Even after this blow Philip succeeded in arousing the Maine and New Hampshire tribes to his support, and the war still raged for a while through the New England settlements. Rhode Island suffered severely. Warwick was burned, and the cattle driven off. Tradition says that when the enemy approached Providence, Roger Williams, now a very old man, went out to meet them. “Massachusetts,” he said, “can raise thousands of men at this moment, and if you kill them, the King of England will supply their places as fast as they fall.” “Let them come,” was the reply, “we are ready for them. But as for you, brother Williams, you are a good man; you have been kind to us many years; not a hair of your head shall be touched.” Fifty-four houses in the northern part of the town were burned, but the fearless old man was not harmed.
Many of the colonists took refuge on Aquidneck, where the inhabitants of Newport and Portsmouth received them with great kindness. To protect the island a little flotilla of four boats, manned each by five or six men, was kept sailing around it day and night. There was no rest for old or young. April opened a brighter prospect. Canonchet, chief of the Narragansetts was taken prisoner. A young Englishman attempted to examine him. “You much child; no understand matters of war. Let your brother or your chief come. Him I will answer,” was his haughty reply. He was offered his life if his tribe would submit, but refused it. The offer was renewed and he calmly said, “Let me hear no more about it.” He was sent to Stonington, where a council of war condemned him to death. “I like it well,” said he; “I shall die before my heart is soft, or I have said anything unworthy of myself.” That as many as possible of his own race should take part in his execution Pequots were employed to shoot him, Mohegans to cut off his head and quarter him, and the Niantics to burn his body. When all this had been done, his head was sent to the Commissioners at Hartford as “a taken of love and loyalty.”
Throughout the spring and early summer the war still raged with unabated violence. The Rhode Island Assembly was so hard pushed that it was compelled to repeal the law exempting Quakers from military service. A few days before the capture of Canonchet he had surprised a party of Plymouth men near Pawtuxet. A battle was fought in an open cedar swamp in Warwick. But at last fortune seemed to turn towards the English. Philip’s allies began to fall from him. His wife and children were taken prisoners. Captain Church with a chosen band was on his trail. Hunted from lair to lair he sought refuge at Mount Hope. A few followers still clung to his fortunes. His mind was harassed by unpropitious dreams, and in his weariness his pursuers came upon him unawares. As he rose to flee he was shot down by a renegade Indian. The victors drew his body out of the swamp, cut off his head, and dividing the trunk and limbs into four parts hung them upon four trees. The head was sent to Plymouth where it was hung upon a gibbet. One hand was sent to Boston where it was welcomed as a trophy, and the other was given to the renegade who shot him, by whom it was exhibited for money. His son was sold into West India servitude.
With the death of Philip the war ended, although there were occasional collisions and bloodshed. For two members of the New England confederacy it had been a war of desolation. Connecticut, the third, escaped unharmed. Rhode Island, which had never been a member of it and had never been consulted concerning the war, although some of its leading incidents occurred within her borders, suffered most. Her second town was burned, her plantations laid waste and the inhabitants of her main-land driven for shelter to the island.
With the vanquished it went hard. Many were killed in battle, some were shot in cold blood by the sentence of an English court-martial. Many were sold into slavery—with this distinction in favor of Rhode Island, that while the other colonies sold their prisoners into unqualified servitude, she established for hers a system of apprenticeship by which the prospect of ultimate freedom was opened to all.
CHAPTER XI.
INDIANS STILL TROUBLESOME.—CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.—TROUBLES CONCERNING THE BOUNDARY LINES.
War was followed by pestilence, which moves so fatally in her train. Of this pestilence we only know that it ran its deadly course in two or three days, and left its traces in almost every family. Meanwhile the legislature was sedulously repairing the breaches of the war. Laws passed in order to meet an urgent want were repealed, and chief among them as most repugnant to the tolerant spirit of the Colony the law of military service. The farmers returned to their desolate fields—citizens to the ruins of their hamlets. “Give us peace,” they may have said, “and we will efface the traces of these ruins.”