The Mayflower and the Pilgrims' New World* (36 page)

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An elm bowl attributed to King Philip.

Later, in the midst of yet another extended journey, Rowlandson started to lose strength. As she slogged through the knee-deep mud of a swamp, Philip unexpectedly appeared at her side and offered his hand and some words of encouragement. In her book, Rowlandson faithfully records these acts of kindness on Philip's part. But nowhere does she suggest that the sachem was unfairly hated by her fellow Puritans. Rowlandson had lost her daughter and several other loved ones in the war Philip had started, and nothing—not a pancake or a hand offered in friendship—could ever bring them back.

On March 9, Philip met for the first time with Canonchet, the young leader of the Narragansetts. As they all knew, the victories they had so far won at Lancaster and Medfield were meaningless if they did not find a way to feed their people. They needed seed corn to plant crops in the spring. Hidden underground in swansea was a large store of seed. Canonchet volunteered to lead a group of warriors and women back into the very heart of Plymouth Colony to retrieve it. As the women returned with the seed to the Connecticut River valley, Canonchet would remain in Plymouth and bring the war back to where it had begun.

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Nineteenth-century depiction of Mary Rowlandson being taken across the Connecticut River toward Philip's forces.

 

◆◆◆ On February 29, Benjamin Church attended a meeting of the Council of War at Governor Winslow's home in Marshfield. The raid on Medfield the week before had been followed by an attack on nearby Weymouth, and there were fears that the colony was about to be overrun with hostile Indians from the north. A member of the Council of War proposed that a militia company of sixty soldiers be sent to the farthest towns in the colony to defend against a possible Indian attack. The same official proposed that Church be the company's commander. But Church had a proposal of his own.

If the Indians returned to Plymouth, it was reasonable to assume that, in Church's words, “they would come very numerous.” As Massachusetts had learned, it was a waste of time stationing militias in town garrisons. Although they helped to defend the settlement in the event of an attack, they did nothing to limit the Indians' activities. The only way to conduct the war was to “lie in the woods as the enemy did.” And to do that, you not only needed a large force of several hundred men, you needed a large number of friendly Indians. “[I]f they intended to make an end of the war by subduing the enemy,” Church insisted, “they must make a business of the war as the enemy did.” He suggested that Plymouth officials should equip him with an army of three hundred men, a third of them Indians. Give him six weeks, he said, and he and his men would “do good service.”

Because it included the use of a large number of Indians, Church's proposal shocked the Council of War. At that time in Plymouth Colony, fear of all Indians—hostile and friendly alike—was so high that just a few days before, the Council had voted to banish some Praying Indians to Clark's Island in Plymouth Harbor. Not surprisingly, the Council turned him down. But Church's words were not totally ignored. The man who agreed to serve instead, Captain Michael Pierce of scituate, was given, in addition to sixty Englishmen, twenty “friend Indians” from Cape Cod.

Church decided then his first priority must be to make sure his pregnant wife, Alice, and their son, Tom, were safe. If the Indians should come in the numbers he expected, he knew that Duxbury, where they were now located, was likely to be a prime target. Even though it meant leaving the colony, he decided to take Alice and Tom to Aquidneck Island.

It was an unpopular decision with the authorities, from whom he needed a permit. Eventually, Church was able to convince Governor Winslow that he could be of some use to him “on that side of the colony,” and he was given permission to relocate to Rhode Island. On March 9, they set out for Taunton, then proceeded by boat down the Taunton River to Mount Hope Bay and Aquidneck Island, before arriving safely at Captain John Almy's house in Portsmouth.

 

◆◆◆ For the English, March of 1676 was a terrible and terrifying month. Indians from across New England banded together for a devastating series of raids that reached from the Connecticut River valley to Maine and even into Connecticut itself, a colony that had, up until then, been spared from attack. But it was in Plymouth, on sunday, March 26, where the English suffered one of the worst defeats of the war.

Captain Pierce and his force of sixty Englishmen and twenty Praying Indians were marching north along the east bank of the Blackstone River when they spotted some Indians. There were just a few of them, and when the Indians realized they were being followed, they turned to flee. Pierce's men eagerly chased them, only to discover that they had walked into an ambush. A force of five hundred Indians, apparently led by Canonchet, emerged from the trees. Pierce and his soldiers ran across the rocks to the west bank of the Blackstone, where another four hundred Indians were waiting for them.

Pierce ordered his company of eighty men to form a single ring, and standing back to back, they fought bravely against close to a thousand Indians, who according to one account “were as thick as they could stand, thirty deep.” By the end of the fighting two hours later, fifty-five English, including Pierce, were dead, along with ten of the Praying Indians. Nine English soldiers either temporarily escaped the fighting or were taken alive and marched several miles north, where they were tortured to death at a place still known today as Nine Men's Misery.

Given the impossible odds, the Praying Indians would not have been blamed for trying to escape at the first sign of trouble. But one Indian named Amos stood at Pierce's side almost to the very end. Even after his commander had been shot in the thigh and lay dying at his feet, Amos continued to fire on the enemy. Finally, it became obvious that, in the words of William Hubbard, “there was no possibility for him to do any further good to Captain Pierce, nor yet to save himself if he stayed any longer.” The Narragansetts and Nipmucks had all blackened their faces for battle. so Amos smeared his face with gunpowder and stripped off his English clothes to impersonate the enemy. After pretending to search the bodies of the English for anything valuable, he disappeared into the woods.

Amos was not the only Praying Indian to make a remarkable escape that day. As the fighting drew to a close, another Praying Indian turned to the English soldier beside him and told him to run. Taking up his tomahawk, the Indian pretended to be a Narragansett chasing his foe, and the two of them did not stop running until they had left the fighting far behind.

When word of the heroism of Pierce's Praying Indians began to spread, public opinion regarding the use of friendly Indians in combat started to shift. It still took some time, but New Englanders came to realize that instead of being untrustworthy and dangerous, Indians like Amos and the spies James and Job might in fact hold the secret to winning the war.

 

◆◆◆ Unlike Massachusetts and Plymouth, Connecticut had relied on friendly Indians from the start of the conflict. In addition to the Mohegans, there were the Pequots and the Niantics, a subset of the Narragansetts, who had remained loyal to the English. In early April, a Connecticut force under Captain George Denison was in the area of modern Pawtucket, Rhode Island, when they captured an Indian woman who told them that Canonchet was nearby. Over the course of the next few days, Denison's eighty or so Mohegans, Pequots, and Niantics competed with one another for the honor of capturing the great Narragansett sachem.

In the last few months, Canonchet had earned the reputation for physical courage that had so far escaped the more famous Philip. Dressed in the silver-trimmed jacket the Puritans had given him during treaty negotiations in Boston, with a large wampum belt around his waist, the young sachem was known for his bravery in battle. Even the Puritans had to admit that Canonchet “was a very proper man, of goodly stature and great courage of mind, as well as strength of body.” At considerable risk, he and thirty warriors had succeeded in collecting the seed corn from storage pits just north of Mount Hope. The corn had already been delivered to the Connecticut River valley, where the women would begin planting in May. He was now leading the army of fifteen hundred Indians that had destroyed Captain Pierce's company.

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Canonchet Memorial in Narragansett, Rhode Island. Limestone statue sculpted in 1977.

On April 9, Canonchet was resting at the foot of a hill near the Blackstone River with nine of his warriors, trading stories about the attack on Captain Pierce and his company, when he heard “the alarm of the English.” He ordered two of his men to go to the top of the hill and report back what they saw, but the men never returned. A third warrior was sent, and he, too, disappeared. Only after two more men went to the top of the hill did Canonchet learn that “the English army was upon him.”

Taking up his musket and blanket, the Narragansett sachem began to run around the base of the hill, hoping to sneak through the enemy forces and escape behind them. However, one of Denison's Niantic warriors saw the sachem moving swiftly through the woods, and the chase was on.

Canonchet soon realized that Denison's Indians were catching up to him. Hoping to slow them down, he stripped off his blanket, but the Indians refused to stop and pick up the valuable item. Canonchet then shook off his silver-trimmed coat, followed by his belt of wampum. Now the Indians knew they had, in Hubbard's words, “the right bird, which made them pursue as eagerly as the other fled.”

Ahead was the Blackstone River, and Canonchet decided to try and cross it. But as he ran across the slick stones, his foot slipped, and he fell into the water and soaked his gun. Canonchet still had a considerable lead over his pursuers, but he now knew that flight was useless. According to Hubbard, “he confessed soon after that his heart and his bowels turned within him, so as he became like a rotten stick, void of strength.” A few seconds later, a Pequot Indian named Monopoide caught up to the sachem, who surrendered without a fight.

The English offered to spare Canonchet's life if he helped them convince Philip and the others to stop the fighting. But he refused, “saying he knew the Indians would not yield.” He was then taken to stonington, where officials blamed him for dragging the Narragansetts into war. He responded that “others were as forward for the war as himself and that he desired to hear no more thereof.” When told he'd been sentenced to die, he replied that “he liked it well, that he should die before his heart was soft or had spoken anything unworthy of himself.” Just before his execution in front of a Pequot firing squad, Canonchet declared that “killing him would not end the war.” He threw off his jacket and stretched out his arms just as the bullets pierced his chest.