Where those wild dwellers of the woods had gone;
Behind them lay a black and smoking waste,
As carrying fire and terror they went on.
Winter was now at hand and that season was unfavourable to Indian warfare, the leafless trees affording them no longer ambush, while the hardened surface of the swamps, which were the strongholds of the savage, rendered them accessible to their enemies. It was now resolved to include the Narragansetts in the list of enemies, and accordingly, just before Christmas, 1,000 men, headed by Josiah Winslow, entered the Narragansett country, then covered with deep snow. At length they reached one of the ancient fastnesses of the Indians, where the town of South Kingstone now stands. “It was built on a rising ground,” says Hildreth, “in the morass, a sort of island of five or six acres, fortified by a palisade, and surrounded by a close hedge. There was but one entrance, quite narrow, defended by a tree thrown across it, with a block-house of logs in front and another at the back. It was Lord’s-day, but that did not hinder the attack.” Desperate was the onset, and equally desperate the defence; victory for some time was doubtful, but at length, after many lives were lost on both sides, the English became masters of the fort. The wigwams, amounting to 600 in number, were fired, and “all the horrors of the Pequod massacre renewed.” “Most of their provisions, as well as their dwellings, were consumed with fire,” says the old narrative, “and those that were left alive were forced to hide themselves in a cedar swamp not far off, where they had nothing to defend themselves from the cold but boughs of spruce and pine-trees.” The English were masters of the place, and after burning all they could set fire to, they retired with their dead and wounded, amounting to between 200 and 300. This terrible contest is known as the “Swamp Fight.”
“Our victory,” continues the chronicle, which reads like the history of some wholesale slaughter of the heathen by the children of Israel, “was more considerable than we at first expected. The enemy lost many of their principal fighting men, their provisions also by the burning of their wigwams and stores, so that it was the cause of their total ruin, they being driven away from their habitations, and put by from planting for the next year. Seven hundred fighting men of the Indians died that day, besides 300 that died of their wounds. The number of old men, women and children that perished either by fire, or that were starved with hunger and cold, none can tell.”
“Now, indeed,” may we say with Bancroft, “was the cup of misery full for the red men. Without shelter and without food, they hid themselves in the cedar swamp. They prowled the forests and pawed up the snow for ground-nuts and acorns; they ate the remnants of horse-flesh; they sunk down and died from feebleness and want of food.
“The spirit of Canonchet did not droop under the disasters of his tribe. ‘We will fight to the last man,’ said he, ‘rather than become servants to the English.’ In April, however, he was taken. His life was offered him if he would procure a treaty of peace. He refused with disdain; and being condemned to death, remarked, ‘I like it well; I shall die before my heart grows soft—before I speak anything unworthy of myself.’” Two Indians, in the employ of the English, shot him, and his head was sent to Hartford.
The scattered remains of the Indians in the meantime pursued the work of vengeance. “We will fight,” said they, “these twenty years; you have houses, barns and corn; we have nothing to lose.” And Lancaster was burned, and forty of its inhabitants killed and taken prisoners, among the rest Mary Rolandson, the wife of the minister, whose narrative of the fearful event is still preserved. The towns of Medfield, Groton, Marlborough and Weymouth, only eighteen miles from Boston, were all laid in ashes; the neighbourhood of the Narragansett country was deserted: the towns of Rhode Island, though they had taken no part in the war, suffered; Warwick was burned, and Providence partially destroyed. Roger Williams, now an aged man, whose influence had formerly been so great with the Narragansetts, accepted a captain’s commission for the defence of Providence, and another governor was chosen in the place of Coddington, whose peaceable Quaker principles would not allow him to fight even in a war of defence.
The attack on the Narragansetts, who had always been faithful allies of the English, was as unjustifiable as it was impolitic. The whole country was now filled with hostile Indians; security was at an end; every forest-path was an ambush for the day-light assault, and the silence of night was broken by the fearful war-whoop, which was followed by murder and fire. The sufferings of the Indians, also, were extreme; they had no provisions, and their ammunition was exhausted. Vain were all their attempts now to retrieve their circumstances; the English attacked them even while attempting to plant corn, or to fish for a subsistence.
The English pursued the war with unabated determination, and, in the spring of 1676, were in most cases victorious. Jealousies had also arisen among the tribes themselves, and many submitted, while others fled to the north. Philip was like a hunted wild beast; he fled from one tribe to another, endeavouring still to rouse them against the whites. In vain had the Mohawks urged upon him submission; he gave the warrior his death-blow who spoke of peace; and now, twelve months after the war broke out, he returned to Mount Hope, which was still held by him, by his relative Witamo, the squaw-sachem of Pocasset. Philip was watched narrowly by Captain Church, who at length surprised his camp, killed a considerable number of his people, and took captive his wife and son. The elders deliberated long on the fate of this child, the youngest branch of the family of the friendly Massasoit; many were for putting him to death, but finally he was sold as a slave in Bermuda, which was the hapless fate of many another noble son of the forest. Witamo shared the calamities of Philip; her people were killed, and she herself drowned while crossing a river. Her body, however, was recovered, and the head, being cut off, was set upon a pole, “amid the scoffs and jeers of the soldiers, and the tears and lamentations of the Indians.”