Reading the American Past: Printed Page 66

DOCUMENT 4–3

Wampanoag Grievances at the Outset of King Philip's War

In 1675, John Easton, the deputy governor of Rhode Island, met with the Wampanoag leader Metacom, whom the English colonists called King Philip, in an attempt to avoid full-scale war between the colonists and the Indians. Easton, a Quaker whose religious beliefs had caused his family to be expelled from Massachusetts, explained the Indians' complaints against the colonists in a private letter to the governor of New York, excerpted below. Easton's letter, which was not published until 1858, offers a rare and relatively dispassionate account of the Indians' perspectives on the growth and development of the New England colonies during the seventeenth century, and of the circumstances that precipitated war.

John Easton

A Relation of the Indian War, 1675

A true relation of what I know and of reports, and my understanding concerning the beginning and progress of the war now between the English and the Indians. ...

For 40 years . . . reports and jealousies of war had been so very frequent that we did not think that now a war was breaking forth; but about a week before it did we had cause to think it would. Then to endeavor to prevent it, we sent a man to [King] Philip to say that if he would come to . . . [meet with us] we would come . . . to speak with him. ... Philip called his council and agreed to come to us; he came himself unarmed and about 40 of his men armed. Then 5 of us went over; three were magistrates. We sat very friendly together. We told him our business was to endeavor that they might not receive or do wrong. They said that was well — they had done no wrong, the English wronged them. We said we knew the English said the Indians wronged them and the Indians said the English wronged them, but our desire was the quarrel might rightly be decided in the best way, and not as dogs decided their quarrels. The Indians owned that fighting was the worst way; then they propounded how right might take place, we said by arbitration. They said all English agreed against them, and so by arbitration they had had much wrong, many miles square of land so taken from them; for English would have English arbitrators, and once they [the Indians] were persuaded to give in their arms, that thereby jealousy might be removed, and the English having their arms would not deliver them as they had promised, until they consented to pay a 100 pounds [currency], and now they had not so much land or money, that they were as good to be killed as to leave all their livelihood. ...

We . . . said to them when in war against the English[,] blood was spilt that engaged all Englishmen, for we were to be all under one king. We knew what their complaints would be, and in our colony [Rhode Island] had removed some of them [their complaints] in sending for Indian rulers . . . [when] the crime concerned Indians' lives, which they very lovingly accepted, and agreed with us to their execution, and said so they were able to satisfy their subjects when they knew an Indian suffered duly, but [they] said in whatever was only between their Indians and not in townships that we had purchased, they would not have us prosecute [Indians], and that they had a great fear lest any of their Indians should be called or forced to be Christian Indians. They said that such were in everything more mischievous, only dissemblers [pretenders], and that then the English made them [Christian Indians] not subject to their own [Indian] kings, and by their lying to wrong their kings. We knew it to be true, and we promising them that however in government to Indians all should be alike and that we knew it was our king's will it should be so. ...

But Philip charged it to be dishonesty in us to put off the hearing of their complaints; and therefore we consented to hear them. They said they had been the first in doing good to the English, and the English the first in doing wrong; they said when the English first came, their king's father was as a great man and the English as a little child. He constrained other Indians from wronging the English and gave them corn and showed them how to plant and was free to do them any good and had let them have a 100 times more land than now the king [of the Indians] had for his own people. But their king's brother, when he was king, came miserably to die by being forced into [the English colonists'] court and, as they judged, poisoned. And another grievance was if 20 of their honest Indians testified that a Englishman had done them wrong, it was as nothing; and if but one of their worst Indians testified against any Indian or their king when it pleased the English, that was sufficient. Another grievance was when their kings sold land the English would say it [the land sold] was more than they [the Indian kings] agreed to and a writing must be proof against all them, and some of their kings had done wrong to sell so much that he left his people none, and some being given to drunkenness, the English made them drunk and then cheated them in bargains, but now their [Indian] kings were forewarned not to part with land for nothing in comparison to the value thereof. Now whomever the English had once owned [recognized] for [the Indians'] king or queen, they [the English] would later disinherit, and make another king that would give or sell them [the English] their [the Indians'] land, that now they had no hopes left to keep any land. Another grievance was that the English cattle and horses still increased so that when they removed 30 miles from where the English had anything to do, they could not keep their corn from being spoiled, they never being used to fence, and thought that when the English bought land of them that they [the English] would have kept their cattle upon their own land. Another grievance was that the English were so eager to sell the Indians liquors that most of the Indians spent all in drunkenness and then ravened upon [plundered] the sober Indians and, they did believe, often did hurt the English cattle, and their [Indian] kings could not prevent it. We knew beforehand that these were their grand complaints, but then we only endeavored to persuade them that all complaints might be righted without war, . . . that they should lay down their arms, for the English were too strong for them. They said, then the English should do to them as they [the Indians] did when they were too strong for the English. ...

In this time some Indians fell to pilfering some houses that the English had left, and an old man and a lad going to one of those houses did see 3 Indians run out thereof. The old man bid the young man shoot, so he did, and an Indian fell down but got away again. It is reported that then some Indians came to the garrison and asked why they shot the Indian. They [the English] asked whether he was dead. The Indians said yea. An English lad said it was no matter. The men endeavored to inform them it was but an idle lad's words, but the Indians in haste went away and did not harken to them. The next day the lad that shot the Indian and his father and five more English were killed; so the war began with Philip. ...

After the English army, without our consent or informing us, came into our colony [Rhode Island], they brought the Narragansett Indians to articles of agreement with them. Philip being fled, about 150 Indians came in to a Plymouth garrison voluntarily. The Plymouth authorities sold all but about six of them for slaves, to be carried out of the country. It is true the Indians generally are very barbarous people, but in this war I have not heard of their tormenting any; but that the English army caught an old Indian and tormented him. He was well known to have been for a long time a very decrepit and harmless Indian. ...

The English were jealous that there was a general plot of all Indians against the English, and the Indians were in like manner jealous of the English. I think it was general that they were unwilling to be wronged and that the Indians do judge the English to be partial against them. ...

I having often informed the Indians that English men would not begin a war otherwise, it was brutish so to do. I am sorry that the Indians have cause to think me deceitful, for the English thus began the war with the Narragansetts after we had sent off our Island many Indians and informed them, if they kept by the watersides and did not meddle, that the English would do them no harm; although it was also not safe for us to let them live here. The army first took all those prisoners, then fell upon the Indian houses, burned them, and killed some men. The war began without proclamation; and some of our people did not know the English had begun mischief to the Indians, and being confident and having cause to be so, believed that the Indians would not hurt them before the English began. So they did not keep their garrison exactly. But the Indians, having received that mischief, came unexpectedly upon them and destroyed 145 of them beside other great loss. But the English army commanders . . . sold the Indians that they had taken . . . for slaves, except for one old man that was carried off our Island upon his son's back. He was so decrepit he could not go, and when the army took them, his son upon his back carried him to the garrison. Some [English colonists] would have had him devoured by dogs, but the tenderness of some of them prevailed to cut off his head. And afterwards they came suddenly upon the Indians where the Indians had prepared to defend themselves, and so received and did much mischief. And for about six weeks since, the time has been spent by both parties to recruit; and now the English army is out to seek after the Indians, but it is most likely that those most able to do mischief will escape, and the women and children and impotent may be destroyed; and so the most able will have the less encumbrance to doing mischief.

But I am confident it would be best for English and Indians that a peace were made upon honest terms for each to have a due propriety and to enjoy it without oppression or usurpation by one to the other. But the English dare not trust the Indians' promises; neither the Indians to the English's promises; and each has great cause therefore. ... It has always been a principle in our Colony that there should be but one supreme authority for Englishmen both in our native country and wherever English have jurisdiction; and so we know that no English should begin a war and not first offer for the king to be umpire, and not persecute those that will not conform to their worship, even if their worship be what is not owned by the king. ...

I am persuaded that New England's priests are so blinded by the spirit of persecution and anxious to have their hire [salaries] and to have more room to be mere hirelings, that they have been the cause that the law of nations and the law of arms have been violated in this war, and that the war would not have been started if there had not been a hireling who, for his management of what he calls the gospel, to have it spread by violence, and to have his gain from his quarters paid for; and if any magistrates are unwilling to act as their pack horses, they will be trumpeting for innovation or war.

From John Easton, “A Relation of the Indian War” in Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675–1699, ed. Charles Henry Linoln (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913), 2–13. Ed. Paul Royster, 2006.

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