Volume I Part 11 (2/2)
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.
Ma.s.sachusetts has seen no other such winter as that which followed.
”Morn came, and went--and came, and brought not day, And men forgot their pa.s.sions 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 Ma.s.sachusetts:
”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 G.o.d'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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 const.i.tuted 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 consecrate a large force upon any one point. With his forces divided into war parties as necessity or circ.u.mstances dictated, he was able in the s.p.a.ce 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts which should send twenty thousand able-bodied men to the grave, and render twenty thousand families houseless, and for the most part dest.i.tute. 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 pa.s.sed 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 ma.s.sacred 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 G.o.d'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 those 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 Hamps.h.i.+re and the district of Maine, the fires of war flickered ere they went forever out. Omitting comparatively unimportant incursions, the Indian wars of Ma.s.sachusetts 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 pa.s.sed from war to peace they forgot not their religious duties, and the 29th of June in Ma.s.sachusetts, and the 17th of August in Plymouth, were set part 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 n.o.ble and heroic race.
The war was brief; its operations were rapid. In the s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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 this 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 hards.h.i.+p 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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.
Pa.s.sing from the princ.i.p.al features of this b.l.o.o.d.y 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 Ess.e.x 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 the 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'.
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