The close proximity in which the whites and natives dwelt in many places was the source of endless friction and petty annoyance, particularly to the Indians. The live-stock of the settlers was forever being allowed to stray into the cultivated lands of the savages; and at the time of the troubles in 1671, the colony of Plymouth had to appoint committees in no less than eleven different towns, “to view the Damage done to the Indians by the Horses and Hoggs of the English.”[[843]] The question of firearms was the subject of frequent legislation by the colonial courts, and of friction with the natives, in the altered condition of whose life they had become practically essential as a means of procuring food.[[844]] Notwithstanding this fact, and the obvious one that the guns, having been paid for by the Indians with their own money, were their property, the English, frequently, when alarmed by rumors of hostility, required that the savages deliver all their arms into the hands of the authorities, considering as enemies those who refused.[[845]] Not only was this a hardship and a humiliation, but, on a number of occasions, the English refused to return the weapons, simply confiscating them. In 1671, for example, in Plymouth, after Philip had been required to deposit the guns of his people with the Court, that body determined that they were “justly forfeit,” and coolly divided them among the towns of the colony.[[846]] At one stroke, not only were the natives deprived of their means of livelihood and defense, but the weapons, which they had honestly bought, were thus, by legalized robbery, turned against themselves. No individual with the instinct of self-respect and self-preservation could fail to see that his eventual choice would lie between resistance and virtual slavery.
The missionary efforts of the English differed from those of the French precisely as did their exploitation of the land. In French America, the religious counterpart of the lonely trapper or trader was the Jesuit priest, who, cross in hand, and frequently without a companion, penetrated to the far depths of the forest, to carry his message to the heathen wherever found. In New England, however, as it was the town and not the trader that pushed the frontier forward, so the lonely missionary was replaced by the organizer of communities, and the savages on the fringe of civilization were gathered into villages within the bounds of white settlement, there to have the gospel preached to them, and to be joined in a covenanted church. Such work was practically negligible in Rhode Island and Connecticut, but, by the outbreak of Philip's War, had made considerable progress in Massachusetts and Plymouth. In the latter two colonies, the labors of the Reverend John Eliot, who had translated the Bible into the Indian tongue, of Thomas Mayhew, Richard Bourne, and others,—paid for almost wholly with funds raised in England,—had resulted in the gathering of perhaps four thousand converts.[[847]] A considerable number of these “Praying Indians,” as they were called, were scattered in villages on Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, and in some twenty localities in Plymouth, and about eleven hundred were located in Massachusetts. Of the latter, the earlier and most dependable ones dwelt in the seven towns of Chelmsford, Littleton, Natick, Marlborough, Hopkinton, Grafton, and Stoughton, which were located at intervals of a dozen miles or so along the frontier of the eastern settlements, and which might have been used as a possible line of defense against any hostile movement from the unoccupied central portion of the colony, which lay between them and the towns of the Connecticut River.[[848]] In a large proportion of cases, the conversion seems to have been genuine, and the Indians, more particularly in the seven towns named, to have become sincere friends of the English, although the more recent converts in the Nipmuck country soon went over to the enemy.
To the bulk of the savages, however, the humdrum existence led by their praying brethren in the little reservations allotted to them by the English, and their position of humble dependence upon the white lords of the soil, could hardly make a serious appeal. The past was too recent, and its contrast with the present was too vivid. It was becoming clear to the dullest witted that the future could hold little else, however, unless the power of the whites could be broken once and for all.
Massasoit, the aged Sachem of the Wampanoags, who had been a consistent friend to the settlers since 1620, died in the winter of 1660-61, and his son Alexander, who succeeded him, also died a few months later. In fact, his death is said to have been due, in part, to his anger and chagrin at having been forcibly seized by the authorities of Plymouth when called upon to make his appearance before them.[[849]] The change of relations between the whites and Indians was well exemplified by the difference between the formal and dignified embassy sent from Plymouth in 1620, to visit Massasoit and to negotiate a treaty with him, and the “eight or ten stout men,” under Major Winslow, who surprised Alexander in his hunting-lodge, seized his arms, and commanded him to travel to that same Plymouth, to appear before the governor.
Philip had not long succeeded his brother Alexander as sachem, when he, in turn, was curtly summoned to appear before the Court, to clear himself of rumored disloyalty. Although nothing whatever was proved, and Philip offered to leave another of his brothers as hostage, he was forced to sign a treaty ratifying all former ones, acknowledge himself an English subject, and agree not to alienate any of his lands without the consent of the Court.[[850]] Five years later, on renewed rumors of his disloyalty, his arms were taken away, and he was again forced to appear before the magistrates. Although once more no evidence was produced against him, and his arms were returned, he was nevertheless required to give his note for £40 as part of the charge for the expedition which had been sent after him.[[851]] In 1671, for wholly inadequate causes, he was forced, not to make a new treaty, but, without option, to sign “several propositions,” by one of which he had to agree to pay a fine of “one hundred pounds in such things as I have,” although, as he had no such sum, he asked for three years in which to pay it. He was also required to acknowledge himself in subjection, not merely to the English Crown, but to the little colony of Plymouth; to pay an annual tribute; to sell land only subject to the colony's approval; and, with exceeding unfairness, to agree in advance to submit, in case of any dispute between the colony and himself, to the verdict of the governor as arbitrator.[[852]] It was on this occasion, as already noted, that all the guns that his people had delivered to the English were confiscated.
This treatment, accorded to the son of that sachem to whom the now grasping colony had, in its infancy, owed its very life, and who had been its friend for over forty years, could not fail to goad him into rebellion, if, indeed, he had not already considered it. Within four years from the time when the son of Massasoit affixed his scrawling mark to the humiliating and confiscatory document, the storm broke which was to drench New England in a sea of blood.
In the absence of any written records of the Indians, from which the story of those four years or so of preparation upon their part might be ascertained, the nature and scope of Philip's plans must remain wholly a matter of inference from the subsequent events. That he nursed his revenge, and carried on negotiations with other tribes for a simultaneous rising against the whites over a considerable territory, would seem to be well established. On the other hand, the time was more or less ripe for the inevitable conflict to occur throughout all the colonies. Once started, the example of a native rising would prove contagious; and there is little evidence to prove that the widespread movements along the seaboard were connected by threads that centred in the hut of the Wampanoag. His tribe itself was weak and inconspicuous, and in Philip's apparent lack of personal bravery and some of the other qualities most admired in a savage leader, there is nothing to indicate—what, indeed, events tend to disprove—that he was personally popular among the natives. Nor, even if we grant that he was surprised into hostilities in that spring of 1675, before all his plans had matured, is there any evidence, in his later conduct of the campaign, of that great ability for organization which has sometimes been attributed to him. There seems to be no doubt, however, that at that time he was engaged in preparing for a general rising, and that he had the sympathy of some of the other New England tribes.
Meanwhile, the English seem to have been singularly oblivious to the realities of the situation. They claimed, and undoubtedly felt, that they had treated the natives with justice. In the beginning, they had naturally failed to understand the Indian character, government, and theory of property. As, on the one hand, they came to know these better, on the other, the contempt they developed for the heathen and the savage, who, incidentally, was in possession of lands coveted by the Saints of God, tended to lessen their belief in his abstract rights. Economically, they had outgrown their early dependence upon the native; and their increasing sense of safety, due to the rapidly developing disparity in numbers, tended to make them callous to the feelings of the “great naked dirty beast,” as Colonel Church described Philip, and they ceased to fear the power of the savage without coming to respect the rights of the man.[[853]] They failed to realize the broader aspects of the struggle, and even the practical fact that they were driving a still powerful race of savages into a corner, where they were not likely to stand at bay without making, at some time, a supreme effort to escape.
When the Indians finally did strike back, the English not only were wholly unprepared but do not seem to have understood the results of their own acts. Instead of regarding the approaching conflict as an inevitable consequence of the relations between the two races, and as having been, more immediately, brought about by themselves, they looked upon it as sent from God; and in a hasty self-examination as to why the Deity should have so afflicted them, the Massachusetts General Court decided that He was then engaged in burning towns and murdering women and children along the frontier, because Massachusetts had become somewhat lax in persecuting the Quakers, and because her men had begun to wear periwigs and their women to indulge in “cutting, curling and immodest laying out theire haire.”[[854]]
The genius of New England has never been military. Her people, in a cause in which they believe, can fight doggedly and well, but she has never given to the nation a great soldier, either as leader or organizer, and King Philip's War presented no exception. From its nature, it was less a war than a series of raids by the savages and retaliatory expeditions by the English; but it was the only sort of war which the colonies could have expected, or for which they ought to have been prepared. There was, however, practically no intercolonial organization. The United Colonies, the efficiency of which as a war-machine had early been damaged by Massachusetts, had received another blow by the loss of a member when New Haven was absorbed by Connecticut. Although Plymouth's suggestion, at that time, to dissolve the Confederacy entirely, had not been approved, the bond had become looser than ever, and under the altered articles, the representatives of the three remaining members were to meet only triennially.[[855]]