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King Philip’s War

Richard Waldron Pays Dearly for Tricking the Penacook in 1689

In 1676, Richard Waldron of Dover, N.H., received an unwelcome order from Massachusetts. King Philip’s War was winding down and a group of Indian fighters had fled to New Hampshire. The government at Boston wanted them pursued and punished.

King Philip’s War pitted the Wampanoag against the Massachusetts colonists in 1675. The colonists drove the Indian forces northward until the war finally ended in 1678.

A View near Point Levy opposite Quebec with an Indian Encampment, by Thomas Davies (National Gallery of Canada)

By 1676 Waldron was something of a strongman in New Hampshire. The deputy to the Massachusetts General Court, he had served as second president of the colonial New Hampshire Royal Council.

He was an ornery Puritan who emigrated from England in 1635, Waldron came from wealth and expanded it greatly, acquiring lands in Dover where he constructed mills on the Cochecho River. He also ran an active trading post with the local Pennacook Indians, with whom he maintained largely friendly relations.

Richard Waldron

He was not to be trifled with. When two Quaker women persisted in spreading their beliefs in Dover, he had them stripped to the waist, marched behind a cart through 11 towns and flogged before setting them loose to flee into Maine.

Waldron clearly sided with the English colonists, but the order to harass the Indians – his trading partners – posed a dilemma. If he carried it out he would attack Indians with whom he had maintained peaceful relations. If he refused he would lose favor with Massachusetts.

The Pennacook, under Passaconaway and his son Wonalancet, kept a peace with the English settlers. But eventually they both despaired because the English continually ignored treaties and agreements.

Waldron ultimately found a stealthy way of eating his cake and having it too. Or so he apparently thought. He invited the Pennacook to a “sham battle” – a war game. When the Indians had discharged their muskets, he captured the fugitive Indians he sought – along with a handful of local Pennacooks – and shipped them to Boston.

Waldron may have thought he had carried out his mission with minimal violence. But the Indians thought it dishonorable.

Thirteen Years Later…

Revenge is a dish best served cold, the old adage suggests, and it certainly was for the Pennacook. For 13 years the tribe mulled the fate of Richard Waldron. Several of the fugitives he had sent to Boston were tried and executed for their part in King Philip’s War. Indians not executed were sold into slavery in the Caribbean.

Following King Philip’s War, New England enjoyed a period of peace. But tensions festered as the Indians and colonists chafed against one another. English settlers viewed the Indians as essentially a conquered people now subject to English rule. The Indians perceived themselves as an independent people who had signed a treaty with the colonists to end hostilities – a treaty that the colonists did not always honor.

In 1689, colonists in New Hampshire began sensing hints that the Indians were growing hostile. Some even shared their fears with Waldron – by this time 80 years old. He dismissed their concerns assuring them that he would know if the Indians intended to start a fight. “Go plant your pumpkins,” Waldron told his neighbors.

Attack on Richard Waldron from Old Times in the Colonies by Charles Carleton Coffin

Meanwhile, Indians under the leadership of chiefs Kancamagus and Mesandoit amassed a force near Dover. King William’s War, fought to settle ownership of northern New England, was about to break out.

A Bitter End

In June, with the weather still cold, several Indian women asked if they might sleep near the fire inside the garrisons that the colonists under Waldron had built at Dover. This was not uncommon on cold nights, and the colonists welcomed them.

Mesandoit himself sat with Waldron one night. He informed Waldon that some Indians were coming soon with some merchandise to trade. He asked Waldron what he would do if unfriendly Indians arrived. Waldron assured him that he could rouse a force of 100 men in an instant.

Late in the night, with the colonists sleeping and no watch posted, the Indian women inside the garrisons opened the doors and admitted the assembled Indian forces. Awakened by Indians in his home, Waldron fought furiously with his sword to repel the invaders, but he was over-matched.

Waldron’s final moments were painful and unpleasant as the Indians tortured him to death and taunted him with a final question: “Who will judge the Indians now?”

The Indians left Dover with 29 captives, which they intended to sell in Canada. Twenty-three people were killed. The garrisons and mills were plundered and burned.

Following the attack, a letter arrived for Waldron from Boston warning him than intelligence from Chelmsford, Mass. suggested some Indians were planning an attack on Dover, coming under the guise of peaceful traders.

Thanks to: The Border Wars of New England, Samuel Drake and The History of New Hampshire, Jeremy Belknap. This story updated in 2022.

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Six Mysterious Stone Structures of New England

Everyone knows that stone walls cover the New England landscape like honeycombs. But far fewer people know about the region’s hundreds of mysterious stone structures.

In the 1930s, someone estimated that New England had 250,000 miles of stone walls. In the following decades came inventories of the region’s stone structures, which some believed to be ancient.

A stone chamber. This one is in Leverett, Mass.

A stone chamber in Leverett, Mass.

Some of those ancient stone structures are oriented to the stars and planets. They also stand near megaliths, cairns or dolmens. A few have what are probably stone beds or sacrificial altars.

Speculation now runs rampant about the origins of the mysterious stone structures. Did medieval Irish monks, American Indians or Vikings build them? Or did the English colonists just built them as root cellars?

Most noteworthy, just three Northeast counties account for the majority of stone structures in North America: Putnam County, N.Y.; New London County, Conn.; and Windsor County, Vt.

Massachusetts has the densest concentration of beehive-shaped stone chambers like those built by Culdee monks in Ireland. The state has 105 sites containing stone structures.

Connecticut also has quite a few at 62, New Hampshire has 51 and Vermont has 41. Tiny Rhode Island has only 12 stone structures, but still more than Maine, which has only four.

Some speculate that perhaps ancient voyagers frequently traveled the Merrimack, the Thames and the Connecticut rivers. They then built their stone structures along those routes.

Here, then, we bring you ancient stone structures (or maybe colonial root cellars), with at least one in each New England state.

Gungywamp, Groton, Conn.

Gungywamp stone circle

New England colonists found many stone buildings, when they arrived. Typically they were one story high, circular or rectangular and as long as 30 feet. Many had roof openings that allowed a little light to illuminate the interiors.

As a result, early mercenaries to the Northeast wrote about ‘Indian stone castles.’ Furthermore, John Winthrop the Younger in 1654 received a letter from John Pynchon of Springfield, Mass. Pynchon heard ‘a report of a stone wall and strong chamber in it, made all of stone, which is newly discovered at or near Pequot.’

The 100-acre Gungywamp archaeological site in Groton, Conn., contains such stone structures as beehive chambers, petroglyphs, a double circle of stones, cellars and walls. All date back hundreds of years.

Some of the structures are thought to be Native American and perhaps had ceremonial functions. Colonial settlers built others with purposes such as root cellars and birthing chambers. Some features of the site suggest they were originally built as fortifications.

There is plenty of speculation about the purpose of the Gungywamp stone structures. Some theorize that 8th-century Irish monks built certain structures. They argue ‘Gungywamp’ means ‘church of the people’ in Gaelic. Others say it is an Indian word.

Gungywamp’s most famous chamber is the so-called ‘calendar chamber.’ Archaeologists suspect the colonists originally used it for storage for a nearby tan bark mill. A vent at one end of the chamber aligns with the spring and fall equinoxes. It thus allows a shaft of sunlight to fall directly on a smaller chamber within the larger structure.

Gungywamp is preserved, but many of the structures stand on private land. It can be toured virtually here. Visitors can tour the Gungywamp through the Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center. More information is available here.

Hirundo Stone Structures, Alton and Old Town, Maine

Hirundo Wildlife Refuge

The Red Paint people of Maine once settled in the Hirundo Wildlife Refuge, a wetland preserve. Archaeologists discovered artifacts from the 7,000-year-old village along the Wabanaki Trail.

Among the bogs and ancient burial grounds are at least 18 curious stone piles, clearly made by humans. But by whom and for what? And when? No one know. Most are 6-1/2 feet in diameter and a foot and a half high.

The University of Maine owns the Hirundo Wildlife Refuge, which is open dawn to dusk all week long.

Upton Stone Chamber, Upton, Mass.

Nashoba Brook Chamber

The largest and probably best known stone chamber in Massachusetts is the Upton Stone Chamber near Worcester in Upton.

It includes a tunnel that connects to a roundish beehive room. A stone slab sits on top. In 1989, two archao-astronomists concluded that people used the chamber between 700-750 A.D. to study the Pleiades. Around 670 A.D., they used it to view the summer solstice.

To see photographs from 1944 of the Upton Stone Chamber, click here. The Upton Heritage Park is at 18 Elm Street.

Thirty miles away in Acton, an underground stone chamber in the Nashoba Brook Conservation Area is known as the ‘potato cave.’ Residents had long assumed the structure was a root cellar. A 2006 excavation found evidence people stored food in it in the 18th or 19th century. Some argue Indians built it before the colonists arrived. Still others say railroad workers lived in it during the 19th century.

You can visit the restored chamber at the Nashoba Brook Conservation Area in North Acton on the easterly side of Main Street (Route 27), toward Westford and Carlisle.

American Stonehenge, Salem, N.H.

America’s Stonehenge

During the summer solstice, a procession of people banging drums softly come to America’s Stonehenge. They aim to honor Mother Earth.

America’s Stonehenge is a 30-acre complex of standing stones, underground chambers and stone walls in North Salem, N.H. As the largest collection of stone structures in North America, it includes dolmens, or horizontal stone slabs on vertical stone uprights. It also has cromlechs, or circles of standing stones and barrows, or tombs. There’s a secret bed, an echoing oracle chamber, a sacrificial altar stone and a stone-lined speaking tube that gives the impression the altar is talking when someone speaks into it.

Radiocarbon dating confirms that the structures were built as many as 4,000 years ago.

The written record doesn’t mention the ancient stone structures until 1907, in History of Salem, New Hampshire by Edward Gilbert. He wrote that a family named Pattee owned the land, called Mystery Hill, and had many of the stones carted away for construction in Lawrence, Mass.

A retired insurance executive named William Goodwin bought the site in 1937. He had it excavated and became convinced Irish Culdee monks built the site about 1000 A.D. The monoliths are astronomically aligned, leading to the conclusion the stones were used as a prehistoric calendar.

Mystery Hill was renamed America’s Stonehenge and as a result gets 15,000 visitors a year. The site can still be used as an accurate yearly calendar.

Queen’s Fort, Exeter, R.I.

Queen’s Fort

The Queen’s Fort and Queen’s Bed Chamber in Exeter, R.I., have colorful legends about them. In its later years, the Queen’s Fort supposedly sheltered hermits and bandits.

Archaeologists and historians associate the fort with a man named Stonewall John, a talented stone mason who may have been Narragansett or English. He may have built the stone fort to protect King Philip during King Philip’s War (1675-78). The colonists made one of their first attacks on the fort during the war.

Within the fort a chamber – six square feet with a seven-foot ceiling and a sand floor – was perhaps built for the Narragansett queen Quaiapen (also called Matuntuck). She supposedly hid out at the site during King Phililp’s War before moving somewhere else, where she died. Some have also suspected that Quaiapen and Stonewall John were lovers.

Many archeologists have since dug at the site. Today the Rhode Island Historical Society owns it, and the National Register of Historic Places includes it on its list. You can get to it via a series of trails in Exeter that surround the property. Find more information here.

Stone Structures in South Woodstock, Vt.

Eastern Vermont has some of the densest concentrations of ancient stone structures in North America. An inventory of Vermont’s stone chambers compiled by the New England Antiquities Research Association found 52 stone chambers. They discovered them in 23 towns in five Vermont counties, particularly Orange and Windsor.

In 1975, a retired marine biologist from Harvard announced his discovery: On Vermont’s stone structures he found inscriptions in a dead Celtic language called Ogam. He concluded Celts from the Iberian peninsula carved them around 1000 BC. They all faced east and many had inscriptions. And some have symbolic markings, while others have Celtic place names.

But critics of the theory counter that Celts would have left other evidence that they’d settled in New England. But no one found any such evidence.

Still, Vermont farmers told stories of their great-grandfathers’ plows uncovering stone huts. So in 1977, the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation studied the stone chambers in the state. They concluded the stone structures did not serve as stone burial vaults, charcoal or lime kilns, potash burners or iron furnaces.

One of the biggest and best known stone chambers is called Calendar II in South Woodstock, Vt. Calendar II measures 10 feet by 20 feet on the inside, the same geometrical ratio as the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid. And the door aligns with the solstice sunrise.

A Norwich University professor studied aerial photographs of Vermont and discovered another mystery. He found odd hexagonal patterns made of stone walls and ditches. But many had no relation to current and traditional land use patterns. The mystery remains unsolved.

Notes on Mysterious Stone Structures

Images: Gungywamp By Randal J. (en:User:RJFerret) – Own work (own photo), CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7714677; Nashoba Brook Stone Chamber, By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20548479; Leverett Stone Chamber By BittyRed – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46106121; American Stonehenge, By Stan Shebs, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=123562; Queen’s Fort, By JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D. – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49496088; Stonehenge CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=195581. Hirundo Wildlife Refuge By Namiba – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69290251.

This story about mysterious stone structures was updated in 2022.

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The Fall River Skeleton in Armor

The Fall River skeleton discovered in 1832 in a sand bank near a church had an unusual feature: It was clad in armor.

Sketch of the Fall River skeleton in armor.

Not 20 miles north another mysterious discovery had been made: Dighton Rock, a 40-ton boulder with strange writing carved in it.

And some 30 miles south in Newport, R.I., stood a stone tower that some – including a famous poet — thought the Vikings had built.

The discovery of the Fall River skeleton so near those other artifacts inspired theories that an ancient people had colonized America well before Columbus. Maybe they’d written their epitaphs on the rock found in Dighton.

If the skeleton survived, modern scientists might have solved the mystery. But the skeleton and its armor remained intact for only 11 years after their discovery.

Fall River Skeleton in Armor

Laborers uncovered a skull as they dug down a sand bank in the town of Fall River. They dug further and found a body in a sitting posture, enveloped in a covering of coarse dark bark. Copper bangles, brass arrowheads and triangular copper armor surrounded the Fall River skeleton. It had a belt made up of 41 small brass tubes.

Most people at the time thought the skeleton belonged to a Native American chief. Given Fall River’s location, he could have belonged to the Narragansett or Wampanoag tribe.

Some thought the Fall River skeleton belonged to a Phoenician, Carthaginian or Egyptian mariner who discovered North America.

Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1868

The skeleton took up residence in the Fall River Athenaeum, where Henry Wadsworth Longfellow went to see it.

He liked what he saw.

“The skeleton in armor really exists. It was dug up near Fall River, where I saw it two years ago,” he wrote. “I suppose it was one of the old northern sea rovers who came to this country in the 10th century.”

Longfellow wrote a poem, The Skeleton in Armor. “I was a Viking old,” the narrator declares.

The Newport Tower

He included the Newport Tower in the poem. The Viking brought to the new land a wife, “a blue-eyed maid,” he wrote. She died, and “Under that tower she lies.”

Fall River Fire

The fire of 1843 destroyed both the athenaeum and the skeleton inside it. It happened when two boys playing with a small cannon set 20 acres of Fall River on fire, burning the post office, custom house, shops, banks, churches and the homes of 200 families.

The fire made it impossible to date the remains of the Fall River skeleton in armor. But it couldn’t have lasted more than a few centuries because it was buried in moist soil. That rules out the ancient mariner theory.

In 1881, Henry E. Chase of Brookline, Mass., debunked the theories about a pre-Columbian colony in an essay, Notes on the Wampanoag Indians.

Chase pointed out the Indians had a custom of stringing tubes of copper or brass in wide belts, and they buried their dead in a sitting position.

“We may regard him as a very ordinary and vain Indian, buried in his finery,” he wrote. “[O]r we may think of him as a successful warrior safely returned from a secret participation in King Philip’s war, and afterwards buried in the spoils which he had stripped from a fallen foe.

Several decades later, archaeologists discovered the brass arrowheads to be the same as those the Iroquois used.

Archaeologists eventually determined the Newport Tower was actually the remains of a 17th-century windmill.

But they never solved the mystery of the Fall River Skeleton in Armor.

Click here to read Longfellow’s poem, The Skeleton in Armor.

This story about the Fall River skeleton in armor was updated in 2022.

Images: Newport Tower By ajay_suresh – Newport Tower – Newport, RI, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=110188720.

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Plymouth Colony Drafts the First Laws in North America

Democracy formally took root in colonial North America on Oct. 4, 1636, when Plymouth Colony drew up the first written legal code on the continent.

Plymouth Colony was settled in 1620 by Anglicans and Separatists, also known as Brownists, and later known together as the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims believed God commended them to adopt democracy as their form of government. And that government should enforce religious belief.

A typical house in Plymouth Colony, recreated at Plimoth Patuxet.

By 1636, Plymouth Colony had fewer than 3,000 inhabitants. The Massachusetts Bay Colony would eventually eclipse it in wealth and population and absorbed the entire colony.

In the beginning, the laws of Plymouth Colony only carried the weight of a proclamation by the General Court. But in 1636 the court put them into a code known as the “General Fundamentals.”

Plymouth Colony Bill of Rights

The legal code included a rudimentary bill of rights and guaranteed trial by jury. It levied taxes, decreed the distribution of land and set out punishments for specific crimes. Several crimes carried the death penalty: treason, murder, witchcraft, arson, sodomy, rape, bestiality, adultery, and cursing or smiting one’s parents.

The Book of the General Laws of the Inhabitants of the Jurisdiction of New-Plimouth

Plymouth magistrates, however, rarely meted out the death penalty. Only one sex crime ever resulted in an execution: Thomas Granger in 1642 for bestiality.

Edward Bumpus received a death sentence for “striking and abusing” his parents in 1679. But he received only a severe whipping due to his insanity. The alleged killers of a Praying Indian named John Sassamon in 1675, which set off King Philip’s War, also received the death penalty.

Rules for Adultery

Convicted adulterers were to be punished by wearing the letters ‘A’ and ‘D’ sewn on to their garments. Nathaniel Hawthorne, of course, used that in his short story, The Scarlet Letter. Anyone convicted of burglary got the letter ‘B’ branded onto his hand. Profanity got you not more than three hours in the stock. Whipping or a fine of 40 shillings went to those who traveled, worked or participated in sports on the Sabbath.

Watching their language.

The General Fundamentals began with a preamble that declared “the associates of the Colony of New Plimouth” as “free born subjects of the kingdom of England.” As such, they had all the privileges of Englishmen. They didn’t have a charter, but believed that God wanted democratic government.

The first article of the General Fundamentals was a declaration of self-rule, stating,

That no act, imposition, law or ordinance be made or imposed upon us at present or to come, but such as has been or shall be enacted by the consent of the body of freemen or associates, or their representatives legally assembled; which is according to the free liberties of the freeborn people of England.

The second article established the election calendar, including “a free election annually, of governor, deputy governor, and assistants. But only freemen –men of property who belonged to the church — could vote.

Plymouth Colony also drew up laws for preaching the Gospel to indigenous people and for admitting them as preachers.

This story about Plymouth Colony last updated in 2022.

Images: Plymouth Colony house by By Ben Franske – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4459090.

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Flashback Photo: Miles Morgan, Springfield Pioneer

Miles Morgan, a constable and selectman of Springfield, Mass.., was honored in 1882 by the erection of a statue in Court Square by Jonathan Scott Hartley. The photo below was taken in 1908.

Miles Morgan

He was an early settler of the town before it even became Springfield in 1640. (The town was named Agawam Plantation.)

Miles Morgan

He had sailed from Bristol, England, to Boston in March 1636. On board ship he met Miss Prudence Gilbert and took quite a liking to her. She settled in nearby Beverly, Mass., with her family.

Morgan then walked 90 miles west from Boston to join a group of settlers headed by William Pynchon at Agawam Plantation. According to an old story, Miles Morgan wooed Prudence Gilbert by letter — or “by proxy.” He couldn’t read or write (not unusual for the time), but perhaps he dictated the missive.

He proposed to her to become his wife and the sharer of his dubious fortunes in the wilderness. To his frank proposal she, with equal frankness (for coquetry was not then in fashion), wrote him an explicit answer; and informed him of her willingness to comply with his wishes.

Miles Morgan, along with two neighbors and an Indian, made the journey back to Beverly in 1643. He took an old horse to carry his bride’s furniture and the muskets “to fight the armies of the aliens who might molest them.”

Once married, the happy couple then walked back to Springfield with their old horse and made a home. Morgan seems to have prospered as a farmer and butcher. He served as as constable, selectman and highway surveyor.

So why such a noble statue of an early selectman and highway surveyor? Perhaps it was because he was a hero of King Phillip’s War. In 1675, Indians attacked Springfield and destroyed a considerable part of the town. Some of the villagers took refuge in Morgan’s house and returned fire with “spirit and success.”

More likely the reason for the statue was one of Miles Morgan’s descendants: J.P. Morgan.

Ed Note: This story updated in 2022.

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Massasoit Visits Plymouth for Trade and a Peace Treaty

Around 11 am on March 22, 1621, a fine warm day, two Wampanoag Indians appeared in the village of Plymouth with a favor to ask: Would the Pilgrim leaders meet with Massasoit?

The Indians both spoke English. The first, Samoset, learned a smattering from English sailors along the Maine coast. Squanto, the second, spoke the language well, because English explorers had captured him and taken him to England as a slave .

The Indians told the colonists that Massasoit, their great sachem, was nearby with his brother Quadequina and 60 men — an intimidating show of force. Massasoit wanted to parley with the Pilgrims, for he wished to have trade and peace with them.

The Pilgrims welcomed the Indians’ overtures. They had arrived in the New World nearly four months before and had a rough go of it. Forty-five of the 102 Pilgrims died that winter.

The meeting with Squanto and Samoset resulted in the first peace treaty between Native Americans and American colonists. The peace would last 40 years, with both parties holding to their agreement not to ‘doe hurt’ to one another.

Massasoit and the pilgrims negotiate a treaty

Massasoit, A Lustie Man

As leader of the Wampanoag tribe, Massasoit practiced shrewd diplomacy. He viewed the Pilgrims as potential allies against the Narragansetts, his enemies in the region. A great plague had killed many of his own people.

Massasoit would have been about 40 when he paid that first visit to Plymouth. Pilgrim Edward Winslow described him as:

…a very lustie [strong] man, in his best yeares, an able body, grave of countenance, and spare of speech.

He dressed as his followers did, except for a great chain of white bone beads around his neck and a little bag of tobacco. He had painted his face dark red and oiled both his head and face so he ‘looked greasily,’ wrote Winslow.

Winslow volunteered to go with Squanto and Samoset to meet Massasoit. He brought with him a gift: a pair of knives and a copper chain with a jewel in it. To Quadequina he brought a knife and a jewel ‘to hang in his ear.’ He also brought liquor, biscuits and butter, all of which the Indians accepted.

Edward Winslow

Peace Talks

Upon meeting Massasoit, Winslow made a speech. King James, he said, saluted him with words of love and peace, and accepted him as an ally, and they wished to have trade and peace with him. Squanto and Samoset translated.

Massasoit said he liked the speech. They ate and drank, and then departed the camp with about 20 of Massasoit’s men, who left their bows and arrows behind.

Myles Standish and William Brewster joined them at a brook with six armed men. They escorted Massasoit to a house under construction for William Bradford. It had a green rug on the floor and three cushions.

Gov. John Carver came to the house with drum and trumpet after him and a few musketeers. Massasoit, Winslow later noted, was quite taken with the trumpet. Carver kissed Massasoit’s hand, and Massasoit kissed him back before they sat down.

The Treaty

Statue of Massasoit in Plymouth

Carver called for liquor and toasted Massasoit, who ‘drank deeply.’ Then Carver called for fresh meat, which Massasoit ate and shared with his men.

They then agreed to the treaty:

1. That neither he nor any of his should injure or do hurt to any of our people.

2. And if any of his did hurt to any of ours, he should send the offender, that we might punish him.

3. That if any of our tools were taken away when our people were at work, he should cause them to be restored; and if ours did any harm to any of his, we would do the like to them.

4. If any did unjustly war against him, we would aid him; if any did war against us, he should aid us.

5. He should send to his neighbor confederates, to certify them of this, that they might not wrong us, but might be likewise comprised in the conditions of peace.

6. That when their men came to us, they should leave their bows and arrows behind them, as we should do our pieces when we came to them.

Lastly, that doing thus, King James would esteem of him as his friend and ally.

Peace and Friendship

Winslow, who became Massasoit’s friend, wrote that he trusted him. Sometimes two or three Pilgrims had gone into the woods, working or hunting, and the Wampanoags didn’t harm them, though it would have been easy to do so.

“Hee hath a potent Adversary the Narowhiganseis [Narragansetts], that are at warre with him,” wrote Winslow, a”gainst whom hee thinkes wee may be some strength to him…”

Massasoit would also form friendships with Carver, Bradford and Standish. And he prevented the Pilgrims from starving to death during the early years of Plymouth Colony.

William Bradford

At the same time, Massasoit protected his people’s spiritual traditions, preventing their conversion to Christianity.

For the next four decades, the Wampanoags and the Plymouth colony lived in peace.

And then, King Philip’s War broke out.

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This story was updated in 2022.

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