His reluctance to commence war.
His foresight.
His humanity.
It is said that with reluctance and anguish he entered upon the war, and that he shed tears when the first English blood was shed. His extraordinary kindness to the Leonards, inducing him to avert calamities from a whole settlement, lest they, by some accident, might be injured, develops magnanimity which is seldom paralleled. He was a man of first-rate abilities. He foresaw clearly that the growth of the English power threatened the utter extermination of his race. War thus, in his view, became a dire necessity. No man could be more conscious of its fearful peril. With sagacity which might excite the envy of the ablest of European diplomatists, he bound together various heterogeneous and hostile tribes, and guided all their energies. Though the generality of the Indians were often inhuman in the extreme, there is no evidence that Philip ever ordered a captive to be tortured, while it is undeniable that the English, in several instances, surrendered their captives to the horrid barbarities of their savage allies.
His mode of warfare.
"His mode of making war," says Francis Baylies, "was secret and terrible. He seemed like the demon of destruction hurling his bolts in darkness. With cautious and noiseless steps, and shrouded by the deep shade of midnight, he glided from the gloomy depths of the woods. He stole on the villages and settlements of New England, like the pestilence, unseen and unheard. His dreadful agency was felt when the yells of his followers roused his victims from their slumbers, and when the flames of their blazing habitations glared upon their eyes. His pathway could be traced by the horrible desolation of its progress, by its crimson print upon the snows and the sands, by smoke and fire, by houses in ruins, by the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the groans of the wounded and the dying. Well indeed might he have been called the 'terror of New England.' Yet in no instance did he transcend the ordinary usages of Indian warfare.
Do justice to his memory.
"We now sit in his seats and occupy his lands; the lands which afforded a bare subsistence to a few wandering savages can now support countless thousands of civilized people. The aggregate of the happiness of man is increased, and the designs of Providence are fulfilled when this fair domain is held by those who know its use; surely we may be permitted at this day to lament the fate of him who was once the lord of our woods and our streams, and who, if he wrought much mischief to our forefathers, loved some of our race, and wept for their misfortunes!"
Feelings for him in 1677.
There was, however, but little sympathy felt in that day for Philip or any of his confederates. The truly learned and pious but pedantic Cotton Mather, allowing his spirit to be envenomed by the horrid atrocities of Indian warfare, thus records the tragic end of Pometacom:
Cotton Mather's record.