The Barbarous Years

Bernard Bailyn, one of the leading scholars of colonial America was 89 when The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675 was published in 2012.  He would pass in 2020 at the age of 97.

Why "The Barbarous Years"?  Here's Bailyn's explanation in the introduction:

"All the people involved - native Americans, Europeans, latterly Africans - struggled for survival with outlandish aliens, rude people, uncultured in what mattered.  All  . . . felt themselves dragged down or threatened with descent into squalor and savagery.  All sought to restore the civility they once had known."

"Later generations, reading back into the past the outcome they knew, would gentrify this early passage in the peopling of British North America; but there was nothing genteel about it.  It was a brutal encounter - brutal not only between the Europeans and native peoples . . . and between European and Africans, but among the Europeans themselves . . ."

It is, indeed, a tale filled with violence, famine, harsh weather, crop failures, dangerous voyages, exploitation, constant infighting and outbreaks of violence within each settler group, along with daring, courage, sacrifice, and occasional attempts at understanding across the divides. 

The natives were not a peaceable lot at the time.  Baily describes the Iroquois, the leading northern confederacy in these terms:

 "Fierce warriors perpetually organized for war, whose savage treatment of captives created terror wherever it was known, the Iroquois were the scourge of their neighbors and rivals.  The Western Abenakis' panic fear of the Iroquois tribe closest to them, the Mohawks, has been described as 'almost psychotic'; the Hurons might realistically have anticipated that one day the neighboring Iroquois would utterly destroy them."  

"They were at war with a succession of Algonquian, Montagnais, and Huron peoples . . . and at the same time they were driving the Susquehannocks . . . farther and farther to the south . . . they mounted lesser campaigns for similar reasons against the Western Abenakis in Vermont . . . and in scattered forays far to the south, across some of the backcountry tribes of Virginia and the Carolinas.

To the south, in Virginia, the leading chief was Powhatan who created a "brutally expansive empire", turning on a neighboring tribe, the Chesapeakes "with fury and obliterated the entire community", even as the Jamestown fleet set sail from Britain.

In advance of the arrival of European settlers, many of the tribes, particularly along the coast, were already suffering from the devastating onslaught of diseases brought by the early Atlantic traders, so that on occasion, the earliest settlers found the land almost deserted.

Bailyn discusses the Pilgrim and Puritan founders of New England, the Dutch in the New Netherlands, and the small Swedish and Finnish(1) colonies along the lower Delaware River, but spends the most time on the Virginia and Maryland settlements, and its on those colonies, and particularly on the risks faced by the earlier settlers, the introduction of indentured servitude, and slavery that I'll focus on.

It's often forgotten that for 17th century Englishmen, their primary reference point for colonialization and attitudes towards indigenous peoples was Ireland and the Irish.  Ireland had been England's fastest growing colony for a century.  And what did the English think of the "wild" Irish?

Bailyn provides quotes from leading Irish colonizers, many of whom later journeyed to the New World.

"They 'blaspheme, thei murder, commit whoredom, hold no wedlocke, ravish, steal, and commit all abomination without scruple . . . matrimonie emongs them is no more regarded . . . than conjunction between unreasonable beasts, perjurie, robberie and murder counted alloweable'"

". . . more uncivil, more uncleanly, more barbarous, and more brutish in their customs . . . then in any other part of the world"

This attitude carried over to the natives in the New World.  One of the first governors of Jamestown, Sir James Dale, who launched the first war against native tribes in Virginia,  is described in these terms:

"a participant in the ruthless slaughter of noncombatants in Ireland on the ground that 'terror . . . made short Warrs'" 

Bailyn cites the leading historian of that English-Indian war regarding the tactics of that struggle:

"translated England's ad terrorem tactics from the Irish wars of the late sixteenth century - specifically the use of deception, ambush, and surprise, the random slaughter of both sexes and all ages, the calculated murder of innocent captives, and the destruction of entire villages . . ."

Whether in peace or war, the mortality toll on the Virginia settlers is astonishing.  Malnutrition, disease, the heat and humidity, along with Indian attacks was unceasing.  The original settlers landed in Jamestown in May 1607.  By September only 58 of the 104 were still alive, and of that group only six were able-bodied men capable of labor.  By January 1608, twenty more had died.

By May 1610, after the arrival of more settlers, only about 60 of 400 were still alive after a starvation winter, the survivors "so leane that they looked lyke [skeleton], cryeinge owtt, We are starved."

Eight hundred more arrived later in 1610, but six months later more than a third "had sickened and died or were killed by the Indians."

By the end of 1611 more than 1,500 settlers had arrived since 1607 but only 450 were alive.  By 1616 more than 2,000 had reached the Virginia colony but the population was only 351, of whom more than 350 were killed in Indian encounters.

After the first decade, large and more isolated plantations were established but the deadly toll continued to mount.  Half of the 280 sent to Martin's Hundred were dead by the end of 1621. A year after 34 men arrived at Berkeley Hundred, 31 were dead.  Of 120 men and boys sent to Bennett's Welcome in 1621 only 10 were alive by the end of 1623.

And just getting to Virginia involved a perilous voyage taking two to three months, during which waves of sickness would pass through the passengers in their crowded quarters.  In one instance, the colony lost valuable skills and workers when "Most of the carefully recruited ironworkers were lost on a single voyage".   

In a notorious incident, of a shipload of 180 religious dissenters, only 50 survived the voyage; "they had been 'packed together', it was reported, 'like herrings; they had amongst them the flux, and also want of fresh water".

Following the early conflicts, English policy changed regarding the natives.  In 1621, Governor Yeardley was told that "no injurie or oppression bee wrought by the English against any of the natives of that countrie wereby the present peace may be disturbed" and "to converse" and "labor amongst them . . . that therby they may growe to a likeing and love of civillty and finallie bee brought to the knowledge and love of God and true religion."  Yardley was instructed to set 10,000 acres aside for the building of schools and living quarters for the Indians.

But Yardley's attempts to improve relations were too late, as the local tribes had already begun planning for a surprise assault on the colonists.  On March 22, 1622 more than 300 English men, women, and children were killed.  Over the next few months the colonists were to prevail and the surviving natives driven into the interior, but because of the inability to plant crops, perhaps another 1,000 settlers died on malnutrition and disease in 1622 and 1623.

In total, about 8,000 settlers arrived in Virginia between 1607 and 1624.  A census the following year found only 1,218 still alive. 

Many of those 1,218 were indentured servants, bonded for a set period of years, usually seven, to their masters.  Bailyn reports that during the 17th century at least 70%, and perhaps up to 85%, of migrants to Virginia's tobacco coast were indentured servants.  

Those servants were not just adults.  Many were vagrant and orphaned children rounded up by the authorities and sent to Virginia.  For instance, between 1618 and 1620, from Bridewell Hospital in London, a detention center and jail for vagrant children, "idle wastrels, petty theives, and dissolute women" sent at least 337 to Virginia as apprentices;  by 1624 more than 4,000 vagrants were transported to the colony.

As the decades progressed, Bailyn tells us:

"Increasingly there were Irish among them, despite the fact that in the West Indies, where Irish laborers had been recruited in large numbers, they had proved to be difficult, unreliable, and often rebellious, largely as a consequence of their resistance to the vicious treatment they received from the English planters, who despised them." 

Until freed, servants were under the absolute control of their masters being, "bought and sold, pledged as security on debts, even risked in gambling . . . [T]heir worth was closely calculated, upon sale or in estate inventories".

Even later in the century, the excessive settler mortality continued for both planters and servants. 

"Between 15 and 30 percent of male immigrants to Maryland at midcentury died within the first 'seasoning' year of their residence."

In Virginia's Middlesex County "only a minority lived to the end of their service and joined the ranks of the free", while among landowning families the mortality rate was such that households were "complex, jumbled, unstable, at times bizarre." 

The 1625 census counted 23 Africans "of indeterminate legal status", among the 1,218 inhabitants.  For the first half-century of the colony that indeterminate status continued with a number of Africans acquiring freedom.  That was to change.

By the 1670s decreasing immigration from Europe, and the cost of those immigrants, was becoming an increasing problem for the small group of plantation planters, who were expanding acreage and facing an growing need for labor.  In 1670, Africans comprised about 9% of Maryland's population and there were 2,000 in Virginia, but there was not yet wholesale importation.  At the time most Africans came from British owned Barbados, the Dutch possessions in the Caribbean, or from Spanish settlements on the American mainland, not directly from Africa.

It was towards the end of the period covered by Bailyn that the legal structure began to be put in place to clearly define and manage Africans, and planned importation directly from across the Atlanta became large scale.  The change was also prompted by broader societal changes:

"By 1675 the stress lines in Chesapeake society had become clear.  A restive, footloose, unsettled population of land-hungry former servants exposed to Indian assaults pressed against an established population of small-scale planters and farmers active in the local courts and, through their deputies, in the Burgesses.  They in turn were sensitive to pressure from increasingly aggressive gentry families intent on creating great estates that required demanding personal management. . .  And feverish land speculation was driving up land values, to the spectacular benefit of some but for many a keen sense of real and relative deprivation."  

With regards to slavery we can see the stress lines statistically.  Two of every three officeholders in Virginia and Maryland owned slaves, while only one of every 16 non-officeholders were slaveowners.  The majority of tobacco farmers did not own slaves.  The result, according to Bailyn was that:

"The record of the growth and distribution in the ownership of slaves reflects the emergence of a racist, patriarchal culture.  But in the 1670s it was newly formed, strange, uncertain, and taut with inner tensions."

For the politically powerful planters:

"The question was not what the moral limits of slavery might be but how it might best be elaborated and defined in law for maximum use in the Chesapeake, and how it might related to differences in race".

It's Bailyn's reminder that from the planter perspective, slavery had always existed in one form or another; the default mode of societal organization.   What is the exception, is the abolition movement that arose in the second half of the 18th century in Britain and its colonies in America, as discussed in Christopher Leslie Brown's history of the abolition movement in Britain, Moral Capital.

----------------------------------------

(1)  The author believes the Finnish settlers were the most compatible with the natives, as their lifestyle and culture was the most similar of all the Europeans.

Dominion Of New England

(from pinimg)

Most forms of government tend towards centralization motivated by a number of reasons including control, consistency and efficiency.  In his groundbreaking book, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes To Improve The Human Condition Have Failed, James C Scott described the process by which early modern European statecraft became "devoted to rationalizing and standardizing what was a social hieroglyph into a legible and administratively more convenient format", concluding:

The social simplifications thus introduced not only permitted a more finely tuned system of taxation and conscription but also greatly enhanced state capacity.

In the 17th century, several of Britain's American colonies went through an attempt at such centralization and categorization.

During the 1620s and 30s, the New England colonies were settled by religious separatist groups, the Pilgrims and Puritans, along with dissenters from those sects who founded Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.  During much of the following twenty years, England itself was convulsed with Civil War, the overthrow of the monarchy and the regime of the Puritan, Oliver Cromwell, all of which allowed the colonies to grow with support but little interference from the home country.

Adjacent to the New England colonies was a Dutch settlement, New Amsterdam, encompassing Manhattan and the Hudson River Valley.  Further south were the Jersey colonies containing Dutch and Swedish settlements.

In 1660, the monarchy was restored with the reign of Charles II.  Four years later, the English seized New Amsterdam and the Jersey colonies.  In 1675-6, the New England colonies went through the trauma of King Philips War, the largest Indian war in American history (for more see Bloody Brook and The Sudbury Fight).  Though the colonists prevailed, much of the interior of New England was abandoned until the early 18th century.

Charles II viewed the Massachusetts Bay Colony as an unruly nuisance that had supported the Cromwell regime which had executed his father.  The Bay Colony was a theocracy, banning the Anglican Church.  It also flaunted English property law and ignored the Navigation Acts which forbid colonial merchants from selling to customers outside of England.  In 1684, Charles revoked the colony's charter after it refused to relax its religious restrictions.  The King died in February 1685 and the next steps were left to his brother and successor, James II, the last Roman Catholic monarch in British history.

In addition to the religious disputes with the errant colony, James faced some broader issues with the American colonists.  There was a continued threat from the French and their Indian allies in Canada, separated by wilderness and ill-defined and disputed boundaries from the English settlers.  The Crown was also losing revenue because of a lack of taxation and the blatant disregard of the Navigation Acts.

The solution James arrived at was a massive reorganization of the colonies, revocation of existing charters, and more direct rule by the home country which would provide for coordinated defense, enforcement of the Navigation Acts, increased revenues and the added benefit of allowing him to bestow lucrative administrative posts and land grants upon his favorites.

The initial commission for this project was given to Joseph Dudley in October 1685.  Arriving in Boston in May 1686, his writ extended to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the province of Maine, Plymouth Colony, and Narragansett County in Rhode Island.  On September 9, the Dominion was expanded to include Connecticut and the rest of Rhode Island.  The next year, New York and East and West Jersey were to be joined to the new administrative unit.
(Sir Edmund Andros)

It was only with the arrival in Boston of Dudley's successor, Sir Edmund Andros, that the Dominion truly took shape.  Under Andros, town meetings were restricted, his council was appointed, not elected, and property law was aligned to conform with English practice which threatened the freeholds of many colonists.  For the most part, the colonies resisted the authority of Andros, some passively, some actively. In Massachusetts, the most obvious manifestation was resistance to Sir Edmund's attempts to create an Anglican Church in Boston.  At that time, Anglican congregants had to hold services outside. He was rebuffed in his attempts to find land for a church as no one would sell to him.  He then requested use of the Puritan meetinghouse and was also refused.  Finally, he seized part of the public burying ground along Tremont Street and built a wooden church, now known as King's Chapel (rebuilt in stone in 1749), further outraging public sentiment.
(King's Chapel today; Burying Ground is to the left)

And even worse religious affront was to come.  According to history of massachusetts.org, citing the book, The Imperial Executive In America:

“Further evidence of Anglicization was provided by the presence of a Maypole in Charlestown, a symbol that was particularly offensive to Puritans. Angry Puritans cut down the Charlestown maypole, but an even bigger one was put up. Its very existence was a sign that Anglican influence was becoming stronger and that the Puritans were losing control of their society. The Maypole represented only the tip of the Anglican wedge, soon to be followed by observance of Christmas and other holy days, and by card games, dancing, playgoing, and other activities previously banned by the Puritans.”

Cats and dogs, living together! 

Connecticut also actively resisted Andros' authority, refusing to surrender its charter, an unusually liberal one, issued by Charles II in 1662, granting the colony virtual autonomy.  Things became so tense, that Andros went to Hartford in October 1687 to meet with local leaders and take the charter back to Boston with him.  His efforts were to be thwarted.  According to Connecticut lore, Andros attended an evening meeting at which he demanded the document, which was initially produced but then the lights were suddenly dowsed and when the candles were lit again, the charter had disappeared, eventually being hidden in a large oak tree nearby.  The Charter Oak, as it became known, survived until felled by a storm in 1856.  The Governor's desk and the Chairs for the Speaker of the House of Representatives and President of the Senate are made from the wood of the Charter Oak.
(The Charter Oak, by Charles De Wolfe Brownell)

At the same time, James II was becoming increasingly unpopular in England.  As a Roman Catholic he was always suspect by the Protestant majority and his attempts to reduce the number of official posts subject to the religious test of being a member of the Anglican Church only increased the suspicion.  Meanwhile, religious leaders in the Massachusetts Colony, led by the Puritan ministers, Increase Mather and his son, Cotton, decided to send Increase to England in order to lobby the King for a relaxation of the rule of Andros and the return of the colony's charter.

According to 1911 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, Increase received his name "because of the never-to-be-forgotten increase, of every sort, wherewith God favoured the country about the time of his nativity.”  Bitterly opposed to religious tolerance in Massachusetts, Mather's later reputation suffered because of his association with the Salem Witch Trials in 1692.  Both he and Cotton played ambiguous roles, urging caution in the proceedings and rejecting certain types of evidence but refusing, at the time and thereafter, to criticize the overall process.  He also served as President of Harvard from 1692 through 1701.  Not sure whether that helped his reputation.  Cotton's unusual first name came from the maiden name of Increase's wife, Maria Cotton.

Despite efforts by Andros to prevent the journey, Mather was smuggled aboard a ship leaving for England in April 1688.  We was finally able to meet with James in October and received promises that the colony's concerns would be addressed, but before James could take any action, other events intervened.

In June 1688, a son was born to James, giving him an heir to the throne that most believed would be raised Catholic.  The Parliamentary opposition conspired with the King's Dutch Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange and his wife Mary to install them as the new rulers of England.  In early November 1688, William, accompanied by 15,000 soldiers landed in Devon in southwestern England.  Five weeks later, after minor fighting, William entered London and James fled to France.  The Glorious Revolution of 1688 had succeeded, and England entered a new, and permanent, phase of Parliamentary supremacy, crowned by the Bill of Rights of 1689, a revolutionary document that was to be cited by the American colonists in support of their claimed rights during the 1760s and 1770s.

News traveled slowly across the Atlantic in the 17th century, particularly during the stormy winter weather when few ships crossed the ocean.  In January, Sir Edmund led a military expedition to Maine in response to Indian incursions.  Returning to Boston in mid-March, Andros was present when the first news of the revolution reached the city in early April.  Despite his efforts to suppress the reports, the news quickly became widely known.

On the morning of April 18, 1689, militia companies accompanied by large crowds assembled in town and raised an orange flag on Beacon Hill in support of King William and Queen Mary.  The total crowd of about 2,000 began arresting Dominion officials; Andros, who had a garrison of only about a dozen British soldiers, surrendered, and was held captive for nearly a year. (19th century depiction of arrest of Andros)

The triumphant insurgents issued a declaration:

We have been quiet, hitherto, but now the Lord has prospered the undertaking of the prince of Orange, we think we should follow such an example. We therefore, seized the vile persons who oppressed us.

Four days later, Samuel Prince wrote a letter to his father-in-law, Thomas Hinckley, governor of Plymouth Colony, describing the start of the revolt:

I knew not any thing of what was intended, till it was begun; yet being at the north end of the town, where I saw boys run along the street with clubs in their hands, encouraging one another to fight, I began to mistrust what was intended; and, hasting towards the town-dock, I soon saw men running for their arms: but, ere I got to the Red Lion, I was told that Captain George and the master of the frigate was seized, and secured in Mr. Colman's house at the North End, and, when I came to the town-dock, I understood that Boolifant and some others with him were laid hold of; and then immediately the drums began to beat, and the people hasting and running, some with and some for arms, Young Dudley' and Colonel Lidgit with some difficulty attained to the Fort. 

The Dominion's authority rapidly collapsed.  The final bastion fell in late May of 1689 when Sir Edmund's deputy and Lt Governor, Francis Nicholson, a British army captain, who seat of authority was New York, was overthrown in a rebellion led by Jacob Leisler, a German immigrant and militia captain.  Leisler's rule lasted for almost two years, despite local opposition but when he refused to recognize the authority of the new governor sent by King William, he was captured and executed.

With the failure of the Dominion, most of the colonies reverted to their former status.  The exception was Massachusetts which did not get its old charter back.  Under a new 1691 charter a degree of local rule was restored and boundaries expanded; the province of Maine and the struggling Plymouth Colony being added to the colony, and the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard transferred from New York to Massachusetts Bay.  At the same time, the colony's governor became a Royal appointee, as did other officials (though, in reality, Increase Mather named the initial individuals to receive such appointments), freedom of worship established and religious restrictions on voting removed.

From thence forward until the end of the Seven Years War (known as the French & Indian War in America), the British government followed a policy of what was later christened "salutary neglect"* towards the American mainland colonies, in particular those of New England, under which the enforcement of the trade laws was abandoned and local affairs left to run on their own.  It was this experience of growing self-government that helped fuel resistance to British attempts after 1763 to reassert its authority.


* The phrase, "salutary neglect" comes from a speech in Parliament by Edmund Burke on March 22, 1775.  Speaking in opposition to the government's attempts to coerce colonial cooperation, he remarked:

“That I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt, and die away within me.”

The Sudbury Fight

On April 21, 1676, somewhere between 500 and 1,500 Indian warriors made their closest approach to Boston during what became known as the Sudbury Fight.  It happened during Kings Philip's War of 1675-6, the bloodiest settler-Indian conflict in American history, as measured by the percentage of the male population killed or wounded (THC wrote of the origin, course and memory of the war in the post Bloody Brook).  King Philip (native name Metcomet), lived near the Rhode Island/Massachusetts border and an incident involving him triggered the war.

(Map from King Philip's War by George Ellis & John Morris (1906) via U of Chicago.)

By the late winter of 1675-6, Indian attacks had forced the abandonment of the towns of central Massachusetts.  Settlers in the Connecticut River Valley towns were huddled closely in several towns for protection and small settlements in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Maine had come under attack.

In March a meeting of Indian warriors at Mt Wachusetts (see map above) resulted in a decision to attack settlements to the east in the direction of Boston, with Sudbury being the immediate objective (reportedly after rejecting an attack on Concord).  Marlboro, Groton and Lancaster were quickly overrun and burned and by the evening of April 20, the warriors were on the outskirts of Sudbury.

At the time, the boundaries of Sudbury were different than they are today, also embracing current-day Wayland as well as Maynard to the northwest. Most of the town's populace was located on the east side of the Sudbury River, in what is now Wayland.  Eastern Massachusetts has been densely settled for more than two centuries, but in the latter part of the 17th century, it was on the frontier.  Beyond the new town of Marlboro, immediately to the west of Sudbury, there were only scattered settlements in the midst of the woodlands until you reached the Connecticut Valley towns.

All of the frontier towns like Sudbury and Marlboro depended upon local militia for protection against Indian raids from the western wilderness and also upon "garrison" houses; selected homesteads strengthened for protection, well-provisioned to withstand sieges and with guns and powder available to which families could flee in times of trouble.  There were six garrison houses in Sudbury.

On April 21, there were about 200 defenders of the Sudbury settlement.  About 80 local militia along with several columns of militia from other towns were in the area that day.

The action opened with an early morning attack by the Indians on the garrison houses as well as a crossing of the Sudbury River and the burning of some homes in the eastern part of town.  The primary target was the Haynes Garrison house, just west of the river, where the siege began at 6 am.


(screenshot from slideshare; an excellent presentation on King Philip's War in Marlboro, worth looking at, it can be found here)

Stationed in Marlboro was a company of about 70 under the command of Captain Samuel Wadsworth.  While most of the settlement had already been burned, Wadsworth's company was stationed at one of the garrison houses to which he had march through Sudbury without being aware of the gathering force of Indians.  Upon hiring firing, Wadsworth took about 50 of his men and began marching towards Sudbury.  On another road between Sudbury and Marlboro, a company of 18 mounted men under Captain Edward Cowell was ambushed, with four of his men killed before the Indians withdrew and he cautiously made his way into Sudbury.

Meanwhile, another company of about 40 from Watertown under Captain Hugh Mason mustered and began marching west to Sudbury's relief upon getting the alarm.  As they pushed into Sudbury they found the Indians on their front withdrawing.

The siege at Haynes Garrison house continued into early afternoon, with constant shooting and unsuccessful attempts by the Indians to set the house afire.  At one point, those in the house watched in horror as 12 Concord men, moving south along the river to help those in Sudbury were ambushed, with only one escaping.  Early afternoon saw the end of the garrison house siege as the Indians withdrew.

It was only later in the day that the reasons for the Indian withdrawals became clear; Wadsworth's company had fallen into yet another ambush and his force was big enough that all of the Indians in the area were needed to annihilate it.  Taking up a position on Green Hill near the Sudbury/Marlboro border, Wadsworth's men waged a desperate struggle that afternoon.

Samuel Wadsworth was already an experienced combat captain in the war.  He came from a distinguished family, arriving in Boston, as a two-year old, with his father Christopher aboard The Lion in 1632.  Christopher's older brother, William Wadsworth, arrived on the same ship and went on to become one of the founders of Hartford, Connecticut.  Young Samuel grew up in Duxbury, near Plymouth, before moving to Milton, southwest of Boston in 1656.  There, he and his wife Abagail raised eight children (five surviving into adulthood) on their 300 acre farm.  One of his sons, Benjamin, six years old in 1676, went on to become President of Harvard College from 1725 to 1737.  Wadsworth House at Harvard, built for Benjamin in 1726, still exists as the second oldest building at the University and served as George Washington's first headquarters when he arrived to take command of the Continental Army in July 1776.

Despite his experience, Wadsworth did not survive the battle - nor did 28 of his soldiers. The survivors were able to break out of the encirclement and seek refuge in the garrison houses.  Little is known of the details of the struggle on Green Hill.  This account is from the 1906 book by Ellis and Morris on the war:

In the evening the worst was confirmed. Captain Wadsworth had learned, soon after his already at Marlboro, of the storm gathering in the rear. Leaving the least efficient of his command in garrison, and taking with him Captain Brocklebank and the troops who had been relieved, he marched back without delay. He was expected. As he neared Sudbury by the south road, a few warriors appearing across the path ahead amid the trees, fled before him toward Green Hill. Experienced soldier though he was he believed that the main body of the foe had been seized with a panic on his approach, and, leaving the road, in eager pursuit rushed into the woods. The flitting of dusky forms and the roar of musketry from all sides soon undeceived him. The troops rallied and fought their way to the crest of the hill and, sheltering themselves behind the trees and rocks, held their own until the evening fell. Then the Indians fired the bushes and grass to windward, and as Wadsworth's weary men fell back in the dusk, blinded by the smoke, and their nerves shaken by the loss of many of their comrades, a panic seized them, the Indians closed in, there was a brief hand to hand conflict, and all was over. 

(Wadsworth monument on Green Hill from U of Chicago page on Ellis & Morris book)

That evening about 125 people - Sudbury families and surviving militia - huddled in the garrison houses on the west side of the river, anticipating a further Indian onslaught the next day.  But with dawn nothing happened.  The Indians had withdrawn to the west.

The Sudbury Fight was a tactical victory for King Philip's warriors.  They had successfully conducted three ambushes - on Cowell and Wadsworth's commands as well as on the Concord men, and destroyed much of Sudbury west of the river.  Fifty two militia were dead, while Indian losses may have been as few as four to six.  Why the withdrawal occurred remains unknown, but King Philip never resumed the offensive, the initiative quickly moved to the colonials, and the war was over by the end of the year. 

THC has always been interested in the events of the Sudbury Fight.  From 1973 to 1975 he lived in Sudbury and the foundations of the Haynes Garrison house were still visible along Water Row, adjacent to the river.  The Haynes Garrison House stood until 1876; this engraving is from a history of Sudbury (found via Along The King's Highway).  He and Mrs THC revisited the site earlier this year and took these photos:

Bloody Brook

On September 18, 1675 Captain Thomas Lathrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was leading sixty soldiers and about twenty teamsters with wagons loaded with food in an evacuation of the Connecticut River valley village of Deerfield, Massachusetts.  As they came to a small brook the lead soldiers stopped to rest to allow the wagons to catch up.  For unexplained reasons, Captain Lathrop allowed his men to set aside their arms in order to gather grapes "which proved dear and deadly grapes to them" in the words of Increase Mather.  While relaxing the group was attacked by several hundred Nipmuc Indians. (19th century photo)  Sixty of Lathrop's force (including Lathrop) were killed along with an unknown number of Nipmucs and the scene of the battle became known as Bloody Brook.  It was one of the larger battles of King Philip's War.

Wait a minute.  "King Philip"?; War in Massachusetts?

King Philip's War started on June 20, 1675 when a band of Pokanokets Indians raided Swansea, Massachusetts.  By the time the war ended in the fall of 1676 it had become, in terms of its consequences and the relative loss of life, the most significant conflict between Indians and European settlers in US history.  And it didn't take place on the Great Plains or in the deserts of the Southwest (for another, more successful, Indian revolt occurring five years later see Pueblo Revolt) - it was in New England.

Although the war "started" with this attack, its origins went back fifty years to the original English settlements in Plymouth (1620) and Boston (1630) and the tangled history of provocations and misunderstandings between the settlers and the native Indian tribes.  King Philip himself is an example of this complex history.  He was the younger son of Massasoit, Sachem of the Wampanoag tribe, who had befriended and helped the Pilgrims at Plymouth during the colony's struggling early days.  Philip's Indian name was Metacom but at the request of Massasoit's elder son, Wamsutta, the Plymouth authorities gave both sons English names which is how Metcacom became Philip and Wamsutta was renamed Alexander.(No contemporary image of Philip exists)   For years, both sons moved back and forth between Indian and English societies.  Alexander succeeded his father as Sachem until he died in mysterious circumstances while in English custody in 1662 (current modern speculation is that he had appendicitis and his death was hastened by medical malpractice by an English doctor)  Philip became the new Sachem but his brother's death along with many other incidents led to his (and other Indians) increasing disaffection with their treatment by the English. 

During the war, more than half of the 90 English settlements in New England were attacked and at the peak of Indian success, in the spring of 1676, it seemed possible that the only settlements left in English possession might be those on the Atlantic coast.  The death rate for the English was twice that of the Civil War and 8X the rate in World War II.  Thousands of the surviving settlers became destitute (New England's entire English population was only 52,000 at the time) and aid was hurriedly sent to the colonies from England and Ireland. 

Rhode Island was devastated, with Providence and Warwick converted to pillaged ghost towns.  Interior Massachusetts was largely abandoned with towns like Worcester, Deerfield and Marlboro destroyed and Sudbury (only 20 miles from Boston) and Chelmsford heavily damaged.  All the settlements in Maine were destroyed with the exceptions of York, Kittery and Wells.  Connecticut suffered the least, with only Simsbury burned.

The outcome was even more disastrous for the Indians.  An estimated 15% of the tribal population (including Philip) were killed.  Many of the survivors were sold into slavery and transported to the West Indies and others sent to Bermuda where many of their descendants live today.  Others migrated to New York and Canada.  For the remnants, the pre-war relationships with the English would never be restored - though these were difficult before 1675, the situation became much worse in the aftermath of the war.

The impact of the war along with the continued French and Indian raiding threat from Canada slowed the settlement of interior New England for decades. Worcester, abandoned in 1675, was not resettled until 1722.  Even six decades later, when Robert Rogers (founder of Rogers Rangers) was born in Methuen, Massachusetts it was still the northern limit of English settlement - only 50 miles northwest of Boston.

In contrast, it was only 42 years from the end of the Mexican War with its acquisition of the American southwest along with the settlement with England that brought us the Oregon territories to 1890 and the end of the Indian wars in the West.


The best account of the war is King Philip's War: The History And Legacy Of America's Forgotten Conflict (1999) by Eric Shultz and Michael Tougias. Shultz and Tougias also do a good job tracing the different views of Philip throughout American history and from whom the quotes below are excerpted.

For most of the century after the War, Philip was regarded as a villainous figure with, for example, Reverend William Hubbard describing him as
  

"a savage Miscreant with Envy and Malice against the English"

 Reading some of the references to Philip makes him sound like kind of a Keyser Soze figure for New England children.

After the Revolutionary War and for much of the 19th century a different, and more sympathetic, Philip was portrayed.  In Philip of Pokanket, Washington Irving wrote of him:

"Moved to hostility by the lust of conquest . . . He was a patriot attached to his native soil . . . a prince true to his subjects, and indignant of their wrongs . . . "

By the late 1800s, antiquarian Samuel Adams Drake was writing:

"In his own time he was the public enemy whom any should slay; in ours he is considered a martyr to the idea of liberty . . . "

By the mid-20th century historians were presenting a more tempered view of Philip as:

"more futile than heroic, more misguided than villainous"

And then in the latter part of the 20th century came the revisionist wave portraying Philip as:

"the innocent victim of Puritan skullduggeries".

 In the end I think Shultz and Tougias get it right when they summarize these transformations:

"Like his portraits, descriptions of Philip's character often more adequately reflected the bias of the times than the life of a real flesh-and-blood man struggling to adapt to his rapidly changing world."