The tragic death of Alexander,—​the direct result of the bold and perhaps unwise policy of the Plymouth government—​broke the first link in the chain of friendship that had bound Wampanoag and Englishman together. The sullen attitude of the savages awakened anxiety among the colonists, and it was with some alarm that those dwelling at the Sowams’ settlement beheld a vast concourse of savages gathered at Mt. Hope to mourn for the dead chief and to celebrate his brother Philip’s accession to the sachemship. But the feared outbreak of hostilities did not occur. Whatever Philip’s real feelings were, he apparently desired to live in amity with the English; and a few months after becoming the head of his tribe renewed the “covenant” which Massasoit had made with the government of Plymouth. He does not seem to have, at first, felt a prejudice against the Christian religion for, in the winter of 1663-4, he and his people sent to John Eliot for “books to learn to read and to pray unto God.” Eliot’s son twice visited Pokanoket and taught among the Wampanoags, and from a letter addressed by Eliot to the United Colonies in 1664, it appears probable that the apostle, himself, labored at Mt. Hope in 1664-5.

The hamlet by the Kickemuit continued under the ward of Rehoboth during 1663 and 1664, being ordered to so remain until such time as the “naighborhood should be in a capassitie and desire to be a township of themselves.” In 1664 Sowams was rated at £2:05:00; in 1666 at £07:17:06; in 1667, at £10:10:00. During this same year, “Wannamoisett[21] and Parts Adjacent” were incorporated as a township under the name of Swansea. The charter granted it described the township as “all such lands that lyeth betwixt the salt water Bay and coming up Taunton River all the land between the salt water and river and the bounds of Taunton and Rehoboth.” It will readily be seen that the site of Warren was included within the bounds of this extensive territory. The history of Sowams thus became merged in that of Swansea, less than a score of years after its commencement, and from the annals of Swansea the chronicler must glean the facts that make up its final chapters.

It is not within the province of this sketch to discuss at length the causes which led to that mighty struggle between savagery and civilization known is history as King Philip’s War. For some years after he became sachem, Philip maintained an outward show of fealty to the English. But as time went on the relations of red men and white became strained. The Indian saw the forests rapidly vanishing beneath the colonist’s axe, and realized that the game on which he depended for sustenance would, also, soon disappear. He was forced to sell his lands for the necessities of life, and he complained bitterly, and too often with reason, of wrongs inflicted upon him by his white brother. Moreover, he was fast becoming debased by the vices of civilization. Philip was a statesman and a patriot. He loved his country and his people. In the increasing power of the English he saw presaged the downfall of his race. He resolved to attempt the extermination of the usurpers. His fertile brain evolved a scheme for a union of the various native tribes against the common foe. The English suspected his designs, yet he many times adroitly baffled their watchfulness. The fates, however, were against him, and he was destined never to work out the salvation of his people.

In 1675, John Sassamon, a Christian Indian employed as a sort of private secretary by Philip, warned the Plymouth government that his master was plotting against it. Philip discovered the perfidy of Sassamon, and shortly afterward, the dead body of the latter was found beneath the ice in Assawamset Pond in Middleborough. The English doubted not that Sassamon had been put to death by the sachem’s order. They arrested three savages whom they charged with the murder, tried them before a jury composed of twelve Englishmen and four Indians, and sentenced them to death, though two of them maintained their innocence to the last. Philip had been summoned to Plymouth to testify regarding his own connection with the murder, but he was too wise to obey an injunction, so fraught with peril. Instead, he openly hurled defiance at his accusers.

His first overt act was committed within the limits of Sowams. “A little before the Court,” the Plymouth Records tell us, “Philip began to keep his men in armes about him and to gather strangers unto him and to march about in armes toward the vper end of the Necke on which he lived and neare to the English houses whoe began thereby to be somewhat disquieted but tooke as yett noe further notice but only to sett a military watch in the next Townes as Swanzey and Rehoboth.” The Indians, however did not long confine themselves to stalking about and flourishing their weapons. Their powwows, or priests, having prophesied defeat to which ever party should shed the first blood in the conflict, they sought to provoke the English to attack them by shooting their cattle, frightening women, and insulting travellers. On the 18th or 19th of June, Job Winslow’s house[22] was “broken up and rifled” by them. On Sunday, June 20th, a party of eight warriors fully armed, invaded the hamlet. They knocked at the door of a colonist and demanded permission to grind their hatchets. Upon being told that the grinding of hatchets on the Lord’s Day was a sin they replied, “We know not who your God is and we shall grind our hatchets for all you or your God either.” They then proceeded to another house where they helped themselves liberally to food. Continuing along the road they met an Englishman whom they took prisoner, but later dismissed, after enjoining him not to work on the Lord’s Day and to tell no lies.

As they proceeded on they began to shoot the cattle in the fields, encountering no resistance as nearly all the settlers were in attendance at public worship. At length they reached a house whose owner was not at church. They killed his cattle, then entered the house and demanded liquor, which being refused they attempted to seize by violence. The Englishman infuriated, snatched up his gun and fired, seriously injuring one of the savages. The Indians immediately retired, bearing the wounded warrior with them, and breathing threats of vengeance. Back through Sowams they swiftly wended their way to their own territory. Tradition says that at Kickemuit Spring they met Philip, who wept when he heard their story, and there seems little reason to doubt the truth of the tradition. Though he had long meditated war, the sachem was not yet fully prepared for it. Events unforeseen had, however, hastened the crisis. He found it impossible to curb the impatience and fury of his younger warriors, and though he had failed to complete his cherished scheme for a general uprising of the red men, he could no longer delay open battle with the enemy. Perhaps a prophetic foreboding of defeat forced the tears from his eyes.

The raid upon Sowams was the beginning of a reign of terror that extended over every portion of Swansea. The Plymouth government, upon being notified of the condition of affairs, immediately dispatched companies of militia to the assistance of the distressed township. On June 22d, six men were killed or mortally wounded at Mattapoiset. Thursday, June 24th, was appointed a day of fasting and prayer, and as some of the colonists were returning from church they were fired upon by the Indians with the result that one man was killed and another wounded. During the same day “six men were killed in another part of the town.” On the 28th, William Hammond was killed and “one Corporal Belcher” wounded while scouring the “enemy’s territory” between Miles’ garrison[23] at North Swansea and the Sowams’ settlement. On the 29th, a party of Indians who had shown themselves near the garrison were pursued by the English towards Sowams but made their escape into a nearby swamp.[24] That night Philip, fearful of capture, abandoned Mt. Hope Neck retreating across the bay to Pocasset, now Tiverton. One of the last acts performed by the savages ere quitting the home of their ancestors, was the final destruction of Sowams. Hubbard tells us that on the following day the entire English force (which had concentrated at North Swansea) marched from Miles’ garrison towards Mt. Hope. At a point about a mile and a half below the bridge near the garrison they “passed by some houses newly burned” and “not far off one of them they found a Bible newly torn and the leaves scattered about by the enemy.” These charred ruins and torn and scattered leaves were all that remained of English Sowams, ill-fated Sowams, strangely destined to be destroyed by the same hands that had nurtured it in its infancy. Two or three miles further on, at the “Narrow of the Neck” on the west bank of Kickemuit River the soldiers discovered the “heads, hands, and scalps” of eight Englishmen, murdered at Mattapoisett, “stuck up on poles near the highway,” close by the spot which must have been pressed by the feet of Winslow and Hopkins when, journeying from Plymouth to Pokanoket in 1621, they crossed the “wading-place” at Kickemuit and entered Sowams for the purpose of continuing the “league of peace and friendship” with Massasoit, and of securing from the savage chief the supply of seed corn which the feeble colony of Plymouth then stood sorely in need of.

The site of English Sowams remained desolate from that eventful June day until some time after the close of the war which soon followed the death of King Philip in August, 1676. About 1678, settlers began to rebuild along the Kickemuit, and the old “ways” and “bridal paths” laid out “long since” by the Sowams’ colonists were re-surveyed, descriptions of them being carefully recorded. Most of these ancient highways are in use at the present day. There being no Indians left on Mount Hope Neck, the territory now occupied by the town of Bristol and the compact part of Warren, passed into the possession of the successors of the original Sowams’ proprietors, by virtue of the deed executed by Massasoit and Wamsutta in 1653. By an arbitrary act, King Charles transferred the site of Bristol to Plymouth, but that of Warren became a part of Swansea. As early as 1671, the last mentioned district was known by the name of “Brooks’ Pasture,” undoubtedly from some right of ownership in it possessed by Timothy Brooks.[25] What that right was the writer has been, thus far, unable to discover, though a careful and diligent search of the early records has been made in the hope of solving the mystery. At different periods, between 1681 and 1725, Brooks’ Pasture—​with the exception of the meadows or marshes divided in 1653 between Thomas Prince and his partners in the Sowams’ purchase—​was laid out and divided among the proprietors there being, in all, eight several apportionments of land made.

It is uncertain at what date the first dwelling house was erected in the western part of Brooks’ Pasture. In 1746, that section of Swansea now occupied by the two towns of Barrington and Warren was ceded to Rhode Island, incorporated as a township, and given the name of Warren in honor of Admiral Sir Peter Warren, the hero of Louisburg and Cape Breton. Warren’s proximity to the ocean, and its excellent harbor facilities, early led the inhabitants to engage in maritime pursuits; and, in course of time, the wharves, and shops, ship yards and dwelling houses of a flourishing seaport sprang up to replace the vanished wigwams of Massasoit’s town, Sowams in Pokanoket.