“Being well acquainted”: John Winthrop, July 20, 1636, in Winthrop’s Journal, 184.
[>] “one thousand fathoms”: Winthrop, August 25, 1636, in Winthrop’s Journal, 186.
“a strange mixture”: Edward Eggleston, The Beginners of a Nation (New York: D. Appleton, 1897), 201.
“For, said I”: Gardener, “Leift Lion Gardener,” 140.
[>] “Seeing you will go”: Ibid.
“What cheere, Englishmen”: Underhill, “Newes from America,” in American History Told by Contemporaries, ed. Albert B. Hart (New York: Macmillan, 1917), 1:439.
“They not thinking”: Ibid.
“What English man”: Ibid.
“Seeing that they did”: Ibid., 1:59–60.
“a pretty quantity”: Gardener, “Leift Lion Gardener,” 142.
[>] “slew all they found”: Underhill, “Newes from America,” in American History Told by Contemporaries, 60.
“defending ourselves”: Gardener, “Leift Lion Gardener,” 144.
“said the arrows”: Ibid.
“Have you fought”: Ibid., 132.
“We said we knew”: Ibid.
“We are Pequits”: Ibid.
[>] “having bene undertaken”: Massachusetts General Court (April 18, 1637), quoted in History of the Pequot War, xii.
“were not fitted”: Gardener, “Leift Lion Gardener,” 149.
[>] “commend our Condition”: Mason, “Brief History,” 22.
“very great Captains”: Ibid., 24.
“upon peril of their Lives”: Ibid.
[>] “almost impregnable”: Ibid., 26.
[>] “by which advantage”: Roger Williams to John Winthrop, ca. August–October 1636, in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd ser. (Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1846), 1:160.
“That it would be”: Ibid., 1:161.
Shortly before daybreak: Mason (“Brief History,” 26) suggests that the exhausted men overslept and dawn was already breaking when they awoke, but Underhill (“Newes from America,” in History of the Pequot War, 78) says they awoke at one o’clock in the morning.
led by Uncas: There are two firsthand narratives of the attack—Mason’s and Underhill’s, with a third by Philip Vincent who, though he apparently drew on eyewitness accounts, was not at the melee himself. They differ in details, sometimes contradicting one another, as with the march time just noted and the participation of the Indian allies. Underhill’s account, published a year after the war, mentions only in passing that they had three hundred Indians “without side our soldiers in a ring battalia” (Underhill, “Newes from America,” in History of the Pequot War, 78), while Vincent credits the Narragansetts for covering the English retreat and says that the Mohegans “behaved themselves stoutly” (Vincent, quoted in History of the Pequot War, 106). Only Mason’s “Brief History” gives Uncas a great deal of personal credit—but as scholars have pointed out, by the time Mason wrote his version of events years later, he considered Uncas a friend and ally and had been involved in several land deals with him.
“Owanux!”: Mason, “Brief History,” 27.
[>] “concluded to destroy”: Ibid., 28.
“Seeing the fort”: Underhill, “Newes from America,” in History of the Pequot War, 80.
[>] “The fires of both”: Ibid.
“Many were burnt”: Ibid., 80–81.
“did swiftly over-run”: Mason, “Brief History,” 29.
“Some of them climbing”: Ibid.
“God was above them”: Ibid., 30. From Psalm 21 (Authorized [King James] Version), “Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger: the Lord shall swallow them up, and the fire shall devour them.”
[>] “cried Mach it”: Underhill, “Newes from America,” in History of the Pequot War, 84.
“It was a fearfull”: Bradford, in Bradford’s History, 339.
“victory to the glory”: Gardener, “Leift Lion Gardener,” 137.
“It may be demanded”: Underhill, “Newes from America,” in History of the Pequot War, 81.
[>] blood-red hearts: See William S. Simmons, “The Mystic Voice,” in Hauptman and Wherry 1990, 149–52.
About three hundred: My discussion of Pequot slaves is largely informed by Fickes 2000. Some authors have referred to the Pequot captives as indentured servants, but English indenture contracts—while hardly a model of enlightened labor practices—set a specified period of servitude, were governed by a written contract, and required at least theoretical consent by the prospective servant. The Pequot women and children were, in all ways that mattered, slaves.
shipped to Bermuda: Although colonial records document only this single shipload of Pequot slaves sent to the islands after the 1637 war (which, according to those records, missed Bermuda and wound up in the Caribbean), the Mashantucket Pequot maintain that Pequots and members of other New England tribes were sold into slavery on Bermuda, where an annual “reconnection ceremony” is now held on St. David Island. See Carocci 2009.
“women and maid children”: John Winthrop to Thomas Prence, July 28, 1637, quoted in Bradford’s History, 429.
“Wee have heard”: Hugh Peter to John Winthrop, 1637, in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 4th ser., 6:95.
[>] “Since the Most High”: Ibid., 6:225.
“which they will”: Ibid.
“an incomparable way”: Ibid.
“shall no more be called”: “Articles Between Ye Inglish in Connecticut and the Indian Sachems,” in Collections of the Rhode-Island Historical Society (Providence: Marshall, Brown, 1835), 3:177. This is the only copy of the treaty that still exists.
“suffer them to live”: Ibid.
“shall not presently”: Ibid.
[>] “an Island of mine owne”: Lion Gardener, quoted in Ellsworth S. Grant, “To the Manor Born,” American Heritage, October 1975, www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1975/6/ 1975_6_8.shtml.
Chapter 5: Between Two Fires
[>] “aged thirty years”: Robert Roules, quoted in Axtell 1974, 650.
“What for you”: Ibid.
[>] “If Englishmen shoot”: Ibid.
Metacom, son of: There are various spellings of his name, including Metacomet. Although it may seem condescending to use an English name for the Wampanoag leader, it is unclear what the sachem actually called himself. In 1660, Metacom’s older brother Wamsutta asked the court at Plymouth to give them both English names, and the court complied: Alexander and Philip. The names Philip used likely changed with the circumstances and audience. He is unlikely ever to have referred to himself as “King Philip”—that label was applied by the English, perhaps in equal parts sarcasm and recognition of his leadership—but he clearly considered himself an equal of the English king.
[>] “all the fishing ilandes”: Francis Card, quoted in Baxter 1900, 6:150.
“[H]e doth make”: Ibid., 6:150–51.
[>] “a dull and heavy-moulded”: William Hubbard, A General History of New England, 2nd ed. (Boston: Charles C. Little, 1848), 635.
“either Skill or Courage”: Ibid.
“a greasy shirt”: Roules, quoted in Axtell 1974, 650.
[>] “even to our clothes”: Ibid., 652.
“that they might be”: Ibid.
“We found them”: Ibid.
“suffered neither constable”: Ibid.
[>] “Christians in this Land”: Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (Hartford: Silas Andrus & Son, 1820), 2:275.
“the Immoralities”: Gyles 1736, ii.
“wer in everi thing”: John Easton, “A Relacion of the Indyan Warr, by Mr. Easton, of Roade Island, 1675,” in Lincoln 1913, 10.
[>] “Some of our captives”: Samuel Penhallow, “The History of the Wars of New-England with the Eastern Indians” (1726; repr., Cincinnati: Dodge & Harpel, 1859), 25.
“gave satisfaction”: Ibid.
[>] Pokanoket sachem: The Pokanoket, which by the 1670s lived near Mount Hope,
Rhode Island, were a group of affiliated villages within the larger Wampanoag culture. As Jill Lepore points out in The Name of War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), Indian society in the late seventeenth century was in immense flux, and it is difficult to know with any certainty who was part of which group. Like her, I generally use “Wampanoag” to refer to the Pokanoket, Pocasset, Sakonnet, and other closely related groups in southeastern Massachusetts.
“saied they had bine”: Easton, “Relacion of the Indyan Warr,” 10.
[>] a jury of twelve: Supplementing white juries with Indian jurors, especially Christian Indians, was not uncommon, especially in capital cases. For one thing, Native participation ensured the presence of interpreters.
hanged on June 8: One of the three actually survived the hanging when the rope broke.
“The next day”: Easton, “Relacion of the Indyan Warr,” 12.
“So the war begun”: Ibid.
“In this time”: Daniel Witherell to John Winthrop Jr., June 30, 1675, in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd ser. (Boston: Charles C. Little & James Brown, 1846), 10:119.
[>] Nipmucs in Massachusetts: The names, I realize, can be confusing. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Nipmuc occupied what is now central Massachusetts, while the Massachusett were a closely related Wampanoag division originally occupying the coast south of Massachusetts Bay.
“Yet after all”: “The Examination and Relation of James Quannapaquait,” January 24, 1675, in Salisbury 1997, 120.
“leaving & loosing”: Ibid.
[>] “If they came”: Ibid.
“alleaging that Philip”: Ibid., 115.
[>] “not deliver up”: William J. Miller, King Philip and the Wampanoags of Rhode Island, 2nd ed. (Providence, RI: Sidney S. Sides, 1885), 139.
[>] “young and old”: James Oliver (December 26, 1675), quoted in George M. Bodge, ed., Soldiers in King Philip’s War, 3rd ed. (Boston: Rockwell & Churchill Press, 1906), 174.
[>] “They within”: “A Farther Brief and True Narration of the Late Wars Risen in New-England,” reprinted in A Farther Brief and True Narration of the Great Swamp Fight in the Narragansett Country, December 19, 1675 (Providence, RI: Society of Colonial Wars, 1912), 10.
“We no sooner”: Ibid.
“We have slain”: Ibid.
“300 fighting men”: Oliver, quoted in Bodge, Soldiers in King Philip’s War, 174–75.
[>] “a Renagado English Man”: Nathaniel Saltonstall (1676), “The Present State of New-England with Regard to the Indian War,” in Lincoln 1913, 67.
“a sad wretch”: Oliver, quoted in Bodge, Soldiers in King Philip’s War, 175.
“shot 20 times”: Ibid. In The Name of War, Lepore notes that Tift’s story and the accusations against him are a morass of inconsistencies, ranging from Oliver’s contention that he was an active fighter, to Nathaniel Saltonstall’s contention that Tift didn’t fire a shot, to suggestions that he’d married a Wampanoag woman. Lepore argues that Tift’s gruesome fate had as much to do with his gender—a male turncoat was especially dangerous—and English fears about colonists going native as with his actions.
“Counsel of War”: Saltonstall, “Present State,” 67.
“destroyed with exquisite”: Nathaniel Saltonstall (1676), “A New and Further Narrative of the State of New-England,” in Lincoln 1913, 97.
“It is computed”: Ibid.
“all young Serpents”: Hubbard 1803, 216.
“13 Squawes”: John Hull (1676), quoted in Bodge, Soldiers in King Philip’s War, 480.
[>] “Why shall wee”: “The Examination and Relation of James Quannapaquait,” 125.
“Let us live”: Ibid.
“Know by this paper”: Quoted in Daniel Gookin, “An Historical Account of Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England,” in Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1836), 2:494.
“You must consider”: Ibid.
“Always brutal”: Lepore, The Name of War, xiii.
“a landscape of ashes”: Ibid.
[>] Menameset: The village was also known as Menemesseg or Wenimesset.
[>] “Thou hast been”: “The Examination and Relation of James Quannapaquait,” 122.
“None shall wrong thee”: Ibid.
[>] “Hee will not beeleve”: Ibid., 117.
Kattananit, however, chose: Kattananit left Menameset the night before the planned attack, having made arrangements with other pro-English Indians in the village to meet him secretly some weeks later and deliver his children. But some English authorities, not trusting Kattananit’s motives, prevented the rendezvous, and he didn’t get his children back until after the war ended.
“If God please”: “The Examination and Relation of James Quannapaquait,” 117.
[>] “Some in our house”: Mary Rowlandson (1682), quoted in Salisbury 1997, 69. Only four pages of the original edition of Rowlandson’s book survive. This annotated version uses the “second Addition,” one of four published that year, and is less modernized than later editions.
“Lord, let me dy”: Ibid.
“[stood] amazed”: Ibid.
“but when it came”: Ibid., 70.
[>] “I shall dy”: Ibid., 73.
[>] Wetamo (or Weetamoo): Although the sachem’s name is usually spelled Weetamoo, Strong 1999 argues that Wetamo is probably closer to the original Algonquian, which linguist Frank Speck (1928) translated as “lodge-keeper.” Rowlandson’s own attempt to render Wetamo’s name as “Wettimore” would seem to support this spelling.
“full of wormes”: Rowlandson, quoted in Salisbury 1997, 106.
“I could not but”: Ibid., 82.
“a bait”: Ibid.
[>] “I was utterly”: Ibid., 83.
“For the Indian Sagamores”: Quoted in Nourse 1884, 110.
“if you have any”: Ibid.
“Though they were”: Rowlandson, quoted in Salisbury 1997, 97.
[>] “for these sundry”: John Easton (1676), “Record of a Court Martial Held at Newport, R.I. in August, 1676,” in Narrative of the Causes Which Led to Philip’s Indian War, of 1675 and 1676, ed. Franklin B. Hough (Albany, NY: J. Munsell, 1858), 175–76.
“to show such gentlemen”: Thomas Church, A History of King Philip’s War, ed. Samuel G. Drake (Boston: Howe & Norton, 1825), 101. This account was first published in 1716 by the son of Captain Benjamin Church, who was Alderman’s commander at the time of Philip’s death. Noting that Philip’s head went for the same bounty as those of other enemy Indians, the younger Church groused, “Methinks this was scanty reward and poor encouragement.”
[>] “made Publick”: The cover of the second edition of Rowlandson’s book contained the inscription, “Written by Her own Hand for Her private Use, and now made Publick at the earnest Desire of some Friends, and for the Benefit of the Afflicted.”
first American woman: The first American woman author was poet Anne Bradstreet, whose The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, By a Gentlewoman of Those Parts was published in 1650 in England.
“we were not ready”: Rowlandson, quoted in Salisbury 1997, 80.
“but be acknowledged”: Ibid., 23.
“that Hazardous service”: Nourse 1884, 114.
“in sattisfaction”: Ibid.
“that abominable Indian”: Increase Mather, Early History of New England, ed. Samuel G. Drake (Boston: Samuel G. Drake, 1864), 257.
[>] “James the printer”: Rowlandson, quoted in Salisbury 1997, 103.
“A Revolter”: “A True Account of the most Considerable Occurences that have hapned in the Warre between the English and the Indians in New-England” (1676), in The Old Indian Chronicle, ed. Samuel G. Drake (Boston: Antiquarian Institute, 1836), 130.
[>] “Honoured Mother”: Thaddeus Clark to his mother, June 14, 1676, Maine Historical Society, coll. 420, box 7/32, www.mainememory.net/media/pdf/22345.pdf.
retaking the remaining vessel
s: Having lost their boats to the Abenakis, some Marbleheaders were even more incensed to see them retaken by colonial officials from New York, which controlled parts of the Maine coast. “Some of those owners have said they had rather the Indyans had kept their Ketches, then that they should come into the hands of New-Yorke Governm[ent]” (Anthony Brockholls [January 7, 1677], quoted in Franklin B. Hough, Papers Relating to Pemaquid and Adjacent Areas in the Present State of Maine, Known as Cornwall County, When Under the Colony of New-York [Albany, NY: Weed, Parsons, 1856], 12).
[>] “that none of said Indians”: George Wadleigh, Notable Events in the History of Dover, New Hampshire (Dover, NH: Tufts College Press, 1913), 81.
cochecho or qouchecho: Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the spelling changed to Cocheco, apparently due to a clerical error (Thompson 1892, 44).
William Hathorne: Sometimes spelled Hawthorne.
“seize all Indians”: Chandler E. Potter, The History of Manchester, Formerly Derryfield, in New Hampshire (Manchester, NH: C. E. Potter, 1856), 77.
“Sham battles”: Mock battles were also sometimes used for political or religious purposes, such as one especially elaborate drama staged by the Spanish in Mexico in 1539. Reenacting the siege of Jerusalem, complete with Saint James on a white stallion helping to rout the Moors, this mock battle was a way of reinforcing the legitimacy of Catholic Spanish rule over the conquered Aztecs.
[>] “taken like so many”: Drake 1910, 17.
Chapter 6: “Our Enimies Are Exceedeing Cruell”
[>] “My Moose-skin Coat”: Gyles 1736, 16.
[>] “wonderfully reviv’d”: Ibid.
“but again my Spirits”: Ibid.
“The Indians cry’d out”: Ibid.
“which were as void”: Ibid.
“The Indians said”: Ibid., 17.
“whole like a Shoe”: Ibid.
[>] “I follow’d them”: Ibid.
“the Common Abuses”: John Pike, quoted in Cotton Mather, “Decennium Luctuosum, or The Remarkables of a Long War with Indian Savages” (1688), in Lincoln 1913, 186.
“at which [the Indians]”: Ibid.
[>] “plant their pumpkins”: George Wadleigh, Notable Events in the History of Dover, New Hampshire (Dover, NH: Tufts College Press, 1913), 91.
The First Frontier Page 48
