Mayflower

Failed Strategy: The Sassamon Trial, Political Culture, and the Outbreak of King Philip’s War” in American Indian Culture and Research Journal. In a November 18, 1675, letter to John Cotton, Thomas Whalley refers to Josiah Winslow’s “weakness” and “frail body,” Curwen Papers, AAS. In addition to hearing the testimony of an Indian witness, the jurors at the Sassamon trial were told that Sassamon’s corpse had begun “a bleeding afresh, as if it had newly been slain” when it was approached by Tobias; known as “cruentation,” this ancient test of guilt in a murder case was of dubious legal value; see Kawashima’s Igniting King Philip’s War, p. 100.
    According to William Hubbard in HIWNE, Philip would have lacked the courage to launch the war “if his own life had not now been in jeopardy by the guilt of the foresaid murder of Sassamon,” p. 58. In a note to William Harris’s reference to the Indians’ preference for fighting in the summer and the English preference for winter in A Rhode Islander Reports on King Philip’s War, Douglas Leach writes, “The English, fearing ambush, disliked fighting against Indians in the months when foliage was thick and when the swamps were miry and difficult to penetrate,” p. 63. Samuel Drake cites the traditions concerning Philip’s inability to control his warriors in June 1675, as well as his anguished response to the death of the first Englishman in OIC, pp. 56–57; see John Callender’s An Historical Discourse on the Civil and Religious Affairs of the Colony of Rhode-Island for the family traditions about Philip’s reluctance to go to war: “He was forced on by the fury of his young men, for against his own judgment and inclination; and that though he foresaw and foretold the English would in time by their industry root out all the Indians, yet he was against making war with them, as what he thought would only hurry on and increase the destruction of his people,” p. 73. Francis Baylies in Historical Memoir of…New-Plymouth, vol. 2, edited by Samuel Drake, writes of the Indians’ intimate knowledge of both the English and the countryside: “They knew the habits, the temper, the outgoings, the incomings, the power of defense, and even the domiciliary usages of every [English] family in the colony. They were minutely acquainted with every river, brook, creek, bay, harbor, lake, and pond, and with every local peculiarity of the country. They had their friends and their enemies amongst the English; for some they professed a fond attachment; others they disliked and avoided. In short, they seemed as much identified with the English as Greeks with Turks,” p. 17.
    CHAPTER THIRTEEN- Kindling the Flame
    In this and subsequent chapters, I have relied on Henry Martyn Dexter’s edition of Benjamin Church’s Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War (EPRPW); Dexter’s extensive knowledge of New England history and geography makes the edition an invaluable resource. Another excellent edition is that edited by Alan and Mary Simpson and published in 1975; in addition to a solid introduction, their edition includes a wide variety of helpful illustrations. Samuel Drake collected several important contemporary accounts of King Philip’s War in the volume The Old Indian Chronicle (OIC), most notably Nathaniel Saltonstall’s three extended articles about the war and an account by Richard Hutchinson. Also of importance is the account by John Easton in which Easton describes the unsuccessful attempt by a delegation of Rhode Island Quakers to bring about a peaceful resolution to Philip’s difficulties with Plymouth; the account also includes much important information about the early months of the war. Two Puritan ministers wrote histories of the conflict: Increase Mather was the first out with his hastily assembled History of King Philip’s War (HKPW), soon followed by William Hubbard’s History of the Indian Wars in New England (HIWNE), which received the official blessing of the Massachusetts colonial government. I have used Samuel Drake’s editions of the two works; his edition of Mather’s history also includes that written by his son Cotton Mather. Another important contemporary source is the letters written by William Harris, which have been collected and edited by William Leach in the volume A Rhode Islander Reports