Mayflower

been a diversion. On July 30, word reached Henchman that the Indians he was supposedly guarding in the Pocasset Swamp were no longer there. Several hundred Pokanokets and Pocassets had been sighted almost twenty miles to the west of the Taunton River, and they were headed north toward Nipmuck country.
    Â 
    After fleeing across Mount Hope Bay to the Pocasset Swamp, Philip realized that he must escape from Plymouth Colony. Otherwise the Pokanokets would, as Cudworth had predicted, begin to starve to death. He must find a way to reach his father’s old haunts among the Nipmucks, approximately sixty miles to the northwest.
    They must somehow cross the Taunton River just above Mount Hope Bay and move with lightning speed past the settlements of Taunton and Rehoboth before crossing a stretch of flat, open country known as the Seekonk Plain to the Seekonk River. Once they’d forded the river, they would head north to the Nipmucks. About a hundred women, children, and elderly were judged to be too weak to complete the journey, and as the night of the escape approached, there were undoubtedly many tearful good-byes.
    The English had built their fort at the southern end of the Pocasset Swamp, near where the Taunton River flows into Mount Hope Bay. Philip and Weetamoo headed north, working their way up the full seven-mile length of the swamp over ground the English considered impassable. Since the Taunton River was between them and potential freedom to the west, and they no longer had any canoes, this strategy had the benefit of taking them to where the river was fordable. On a night at the end of July, at dead low tide, probably in the vicinity of modern Dighton, where the river is less than an eighth of a mile wide, 250 of Philip’s and Weetamoo’s warriors, accompanied by a large number of women and children (including Philip’s wife and their eight-year-old son), prepared to cross the Taunton River. They constructed crude rafts of driftwood, and after wading out to the center of the stream, they swam and floated their way to the western bank. As dawn approached, they clambered onto shore and disappeared into the woods.
    On July 30, some residents of Taunton were astonished to see several hundred Indians making their way west. A messenger was sent to Rehoboth, a village situated some ten miles west of the modern town of that name, where the minister, Noah Newman, began to organize a party of volunteers to pursue Philip. Also in Rehoboth was a group of approximately fifty newly arrived Mohegan Indians under the command of Uncas’s son Oneco. Many in New England had wondered how the Mohegans would respond to word of the Pokanoket revolt, especially since Philip was known to have sought Uncas’s support that spring. The Mohegans’ decision to remain loyal to the English was one of the few pieces of good news the colonies received in the summer of 1675, and Uncas’s son eagerly joined the chase.
    By sunset of July 31, the English and Mohegans had pursued Philip across the Seekonk River into the vicinity of modern North Providence. The trail headed northwest for another ten or so miles, and with it now almost totally dark, several Mohegan scouts were sent up ahead. They reported hearing the sounds of wood being chopped as Philip’s men made camp. Leaving their horses behind with some attendants, the English and Mohegans continued on foot another three miles until they reached a region known as Nipsachuck, in modern Smithfield, Rhode Island.
    It had been hoped that Captain Henchman and his men, who had sailed from Pocasset to Providence, would have joined them by now. But even without reinforcements, they decided they must engage the enemy. As they prepared to attack in the predawn twilight, five Pocassets from Weetamoo’s camp, apparently out foraging for food, stumbled upon them. Shots were fired, and the battle began.
    The fighting lasted until nine in the morning, when Philip’s and Weetamoo’s men were forced to retreat into a nearby swamp. They had suffered catastrophic casualties—losing twenty-three men, including Nimrod, one of Philip’s bravest warriors, while the English had lost only two.
    Philip had lost even more men to desertion, and he and his sixty or so remaining warriors were on the verge of surrender as they huddled at the edge of the Nipsachuck Swamp. They were starving, exhausted, and almost out of gunpowder, with several hundred women and children