Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 240 - King Philip's War Part 3: The Hungry March

Episode Date: December 27, 2022

The horrible conclusion to King Philip’s War Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys 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

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now back to the show. Hello, and welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joee and with me is liam again hello liam hey bud it's weird how you're still here at part three of a series it's almost like you're here for the whole thing well are there are there people being mean to me in the comments again oh there's probably people being mean to me in the comments too be be nice be nice to me yeah he's he's he's got joe our boys going's... Our boy's going through it. He's going through it. I'm enjoying a nice tall

can of burned energy drink, which I... I don't know where this is from, to be completely honest. I feel like you're happier not knowing, frankly. I'm just a little curious. There's all sorts of different languages. There's Spanish on here. I think there's Turkish on here. I'm looking it up on my phone i need distribution in romania

burn energy light it up yeah with an exclamation point uh it is distributed by the the romanian coca-cola branch okay does it have an exclamation point on it? No, it's just the word burn. Okay, so it's apparently owned by Monster. Weird. Romanian Monster? I don't know. What flavor is it? Green.

Is it just called Bird Green? It doesn't have a flavor. It says something in fucking Romanian or something, and it just says burn. But the color is green. It tastes green is an accurate taste for it. It has no discernible flavor. You're going to die. You know what?

I hope so. Moving on. Oh, buddy. So when we left you last time on part two the the main theater of war sputtered and died uh but i actually do have to clarify that the main theater of this war had actually gone for quite a long time um much longer than the rest of it but it likes it much lower intensity uh to the point that to the point that we're really not going to talk about it anymore we're talking about like low scale gorilla stuff or yeah yeah yeah like nothing in comparison to the rest of it main

main goes through some shit um because when you live in maine what else are you going to do other than kill one another i suppose do the ala bean store i suppose do math but i hadn't been invented yet so there's shit on luck. But winter sweeps in. Everybody starts sputtering and dying because it's cold and it's the fucking 1600s, so you just drop dead because your lungs shatter.

Disease, yes, as we've established. Life was terrible, even when the wind wasn't searing your skin off and killing your fingers and toes. When you're up to your balls in snow, things tend to get a lot worse. However, by this point, our boy King Philip had camped out in New York around what today would be. Oh, man, I'm probably going to pronounce this wrong.

Scotty Coke. I'm not going to correct it. It's fine. The reason he had gone there was to enlist the help of another tribe the mohawk who had so far completely stayed out of the war as philip was down to only a few dozen warriors at best at this point and the mohawk were considered a pretty big regional power he hoped to be able to swing them his way this is gonna is i assume it's gonna work good we're actually not sure if that's why he went to new york it's not like philip

left us a detailed itinerary it was just like all right see ya yeah he could have actually been there uh to draw the mohicans into the conflict and organize their hopes that they would be raided like be like oh no i see that you've been raided would you like to join my war i think it was they were going to launch right on albany and then figured that new yorkers would blame the mohicans sure okay um new york colony itself was also not involved in the war uh because remember every colony is virtually independent and hates all the other colonies um so you know new york's governor edmund andros wasn't super happy when he heard philip showed up on his doorstep because he's like, hey, I stayed out of this shit. You brought it here.

Please leave me alone. Yeah. Ippity hoppity, get off my property. Now, just so someone doesn't accuse me of saying Andrus is a good guy or something for staying out of the war so far, I should point out that his opposition to the war had nothing to do with his love of native peoples, but rather because he had a personal beef with the governor of Massachusetts and simply didn't want to work with him. He was not a man of principle. He was a petty bitch. Previous to this, Andrews had also agreed to sell firearms to the New York tribes, mostly the Iroquois. This led to the Massachusetts governor to accuse Andrews of selling guns to King Philip, which he wasn't.

Not that he was, again, morally opposed to this. Philip just had no money. He had nothing worth trading. So I was like, it's like Lord of War when he says, like, I didn't do business with the Sama bin Laden, not because I have any personal standards. His checks were just bouncing at the time. From King Philip, four guns. Smiley face.

Then after It just says four drugs. Man, I didn't know that was it Cash App or whatever? Would you put notes on Venmo? Sorry, Venmo.

I didn't know that those were publicly available so i sent like ten dollars to my friend the other day and just to fuck with him i said for that ass uh as the note beautiful and he's like thanks uh my wife could see that i was like good but after not entering the war and hearing philip was camping out in new york they again accuse andros of sheltering him which he also still wasn't hell new york had sold the gunpowder to the colonies they used to commit the great swamp massacre they were playing both sides uh like they always come out on top that's's right. True enlightened centrism. Selling guns to commit a massacre while also selling guns to protect from a massacre. We like to have fun here.

Whatever the case for Philip being in New York, Andros absolutely did not want him there. So while it can never be confirmed, it's thought and generally accepted that Andros, who is close to the Mohawk people, told them to get rid of Philip. He did not care how. Just like a tribe-wide bouncer like get get this motherfucker out of my bar sure soon after that the mohawks attacks philip camped and destroyed uh almost the entire wampanoag people like philip ran off because you know small group of people the wampanoag people not so lucky uh almost 500 of them were killed uh and sent the survivors running off screaming into the new england and uh debt like the the the middle of new england winter yeah yeah yeah bad news as if that wasn't bad enough they just kept going uh like they just acted as like new york colony's proxy force and just

went batshit crazy they tore through anything and everyone that stood in their way destroying virtually any algonquin villages they came across as they kept moving keep it now this kept philip running and desperately seeking food and shelter as the mohawk tore through the winter of 1675 like a fucking buzzsaw ah yes the old sherman through atlanta approach yeah uh and this went on for a year and the mohawk were suddenly more terrifying than the colonists so for a lot of people um a lot of tribes that were kind of involved in the war maybe they just uh their fence sitters half their tribe went off to fight but they didn't officially join sure a lot of these fucking tribes ran to the colonists and surrendered to them just to save themselves

from the mohawk um fully knowing by the way that they would like slavery is better than getting a fucking axe through the head by a mohawk warrior sure and the mohawk made people die real bad uh without going into details uh at the moment i'll go into details later it's not that i don't do that it's just yeah it's pretty fucked up shit uh like they did things yeah they did things that were so bad. Even the tribes and the militias who remember were literally cutting each other apart and throwing the pieces into the branches. We're like, God damn the mohawk. Like, I know I'm fucked up, but damn. Now, in other occasions, the colonists urged these tribes of surrender to save their lives for the Mohawk, promising

to not put them into slavery, and then put them into slavery. If the colonists got their hands on you, you were becoming a slave. Though I should point out that the Mohawks did not throw themselves into this war because they're loyal to Andrews or even friendly to any kind of colonial cause. Their main political and historical enemy were the Nargansetts. So once the colonists dragged them kicking and screaming into the war, which remember, they forced them into last episode, Andros could give the Mohawk the green light,

arming and supplying them the entire time so they could go duke it out with their old enemy. However, down in New England, things were slightly more temperate weather-wise, so the war only lulled for about a month before kicking back off at the end of January I've never been to New England but I've

always been under the impression that it's a frozen hellhole for about as long as Michigan was every year so yeah I can't imagine doing war at the end of January yeah yeah I wouldn't recommend it yeah if you remember it's by the way uh way no if you remember from last episode the colonies had raided the nargansett winter camp uh so for no reason whatsoever dragging them into the war they so far mostly stayed out of real master fucking move there now the nargansetts were looking for revenge regathering their forces and began raiding parts of Rhode Island, roughly where Cranston and Warwick are today. They burned everything that they got

their hands on and stole. So just normal Rhode Island then? Yeah, just normal Rhode Island. Warwick, famously a place that's never been a fire before. Station Nightclub Fire. Check out that episode. Yeah, it was very, very good. Don't watch the video. Don't watch the video uh one of the

scariest hotels i've ever stayed in was a warwick scary as in sketchy or scary as in like i don't believe in ghosts but this bitch is haunted both actually the ghosts do meth here yeah you know that joke about you got ghosts in your blood, you should do cocaine about it? They sure are, son. Hey, I mean, that means they're very healthy, thankfully. Everybody knows that's the best kind of health care. That's right. During these raids, the natives burned everything they could get their hands on, stole as much livestock that they could carry before running back off into the forest.

And after this, the Narragansett said the one thing the colonists are trying really hard to stop, and previous to this only existed in their nightmares, they began to march towards the Nipmuc and Wapunag people, making an alliance. Uh-oh. Yeah, congratulations, you've played yourself. You caused all of this. None of these guys are even involved.

Put a quarter in your ass because you played yourself now when word got back to the colonists they sent the same force that had been resting since the great swamp massacre to attack them and stop them from making contact however this went about badly as you can imagine

remember it's fucking January the army had been reinforced from the fight from before but nobody could actually supply it because logistics weren't invented yet apparently uh like the colonial supply situation was always bad because life sucks and everything's terrible they're living hand to mouth on everything you know um but that was winter in the middle of a war uh like a desperately bad war that was destroying so much of like colonial america at the time their population their supplies everything their food supply

specifically so everything is just stretched then so after marching uh out after the narragansetts they simply found themselves constantly getting ambushed they ran out of food in about a day and then had to eat their horses they they tried to stick with it thinking that eventually they'd be able to trap the narragansetts into a pitched battle and win because they're stupid um because why would they do that famously what you should do when fighting a battle is fight your enemies battle for them like ah they really want us to fight this way i guess we'll do that yeah i guess we'll stand in the line and shoot at one another like a bunch of dumb asses um the so the fortress marched endlessly uh occasionally catching a musket ball between the eyes from a bush uh and you know dying of frostbite the army's commander decided by early february that this isn't going so well we should probably

turn around because at this point about half of his army that hadn't been shot or died from exposure or very skills yeah dropping dead from terminal syphilis on the march uh half of them had just gone home they're're like, fuck this relief. I would too. They just went home. I'm going to pay you a clove of like eight cents a day, dude. I'm not, if I'm going to get it at all. They are not being paid. They are not being paid. Yeah.

I'm just bouncing. See ya. This whole endeavor earned the lovely nickname, The Hungry March, which I also learned while researching this episode is the name of a brass band in Brooklyn. So I don't know if their music's good or not, but solid band name. After this, the Narragansett's officially allied with the rest of the war tribes, meaning quite literally the colonists caused their own nightmare to become true because they're huge assholes yeah that sounds about right yeah who would have thought fucking crackers man though you can't serve such a a big camp of different people without some spies getting in which is

what happened uh mostly these were praying indians who were somewhat loyal to the great fucking name yeah great we didn't invent it so no that's actually the name of my band uh now uh these guys acted as double agents they told the colonists that several towns were about to be attacked with lancaster about the first to go though the colonists refused to believe them because they doubted their loyalty and also because you know why you would employ them as spies exactly they dispatched a spy. Then when he did his job, they just ignored him. They were like, nah, not like that, motherfucker.

Yeah. Could you tell that to me while being more white? No. I already converted to your religion. Nah, not good enough. Nope. Come back. Come back later.

So, of course, when the attack came on February 10th, nobody was there to defend it. The closest garrison of a whole 40 guys was stationed several miles away. so of course when the attack came on february 10th nobody was there to defend it the closest garrison of a whole 40 guys was stationed several miles away and wasn't even yeah they were boys wasn't even told hey there might be an attack over in lancaster so word had to travel to them by some guy running over there and telling them to come and help ah yes the marathon approach yeah uh but it's a Lancaster marathon, so I assume he's carrying like a beer. It's like a beer mile.

By the time they finally got the Lancaster, an allied war band had already leveled the place, killing the town's minister and taking 20 people hostage who, in an Uno reverse card, were sold into slavery to other tribes. How do you like it motherfuckers everything the spy

said ended up being true as raids kept coming the colonial government was so unable to deal with any of this that when around 300 nipmuck warriors attacked medfield uh which someone in the comments told me that that's where they live so congratulations you live in a sorry you live in a battlefield yeah why get out uh but 300 nipmuck warriors attacked medfield their local garrison Congratulations. You live in a battlefield. Yeah. Why? Get out. But 300 Nipmuc warriors attacked Medfield. Their local garrison of 100 guys just didn't even respond. So the warriors torched the place and kidnapped people without much of a fight.

This terrified Boston, as it was pretty clear to everyone, that native forces could pretty much attack anywhere they wanted. The colonial militia was too incompetent to stop them. And as if to underline this, they immediately sent an army to try to chase down the allied tribal forces that had been raiding them. Again, only to find empty forces and snipers. These guys are real good at wars. Yeah, when the bushes start speaking Wampanoag, you're going to have a problem. Yeah. When they return... Copperhead Road is blaring for some reason when they return to their garrisons after chasing shadows then they got attacked again uh captain

william clark's garrison was almost entirely destroyed because his men were all asleep when the natives launched their attack and they didn't leave anybody to stand guard. Raiding parties were turned back in some cases by colonial forces, but then Warwick, Rhode Island was, for all intents and purposes, completely destroyed. And from my understanding, they still haven't rebuilt. It still looks the same. The winter of 1676 went terribly for the colonists. Province Rhode Island was torched. There was even an attack on Plymouth itself, which wasn't successful.

It was beaten back by the militia, but it showed that nothing was safe. The best, the biggest, most powerful colonies are being attacked. Boston is in gun sights and shit. It did not matter where you were. Everything broke down. As the frost thawed, it became planting season, something that was literally a matter of life and death. Well, it still is, too, but I don't know why I said that. But they're living hand-to-mouth, hardscrabble lives. If missing and fucking up a planting season, everybody just dies.

But there is now a huge swath who had previously been farmland that the colonies pretty much lost control of because remember all the population had fled because there's not enough garrison to protect them. Towns had been torched or otherwise abandoned, sometimes evacuated. People were paranoid. The war had no front lines.

Nowhere was safe. And also remember, the militia are also the planters like there's no soldiers ever it's just a guy so like you can't do both this is gonna be a big problem this ended up being a creating a state of perpetual terror and paranoia oh good which thankfully they weren't already paranoid as shit right um and this is also not helped by the proliferation of like small newspapers. Each one told everyone who read it that the, like all of the lurid horrifying details of the brutality of the war going

around them. That is if they're one of the few people that didn't actually see it themselves because everywhere is getting fucked up. Like people are seeing dead bodies left and right. Like most of these people's towns had already been attacked it doesn't take many stories of men women and children being field dressed like a deer for people to begin thinking that they're living in the goddamn apocalypse meanwhile new elements kept being introduced as the colonial militia kept shooting at random tribes and dragging them into the war or when governor andros effectively invaded New England with the Mohawk without consulting anybody else.

They lacked the ability to protect people while they worked and instead could only plant in areas that were solidly under their control, which, if you remember back to the population boom from, I believe, the first episode, that means there was not nearly enough land to feed for to to feed all these people furthermore only small groups could plant at a time because the colonial militia were hardly able to patrol and protect people all at the same time while also having to plant uh like you know all of society is effectively breaking down right by and large the english crown had stayed out of this war so far no british soldiers

would take part none of them would ever be shipped over there effectively the only thing they ever learned about uh the war came from puritan businessmen traveling back uh to the islands and holy shit did the british hate the colonial administrators thinking that they were just about the most incompetent people they'd ever seen and gotta hand it to the king on this one he was right uh that's all right yeah it came pretty obvious to england that they would have to at some point solidify direct rule over the colonies because these guys were too dumb to run shit on their own um sure that won't lead to any future problems or revolutions in local history now seemingly every time the colonies tried to do something, it ended up as a catastrophic fuck-up.

For example, after the reign of Marlborough, the Colonial Council of War ordered Captain Samuel Wadsworth to take 50 men to the Massachusetts frontier. However, the allied tribal forces of native warriors, sometimes

noted being led by Philip himself, though in reality, probably not, just went around them and infiltrated the town of Sudbury in the middle of the night and started setting shit on fire. Civilians ran, hiding in the town's garrison block while trying to shoot back, though they were outnumbered by several hundred at this point. This is just something of a trap for the nearby town of Concord

because when they heard gun nearby town of Concord because when they heard gunfire, the Concord militia garrisoned Mustard and ran over to the town of Sudbury for help, only to get caught in an ambush that was waiting for them because that's what the natives were planning. This happened so close to Sudbury

that their trapped garrison could actually watch the relief force get wiped out. Oh, fun. Yeah, that'll bring morale up. With the town trapped garrison could actually watch the relief force get wiped out oh fun yeah that's that that'll bring morale up with the town's garrison yeah with the town's garrison completely surrounded the war bands filled up a wheelbarrow with flax and lit it on fire setting it flying towards the building hoping to burn the whole thing down but then it hit a rock upturned and flung burning goddamn flax in every direction, setting the town on fire in all directions. Everywhere, yes. And before the warriors could rig up another ACME fire device to target the garrison, another relief column from Watertown appeared.

And since the warriors didn't plan on these ones coming and having a stand-up fight in the middle of a burning town, they hauled ass ass back to the woods not wanting to engage them in open battle which good call fair enough at this point Wadsworth detachment of 50 men finally showed up and told the relief column that they should go after the natives but the column was pretty in a pretty bad way after being ambushed so you know shit rocked yeah going and

chasing into the woods is a bad idea so Wadsworth decided to do it on his own however he had no idea where the allied tribal army went. They had effectively melted into the unbroken forest. So he just went bumblefucking his way through the bush until he got spotted by a few

native warriors just standing around who then ran off. Obviously, this is as clear as day a fucking trap. And instead of seeing that, Wadsworth ordered his men to give chase. Put his thumb up his own butthole. Yes. Yeah, of course, those guys were bait and led them directly into a bigger ambush.

Oh, no, my thumb. It's in my butt. His force was immediately surrounded and began being picked apart. When, shockingly, Wadsworth men actually held their their ground forming a square and began firing back the natives were unable to break the square until they're like wait a minute why are we throwing ourselves at this these guys are standing in a field of dry brush they just lit the field on fire yeah they just lit the field on fire uh that broke the uh the malicious square formation because you know they got a goddamn wildfire thrown at them.

Yeah, that all happened. And they broke and ran for their lives. Most of them did not make it. Wadsworth was killed. Some of the militiamen surrendered, which turned out to be a very, very bad idea. They probably assumed they were going to be sold into slavery, which they were not. Remember, many of these warriors had very vivid, very recent memories of what the colonial militia had done to their people,

especially at the swamp fight. According to Increase Mather, the Puritan historian, Ah, yes. Also, I believe a pretty pivotal part of the Salem Witch Trials. Yes. Quote, stripped them naked, causing them to run the gauntlet, whipping after them

with a cruel and bloody manner. And then they threw hot ashes upon them. They cut flesh from their legs and put fire into their wounds. Delighted to see the miserable torments of these wretched creatures. Afterwards, they were dressed out like deer and their pieces were spread across the forest, knowing that their friends and family would come and see them soon. Yeah. that their friends and family would come and see them soon. Yeah.

This kind of thing was not just an outlier. It's pretty standard for pretty much both militia and tribal warriors that fell into one another's hands at this point. There was another incident that became known as Nine Men's Misery, where 10 militia were captured and nine were tortured to death slowly over the course of hours or days. And the 10th guy managed to escape. I don't entirely know how. But the site of this torture is now a monument in Cumberland, Rhode Island and weirdly considered the oldest veteran

memorial in the United States. It's called Nine Men's Misery. Nice and cheerful. Don't go to Rhode Island. There's nothing in Rhode Island. This sounds like the point where I like say the natives seized upon this weakness driving the colonists back onto boats and making them fuck off back to england yeah but um i know i've said this a few times but it bears repeating all the thoughts that native people were playing this

colony-wide war allying with one another uh long in advance and stockpiling food and resources was only in the imagination of the colonial population. Instead, they were doomed, for lack of a better term. While they were winning virtually every battle they fought, it truly did not matter. Every battle cost them more than it cost the militia or the colonists or even the colony-allied tribes. Nobody in this war made any attempt to tell

the difference between soldiers and civilians and the militia saved the most brutal fighting for their native allies like the mohawk and the mohicans uh meaning sometimes when they won a battle they were effectively uh then by they i mean like philip they were effectively only shooting themselves in the foot and And same for colonial allied tribes. The first Pyrrhic victory comes to mind. Yeah, they're constantly losing people while the colonists are obviously getting mangled as well, but the colonist population

will always go up. They're sucking and fucking. There is a better chance more than their native allies died than actual colonists, and even if Philip won a battle killed 10 colonists and they lost three of their own, they're not going to replace those three. Pressing more native allies into colonial service had other benefits as well. They had gotten rid of the natives' most advantageous position when it came to fighting, and that was

fighting in the forests. Now, even though the colonists didn't change from their traditional war fighting methods, they had people at their disposal that would absolutely be able to handle it. They will fight Philip's people the way that Philip fights. So they have parity, rather than spending every day of your life tripping over your dick and getting ambushed in the woods like they had been doing. However, the true Achilles heel was, you guessed it, supplies. Despite the paranoid conspiracy theories of the colonists, the native tribes did not plan for this war. There was no stockpile. There was no preparation when it came to harvesting or hunting, nothing. Now, forests into what was effectively a permanent and constant war footing,

that meant they couldn't sow crops, which some tribes didn't do that at all anyway uh but uh some did but the few that did wouldn't be able to sow crops now the men were fighting and always had to be on guard which just like the militia the men were hunters they were gatherers i mean women also did those things but not as much they have to totally retool for this and they just don't have the resources to do so. Yeah. Yeah. Not to mention they couldn't just sit still long enough to farm because it was only a matter of time before their village was located and turned into a charnel house by the militia or their tribal allies. This constant stress of war also meant hunting dropped sharply because they had to choose. How are we going to use our gunpowder? Like, are we going to use this ammo to eat or defend ourselves?

Right. Yeah, yeah. And this was not a secret to the colonists. They helped this occur. Their war aims changed to waging a logistical war against anything that could supply native people, military, or civilian alike,

turning the countryside into one rolling scorched earth campaign. Nothing was safe for the natives to do. Their fields, if they had them, were burned. Wild animals were called in mass. They couldn't hunt. I think in episode one, the colonists weren't hunters. They didn't need to. They had livestock. They were farmers. And normally only rich people went out and hunted occasionally. But now, entire militia groups are being sent off into the woods in order to kill literally any living thing that you find so the natives couldn't eat it. Birds, rabbits, deer kill everything that moves. kill everything that moves. And even on top of that, of course, you could still fish, and the colonists knew all the good fishing spots. So they set up ambush parties on all of these spots waiting for the natives to show up to try to eat. And this led to the horrific event known

as the Falls Fight, more accurately, the Falls Massacre. At this point, there wasn't a single band of native people who were fighting the colonists that was not just simply falling apart. Starvation, thirst, and rampant disease swept through all of them. So in May 1676, with no options available, a band of Algonquin people attempted to set up a fishing camp near Turner Falls, Massachusetts, and immediately found themselves under attack by a detachment led by Captain William Turner. His men were largely untrained. They're just some guys, even for militia guys. They didn't even really know how to fire their muskets, but that didn't really matter because the people they were fighting were surprised,

half dead from disease and starvation or unarmed. The ones that did have weapons barely had the strength to pick them up and defend themselves. In other versions of the story, there was no fight. The natives were sleeping and they were effectively murdered in their sleep. American tradition, baby. This rapidly turned into an

outright massacre that went on for hours. 200 native people were killed at least uh most of them were not warriors most of them were women and children because a lot of the men had already been dead and fighting the colonists remembering the butchery at bloody brook which is uh you know where people were surrendered then got dressed out they repeated it they hacked apart and mutilated the corpses of people they killed, strung along human organs, skins, and limbs from the surrounding forest. Jesus fucking Christ, man.

And they collected their ears as a trophy. Ew. Yeah. And they left them there, letting everybody know that this is what would happen if you came and tried to get food. Now, if we can take one bright smile out of those fucking horrible stories, that Turner and his merry gang of war criminals were as they were leaving the scene at the falls. Another native band came running in and they were ready to fight, hearing the gunshots and heading towards them and armed to the teeth. Turner's unit were fine at massacring half dead or sleeping people, but in an actual fight, they were worthless. But when they were counterattacked, they immediately broke and ran.

fight, they were worthless. When they were counterattacked, they immediately broke and ran. The responding native band saw what they had done at the falls and hunted them for revenge, almost as a sport. Most of the 150 men were able to make it back to the town of Hatfield, but 40 didn't. And they got the old hard goodbye, much like they had just given the poor people at the falls fishing camp. And in a great version of uh of karma captain turner was included in that then that band launched a raid on hatfield itself killing 10 more people and setting most of the town on fire now obviously uh uh terror warfare bad uh nobody like i don't i hot hot take hot take. I know I'm willing to give indigenous people here a pass.

Oh, yeah. This isn't about. I mean, it would do whatever you want. And when someone should murder you and your family. But, you know, whenever we talk about something working on the show, we're not necessarily talking about how much we like it. But the colony's terror warfare, which is effectively what it was, is genocidal terror warfare. It worked.

Faced with certain death, it didn't take long for some native people to start turning. Remember, this is a very, very loose alliance, and in some cases, I wouldn't even use the word alliance at all. Made up of people who didn't really like each other at best and were just as likely to shoot one another as shoot the

colonists at worst many bands and tribes decided that this war is a fucking stupid idea we need to get out of here uh like we need to end it but we're not entirely sure how and seeing the falls massacre as evidence that the colonists were going to hunt them into extinction because that is what they were planning on doing. And this isn't something that the natives imagined either. There are several loud and repeated calls for the total extermination of the native population of New England

during this time by all levels of the colonial government. So several tribes, even those among Philip's own Wampanoag, openly talked about murdering King Philip and delivering his head to Plymouth as like, hey, look, it's over. He's dead. Peace. As if things couldn't get worse, the colonists were learning about the movements of native leaders from their growing network of spies. And that's how they caught up with the nargansett leader cannon shit

uh which i'm sure i'm pronouncing incorrectly yeah you're ruining it but that's okay uh uh wounding him and then captured him uh he was a hard fucking guy though he a man who once said quote we will die to the last man but we will not be slaves to the english um after and this was after surviving the great swamp massacre wow so when the colonists offered to spare him and return to swearing peace for his people and ending their part of the war he refused fully knowing what was coming to him next uh in fact uh when he was reminded what waited for him he said quote i like it well i shall die before my heart is soft and before I have spoken a word unworthy of myself. Like, do your worst,

bitch. I mean, they did. I will flip off God and walk backwards into hell. I mean, to be fair, they did do their worst. He was hang-drawn and quartered, because it's the 1600s. His head was delivered to colonial authorities in Hartford, Connecticut.

Another reason hartford has no business to exist yeah uh or connecticut in general that sucks uh isn't it just a tax base like a yes i thought dad went to connecticut for school it's like connecticut is just the like american dubai where people don't go to fucking pay taxes on shit like that's just like that's that's delaware but oh yeah i forgot about delaware yeah same thing whatever they're both the same to me um i'm sorry if you fascinating knowledge of uh fascinating limited understanding of geography for a guy who's historian hey i don't know about the fucking northeast or whatever where things are i can't be bothered to learn where things are okay people listening at that

point you also forgot about delaware until he brought it up like don't fucking lie to me i happen to live above it so uh now by june a massive new army had been put together their major daniel henchman the uh the plan was yeah his name was dan Daniel Henchman. It's like if he wasn't born in the 1600s, this is the name of a Bond villain B character. Mr. Henchman, it's nice to see you. Hello.

He's wearing a black blazer with a black turtleneck and a nondescript cross necklace. I also have just described almost every Armenian uh how they dress in the winter so yeah yeah the the plan was eventually to launch a counter-offensive uh but that largely took form as a roving gang of slavers slaughtering and enslaving any group of natives that they found through the course of a month. Conservatively, their victims were in the hundreds, but it's

probably in the thousands. They were just operating a death squad. It's a colonial American, I'd say it's groupin'. They don't really have that at the end. The colonial, what do they call those? Colonial Williamsburg or

whatever. The colonial militia had also finally managed to organize their garrison system correctly this meant that there is no more rule out of the way towns uh left unguarded for native bands to pick off with ease each one had either been abandoned or turned into a fortress so now a fight was going to be a lot harder well that meant they couldn't conduct their raids it didn't mean the militia was going to get in a decisive open battle that they insisted they need to break the back of native resistance either, because the natives weren't going to give that to them. Right. Instead, the native band simply hid out in the forest, slowly dying and doing everything they

could to simply fight food. This really stopped the native war effort because they just couldn't go on. This didn't stop the constant violence. The type of violence simply changed. There's no more tit for tat raids or massacres, but rather a constant rolling and unending campaign of slaughter launched by the colonial militia against the force. That was literally not even trying to fight back anymore because they couldn't. They're just like they're eating grass and shit man like which also when the when the colonial authorities learned that they started they started wildfires that burned the grass and the trees away like absolute extermination tactics for example a hundred hundreds of narragansetts were massacred when

they were just out trying to find some corn seeds for planting yeah yeah just try to do stuff any survivors are forced into slavery as is always the case here uh here now the voices within the native alliance who talked about killing philip and sending his head to plymouth uh to end the war it got a little bit louder could you imagine uh like i don't care how like dedicated to the cause you are after you're like picking corn seeds out of animal shit for food you're like philip's gotta go man like philip philip we're done here right we're done we're going home oh can't go home it's on fire uh yeah after hearing this one too many times of like people threatening to murder him pretty like nobody was really hiding it anymore uh philip no longer had any any kind of pull any tribes

at this point not even his own who are also threatening to kill him understandable i think yeah he uh he retreated with a handful of supporters to a place called mount hope um oh good name i bet it's gonna go poorly yeah it always does uh hunting him was benjamin church we touched on him previously for about five seconds as an example of one of those stereotypical hard men colonial frontiersmen um he was a tracker woodsman uh also absolute psychopath uh now church's reputation has long since been whitewashed because he's considered the father of the U.S. Army

Rangers. And he even has a bronze colored ranger tab tacked onto his grave. Now, the whitewashing tends to come down to his tactics, which they boil down to, quote, the natives are good at this kind of warfare, so we should learn from them.

Very groundbreaking stuff. Though he also came out with an actual list of military tactics, which was not really a thing in the 1600s. Though his list, which is still cherished and championed by the rangers today, left out the part where he was the colonial patron saint of terror genocide warfare right einsatz group would die yeah he was at the swamp massacre and uh gladly and gleefully took part in the murder and mutilation that happened there uh this uh i i

mean his bullet point list is unimportant but the one of the the fourth bullet of the published principles of warfare is quote not inflicting unnecessary damage or harm so yeah he's also a lion bitch now during the hunt for king philip church's forces made up of sconnet natives and colonialists he had trained himself unleashed a campaign of horror uh the direction of Mount Hope. Every band in his way was murdered or enslaved. If they were warriors or not, meant absolutely nothing. According to one of the sources that I used here, King Philip's War, the history and legacy of America's forgotten conflict, called these, quote, cleanup operations.

Yeah. Church, while a monster, was not alone in this of course not major john telcott led what was effectively a death squad across the entirety of massachusetts he didn't even bother to take slaves which is one hell of an outlier during this period uh look wow you're not even enslaving people okay okay in new york governor andros had opened his land to any native refugees of the, of the ongoing war, which is true.

That was not a trap. Andros. Well, everybody in this story sucks. He sucks the least, which is the, and on this show is really the best you can hope for, to be completely honest.

That's true. Talcott stocked the roads that he knew that would be taken by new England natives towards a relative safely, relative safety of New York. He spawn camped. He waited on a road, the only road that he knew people were going to take to New York and killed everyone on the road. And then he left their bodies on the road. He did not enslave anybody. He just murdered everybody.

Fucking Christ. However, eventually church's mission to find and kill king philip would come to an end on august 1st they saw him wounding him in a shootout before he escaped though they did manage to capture his family uh his wife and nine year old son they were sold into slavery uh nobody's really sure it happened to them but most people think they're kind of made sure to die as revenge. Shortly after that, they discovered Widamu, the leader of the

Pocasset. Rather than be captured, she was rumored to have killed herself. Though other sources say she drowned in a river on accident in the middle of all this. But regardless, her body was dismembered with axes, and her head was placed on a spike and

prated through Taunton Green, Massachusetts. Oh, great. Philip still managed to outrun him, despite having a musket ball on his side. But eventually, another spy came forward, a guy named Alderman. I assume not in Alderman, but his name was Alderman. It's weird. I'm the elected Alderman of this tree. it's weird I'm the elected alderman of this tree now

alderman was brother to a guy Philip had killed personally because that guy had suggested that they surrender and give Philip up so this is a revenge for him as well sure alderman told church that he would lead his men to Philip's camp which is hidden by again in a swamp

Philip loves swamps I mean he is Shrek he just loves being in swamps again he just wants to be philip loves swamps he loves them i mean he he is shrek uh he he just loves being in swamps and he again he just wants to be left alone in the swamps on august 12th 1676 they sprung their trap and philip was shot dead by alderman after refusing to surrender one last time his body was hanged drawn and quartered and decapitated and his head was sent to plymouth and actually the rest of his body was sent back Plymouth and actually the rest of his body was sent back to Plymouth as well in pieces and spread around the city

on different public displays. Alderman was allowed to keep one of Philip's hands as a souvenir. That's gross. Yeah, why would you even want that? Because you're a freak, dude. You've had it for three days and now it's rotting. Good job. You're an asshole i mean

to be fair philip did kill alderman's brother so fair enough he gets a pass in this situation a little weird yeah like maybe he wore it on his neck like a yeah like a chain like flavor flavor and a clock but just a hand swinging back and forth you you take the hand right you curl up the fingers so they so rigor mortis sets in with just the middle finger up. So it's like, you know, you decorate it a bit. You've got to have fun with it.

Now, with the war effectively over, the colonial war aims rapidly changed. Now they would continue their campaign of brutality in order to destroy any possible remnant of native power in the region. By native power, I mean native existence. Several band and

tribal leaders were given promises of safety in exchange for surrender, only to be executed, and then the rest of their tribe to be forced into slavery. Others were dragged through the streets of Boston and hung up in public in front of the hooting masses who were just there to hang out. In the end, King Philip's War was as close to an apocalypse that New England has ever seen.

The Narragansett tribe was effectively obliterated. Only 200 of them, maybe less, survived, despite the fact, starting out, they were one of the strongest tribes in the region. The tribe was so thoroughly destroyed that descendants still struggle for recognition to this day. The Wampanoag were broken and scattered and destroyed, their leadership all dead and enslaved. From this point on, existence in New England for Native people was pretty much not allowed. They either ejected, murdered, or enslaved in a process that Eugene Aubrey Stanton, a Plymouth colony historian, called, quote, wholesale perpetual enslavement. The colonies had annihilated Algonquin society as a rival power or even a people. And New England at such a level that it could never recover.

In terms of population, King Philip's War was the bloodiest conflict in American history per the size of the population. Starvation and disease wreaked havoc at a scale that guns of the era just couldn't achieve as it was quite common in war back then, but much worse in a war like this. Around 2,500 colonists died, which could have been 30% of the population of New England. At least twice as many Native Americans were killed. We're not entirely sure. But if twice that number were killed, it's thought that two or three times that number were enslaved with untold thousands of them dying in slavery. 52 colonial towns were attacked, a dozen were destroyed, and most of everybody's

food supply was destroyed, used, or otherwise lost. That meant for years after the war, people were dying from the effects of the war. Depending on where you lived, those losses were much, much higher regionally. For example, many native bands were completely obliterated. Their numbers were never going to recover, which goes back to part one when we're talking about the the rolling genocide of native people like plymouth colony lost eight percent of its entire adult population the breath of destruction was so incredible that it's thought that it took a hundred years for new england to recover and by new england i mean colonial new england not the native the native population would never recover right so if you think about it this is is 1676, 1678, give or take.

It took almost until the end of the American Revolution for New England to recover from this. Wow. Yeah. The war led to something else as well. During this entire war, the British Empire

had been watching their subjects completely fuck this thing up from afar. A royal commission was conducted by Edward Randolph that found that the Puritans, when you know it running an insane theocracy, breaking English law and trading with several of England's enemies, namely the French. Somewhat ironically,

it also found that the colonies had stolen land, not from native people that they had stolen land from, but instead the British crown. Yeah. How dare you? Can't have that. The commission ended with him by saying that it was pretty clear that many colonies wanted a general

governor, like central leadership, directly appointed and managed by the King of England. And from there, there was a slow and never-stopping march to England asserting its authority over the colonies. Eventually, of course you know leading them becoming fully chartered uh an official crown colonies under royal authorities and then you know everything that happens after that so this

war directly led to effectively america uh which is disgustingly apt you know like of course it's a genocide yeah of course and that is king philip's war the conclusion uh yeah uh so yeah i hope i don't know if i want to say you enjoyed that this gave you horrible statistics of death and misery hopefully you didn't enjoy that too liam we do a thing on the show called questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question, sign up on the Patreon, ask us on Patreon or on Discord, and you can ask us a question. So this question is sent to us. What is like a slang term, parentheses, not a slur, good call, that you used to use an awful lot when you were younger and now you absolutely do not um i i mean i guess we're a little bit older than some of our listeners so we're gonna we're gonna be getting into some old lore here um i gotta go with tight nobody says tight anymore i've said

tight uh but i always say it sarcastically i've. Uh, you ever use cheesing for like smiling. I've seen people use it. I was not a cheesing user myself. Geeking out. What is geeking out? Is that just like, just like freaking out or just like, uh,

where I grew up geeked out was a term that we use for people in math. Oh, okay. Um, we had math, but I think it was, that was just sort of standard. Yeah. Like of course, central Pennsylvania, baby. We had meth, but I think that was just sort of standard. Yeah, like, of course.

Central Pennsylvania, baby. Hell yeah. I mean, there's another one. Tight is definitely one that comes to my mind. I think the last time I heard that was when I rewatched Breaking Bad. I can't think of another one. Maybe butt spackle for diarrhea. I remember people saying that a lot when I was a kid.

If you said butt spackle, I don't think people would know what the fuck you're talking about. Butt spackle. Butt spackle. That's a good one. It makes sense, right? Okay. Well, that's been, that was a good question.

Anyway, yeah, if you support the show or become a supporter of the show, ask us a question and think of supporting the show. If you like what we do here, throw of the show, ask us a question. And think of supporting the show. If you like what we do here, throw us $1, $2, whatever. And you get access to our Discord, which is a lovely little self-contained community full of weirdos like us. You get to ask questions from Legion. You get bonus episodes. You get early episodes.

Liam will come to your house and high five you yeah uh and uh yeah liam plug your show hi uh 10 000 losses and well there's your problem sorry i was in the middle of burping outstanding um and yeah i have books out uh the links uh for them will be in the show notes if you like military sci-fi check them out they're cheap and i like to consider them fine uh so pick those up too uh and until next time uh oh uh a lot of people from massachusetts and stuff uh and all the eastern states messaged me and said like they they grew up in some of these towns that had been attacked. Had no idea. They don't talk about it in school. One guy's school is named after King Philip, and his school did not teach about the war.

That sounds about right. Yeah, which is incredible. So until next time, good luck in the American education system, I guess. Sorry.