Indian policy of New England.
The Indian policy of the New Englanders was more humane than that adopted in any of the other colonies except Pennsylvania. Compensation had been granted to the savages for lands taken, firm friendships had been formed between some of the chiefs and the whites, and the missionary enterprises among the red-men were conducted on a large scale and with much zeal. Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod, and the country round about Boston were the centres of proselytism; the "praying Indians" were gathered into village congregations with native teachers, most notable being those under the supervision of John Eliot, "the apostle." Of these converted Indians there were in 1674 about four thousand; several hundred of them were taught a written language invented by Eliot, who successfully undertook the monumental labor of translating the Bible into it for their benefit.
Troubles with Philip.
Massasoit, head-chief of the Pokanokets, had made a treaty of alliance with the Plymouth colonists soon after their arrival, and kept it strictly until his death (1660). His two sons were christened at Plymouth as Alexander and Philip. Alexander died (1662) at Plymouth, where he had gone to answer to a charge of plotting with the Narragansetts against the whites. Philip, now chief sachem, wrongfully thinking his brother to have been poisoned, was thereafter a bitter enemy of the dominant race. For twelve years there were numerous complaints against him, and he was frequently summoned to Plymouth to make answer. He was smooth-spoken and fair of promise, but came to be regarded as an unsatisfactory person with whom to deal. In 1674 it became evident that Philip was planning a general Indian uprising, to drive the English out of the land.
King Philip's War.
His territory was now chiefly confined to Mount Hope,—a peninsula running into Narragansett Bay; and here he "began to keep his men in arms about him, and to gather strangers unto him, and to march about in arms towards the upper end of the neck on which he lived, and near to the English houses." On the twentieth of June a party of his warriors attacked the little town of Swanzey, killing many settlers and perpetrating fiendish outrages. War-parties from Mount Hope now quickly spread over the country, joined by the Nipmucks and other tribes. Throughout the white settlements panic prevailed, and several towns in Massachusetts, as far west as the Connecticut valley, were scenes of heart-rending tragedies.
The Narragansetts had played fast and loose in this struggle, their disaffection growing with the success of the savage arms. It was evident that unless crushed, they would openly espouse Philip's cause in the coming spring, and the danger be doubled. A thousand volunteers, enlisted by the federal commissioners, on December 19 attacked their palisaded fortress in what is now South Kingston. Two thousand warriors, with many women and children, were gathered within the walls. About one thousand Indians were slain in the contest, which was one of the most desperate of its kind ever fought in America.
The following spring and summer Philip again made bloody forays on the settlements; but he was persistently attacked, his followers were scattered, and he was at last driven, with a handful of followers, into a swamp on Mount Hope. Here (Aug. 12, 1676) he was shot to death by a friendly Indian, and "fell upon his face in the mud and water, with his gun under him; ... upon which the whole army gave three loud huzzas." His hands and head were cut off and taken to Boston and Plymouth respectively, in token to the people at home that King Philip's war was at an end, and that thereafter white men were to be supreme in New England.
The effect of the struggle.
During the two years' deadly struggle the colonists had been surfeited with horrors, of which the statistics of loss can convey but slight idea. Of the eighty or ninety towns in Plymouth and Massachusetts, nearly two-thirds had been harried by the savages,—ten or twelve wholly, and the others partially destroyed; while nearly six hundred fighting men—about ten per cent of the whole—had either lost their lives or had been taken prisoners, never to return. It was many years before the heavy war-debts of the colonies could be paid; in Plymouth the debt exceeded in amount the value of all the personal property.