise it was him until, as he was running, in order to go as fast as possible he started throwing off his clothes, including the silver-laced coat the English had given him. In his haste his foot slipped on a stone crossing the Pawtucket River, he fell and was caught. When he was asked to reveal Philip’s whereabouts and submit to the English, this proud son of the tragic Miantonomo said he would fight it out to the last man. Just before he was executed he said, ‘I like it well. I
shall die before my heart is soft, and before I have spoken a word unworthy of myself.’

  Canonchet told the English that killing him would not end the war because all the Indians wanted to destroy them. In fact, however, most Indians had had enough of being fugitives. Philip’s allies were exhausted and feared that the Mohawks would come for them. They were living on groundnuts and English cattle that they stole in the night. Once the planting season passed without them having put seed in the ground, they would starve. They could no longer peacefully smoke their fish on frames by rivers in preparation for the winter. They started to surrender in large numbers. An Indian known as James Printer, John Eliot’s typesetter assistant, reappeared. He threw himself on the authorities’ mercy, reporting that many Indians were dying of disease.

  An atmosphere of acute anxiety and sadness prevailed also amongst the English. Weakened by the war, they fell prey to a flu epidemic. John Winthrop junior died, aged seventy. So many perished in Boston that the funeral processions bumped into one another.

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  Philip was being forced slowly back to his old territories. It was rumoured that he was calling Indians to him for a last stand at Mount Hope. He might regroup and then fall on Plymouth Colony again.

  In spite of all that had happened Philip retained affection for those English who were his friends. In a tragic episode Hezekiah Willett, the son of Philip’s former trading partner Thomas Willett, stepped out of his door in Swansea, when Narragansetts leapt up and beheaded him. His body was stripped and his black servant Jethro was carried off. Jethro later reported poignantly that ‘the Mount Hope Indians that knew Mr Willett, were sorry for his death, mourned, combed his head, and hung peag in his hair’.

  Benjamin Church, meanwhile, was coaxing Philip’s neighbours, the Sakonnet Indians under their Squaw Sachem Awashonks, into coming over to the English side. Awashonks said she would abandon Philip on condition all her tribe’s lives were spared. Church gave his word, and said how pleased he was at the thought of the return of their former friendship. Awashonks responded forthrightly they would get Philip’s head before the Indian corn was ripe.