Replies

Increased contact between Indians and whites bred increased suspicion and distrust on both sides. Repeatedly during the late 1660s and early 1670s, the Plymouth magistrates--often the victims of their own paranoia and gullibility--suspected that King Philip was plotting with the French in Canada or the Dutch in New Netherlands to attack the settlements of New England. Philip denied any involvement with the French or Dutch, but he failed to convince the Plymouth officials of his innocence. In 1671, after the colonists' suspicions became a conviction that Philip was planning to attack their towns, they forced him to sign a new treaty that pledged his friendship to them. They also extracted a promise to pay them an annual tribute of 100 pounds sterling and to surrender his warriors' muskets to the Plymouth authorities. Not all of Philip's men gave up their guns, however, and the Plymouth officials saw the lack of total compliance as another threat of war. On September 29, 1671, King Philip signed yet another treaty with the whites that brought about what he had been trying to avoid all along: the subjugation of his people under the laws of Plymouth colony and the English king.

Philip did not seem to take the agreement seriously. He held the colonial authorities in utter contempt and complained on one occasion that the Plymouth magistrates did not hold the highest station in their government. If they wanted him to obey them, they should send their king to negotiate with him, not their governors. "Your governor is but a subject," he said. "I shall treat only with my brother, King Charles [II] of England. When he comes, I am ready."

It is nearly impossible to know what Philip was planning in the mid-1670s as he and the English veered closer and closer to war. A reconsideration of the scarce available evidence suggests that Philip never did develop an overall policy toward the English, or a grand design for a conspiracy against them; however, he may have hoped on more than one occasion to rid himself of his white neighbors by attacking their settlements, or finding allies who could help him subvert the colonists' rising dominance. Styled "king" by the English, Philip actually lacked the sweeping political authority over his own people attributed to him by ethnocentric whites who assumed that the governmental structure of Indian tribes resembled the English monarchy. Rivalries with other Algonquian tribes--and the success of the English policy of divide and conquer--precluded any military coalition among the Wampanoags and their Indian neighbors.

Whether or not King Philip was conspiring with other Indians to wipe out the English, the white authorities certainly thought he was. So did some Indians. John Sassamon, an Indian who had served for a time as Philip's aide and translator, believed the Wampanoag sachem was indeed planning a pan-Indian conspiracy against the English. A convert to Christianity who had studied for a time at the Indian school at Harvard College, Sassamon lived for many years among the whites in Massachusetts, but in the 1660s he abandoned the English and joined Philip's band at Montaup. Later, Sassamon, who was described by another Indian as "a very cunning and plausible Indian, well skilled in the English Language," lived with a community of Christian Indians in Natick and eventually became an Indian preacher.

In late January 1675, Sassamon, saying he feared for his own life, told Governor Josiah Winslow of Plymouth that King Philip was hatching a plot against the English. Despite all their earlier suspicions about Philip, Winslow and the other Plymouth officials refused to take Sassamon seriously--until they found his body beneath the ice in a pond. An Indian witness claimed that he had seen three Wampanoags murder Sassamon and throw his body into the water. Quickly the Plymouth authorities rounded up the suspects--all of whom belonged to Philip's band--and took them into custody. With great speed, the three Indians were tried, found guilty of murder and sentenced to be hanged. On June 8, 1675, two of the Indians were executed. But when the rope around the neck of the third man broke, allowing him for the moment to escape death, he confessed to Sassamon's murder and declared that Philip had masterminded the crime. The condemned man's confession did him no good; within a month he was executed by a Plymouth firing squad.

When word of the executions reached King Philip, he ordered his tribe to prepare for war. The Wampanoags sent their women and children to safety across Narragansett Bay and gathered their men together for war dances. Deputy Governor John Easton of Rhode Island visited Philip and tried to negotiate a peaceful settlement between Plymouth and the Indians. Even Plymouth's Governor Winslow sent letters of peace and friendship to the Wampanoags. For about a week there was a possibility that the crisis would pass without bloodshed.

Then the storm broke. On June 18, several Wampanoags raided a few deserted houses in the English settlement of Swansea, just north of Montaup. Two days later, more Indians returned to the settlement, entered the abandoned houses and set fire to two of them. Meanwhile, the Swansea settlers took refuge in fortified garrison houses and sent a messenger to Plymouth asking for military assistance. On June 23, a young English boy shot and killed an Indian who was looting his house--the first bloodshed in what was to become New England's most devastating war.

No one seemed able to control events, least of all King Philip. If his plan was to fight the English rather than submit to their ways, his military strategy revealed an utter lack of careful thought or purposeful design. On June 24, the Indians attacked Swansea in force, killing a total of 11 white settlers (including the boy who had fired the war's first shot) and wounding many others. Yet the approach of militia troops from Plymouth made it apparent that Philip could not remain in Swansea or even in Montaup.

Goffe Rallying the Men of Hadley [in Defense of Indian Attack during King Philip's War, Hadley, Mass., 1675-76]

Fleeing Montaup, King Philip led his warriors east to the Pocasset country. A small group of white soldiers, commanded by militia Captains Benjamin Church and Matthew Fuller, tried to surprise Philip and his Wampanoags at Pocasset, but the Indians fled before the colonial troops could attack. Later, Church's company was ambushed in a fierce attack by Philip's Indians, who pushed the soldiers back to the Pocasset shore. Pinned down at the beach, Church and his men finally escaped when some Rhode Island patrol boats rescued them in the nick of time. Church later thanked "the glory of God and his protecting Providence" for helping to effect their narrow escape.

While soldiers from Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay assembled near Swansea and organized themselves into an army, Philip and his small force struck effectively at nearby undefended white settlements. During early July, Philip's warriors attacked the towns of Taunton, Rehoboth, Middleborough and Dartmouth, killing settlers and burning houses. Stealth and speed became Philip's greatest weapons, causing the English to live in constant fear of surprise attacks. Every noise in the forest sounded like the footsteps of moccasins or the echoes of war whoops.

On July 19, Church and his men, hoping once more to trap King Philip, returned to the swamps of Pocasset and fought a desperate battle with the Indians. The English suffered many casualties in the fight and withdrew, leaving behind seven or eight of their dead. After regrouping, Church and his men tried to surround the marshlands and force Philip to surrender. Instead, Philip and his Indians slipped through the swamp and disappeared into thick woods, leaving no trace. One English soldier observed that fighting in muddy swamps and tangled forests made victory for the whites nearly impossible. It was, he said, "dangerous…to fight in such dismal woods," where the leaves muffled movements, "thick boughs" pinioned arms, and roots shackled feet and legs. "It is ill fighting with a wild Beast in his own Den," he complained.

Philip's escape from the clutches of Church and the colonial militia meant that the war would no longer be fought simply within the relatively small area around Mount Hope, Swansea and Pocasset. The conflict now burst out into the open country of New England, and the spread of its flames could not be contained. As Indian attacks multiplied throughout southern New England during the summer of 1675, white settlers believed that King Philip had taken supreme command of a large army of Indian allies, although such was not the case. At best Philip led a war party of some 300 Indians, most of whom were Wampanoags or members of other bands residing in the vicinity of Montaup.

At the end of July, Philip took his warriors out of Wampanoag territory to link up with the Nipmucks of central Massachusetts. No one knows precisely what he did or where he went for the next several weeks. Throughout August, reports came into Plymouth and Boston that he was spotted in Massachusetts, or seen in Connecticut, but most of the reports were unconfirmed or vague in their details. Actually Philip seemed to be everywhere at once, or nowhere at all.

Meanwhile, the frontier exploded from Connecticut to Maine with one Indian attack after another. The Narragansetts, who at first declared Philip their enemy, eventually allied with him as the fighting continued during the summer of 1675. But not all New England Indians rose up against the whites. The Niantics of southern Rhode Island, the Mohegans and Pequots of Connecticut, and several other smaller tribes throughout southern New England served with the English as scouts and warriors against Philip's forces, or maintained a nominal neutrality during the conflict.

English towns, however, remained vulnerable to surprise attacks, and one settlement after another was abandoned in the wake of devastating Indian assaults that took place from the summer to the late autumn of 1675. Taken off guard by the Indian uprising, and poorly prepared to fight a major war of any kind, the New England colonists seemed unable to win any decisive victory against their Indian enemies.

That situation changed in December when a combined English force invaded the territory of the Narragansetts in southern Rhode Island in hopes of capturing Philip at an Indian fortress in the Great Swamp. On December 19, the soldiers assaulted the palisaded fort at a weak, unfinished corner, but Indian resistance was strong and effective. Impetuously, the English troops decided to fire the fort; in doing so, they burned the Indians' supply of food, which the soldiers themselves needed for their return march out of the swamp.

The Narragansetts fled the fort, leaving behind about 100 dead and 50 wounded warriors, and perhaps as many as 1,000 casualties among their women and children. The English lost 70 dead and about 150 wounded, many of whom later died in the winter cold from their wounds. The whites had at last won a victory, but at a very high cost. More important, the English troops had failed to capture King Philip. Earlier intelligence reports had proven false; he was not in the fort at the time of the attack.

Additional Sources:

www.csulb.edu
www.sailsinc.org
www.bluemarblemaps.com
www.westbrookfield.org
freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com
www.militaryhistoryonline.com
go.hrw.com/ndNSAPI.nd/ gohrw_rls1
www.learner.org

On This Day In History

Birthdates which occurred on May 19:
1469 Giovanni della Robbia Italian sculptor
1611 Innocent XI [Benedetto Odescalchi] Italy, 240th Roman Catholic Pope (1676-89)
1795 Johns Hopkins philanthropist, founded Johns Hopkins University
1808 Samuel Jameson Gholson Brigadier General (Confederate Army), died in 1883
1812 Felix Kirk Zollicoffer Brigadier General (Confederate Army), died in 1862
1815 John Gross Barnard Brevet Major General (Union Army), died in 1882
1828 Adin Ballou Underwood Brevet Major General (Union volunteers)
1858 Roland Napoleon Bonaparte French officer/traveller (Surinam)
1859 Nellie Melba [Heal Mitchell] Australian soprano (Peach Melba)
1860 Victor E Orlando Italy's premier (1917-19)

1890 Ho Chi Minh leader of Vietnam// Communist Thug (1946, 1969)

1915 Pol Pot dictator/mass murderer

1925 Malcolm X [Little] Omaha NE, assassinated leader of black muslims
1928 Anthony C B Chapman England, sports car builder/autoracer (Formula 1)
1929 Harvey Cox US theologist (Secular City)
1934 James Charles Lehrer Wichita KS, news anchor (McNeil-Lehrer Report)
1935 David Hartman Pawtucket RI, TV personality (Good Morning America)
1939 Nancy Kwan Hong Kong, actress (Flower Drum Song, World of Suzie Wong)
1940 Frank Lorenzo airline executive (Continental, Texas Air, Eastern)
1941 Jimmy Hoffa Jr son of Jimmy Hoffa/Teamster union leader
1941 Nora Ephron New York NY, novelist/screenwriter/director (Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, Michael, Heartburn)
1945 Peter Townshend England, rock guitarist/vocalist/composer (The Who-Tommy)
1946 Phillip Rudd Melbourne Australia, rock drummer (AC/DC-Rock 'n Roll Damnation)
1947 Jerry Hyman Brooklyn NY, rock singer/trombonist (Blood Sweat & Tears)
1948 Grace Jones [Mendoza] Spanishtown Jamaica, singer/actress(?) (Vamp)
1948 Jean-Pierre Haignere France, cosmonaut (Soyuz TM-17)
1948 Tom Scott Los Angeles CA, saxophonist/bandleader (Pat Sajak Show)
1949 Dusty Hill rocker (ZZ Top)
1951 Joey Ramone [Jeffrey Hyman] Forest Hills NY, punk rocker (Ramones-Baby I Love You)
1955 Pierre J Thuot Groton CT, Lieutenant Commander USN/astronaut (STS 36, 49, 62)
1959 Nicole Brown Simpson Frankford Germany, Mrs OJ Simpson (murdered in 1994)
1968 Jeanne Basone Brubank CA, wrestler (Hollywood-GLOW)
1976 Kevin Garnett NBA forward/MVP (Minnesota Timberwolves)

Deaths which occurred on May 19:
0804 Alcuin of York English scholar, dies in Tours France at 69
0988 Dunstan[us] English archbishop of Canterbury, dies
1296 Celestine V [Pietro del Murrone] Pope (1294), dies
1536 Anne Boleyn Queen of England/wife of Henry VIII, beheaded
1536 Lord Rochford English brother of Anna Boleyn, beheaded
1786 John Stanley composer, dies at 74
1795 Josiah Bartlett US physician/judge (signed Declaration of Independence), dies at 65
1864 Nathaniel Hawthorne US, writer (Scarlet Letter), dies
1895 José J Marti y Perez Spanish/Cuban poet (Versos sencillos), dies
1928 Henry Franklin Belknap Gilbert composer, dies at 59
1928 Max Scheler German philosopher, dies at 53
1935 Thomas E Lawrence (of Arabia) dies in a motorcycle crash
1954 Charles Edward Ives US composer(?) (Unanswered Question), dies at 79
1958 Ronald Colman British actor/heartthrob (Prisoner of Zenda), dies at 67
1966 Tortoise reportedly given to Tonga's king by Captain Cook (1773), dies
1969 Coleman Hawkins US jazz musician/composer, dies
1971 Ogden Nash poet/TV panelist (Masquerade Party), dies at 68
1988 Virginia Farmer actresss (Cyrano de Bergerac), dies at 90
1991 Douglas L Mays cartoonist (Punch), dies
1994 Henry Morgan TV panalist (To Tell the Truth), dies of cancer at 74
1994 Jacqueline [Lee Bouvier] Kennedy Onassis 1st lady (1961-63), dies of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at 64
1994 Luis Ocana Span cyclist (Tour de France 1973), commits suicide at 48
1996 Johnny "Guitar" Watson musician, dies at 61
1996 Margaret Rawlings actress (Roman Holiday), dies at 89
1997 Millie dog of President Bush (Millie's Book), dies at 12
2004 Jack Eckerd (91), founder of the Eckerd drug store chain

GWOT Casualties

Iraq
19-May-2003 7 | US: 6 | UK: 1 | Other: 0
US 1st Lieutenant Timothy Louis Ryan Al Hillah (near) Non-hostile - helicopter crash
US Staff Sergeant Aaron Dean White Al Hillah (near) Non-hostile - helicopter crash
US Sergeant Kirk Allen Straseskie Al Hillah (near) Non-hostile - drowning
US Lance Corporal Jason William Moore Al Hillah (near) Non-hostile - helicopter crash
US Lieutenant Colonel Dominic Rocco Baragona Safwan (near) Non-hostile - vehicle accident
US Captain Andrew David LaMont Al Hillah (near) Non-hostile - helicopter crash
UK Corporal David Shepherd Not reported Non-hostile - natural causes

19-May-2004 1 | US: 1 | UK: 0 | Other: 0
US Specialist Michael C. Campbell Samarra (near) Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack

Afghanistan
05/19/02 Vance Jr., Gene A. Sgt. 38 Army Afghanistan

http://icasualties.org/oif/
Data research by Pat Kneisler
Designed and maintained by Michael White

On this day...
0715 St Gregory II begins his reign as Catholic Pope
1506 Columbus selects his son Diego as sole heir
1515 George van Saksen-Meissen sells Friesland for 100,000 gold guilders to arch duke Charles
1568 English queen Elizabeth I arrests Scottish queen Mary
1571 Miguel Lopez de Lagazpi founded Manilla in the Phillipines
1585 Spain confisquates English ships
1588 Spanish Armada sets sail for Lisbon, bound to England
1635 France declares war on Spain
1643 Battle at Rocroi/Allersheim: French army destroys Spanish army
1643 Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut & New Harbor form United Colonies of New England
1662 Uniformity Act of England goes into effect
1749 George II grants charter to Ohio Company to settle Ohio Valley
1780 About midday, near-total darkness descends on much of New England to this day its cause is still unexplained
1792 Russian army enters Poland
1796 Game protection law restricts encroachment on Indian hunting grounds (That worked out real good)
1848 México gives Texas to US, ending the war
1856 Senator Charles Sumner, Massachusetts, speaks out against slavery
1857 William Francis Channing & Moses G Farmer patents electric fire alarm
1862 Homestead Act becomes law provides cheap land for settlement of West
1863 Siege of Vicksburg, investment of city complete
1864 Battle of Port Walthall Junction VA (Bermuda Hundred)
1864 Last engagement in series of battles known as Spotsylvania
1864 Skirmish at Cassville GA
1884 Ringling Brothers circus premieres
1885 1st mass production of shoes (Jan Matzeliger in Lynn MA)
1885 German chancellor Bismarck takes possession of Cameroon & Togoland
1891 Rice Institute, which became Rice University, is chartered
1892 Charles Brady King invents pneumatic hammer
1892 National Society of Colonial Dames of America founded
1893 Heavy rain washes "quick clay" into a deep valley, kills 111 (Norway)
1896 1st auto (Benz) to arrive in Netherlands
1898 Post Office authorizes use of postcards
1900 Great Britain annexes Tonga archipelago
1902 Great Britain & Boers resume peace talks in Pretoria
1905 Italian King Victor Emmanuel & Swiss President open world's longest railroad tunnel (Simplon) links Iselle Italy & Brig Switzerland
1905 Tom Jenkins beats Frank Gotcha for heavyweight wrestling champion
1906 Federated Boys' Club (Boys' Club of America) organizes
1910 Cleveland Indian Cy Young gets his 500th win, beats Washington 5-4 in 11 innings
1911 Philadelphia Athletics are 12½ games back in American League, & win the World Series
1912 American League president Ban Johnson tells Tigers if they continue protest of Ty Cobb's suspension, they will be banned from baseball
1913 Webb Alien Land-Holding Bill passes, forbidding Japanese from owning land
1916 Escadrille Américaine (Lafayette) transfered to Verdun
1921 Congress sharply curbs immigration, setting a national quota system
1923 KPD (communist revolts) in German Ruhr cities occupied by Allies
1926 French air force bombs Damascus Syria
1928 "Firedamp" explodes in Mather PA coal mine killing 195 of 273 miners
1928 51 frogs enter 1st annual "Frog Jumping Jubilee" (Angel's Camp CA)
1929 Cloudburst causes stampede in Yankee Stadium; 2 people crushed to death
1929 General Feng Yu-Xiang of China declares war on Chiang Kai-Shek Government
1930 White woman win voting rights in South-Africa
1934 Sherlock Holmes crossword puzzle in "Saturday Review of Literature"; Males who solved puzzle become members of Baker Street Irregulars
1935 NFL adopts an annual college draft to begin in 1936
1939 Churchill signs British-Russian anti-Nazi pact
1940 French counter attack at Péronne under General De Gaulle
1941 German occupiers in Holland forbid bicycle taxis
1941 New Nazi battleship Bismarck leaves Gdynia, Poland
1943 Berlin is declared "Judenrien" (free of Jews)
1944 240 gypsies transported to Auschwitz from Westerbork Netherlands
1944 German defense line in Italy collapsed
1951 UN begins counter offensive in Korea
1953 Nuclear explosion in Nevada (fall-out in St George UT)
1954 Postmaster General Summerfield approves CIA mail-opening project
1958 "South Pacific" soundtrack album goes to #1 & stays #1 for 31 weeks
1958 US & Canada form North American Air Defense Command (NORAD)
1959 Ho Chi Minh Trail begins as The Peoples’ Army of Vietnam’s Military Transportation Group 559
1960 Alan Freed & eight other DJs accused of taking radio payola
1960 Belgian parliament requires rest day for self employed
1960 Juan Marichal debuts as San Fransisco Giant pitcher, beats Phillies on 1 hitter
1960 USAF Major Robert M White takes X-15 to Mach 6
1962 Stan Musial breaks Honus Wagner's National League hit record with 3,431
1962 US performs nuclear test at Christmas Island (atmospheric)
1964 US diplomats find at least 40 secret microphones in the Moscow embassy
1965 Patricia R Harris named 1st US black female ambassador (Luxembourg)
1967 US bombs Hanoi
1967 USSR ratifies treaty with England & US banning nuclear weapons in space
1971 USSR launches Mars 2, 1st spacecraft to crash land on Mars
1976 Gold ownership legalized in Australia
1976 Senate establishes permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (still haven't found any)
1977 "Smokey & the Bandit" premieres
1979 "In The Navy" by Village People hits #3
1981 Pirate Jim Bibby gives up a leadoff single to Brave Terry Harper, then retires the next 27 batters
1982 Sophia Loren jailed in Naples for tax evasion
1983 NASA launches Intelsat V
1983 Weird Al Yankovic gives live performance at Wax Museum in Washington DC
1984 Pat LaFontaine scores 2 goals within 22 seconds in an NHL playoff game (NHL, remember them?)
1984 STS 41-D vehicle moves to launch pad
1988 Carlos Lehder Rivas, of Colombia's Medellín drug cartel, is convicted in Florida for smuggling more than 3 tons of cocaine into US
1989 Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) last appearance on Dallas
1991 Willy T Ribbs becomes 1st black driver to make Indianapolis 500
1992 27th Amendment ratified, prohibits Congress from raising its salary
1992 Amy Fisher shoots Mary Jo Buttafuoco in Massapequa Long Island New York
1992 Englishman Dave Gauder, 224 lbs, pulls 196 ton jumbo jet, 3 inches
1992 Ric Flair wins NWA wrestling title
1992 Vice President Dan Quayle sites Murphy Brown as a poor example of family values
1993 The White House set off a political storm by abruptly firing the entire staff of its travel office; five of seven staffers were later reinstated and assigned other duties.
1993 Boeing 727 crashes into mountain at Medellín Colombia, kills 132
1994 Tennis star Jennifer Capriati (18), checks into a drug rehab center
1995 World's youngest doctor, Balamurali Ambati, 17, graduates Mount Sinai
1996 STS 77 (Endeavour 11), launches into orbit
1998 Justice Department sues Microsoft
1999 "Star Wars: Episode One -- The Phantom Menace" opens
2002 Vietnam claimed almost 100% turnout in the mandatory single party national elections. All 759 candidates were approved by the Fatherland Front
2161 8 of 9 planets aligned on same side of sun

Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"

Finland : Flag Day of the Army
Turkey : Youth & Sports Day
Vietnam : Ho Chi Minh's Birthday (1890)
National : Bike to Work Week (Day 4)
National : Pickle Week (Day 4)
US : Boy's Club Day
US : Frog Jumping Day (Not sure if this means we are supposed to jump on frogs (why someone would want to do this I can't say), or if frogs are allowed to jump today but not any other day, and if so how do we stop them)
National Mime Month

Religious Observances
Christian : St Ives
Anglican, Lutheran : Commemoration of St Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury
Roman Catholic : Commemoration of St Peter Celestine, pope
St Yvo of Kermartin Feast day

Religious History
1662 England's King Charles II approved a bill requiring all ministers to assent publicly to the Anglican "Book of Common Prayer."
1740 English revivalist George Whitefield wrote in a letter: 'True faith is not merely in the head, but in the heart.'
1885 The complete Old and New Testament English Revised Version (EV or ERV) of the Bible was first published in England. After a promised 20-year wait, U.S. scholars on the ERV committee published an "Americanized" edition in 1905, known afterward as the American Standard Version (ASV) of the Bible.
1939 Death of Howard B. Grose, 88, U.S. Baptist leader and author of the hymn, "Give of Your Best to the Master." At one time president of South Dakota State University, Grose also worked with American Baptist publications and home missions.
1971 "Godspell" first opened at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York City. The musical by Stephen Schwartz is based on the New Testament Gospel of Matthew, and is still produced by secular and religious theater groups today.

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.

Thought for the day :
"You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do."