by Jill Lepore
The difference between accounts printed in Boston and Cambridge and those printed in London is not as dramatic as it might seem. We need not take high-minded intentions like Wheeler’s as chief indicators of the accounts’ appeal; the London reprintings of Boston and Cambridge narratives suggest that even sober Puritan sermons might have satisfied readers interested in gore for gore’s sake. Several of these narratives were also advertised in the Term Catalogues as well as in The London Gazette.33 Moreover, accounts printed only in New England did not always remain there. The colonial authorities sent important narratives of the war to King Charles, and more than a few colonists shipped books to friends and family across the Atlantic.34 John Hull of Marblehead wrote to an English cousin, “I have sent you three Bookes of the History of our War; one for Mr. Sam Burfoot, one for your self, & Cousin Dan Quinscy, and one for Cousin Buckam.”35 Similarly, Samuel Sewall sent copies of Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative to his English uncles.36 Nor did printed materials only travel eastward. In August 1675 Joseph Eliot wrote to a fellow Connecticut colonist to see if he could borrow some of his English “gazers”: “My intreaty therefore is unto your self, that you would do me the favor to lend me such as are gainable there, and I shal carefully return them: it is one addition to the advantage of reading them, that in this our calamtou[s] times we can the better sympathize with the European stories of the sad effects of these warrs.”37
The sending of so many books across the Atlantic confirms the view, widely held by historians of the book, that seventeenth-century New Englanders lived in a world of print continuous with that of Europe.38 Perhaps the best evidence about the transportation of books, both within and outside the colonies, comes from Increase Mather, who was meticulous about recording how he distributed copies of his own accounts of King Philip’s War. When Richard Chiswell returned two dozen unsold copies of the London edition of A Brief History to Mather, the Boston minister asked his brother-in-law John Cotton to help sell them in Plymouth and Connecticut.39 Meanwhile, Mather shipped more than a few copies right back across the Atlantic, to friends in England, along with copies of his Relation and other works.40 By all indications, Mather’s friends and colleagues eagerly awaited his books. John Bishop wrote to Mather in July 1676, complaining anxiously, “we knew nor heard of any thing Printed, til of late Mr Alden told me there was, & wondred that we had it not.”41 William Goffe begged Mather for a copy of his Brief History. “I was tould that beside your Exhortation, you have also taken the pains to write a History of the War, which is also printed. But I have not had the happynesse as yet, to see it; and know not when I shall, tho: I much desire it.” Goffe had even had difficulty keeping his copy of Mather’s Exhortation, which, he said, was “was taken from me before I could read it a second time.”42In Dublin, Ireland, Mather’s brother Nathaniel made a similar complaint, acknowledging that he had received “of your historyes of the late war with the Indians, for which I heartily thank you & wish I had had more of them … they were so acceptable that save that I kept one of them, to read it over a few hours, I have not yet been able to keep any of them in my hands.”43
The popularity and distribution of the war narratives must have varied greatly, of course, as did their content. Yet, whether printed in Boston, London, or Cambridge, in octavo or quarto, in two editions or four, on cheap paper or fine, one element is common to all of the published accounts of King Philip’s War: all exhibit a pressing if not a frantic concern about truthfulness. This concern is reflected in the titles of some. A True Account, A Brief and True Narration, A Farther Brief and True Narration; and in the subtitles of others: “Being a True and Perfect Account,” “being a True and last Account,” “The most Exact Account yet Printed,” “an Account of the true Reason thereof, (as far as can be judged by Men),” or a narrative that has been “Faithfully Composed.”44 Such titles can be partly explained by convention; news and historical accounts published in England commonly asserted their truthfulness on their title pages. Yet, like Mather’s assertion that his was the “true history of this affair,” many chroniclers of King Philip’s War also provided lengthy prefatory statements establishing their narratives’ authenticity. Saltonstall’s first letter began by noting, “There being many and various Reports concerning the Causes of the present War amongst us, it may not be amiss in the First Place, to give you a true Account of the Reasons thereof.”45 Another account offered a “true Narrative of those Indians Stirs.” And William Hubbard’s preface contained an extended discussion of the sources for his history, all of whom were “Persons worthy of Credit.”46
Like Mather, who was disgusted by the “abounding mistakes” in Saftonstall’s Present State and, he believed, the equally uncreditable account of John Easton, several writers established their own legitimacy by casting aspersions on other reports. “What hath been made Publick from the beginning hath not been represented so exactly as it might have been,” complained the author of A True Account. “I shall therefore upon a review of some Papers lying by me Collect and Communicate a few lines so much of that Affair … [that] may be depended upon as true, without partiality to either side.”47 Correcting the errors of other authors was often cited as a principal reason for writing in the first place. And when colonists like Thomas Wheeler explained that they wrote not only “for the help of our memories” but also for “the preventing of mistakes in Reports,” they had cause to be concerned.48 No matter how much the colonists wrote and wondered about their war, the truth always seemed elusive.
II
LONG BEFORE Wheeler’s Remembrance, before Hubbard’s Narrative, before even the earliest accounts in The London Gazette, news of the war had spread quickly throughout the colonies. Most people got their news face to face, from friends, neighbors, or relations. Seventeenth-century New England was, after all, primarily an oral culture. To William Harris it seemed that “Mesengers like Jobes came soone one after another,” all telling “of burneing houses, takeing cattell, killing men & women & Children: & carrying others captive.” Or, as Noah Newman lamented, colonists “dayly herd of houses Burned & People ded & killed at severall Places.” Much news also came by letter. Benjamin Tompson put a common sentiment into verse when he complained, “Posts daily on the Pegasean steeds / Bring sad reports of worse than Nero’s deeds.”49
If little of the news was good, even less was reliable. “Reports are so many & various that one knowes not what to believe,” wrote one confused colonist. Or, as another complained, “Wee have many Lame reports & blinde relations of such things & without Cleerer grounde know not well how to direct prayers or prayses.” As a result of all the confusion, some news was conveyed in qualified terms: “We have newes that Plimouth Deauxborough, and Bridgwater are great part destroyed and that Capt. Bradford and his Son both are Slayne,” wrote a beleaguered Bostonian. Yet, he added with failing optimism, “all Communication by land betweene this and that land obstructed; Soe that there is roome for hope that matters are not soe bad as reported but hitherto they have comonly prooved worse.”50
In their attempts to keep up with false reports, many colonists engaged in fact-checking correspondences. In July 1675 John Winthrop, Jr., wrote to his brother to warn him that “that which hath beene reported, as you mention that Quabage was burnt, is utterly fake.” And, Winthrop continued, as to the news that some of Philip’s men had fled to another sachem, “being only a report, I can write nothing positively.” In a reply to a letter from Winthrop, William Leete informed him, “As to those misreports about Indians westward stirring, &c., I understand you have already bin better informed & so I need say nothing.”51 Not all colonists, of course, were so careful about verifying the reports they sent and received. “People are apt in these dayes to give credit to every flying and false report,” Samuel Gorton complained, “and not only so, but they will report it againe, as it is said of old, report and we will report; and by that meanes they become deceivers and tormenters one of another, by feares and jealousies.” John Pynchon,
too, noted the proliferation of false reports. To Winthrop he wrote, “Yours was the first and all the intelligence I have had except flying reports.”52
That information was sent did not necessarily mean it would arrive, since roads were often impassable. “The way of Sending is Soe enterupted by the war,” complained William Harris, “that ther is noe safe Sending nor pasing to & fro (without danger of life).” After John Pynchon sent a post to Brookfield, he later found out that “they were obstructed by 15 or 16 Indians … who endeavored to get the way of our messengers.” Daniel Witherell intercepted and opened a letter that was intended for John Winthrop, Jr., and later apologized to Winthrop: “This morneing I Recaved the Narrative of the Bloody Designs of the Indians Which was Directed to your Honour; and Conceiving it might give uss herer fuller Information than wee had formerly Receved[, we] presumed to open [it] hopeing wee shall obtayne your honours pardon therein.” An old man, deserted and alone, John Kingsley added a postscript to a letter to the Connecticut War Council, begging that a message be sent to his son in Massachusetts: “If aney know or here that Enoes Kingsley be alive, at Northamton, let know that I his father am a live tho no shelter for my gray head.”53
Of all the unreliable news of the war, most colonists considered news conveyed by Indians to be the most dubious. Samuel Hooker cautiously passed on “the last report which cometh to mee (which is Indian newes) but said to be true” and Roger Williams warned that “all the fine words from the Indian Sachims to us were but words of policie, falshood & Treacherye.”54 Communication between the two sides was usually assigned to literate Christian Indians temporarily released from Deer Island, but they commonly met with little success. When the Massachusetts Council sent a Christian Indian to Wachusett to negotiate the release of Mary Rowlandson, they sent him with “paper pen and Incke” and carrying a white flag. That the Council saw fit to explain that such a flag “is used by civil nations in tyme of warre when any messengers are sent in a way of treaty” suggests the difficulties and dangers inherent in such exchanges.55 Meanwhile, Algonquians who did not wish to be found often successfully thwarted Christian Indians, as when Sam Namphow, carrying a message for the sachem Wannalancet, was sent on a wild goose chase. “We cam to pamakook,” Namphow reported, and “there we soe sum of the pumakook indians and asked them w[h]ere wamsait was they sait he was a[t] pomachowasick we went to wanneposokick … w[h]ere they sat he was but when we cam to wunnippasakick there we saw sum more indians we asked them were is the sachem they sait he went away three weeks agone from pomaschowasick.”56
Algonquians who fought against the colonists had their own lines of communication: news reports, whispered rumors, prophecies, diplomatic envoys, stories told in wampum beads. Unfortunately, colonists took little note of how their enemies communicated news of the war—Nathaniel Saltonstall warned that “these Heathenish Stories are consonant to their Barbarous Crueltie, and ought to be valued accordingly”—except to observe, as they often did, that “the Indians have their scouts out.”57 Instead, colonists were more likely to express amazement at how well Algonquians hid information. Colonial soldiers could never be certain how many of the enemy had been killed, since the Indians almost always “adventured back and took their dead Men away with them.”58 But, while hiding the extent of their own losses, Algonquians celebrated English losses by making marks on trees and shouting or “co-hooping” to count the enemy dead—messages designed to be seen and heard by Indians and colonists alike. As John Russell wrote, “when [the Indians] heard of the Massacre at Quaboag, they made in the Fort eleven Acclamations of joy, according to the number of our men that were slain.”59 Writing about the attack on Marlboro, Richard Jacob described how a group of Indians, “as theire accustomed maner is after a fight, began to signifie to us how many were slaine. They Cohoop’d seventy-four times, which we hoped was only to affright us seing we have had no intelegence of any such thing, yet we have Reason to feare the worst Considering Theire Numbers.”60
For most of the war, colonists everywhere had reason, like Jacob, “to feare the worst”: most news was bad news. Yet, however bad the news was likely to be, people were desperate to hear it. “We long to here some good tidings from Boston,” Mary Pray wrote from Providence, since “we have But littel here But such news as Increaseth our sorrowes.”61 Similarly, Thomas Whalley told John Cotton, “We dayly long to heare from our army,” and later begged him, “What [news] you have i pray you send me.” With the enemy “round about us,” colonists in isolated towns felt particularly cut off from the flow of important information: “We are a distressed people. We hear nothing since from the army.” In August 1675 the Connecticut Council wrote to John Pynchon, employing a poignant image in its request for news: “We stand a tiptoe for intelligence.”62
Colonists begged one another for news time and again, and especially for lengthy reports. “The Last heavy newes of the Indyan Warr hath put mee upon a bold request,” Nathaniel Brewster wrote in July 1675, “to beseech yor honor for a few Lines, as an abstract, of the true state and progress of this sad Commotion.” After receiving a letter from John Cotton, Noah Newman obliged a similar request. “As to your desir of the Hystory of [the] medfield tragedy,” Newman replied, “I shall give you the best account I can.”63 Colonists sent lengthy letters not only to one another but also to friends and relatives in England, who often copied and distributed them. Writing from England, Jane Hook reminded Increase Mather, “we are much inquiring after the afares of our brethren in N:E:”; and toward the end of the war, Christopher Which-cot rejoiced at once hearing “some incouraging news by the last ships that come from new England.”64 Sketchy news of the war often left friends and relations in England anxious for fuller details. Stephen Dummor, distressed by a letter he received from his cousin Samuel Sewall detailing “the Barbarous and cruell proceedings of the Heathons,” criticized another New England correspondent for his failure to supply eagerly awaited news: “In your Letter you have not sent me a word of the sad tydings that are fallen out amongst you.” For John Hall, who worried from England about his mother in Massachusetts, no news was worse than bad news: “I have Lively Ideas in my minde of the fright and distractions that those salvages put you too.”65 No news was worse than bad news, but often enough, no news was all most colonists could give.
III
MUCH AS they yearned for news, much as friends, neighbors, and relatives begged them for it, many colonists, like Simon Bradstreet and John Eliot, found it difficult to write about the war at all. After witnessing the burning of the town of Springfield, John Pynchon felt utterly debilitated, admitting, “I know not how to write.”66 And often, even writers who supplied lengthy and vivid accounts apologized for the ineptness of their descriptions. “It is not my tongue, or pen can express the sorrows of my heart, and bitterness of my spirit,” Mary Rowlandson wrote.67 In his moving letter to the Connecticut War Council begging for help, John Kingsley confessed, “I am not able to beare the sad stories of our woeful day.” As “the I man & onely left” in a town that he had seen destroyed and then abandoned, Kingsley was starving and near death. “I can say truely,” he moaned, with weariness weighing down every word, “that since our wares begun my flesh is so gon with feare, care & grife & now this sicknes, my skin is redey to cleave to my bones.” Moreover, he continued, “to tel you what wee have & how wee are like to sufer my hart wil not hould to write & sheetes would [not] contayne.”68
Kingsley’s dilemma is paradoxical. The magnitude of his suffering required him to write, but it also made writing impossible; however much he needed help, he could not bear the sad stories he must tell to get it. To tell you what we have and how we are likely to suffer my heart will not hold to write and sheets would not contain. It is, in fact, the uncontainability of Kingsley’s pain that distressed him most, and it is here that his choice of imagery is most telling: his suffering, Kingsley suggested, is best measured by the paper needed to describe it. And no amount of paper is enough. Images like thi
s, in which paper and books and pens and ink act as measurements of pain and evil, are peppered throughout the wartime writings. In a letter about the “trechoury” of the Narragansett Indians, for instance, Mary Pray claimed that “a vollum might be writ of their vilany.” And Philip Walker employed the same metaphor when describing Indian attacks:
The Impious actts off thes Infernal bests
actted abroad & in ther helish nests
would swell a volum to a magnitud.
Another common metaphor suggested that some horrors could never be described by the written word, and could only be measured by the physical evidence produced by the body. Thus Benjamin Tompson wrote,
Not ink, but blood and tears now serve the turn
To draw the figure of New England’s urn.
Similarly, John Hall wrote to his mother in Ipswich, “though tears of water yea of blood if wee were able are not enough to bewaile the desolations that fire; blood, rapine, and cruelty hath made in N.E.”69
The devastation of the war was, to many colonists, “hardly imaginable.”70Indeed, the troubling result of all of the “flying reports” and miserable news was that colonists hardly knew what to believe unless they had seen it themselves or, better yet, had touched or felt it, since appearances, too, were some times uncreditable. Literary scholar Elaine Scarry has called this concern with communication during war “verbal unanchoredness” and argues that it is an inevitable result of the traumas of warfare. “Within the war itself,” Scarry argues, “the indisputably physical reality of the mounting wounds has as its verbal counterpart the mounting unreality of language. “That is, as the physical devastation becomes real, the language describing it becomes unreal. Lies, falsifications, misrepresentations, fictions, and misinformation are all typical of the spoken and written language of war, according to Scarry, and all combine to produce a suspended reality, a verbally “unanchored” world.71
