Info dump pt 2
told the colonial leaders of the plan and the next time he was seen, he was at the bottom of Assawompset Pond with a broken neck. The colonies arrested 3 Wampanoag and hung them for the murder of the praying indian. (Side note: The pond was also part of a land dispute between the tribes and the colonies but conveniently when the colonists arrested some of the natives, the land was suddenly theirs) Now King Philip and the other tribal leaders felt that the hanging of the 3 Wampanoag was the English overstepping their jurisdiction and unacceptable. The execution of these three men was the first “shots” of the bloodiest war per capita in American history. By the end of this conflict, 30% of the english colonial population would be dead with the natives suffering even more losses than that.
On June 20th, 1675 a band of Pokanoket(a subdivision of Wampanoag) attacked the English village of Swansea likey against the wishes of King Philip. They burned a few homes and left. However on the 23rd, an English boy saw a Pokanoket outside his how and was instructed to fire a rifle, killing him. This enraged the entire Pokanoket tribe and they returned the next day to launch a full scale attack, killing 3. This kept snowballing and snowballing until on the 28th, the colonies sent a militia to the native village at Mount Hope, Rhode Island, destroying the entire settlement(Tensions were not helped by the fact the a total lunar eclipse had occurred the day prior, a phenomena that many of the natives took as a sign that total victory would be theirs)
Word of the violence in Massachusetts and Rhode quickly spread and by the middle of summer, the Podunk and Nipmuc tribes would be involved in the conflict. By the end of the summer, the english settlements of Middleborough, Dartmouth, Mendon, Brookfield, Lancaster, Deerfield, Hadley, and Northfield had all suffered native raids. The attack on Brookfield was especially consequential as it led to an official declaration of war by the colonies. This allowed a band of Nipmuc to have a clear conscience when the ambushed a wagon train of crops guarded by 79 militia men on a road between the towns of Hadley and Deerfield. 57 colonists did not make it off that road. The town of Springfield was next up, and after the dust settled and the raiders were drove off, anything that could burn was reduced to ashes.