The Name of War

by Jill Lepore

  54Tompson, New-England’s Crisis, 220.

  55Saltonstall, Present State, 31. Or, as Benjamin Tompson wrote:

  The swamps were courts of guard, thither retired

  The straggling blue-coats when their guns were fired,

  In dark meanders, and these winding groves, Where bears & panthers with their monarch moves

  (New England’s Crisis, 220-21).

  56Brief and True Narration, 5.

  57Mather, Brief History, 62.

  58Hubbard, Narrative, 1:87. In issuing his official orders to Captain Joseph Syll, Gookin instructed him, “You are carefully so to march your men in the woods so that if it be possible to avoide or shunne or well serch before you com to neare all thick places as swamps or thicketts wher the enimy uses with subtilty to lurke in Ambushments” (Daniel Gookin to Captain Joseph Syll, November 2, 1675, NEHGR 41 [1887]: 403).

  59Stephen Saunders Webb, 1676: The End of American Independence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 239. On the significance of swamp imagery in later American culture, see David C. Miller, Dark Eden: The Swamp in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Unfortunately, Miller makes no acknowledgment of the seventeenth-century roots of Anglo-American fears of swamps.

  60Saltonstall, New and Further Narrative, 77. Harris, A Rhode Islander Reports, 30. Williams, Key into the Language, 150. Samuel Symonds to Sir Joseph Williamson, April 6, 1676. Swamps, another Englishman complained, are “so soft Ground, that an Englishman can neither go nor stand thereon, and yet these bloody Savages will run along over it, holding their Guns cross their Armes (and if Occasion be) discharge in that Posture” (Saltonstall, Present State, 31). In July 1675, for example, Philip and his men secreted themselves in Pocasset Swamp while Plymouth forces tried desperately to apprehend them. On July 20 James Cudworth reported to Josiah Winslow that his 120 men had been “fired upon out of the bushes, and in and out of swamps were fired at, and we had a hot dispute, especially when we were to go near to a swamp.” When they finally succeeded in entering the “hideous dismal swamp,” they found all the women and children had fled. “They fly before us,” Cudworth complained, “from one swamp to another” (James Cudworth to Josiah Winslow, July 20, 1675, MHSC, 1st ser., 6 [1799]: 84). Nine days later Winslow reported to John Winthrop, Jr., “Our enemy keeping them selves cloase within the most hideouse swamps they can finde, wher in wee cannot ingage them but at extream disadvantage, it threatens a continuance of the war longer then wee some times hoped it might have beene” (Josiah Winslow to John Winthrop, Jr., July 29, 1675).

  61Noah Newman to Lieutenant Thomas, September 30, 1675, transcribed in Bowen, Early Rehoboth, 3:89-90. The OED erroneously claims the word “swamp” was not used as a verb until 1688.

  62Hubbard, Narrative, 1:252. (Psalm 74:20: “The dark places of the world are full of the habitations of cruelty.”)

  63Williams, Key into the Language, 150. Samuel Symonds complained that English soldiers “cannot meet with any Body of [Indians], their manner being to move from place to place almost every day, Leaving their Women and Children in hideous Swamps & obscure, unaccessable places, of which the Country is Full” (Samuel Symonds to Sir Joseph Williamson, April 6, 1676).

  64Mather, Brief History, 206-7.

  65Kathleen J. Bragdon, “The Material Culture of the Christian Indians of New England, 1650-1775,” in Mary C. Beaudry, ed., Documentary Archaeology in the New World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 128-29. Kathleen J. Bragdon, “Probate Records as a Source for Algonquian Ethnohistory,” in William Cowan, ed., Papers of the Tenth Algonquian Conference (Ottawa: Carleton University, 1979), 136. Elise Brenner, “Strategies for Autonomy: An Analysis of Ethnic Mobilization in Seventeenth-Century Southern New England” (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1984), 127-32.

  66A notable exception is Nathaniel Saltonstall’s definition for English readers: “Wigwams are Indian Huts or Houses” (Saltonstall, New and Further Narrative, 77). Thomas Morton made a common analogy when he wrote, “The Natives of New England are accustome to build them houses much like the wild Irish” (New English Canaan or New Canaan, 134).

  67James Cudworth to Josiah Winslow, July 20, 1675, MHSC, 1st ser., 6 (1799): 84.

  68Tompson, New England’s Crisis, 223.

  69Rowlandson, Soveraignty, 334.

  70Francis Bland, The Souldiers March to Salvation (Yorke, 1647), 15.

  71When the Plymouth forces found Philip’s empty fort in Pocasset Swamp in July 1675, they found there “four English heads on poles.” These the English took down and put Tour Indian heads in their place” (Brief and True Narrative, 5).

  72Samuel Moseley to John Leverett, August 16, 1675, NEHGR 37 (1883): 177.

  73Harris, A Rhode Islander Reports, 36-38. This attack is quite similar to the English attack on the Pequots in Mystic, Connecticut, in 1637; see, for example, John Underhill, “News from America,” MHSC, 3rd ser., 6 (1837): 1-28. Since nearly all contemporary chronicles include a description of the Great Swamp fight, I have not listed them here, except to observe that the most complete contemporary printed account can be found in Farther Brief and True Narration and that Wait Still Winthrop’s poem Some Meditations is a reflection on the battle. A usefully detailed secondary account is in George M. Bodge, The Narragansett Fort Fight (Boston, 1886), and, most useful of all, Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 123-35.

  74Ashcam, A Discourse, 100. Adam Hirsch has argued that the English adopted tactics of “total war” in fighting the Indians after the Pequot War, and while he does not cite it, no example supports his argument more powerfully than this attack (Adam J. Hirsch, “The Collision of Military Cultures in Seventeenth-Century New England,” JAH 74 [1988]: [204-9).

  75Mather, Brief History, 107-8. News from New England, 1. Joseph Dudley to unknown, December 21, 1675, NEHGR 40 (1886): 89. Tompson, New England’s Crisis, 223-24. Or, as another Englishman admitted, “ours had now a Carnage rather than a Fight, for every one had their fill of Blood” (News from New-England, 1). The celebratory assessment has been shared by many early historians of the event. Bodge, for instance, writes, “By any candid student of history I believe this must be classed as one of the most glorious victories ever achieved in our history, and considering conditions, as displaying heroism, both in stubborn patient and dashing intrepidity, never excelled in American warfare” (Bodge, The Narragansett Fort Fight, 13).

  76Noah Newman to John Cotton, March 3, 1676, Curwen Papers, AAS. For another account of the attack on Medfield see John Wilson and others to the Massachusetts Council, February 21, 1676, Mass. Arch. 68:139, transcribed in George Ellis, Exercises at the Bicentennial Commemoration of the Burning of Medfield (Medfield, 1876), 24-25. See also Gookin, “Historical Account,” 493-94. And see Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 159-60.

  77Noah Newman to John Cotton, March 3, 1676.

  78John Wilson to the Massachusetts Council, February 14, 1676, transcribed in Ellis, Exercises at the Bi-Centennial, 14-15.

  79Gookin, “Historical Account,” 493; News from New-England, 4. John Wilson and others to the Massachusetts Council, February 21, 1676.

  80Hubbard, Narrative, 1:169.

  81Richard Waldron to the Massachusetts Council, September 25, 1675, NEHGR 42 (1888): 190. Edmund Browne to John Leverett, September 26, 1676, NEHGR 7 (1853): 268. John Kingsley to the Connecticut Council, May 5, 1676. John Hull to Philip French, September 2, 1675, John Hull’s Letterbook, AAS.

  82Rowlandson, Soveraignty, 324-26.

  83Hubbard, Narrative, 1:70.

  84Mather, Exhortation, 171. Mather, Brief History, 123-24.

  85Noah Newman to John Cotton, March 3, 1676.

  86Rowlandson, Soveraignty, 324.

  87Williams, Key into the Language, 131.

  88Mather, Brief History, 61.

  89Quoted in Peter Furtado, “National Pride in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, ed. Raphael Samuel, v
ol. 1: History and Politics (London: Routledge, 1989), 46. See also John Bulwer, Anthropometamor-phosis, man transform’d, or, The artificial changeling: historically presented in the mad and cruel gallantry, foolish bravery, ridiculous beauty, filthy finenesse, an loathsome lovelinesse of most nations … with a vindication of the regular beauty and honesty of nature and an appendix of the pedigree of the English gallant (London, 1650).

  90See Bulwer, Anthropometamorphosis.

  91Thomas Hall, Comarum akosmia the loathsomnesse of long haire (London, 1654), especially 13, 45.

  92Harris, A Rhode Islander Reports, 84.

  93Noah Newman to John Cotton, March 14, 1676, Curwen Papers, AAS. During her captivity Rowlandson met “one Mary Thurston of Medfield,” who was probably Goodwife Thurston’s daughter (Rowlandson, Soveraignty, 338).

  94However distinctive an English body’s appearance might be, darkness could always obscure its unique qualities. Again and again the colonists complained that it was impossible to tell who was English at night: “The darkness was such as an English man could not be discerned from an Indian,” or, perhaps more tellingly, “it was so dark that an Indian could hardly be discerned from a better Man” (Mather, Brief History, 131. Hubbard, Narrative, 1:208).

  95Gookin, “Historical Account,” 478. Wheeler, Thankefull Remembrance, 253. Captives who lost their ability to speak English were likely to remain among the Indians; this transition marked a dramatic departure from English culture. For a compelling account of one such captivity see John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).

  96Retreating Nipmucks burned the bridge beyond Medfield, preventing English soldiers from following them across the Charles River. Once on the Sherborn side of the bridge, the Nipmucks taunted the English from the riverbank. The note was discovered afterward (Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 160). Noah Newman copied the note out in his letter to John Cotton, March 14, 1676, and Hubbard recorded a somewhat modified version: “As they passed the Bridg, [the Indians] left a Wrighting behind them, expressing something to this Purpose, that we had provoked them to Wrath, and that they would fight with us this twenty Years (but they fell short of their Expectation by nineteen) adding also, that they had nothing to lose, whereas we had Houses, Barns, and Corn” (Narrative, 1:171). Captain Benjamin Gibbs took the note from the tree and brought it to the Massachusetts Council, and Daniel Gookin, having read it, commented that it suggested “the pride and insolence of these barbarians at this time” (Gookin, “Historical Account,” 494-95). Several antiquarian researchers have attributed this note to James Printer, including Samuel Gardner Drake (in the footnotes of his edition of Hubbard’s Narrative) and William S. Tilden, History of the Town of Medfield, Massachusetts (Boston, 1887); and circumstantial evidence also points to Printer (he was one of a very few highly literate Indians living among the Indians who attacked Medfield).

  97Anderson has observed, “During the two decades before King Philip’s War, Plymouth officials approached local Indians at least twenty-three times to purchase land, often mentioning a specific need for pasture” (“King Philip’s Herds,” 620).

  98Roger Williams to [Robert Williams?], April 1, 1676. The Narragansett Indian who spoke these words to Williams may well have been Stonewall John and the man tortured to death by Mohegans as described in the Prologue (Samuel Gardner Drake, Book of the Indians [Boston, 1841], 3:78).

  99Anderson, “King Philip’s Herds,” 613-14.

  100Easton, “Relacion,” 11.

  101Noah Newman to John Cotton, March 14, 1676.

  102Quanohit, Sam, and Kutquen to the Massachusetts Council, April 12, 1676, transcribed in Gookin, “Historical Account,” 508.

  103Farther Brief and True Narration, 3-4.

  104Quoted in William Simmons, Spirit of the New England Tribes: Indian History and Folklore, 1620-1984 (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1986), 46. Wampanoags also practiced this ritual.

  105For instances of this nature see Captain Benjamin Newberry to John Allyn, May 26, 1676, NEHGR 25 (1871): 72; Saltonstall, Continuation, 79-80; Hubbard, Narrative, 164-65; Lieutenant Richard Jacob to unknown, April 22, 1676, NEHGR 40 (1886): 391-92; Harris, A Rhode Islander Reports, 44-46; Joseph Dudley to unknown, NEHGR 40 (1886): 87-88; Mary Pray to James Oliver, October 20, 1675, MHSC, 5th ser., 1 (1871): 105. For more Indian attacks on cattle see Anderson, “King Philip’s Herds,” 622-23.

  106Randolph, “Short Narrative,” 266.

  107Mather, Brief History, 132.

  108See Anderson, “King Philip’s Herds,” and Cronon, Changes in the Land.

  109Roger Williams to John Leverett, January 14, 1676.

  Chapter 4 • WHERE IS YOUR O GOD?

  1Rowlandson, Soveraignty, 353. For a very similar ceremony to resolve to go to war see Church, Entertaining History, 91-92; and for a powwaw predicting a storm see “Narrative of the Captivity of Quentin Stockwell” in Samuel Gardner Drake, ed., Tragedies of the Wilderness (Boston, 1846), 64. On the role of powwaws and other religious practitioners see Kathleen J. Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 1300-1630 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 200-216.

  2Rowlandson, Soveraignty, 354.

  3On manitou and the Algonquian spirit world see Bragdon, Native People, 184-87.

  4Samuel Green, ed., Diary of Increase Mather, March 1673-December 1676 (Cambridge, Mass.: John Wilson & Son, 1900), 26, 28; see also Mather, Brief History, 116.

  5See Douglas Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1958; reprint, East Orleans, Mass.: Parnassus Imprints, 1992), 172—75. See also Saltonstall, New and Further Narrative, 92-94.

  6True Account, 2.

  7Increase Mather, The Day of Trouble is Near (Cambridge, 1674), 6. John Kingsley to the Connecticut War Council, May 5, 1676, CCR 2:445. On the colonists’ need to interpret the war see Michael J. Puglisi, Puritans Besieged: The Legacies of King Philip’s War in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991), 14. Much of the colonists’ providential interpretation of the war must be seen as part of a broader rhetoric of jeremiads; see Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978).

  8John Eliot to John Winthrop, Jr., July 24, 1675, MHSC, 5th ser., 1 (1871): 424. Walker, “Captan Perse,” 87, 93.

  9See Jon Butler, “Magic, Astrology, and the Early American Religious Heritage, 1600-1760,” AHR 84 (1979): 317-46; and David Hall, Words of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 76-94.

  10Mary Pray to James Oliver, October 20, 1675, MHSC, 5th ser., 1 (1871): 105.

  11John Josselyn, An Account of Two Voyages to New-England, Made during the Years 1638, 1663 (London, 1675; reprint, Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1988), 125.

  12As, for instance, when Edward Wharton said the Indians had made of the English settlements “a burdensome and menstruous cloth” that, having fouled, they might now cast out of the land (New-England’s Present Sufferings, 7).

  13“The bleeding body signifies as a shameful token of uncontrol, as a failure of physical self-mastery particularly associated with woman in her monthly courses’” (Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993], 92).

  14“Some of the Ancient Writers have dignified the frame of Man’s body with the name and title of The Book of God” (Helkiah Crooke, Micropocosmographia: A Description of the Body of Man [London, 1651], 11).

  15Ambrose Pare, The Works of Ambrose Pare (London, 1649), 254.

  16Mather, Exhortation, 172. Or again, “We have been brought into such a bleeding state,” Mather declared, “to make a right improvement of this dreadful Dispensation” (170).

  17John Kingsley to the Connecticut War Council, May 5, 1676. Roger Williams to John Leverett, October 11, 1675, PCR 10:453-55. John Pynchon
to John Leverett and the Assistants, October 8, 1675, The Pynchon Papers, ed. Carl Bridenbaugh and Juliette Tomlinson (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1985), 1:157-60.

  18Saltonstall, Present State, 44.

  19Hubbard, Narrative, 1:48-49. For more on Passaconaway see Gookin, “Historical Account,” 463.

  20Quoted in William Simmons, Spirit of the New England Tribes: Indian History and Folklore, 1620-1984 (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1986), 38. See also Daniel Gookin, “Historical Collections of the Indians in New England [1674],” MHSC, 1st ser., 1 (1792): 154.

  21Walker, “Captan Perse,” 84. Walker also expressed some of the greatest fury against what he believed to be the Indians’ basic evil:

  As a corupt tre brings forth Evill fruigh[ts] & a corupt ffountayne corupt & noysom stre[ams] So doath owr hethen Enimis being Corupt in th[e] ffountayne & rote of the mater streme forth Poysned waters of death as Cayne the first Murtherer, as Nero, Diocletian, & Domitio, Thos Hethen murthring Emperours that wear su[ch] Monsters of nature whos mad rage agaynst the Christians as out of Hell fomd out ther veno[m] (ibid.).

  22C. Mather, Magnalia 2:479-80. On the Puritans’ theory of a “Satan-Indian alliance” see Steven D. Neuwirth, “The Images of Place: Puritans, Indians, and the Religious Significance of the New England Frontier,” American Art Journal 18 (1986): 47-51.

  23Laws & Ordinancies of Warre, Pass’d by the General Court of the Massachusets (Cambridge, 1675), 32.

  24Mather, Brief History, 58, 92, 119-20, 157-62.