Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 239 - King Philips War Part 2: A Pocket Full of Grapes

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

The war finally starts and the colonial authorities immediately make everything much worse. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Buy Joe's books: https://www.amazon.com/Frontier-Corps-Military-Sci-Fi-Forlorn-ebook/dp/B0B5YJD7J2/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=0F9hR&content-id=amzn1.sym.e4bd6ac6-9035-4a04-92a6-fc4ad60e09ad&pf_rd_p=e4bd6ac6-9035-4a04-92a6-fc4ad60e09ad&pf_rd_r=BJFJ8DMEE9M0Y60XFEVE&pd_rd_wg=HG18o&pd_rd_r=03aa9132-cb25-484a-a41e-dd419379f0a4&ref_=pd_gw_ci_mcx_mr_hp_atf_m Sources: Lisa Brooks. Our Beloved Kin James Drake. King Philip’s War: Civil War in New England Kyle Zelner. Rabble in Arms, Massachusetts Towns and Militiamen During King Philip’s War

Hello and welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I said welcome back like we just had like a commercial break or something. But we're in the middle of a series, so I assume you're coming back because we're in part two. Anyway. You're doing what I used to do for Lions Led by Donkeys and simply forcing Roz to listen to like 10 hours of it in a row. That's right. I'm Joe and with me, as always, is Liam.

Hello, Liam. Hey, Joe. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing well, man. It was my, uh, it won't matter when this comes out, but it was my fifth first date-iversary with Corinne today. Eh, that still counts. We celebrated by her getting food poisoning.

That's how I celebrate all of my anniversaries. Catastrophic food poisoning, yes. I gotta, how do you keep track of, like, like what you remember exactly what date your first date was on? Bumble, bro. Uh, okay. Okay. So there's like, there's evidence. There's evidence.

Yes, yes, yes. Interesting. I've never been in a situation where I like remember exactly when the first date of whatever relationship I was in. That's because you're a selfish lover, Joe. That's right. of whatever relationship I was in. That's because you're a selfish lover, Joe.

That's right. You kind of disheartened how quick you were with that. I know what I am. It's fine. The first key to accepting yourself is knowing who you are. I guess that's true. I don't even know if that's true. I think I just made that up.

Liam, last time we were pot were uh we were potting we were casting a pod uh we were talking about king philip's war um part and it ended in the the worst murder investigation in colonial american history uh at least one that i've ever read about oh he's still warm this is the body uh and now we're gonna do a genocide about it uh i mean what what can you expect here like plymouth ncis or something um it's like that would be one depressing television show for one i'd probably watch it and be the only like csi ncis episode i've ever actually watched uh but i mean if you remember like they're a couple years away from doing um like the salem witch trials these people are not the smartest motherfuckers on earth all right that is true that that is true so when we left you last time the colonies of new

england kind of edged their way into would become a massively catastrophic war via inventing racist homeowners associations, also known as homeowners associations. Yeah, but you repeat yourself. Defund the HOA. And becoming horribly paranoid that all they're fucking around would eventually lead to an era known as finding out. And this era would start on Juneune 20th 1675 with the raid on swansea massachusetts is it swansea am i fucking that up swansea yeah it's swansea okay swansea perfect i don't know shocks is gonna find a way to get mad at this episode anyway who gives a shit all the all the funny region like the all the little regional things always end to someone getting mad at me and i've just learned to accept it yeah uh please leave please forever to leave a

five-star review and don't hate us much like the uh the the movie lord of war when he says you know i am a lord of war he's like it's warlords well i like it my way better yes that's my response whenever i pronounce anything wrong i like it my way better yes that's my response whenever i pronounce anything wrong i like it my way better all right hey man you know uh it's your podcast i'm just i'm just here to party so this was considered by colonists to be the long-awaited massively well-organized native uprising against them because remember they've been worried about this for probably decades at this point um but it wasn't. There's no proof that that massive multi-tribe-wide native conspiracy ever existed in any real way. And there's no proof that Philip

even had anything to do with the raid on Swansea at all. There is evidence that he was gathering men for something. But when the raid happened, when he heard about the raid on swansea he actually broke down into tears because he kind of knew what was going to come next right massive reprisals the closest thing we have to a declaration of war by philip is when he said quote the english who first came to this country were a handful of people forlorn poor and distressed well actually the english are still kind of like that. Philip didn't say that. I said that.

Yeah, you guys suck. Not us Americans who are cool and good, of course. And certainly not genocidal maniacs. My father, who was in Satcham, he relieved their distresses in the most kind and hospitable manner. He gave them land to plant and build upon. They flourished and increased. By various means, they got possessed of a great part of this territory.

But he still remained their friend till he died. My elder brother became Satchim. They pretended to suspect him of evil designs. He was seized and confined and thereby thrown into illness and died soon after i became sachem they disarmed all of my people their lands were taken but a small part of the dominion of my ancestors remained i am determined not to live until i have no country that's the closest thing anybody has that Philip was planning a war. Um, and I,

I would argue that's not really much of a declaration of war. That's just a guy who wants to be left alone. Yeah. It's a guy. It's pretty, pretty mad. Yeah. Yeah.

I would be mad too. Please get the fuck off my land. Thanks. Please stop shooting at, shooting at us and stealing our food. Stop being, stop doing racist homeowners association shit at me. Philip wasn't exactly a military genius or the leader of a powerhouse tribe in the region.

I mean, Philip never fought in any war that anybody's aware of. And the native politics were a fucking minefield. And admittedly, Philip wasn't that good at them. He never really had to be. His whole life, he's had to dance around the British. He never really learned how native politics work pre-British. He wasn't old enough. Many tribes still had loyalties to the British, forced or otherwise. Some tribes, like the Sconnet, tore themselves apart over the issue with their leaders saying they were staying loyal to the British.

But many of their warriors giving their sachem a middle finger and going off to Philip's camp, which everything started kicking off. This happened quite a bit, actually. I imagine more than a few people sort of saw the writing on the wall. Yeah, and their leaders were the ones that benefited um from their forced or otherwise relationship with the british like they're the ones that got the favors that the the normal people just got fucked no dude trickle down works you're a moron shut up i'm gonna trickle down colonialism just colonialism pyramid scheme what if ronald multi-level marketing my bad what if ronald reagan ran the British East India Company?

Oh, that cursed sentence. Now, at the rate at Swansea, it wasn't even actually Philip's tribe who did it. A band of Pocahontas warriors attacked Swansea. They looted several homes and set others on fire. Colonies at the time were normally supposed to be garrisoned by members of the militia, which we talked about in the last episode with their cool courting rituals of shooting muskets next to people's heads.

Gotta love it. Ladies, if you're listening, Joe knows his way around a musket. Hello, nice to meet you. Just blasting a black powder musket in between our feet and through the dirt like hey man tinnitus makes everyone horny there's a i don't know why i've never been able

to get a second date i don't get it i said but but liam said tinnitus made everyone horny i go through a lot of black powder but no second day you have tinnitus joe yeah now these these militiamen are supposed to be stationed within block houses which you know we talk about block houses quite frequently in the show like the bunker bunkers of some kind but that's not really what these were uh just think of it was the block house was the most sturdily built house in the in the town um like it has decent walls and stuff like that but concrete bunker or something these are not however these garrisons and blockhouses except even the every everything was left up to the local government to maintain and oftentimes they just didn't do it uh so the garrison houses or

blockhouses um were also supposed to be like a safe house for the population of whatever town that they just run in. And they did do this in Swansea. There were no militia there, but the people just flooded into the block house and word got to the governor of Massachusetts that the raid had happened. And this wasn't like a horribly destructive raid, certainly not the worst one we're going to talk about in the remainder of the series, that's for sure. But it was eye-opening for the Massachusetts governor, right? However, there's actually another version of these events that kind of change what the raid might be. these events that kind of change what the raid might be. And we don't know which one is true because it's the 1600s. And this version was written by John Easton, that Quaker that we talked about. He'll be involved as a historian of this conflict pretty much throughout. And he was an eyewitness because he was in Swansea. He said that some native men did break into a house, but they were looking for food because everything we talked

about, most of the tribes were hurting for food for various reasons. Almost most of all of them directly related to the British and the relationship between the two societies. And they broke into a house and then a civilian shot one of them now this might sound normal to americans listening uh that like shooting you're like shooting someone that breaks into your home is like yeah of course you would do that and for our internet and for our international listeners yes we realize how insane that sounds um he does i don't but uh the natives like this wasn't the case back then like people don't expect to get shot right especially over just stealing and that's when like a natives after one of them got shot went to a local garrison asked hey what the fuck we just wanted some food um the the men

inside then told him to fuck off and the day, this apparently happened on the 19th. And on the 20th is when the raid happened. And according to Easton, it was in revenge for shooting one of their own. And it killed nine colonists. So it depends on... We honestly don't know which part is true. I think both of them could be very true. Because there's obvious that there was a years-long process of building tension between the two sides where you can't just keep treating people like that and expect them not to do something.

Right, of course. Now, whatever happened, the governor ordered 200 men under the command of Major William Bradford to march in and protect the town. And they really didn't. Oh, no? they really didn't um oh no after they killed the nine colonists like the the native warriors kind of hung out in the surrounding woods and like shot at people that would come by they were still stealing things um the militia parked itself inside the town's garrison building and decided that they were only worth protecting the people who had actually made it into that same building all right yeah uh very much the same as like a mall security guard uh i guess yeah well that's

not true mall security guard don't actually do anything at all these guys would at least like shoot back um now like the thing is is like you can't trap people in a into a blockhouse very long there's not a lot of food or water in there uh everybody left everything at their homes so like they're like. So after a couple hours or whatever, like, well, I'm going to go home and get something. And that person would wander out of the neighborhood blockhouse and get picked off by a native sniper. Because remember, they're very good shots from hunting and stuff like that. Men inside the blockhouse themselves are also occasionally clapped by a walling sniper fire through the windows. Now, remember back in episode one, when I said that the trading of guns to native tribes

has become very important. This is kind of one of those things. In early colonial America, it's seen as like, I mean, this is certainly an American thing. And pop culture is is a huge part of why this is the case um we think of as being populated by like hardman hunters trackers survivalists like weak people wouldn't survive here right like like that's how that's how we've always been told to think of like colonial america is that it's a hard scrap of life and if you're weak you died that's not true at all um i mean in a growing up in america you're told that these early colonialists and like frontiersmen were terminator levels of indestructible you know um and there were a couple of those guys floating

around uh one guy named edward church who was literally nicknamed the king of the wild frontier which oh boy okay it's kind of baller um it is kind of baller i guess uh but they were by far a tiny tiny minority remember like we talked about in the last episode the vast majority of colonists were just normal farmers who were actually actually quite malnourished sick you know oh yeah they were desperately just trying to get by they were just some dudes and probably not healthy ones um and these were farmers like they were there's normal farming like there would have been in england because that's where these people came from for the most part um so like hunting and the general use of firearms was actually a rich guy hobby because Because if you think about it,

normal people have to fucking farm every day. They have to back breaking labor just so they can eat. They don't have time to go grab their brown bass musket or whatever and go pot some deer. That was something the well-off people did. Even members of the militia rarely fired their weapons. Even members of the militia rarely fired their weapons. So they weren't great shots. But they also didn't need to be. Because remember, they're framed on European-style warfare, which is lines of infantry firing volleys. So they're not used to getting picked off in the woods. Yeah, they're not exactly going to be.

You don't need to be a great shot to do that. not exactly going to be, you don't need to be a great shot to do that. And that nobody had any military experience outside the Pequot War, which we talked about briefly, which was very, very small and wasn't fought at all like a European war. That meant these militiamen had no idea how to fight in the 99% rural landscape of New England, which is heavily forested, like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles of unbroken forest. So now they're definitely finding themselves in a bad way. In comparison, the native warriors were the total opposite. The tribes were not usually hunters. Some of them were not usually hunters. Some were fishermen, some were whatever.

But they were driven into this lifestyle by the constant encroachment on their lands by the British. I mean, to a lesser extent, the French and the Dutch as well. And they had to trade various things to get firearms from the white people. Then they were not given a large amount of ammunition because that was a mechanism of control. Control, sure. So that meant they couldn't fucking miss when they shot. So they had to become incredibly good shots. And then they slowly adopted those firearms into new hunting practices that they had to develop because they know their choice or old hunting practices, which are stalking, camouflage, things like that.

This meant they were the best shots in North America by far. Because if you're hunting with a black powder musket and you have a very, very limited amount of ammunition. You only get one shot and your dinner gets away if you miss or you starve. They were great at stalking, tracking, and camouflage because their lives had literally become to depend on it. And due to the fact that their lives depended on their guns working flawlessly and every time they pulled a trigger, many of these warriors had become impromptu gunsmiths because they had to learn how to fix them and they could actually improve them in some cases like light like learn how to carve away things they didn't need so they'd be lighter stuff like that so as the soldiers moved out of swansea trying to push into the surrounding forests and get out to get at these bands of of

of warriors who were sniping at them they pretty much only succeeded into walking into a continuous ambush and getting shot at by people they couldn't see and then you know they would do the normal thing of like trying to form a line uh organize volleys so they could fire back uh and by the time they did that the warriors had already displaced and they were shooting at empty bushes. When enough soldiers finally showed up that they could sweep the entire local, like this is happening on a peninsula in Swansea, and they thought that the best way they could finally find all these warriors is to sweep the entire peninsula at once, the warriors simply left, withdrawing into the territory controlled by the Pocasset tribe. The settler's resident expert, Edward Church, remember the king of the wild frontier, he kind of realized what was happening.

And he said, literally the only way we can do this is if we just chase after them. We can't slow down. We can't worry about forming lines and whatnot, any of this bullshit. We just need to attack them. But instead, it was decided to drop down a fort in the area and garrison it. And from there, they would send out small patrols who were then again ambushed by warriors who were still lurking in the woods.

Though, the failure of these patrols could have had something to do with this garrison idea, which was probably never going to work. Or it could have also been a problem based on the quality of the soldiers that the Massachusetts Bay Colony had actually sent out. Right. Now, not wanting to send their best soldiers into the woods to a wild goose chase, they kept those guys close to

massachusetts like the the core of massachusetts for themselves instead they scraped together a bunch of criminals who gave them guns uh and like most of these guys were literally convicted pirates which is admittedly that's kind of cool that's kind of cool that's all right all right however uh their commander was a convicted pirate named Samuel Mosley. And he was so racist, even for the time, he refused to even use a native scout. Meaning he and his, I don't know. Merry brand of crackers. Yes.

Yeah. All just continually got lost in the woods. Yeah, that'll do it. And then shot at. Now, we don't know if Church's plan to storm through the pocasset area was going to work we do what we do know it didn't work and that's what happened um and philip was now fully on board with the war because it's not really like he had much of a chance a choice anymore you know like the war was started it didn't matter if he was into it, right? He was going to get the blame for it.

And since Philip ran into the Pocasset area, he decided to talk to the leadership to try to get them to join together, right? The settlers learned this when they sent a diplomatic party because they also realized that they have to get the natives to kind of either A, join their side, normally via threats. We'll talk a little bit more about this uh later or be um like denounce philip at minimum but when their diplomatic party

walked into pocasset land they immediately got shot in the face so there was a hint that something was off now like i think the pocassets may have joined Philip. Sir, why do you think that? Well, I'm getting domed right now. Our diplomat just got connected to the king's Wi-Fi. The war was rapidly spreading. And while it hadn't started as a grand native plan in any way, it certainly was turning into one. Because, you know. Through the greater unified

theory of fuck England. Right, of course. Church warned the government that this would happen if Philip escaped and managed to gather more allies by his side. Namely, they were worried about the Nargansetts. Like we talked about the last episode. Nargansetts, Jesus fucking Christ.

Nargansetts. Nargansetts. They were by far Nargansetts. Nargansetts. They were by far the most powerful tribe in the entire region. But they had stayed neutral. They were not fans of the English. They were, like everyone else, they weren't in some kind of alliance with the English by choice, but they weren't taking the English side either. They were staying neutral, and they told Philip to fuck off and leave them alone. They wanted to stay out of this.

Now, the easiest way to explain why they wanted to do this isn't because they didn't support shooting the English or driving them from native land. I'm sure they did. shooting the English or driving them from native land. I'm sure they did. Or because they hated the natives that had sided with Philip because they also hated them. Because remember that everybody hates everybody in this situation. But quite practically, they figured like, well, if these two sides shoot each other,

I can clean up the mess and take over both sides. Yes. Yeah. Totally makes sense. Got to play both sides yes yeah totally makes sense gotta play both sides that way you can never lose i always come out on top that's right however the sellers way of ensuring that the nargansett stayed uh neutral was by doing it the most english way possible they showed up at a nargansett camp and demanded hostages uh which nearly demanded hostages that's yes okay yeah of course the

idea is like well you won't fight a war if we have like your satram's son as as a as a hostage little do you know i've been waiting to i've been waiting to kill that son of a bitch my whole life yeah the hostage the hostage system doesn't really work if you fucking hate your kids you know yeah um i feel like that's why that's why the soviet union won world war ii um and this almost ended with the diplomats getting shot in the face um and they should have honestly they did acquiesce and give them hostages uh but it was definitely like a all right i'll give you my cousin or whatever i don't even like this yeah i don't give a shit about this.

Who can I find down here? Now just give me a second, please. But the Narragansetts didn't declare outright, but the meeting ended with them not really being neutral anymore because of course it fucking didn't. Yeah, I wouldn't be neutral either. They did. Give me my cousin's kid back, please. Yeah, give me back that idiot who has mittens pinned to his jackets year-round and getting farts at dinner tables. He's our village idiot. You leave us alone.

He's our village idiot. You can't have one. Our draft pool for the village idiot is quite thin due to all of the malnourishment. They can't do that to our pledges. They can't do that to our pledges. Only we can do that to our pledges. The Narcansans did sign a treaty that they said that they would stay out of this conflict, but they saw this as completely pointless. They didn't really believe in the agreement because they didn't make it on their own free will,

because of course they fucking didn't. The Wampanoags, over the next next few weeks raided their way through the area taunting an old ria booth uh both got lit up by the end of june by july the entire settlement of middleborough was destroyed and dartmouth was hit uh by a different tribe that decided it was time to join in on the fun now i should point out here that oftentimes it like in some histories of the war this is like shown as being evidence of a like a native alliance confederation or some of some kind but it imagine at best it's pretty loose it's and it just bases on fuck that guy it's more based on fuck that guy than the tribe is working together at all. Cause you know, word travels fast and when people are getting raided,

they're like, fuck yeah, let's go because everybody's been waiting to do this. Um, the Nipmuck people also joined an attack to Menden, Lancaster and Medfield. Uh, and by July,

the war had spread from Plymouth to involve virtually all of new England. So yeah, things, things went, uh, quite quick shit to hell in a handbasket as my mother New England. So, yeah, things went quite quickly. To hell in a handbasket, as my mother would say. However, according to James Cudworth, a commander from Plymouth, he had located Philip's position

and they were going to surround and starve him out. Though Church, again, the guy who actually knows what he's doing here, pointed out how stupid this was, saying, attempting to surround a native warrior in his own backyard was completely pointless and he would doing here, pointed out how stupid this was, saying attempting to surround a native warrior in his own backyard was completely pointless and he would certainly find a way out.

Yeah, he knows the land a little better than you do, Guy. Yeah. However, Cudworth just ignored him and they did what they like to do the most, build another fort. They love doing it. They love building forts. They love doing it.

And this is near the swamp he thought Philip was hiding in. He was there somewhere, but they were never going to find them. And once again, they deployed patrols to track down and destroy anything connected to the war effort. And this is the first time

during the war that the militia purposely targeted native food supplies. This is going to become much, much worse in part three. Something comes up worse in part three? Yeah. Are we sure? Possibly.

Wow. It might be a thing that we do consistently here. It is a thing we do consistently because, yeah, I mean, people are garbage. Execute your local Englishman. Sicily because yeah I mean people are garbage execute your local Englishman of uh no like of this um tactic church took no part in it and he said quote to the army now lay still to cover the people from nobody while they were building a fort for nothing I like that it's poetic um honestly that if you could copy and paste that quote to the war in Afghanistan or Iraq or Vietnam, it would work great. Another reason for this was that rather than the full offensive that Church kept begging for, because he knew that would be the only thing that would end this,

all of this fort building and small patrols and whatever required fewer soldiers and was much easier to do. Works good in Starcraft. Church simply did not want to build additional pylons. No. He didn't think the pylons were important. But it's also important to remember that none of these militiamen are full-time soldiers. There are no full-time soldiers.

They're just guys. They're just guys. And more importantly, they're farmhands. All of them had fields to work and it was about to be harvest season. So remember a bad harvest in these days literally meant to hold you're gonna die right yeah uh what did we call it uh exploding disease or something disease exploding missed disease um and you know well i i should point out you know a bad harvest means more death and misery than normal, because there's always death and misery in colonial America.

So they chose the option that allowed them to send the majority of their soldiers home so they could work. son of uncas who had continued the family tradition of being something of uh an eager uh ally of the the of the settlements right oh that's gonna end poorly for you my friend like there there's some people who are forced to work for the british and there are some there's this fucking guy and there's some people who are enthusiastic supporters because it benefits them, right? Right. This is where the war should have ended. When that go in about 265 men had Philip dead to rights and the first battle of Nipsichuk. Today is it's in like Smithfield, Rhode Island. We don't know much about the battle itself. There's no firsthand written accounts or anything, but we do know that Philip was badly outnumbered because he only had 40 warriors

and 30 guns. Oh no. 23 of Philip's men were killed and he was forced to run off and hide in a swamp once again. Philip ends up hiding in swamps quite frequently. He loves doing it. He just loves a good swamp. You get stuff like

I don't know, a lot of Phyrexian mana that way. He's history's first Shrek. Two awful jokes. Back to back. That's great. And reportedly, according to Easton, the Quaker, Philip was ready to surrender at this point. However, Winnetka, not being the best commander, nor even from the area, got lost in the swamp while wandering through the area and trying to find Philip and his few remaining men. the administration of Boston was trying to win over the Nipmuc at the same time,

despite the fact that they'd already attacked Menden. They were hoping that if they called everybody down, they would be able to... Because the Nipmuc weren't the most powerful tribe. They figured if maybe they get one of the weaker ones to go back to their camps or maybe join their side via threats and kidnapping, then things would be better, right? They're hoping to nip this problem in the bud before the whole fuck the colonies train fully left the station. And turned everyone into mist. A diplomatic party of around 25 men set off to find the Nipmuc leaders

and they fully planned, like they had done with the Narragansetts, like force them into a treaty at gunpoint, right? Right, right? Right. Right. Of course. And then they found the village is abandoned, which probably should have been a hint that something was off. And then they ran into a group of Nipmuc who were out foraging or something.

And they said, these guys apparently weren't too keen on the war either, because they told the diplomats, you might want to go home. This was also ignored. Instead, they kept going, walking straight into an ambush, which is now known as Wheeler's Surprise. Wheeler's, what a name. Yeah, that's certainly a name for an ambush, named for Captain Thomas Wheeler, who was the commander of the mission. Wheeler immediately ordered either a retreat or the 25 men broke and ran. Both are very possible. We don't know. As they tried to flee, another group of Nipmuc appeared from behind them,

pinning them in, shooting and hacking them with hatchets. Almost immediately, Captain Wheeler and his second command, Captain Hutchinson, were wounded. And everybody was probably going to die quite horribly if it wasn't for the men's local guides from the Natak tribe, who just took command of the entire mission and led them out of the kill zone. The guides ran towards the town of Brookfield, knowing the Nipmuc, led by a Satchem Mudawump, were right behind them and were going to continue the attack. The surviving members of the mission and the 70 people of the town, because remember, these are very small towns. This is a town of 70 people, all barricade

themselves into the town's block people uh all barricade themselves into the town's blockhouse mudawump who is now who now probably has hundreds of men attack the blockhouse which is pretty easily fought off uh because you know when you're attacking a was effectively a fortified position it's not gonna go so well by and large yeah you're fighting the colonist game then like they can sit in there and just shoot at you and volleys then channeling his inner wily coyote oh boy mudawump got an idea he loaded a wheelbarrow up with flammable shit he had found laying around okay all right and it was it was about to just uh he was gonna send a warrior to charge towards the blockhouse with it which to me sounds like he was accidentally trying to create a

suicide bomber this feels like a kamikaze attack i was gonna say um but right as the plane was unraveling here uh it started to rain so he couldn't do that as the nitmuck sat around thinking about how to close this one out a real a relief column from lancaster showed up uh which made things a lot more even than muddle up would have liked like he didn't show up here for a fair fight. He thought he was fighting 70 people. And so he stole the entire town's livestock and retreated. All right. If you can't suicide bomb the blockhouse, you got to do the next best thing.

Steal all the cows or whatever. They're probably pigs, honestly. Mudawump and his men pulled back to a fort that they had built, linking up with Philip and creating a hotspot for anti-colonial activity that drew in warriors from across the region. And soon the Connecticut River Valley became a scene of several raids as well, leading to Boston sending troops there. is an interesting kind of thing because normally this is happening around tribal lines, but this fort would just like random natives who wanted to join in, even if their tribe said no, would all just coalesce there. Yeah. It's like, I don't know, a recruiting station in a decent part of town, I guess. Boston's military in the region would be organized by John Pynchon, a man who begged the government to not give him the job because he said, quote,

I would not be very good at this job, which. Okay. All right. So they totally did it anyway, though. That's yeah. All right,

cool. You got it. You got it. Like, I'm not going to say anything nice about most of the columnists in this, but like, at least he's honest. This is like,

please don't do this to me. I just want to eat shit at farmingvick yeah like i just want to i want to go back to my day job being a literal shit shoveler um with my family of internal parasites that i hang out with oh you fellas ever heard of miss disease now other colonial attempts at diplomacy went about as well as you can imagine the battle of south deerfield started because Commanders Thomas Lathrop and Richard Beers took about 100 men to attack the Norwooduck tribe because they literally planned to like, well, if we murder the whole tribe, they can't even involved yet now they succeeded again in getting ambushed in a swamp um because i i didn't know there were so many swamps in the northeast apparently you're just swamp people there yeah me yeah i'm lumping you in it because you're close enough you fucking yankee you can just say yankee liam the swamp creature wow dude that's not wrong but like you don't have to say it i prefer swamp person

oh i prefer swamp dude uh they you know they succeeded in once again getting ambushed in the swamp like i said but they did succeed in two things again getting shot in a swamp which is apparently siddler's favorite thing to do and uh driving a neutral tribe directly into the anti-colonial forces that were growing there because of course they fucking would right as springfield was raided once again colonial militia marched up to a neutral tribe they sell this time the agawam and demanded their guns this caused the agawam to shoot a couple of people and join the resistance. I'm starting to think that these guys are not that good at diplomacy, Liam. I'm really starting to doubt their ability to talk their way out of this one. Now, up in Maine, things were much

different. There was effectively no war yet. However, word had gotten back to the colonists that shit was popping off down south. So acting on the assumption that every native tribe must be working together, I assume they believe that they had some previously unknown communication system which would have made all of this possible. So they believe that even the tribes in Maine, which hadn't done anything yet, were about to join in, right? So men from York, Maine, armed themselves to the teeth and marched off to confront the Androscoggin tribe, demanding they hand over all of their guns. Sure, okay, guys.

The Androscoggin Fucking assholes. The Androscoggin answered by raiding a nearby trading post and killing a couple of cows. This shit just keeps happening. A group of colonists were sailing down the Casco Bay and saw a group of native men from the Pensacobit tribe knocking on the door of a house they knew to be

owned by settlers. So without exchanging words or without any warning, they simply started shooting at them. They launched a fucking sailboat drive-by based on nothing other than seeing some native guys standing outside of a house. Now, this tribe hadn't just been neutral, actually. They were allies of the colonists for years. So after that, though, they grabbed their guns and made for the forts in the woods, which today would be in Winslow, Maine. And then there's an Abenaki leader named Squando, a man who had been plotting his revenge against the colonists for as long as anybody could remember for a reason that is like, it's the, it's the origins of a super, like a comic book superhero. Okay. Hear me out. Years before this, his infant child had been killed by colonists because the colonists had heard a rumor. And I swear to God, this is true

that native people could swim from birth. they could just if if like a native child was born he just inherently knew how to swim so when um the infant and his mother were out by a riverbank uh these colonists simply like seized upon them and shucked them into the river just to see if it was true and they died because of course they fucking did just amazing that's that's so fucking awful dude he he was joined by a narragansett leader nicknamed and i the coolest nickname of this entire series the yankee killer that is a good that is good hell yeah and in uh an andro scoggin leader named significantly less coolly, Mug Hegon. Mug Hegon.

All right. Yeah. And together, they unleashed a month-long string of violence throughout Maine in September 1675. Towns were raided. Everything that could be burned was, including people, while they were still alive. In Saco, they nearly succeeded in killing the entire garrison they also attacked winter harbor forcing the colonists to abandon it before burning it to the ground which is this is much much more interesting that's happening in like the connecticut river valley because in the

connecticut river valley people are being killed of course but livestock's being stolen people are raiding people's uh each other's houses stealing goods. In Maine, they're literally just destroying everything. They're not stealing anything. Maine does it different, man. Yankee Killer and Mug are literally murdering everything. Yeah, we're hungry, but we're burning the fucking cows. We don't care. If we're hungry, then everyone's hungry.

Yeah. Soon, even York, Maine would be within their gun sights. They seem to be everywhere, but also nowhere at once. Anytime the militia attempted to strike out before being raided again, they would find nothing or be led into another ambush. Maine fucking burned. Men, women and children everywhere got snatched by the shadows, dragged off into the woods to be butchered with the remains scattered into pieces for the militia to be found. Okay.

All right. Fair enough. Absolutely nothing the militia could do could stop them in Squando, the Yankee killer, and Hegon

as they laid out a stream of revenge that spanned the eastern seaboard. The only thing that slowed them down was the encroaching winter freeze

and i should also point out here we'll talk about more of the the colonist brutality later mostly next episode they were also doing that like if you remember from episode one the the the effectively butchering of people and laying their uh remains out like that was not a normal part of the eastern tribes warfare until the pekwat war where they learned it from the british like they were literally attempting terror warfare like if you like stay in your fucking like stop fucking with us or this is going to happen to you and they're both they're both doing it by the time um in november when everybody pulled back to their winter quarters at at least 80 colonists were dead, which

you have to ingest for the fact that the entire colonial population of Maine was 5,000. Back down the Connecticut River Valley, over the same time frame, the Norwatuck, furious at the assholes who had showed up brandishing guns,

began to raid Deerfield and Northfield. Northfield was put to the torch leaving almost nothing standing the tribes were so pissed they didn't even steal a livestock and instead shot them and set them on fire they did get some revenge on the guys who dragged them into us on september 4th when they ambushed a patrol being led by richard beers which remember is one of the diplomats who well, diplomat, he's a guy who pointed a gun at them and made them sign a treaty. I don't want to use the word diplomat for that. And his entire patrol was killed, including

him. Then a week after that, another 20 men walked into an ambush at Deerfield, prompting colonial authorities to simply say, fuck it, we're abandoning Deerfield. Fair enough. Captain Lathrop, the other guy responsible for the Norbituk stick-up job slash diplomacy

mission, was put in charge of evacuating Deerfield. His soldiers were escorting the civilians of the town when they also got ambushed, this time by the Nipmuc people led by Mudawamp in what had become known as the Battle of Bloody Brook. I will say, battle

is a strong term. is simply more this is definitely more of a massacre a wagon train pulled over as militiamen stopped and i swear to god pick grapes that they had found um and you know i i guess it makes sense because you know everybody's starving and dying hey look some fruit uh but guys you're in the middle of a war zone uh they got so distracted by some fruit that they set their guns on the ground so they could gather more uh so of course that's around 700 nitmuck warriors attack them when all of their guns are on the ground their pockets are full of grapes the militiamen are taken by such surprise it's normally written that most of them died before they even got back to their guns.

Captain Lathrop, his men, and the civilians totaling around 80 died quickly and horribly. And worst of all, they never got to eat any of the grapes. Oh. I mean, again, think of how small these populations are in one ambush. 80 people are killed. Right. Insane casualties. A couple percentage points, right.

Yeah. Then the Nipmuc destroyed Deerfield, burning it to the ground responding to this just can't catch a break huh yeah i mean i don't know what they did deserve it but they deserve it if deerfield still exists today they deserve it again all right responding to this the garrison of troops that was guarding springfield ran out to stop them but they got fucking played because soon as they left springfield they didn't simply dodge around them and attack springfield which was now undefended and then that was also had most of the town burnt to the ground including their grain storage which is the last thing that can that you can allow to happen in a situation like this imagine Imagine how annoyed those soldiers are running off to help

Deerfield as their town explodes behind them. Like Walt's wife looking back. Like, goddammit, they're behind us, aren't they? I hate this place! This finally got Pynchon fired, who again, to his credit, told him he should not have been hired in the

first place. That one was really not on him. Can you imagine that exit interview? Yeah, like General Pinchon, how could you do this? I told you this would happen. I want to go home, man. A man named Samuel Appleton was put in charge of the combined forces of Massachusetts

and Connecticut. And finally, under his command, they're able to stop a Nipmuck raid from destroying the town of Hatfield, which was effectively the first colonial victory of the war so far, which is a low bar so far. Though, by now, the reality and just the rumors of the war begin to spread to the colonies that had so far kind of dodged the violence. Everybody knew about it. Like I've pointed out, most of these towns lacked garrisons, any way of of defending themselves either because they simply didn't have one or because they were so small like local administrators thought that maybe it wasn't worth it so a massive

wave of refugees began running east to the point it became a logistical and humanitarian nightmare just the towns back then are tiny. Remember, there's a couple of these have 50, 70 people, even sometimes even less. Everybody's living, even in the big towns like Boston, people are living hand to mouth. There's no going down to the store and buying your food for the week. That's not something that existed. People were living subsistence farming lifestyles. Some people weren't, but the vast majority of people were not doing well. And all of this still needed these far-flung towns to literally scratch shit out of the ground. And hopefully there was enough food to go around.

But when, say, places like Boston and other towns suddenly have hundreds or maybe even thousands in a population so small piling into these towns. There just wasn't enough food in the first place. And now they don't have any. These people are all going to starve. And now there's another impact of abandoning all of this area and running eastwards more protective. You're losing, you're abandoning all this farmland, which everybody needed to continue living, needed to continue farming in order so they could continue living and scraping by. The colonies simply couldn't survive with their population running east. Remember, they had that baby boom, which is why they expanded so far. They needed to keep them farming where they were, and more importantly, not piling into towns and causing a starvation crisis.

where they were, and more importantly, not piling into towns and causing a starvation crisis. Appleton had to order the colonists into more remote areas to stay where they were, and nobody was allowed to abandon anything without his explicit permission, which he was not going to give. And not to mention, this meant that all of these people are eventually going to be attacked and murdered by native warriors because he was also not sending them any protection either. by native warriors because they're he was also not sending them any protection either somewhat incredibly this coincided with the coming of winter again so the natives that had been putting the connecticut river valley to the torch packed it up and went home until the season passed the militias did the same thing breaking their camp and going home to die of uh i don't know it's a winter disease sp Spitting frost lung. Spitting lung. Yeah.

Cold. You die of cold. Yeah. You're dead of the sniffles. It's the 1600s, bitch. This is just what it is. We can't do anything about that. The Nargansett tribe, despite a few warriors acting on their own, had not yet fully joined the war officially as a tribe. A prospect of them doing that absolutely terrified the colonies. They were by and far the most powerful tribe in New England, and the

colonies were very aware that by fall, members of the tribe were joining the Nipmuc, Wampanoag, and others. Each time they heard this, the colonies once again showed their ass and pissed off the Narragansetts, more normally showing up, threatening them, stuff like that. I already talked about the gunpoint treaty they signed, but that kept happening over and over again. In another occasion, the colonies demanded the Narragansetts hand over all of the Wampanoag refugees that they were sheltering, which the tribe fully knew would have been selling them into slavery. So the tribe refused the demands. There were some tribal leaders who wanted to sit the war out and still others that were

fine with training the colonists and trying to smooth things over because life was easier when you did that, of course. There are also some, namely the leader Cannon Chet, who possibly commanded as many 3,000 warriors who seemed to be just really wanting to join in on the fun but had not yet. Nobody is entirely sure why, but it could have been the more moderate tribal leaders talking him down and hoping the colonists were smart enough to not directly fuck with the tribe, right? They were, however, not smart enough to not directly fuck with the tribe for very long. In November, the colonies voted to dispatch a thousand men directly into Narragansett territory,

claiming that the tribe had not fully fulfilled the proportions of the treaty that they had signed. We can assume that meant by simply not listening to every single thing the colonies had told them to do. These weren't exactly negotiations. You might be asking, wow, was the United Colonies really ready and capable of sustaining a thousand men in the field over the course of winter? Fuck no, they weren't. Rhode Island straight up refused to send any men on the mission because how dumb

it sounded. Like, no, that sounds like a recipe for dying in the forest. By December, men were already dropping from frostbite, shedding dead toes like so many feathers off of a bird. They'd find themselves in one of the region's most bloody battles as the force under the command of Governor Winslow

attacked a fortified Narragansett village located in the, you guessed it, another swamp. We're just shrekking everything up today. Get a shrek harder. This became known as the Great Swamp Fight.

Great name. Again, that name is not fully fair. Massacre is probably much more accurate. The colonial militia had been tipped off by a native guide who was called Indian Peter. Jesus. Who led them into a Narragansett village. The village was strategically placed in an area of a swamp that was normally surrounded by what would effectively be the swamp version of a moat. It would have been uncrossable, right? But it was December and it had frozen over.

The village had been fortified with walls and firing positions, but without the added layer of the swamp keeping the attacking colonial militia back, the warriors on the inside simply couldn't sustain the amount of fire needed to keep back a thousand men. Though they did figure out, this is kind of fun, in the middle of all this misery, they did find out if they shot the frozen swamp when the men were charging across the frozen area, the ice would break and they'd fall into the swamp and die of hypothermia, which is quite funny. Tasty. Yeah. of hypothermia which is quite funny tasty yeah swampothermia what a what what a hell of a way to die they they died from what is called is the the the shrekothermia the cold ogres i don't know good morning joe look not all of them can be good fuck off okay joe it didn't take long for the colonial militia who vastly outnumbered the amount of warriors behind the walls to overwhelm the defenders. They thought that maybe there's 90

warriors on the inside and about a thousand militia. And once inside, they did find 900 unarmed civilians, mostly women and children, of the Narragansett tribe. Oh, you said it right correct this time. What happened next would be something that

you would have expected to see in nanking rather than new england oh no men women and children were butchered and torn apart many of the militiamen cut away pieces to keep as souvenirs if any members of the tribe were lucky enough to be able to run off into the swamp they would die in the freezing cold of a new england winter because they were running off with no food or shelter and they would die of exposure freezing cold of a New England winter because they were running off with no food or shelter, and they would die of exposure. After several hours of ruthless murder, they set what was left of the village on fire. Unfortunately, about 500 people were hiding, and they were burned to death. Casualty numbers are really all over the place on this due to the year and the lack of recording,

but at least 1,000 Narragansetts could have died, the vast majority of them civilians. A tribe who, remember, was not actually in the war yet. 80 of the colonial militia died, with another 150 wounded. The amount of shot they fired off during this, though, and the casualties they took rendered Winslow's force completely useless for any further fighting after this battle was over, and they dragged the Narragansetts fully into the war. Going to be honest with you, I'm not really sure what they hoped to achieve with this one. I cannot imagine a situation where you murder a thousand people and don't immediately want to throw everything you have into killing you back as soon as possible. Puritans, truly military masterminds. However, on the bright side of things,

when this plan was tried against the Abenaki in Maine, the colonial militia was forced to turn around because they ran out of food and they began dying because they were trying to do things in the winter in Maine. Yeah, I wouldn't do that. I have done that. Wouldn't do it again. They did get all the way to like New Hampshire and the vast majority of them died from frostbite. Oh boy, no seatbelt laws. Too bad I'm going to die of cold mist. Hey boys, what if we lived

not free and died of frostbite? Maine itself would go largely quiet during the winter as the Abenaki were being hammered by the same terrible winter as everybody else. And being wracked with disease and exposure, as well as the stresses of war put their food supply

whatever bad situation the food supply was already in, it pretty much destroyed it entirely. So they couldn't exactly go to war. And the militia had gotten their teeth kicked in by the weather. So they were done. Effectively, the war was over in Maine, at least temporarily. So we'll come back to that one one and we'll come back to the series as well because this would not be the case in southern new england where the war would reach much new heights and much new lows really and that is where we'll pick up next time on the conclusion of part three um liam how you how you feeling after this i fucking hate white people uh myself included uh as the son of a new englander uh who is the most bitter man i know uh yeah uh i don't know man i'm excited

to show this one to my dad i feel real bad about it uh i just i don't i don't really understand i will say this is gonna get a bit preachy for a second but like i just don't understand this weird right-wing grift insistence that like america has never done anything wrong and like i also don't necessarily agree with the left with some people on the left positioning that like we're a unique evil i i think imperialism is bad no matter what funny hat it wears but like this shit fucking sucks dude i think uh both of those take i think both of those takes in american history are very very uh myopic and uninformed and yeah they're they're they're not uh they don't make any sense they're not serious i mean for for one i don't i think the the right wing talking point is effectively boils down to might makes

right and the left and i'm not going to say both the right and the left are bad about this, but this idea that America is a uniquely evil society is fucking stupid. Literally open a history book to almost any country in the history of the world. Like, especially any kind of, especially in the modern age of imperialism, anybody who took over their neighbor, anybody who went to war with indigenous populations. I mean, I live in a very, very small country with a lot of...

I've been a victim of a lot of that from neighbors and a lot of the countries that did that largely get a pass because they're not like America or Canada or the UK. It's kind of disgusting. I think a lot of that has to do with this might make right shit or this america is uniquely awful has a lot to do with the fact that the people that believe that live here and they think that america is the main character of every story um and that is the very dumb way to look at the world yep i'll go sign that um liam plug your shows listen to well there's your problem listen to 10 000 losses thank you everybody for listening to the show uh if you

like this episode and you know how optimistic and happy it was uh if uh consider donating to the show you make uh you know you support the show you make everything we do here possible plus you get bonus stuff uh you like episodes like this early you get bonus episodes access to the discord books stickers discounts stuff like that or if you don't want to give us your money you don't have to it's your money do with it what you will uh you can leave us a review on whatever podcast platform you use it helps um us for instance we were nominated for an award i assume based on itunes reviews i think that's how they probably did that um i don't i don't know how that worked i didn't i didn't submit the show for anything but yeah so like the reviews do really help also they let us know that you know you like what we're

doing um which is nice to hear sometimes all the time really um and uh check out uh my book series the forlorn hope um they they're all out now people have said that they are in fact a book again everybody thank you so much for listening. And until next time, don't go on a camping trip in the... No, you will turn into winter shit. Don't go hang out. That was the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by the sun of York,

I say as I shit out of my mouth. Do not go hang out in the woods in Maine in the middle of winter with a thousand of your homies. No, homies. Oh, you did it.