Chapter Fifteen
A New World in Conflict

War Against the Colonies: King Philip’s War

While the kings of Europe fought and schemed to make their kingdoms larger, the English colonies in North America were growing larger all on their own. More and more men and women were making the long journey across the Atlantic Ocean. New settlements spread across Massachusetts, over into the land we now call Rhode Island and Connecticut. New settlers built more houses, cleared more fields, and chopped down more trees.

They needed more space. And so they kept moving further west—and further into Native American lands—until the Wampanoag tribe decided to fight back.

At first, the Wampanoag and the English had been friends. When the English settlers first came to Massachusetts, the Wampanoag showed them how to fish, how to trap game, and how to survive the harsh northern winters.

But as the Massachusetts colony grew larger, the colonists no longer needed the Wampanoag. They grew their own crops, and traded their own goods to European merchant ships in exchange for the salt, weapons, and seeds that they needed. And they forced the Wampanoag to give them more land for their growing town.

The king of the Wampanoag tribe, Metacom, saw that his kingdom was vanishing. When his people went to fish in their favorite streams, the banks were crowded with colonists. When they walked in their hunting grounds, English hunters lurked behind trees, waiting for deer. “I am resolved,” Metacom announced to a friend, “that I will not see the day when I have no kingdom.”

One cold January morning, a young Wampanoag man left his tiny village and hurried down the icy dirt road, toward Plymouth Bay. He had grown up in Metacom’s kingdom, but in his teens he had gone to the new little college built by the English to train Christian ministers. At this little college, which the English called Harvard, the Wampanoag boy had been given the English name John Sassamon.

John Sassamon knew Metacom well. Because John could read and write in English, Metacom had often asked him to carry messages to the English leaders. But now John Sassamon carried a warning.

John walked for hours, shivering in the grey winter air. His feet grew numb with cold. Finally, the tall wooden walls of the Plymouth fortress came into view. John Sassamon hurried through the gates. “Where is the governor?” he asked. “I must speak to him right away!”

The governor of Plymouth, Josiah Winslow, was busy with paperwork. But John Sassamon waited, anxiously glancing back at Plymouth’s strong walls. When he was finally brought into the governor’s office, he spoke so quickly that Winslow could barely understand him. “King Metacom is raising an army!” he blurted out. “He’s asking every other tribe to join with him to fight against you. He plans to drive the English back to their home! I’ve come to warn you. But please, please don’t send me back. He doesn’t know I’m here, and if the warriors find out that I’ve warned you, they’ll kill me!”

Winslow sighed. Like many English, he thought that the Wampanoag were stupid and not to be trusted. “You can hardly believe an Indian,” he remarked to a friend, “even when they tell the truth.” He turned to John Sassamon. “Go back home,” he said. “Plymouth Plantation is safe.”

Sassamon pleaded to stay, but Winslow refused. When Sassamon left the fortress, his eyes were filled with tears.

A week later, John Sassamon disappeared. His body was found, frozen into the ice of a pond. His neck was broken.

Josiah Winslow and the Plymouth Plantation leaders took alarm. Perhaps Sassamon’s fears had been real! When two men came forward, claiming that they had seen three Wampanoag warriors kill Sassamon and throw him into the pond, the English decided to show Metacom who was really in charge of Massachusetts. English soldiers arrested the warriors and brought them to Plymouth. The Wampanoag warriors were tried, convicted of murder—and executed.

Metacom was furious! How dare the English invade his village and drag away his warriors? Three days after the execution, Metacom and his men attacked a little Plymouth settlement, burning houses and driving the settlers away.

War had begun.

The war between the English and the Wampanoag dragged on for months. The colonists had more guns—but the Native Americans were better at surprise attacks and ambushes. And Metacom convinced other Native American tribes nearby to join with him in his war against the English. Native American warriors burned English settlements, killed English colonists, and took others captive, only releasing them in exchange for money and weapons. One of these captured women, Mary Rowlandson, wrote about the attack on her house. “It was the dolefulest day that ever mine eyes saw,” she lamented. “....[F]rom all…places [the Indians] shot against the house, so that the bullets seemed to fly like hail….Some in our house were fighting for their lives, others wallowing in their blood, the house on fire over our heads….Then I took my children…to go forth and leave the house: but as soon as we came to the door and appeared, the Indians shot so thick that the bullets rattled against the house, as if one had taken an handful of stones and threw them.” Mary and her children were captured and held prisoner for weeks, until her husband paid money for her release.

After eight months of war, thirteen hundred Englishmen from Plymouth banded together to make the strongest attack yet against Metacom’s forces. Metacom and his warriors had joined together with another tribe, the Narragansett, and were camped out in the middle of a treacherous swamp. The Englishmen sloshed through the swamp and attacked Metacom’s camp. The battle, which became known as the Great Swamp Fight, almost wiped out the Native American warriors! Metacom himself fled west, into the colony of New York, and tried to convince the Mohawk tribe to give him fresh warriors and weapons. When the Mohawks refused, Metacom tried to keep on fighting with his remaining men.

But his shrinking war band could not resist forever. Eight months after the Great Swamp Fight, English soldiers surrounded Metacom’s camp. Metacom escaped, but his wife and nine-year- old son were captured and sold as slaves to South America.

Metacom evaded the English for ten more days—but was surrounded in the middle of a swamp, unable to get away. A Native American warrior who had joined the English forces shot Metacom. The English then cut off his head, paraded back to Plymouth in triumph, and put Metacom’s head up on a pole in the middle of the settlement—where it remained for years!

Because the English called Metacom “King Philip,” this war became known as King Philip’s War. Twelve English towns had been burned to the ground. One out of every sixteen men had died. Crops had been destroyed and farms leveled. In the following winters, many colonists died of starvation.

But more than three thousand Native Americans had died as well. Whole villages had been burned. Entire tribes had been killed; the few remaining members of those tribes scattered, many fleeing to the north. Now the English could continue to spread across North America, across land left empty by King Philip’s War.

War Against the Colonies: Louis XIV Saves New France

Up north of Massachusetts, the French colonies were also fighting with Native American enemies.

The people of New France had done their best to be friends with the Native Americans nearby. Years before, Samuel Champlain had been careful to make friends with the nearest tribe, the Hurons. He gave them presents, slept and ate in their villages, and helped them fight against their enemies.

But the Hurons suffered from this friendship! The French gave the Hurons presents, but they also passed along a terrible new disease called smallpox. The Hurons had never been near smallpox before, so their bodies couldn’t recognize the germs and fight them off. They began to grow ill. Rashes spread across their faces. They had trouble breathing and swallowing. Over half of the Huron tribe died from smallpox!

Another Native American tribe that lived nearby, the Iroquois, saw that the Hurons had become weak from illness. The Iroquois had always been more warlike than the Hurons. So Iroquois armies invaded Huron land, burned Huron camps and longhouses, and killed hundreds of Huron men and women. The Huron tribe disintegrated, and the triumphant Iroquois claimed their land.

Then the Iroquois set out to destroy New France—because the French had been friends and allies of the Hurons. Small parties of Iroquois warriors raided farms in Quebec, burning houses and killing settlers. Other war bands laid siege to Montreal, the largest settlement in New France. The settlers fought back. But the fierce and determined Iroquois were experts at forest fighting. They appeared and disappeared with bewildering speed, leaving death and destruction behind them. The attacks went on and on. More and more French settlers left the dangerous lands of New France and went home! The colony shrank until it had almost disappeared.

But then the king of France, Louis XIV, stepped in to rescue New France.

Louis XIV, the Sun King, had spent years fighting wars to expand his French empire. He didn’t intend to lose his colonies in the New World! So he sent soldiers from the French army over to fight the Iroquois. He promised these soldiers that he would give them land in the New World if they would save New France.

The French soldiers sailed to New France and marched off their ship, ready to fight. They had muskets and cannons. They had already fought bloody wars on the battlefields of Europe—and they were sure that they could defeat the “savages” of North America.

They were wrong! The battlefields of Europe hadn’t prepared them to fight in thick woods and tangled brush. Even with their bullets and cannonballs, the French soldiers weren’t able to defeat the Iroquois nation.

But they did manage to protect the settlements of New France from attack. Finally, the Iroquois agreed to observe an uneasy peace. They retreated back to their own land, and the French soldiers settled down on their new land, ready to begin new lives.

Now they were faced with a different problem. Louis XIV had sent hundreds of soldiers—all men—to New France. These soldiers wanted to start families and raise lots of little French Canadians. But there were six men for every woman in New France!

Once more, Louis XIV came to the rescue. He announced that he would pay young Frenchwomen large amounts of money if they would go and live in the colonies. Many young women accepted the king’s offer and sailed across the Atlantic to New France—where they were greeted with great joy by French soldiers looking for wives! These young women became known as filles du roi, or “daughters of the King.”

Now that New France was a safer place to live, the colony began to grow once again. Farmers called habitants cultivated the fields of the New World. Fur traders called voyageurs sailed up and down the rivers, trading for furs. Ships from France came to the ports of New France, bringing French goods, newspapers, and more settlers. The towns of Quebec and Montreal grew larger and richer. The streets were laid with cobbles; stone houses stood proudly in the middle of each town. Silversmiths, wigmakers, and tailors worked hard on their crafts. The gentlemen and ladies of New France, like the courtiers of Louis XIV over in France, decked themselves with silk, lace, powdered wigs, and jewelry.

But the Iroquois had not given up. Once again, they began to attack the rich towns and farms of New France.

One October morning, the farm of François Jarret lay peacefully under the mellow fall sun. François Jarret was a seigneur, an army officer who had been rewarded with a large farm. Jarret’s farm was called Verchères. Many farmers lived on the lands of Verchères, cultivating Jarret’s fields for him.

On this particular morning, François Jarret and his wife were both away from the fort, tending to business in the nearby town. Their fourteen-year-old daughter Marie-Madeleine was walking through the fields. She could just see the fort in the distance. Birds sang in the trees nearby, and the cool fall air moved against her face.

Suddenly, Marie-Madeleine heard gunshots in the distance. Then she heard a terrifying sound: the voices of farmers, screaming, “Save yourselves! The Iroquois are attacking!” She turned—and saw a band of fifty Iroquois warriors charging toward her. She ran toward the fort as fast as she could!

Later, Madeleine wrote down the events of that day. This is a simpler version of her story:

The Iroquois who were chasing me found that I was too far ahead for them to capture. So they started to shoot at me. Bullets whizzed by me! As soon as I came close enough for the guards inside the fort to hear me, I started shouting, “Get your weapons! Please, come and save me!” But no one appeared at the walls!

Just as I reached the gate, the fastest warrior caught me by the handkerchief around my neck. I yanked it off, leaving it in his hand, slipped through the gate—and pushed it closed! I looked around me. There were a few gaps in the walls of the fort. I started shouting at the others inside the fort, “Put posts across the gaps! Repair the walls!” I grabbed one of the posts myself and put it into place. When the others saw me carrying a post, they began to fix the walls themselves. So I went to find the guards. I found one hiding. Another was inside the room where the ammunition and powder was kept. He was holding a lighted fuse!

“What are you doing?” I shouted. He answered, “It’s hopeless. We should blow ourselves up so that the Iroquois can’t capture us.” “Miserable man!” I screamed. “Give me that!”

He gave me the fuse. I could see that no one else would lead us—so I took off my bonnet, put on a hat, and grabbed a gun. I found my two little brothers, who were twelve and ten. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s fight to the death for our country!”

We loaded the cannons and shot them from the walls. The Iroquois were frightened by this and fell back a little. Inside the fort, women were crying. I ordered them to be shut up in an inside room, so that our enemies would not know that we were frightened. The sun was setting. The sky was filling with clouds; snow and ice had begun to fall. I knew that the enemy would attack again as soon as the night grew dark. All night, we stood on the walls, guarding the fort against the invaders. I took one corner. My two brothers took two more. The last corner was guarded by a man of eighty years old! For eight days, we held the fort against our enemy.

Finally, French soldiers from a nearby settlement arrived and drove off the attackers. For her bravery, Marie-Madeleine de Vercheres became a French Canadian heroine. Her statue still stands in Quebec today.

William Penn’s Holy Experiment

While the colonies in New France and New England fought for survival, a man named William Penn was working hard to build a different kind of colony. Penn wanted this new colony, Pennsylvania, to be a place of peace, brotherhood, and love—not a place of war.

But the history of Pennsylvania was filled with trouble!

The story of Pennsylvania began in 1660, when William Penn was just sixteen and studying at the University of Oxford. The English had just decided to invite Charles II back to England. William’s father, an officer in the English navy, commanded the ship that brought Charles II back to England. In gratitude, Charles II made William’s father an admiral and a knight. And when Charles II was crowned in London, Admiral Penn loaned him sixteen thousand pounds for his treasury—more money than a farmer or merchant might earn in his entire lifetime!

Admiral Penn wanted William to have a position at the new royal court—perhaps as an ambassador or army officer. But in Oxford, William had started going to the meetings of a religious group called the Society of Friends of the Truth. The Friends were nicknamed “Quakers” because people whispered that they “quaked,” or shook, in the presence of God. Quakers refused to belong to the Church of England. Instead they gathered together in plain meetinghouses where they sat and prayed quietly, waiting for God’s words to come directly into their hearts. Quakers believed that every man and woman should be equal. So they refused to use the word “you” because, in those days, people used the word “you” when talking to superiors and the word “thee” when talking to equals. Quakers used “thee” when speaking to everyone. They wouldn’t even take their hats off in the presence of the king! This looked a lot like rebellion—so Quakers were often arrested and put in jail.

Admiral Penn didn’t want William to become a Quaker. So he ordered William to come home from Oxford, and sent him to France instead. In France, William met Louis XIV and learned French dress and French manners at the glittering, beautiful, French court. When he returned, he seemed content to lead the life of a wealthy aristocrat. He went to parties and balls. He decided to become a soldier and had his portrait painted in a full suit of armor!

But while William was playing the part of a fashionable young man, he was still thinking about Quaker ideas. Soon, William Penn was going to Quaker meetings once more. At the age of twenty-two, sitting in a Quaker meeting, William Penn was suddenly filled with joy. “The Lord visited me,” he later said, “with a certain sound and testimony of his Eternal Word.” Now William could no longer be a soldier; Quakers believed that fighting was wrong. And he certainly wouldn’t be a royal ambassador; Quakers were not in favor at court. When Admiral Penn found out that his son had become a Quaker, he was so furious that he threw William out of the house and told him not to come back!

William Penn went to live with friends in London. He wrote tracts defending Quaker beliefs, preached in public, and was thrown into jail. When he was released, he learned that his father was dying. William Penn hurried home to sit by his father’s side. Ten days later, Admiral Penn died.

William spent the next three years writing and thinking about Quaker ideas. Meanwhile, all over England, Quakers were put in jail because of their beliefs. William Penn knew that, over in North America, Puritans had formed colonies where they could worship as they pleased. Why couldn’t Quakers have a colony as well?

So William wrote to Charles II, reminding the king that he still owed the Penn family sixteen thousand pounds. He asked for the king to pay him back, not with money, but with land in North America.

Charles II agreed—and he insisted that the land be called Pennsylvania in honor of William’s father. In 1681, he gave William Penn a piece of land on the western bank of the Delaware River for his very own. The land was almost as big as the country of England!

William Penn planned to use this land for a colony where Quaker ideas would be followed. He wanted the settlers to be like brothers, all equal to each other. The capital city would be called the City of Brotherly Love—in Greek, Philadelphia. The colonists would govern themselves! To help them, he wrote out directions, called the Frame of Government, that explained how the colony would run. Colonists would vote to elect three groups of leaders: a council, an assembly, and a governor. The council would make laws, the assembly would vote on whether or not the laws should be passed, and the governor would make sure that laws were followed. That way, no one group of people would have all the power. Later, this Frame of Government would be a model for the American Constitution.

William Penn didn’t forget about the Native Americans either. He sent them a message promising to pay them for any land that the colonists used. In the directions for his new colony, he wrote, “No man shall by any ways or means, in word or deed, affront or wrong any Indian….The Indians shall have liberty to do all things…that any of the [colonists] shall enjoy.”

In 1682, William Penn himself came over to Pennsylvania, bringing a hundred colonists with him. In the next year, twenty-three different ships arrived, one at a time, bringing new settlers—two thousand in all!

But the governor of Maryland, the colony just south of Pennsylvania, watched Pennsylvania’s growth with alarm. He thought that the Pennsylvania colonists were settling on land that ought to belong to Maryland. Just two years after William Penn’s arrival, the Maryland governor announced that he was going to sail to England and ask the king to give him part of Pennsylvania’s land.

William Penn didn’t want to leave his colony so soon. But he had no choice. He had to follow the Maryland governor back over to England and defend Pennsylvania’s right to its land! So, sadly, he boarded a ship and set out on the long journey across the Atlantic.

He would not return for fifteen long years!

When he arrived in England, he found that Charles II was too ill to see him. Not long after, Charles II died—without leaving a son behind him. His brother, James II, claimed the throne.

But James II was Catholic. The people of England were horrified. Did this mean that England would become a Catholic country? And then something even more alarming happened: James II and his wife had a son. They planned to raise this little boy to be a good Catholic—and James’s heir. Now, England might be facing a whole dynasty of Catholic kings!

The English Protestants revolted. They sent a message to James’s older daughter, Mary, who lived in Holland. Mary was a Protestant, and she had married a Dutch nobleman, William III of Orange. Both were Protestants. “Come to England and seize the throne!” the English Protestants pleaded. “Be king and queen and deliver us from Catholic rule!”

William and Mary agreed to come. They also agreed to sign a paper, promising that they would not try to pass any laws without the approval of Parliament. In November of 1688, they sailed to England along with 14,000 Protestant soldiers. As soon as they landed, James’s royal army deserted him and welcomed the new Protestant rulers! James, like his brother before him, had to flee to France.

The Protestants of England were delighted. They now had a Protestant king and queen who had promised not to be tyrants. The English called this takeover the Glorious Revolution. Their new monarchs, Mary II and William III, would never try to seize power from Parliament.

But the Revolution wasn’t so glorious for William Penn. He was arrested three times because he was suspected of loyalty to the king. Each time he was released, he tried to get a ship to take him back to Philadelphia—and failed. Finally, he was forced to go into hiding. He stayed in hiding for years and years!

Finally, when fears of James II’s return began to die down, William was able to come out of hiding and buy passage on a ship to North America. When he walked down its gangplank in the harbor of Philadelphia, he could hardly believe his eyes. In fifteen years, Philadelphia had grown to be the second largest town in all of North America! The city was filled with shops, tall brick houses, wide streets, and thousands of people. The Holy Experiment had succeeded.

Today, a statue of William Penn stands on top of Philadelphia’s City Hall. The statue is thirty-seven feet tall! For many years, no building in Philadelphia was allowed to be taller than the brim of the statue’s hat, so that William Penn would always be the highest spot in the city that he planned.