During the Revolutionary War, the Plymouth County militia was led by Colonel Theophilus Cotton of Plymouth. News reached Plymouth of the Battles of Concord and Lexington, and Cotton gathered his soldiers and marched on the town of Marshfield where a small British barracks had been established on the estate of Nathaniel Ray Thomas, known today as the Daniel Webster Estate. Cotton's forces surrounded the British troops, but Cotton determined not to fire, allowing the British to escape by water down the Green Harbor River and back to the security of the British forces occupying Boston.
Revolutionary War
Plymouth, Massachusetts
Plymouth, Massachusetts | Revolutionary War
Yes, Revolutionary War Yes, the "Pequot War". Yes, King Philip's war. Yes, the Revolutionary War.
what year did the mayflower land on plymouth bay
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December 16, 1620
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where was this colony located?
user
Plymouth, Massachusetts
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which is the ship they traveled to this place in?
user
"Mayflower"
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is there a society bearing the same name as the ship?
user
Yes, The General Society of Mayflower Descendants, or The Mayflower Society
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what was the language spoken by the people who came on the ship?
user
Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
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was the place mentioned earlier associated with any war?
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Plymouth Colony was established in 1620 with significant early help from local Indians, particularly Squanto and Massasoit. Subsequent colonists founded Salem, Boston, and many small towns around Massachusetts Bay between 1628 and 1640, during a time of increased English immigration. The colonists progressively expanded throughout the territories of the several Algonquian-speaking tribes in the region. Prior to King Philip's War, tensions fluctuated between Indian tribes and the colonists, but relations were generally peaceful. The Rhode Island, Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven colonies each developed separate relations with the Wampanoags, Nipmucs, Narragansetts, Mohegans, Pequots, and other tribes of New England, whose territories historically had differing boundaries.
King Philip's War | Historical context
During the Revolutionary War, the Plymouth County militia was led by Colonel Theophilus Cotton of Plymouth. News reached Plymouth of the Battles of Concord and Lexington, and Cotton gathered his soldiers and marched on the town of Marshfield where a small British barracks had been established on the estate of Nathaniel Ray Thomas, known today as the Daniel Webster Estate. Cotton's forces surrounded the British troops, but Cotton determined not to fire, allowing the British to escape by water down the Green Harbor River and back to the security of the British forces occupying Boston.
Plymouth, Massachusetts | Revolutionary War
Massasoit sent him to approach the colonists to find out whether their intentions were peaceful. Massasoit forged critical political and personal ties with colonial leaders William Bradford, Edward Winslow, Stephen Hopkins, John Carver, and Myles Standish, ties which grew out of a negotiated peace treaty on March 22, 1621. The alliance ensured that the Pokanoket s remained neutral during the Pequot War in 1636. According to Colonial sources, Massasoit prevented the failure of Plymouth Colony and the starvation that the Pilgrims faced during the earliest years of its establishment.https://vc.bridgew.edu/bmas/64/
Massasoit | English at Plymouth
They named their settlement "Plimouth" (sometimes spelled "Plimoth") after the major port city in Devon, England from which the "Mayflower" ultimately sailed.
Plymouth, Massachusetts | Colonial era
King Philip was the younger son of Massasoit and the heir of Massasoit's position as sachem of the Pokanoket and supreme leader of the Wampanoag. (He was also known as Metacomet and other variations on that name.) He became sachem upon the sudden death of his older brother Wamsutta, also known as Alexander, in 1662. The cause of the war stems from the increasing numbers of English colonists and their demand for land. As more land was purchased from the Native Americans, they were restricted to smaller territories for themselves. Native American leaders such as King Philip resented the loss of land and looked for a means to slow or reverse it.
Plymouth Colony | King Philip's War
At the time of the pilgrims' arrival in Plymouth, the realm of the Pokanokets included parts of Rhode Island and much of southeastern Massachusetts. Massasoit lived in Sowams, a village at Pokanoket in Warren, Rhode Island. He held the allegiance of a number of lesser Pokanoket sachems. In 1621, he sent Squanto to live among the colonists at Plymouth. Outbreaks of smallpox had devastated the Pokanokets, and Massasoit sought an alliance with the colonies of New England against the neighboring Narragansetts who controlled an area west of Narragansett Bay in the Rhode Island. Samoset was a minor Abenakki sachem ("sagamore") who hailed from the Muscongus Bay area of Maine, and he learned to speak English from fishermen who plied those waters.
Massasoit | English at Plymouth
Also connected to Massasoit was Samoset, a minor Abenakki sachem who hailed from the Muscongus Bay area of Maine. Samoset (a mispronunciation of Somerset) had learned English in England as a captive of the Merchant Tailors Guild. On Friday, March 16, the settlers were conducting military training when Samoset "boldly came alone" into the settlement. The colonists were initially alarmed, but he immediately set their fears at ease by asking for beer. He spent the day giving them intelligence of the surrounding tribes, then stayed for the night. The next day, Samoset returned with five men all bearing deer skins and one cat skin.
Squanto | Plymouth Colony
After the failed settlement of Roanoke (1585) and the first permanent settlement at Jamestown (1607)—near speakers of Powhatan languages—shifted to New England with failed attempts at Cuttyhunk (1602) and Cape Ann (1624) and successful settlement of Plymouth (1621), Salem (1628), Massachusetts Bay (1629)—all in what is now Massachusetts and in the midst of Massachusett-speaking peoples—and a few other sites in New England. The earliest settlers struggled in the colder climate of New England, with their lives dependent on the Native American peoples for education on local agriculture, food aid, protection from less welcoming tribes and a market for trade. Through these close interactions, the English settlers adopted hundreds of words, probably hundreds more when compounds and calques of Massachusett phrases are included.
Massachusett language | Massachusett influences in the English language
The English settlers of the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies initially referred to Massachusett as the Indian language, at first because they were unaware of the ethnic and linguistic boundaries between peoples, and later as they discovered that nearly all the Indians spoke the same language. Massachusett was adopted as a general term, although due to the influence of the Indian mission and the success of the Praying Town of Natick, Natick also was a common reference to the language, especially in written form. In the Plymouth Colony, both Massachusett and Wampanoag, especially since the colony covered most of their traditional territory, were in general use.
Massachusett language | Exonyms
The first major war in New England was the Pequot War of 1637. The war's roots go back to 1632, when a dispute arose between Dutch fur traders and Plymouth officials over control of the Connecticut River Valley near modern Hartford, Connecticut. Representatives from the Dutch East India Company and Plymouth Colony both had deeds which claimed that they had rightfully purchased the land from the Pequots. A sort of land rush occurred as settlers from Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies tried to beat the Dutch in settling the area; the influx of English settlers also threatened the Pequot. Other confederations in the area sided with the English, including the Narragansetts and Mohegans, who were the traditional enemies of the Pequots.
Plymouth Colony | Pequot War
Many of the neighboring tribes had been traditional competitors and enemies. As the colonial population increased, the New Englanders expanded their settlements along the region's coastal plain and up the Connecticut River valley. By 1675, they had established a few small towns in the interior between Boston and the Connecticut River settlements. The Wampanoag tribe under Metacomet's leadership had entered into an agreement with the Plymouth Colony and believed that they could rely on the colony for protection. However, in the decades preceding the war, it became clear to them that the treaty did not mean that the Colonists were not allowed to settle in new territories.
King Philip's War | Historical context
The raids stopped when the war ended. Some captives were adopted into the Mohawk and Abenaki tribes; older captives were generally ransomed, and the colonies carried on a brisk trade. The Third Abenaki War (1722–25), called Dummer's War, erupted when the French Jesuit missionary Sébastien Rale (or Rasles, 1657?-1724) encouraged the Abenaki to halt the spread of Yankee settlements. When the Massachusetts militia tried to seize Rasles, the Abenaki raided the settlements at Brunswick, Arrowsick, and Merry-Meeting Bay. The Massachusetts government then declared war, and bloody battles were fought at Norridgewock (1724), where Rasles was killed, and at a daylong battle at Pequawket, an Indian village near present-day Fryeburg, Maine, on the upper Saco River (1725).
Abenaki language | Abenaki wars
This may be explained by the fact that the original settlers of Natick were Massachusett people from Neponset, but after King Philip's War, the community attracted many Nipmuc whose dialects generally prefer . As Eliot employed the form in his translations, this form spread as the 'standard' in writing. Many instances seem to have been standardized by colonial mapmakers and Indian translators themselves. For instance, the colonists referred to a hill that once existed as Hassunek or Hassunet Hill, but the name survives today as Assonet Street in Worcester. Similarly, Asnacomet Pond, in a formerly Nipmuc-language area, was recorded as 'Asacancomic in the older colonial sources.
Massachusett language | Locative vs
He was beheaded and his head stayed on public display on a pole in Plymouth for 25 years.
Seekonk, Massachusetts | King Philip's War
However, the extent to which the Brythonic Cornish language was spoken east of the Tamar remains a point of conjecture.
History of Plymouth | Early history
A handful of Indians had rudimentary knowledge of English through occasional contacts with English seafarers, adventurers, fishermen and traders for a few decades before the first permanent English settlement of New England at Plymouth. When the Pilgrims established their outpost, they were greeted in English by Samoset, originally an Abenaki of coastal Maine, and Tisquantum ('Squanto'), a local Wôpanâak, but both of their home villages were also wiped out by an epidemic caused by infectious agents unknown in the New World. Tisquantum was abducted by an English vessel, sold into slavery in Spain, mysteriously found his way to London where gained employment on English explorations of the North American coast and later escaped and took up residence in a neighboring Wôpanâak village.
Massachusett language | Massachusett Pidgin English
Samoset was a sagamore (subordinate chief) of an Eastern Abenaki tribe that resided in what now is Maine, and an English fishing camp had been established in the Gulf of Maine. Samoset learned some English from fishermen who came to fish off Monhegan Island and he knew most ship captains by name. The Abenaki language is an Algonquian language related to the Massachusett language of the Nauset and Wampanoag people of the area around Plymouth Colony, and Samoset was visiting Wampanoag chief Massasoit at the time of the historic event. He entered the settlement at Plymouth on March 16, 1621, greeted the colonists in English, and asked for beer.
Samoset | History
Winslow, with Squanto as translator, proclaimed the loving and peaceful intentions of King James and the desire of their governor to trade and make peace with him. After Massasoit ate, Miles Standish led him to a house which was furnished with pillows and a rug. Governor Carver then came "with Drumme and Trumpet after him" to meet Massasoit. The parties ate together, then negotiated a treaty of peace and mutual defense between the Plymouth settlers and the Pokanoket people. According to Bradford, "all the while he sat by the Governour, he trembled for feare". Massasoit's followers applauded the treaty, and the peace terms were kept by both parties during Massasoit's lifetime.
Squanto | Plymouth Colony
The Pokanokets also lived nearby and had developed a particular dislike for the English after one group came in, captured numerous people, and shot them aboard their ship. By this time, there had already been reciprocal killings at Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod. But during one of the captures by the English, Squanto escaped to England and there became a Christian. When he came back, he found that most of his tribe had died from plague.
Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony) | First contact
He learned English, escaped slavery, and returned home in 1619. He taught the colonists how to farm corn, where and how to catch fish, and other helpful skills for the New World. He also was instrumental in the survival of the settlement for the first two years. Squanto and another guide sent by Massasoit in 1621 named Hobomok helped the colonists set up trading posts for furs. Chief Massasoit later formed a Peace Treaty with the Pilgrims. Upon growing a plentiful harvest in the fall of 1621, the Pilgrims gathered with Squanto, Samoset, Massasoit, and ninety other Wampanoag men in a celebration of thanksgiving to God for their plentiful harvest.
Plymouth, Massachusetts | First Winter
The first English settlements, the Plymouth Colony by the Pilgrims in 1620, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony by the Puritans in 1629, both were founded in Massachusett-language speaking territory. The colonists depended on the Indians for survival, and some learned how to communicate with the Indians for trade. As the population of the English increased with further Puritan migrations, and the Indians became outnumbered, moves to assimilate the Indians were enacted. With colonial backing and funding from the Society for the Propagation of the Bible, missionaries such as John Eliot, Thomas Mayhew and his descendants amongst the Wampanoag, and Roger Williams began to learn the local languages and convert the Indians.
Massachusett language | Early colonial period
English Puritans from the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies settled at the four recently established river towns of Windsor (1632), Wethersfield (1633), Hartford (1635), and Springfield (1636.)
Pequot War | Origin
It is not known when the last speakers perished, but Tamsen Weekes, who died in 1890 at the age of 90, was likely one of the last fluent speakers. Studies of the Wampanoag tribe in the 1920s did not find any native speakers, but only those who remembered small bits of the language. War also greatly reduced the population. The ravages of King Philip's War (1675–76) is believed to have reduced the population by 40%, due to executions, retaliatory attacks and displacement. Many of the Praying Indians that remained neutral were rounded up and left on islands in Boston Harbor where many perished from disease, starvation and exposure to the elements.
Massachusett language | Extinction
Peter's grandchildren Penelipa, (Penelope), Deborah, Charles and Peter were given land at the Watuppa Reservation in thanks for the Saconnet's help to the English and Benjamin Church in King Philip's War. Two great grandsons named Peter and Abel Washonks were Revolutionary War soldiers in Massachusetts and Connecticut respectively.
Awashonks | Plymouth Colony
During their earlier exploration of the Cape, the Pilgrims had come upon a Native American burial site which contained corn, and they had taken the corn for future planting. On another occasion, they found an unoccupied house and had taken corn and beans, for which they made restitution with the occupants about six months later. Even greater assistance came from Samoset and Tisquantum (known as Squanto by the pilgrims), a Native American sent by Wampanoag Tribe Chief Massasoit as an ambassador and technical adviser. Squanto had been kidnapped in 1614 by an English slave raider and sold in Málaga, Spain.
Plymouth, Massachusetts | First Winter
Historians estimate that, as a result of King Philip's War, the Indian population of southern New England was reduced by about 40 to 80 percent.
King Philip's War | Plymouth Colony
Awashonks sent for Benjamin Church; when he arrived, there were hundreds of people present and Awashonks was leading a ceremonial dance. Awashonks stopped to see Church, who told her that it was not true that Plymouth was preparing for war (as Metacomet's men had told her). Church advised Awashonks to go to the Governor of Plymouth and join with the English. In part because of aid from leaders such as Awashonks, the English defeated Metacomet in King Philip's War.
Awashonks | King Philip's War
Prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims, the location of Plymouth was a village of the Wampanoag tribe called Patuxet. The region was visited twice by European explorers prior to the establishment of Plymouth Colony. In 1605, Samuel de Champlain sailed to Plymouth Harbor, calling it Port St. Louis. Captain John Smith was a leader of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, and he explored parts of Cape Cod Bay and is credited with naming the region "New Plimouth." Two plagues afflicted coastal New England in 1614 and 1617, killing between 90% and 95% of the local Wampanoag inhabitants. The near disappearance of the tribe from the site left their cornfields and cleared areas vacant for the Pilgrims to occupy.
Plymouth, Massachusetts | Pre-colonial era
To this day, some debate exists whether King Philip's men actually committed the murder. Philip had already begun war preparations at his home base near Mount Hope where he started raiding English farms and pillaging their property. In response, Governor Josiah Winslow called out the militia, and they organized and began to move on Philip's position. King Philip's men attacked unarmed women and children in order to receive a ransom. One such attack resulted in the capture of Mary Rowlandson. The memoirs of her capture provided historians with much information on Native American culture during this time period.
Plymouth Colony | King Philip's War
"Of Plimoth Plantation" (1630 and 1651) by William Bradford and "Mourt's Relation" (1622) by Bradford, Edward Winslow, and others are both accounts written by "Mayflower" passengers that provide much of the information which we have today regarding the trans-Atlantic voyage and early years of the settlement. Benjamin Church wrote several accounts of King Philip's War, including "Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip's War", which remained popular throughout the 18th century. An edition of the work was illustrated by Paul Revere in 1772. "The Sovereignty and Goodness of God" provides an account of King Philip's War from the perspective of Mary Rowlandson, an Englishwoman who was captured and spent some time in the company of Native Americans during the war.
Plymouth Colony | Art, literature, and film
Pilgrim separatists landed at Plymouth Rock and formed the Plymouth Colony. Aided by Squanto, a Native American of the Patuxet people, the colony was able to establish a treaty with Chief Massasoit which helped to ensure the colony's success. The colony played a central role in King Philip's War, one of the earliest and bloodiest of the Indian Wars. Ultimately, the colony was annexed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691.
Territorial evolution of North America prior to 1763 | 1620
Hobomok is next mentioned seven months later, in March 1621/22. Plymouth found itself in a precarious situation since the previous November when the "Fortune" brought an additional 35 settlers without any provisions. This required the colony to go on half rations throughout the winter. The Narragansett soon learned of the weakened condition of the settlement and "began to break forth many threats against us," so much so that it was "the common talke of our neighbour "Indians" on all sides" that the Narragansett were making preparations "to come against us." In January the Narragansett sachem Canonicus sent a messenger to deliver a declaration of war (a bundle of arrows wrapped in a rattlesnake's skin).
Hobbamock | Hostility of the Massachuset
These included about 4,000 Narragansetts of western Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut, 2,400 Nipmucs of central and western Massachusetts, and 2,400 combined in the Massachusett and Pawtucket tribes living around Massachusetts Bay and extending northwest to Maine. The Wampanoags and Pokanokets of Plymouth and eastern Rhode Island are thought to have numbered fewer than 1,000. About one in four were considered to be warriors. By then, the Indians had almost universally adopted steel knives, tomahawks, and flintlock muskets as their weapons. The various tribes had no common government. They had distinct cultures and often warred among themselves, although they all spoke related languages from the Algonquian family.
King Philip's War | Population
The colony established a treaty with Wampanoag Chief Massasoit which helped to ensure its success; in this, they were aided by Squanto, a member of the Patuxet tribe. Plymouth played a central role in King Philip's War (1675–1678), one of several Indian Wars, but the colony was ultimately merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony and other territories in 1691 to form the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Despite the colony's relatively short existence, Plymouth holds a special role in American history. Most of the citizens of Plymouth were fleeing religious persecution and searching for a place to worship as they saw fit, rather than being entrepreneurs like many of the settlers of Jamestown in Virginia.
Plymouth Colony | Introduction
Additional access is possible via an extension to U.S. Route 44 in Massachusetts.
Plymouth, Massachusetts | Modern history
The Nauset are extinct as a people today. The Nauset were able to survive the ravages of King Philip's War unscathed due to their isolation, trust of the local English settlers and neutrality. Most of the Nauset relocated to Mashpee where they joined the local Wampanoag when it was established as a Praying town of the Plymouth Colony, and thus, many Mashpee Wampanoag likely have significant Nauset ancestry in their Native bloodlines. The unique features of the speech of the Wampanoag remembers from Mashpee recorded by Speck may be due to Nauset features but could just as easily be considered dialectal variation, late-stage language usage and incorrect 'remembering' of the language as it was recorded from elders that did not speak the language.
Massachusett dialects | Nauset
Prescott, realizing ammunition was getting low and needed to be conserved, instructed his men to fire at the advancing British only when they could see the whites of their eyes. When ammunition began to run out fire from the colonials almost came to a stop, where the British regulars charged the fortifications, with fixed bayonets. The Americans, very few of them outfitted with bayonets, began a hasty retreat, many of them unable to escape as the British regulars were on them too quickly, and a bloody hand-to-hand combat ensued. The British continued a merciless fire on the retreating colonials. This is when Joseph Warren, shot in the face at close range, was killed.
Dearborn-Putnam controversy | Battle
The delegates called for the creation of a Provincial Congress in order to properly represent the people of Massachusetts Bay. They further called for the people of Plymouth County to arm themselves and to become accustomed with military discipline. Declaring that any money paid to the Royal civil government may be misappropriated to causes that may be a detriment to the people, the convention asked all people to stop making any payments until the government, or a government, exists with a constitutional foundation. The construction of fortifications on Boston Neck and the seizing of the gunpowder in Charlestown were also described as overtly hostile acts.
Massachusetts Provincial Congress | Plymouth Convention
Before the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, the Pokanokets occupied much of Southern New England, including Plymouth. They had previously suffered from a series of plagues which killed off large segments of their population, and their leader, the Massasoit Osamequin, befriended the early settlers. King Philip's War was a conflict between the Plymouth settlers and the Pokanokets and allied tribes, and it began in the neighboring area of Swansea, Massachusetts. Metacomet made nearby Mount Hope (a corruption of the Pokanoket word "Montaup") his base of operations; he died following an ambush by Captain Benjamin Church on August 12, 1676. "Massasoit's Seat" is a rocky ledge on the mountain which was a lookout site for enemy ships on Mount Hope Bay.
Bristol, Rhode Island | Early colonization
By 1675, the relationship between the English and the Wampanoag was more tense than ever. Metacomet (Sachem of the Wampanoag tribe, also known as King Philip) was trying to build a military coalition to go to war against the Plymouth settlers. Metacomet sent six men to visit Awashonks and convince her to side with him in the fight against the English. The men told her that if she did not, Metacomet would send his men to kill the colonists' cattle and burn their houses on her side of the river - making it appear as if one of her people had committed the crime.
Awashonks | King Philip's War
When it appeared that the war would resume, four of the New England colonies (Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth) formed a defensive compact known as the United Colonies of New England. Edward Winslow was already known for his diplomatic skills, and he was the chief architect of the United Colonies. His experience in the United Provinces of the Netherlands during the Leiden years was key to organizing the confederation. John Adams later considered the United Colonies to be the prototype for the Articles of Confederation, which was the first attempt at a national government.
Plymouth Colony | Pequot War
The fort was placed in caretaker status following the Civil War, remaining so at least through World War I. The military reservation was purchased by the federal government and declared inactive in 1870. Reportedly, the fort and/or the reservation were used in the Spanish–American War and World War I. The land was sold in 1925 to a private buyer.
Fort Standish (Plymouth, Massachusetts) | Introduction
Of specific concern was the founding of the town of Swansea, which was located only a few miles from the Wampanoag capital at Mount Hope. The General Court of Plymouth began using military force to coerce the sale of Wampanoag land to the settlers of the town. The proximate cause of the conflict was the death of a Praying Indian named John Sassamon in 1675. Sassamon had been an advisor and friend to King Philip; however, Sassamon's conversion to Christianity had driven the two apart. Accused in the murder of Sassamon were some of Philip's most senior lieutenants. A jury of twelve Englishmen and six Praying Indians found the Native Americans guilty of murder and sentenced them to death.
Plymouth Colony | King Philip's War
During the fall of 1621 the Plymouth settlers had every reason to be contented with their condition, less than one year after the "starving times". Bradford expressed the sentiment with biblical allusion that they found "the Lord to be with them in all their ways, and to bless their outgoings and incomings …" Winslow was more prosaic when he reviewed the political situation with respect to surrounding natives in December 1621: "Wee have found the "Indians" very faithfull in their Covenant of Peace with us; very loving and readie to pleasure us …," not only the greatest, Massasoit, "but also all the Princes and peoples round about us" for fifty miles.
Squanto | The peace regime that Squanto helped achieve
In 1779 the British established a base on the Penobscot River in the District of Maine with the intent of establishing a Loyalist presence there. The state of Massachusetts responded with the amphibious Penobscot Expedition, which ended in complete disaster. The British continued a process of raiding the New England coastal communities. One such raid led to a skirmish at Freetown, Massachusetts, while others descended on Massachusetts and Connecticut coastal communities. In the 1781 Battle of Groton Heights, the British were led by Connecticut native Benedict Arnold, who did substantial damage to the town.
Northern theater of the American Revolutionary War after Saratoga | Introduction
The French in Canada and their Abenaki allies, many of whom refugees of King Philip's War and seeking revenge against the English, raided settlements of the Massachusetts Colony. The English colonists enlisted the help of the men of the Indian communities to fight in engagements such as King William's War (1689–1699), Queen Anne's War (1704–1713), Dummer's War (1722–1724), King George's War (1744–1748), Father Le Loutre's War (1749–1755) and the French and Indian War (1754–1760). As many of the Abenaki allies were New England Indians they had absorbed, some battles pitted kin against kin. Many fought with distinction as guides, interpreters and scouts in units such as Gorham's Rangers, such as Abraham Speen, John Babysuck and Jonathan Womsquam, all of whom had ties to Natick's old families.
Massachusett | The French and Indian Wars and the American Revolutionary War
The Battles of Lexington and Concord initiated the American Revolutionary War and were fought in the eponymous Massachusetts towns. Future President George Washington took over what would become the Continental Army after the battle. His first victory was the Siege of Boston in the winter of 1775–76, after which the British were forced to evacuate the city. The event is still celebrated in Suffolk County as Evacuation Day. On the coast, Salem became a center for privateering. Although the documentation is incomplete, about 1,700 letters of marque, issued on a per-voyage basis, were granted during the American Revolution. Nearly 800 vessels were commissioned as privateers and are credited with capturing or destroying about 600 British ships.
Massachusetts | The Revolutionary War
Plymouth Colony lost close to eight percent of its adult male population and a smaller percentage of women and children to Indian warfare or other causes associated with the war. Indian losses were much greater, with about 2,000 men killed or who died of injuries in the war, more than 3,000 dying of sickness or starvation, and another 1,000 Indians sold into slavery and transported to other areas, such as the British-controlled islands in the Caribbean. About 2,000 Indians escaped to other tribes to the north or west; they joined continued Indian attacks from those bases well into the next century.
King Philip's War | Plymouth Colony
Plymouth /ˈplɪməθ/ (historically known as Plimouth and Plimoth) is a town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. Plymouth holds a place of great prominence in American history and is typically the most well known of the Northern Settlements. Plymouth was the site of the colony founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims, passengers of the famous ship the Mayflower. Before the arrival of the Mayflower earlier explorations killed between 90 and 95% of the local native inhabitants due to disease. The near disappearance of the tribe from the site not only left their cornfields and other cleared areas for the Pilgrims to take over, but also meant that the Indians were in no condition to disrupt the arrival of the colonists.
Indian commerce with early English colonists and the early United States | Plymouth and Northern Settlers
This territory, now part of the state of Maine, was then part of Massachusetts, and the state mobilized a large fleet and its militia to dislodge the British. Lovell was given command of the land forces, and the naval fleet was under the command of Connecticut native Dudley Saltonstall. Both men were ordered to cooperate with one another, but neither was given a clear authority over the other; this was a major contributing factor to the disastrous Penobscot Expedition that followed. During the entire course of the expedition, Lovell frequently complained (in his writings, and reportedly in war councils) of Saltonstall's unwillingness to take any sort of risks with the fleet in support of attacks on the British fortifications.
Solomon Lovell | American Revolutionary War
On July 2, a party of Pilgrims led by Edward Winslow (who later became the chief diplomat of the colony) set out to continue negotiations with the chief. The delegation also included Squanto, who acted as a translator. After traveling for several days, they arrived at Massasoit's village of Sowams near Narragansett Bay. After meals and an exchange of gifts, Massasoit agreed to an exclusive trading pact with the Plymouth colonists. Squanto remained behind and traveled throughout the area to establish trading relations with several tribes. In late July, a boy named John Billington became lost for some time in the woods around the colony.
Plymouth Colony | Early relations with the Native Americans
Literate Indian ministers and teachers taught literacy to the elites and other members of their communities, influencing a widespread acceptance. This is attested in the numerous court petitions, church records, praying town administrative records, notes on book margins, personal letters, and widespread distribution of other translations of religious tracts throughout the colonial period. The dialects of the language were formerly spoken by several peoples of southern New England, including all the coastal and insular areas of eastern Massachusetts, as well as southeastern New Hampshire, the southernmost tip of Maine and eastern Rhode Island, and it was also a common second or third language across most of New England and portions of Long Island.
Massachusett language | Introduction
The event that sparked formal hostilities was the capture of a boat and the murder of its captain John Oldham in 1636, an event blamed on allies of the Pequots. In April 1637, a raid on a Pequot village by John Endicott led to a retaliatory raid by Pequot warriors on the town of Wethersfield, Connecticut, where some 30 English settlers were killed. This led to a further retaliation, where a raid led by Captain John Underhill and Captain John Mason burned a Pequot village to the ground near modern Mystic, Connecticut, killing 300 Pequots. Plymouth Colony had little to do with the actual fighting in the war.
Plymouth Colony | Pequot War
As the settlements which followed the landing at Plymouth increased and spread, there was no organized military force for protection - only local volunteer companies, which lacked the capacity for joint action or any centralized authority. The English Government had no standing army, with the only permanent force (other than Royal bodyguards) being the locally organised Militia, in which all able males between 16 and 60 were liable to serve as required for home defence. This part-time force was extended to the New World colonies following the settlement of Virginia in 1607 and its offshoot Bermuda in 1609–1612, and to other colonies as they were established.
Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts | History
Until the end of the seventeenth century, Massachusett was a locally important language. In its simplified pidgin form, it was adopted as a regional lingua franca of New England and Long Island. As a native language, its dialects were spoken by several peoples inhabiting the coastal and insular regions of Massachusetts and adjacent portions of northern and southeastern Rhode Island and portions of southeastern and coastal New Hampshire, with transitional dialects historically extending as far north as the southernmost tip of Maine. Due to the waves of epidemics that killed off most of the Native peoples, competition with the large influx of English colonists for land and resources and the great upheaval in the wake of King Philip's War, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, the language and its speakers had contracted into a shrinking land base and population, concentrated in the former Praying towns of Natick and Ponkapoag and the larger Wampanoag, isolated Wampanoag settlements on the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket and Mashpee on the mainland.
Massachusett language | Geographic distribution
Later that month, a force of 250 Indians was routed near Marlborough, Massachusetts. Combined forces of colonial volunteers and their Indian allies continued to attack, kill, capture, or disperse bands of Narragansetts, Nipmucs, and Wampanoags as they tried to plant crops or return to their traditional locations. The colonists granted amnesty to those who surrendered or who were captured and showed that they had not participated in the conflict. Captives who had participated in attacks on the many settlements were hanged, enslaved, or put to indentured servitude, depending upon the colony involved.
King Philip's War | Battle of Turner's Falls
Ships carrying captured war combatants began to leave New England ports during King Philip's War (1675–78) and continued for the three years of the war. The policy concerning war enemies was that "no male captive above the age of fourteen years should reside in the colony." It is estimated that at least a thousand New England Indian warriors were sold as slaves during King Philip's War, with over half of those coming from Plymouth.
New England Colonies | Wartime enslavement of enemy combatants in New England
Metacom, however, forwent his father's alliance between the Wampanoags and the colonists after repeated violations by the colonists. The colonists insisted that the peace agreement in 1671 should include the surrender of Indian guns; then three Wampanoags were hanged in Plymouth Colony in 1675 for the murder of another Wampanoag, which increased the tensions. Indian raiding parties attacked homesteads and villages throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maine over the next six months, and the Colonial militia retaliated. The Narragansetts remained neutral, but several individual Narragansetts participated in raids of colonial strongholds and militia, so colonial leaders deemed them to be in violation of peace treaties.
King Philip's War | Introduction
On the morning of 14 December 1774, John Langdon made his way through Portsmouth with a drummer, collecting a crowd to descend on the fort. Several hundred men responded to his call, setting out for The Castle by way of the Piscataqua River. The colonists removed 100 barrels of gun powder, light cannons, and small arms. These captured supplies were later used by New Hampshire's forces against the British military, including at the Siege of Boston.
Wentworth Cheswell | Revolutionary War
After his death, his wife and nine-year-old son were captured and sold as slaves in Bermuda. Philip's head was mounted on a pike at the entrance to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where it remained for more than two decades. His body was cut into quarters and hung in trees. Alderman was given Philip's right hand as a trophy.
Metacomet | King Philip's War
The war quickly spread and soon involved the Podunk and Nipmuc tribes. During the summer of 1675, the Indians attacked at Middleborough and Dartmouth, Massachusetts (July 8), Mendon, Massachusetts (July 14), Brookfield, Massachusetts (August 2), and Lancaster, Massachusetts (August 9). In early September, they attacked Deerfield, Hadley, and Northfield, Massachusetts.
King Philip's War | Raid on Swansea
Waban, leader of the Natick Praying Indians, had long warned the Massachusetts Bay Colony that the Nipmuc in the interior were growing impatient with the loss of their lands and that other tribal leaders were likely agitating for resistance, putting the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies on high alert. Tensions reached a boiling point for Metacomet, also known as Philip, a son of Massasoit. Metacomet's brother, Wamsutta, was arrested and died in custody, likely murdered, for selling land to Roger Williams even though these lands and the Wampanoag tribe that sold the lands were not under the jurisdiction of the Plymouth Colony.
Massachusett | King Philip's War (1675–1676)
Contact with the Indians came in March 1621 through Samoset, an English-speaking Abenaki who arranged for the Pilgrims to meet with Massasoit, the sachem of the nearby Pokanoket tribe. On March 22, Plymouth Colony's governor John Carver signed a treaty with Massasoit, declaring an alliance between the Pokanokets and the Colonists and requiring the two parties to defend one another in times of need. Governor Carver died the same year and the responsibility of upholding the treaty fell to his successor William Bradford. Bradford and Standish were frequently preoccupied with the complex task of reacting to threats against both the Pilgrims and the Pokanokets from tribes such as the Massachusetts and the Narragansetts.
Myles Standish | Defense of Plymouth Colony
After exchanging pleasantries with the Winslow and the other representatives of the Plymouth Colony, the conversation between the "sachem"s was not understood by Winslow save a few words. Similar accounts are recorded by the Dutch and Swedish colonists of what is now the Mid-Atlantic States and the traditional homeland of the Lenape peoples. Like Winslow, the Dutch and Swedish settlers thought they were speaking the local language, but were actually speaking pidgin varieties thereof. Massachusett Pidgin spread with the fur trade, allowing Indians to communicate with northern and interior tribes and exchange items for beaver pelts, which were highly prized by the English settlers.
Massachusett Pidgin | Colonial attestation
From 1769 to 1785, the Connecticut settlers in Plymouth were harassed on a regular basis by the Pennamites, Native Americans, and Tories. A series of clashes, which were part of the Revolutionary War and the Pennamite-Yankee Wars, occurred between the multiple parties. During the Revolutionary War, the settlers erected a small fortification on “Garrison Hill,” in the lower portion of modern-day Plymouth Borough. The fort saw action in defending the colonists from Native American raids. Nearly fifty men from Plymouth took part in the disastrous Battle of Wyoming (in 1778). Many of the men were slain in the fight. The women and children of Plymouth Township fled down the Susquehanna River on the night of the battle.
Plymouth Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania | Conflicts
Before the outbreak of war, English settlers in Maine and New Hampshire lived peaceably with their Wabanaki neighbors. Colonists engaged in fishing, harvesting timber, and trade with Indians. By 1657 English towns and trading posts stretched along the coast eastward to the Kennebec River. These communities were scattered and lacked fortifications. The defenseless posture of English settlements reflected the amicable relationship between Wabanakis and colonists to that time. Upon hearing news of the Wampanoag attack on Swansea, colonists in York marched up the Kennebec River in June 1675 and demanded that Wabanakis turn over their guns and ammunition as a sign of goodwill.
King Philip's War | Northern Theater (Maine and Acadia)
(Present-day Maine and New Brunswick remained contested territories between New England and New France.) Phips's written ultimatum demanding Fontenac's surrender at Quebec prompted Frontenac to say that his reply would come only "from the mouths of my cannon and muskets." The New England militia had to reckon with Quebec's formidable natural defenses, its superior number of soldiers, and the coming of winter, and Phips finally sailed back to Boston with his hungry, smallpox-ridden, and demoralized force. His failure shows a growing recognition of the need to replicate European combat techniques and to move closer to England's war policy in order to achieve military success.
Colonial American military history | King William's War: 1689–1697
This war was the bloodiest, in terms of the percentage of the population that died in it, in American history. More than 10% of the total population (native and colonial) of New England perished. The economic, social, and political consequences of King Philip's War (named after the Wampanoag sachem that led them) would echo into the following centuries.
Massachusetts National Guard | Massachusetts Bay Colony
The Plymouth colonists resolved to meet with the Massachusetts Indians who had frequently threatened them. On August 18, a crew of ten settlers set off around midnight, with Squanto and two other Indians as interpreters, hoping to arrive before daybreak. But they misjudged the distance and were forced to anchor off shore and stay in the shallop over the next night. Once ashore, they found a woman coming to collect the trapped lobsters, and she told them where the villagers were. Squanto was sent to make contact, and they discovered that the sachem presided over a considerably reduced band of followers.
Squanto | Mission to the Massachuset people
When King Philip's confederacy rose against Plymouth Colony, the eastern Penobscot and the English settlers in Maine and New Hampshire became involved in war. The Penobscot people were the first among the Original inhabitants to treat for peace, and offered to enter into an alliance with the colonizing English. Articles were drawn and subscribed at Boston on 6 November 1676, and the peace was ratified by Madockawando. The English, however, created a pretext for renewing hostilities. The Penobscot were successful, and destroyed all the English settlements in that part of Maine. In 1678 a treaty was made at Casco, whereby the colonizers were permitted to return to their farms on the condition of paying rent to the Penobscot.
Madockawando | Biography
Metacomet began negotiating with the other Algonquian tribes against the Plymouth Colony soon after the death of his father and his brother.
King Philip's War | Failure of diplomacy
His one shot from the musket got the wolf. He fought with Roger's Rangers in the French & Indian War. At one point the Indians captured him, had tied him to a tree, and were going to burn him alive. A French officer rescued him in the nick of time. When the first shots of the American Revolution were fired at the Battle of Lexington and Concord, word reached Putnam on his farm. He literally "came off the plow" to ride off to war again. Without bothering to change his clothes, he mounted his horse and rode the 25 miles to the scene in 18 hours.
Danvers, Massachusetts | 18th century
It was said that he could journey by land to Philadelphia sleeping only in his own houses. In 1775 also he married Mary Lee, considered to be "a great beauty." Her father was elected to the first Continental Congress by Marblehead. For their wedding gift Patrick had constructed a new mansion on State Street (the center of the city), now the library. After the formation of the United States, the vicissitudes of fortune turned against Nathaniel. The Continental Congress had unleashed a fleet of pirates against British commerce. Unencumbered by the war, the British moved to defend themselves. Most of the privateers had been lost through attrition in the war.
Newburyport Public Library | The Tracy Mansion
The men of the settlement organized themselves into military orders in mid-February, after several tense encounters with local Indians, and Myles Standish was designated as the commanding officer. By the end of the month, five cannon had been defensively positioned on Fort Hill. John Carver was elected governor to replace Governor Martin.
Plymouth Colony | First winter
Massachusetts was a center of the movement for independence from Great Britain; colonists in Massachusetts had long uneasy relations with the British monarchy, including open rebellion under the Dominion of New England in the 1680s. Protests against British attempts to tax the colonies after the French and Indian War ended in 1763 led to the Boston Massacre in 1770, and the 1773 Boston Tea Party escalated tensions. In 1774, the Intolerable Acts targeted Massachusetts with punishments for the Boston Tea Party and further decreased local autonomy, increasing local dissent. Anti-Parliamentary activity by men such as Samuel Adams and John Hancock, followed by reprisals by the British government, were a primary reason for the unity of the Thirteen Colonies and the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775.
Massachusetts | The Revolutionary War
By the time that Plymouth had gotten their force packed and ready to march, the campaign had ended. Massachusetts Bay sent 150 militiamen, Plymouth sent 50, and Connecticut sent 90.
Minutemen | Pequot War
Plymouth faced many difficulties during its first winter, the most notable being the risk of starvation and the lack of suitable shelter. From the beginning, the assistance of Native Americans was vital. One colonist's journal reports: We marched to the place we called Cornhill, where we had found the corn before. At another place we had seen before, we dug and found some more corn, two or three baskets full, and a bag of beans. ... In all we had about ten bushels, which will be enough for seed. It is with God's help that we found this corn, for how else could we have done it, without meeting some Indians who might trouble us.
Plymouth, Massachusetts | First Winter
The Revolutionary seal would also mark the first time the Latin motto used by the state today appeared on a state seal, and meant that the colony no longer recognized the authority of the Royal Governor General Thomas Gage. The source is attributed to the letter written by a father of an English soldier and politician Algernon Sidney: "It is said that the University of Copenhagen brought their album unto you, desiring you to write something therein; and that you did "scribere in albo" these words: 'Manus haec inimica tyrannis ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem'". (Translated, this means "This hand of mine, which is hostile to tyrants, seeks by the sword quiet peace under liberty.") The last words were then written in Sidney's "Book of Mottoes", particularly favored by some in the American colonies.
Seal of Massachusetts | History
In 1675, the King Philip's War erupted between the Wampanoag Confederacy and their allies, on the one hand, and the United Colonies of New England and their Mohegan and Pequot allies on the other. The destructive conflict saw rapid Wampanoag gains and bloody losses by the United Colonies who were largely refused military assistance both by the British government and by the neighboring colony of New York. By the spring of 1676 the frontier of Massachusetts had been overrun and lay "in shambles" with eleven towns – including Dartmouth and Springfield – entirely evacuated, and much of the population sheltered in a besieged Boston.
Irish Donation of 1676 | Background
The Massachusetts Bay Colony passed numerous legislation against Indian culture and religion. New laws were passed to limit the influence of the powwows, or 'shamans', and restricted the ability of non-converted Native Americans to enter English towns on Sabbath. The Nipmuc were also informed that any unimproved lands were fair game for incorporation into the growing colony. These draconian measures and the increasing amount of land lost to the settlers led many Nipmuc to join the Wampanoag chief Metacomet in a rebellion against the English which would ravage New England from 1675–1676. The Native Americans that had already settled the Praying towns were interned on Deer Island in Boston Harbor over the winter where a great many perished from starvation and exposure to the elements.
Nipmuc | King Philip's War
His head was displayed in Plymouth for a generation. Captain Church and his soldiers captured Pocasset war chief Anawan on August 28, 1676, at Anawan Rock in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. He was an old man at the time, and a chief captain of Metacomet. His capture marked the final event in King Philip's War, as he was also beheaded.
King Philip's War | Battle of Mount Hope
Beginning in 1651 and lasting until 1747, almost thirty translations and other teaching aids were produced in the Massachusett language and distributed to the Indians of the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies. A school was established in Natick, where Indian men were trained in reading and writing and Christian theology and would later serve as clerks, ministers, deacons, administrators, interpreters and constables of the newly created 'Praying towns' established by Eliot. As the Indians became literate, they taught others to read and write, thus spreading its use. Just before the outbreak of Metacomet's Rebellion, one-third of Indians were literate in only twenty years after Eliot taught the first Indians.
Massachusett | Language
Indians attacked and destroyed more settlements throughout the winter of 1675–76 in their effort to annihilate the colonists. Attacks were made at Andover, Bridgewater, Chelmsford, Groton, Lancaster, Marlborough, Medfield, Medford, Portland, Providence, Rehoboth, Scituate, Seekonk, Simsbury, Sudbury, Suffield, Warwick, Weymouth, and Wrentham, including modern-day Norfolk and Plainville. The famous account written and published by Mary Rowlandson after the war gives a colonial captive's perspective on the conflict.
King Philip's War | Indian campaign
At the same time, a small band of Indians infiltrated and burned part of Springfield while the militia was away. The settlements within the modern-day state of Rhode Island became a literal island colony for a time as the settlements at Providence and Warwick were sacked and burned, and the residents were driven to Newport and Portsmouth on Rhode Island. The Connecticut River towns had thousands of acres of cultivated crop land known as the bread basket of New England, but they had to limit their plantings and work in large armed groups for self-protection. Towns such as Springfield, Hatfield, Hadley, and Northampton, Massachusetts, fortified themselves, reinforced their militias, and held their ground, though attacked several times.
King Philip's War | Plymouth Plantation Campaign
Unwilling to relinquish their weapons, they left in the night of August 25. A hundred English soldiers pursued them, catching up to them at the foot of Sugarloaf Hill, which for the Nonotucks was a sacred space called the Great Beaver. The English attacked, but the Nonotucks forced them to withdraw and were able to keep moving.
History of Springfield, Massachusetts | King Philip's War
https://vc.bridgew.edu/bmas/64/ Heath, Dwight B. “A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth: Mourt’s Relation”, A relation or journal of the English Plantation settled at Plymouth in New England, by certain English adventurers both merchants and others. Edited from the original printing of 1622. p. 7.
Wamsutta | References
'Abenakian syncope' was an areal feature that had spread from the Abenakian languages to Mahican, a Delawaran language, and was beginning to spread into SNEA during the early colonial period. The feature was obligatory in the Quiripi, Unquachoag, Montauk, Mohegan and Pequot dialects of the Long Island sound, frequent in Nipmuc and mostly absent in Massachusett and Narragansett. For example the 'Fox Sachem' of the Pequot was known to late-stage speakers as whereas the English name 'Uncas' likely preserves an older dialectal and pre-syncopated stage pronunciation of , cf. Massachusett () , indicating that the transition was not complete in New England when the English colonists arrived.
Massachusett language | Lack of syncope
After the departure of Massasoit and his men, Squanto remained in Plymouth to teach the Pilgrims how to survive in New England, such as using dead fish to fertilize the soil. For the first few years of colonial life, the fur trade was the dominant source of income beyond subsistence farming, buying furs from Natives and selling to Europeans. Governor Carver suddenly died shortly after the "Mayflower" returned to England. William Bradford was elected to replace him and went on to lead the colony through much of its formative years. As promised by Massasoit, numerous indigenous arrived at Plymouth throughout the middle of 1621 with pledges of peace.
Plymouth Colony | Early relations with the Native Americans
A man named Metacomet was a Wampanoag Indian leader who was known as King Philip. He was mainly responsible for initiating the war. Metacomet and his band of Wampanoag Indians fought the colonist after the land called Plymouth was taken from them. King Philip's War was brutal and devastated most of the settlements in New England. By the time the war had ended, most of the villages approximately from Marlboro to Grafton were destroyed, having been burnt to the ground. The remaining Nipmuc Indians in the area, were captured and exiled to Deer Island in Boston Harbor without proper clothing, food, or provisions.
Quinsigamond | King Philip's War (1675-1676)
The spring of 1676 marked the high point for the combined tribes when they attacked Plymouth Plantation on March 12. The town withstood the assault, but the Indians had demonstrated their ability to penetrate deep into colonial territory. They attacked three more settlements; Longmeadow (near Springfield), Marlborough, and Simsbury were attacked two weeks later. They killed Captain Pierce and a company of Massachusetts soldiers between Pawtucket and the Blackstone's settlement. Several colonial men were tortured and buried at Nine Men's Misery in Cumberland as part of the Indians' ritual torture of enemies. They also burned the settlement of Providence to the ground on March 29.
King Philip's War | Plymouth Plantation Campaign
One American soldier was killed on Moon Island. Moon Island was not connected to Squantum at this time and a waterway was open from behind Squantum (Squaw Rock) across the mouth of the Neponset River to a large rock called Savin Hill. On Sunday, March 17, 1776, British ships evacuated Boston under pressure from George Washington's forces on the heights on Dorchester (now South Boston). Abigail Adams, from her vantage point in a part of Braintree that is now Quincy, described the sight of the myriad masts of the British fleet as like a forest in the harbor. On board the British ships were 11,000 soldiers and sailors and 1019 self-exiled citizens of Boston, including 102 civil officers, 18 clergymen and 105 loyalists from the country towns.
Long Island (Massachusetts) | American Revolutionary War
To decide the issue, according to Bradford's account, "they got all the Powachs of the country, for three days together in a horrid and devilish manner, to curse and execrate them with their conjurations, which assembly and service they held in a dark and dismal swamp." Philbrick sees this as a convocation of shamans brought together to drive the colonists from the shores by supernatural means. Squanto had lived in England, and he told Massassoit "what wonders he had seen" there. He urged Massasoit to become friends with the Plymouth colonists, because his enemies would then be "Constrained to bowe to him".
Squanto | Plymouth Colony
John River (Medoctec). The war began on two fronts when New England expanded through Maine and when New England established a settlement at Canso, Nova Scotia. Maine fell to the New Englanders with the defeat of Father Sébastien Rale at Norridgewock and the subsequent retreat of the Indians from the Kennebec and Penobscot rivers to St. Francis and Becancour, Quebec.
Colonial American military history | Father Rale's War
The colonial authorities, in turn, demanded the Indians responsible for killing Stone and Norton, a promise not to interfere with colonial settlement in Connecticut, and 400 fathoms of wampum and the pelts of 40 beavers and 30 otters. In 1636, John Gallup came across the boat of trader John Oldham, a noted troublemaker. Oldham had flirted with impropriety since the day that he landed on American soil. Not long after arriving in Plymouth in 1623, he "grew very perverse and showed a spirit of great malignancy," according to Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford. He was later accused of religious subversion and responded with impertinence, hurling invective at his accusers and even drawing a knife on Captain Myles Standish.
Block Island | Pequot War
After the death of the pro-English Massasoit in 1661, his son Metacom, known to the English as "King Philip" initiated contacts with sachems of various tribes of New England to unite against the interests of the Plymouth Colony. The actual outbreak of war occurred on June 20, 1675, when a band of Pokanoket (a tribe of the Wampanoags) launched an attack on Swansea, Massachusetts, most likely without Metacom's approval, in retaliation for an earlier killing of a Pokanoket by an English farmer. In response, the colonists attacked and burned a Pokanoket village at Mount Hope. Simultaneously the colonists sent Ephraim Curtis to the west of Boston into Nipmuc territory to negotiate with the tribe and obtain assurances of loyalty to the English from them.
Wheeler's Surprise | Background
The Pilgrim settlers realized that they did not have a patent to settle in the region, so they signed the Mayflower Compact prior to disembarking. They explored various parts of Cape Cod and eventually sought a suitable location for a permanent settlement to the westward in Cape Cod Bay. They discovered the sheltered waters of Plymouth Harbor on December 17, and the protected bay led to a site for the new settlement after three days of surveying. The settlers officially disembarked on December 21, 1620. It is traditionally said that the Pilgrims first set foot in America at the site of Plymouth Rock, though no historical evidence can prove this claim.
Plymouth, Massachusetts | Colonial era
The social and legal systems of the colony became closely tied to their religious beliefs, as well as to English custom. Many of the people and events surrounding Plymouth Colony have become part of American folklore, including the American tradition of Thanksgiving and the monument of Plymouth Rock.
Plymouth Colony | Introduction
Siding with the colonists against the Crown would have invited Nantucket's inclusion in the punitive acts of Parliament and destroyed the island's fisheries.
Nantucket during the American Revolutionary War era | Acts of Parliament
The truce that had existed between the English settlers of the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies and the local Native peoples was tested. The submission of the local chiefs to the respective colonial governments and adoption of Christianity allowed the Indians to seek redress in the English court system and removed one of the prejudices against them. The Praying Indians of Natick were brought to court several times by the English settlers of Dedham that claimed some of the land, but with Eliot's assistance, most of these attempts failed. Most of the time, however, the Indians failed, as some of the Indian interpreters and chiefs ceded lands to curry favor from the English to maintain special privileges, such as the Nipmuc John Wampas, who betrayed the Nipmuc and Massachusett people by selling land to the settlers to which he had no claim, but these sales were upheld in later court challenges.
Massachusett | King Philip's War (1675–1676)
Plymouth played a very important role in American colonial history. It was the final landing site of the first voyage of the "Mayflower" and the location of the original settlement of Plymouth Colony. Plymouth was established in December 1620 by English separatist Puritans who had broken away from the Church of England, believing that the Church had not completed the work of the Protestant Reformation. Today, these settlers are much better known as the "Pilgrims", a term coined by William Bradford. The Mayflower first anchored in the harbor of Provincetown, Massachusetts on November 11, 1620. The ship was headed for the mouth of the Hudson River near Manhattan, which was part of the Colony of Virginia at the time, but it did not go beyond Cape Cod.
Plymouth, Massachusetts | Colonial era