The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World* (29 page)

On the morning of sunday, June 20, seven or eight Indians approached a man from Kickemuit who had not yet abandoned his home. The Indians asked if they could use his grinding stone to sharpen one of their hatchets. The man told them that since it was the sabbath, “his God would be very angry if he should let them do it.” soon after, the Indians came across an Englishman walking up the road. They stopped him and said “he should not work on his God's Day, and that he should tell no lies.” Intimidated by the Indians, the last residents of Kickemuit left for the shelter of the garrisons. By day's end, two houses had been burned to the ground.

Governor Winslow heard the news that night, and by the morning of Monday, June 21, he had ordered towns across the colony to assemble their militia at Taunton, from where they would be sent to swansea. He also sent a message to officials in Boston, asking for help, but there was no reason to assume that Massachusetts Bay would rush to Plymouth's defense. There were many in that colony who were critical of Plymouth's treatment of the Pokanokets. And for those with long memories, Plymouth had been so slow to come to the Bay Colony's aid during the Pequot War that the Plymouth militia had missed the fighting.

 

◆◆◆ In only a few days' time, companies of militiamen had begun to arrive at Taunton. The elderly James Cudworth was named the army's commander, with Major William Bradford, the fifty-five-year-old son of the former governor, as his second-in-command.

since they'd just arrived on the scene, Cudworth and Bradford were as ignorant as everyone else as to the movements of the Pokanokets. There was one man, however, who had firsthand knowledge of the territory to the south and the Indians surrounding Mount Hope Bay. Just the year before, Benjamin Church, a thirty-three-year-old carpenter, had become the first Englishman to settle in the southeastern tip of Narragansett Bay at a place called sakonnet, home to the female sachem Awashonks and several hundred of her people.

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An engraving of Benjamin Church that appeared in a nineteenth-century edition of his narrative.

Instead of being intimidated by the fact that he was the only Englishman in sakonnet, Church enjoyed the chance to start from scratch. “My head and hands were full about settling a new plantation,” he later remembered.

From the beginning, Church had known that his future at sakonnet depended on a strong relationship with sachem Awashonks, and over the course of the last year, the two had become good friends. In early June, she sent him an urgent message. Philip was about to go to war, and he demanded that the sakonnets join him. Before she made her decision, Awashonks wanted to speak with Church.

Church quickly discovered that six of Philip's warriors had come to sakonnet. Awashonks explained that they had threatened to make the Plymouth authorities turn against her by attacking the English houses and livestock on her side of the river. she would then have no alternative but to join Philip. Church recommended instead that Awashonks ask Plymouth for protection from the Pokanokets. He promised to leave immediately for Plymouth and return as soon as possible with instructions from the governor.

Just to the north of the sakonnets in modern Tiverton, Rhode Island, were the Pocassets, led by another female sachem, Weetamoo. Even though she was Philip's former sister-in-law, the relationship did not necessarily mean she had to join him. Church decided to stop at Pocasset on his way to Winslow's home in Duxbury.

He found her, alone and very upset, on a hill overlooking Mount Hope Bay. she had just returned by canoe from Philip's village. War, Weetamoo feared, was inevitable. Her own warriors “were all gone, against her will, to the dances” at Mount Hope. Church advised her to go immediately to Aquidneck Island, just a short canoe ride away, for her safety. As he had told Awashonks, he promised to return in just a few days with word from Governor Winslow.

But Church never got the chance to make good on his promise. Before he could return to Weetamoo and Awashonks, the fighting had begun.

 

◆◆◆ Church had been in Plymouth speaking with Governor Winslow when the call for the militia had gone out, and he had immediately reported to Taunton. As the army prepared to march to swansea, Major Bradford asked Church to lead the way with a small group of soldiers. Church and his company, which included several “friend Indians,” moved so quickly over the path to swansea that they were able to kill, roast, and eat a deer before the main body of troops caught up with them. Church was already discovering that he enjoyed the life of a soldier. As he later wrote in a book about his experiences during the war, “I was spirited for that work.”

But Church still had much to learn about military tactics. His mission had been to provide protection to the soldiers behind him. By sprinting to swansea, he had left the army open to an Indian ambush. While Church bragged about the speed of his march south, his commanding officers may have begun to realize that this was a soldier who might be too reckless to be trusted.

Over the next few days, more and more soldiers arrived at swansea. In addition to strengthening the Miles garrison, a temporary barricade was built to provide the growing number of soldiers with protection from possible attack. But no direct action was taken against the Indians. since hundreds of Native warriors were said to be with Philip, Cudworth felt that his own force had to match the Indians' numbers before they could march on Mount Hope.

With each passing day, the Indians' taunting of the English increased. Church and his company could hear their whoops and the crackle of gunfire as the Native warriors slaughtered cattle and robbed houses. But so far, no English men or women had been injured. By the morning of Wednesday, June 23, some residents had grown bold enough to return to their houses to retrieve goods and food.

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The Miles garrison in the early twentieth century.

That day, a father and son left the garrison and came upon a group of Indians ransacking several houses. The boy had a musket, and his father urged him to fire on the Indians. One of the Indians fell, then picked himself up and ran away. Later in the day, some Indians approached the garrison and asked why the boy had shot at one of their men. The English responded by asking whether the Indian was dead. When the Indians said yes, the boy snidely replied, “It was no matter.” The soldiers tried to calm the now enraged Indians by saying it was “but an idle lad's word.” But the truth of the matter was that the boy had given the warriors exactly what they wanted: the go-ahead to kill.

Thursday, June 24, proved momentous in the history of Plymouth. Reports differ, but all agree that it was a day of horror and death in swansea. At least ten people, including the boy and his father, were killed by the Indians. some were ambushed on their way back from prayers at the meetinghouse. One couple and their twenty-year-old son stopped at their home to get some provisions. The father told his wife and son to return to the garrison while he finished collecting corn. But as the father left the house, he was attacked by Indians and killed. Hearing gunshots, the son and his mother returned to the house. Both were attacked and in what became a common fate in the months ahead, they were scalped.

For the next few days, Church and the other soldiers remained cooped up at the garrison as their commanders waited for reinforcements to arrive from Massachusetts Bay. In a clear attempt to mock the soldiers, the Indians had the nerve to approach the garrison itself. Two soldiers sent to draw a bucket of water from a nearby well were shot and carried away. They were later discovered with “their fingers and feet cut off, and the skin of their heads flayed off.” Even worse, the Indians succeeded in killing two of the garrison's sentries “under the very noses of most of our forces.”

On the night of June 26, a total eclipse of the moon was witnessed all across New England. several soldiers claimed they saw a black spot in the moon's center resembling “the scalp of an Indian.” All agreed that an “eclipse falling out at that instant of time was ominous.”

Finally on Monday, June 28, with the arrival of several Massachusetts companies from Boston, the number of soldiers had reached the point that Cudworth was willing to attack the Indians. In addition to a troop of horsemen under Captain Thomas Prentice and a company of foot soldiers under Captain Daniel Henchman, there was a rowdy bunch of volunteers under the command of Captain samuel Moseley.

The English had not yet fought a single battle, but Moseley, a sea captain, was already something of a hero. In April, he had led a successful assault on some Dutch pirates off the coast of Maine. In June, several of the captured sailors were put on trial and condemned to death, but with the outbreak of war, they were let free as long as they were willing to fight the Indians under Moseley. In addition to this group of pirates, which included a huge Dutchman named Cornelius Anderson, Moseley had a wild gang of servants and apprentices from Boston.

To a pious group of farm boys and merchants from Plymouth, Moseley's men seemed as savage as the Indians themselves. To Benjamin Church, Moseley was destined to become a bitter rival.

The attack on the Indians was scheduled for the following day, but some of the new arrivals, led by quartermasters John Gill and Andrew Belcher, asked to go out immediately and “seek the enemy in their own quarters.” some Indians on the opposite side of the river were taking great delight in shooting at the garrison. It was time to put these heathens in their place.

Permission was granted, and twelve troopers prepared to take it to the enemy. In addition to William Hammond of nearby Rehoboth, who was to act as their scout, the troopers asked Benjamin Church to join them. They quickly set out across the bridge, all of them knowing that an audience of several hundred English soldiers was watching their every move.

Almost as soon as they crossed the bridge, about a dozen Indians hidden in some nearby bushes started firing at them. In an instant, Hammond, the scout, was, if not dead, nearly so. Belcher was hit in the knee and his horse was shot out from under him, while Gill was slammed in the gut. Fortunately, he'd worn a protective coat of quarter-inch-thick ox hide, known as a buff coat, which he had lined with several pieces of well-placed parchment, and suffered only a severe bruise.

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Massachusetts governor John Leverett wearing an ox-hide buff coat.

The troopers were so terrified by the attack that they turned their horses around and galloped back for the garrison, leaving Hammond dazed and dying and Belcher trapped beneath his horse. As the troopers clattered across the bridge, Church “stormed and stamped, and told them'twas a shame to run and leave a wounded man there to become a prey to the barbarous enemy.”

By this time, Hammond had fallen down dead off his horse, and with the assistance of Gill and only one other man, Church attempted to save Belcher's life. Church jumped off his horse and loaded both Belcher and Hammond onto the horses of the other two. As they retreated to the garrison, Church went after Hammond's horse, which was wandering off toward the Indians. All the while, he shouted out to those at the garrison “to come over and fight the enemy.” But no one appeared willing to join him.