38 King Philip’s War (1675)

What has been the original cause of the present war with the natives? What are the advantages or disadvantages arising thereby and will probably be the End?

Various are the reports and conjectures of the causes of the present Indian war. Some impute it to an imprudent zeal in the magistrates of Boston to christianize those heathens before they were civilized and enjoining them the strict observation of their laws, which to a people so rude and licentious has proved ever intolerable. And that the more for that while the magistrates, for their profit, put the laws severely in execution against the Indians, the people on the other side, for lucre [profit] and gain, entice and provoke the Indians to the breach thereof. Especially to drunkenness, to which those people are so generally addicted that they will strip themselves to their skin to have their fill of rum and brandy. The Massachusetts having made a law that every Indian drunk should pay 10 s. [shillings] or be whipped, according to the discretion of the magistrate. Many of these poor people willingly offered their backs to the lash to save their money. Whereupon the magistrates finding much trouble and no profit to arise to the government by whipping, did change that punishment into 10 days work for such as could not or would not pay the fine of 10 s., which did highly incense the Indians.

Some believe there have been vagrant and jesuitical [Catholic] priests who have made it their business for some years past to go from Sachem to Sachem to exasperate the Indians against the English and to bring them into a confederacy. And that they were promised supplies from France and other parts to extirpate the English nation out of the continent of America. Others impute the cause to some injuries offered to the Sachem Philip. For he being possessed of a tract of land called Mount Hope, a very fertile, pleasant, and rich soil, some English had a mind to dispossess him thereof, who never wanting one pretense or other to attain their end, complained of injuries done by Philip and his Indians to their stock and cattle. Whereupon Philip was often summoned before the magistrate, sometimes imprisoned, and never released but upon parting with a considerable part of his land.

But the government of the Massachusetts (to give it in their own words) do declare these are the great evils for which God has given the heathen commission to rise against them: The woeful breach of the 5th commandment [Honor thy father and mother] in contempt of their authority, which is a sin highly provoking to the Lord. For men wearing long hair and periwigs made of women’s hair. For women wearing borders of hair and for cutting, curling, and laying out the hair and disguising themselves by following strange fashions in their apparel. For profaneness in the people not frequenting their meetings and others going away before the blessing be pronounced. For suffering the Quakers to live amongst them and to set up their thresholds [meeting houses] by God’s thresholds, contrary to their old laws and resolutions.

With many such reasons, but whatever be the cause, the English have contributed much to their misfortunes. For they first taught the Indians the use of arms and admitted them to be present at all their musters and trainings and showed them how to handle, mend, and fix their muskets. And have been furnished with all sorts of arms by permission of the government, so that the Indians are become excellent firemen. And at Natick there was a gathered church of praying Indians who were exercised as trained bands under officers of their own. These have been the most barbarous and cruel enemies to the English of any others. Captain Tom, their leader, being lately taken and hanged at Boston with one other of their chiefs.

That notwithstanding the ancient law of the country made in the year 1633 that no person should sell any arms or ammunition to any Indian upon penalty of 10 £ for every gun, 5 £ for a pound of powder, and 40 s. for a pound of shot; yet the government of the Massachusetts in the year 1657 upon design to monopolize the whole Indian trade did publish and declare that the trade of furs and peltry with the Indians in their jurisdiction did solely and properly belong to their commonwealth and not to every indifferent person. And did enact that no person should trade with the Indians for any sort of peltry except such as were authorized by that court, under the penalty of 100 £ for every offense. Giving liberty to all such as should have license from them to sell unto any Indian guns, swords, powder, and shot, paying to the treasurer 3 d. [pence] for each gun and for each dozen of swords, 6 d. for a pound of powder and for every ten pounds of shot. By which means the Indians have been abundantly furnished with great store of arms and ammunition to the utter ruin and undoing of many families in the neighboring colonies to enrich some few of their relations and church members.

No advantage but many disadvantages have arisen to the English by the war, for about 600 men have been slain and twelve captains. Most of them brave and stout persons and of loyal principles, whilst the church members had liberty to stay at home and not hazard their persons in the wilderness. The loss to the English in the several colonies in their habitations and stock is reckoned to amount to 150,000 £, there having been about 1,200 houses burned, 8,000 head of cattle, great and small, killed and many thousand bushels of wheat, peas, and other grain burned (of which the Massachusetts colony has not been indemnified one third part, the great loss falling upon New Plymouth and Connecticut colonies). And upward of 3,000 Indians men women and children destroyed who if well managed would have been very serviceable to the English, which makes all manner of labor dear.

The war at present is near an end. In Plymouth colony the Indians surrender themselves to Governor Winslow and bring in all their arms, are wholly at his disposal, except life and transportation. But for all such as have been notoriously cruel to women and children, so soon as discovered they are to be executed in the sight of their fellow Indians.

The government of Boston have concluded a peace upon these terms.

1. That there be henceforward a firm peace between the Indians and English.
2. That after publication of the articles of peace by the general court, if any English shall willfully kill an Indian, upon due proof he shall die. And if an Indian kill an Englishman and escape, the Indians are to produce him and he to pass trial by the English laws.
3. That the Indians shall not conceal any known enemies to the English, but shall discover them and bring them to the English.
4. That upon all occasions the Indians are to aid and assist the English against their enemies and to be under English command.
5. That all Indians have liberty to sit down at their former habitations without let [obstruction].

Source: “The Causes and Results of King Philip’s War” (1675), by Edward Randolph in Thomas Hutchinson, A Collection of Original Papers Relative to the History of the Colony of Massachusets-Bay (Boston, 1769), 490-494. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.45493/page/n477/mode/2up