On May 18, Captain William Turner with 150 soldiers from Hatfield, Hadley, and Northampton attacked a large Native fishing camp on the Connecticut River. Although Turner and his men were ambushed during their retreat and more than forty Englishmen, including Turner, were killed, they had succeeded in killing hundreds of Indians. On June 9, the Nipmuck leader sagamore sam lost his wife in another English assault. The Nipmucks decided they had to make peace with the English.
Meanwhile, Philip, accompanied by Quinnapin and Weetamoo, left Wachusett Mountain and headed south into familiar territory. With his brother-in-law Tuspaquin, the Black sachem of Nemasket, leading the way, Philip’s people attacked towns throughout Plymouth and Rhode Island.
From his temporary home on Aquidneck Island, Benjamin Church could see the smoke rising from locations up and down Narragansett Bay. Communication was difficult in these dangerous times, and Church’s family were all anxious for any word about their loved ones and friends. On May 12, his wife, Alice, gave birth to a son named Constant in honor of her father.
A few days later, Church took up a knife and stick and began to whittle. He’d been out of the war for more than three months, and he wasn’t sure what he should do now that his son had been born. Perhaps he should take up carpentry again. But as he whittled the stick, his hand slipped, and he badly cut two of his fingers. Church smiled. If he was going to injure himself, he might as well do it in battle.
It was time he returned to the war.
SIXTEEN
The Better Side of the Hedge
ON TUESDAY, JUNE 6, Benjamin Church attended a meeting of the General Court in Plymouth. More than three months had passed since the Council of War had refused his request to lead a large group of Native Americans against Philip. Over that brief period of time, English attitudes toward the Praying Indians had changed just as the main fighting had shifted back to Plymouth Colony. Church sensed that his timing was just right.
As it so happened, the Council of War had decided to do almost exactly what Church suggested back in February. They planned to send out in a few weeks’ time a force of three hundred soldiers, a third of them Indians, under the command of Major Bradford. Connecticut and the Bay Colony had also promised to provide companies that included significant numbers of Native scouts.
This was all good news, of course, but Church had no intention of serving under Bradford. Bradford was a trustworthy and loyal officer, but Church had his own ideas about how to fight the war. He wanted to find an army of his own.
◆◆◆ Two days later, Church was in a canoe with two Praying Indians headed back to Aquidneck Island. They were approaching the rocky shore of sakonnet at the southeastern corner of Narragansett Bay. This was the home of Awashonks, the female sachem whom Church had known before the war. He was certain that if given the chance, Awashonks would have fought alongside the English. Instead, she’d taken her people across the bay to the Narragansetts. After the Great swamp Fight, the sakonnets had been forced north along with the Narragansetts and eventually made their way to Wachusett Mountain.
As Church and his two Indian guides approached the jagged rocks and pebble beach of sakonnet, he saw some of the sachem’s Indians fishing along the shore. The sakonnets, Church realized, had returned home. Perhaps he could convince them to abandon Philip and serve under him.
After pulling the canoe up on shore, Church discovered that one of the Indians was an old friend named Honest George. George, who spoke English well, said that Church’s suspicions were correct; Awashonks “had left Philip and did not intend to return to him any more.” Church asked George to deliver a message to his sachem: in two days he would meet her and just two others at a well-known rock near the western shore of sakonnet.
Church went to Newport and purchased a bottle of rum and a roll of tobacco to assist with his negotiations with Awashonks. On the morning of the next day, he and the two Cape Indians paddled to sakonnet. As Church had hoped, he could see some Indians waiting on the bank. One of them was Honest George, and as soon as Church landed, Awashonks came down to the shore with her son Peter and her principal warrior, Nompash. The sachem shook Church’s hand and gestured for him to follow her inland to a large rock at the edge of a meadow.
Almost as soon as the four of them gathered around the rock, “a great body” of Indians, all of them armed and with their faces covered in war paint, rose up out of the grass. After a brief pause, Church said that George had told him that Awashonks might be willing to consider peace. she agreed that such was indeed the case. “It is customary,” Church replied, “when people meet to treat of peace to lay aside their arms and not to appear in such hostile form as your people do.” Only after the warriors had placed their muskets in a large pile did Church begin the negotiations.
◆ Treaty Rock, circa 1900, where Sakonnet sachem Awashonks agreed to join forces with Benjamin Church.
But first they had to share the rum. After drinking to the sachem’s health, Church offered the rum to Awashonks. Church could tell by the way she had watched him drink that she suspected the liquor had been poisoned, but eventually she, too, tasted some of the rum, and Church began to talk.
The first thing the sachem wanted to know was why he had not returned a year ago, as promised, with a message from the governor. Church explained that the sudden outbreak of the war had made that impossible, and in fact, he had tried to contact her when he and a small group of men had come to sakonnet only to become trapped in the Pease Field Fight. At the mention of this battle, the warriors rose up from the grass in a great “hubbub,” with one of them shaking his wooden club angrily at Church.
Honest George explained that the warrior had lost his brother at the Pease Field Fight and “therefore he thirsts for your blood.” It was then that Nompash, Awashonks’s chief warrior, stood up and commanded his men to be silent and “talk no more about old things.” Church turned to Awashonks and said that he was sure the Plymouth authorities would spare their lives and allow them to remain at sakonnet if they abandoned Philip. He mentioned the Pequots, a tribe that had once fought against the English but was now a trusted ally. He concluded by saying that on a personal level he sincerely looked forward to reclaiming “the former friendship” they had once enjoyed.
This was enough for Nompash. The warrior once again stood, and after stating the great respect he had for Church, bowed and proclaimed, “sir, if you’ll please to accept of me and my men, and will head us, we’ll fight for you, and will help you to Philip’s head before Indian corn be ripe.”
Church had found his warriors. But now he had to secure the permission of Plymouth Colony.
◆◆◆ Once the Nipmucks decided they had to make peace with the English too, Philip was forced to flee from Wachusett Mountain. since the Mohawks were now his enemy, he could not head to the west or the north, and the Mohegans were waiting for him in Connecticut to the south. He could only return to Plymouth Colony, where there was still plenty of corn hidden in underground storage pits.
Coming south with Philip were the sachems Quinnapin and Weetamoo, and by June, approximately a thousand Pokanokets, Narragansetts, and even some Indians from as far away as the Connecticut River valley had entered Plymouth Colony from the north. On June 16, they attacked swansea and burned all but four garrisons to the ground. On June 26, the Indians turned their attention to Wannamoisett, the portion of swansea first settled by the Brown and Willett families in the 1650s. By this time, Alexander’s and Philip’s old friend Thomas Willett had been dead almost two years. Willett’s twenty-two-year-old son, Hezekiah, was living in a house that had a watchtower. Confident that no hostile Indians were nearby, Hezekiah ventured out with his black servant only to be shot and killed. The Indians cut off his head and, taking the servant captive, returned to their camp in triumph.
Hezekiah had been killed by Indians who were unaware of the Willetts’ long-standing relationship with Philip and his brother. Before his death, Massasoit had instructed both his sons to be kind to
John Brown and his family, and the sight of Hezekiah’s severed head appears to have deeply saddened Philip. The black servant later told how “the Mount Hope Indians that knew Mr. Willett were sorry for his death, mourned, combed his head and hung peag [wampum] in his hair.”
Philip had returned both to the land and to the people he had known all his life. Philip was at war with Plymouth, but from the beginning he had very mixed feelings about his relationship with the colony. In the weeks ahead, the war that ultimately bore his name drew him closer and closer to home.
◆◆◆ Church was having problems of his own. soon after his meeting with Awashonks, he wrote a letter about the negotiations and gave it to the sachem’s son Peter, who left for Plymouth to speak with the authorities. But on June 27, when Bradford’s army arrived at Pocasset, Church had not yet received any word from Peter. Church told Bradford of the sakonnets’ willingness to join him in the fight against Philip, but Bradford would have none of it. He needed to have the official approval of Governor Winslow before he allowed Church to command a company of sakonnets. Until he had that, Awashonks and her people had to go to sandwich at the base of Cape Cod, where they would be beyond Philip’s reach, and await the governor’s decision.
Even though he was not happy with the major’s orders, Church urged the sakonnets to obey. He would go to Plymouth and find out what had happened to Peter. In a week, he promised, he would meet them in sandwich with the approval from Governor Winslow. And so, with a Praying Indian leading them with a white flag of truce, the sakonnets set out for sandwich.
Before Church was able to go to Plymouth, he was forced to accompany Bradford’s army on an unsuccessful hunt for Philip on Mount Hope. Not until Friday, July 7—several days past the deadline he had promised the sakonnets—did Church finally reach Plymouth.
To his immense relief, he learned that Governor Winslow had accepted the agreement Church had reached with the sakonnets. It had taken a month to arrange, but it looked as if Church would at last have his own company of Indians.
◆ Engraving of Mount Hope as seen from the south.
He decided he needed only half a dozen or so Englishmen to round out his force, and in just a few hours he had assembled a group that included thirty-two-year-old Jabez Howland, son of Mayflower passenger John Howland, and Church’s brother-in-law, twenty-eight-year-old Nathaniel southworth. They mounted their horses and, after riding all that night, arrived in sandwich just a few hours before daylight.
Unfortunately, the sakonnets had departed several days before for parts unknown. Church feared that Awashonks had taken offense at yet another broken English promise; adding to his worries was the presence of hostile Indians in the region under the leadership of Totoson, the destroyer of Dartmouth and Clark’s garrison in Plymouth. After a few hours’ sleep, Church and his men set out to catch up with Awashonks and her people.
He thought it likely that they had headed back for home and were following the western shore of Buzzards Bay toward sakonnet. After riding more than twenty-six miles, Church and his men came upon a panoramic view of a bay that today is the outer portion of New Bedford Harbor. Ahead, they “saw a vast company of Indians, of all ages and sexes, some on horseback running races, some at football, some catching eels and flatfish in the water, some clamming, etc.” Church soon learned that these were indeed the sakonnets and that Awashonks and her warriors were extremely pleased to see him once again.
They found the sakonnet sachem at an open-sided shelter facing the bay. As Church and his men watched the red sun sink over the hills upon which the city of New Bedford would one day be built, the sakonnets served them a supper that included “a curious young bass in one dish, eels and flatfish in a second, and shellfish in a third.” By the time they’d finished eating, a large bonfire was lit, “all the Indians, great and small, gather[ing] in a ring round it.”
Many of the sakonnets had participated in the war dance witnessed by Mary Rowlandson prior to the sudbury Fight. That night, they performed a similar ritual. Now, instead of preparing to fight against the English, they were preparing to fight for the people who once were considered their enemies. After each warrior had danced around the fire with a spear in one hand and a wooden club in the other and vowed to fight against the enemies of the English, Nompash stepped forward and announced to Church that “they were making soldiers for him.”
In the weeks ahead, Church’s sakonnet warriors would take him to places that few Englishmen had been before. With the sakonnets’ help, Church’s company would enter the forbidden swamps of the New England wilderness—the same places where, fifty-five years before, Massasoit had gathered his people after the arrival of the Mayflower.
We will never know what Massasoit’s powwows had told him about the future, but we do know that his son Philip was encouraged by his own powwows’ prophesy that he would never die at the hands of an Englishman. However, when Philip learned that the sakonnets had joined the English, it was said to have “broke[n] Philip’s heart.” From that day forward, he was fighting not just the English—he was fighting his own people.
◆◆◆ Church and his sakonnet recruits reached Plymouth the next day. He now attracted several new English volunteers, including Jabez Howland’s brother Isaac, Caleb Cook, Jonathan Delano, and Jonathan Barnes. In their late twenties and early thirties, many of these men were, like Church, either the sons or grandsons of the original Pilgrims. With the help of the sakonnets, this group of Mayflower descendants was about to develop a new way to fight a war.
On the evening of July 11, Church’s company of approximately two dozen men, more than half of them Indians, left Plymouth for Middleborough, where a mixed group of Pokanokets and Narragansetts had recently been sighted. Church realized he still had much to learn when it came to the methods of Indian warfare. As they made their way along the path to Middleborough, he asked the sakonnets “[h]ow they got such advantage of the English in their marches through the woods.” They replied that it was essential to keep the men widely separated or, as Church described, “thin and scattered.” According to the sakonnets, the English “always kept in a heap together”; as a result, it was as “easy to hit [a company of English soldiers] as to hit a house.” Church soon discovered that spreading out his men had the added benefit of making his tiny army seem much larger than it actually was.
The sakonnets also insisted that silence was essential when pursuing the enemy. The English constantly talked to one another, and it always alerted the Indians to their presence. Creaking leather shoes and even the swishing sound made by a pair of thick pants could be heard by the Indians. If some form of communication was required, they should use wildlife sounds, from birdcalls to the howling of a wolf.
They also had to learn how to track the enemy. The morning was the best time, since it was possible to trace a man’s steps in the dew. But perhaps the most important lesson Church learned from the sakonnets was never to leave a swamp the same way he had entered it. To do otherwise was to walk into an ambush.
◆◆◆ After a few hours’ sleep in Middleborough, Church and his men set out after the enemy. soon one of his Indian scouts reported that he’d found an Indian camp. Based on the sakonnets’ description of, in Church’s words, “their fires and postures,” he ordered his men to surround the camp. On his cue, they rushed at the enemy, “surprising them from every side so unexpectedly that they were all taken, not so much as one escaped.”
One of the captured Indians, named Jeffrey, told Church there were a large number of Indians near Monponsett Pond, where Philip’s brother Alexander had been seized back in 1662. Church decided to make Jeffrey a part of their company, promising “that if he continued to be faithful to him, he should not be sold out of the country [as a slave] but should become his waiting man.” As it turned out, Jeffrey remained a part of the Church household for the rest of the Indian’s life.
◆ Nineteenth-century engraving of Captain Benjamin Church and his company. Although once again the depictio
n of the soldiers’ clothing and facial hair is dubious, this image gives a good sense of the tactics Church learned about Indian warfare.
After delivering his prisoners to Plymouth, Church and his men were on their way to Monponsett, where they captured several dozen more Indians. Over the course of the next few weeks, Church’s string of successes continued, and he soon became the talk of the colony. On July 24, Governor Winslow officially gave Church the power to grant mercy to those Indians who agreed to help him find more of the enemy, as he had done with Jeffrey. Church’s recruits were soon convincing other newly captured Indians to do as they had done and come over to what he described as “the better side of the hedge.”
It was a deal that was difficult to refuse, and much of its appeal depended on the company’s captain. Church had the ability to bring even the most “treacherous dog” around to his way of thinking. “Come, come,” he would say, “you look wild and surly and mutter, but that signifies nothing. These my best soldiers were a little while ago as wild and surly as you are now. By the time you have been but one day ... with me, you’ll love me too.”
By the end of July, Church’s little band of volunteers was routinely bringing in more Indians than all of Plymouth’s and Massachusett Bay’s companies combined. In his history of the war, Cotton Mather wrote, “[s]ome of [Church’s] achievements were truly so magnanimous and extraordinary that my reader will suspect me to be transcribing the silly old romances, where the knights do conquer so many giants.”
Church undoubtedly enjoyed the praise, and in his own account of the war, he does his best to portray himself as a swashbuckling knight of the woods. But as even he admitted, his successes would not have been possible without the presence of Bradford’s more traditional army. Based in Taunton, Bradford’s men chased Philip throughout the swamps and woods and several times came within minutes of taking the Pokanoket sachem. But, unlike Church’s company, morale was a problem among Bradford’s soldiers, and by the end of July, many of them had either deserted or found good excuses to return home.
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