Conceived in Liberty (61 page)

Since the massacre of the Pequots in 1637, there had been no open warfare between whites and Indians in New England. The expansion of the white settlers encroached seriously on ancient Indian lands, hunting grounds, and fisheries. Generally, the land was sold voluntarily by the Indians, but, as previously noted, the Indians had no firm concept of private property in land, as landed property was held communally and inalienably by the tribe. The Indians therefore regarded the purchases as a form of lease and thus could not help being hostile to the whites’ clearing the forests for agricultural purposes.
More
justifiable was the Indian resentment at the white government’s arrogant insistence on imposing white colonial laws and sovereignty over the Indians. Indians were hauled into white courts to settle disputes (even all-Indian disputes), and for failing to pay tribute and to obey such rigorous white laws—obviously incomprehensible to the Indians—as observing the Sabbath, and not blaspheming. Blasphemy, in fact, was punishable by death. And particularly significant was the New Englanders’ penchant for confiscating Indian land as punishment for Indian infractions. Furthermore, the Narragansett Indians, who had been induced by Roger Williams to remain friendly during the Pequot War, were continually threatened by the Atherton Company’s pressure for their lands. The murder of the Narragansett chief Miantonomo had, moreover, gone unavenged, because the Mohegan chief Uncas, who had done the deed with the connivance of Massachusetts Bay, remained under white protection. In addition, the Mohegans, Shawutucks, and Cowesits, Indians in alliance with the whites, were protected by the white governments though they repeatedly pillaged and murdered the Narragansett and Nipmuc Indians of southern New England.

In 1660 the venerable Indian chief Massasoit died. As chief of the Wampanoags of western Plymouth, on the eastern shores of Narragansett Bay, Massasoit had saved the original Pilgrims from starvation, and had sheltered Roger Williams in his lonely trek to Narragansett Bay. He was now succeeded by his elder son, Wamsutta, or Alexander. At this point, Plymouth began a series of outrageous harassments of the Wampanoags, who had by this time been driven into the Mt. Hope Peninsula, on Narragansett Bay, now the site of Bristol, Rhode Island. On mere rumor, and with no real evidence, Plymouth ordered Alexander into the General Court in 1662 to defend himself against the absurdly vague charge of plotting mischief. Having successfully defended himself against this accusation, Alexander unfortunately died, giving rise to suspicion among some Indians that he had been poisoned by the whites. Shortly afterward, Alexander’s successor, his brother Metacom (or Philip), was similarly hauled into court to defend himself against similar rumor-based charges. He too was found innocent.

In 1671 vague rumors about Philip’s unfriendliness toward the whites were again heard, and at this time the Plymouth magistrates wanted to adopt the hard-line policy of striking hard and destroying the Wampanoags. The other colonies held Plymouth back, however, and persuaded the colony to agree to a meeting in April of Philip and several leading Massachusetts citizens, as well as Plymouth officials, at Taunton. Philip, incidentally, insisted that Roger Williams be present as guarantee of fair treatment, and this request was granted.

At Taunton the Plymouth authorities made the arrogant demand that the Wampanoags render themselves defenseless by surrendering all their arms to Plymouth—and this despite the fact that no evidence against Philip was ever revealed. Seventy guns were surrendered. In addition to this humiliation, Philip and several sachems were again forced to appear in September, and gratuitously subjected to the insulting warning that he must “amend his ways if he expected peace; and that, if he went on in his refractory way, he must expect to smart for it.” The Indians again submitted and consented to pay a yearly tribute of five wolves’ heads to the colony.

Three years later, the harassment by Plymouth of the Wampanoags came to a climax. Causamon, a Christian or “praying” Indian, who had once been employed by Philip as a private secretary, now informed Plymouth of suspicious goings-on and possible conspiracies of some kind at Mt. Hope. Once again, Plymouth proposed to haul Philip into General Court to answer privately disclosed rumors against him. This time Philip heard of the proceedings, and in March 1675 came of his own accord to the court to defend himself. The authorities admitted they had no evidence of Philip’s guilt, but were displeased that not all the Wampanoags’ arms had been surrendered. They again harried Philip with the warning that if they heard any further rumors (even unproven ones), they would insist on confiscating all of the Wampanoags’ arms. Shortly after Philip left Plymouth, the informer Causamon was found murdered. Before a jury composed of whites and Indians,
three Wampanoags were tried, convicted, and executed for the murder, albeit on the flimsy evidence of only one Indian eyewitness. The execution was carried out despite Roger Williams’ warning of the untrustworthiness of such Indian testimony. Here was the final straw in the accumulation of humiliations and provocations heaped upon Philip, capped by a further warning from Plymouth that Philip send away many Indians of other tribes who had now come to Mt. Hope.

The provocations had gone far enough. But five eminent Quakers, leaders of Rhode Island, headed by the deputy governor John Easton, now tried to persuade Philip, in a final peace conference, to agree to impartial arbitration. Philip was willing to arbitrate, but was also convinced that the other colonies would never agree. A few days later, on June 20, the Wampanoags retaliated for the execution with a raid on the neighboring town of Swansea, burning a couple of houses. In a few days, the raids on Swansea escalated into a few killings. King Philip’s War had now begun. A joint force from Plymouth and Boston now captured Mt. Hope, but the Indians managed to escape from the peninsula.

Philip proceeded to burn and ravage several Plymouth towns: Dartmouth, Middleborough, and Taunton. In the middle of July the war took a more ominous turn. The Nipmuc Indians in Massachusetts entered the war and ravaged the Massachusetts towns of Menlen and Brookfield; they successfully ambushed an armed troop sent for a peace parley. All-out war now commenced. Town after town was devastated. The northern Connecticut Valley towns of Northfield and Deerfield in Massachusetts had to be abandoned. The temporarily reactivated New England Confederation met on September 9 and decided on a united and intense war effort. The three colonies agreed to contribute 1,000 armed men to the united force, and a quota was assigned to each colony: Massachusetts would supply 527 men; Connecticut, 315; and Plymouth, which had started it all, 158. Military conscription reached every male between sixteen and sixty. Massachusetts decreed death for any refusal to serve, and Connecticut prohibited the emigration of any eligible person. The following spring Massachusetts also forced its citizens into a farm-labor draft; officials were authorized “to impress men for the... carrying on of the husbandry of such persons as were called off from the same into the service, who had not sufficient help of their own left at home to manage the same.” Any labor conscript who failed to report was fined, and if this failure was “accompanied with refractoriness... or contempt upon authority,” then the malefactor was liable to the death penalty. All men driven from their homes by the Indians were to be conscripted automatically for military duty in the places of their refuge. All trade with the Indians, not on government account, was forbidden on penalty of confiscation of all the trader’s property. And, finally, no person in Massachusetts was to leave the town of his residence without getting the permission of the local military committee. It would not be surprising if some of the more reflective citizens of Massachusetts began to wonder
who
their enemy was, the Indians or their own government.

The New England Confederation, in the summer of 1675, faced the question: Should it limit the war to its existing confines, or should it use the war as a
point d’appui
for the virtual extermination of the Indians of New England? Bearing in mind the usual white attitude toward the Indians, we are not surprised that New England chose the latter alternative. The particular problem was the land-rich Narragansetts, by far the most powerful of the New England Indians. Despite harassment, the traditionally friendly Narragansetts showed no sign of joining Philip’s antiwhite crusade. And even the almost fanatically pro-Puritan historian of New England, John Palfrey, admits that the confederation found not one scintilla of evidence of any sort of conspiracy between Philip and the other warring Indian tribes, let alone the peaceful Narragansetts.

Provocation against the Narragansetts had been particularly virulent in early 1675. The son of Uncas, the white-protected Mohegan chieftain, murdered a relative of the Narragansett chief Canonchet. Yet the whites refused to take any action to punish the murderers. They refused, as well, to take the case to an impartial justice, and to permit any armed action against Uncas—thereby closing every door of redress to the Narragansetts. In July 1675, soon after Philip launched his attack, the confederation commissioners of Massachusetts and Connecticut sent a strong military force to negotiate a new treaty of friendship with the Narragansetts. By mid-July the Narragansetts had signed a treaty, agreeing not to permit Wampanoag invasion of their land, and to turn over to the whites any Wampanoag refugees. By October it was learned that the Narragansetts had, instead, harbored some Indian refugees. Though a breach of the treaty, the Narragansett decision to give haven to refugees of war was hardly a
casus belli:
indeed, offering asylum to refugees from war is a simple humanitarian act. But the commissioners of the New England Confederation did not react this way. Instead, they delivered to the Narragansetts an ultimatum that if the refugees were not delivered up, the uttermost severities of war would be visited upon them. The confederation promptly raised another 1,000 men under the command of Plymouth’s Governor Winslow and marched in a war of aggression against the Narragansetts.

This action triggered a war hysteria that swept Boston and the rest of New England. Even some harmless “praying Indians” living near Boston were set upon and murdered by white mobs. The highly respected Daniel Gookin, who was friend and superintendent of the Christian Indians, was told that it would not be safe for him to appear on the streets of Boston. In a final flurry, Massachusetts again persecuted the Quakers. Some Puritans disseminated the notion that the Indian war was God’s punishment of New England for relaxing its persecution of the “idolatrous Quakers.” Other Puritans, characteristically, theorized that God was punishing New England for the new fashions in wigs and fancy hairdos.

Winslow’s march into the Narrangansett Country was made without the consent, and against the will, of the government of Rhode Island. Hence the invasion was a flagrant violation of the Rhode Island charter. But the
confederation was heedless of this fact, and heedless also of the devastation that this extension of the war to the Narragansetts would wreak on the Rhode Island settlements. In fact, the Rhode Island government proposed to take the whole dispute to arbitration, and the Narragansetts approved. Implacably hard-line Plymouth refused. The Winslow forces invaded Rhode Island and, by the typically white tactic against the Indians of surprise attack, on December 19 captured the main Narragansett fort at the later site of South Kingstown, Rhode Island. In this terrible “Swamp Fight,” about one thousand Indians were slaughtered, including some three hundred women and children. This was the turning point of the war, as it broke the great Narragansett power.

How had Rhode Island arrived at its peace policy? During the late 1650s and 1660s, the Quakers had made enormous strides in converting a colony already individualistic and libertarian in spirit. In particular, the Quakers were dominant in Newport. In 1672 the increasingly irascible Roger Williams had once more called his old enemy the litigious William Harris, into court. This time the charge was disloyalty and high treason for favoring Connecticut’s claims to the Narragansett lands. At the same time the administration of Governor Benedict Arnold, in league with Williams, passed rigorous measures to suppress agitation against high taxes, largely by the Quakers, and to confiscate the property of disloyal “plotters” against the state. It was clear that Roger Williams had been outstripped as a champion of liberty and freedom of advocacy. The result of Arnold’s despotic act was an alliance between two opposition groups, the Quakers and the Harris forces, which jointly came to power in the Rhode Island elections of May 1672.

The world’s first Quaker government, with Nicholas Easton, now a Quaker, as governor, now embarked on a highly liberal course. Harris was immediately released from prison, and made an assistant of the province. The laws suppressing anti-tax agitators were quickly repealed as an invasion of the “liberties of the people.” And, in an act of August 13, 1673, conscientious objectors were now exempted completely from military service for the first time in America.

The act declared that since Rhode Island already refused to force Quakers or other conscientious objectors to take an oath, “how much more ought such men forbear to compel their equal neighbors, against their consciences, to train to fight and to kill!” In detail this historic act provided: “That no person... that is, or hereafter shall be persuaded in his conscience that he cannot or ought not to train, to learn to fight, nor to war, nor to kill any person or persons, shall at any time be compelled against his judgment and conscience to train, arm, or fight, to kill any person or persons by reason of, or at the command of, any officer of this colony, civil nor military, nor by reason of any by-laws here passed or formerly enacted....”

During the Anglo-Dutch War, however, the Easton administration seriously compromised pacifist Quaker principles, by instructing the magistrates and town military officers to build the colony’s defenses. And after the Dutch recaptured New York, the Quaker-dominated assembly gave authority to the governor to appoint military commanders, and to provide military training for the citizens.