WEBVTT - King Philip’s War 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:04.040 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:12.920 of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome 0:00:12.920 --> 0:00:16.520 to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:19.720 In our recent episode about Paul Cuffey, we mentioned just 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:24.360 really briefly that after King phillips War, indigenous men in 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:27.120 New England were enslaved and sent to the Caribbean, and 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:29.520 that felt like a pretty big thing to just drop 0:00:29.520 --> 0:00:33.479 into an episode without explaining it more, especially since we 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:36.400 have only really mentioned King Philip's War in passing on 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:38.760 the show. It came up as part of the context 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:42.479 and our episodes on Bacon's Rebellion also way back in 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:46.720 It was part of the context for our our show 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:49.199 on the Sham Battle and the Cohico Massacre, which we're 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:51.760 gonna have as a Saturday Classics soon. For folks who 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:55.440 haven't heard that King Phillip's War was an armed conflict 0:00:55.560 --> 0:01:00.080 primarily between English colonists and indigenous nations and what's on 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:03.000 New England, although there were also some indigenous peoples who 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:06.600 were allied with the colonists, and it took place primarily 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:10.600 between sixteen seventy five and sixteen seventy six. In terms 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:14.319 of per capita deaths. That's been described as the deadliest 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:17.880 war in US history, and it had a massive ongoing 0:01:17.959 --> 0:01:22.440 collection of ramifications for indigenous people and for the colonists 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:26.000 in and around New England. Sometimes it's called the First 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:29.880 Indian War, but that name and King Phillip's War are 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:33.720 both misnomers, and we will be talking about that as 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:36.960 we go along. So to set up some context, Plymouth 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:40.080 Colony was the first permanent British settlement in New England, 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:44.000 established after about one people arrived aboard the Mayflower in 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:47.760 sixteen twenty. About forty of the people aboard the Mayflower 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:51.120 were Puritans. These were members of a religious reform movement 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:53.920 that believed that the Church of England was corrupt and 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:58.640 retained too many Catholic influences after the Protestant Reformation. Other 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:02.280 English colonies followed to that one. This included the Massachusetts 0:02:02.280 --> 0:02:06.000 Bay Colony, established in sixteen twenty nine and named after 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:10.480 the indigenous Massachusetts Nation living in the area. Roger Williams 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:13.960 founded Rhode Island Colony in sixteen thirty six after being 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:19.040 banished from Massachusetts. The Connecticut Colony was established the same 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:22.080 year with its name coming from an Algonquin word meaning 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:26.440 beside the long title river. Throughout this whole time, between 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:30.520 sixteen thirty and sixteen forty, thousands more people migrated to 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:34.079 North America from Britain, many of them Puritans who believed 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:39.399 that this so called New World was theirs by divine decree. 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:43.200 The region where English colonists were establishing settlements was home 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:47.320 to numerous indigenous tribes and nations, many of them Algonquin 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:53.040 speaking people's. The Wampanag nation alone included sixty nine different tribes, 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:57.639 and these societies were highly interconnected through economics and through kinship, 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:01.680 including an extensive trading network that spans throughout New England. 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:05.840 The colonists became part of and influenced this network as 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:10.359 they brought different trade goods, including firearms, to this whole system. 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:14.799 English colonization of North America required colonists to get land, 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:17.079 or at least the rights to use the land, from 0:03:17.080 --> 0:03:21.120 the local indigenous people, and especially in the earlier decades 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:24.560 of colonization, a lot of these land deeds read a 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:28.840 lot more like treaties than straightforward purchase agreements. In a 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:31.400 lot of cases, the colonist was given the right to 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:34.679 use the land, but the deed also included some kind 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:38.160 of provisions for an Indigenous family or community to keep 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:41.680 living on or using that land in some way. Deeds 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:45.000 also often included some kind of lifetime payment on the 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:47.960 part of the colonists, something along the lines of a 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.960 bushel of corn. This was similar to what Indigenous families 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:55.240 were expected to contribute to their own communities. So from 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:58.360 the Indigenous point of view, English colonists were becoming part 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:01.400 of their interconnected community that was already made up of 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:05.120 lots of different nations and people's The colonists were gaining 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:08.520 access to the land but also contributing to the community 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:11.600 with the goods that the land produced. But from the 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:13.960 English point of view, it was more like they were 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:17.400 buying the land outright and continuing to have some kind 0:04:17.400 --> 0:04:20.360 of payment long term with this bushel of corn or 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:24.640 something similar every year. And this disparity on how each 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:28.559 side understood this was complicated by the fact that very 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:31.839 few people in the colonies were fluent in both English 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:36.520 and an Algonquin language, and most cases the negotiating parties 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:40.400 might speak some of what another's language, but not fluently. 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:43.839 This gives me a brief flashback to Thomas Harriet and 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:47.919 his visit to the America's under Sir Walter Raleigh, and 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:50.159 how he put some of these ideas in motion that 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:54.600 led to all of these problems going forward. On top 0:04:54.640 --> 0:04:59.080 of having fundamentally different ways of understanding these transactions, English 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:02.440 colonists all so wanted access to more and more land 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:05.640 as their population grew, and as the first generation of 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:10.039 English children born in North America reached adulthood, it was 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:14.120 expected that firstborn sons would inherent land from their fathers. 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:17.279 These firstborn sons thought of this inheritance as their birthright 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:20.880 and something that was exclusively There's not something that they 0:05:20.920 --> 0:05:25.160 shared with their indigenous neighbors. So, because of this need 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:28.400 to get more and more land, negotiations for the land 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:31.480 and the deeds that came out of those negotiations became 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:35.279 increasingly exploitive and absolute in terms of the rights that 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:38.320 the English people were getting. More and more of the 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:42.560 deeds were signed under duress. This included things like the 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:45.680 English taking someone captive and refusing to release them until 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:48.159 they had signed their land over. A lot of these 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:52.480 deeds included no more provisions about the indigenous people's continued 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:55.120 use of the land, and then that led to disputes 0:05:55.160 --> 0:05:59.880 within indigenous communities as people, especially women, realized that the 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:02.719 land that they had been cultivating or living on had 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:05.720 been sold without their involvement and with no provision made 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:08.839 for them. It also wasn't just people who were encroaching 0:06:08.920 --> 0:06:13.719 onto indigenous land. As this situation progressed, colonists introduced a 0:06:13.760 --> 0:06:17.960 lot of domesticated livestock to North America, including cattle and pigs. 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:21.920 Colonists fenced their own crops and then allowed their livestock 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:25.320 to roam and graze freely. Much of the plant life 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:27.960 and grazing land back in Britain was well adapted to 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:31.479 being eaten and stomped on by grazing livestock and then 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:35.279 having the seeds of those plants propagated through dung. The 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:38.200 plants in North America were not adapted in the same 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:42.120 way as the colonists. Animals encroached onto indigenous land, they 0:06:42.120 --> 0:06:45.240 tore up that land, and they were incredibly destructive to 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:51.120 cultivated crops. This wasn't restricted to just you know, planted 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:54.440 crops that someone was cultivating, which the animals did trample 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:58.640 and eat. A lot of the colonists. Domestic animals also 0:06:58.720 --> 0:07:02.159 destroyed things like claim and beds and woodland berry bushes 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:06.000 that people gathered from, and when Indigenous people complained about 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:09.160 this destruction of their crops and their other food sources, 0:07:09.240 --> 0:07:11.120 for the most part, the colonists just told them to 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:15.560 build fences rather than doing anything to contain their own animals. 0:07:16.000 --> 0:07:19.720 Among the Wampanog and other Algonquin speaking people's women were 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:22.960 generally the people who cultivated and managed this crop land, 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:26.600 producing food for their own families and their whole communities 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:30.200 and for trade with the colonists and other indigenous nations. 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:33.920 And colonial records are full of indigenous women's efforts to 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:37.720 resolve this and to protect and fairly distribute what remained 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:41.560 of their communities food stores. Whether something was about a 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:46.320 land deed or animal encroachment, or some other dispute, the 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:51.119 English colonists expected Indigenous people to follow English colonial law 0:07:51.280 --> 0:07:56.400 and to seek restitution through colonial courts. One justification for 0:07:56.440 --> 0:07:58.800 this on the part of the colonists was their belief 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:02.080 that the Indigenous people were primitive and Huthens who needed 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:04.400 to be converted to Christianity and taught the ways of 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:08.840 English society. Another justification was that in a lot of cases, 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:12.080 an indigenous leader or someone else speaking for a tribe 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:15.280 had made some kind of allegiance to the colony, which 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:18.600 the colony regarded as a commitment to follow colonial law. 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:21.720 But in general, these courts were skewed in favor of 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:25.400 the colonists, so the colonists were forcing Indigenous people to 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:29.080 resolve disputes in a legal system that was stacked against them. 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:33.640 Court decisions could be particularly egregious, like enforcing the terms 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:37.080 of a land deed only if an indigenous family surrendered 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:39.960 all its weapons, when those weapons were needed for both 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:43.599 hunting and defense and were necessary to the family survival. 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:46.959 All of this was also happening in the context of 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:50.520 an indigenous population that had been reduced dramatically due to 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:56.400 introduced diseases, especially smallpox. A smallpox epidemic in sixteen thirty 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:59.839 three and sixteen thirty four killed an estimated seventy per 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:03.680 scent of the indigenous population of the Northeast. King Philip's 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:06.120 War wasn't the first time that all of this fed 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:08.880 into a violent conflict, which is why it's not really 0:09:08.920 --> 0:09:12.640 accurate to call it quote the First Indian War, as 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:16.560 it is sometimes known. You'll read that in various uh places. 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:19.680 Although there had been violent conflicts on a smaller scale 0:09:19.720 --> 0:09:22.000 going back to the beginning of a European presence in 0:09:22.000 --> 0:09:25.040 what is now New England, the first sustained conflict in 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:28.440 these English colonies was the Peaquot War, fought mainly in 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:31.439 what is now Connecticut in sixteen thirty six and sixteen 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:34.320 thirty seven. In addition to all these things that we've 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:38.400 just discussed, another influence in the Peaquot War was trading 0:09:38.480 --> 0:09:42.679 relationships with the Dutch and the Peaquat nations existing relationships 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:46.680 with its indigenous neighbors. The Peaquat nation had extended its 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:50.880 influence throughout the region through military conquest and inner marriage 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:53.880 and diplomacy, and it had become the most powerful indigenous 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:56.640 nation in the area. At the end of the war, 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:59.720 though most of the Peaquat fighting force had been killed, 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:03.440 the surviving women and children were mostly captured and enslaved 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:05.920 and sent to two tribes that had sided with the 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:10.520 English in this conflict. After the Peaqua War, relationships between 0:10:10.559 --> 0:10:14.240 the indigenous people and the colonists were relatively free from 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:17.120 violence for the next few decades. We're gonna get to 0:10:17.160 --> 0:10:26.240 how that changed after we have a quick sponsor break. 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:31.160 The King Philip of King Philip's War was Medicom also 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:34.520 known as Medicomet or Po Medicom. These kinds of name 0:10:34.600 --> 0:10:37.800 changes were really common among the Wampanag. He was the 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:41.079 stm or leader of the poconoc At Wampanag, and the 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:45.240 name King Philip came from the English colonists. They basically 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:48.560 gave him a name after Philip of Macedon. Medicom's father 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:52.319 was osa Mequin, also known as the massasoit Stum or 0:10:52.400 --> 0:10:55.839 Great Statum. You'll often see him called massasoit as though 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:58.080 that was his name, but that is really a title. 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:01.440 He was the inter tribal leader of the Wampanog nation. 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:04.680 When the Mayflower arrived in sixteen twenty, he signed a 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:09.520 treaty with the Colonists and maintained relatively peaceful relations with them. 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:12.440 He was present at the meal that has become commemorated 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:16.840 as the First Thanksgiving that colonists basically survived with the 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:19.319 help of osam Equin and the rest of the Wampanog. 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:22.800 Osam Aguin died in sixteen sixty one, and his son, 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:28.840 Wemsuda became stageum. English colonists called Wemsuda Alexander, after Alexander 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:32.240 the Great, but he died suddenly in sixteen sixty two. 0:11:32.800 --> 0:11:35.920 The English had arrested him under suspicion that he was 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:40.200 planning some kind of uprising with the Narraganset people, something 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:43.319 there was not actually any evidence for, and he had 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:47.240 suddenly become very ill while he was imprisoned. A lot 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:51.840 was suspicious about this. English authorities also maintained that Wamsuda 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:54.520 had been ordered to appear in court over this suspicion, 0:11:54.920 --> 0:11:57.240 but that he hadn't shown up and authorities had to 0:11:57.280 --> 0:11:59.920 go bring him in, but there is absolutely no core 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:04.720 documentation to back that up. Many of the Wampanag, including Medicom, 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:08.800 believed that Wemstuda had been poisoned, and then Medicom was 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:12.319 also summoned before the court, also on suspicion of plotting 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:17.120 against the English. And this case, what the colony interpreted 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:20.400 as signs of an uprising was probably just a traditional 0:12:20.480 --> 0:12:24.079 spring festival. Combined with everything that we talked about before 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:27.560 the break, this really eroded the last of the goodwill 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:31.000 that osam Equin had maintained with the colony. Although all 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:33.720 the people that we have just mentioned were men. Women 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:36.560 were also a critical part of the Wampanag leadership and 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:41.400 in diplomatic relationships with the colony. In particular, Medicalm's sister 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:45.040 in law, Wamu, was heavily involved in the events leading 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:48.200 up to and during King Philip's war. She was a 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:50.920 song squaw or a squaw statum, which was a role 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:54.880 English colonists often described as queen. It was a role 0:12:54.960 --> 0:12:57.520 that was on equal footing with a shm and held 0:12:57.559 --> 0:12:59.760 by a woman. But this wasn't a position that she 0:12:59.840 --> 0:13:04.200 had because of her marriage to Wamsuda. It predated that marriage, 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:08.520 and it continued after his death in sixto. Yeah, the 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:12.200 the colonists referred to the statims and the squaw statims 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:15.960 as like kings and queens, but the leadership structure was 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:19.839 really a lot more about leading and about diplomacy than 0:13:19.880 --> 0:13:24.080 it was about being a ruler with like authoritative ordering 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:27.880 right over people. They were trying to fit it into 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:32.320 the European model of monarchy, which it was not. Yeah. 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:34.760 So all the factors that we talked about before the 0:13:34.800 --> 0:13:37.560 break led to the start of King Philip's War, but 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:40.920 it's immediate precursor was the death of a man known 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:45.240 as John Sassamon. Sassamon was an Indigenous man whose parents 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:47.640 had died in an epidemic, and he was raised in 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:51.559 a praying town. These were communities that were established by 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:55.640 Puritans for the purpose of converting Indigenous people to Christianity 0:13:55.679 --> 0:13:58.880 and encouraging them to live under English law and following 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:02.240 English customs. So the Indigenous people that were living in 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:05.360 these praying towns were people who converted to Christianity and 0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:10.920 we're adopting like an English colonial lifestyle. Sassamon also attended 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:14.120 Harvard for a time before the Indian College there was 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:18.000 formerly established. Sasamon had worked as an interpreter for the 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:22.440 English before becoming one of Medicom's secretaries, and his motivations 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:24.920 and actions in all of this really are not clear. 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:27.920 There is some suggestion that the English sent him to 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:31.800 spy on Medicom, and in late sixteen seventy four he 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:36.200 reportedly told authorities in Plymouth that Medicom was planning and uprising. 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:40.080 The colonial government doesn't seem to have taken this warning seriously, 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:44.320 and then sometime in early sixteen seventy five, Sassamon's friends 0:14:44.320 --> 0:14:48.000 reported that he was missing After a search, his body 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:51.280 was found under the ice an assawamps at Pond in 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:56.120 what's now southeastern Massachusetts. Forensics was really not an established 0:14:56.160 --> 0:14:59.400 discipline at this point, but apart from that, there wasn't 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:01.960 much of an ex himanation of Sassamon's body at all. 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:05.400 A witness came forward and said that he had seen 0:15:05.520 --> 0:15:09.480 three of Medicom's counselors murder Sasamon and throw his body 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:13.080 into the lake. Authorities had concluded that it had been 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:16.400 because Medicom really was planning an uprising, and that he'd 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:20.760 ordered Sassamon to be killed for betraying him to the English. However, 0:15:20.840 --> 0:15:23.720 there really was not any evidence for any of this, 0:15:24.320 --> 0:15:27.760 and there are also a couple of complicating factors. The 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:30.920 witness that testified to all of this also owed a 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:33.960 gambling debt to one of the counselors that he implicated 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:36.880 in the crime, and a sawaps that Pond was at 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:40.000 the heart of a land dispute involving many of these 0:15:40.040 --> 0:15:44.240 same people. So it's possible that he was killed and 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:47.400 it like was something that was ordered because of this 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:50.360 whole warning that there was an uprising being planned. It's 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:53.400 also possible that he was killed and it was something 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:58.000 related to this land dispute, or he might have just drowned, 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:02.360 like it's totally unclear. Colonial authorities brought the three counselors 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:05.880 involved to trial to create the appearance of fairness. They 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:10.239 assembled a jury that included six indigenous men and twelve colonists, 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:14.160 but the trial itself was still pretty shoddy. Uh. This 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:17.840 one witnesses testimony was really the only thing connecting Medicom's 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:21.240 counselors to Sassamon's death, which may or may not have 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:23.400 even been a murder, as Tracy said, could have been 0:16:23.400 --> 0:16:27.160 an accident. The evidence presented at court included a report 0:16:27.200 --> 0:16:30.920 that when Sassimon's body was brought to Medicom's counselor Tobias, 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:34.200 that the corps started bleeding, and that that was evidence 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:38.240 of Tobias's guilt. The three counselors were found guilty and 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:41.640 sentenced to be hanged on June eighth, sixteen seventy five. 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:45.040 Two of them were executed on that day. The third 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:48.280 was given a reprieve after the rope broke, and then 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:50.200 he said that he had seen the other two men 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:53.640 commit this crime but hadn't participated in it or intervened 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:56.840 by the end of June, though he had also been 0:16:56.920 --> 0:17:00.640 executed by firing squad. Regardless of what their meta coom 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:03.840 really had been planning, some kind of action against the colonists. 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:08.320 Violence began shortly after these hangings. In early June, several 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:13.960 English farms were burned, apparently in retaliation. Then on June 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:17.640 a colonist in Swansea fatally shot a Wapanog man while 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:21.320 defending his farm from a wapanog graid. The next day, 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:25.320 in retaliation for that death, a Wapanog party killed seven 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:29.000 colonists in Swansea, which is generally marked as the start 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:32.679 of King Philip's War, So if you go read articles 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:35.640 about this, you'll often see it described as this series 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:38.240 of events that started with the death of John Sassmont, 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:41.520 with the trial and the execution leading to this escalating 0:17:41.560 --> 0:17:43.720 back and forth that tipped into an all out war. 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:46.720 But at the same time, a few weeks before the 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:49.879 trial even happened, which was a month before these seven 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:53.280 colonists were killed in Swansea, we Tamu had been talking 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:56.800 to colonial authorities about her fears that the Wampanag We're 0:17:56.800 --> 0:18:00.400 going to face persecution by the English, so tense had 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:04.199 clearly been increasing before this trial even began. There was 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:08.120 heavy fighting in what is now Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:11.320 and Maine. Over the next six months. Many of the 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:15.359 area's indigenous nations formed an alliance with the wampanag The 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:18.359 Mohegans allied with the colonists, as did many of the 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:21.800 indigenous people who had converted to Christianity and we're living 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:26.640 in praying towns. Some including the Narragansett, tried to stay neutral. 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:30.919 At first. Colonial forces fared really poorly in the fighting. 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:33.680 A lot of them were new recruits to the militia. 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:35.760 They really did not have a lot of training, and 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:38.399 the training that they did have was really geared towards 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:41.560 the style of fighting that was used in Europe. Meanwhile, 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:44.480 the indigenous forces tactics were more like what we might 0:18:44.520 --> 0:18:47.680 describe as guerrilla warfare today. They were a very highly 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:51.720 mobile fighting force with marksman and snipers and just superior 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:55.639 knowledge of the terrain. As this was happening, English authorities 0:18:55.720 --> 0:19:00.919 viewed Indigenous people in general with increasing suspicion. This included 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:03.719 people who had converted to Christianity and we're living in 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:07.880 praying towns. One example was James Printer, who was Nipmuck 0:19:08.080 --> 0:19:11.160 but had been raised in an English household and educated 0:19:11.200 --> 0:19:15.200 at Harvard Indian College. In August of sixteen seventy five, 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:18.160 he was captured and accused of participating in a raid 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:22.080 when he had actually been in church at that time. Similarly, 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:25.840 between thirty and forty Indigenous people were arrested and imprisoned 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:28.879 in Cambridge for burning down a haystack that belonged to 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:33.200 a man named Amos Richardson, even though Richardson himself insisted 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:36.600 that none of them were the culprits. On September eighteenth, 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:40.119 an indigenous force ambushed an English convoy that was trying 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:42.800 to remove what was left of the harvest from the 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:46.399 town of Deerfield. Deerfield had been abandoned. In the wake 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:49.400 of the fighting, at least sixty people from the convoy 0:19:49.440 --> 0:19:51.560 were killed in what came to be known as the 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:54.879 Battle of Bloody Brook or the bloody Brook Massacre. In 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:58.520 October of sixteen seventy five, the Narragansett signed a treaty 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:02.439 of neutrality with the ma Instachusetts Bay Colony. Once they 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:06.280 had signed, colonial authorities demanded that they surrender. Wampanag and 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:10.720 other refugees who were being sheltered in Narragansett territory. The 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:14.280 Narragansett refused this. They considered the refugees to be their 0:20:14.400 --> 0:20:17.560 kin and under their protection. So the English took this 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:20.520 as a sign of duplicity on the Narragansetts part and 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:23.840 a suggestion that they might abandon this treaty and joined 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:28.040 with Medicom. There had also overtime been individual Arrogancett people 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:31.280 who had participated in raids and things like that. So 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:34.760 the colonies mustered a militia of about a thousand people, 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:37.560 along with about a hundred and fifty indigenous allies, and 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:41.800 they marched to Narragancet Territory, burning the indigenous settlements that 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:45.440 they passed along the way. On December nineteenth, fighting began 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:48.680 in a swamp in what is now West Kingston, Rhode Island. 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:51.879 This became known as the Great Swamp Fight or the 0:20:51.920 --> 0:20:55.640 Great Swamp Massacre, with the violence stretching into December twentieth. 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:58.600 At first, the Narragansett were able to drive the English 0:20:58.680 --> 0:21:02.560 force back, but at the English regrouped and reinforcements arrived. 0:21:02.840 --> 0:21:05.680 They took the main Narragance at fort, burning it down 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:10.239 with people, mostly elders, women, and children still inside. At 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:13.720 least seventy people were killed among the colonial force. With 0:21:13.840 --> 0:21:17.119 the indigenous death tool much harder to estimate, it was 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:19.480 at least a hundred and fifty people, but it may 0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:22.440 have been hundreds more. This was really a turning point 0:21:22.440 --> 0:21:24.440 in the war, so we're going to take a quick 0:21:24.480 --> 0:21:34.360 sponsor break before we move on. After the Great Swamp Massacre, 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:38.439 the Narragansett Nation unsurprisingly went to war against the colonies. 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:43.440 Narragansett sat Conanchet formed a coalition with other indigenous tribes 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:46.280 and nations, which mustered a fighting force of about two 0:21:46.320 --> 0:21:49.600 thousand and what's now Rhode Island. He then moved into 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:53.840 central Massachusetts and organized another force of about fift hundred people. 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:57.879 As Canancha was forming this coalition, the weather was hampering 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:01.680 the colonists efforts in the war. Late December of sixteen 0:22:01.720 --> 0:22:05.679 seventy five was very snowy, with militia commanders reporting depths 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:08.960 between two and three feet of snow. It wasn't at 0:22:08.960 --> 0:22:12.240 all conducive to the militia's movements, especially since they didn't 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:15.679 know exactly where the indigenous forces were at any point. 0:22:16.520 --> 0:22:19.640 The indigenous forces were affected as well, but they continued 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:22.280 to be a lot more mobile than the colonial forces were, 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:24.960 thanks to having more experience dealing with this kind of 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:27.480 weather and being more familiar with a lot of the 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:31.159 territory outside the colonial towns. It was also just a 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:35.280 lot easier for a small like raiding party in snow 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:38.960 shoes to come in and hit a place and leave 0:22:39.040 --> 0:22:42.440 than it was for like a militia unit to march somewhere. 0:22:44.000 --> 0:22:46.760 In the early months of sixteen seventy six, these two 0:22:46.800 --> 0:22:51.240 indigenous fronts moved northward and eastwards through southern New England. 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:55.440 They converged in Providence, Rhode Island, which the Indigenous force 0:22:55.600 --> 0:22:59.760 burned down in March of sixteen seventy six. By the spring, 0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:03.160 in the face of these two advancing armies, the English 0:23:03.160 --> 0:23:06.879 had abandoned at least eleven towns in Massachusetts, and the 0:23:06.880 --> 0:23:10.480 Indigenous force had destroyed most of the colonial towns in 0:23:10.560 --> 0:23:13.600 Rhode Island on the west side of Narragance at Bay. 0:23:13.640 --> 0:23:15.880 But as the weather got warmer in the spring, there 0:23:15.920 --> 0:23:19.639 was another shift. New England's Indigenous community had been on 0:23:19.680 --> 0:23:22.199 the move through the winter. Whether it was the fighting 0:23:22.200 --> 0:23:25.719 force advancing through the colony, or women, children, and elders 0:23:25.760 --> 0:23:27.320 who were trying to stay out of the way of 0:23:27.320 --> 0:23:31.120 the war. Fewer crops had been planted because people couldn't 0:23:31.160 --> 0:23:33.680 stay in one place to tend them, and what did 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:37.920 get planted was often destroyed by the colonial militia. For example, 0:23:37.920 --> 0:23:41.280 in May of sixteen seventy six, an English force attacked 0:23:41.280 --> 0:23:44.639 a Nipmuck camp that had been established specifically for fishing 0:23:44.680 --> 0:23:48.760 and planting. The colonial militia massacred many of the people 0:23:48.760 --> 0:23:52.000 who were there, who were mostly again women, children, and elders. 0:23:52.320 --> 0:23:55.560 This was about two hundred people. Then an indigenous force 0:23:55.600 --> 0:23:58.800 that was nearby regrouped and killed about forty of the militia. 0:23:59.160 --> 0:24:03.080 This continued to June, with the colonial militia arranging raids 0:24:03.119 --> 0:24:06.119 to destroy the indigenous people's crops and to force them 0:24:06.160 --> 0:24:10.600