You're welcome. I suspect that we both love history.
I think your one paragraph about quote/unquote Indians is a bit skimpy.
I'm happy to provide some more details. I've been posting about that war off and on for years. The book I cited above, "Plymouth Colony," provides some details of the war that I hadn't see before. (My son just gave me that book for Christmas a month ago.) The book provides the following information that I largely paraphrase or in some cases quote directly:
Three Indians apparently killed another Indian named Sassamon on June 1, 1675. Shortly before this, Sassamon had warned authorities "of a Wampanoag conspiracy to wage a general war." A jury that included colonists and Indians convicted the three, two of whom were then hung. Reports of Indian unrest then followed. Indians looted a colonist's house on June 18 and 19 and on the following day, looted and burned houses near Swansea. "On June 23, a dozen more houses were set on fire."
Also on June 23, an Indian who had been looting houses ran from a house and was shot and killed by a colonist. The next day the Indians retaliated and killed anywhere from 2, 3, or 7 colonists depending on which report is believed. On June 25 a colonist at Fall River was killed by Indians and a number more were killed at Swansea on June 25. On June 30, English troops "found eight more at Mattapoiset, upon whose bodies they [the Indians] exercised more than brutish barbarities, beheading, dismembering, and mangling them..." The English troops took down the heads of eight colonists that had been mounted on poles.
I quote all of the above to offset possible claims that the colonists had started King Philip's War by shooting the Indian that had fled the house above.
The War escalated from there and finally ended with the defeat of the Indians. Not that the colonists were all angels and the Indians all devils. The colonists sold a number of their Indian captives into slavery in the West Indies or placement as servants in colonist homes. Peaceful Indians continued to live in Massachusetts after that. The colonists were particularly brutal to Indians in the Pequot War of 1637 when the colonists surrounded a Pequote village, set it on fire and killed perhaps 400 to 700 Pequots inside the village.
The story of your Scottish ancestor's kidnapping by Indians and later recovery sounded similar to the kidnapping of one of my Texas cousins by Indians in the 1830s or 40s. The Indians later sold my cousin back to his family. By the way, I claim Scottish roots too. My last name is Scottish, and my parental DNA traces back to Scotland. I was also surprised to learn that a very small of my DNA was American Indian. Well, many of the branches of my family moved with the American frontier.
Did this Wigfall fella happen to mention anything about the actual, real live burned-alive "burning of Francis McIntosh? Francis' last words were, "shoot me, please! somebody shoot me, shoot me......"
Not that I know of. Here from Senator Wigfall's speech to the Senate on March 2, 1861 is what he said relating to secession:
"That the people of the North shall consider themselves as more blessed than we, more civilized, and happier, is not a matter at which we would complain at all, if they would only content themselves with believing that to be the fact; but when they come and attempt to propagandize, and insist that we shall be as perfect as they imagine themselves to be, then it is that their good opinion of themselves becomes offensive to us. Let my neighbor believe that his wife is an angel and his children cherubs, I care not, though I may know he is mistaken; but when he comes impertinently poking his nose into my door every morning, and telling me that my wife is a shrew and my children brats, then the neighborhood becomes uncomfortable, and if I cannot remove him, I will remove myself; and if he says to me, "you shall not move, but you shall stay here, and you shall, day after day, hear the demerits of your wife and children discussed," then I begin to feel a little restive, and possibly might assert that great original right of pursuing whatever may conduce to my happiness, though it might be kicking him out of my door. If New England would only be content with the blessings which she imagines she has, we would not disturb her in her happiness."
Wigfall was actually the person who took a small boat over to Fort Sumter during the 1861 bombardment by Confederates and accepted Major Anderson's surrender of the fort. That ended the bombardment.
Wigfall negotiated terms with Anderson and got him to run up the white flag over the fort after Wigfall left, stopping the bombardment. Confederate General Beauregard sent three officers to the fort. They told Anderson they were not authorized to negotiate terms (nor was Wigfall). Then another boat carrying two Confederate officers from Beauregard's staff came, and they were authorized to agree to terms of the surrender. They agreed to Wigfall's terms although they argued for a while about Wigfall's and Anderson's agreement to allow the Union troops to salute their flag. They finally agreed to that.
The Wigfall-Anderson terms stopped the bombardment and thus the possible killing of Union soldiers if the bombardment had continues. No Union troops were killed in the bombardment, although a few were wounded. Unfortunately, however, a canon used in Anderson's salute to the flag exploded killing one of the Union troops.