1675.

King Philip's War.

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bloodshed, the white troops had driven Philip and his warriors from Mount Hope. Not long after, Philip was a fugitive, and sped from tribe to tribe, rousing them to vengeance. It seemed as if the war was over; it had really but just begun. Now occurred many terrible and never-to-be-forgotten scenes. The In

dians, avoiding the white troops, dodging them, and never meeting them face to face in the open field, carried on the contest in their savage way of massacring the helpless, and burning villages. Many a fair and quiet settlement was made desolate. The new houses of

the settlers were suddenly laid waste. Women and children were ruthlessly murdered, and burned in the houses. Whole villages disappeared by fire. No one could feel safe; fire and death menaced the colonists in the fields, in their beds, in their churches, at the home porch. Out of the one hundred towns which, at that time, the New England colonies contained, twelve were entirely destroyed, and more than forty were more or less injured.

The Indians suffered, perhaps, not less terribly than the whites. The great tribe of the Narragansetts joined in the war, and it was their chief, Canonchet, who said,

"We will fight to the last man before we will become servants to the English!"

The fort of this tribe, which, built of palisades, stood where the town of South Kingston, Rhode Island, now stands, was

the hiding-place and rendezvous of many of the Indians who had been defeated. This fort the Plymouth colonists resolved to destroy.

In December, 1675, when the snow lay deep on the dreary forest roads, Josiah Winslow set out for Fort Narragansett, at the head of a thousand resolute and well-armed men. It was a long march to this rude fortification; but on reaching it

they soon destroyed it. The fort and its cabins were set on fire; the winter stores of the Indians, their food and clothing, worse still, their old men, women, and children, were consumed in the flames.

The chief Canonchet was soon after taken prisoner. Offered his life if he would submit and agree to make peace, he proudly refused; and then, being condemned to death, he said,

"I like it well; I shall die before I speak any thing unworthy of myself."

There were still terrible ravages and sufferings among the colonies; but by the end of 1675 the force of the Indians