COLUMBIA COLLEGE.-School of Library Economy Circulars of Information, 1886-88. CONNECTICUT STATE LIBRARY.-Six books and one pamphlet relating to the State of Connecticut. ECLECTIC MEDICAL COLLEGE OF NEW YORK.-The Catalogue for 1887. ENOCH PRATT FREE LIBRARY OF BALTIMORE.-The Finding List, June, 1887. GOOD HEALTH PUBLISHING COMPANY.-Their Magazine, as issued. HARVARD UNIVERSITY.-"A Record of the Commemoration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of Harvard." HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA.-Their "Magazine of History and Biography," as issued. IOWA HISTORICAL SOCIETY.-Their "Record," as issued. JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.-Their publications, as issued. LANCASTER TOWN LIBRARY.-The Twenty-fourth Annual Report. LIBRARY COMPANY OF PHILADELPHIA.-Their "Bulletin" for July-September, 1887. LOWELL CITY LIBRARY.-Report for the Year 1886. MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY.-" Archives of Maryland. Judicial and Testamentary Business of the Probate Court, 1637-1650"; McSherrys' "National Medals of the United States"; and one biographical pamphlet. MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL.-The Seventy-third Annual Report. MASSACHUSETTS GRAND LODGE OF FREE AND ACCEPTED MASONS.-Their Proceedings, as issued. MUSEO NACIONAL DE MÉXICO.-The "Anales," Tomo III., Entrega 11a. NEW JERSEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY.-Their Proceedings, as issued. NEW YORK EVENING POST PRINTING COMPANY.-"The Nation," as issued. NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY.-Rev. Dr. Ellis's paper on "The Opening, the Use, and the Future of our Domain on this Continent." NEW YORK MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION.-Their Sixty-sixth Annual Report. NEW YORK STATE LIBRARY.-Ten volumes of New York State documents. NORTH BROOKFIELD TOWN HISTORY COMMITTEE.-Temple's History of North Brookfield, Mass. OLD RESIDENTS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, LOWELL.-Their Contributions, Vol. III., No. 4. ONEIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY.-Their Constitution and By-Laws, 1887. PEABODY INSTITUTE OF THE CITY OF BALTIMORE.-The Twentieth Annual Report. PEABODY REPORTER COMPANY.-"The Reporter," as issued. PHILLIPS ACADEMY, Andover, Mass.-The Catalogue of 1887. PROVIDENCE PUBLIC LIBRARY.-The Second Supplement to the Finding List. RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY.-Their publications, as issued. ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA.-Their Proceedings and Transactions for 1886. SAWYER FREE LIBRARY.-"History of West Roxbury Park.” ST. PAUL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.-Their Report for the Year 1886. SEVENTH DAY ADVENT MISSIONARY SOCIETY.-Their "Signs of the Times," as issued. SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.-The Annual Report, 1885, Part I.; Collections, Vol. 28-30; Bulletin, No. 20; and Pilling's Bibliography of the Eskimo Language. SOCIÉTÉ DES ÉTUDES HISTORIQUES.-Their Revue, as issued. SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF LONDON.-Their Publications, as issued. UNITED STATES BUREAU OF EDUCATION.-Their Circulars of Information," as issued; and the Annual Report for 1884-85. UNITED STATES BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY.-The Contributions, and Bulletins, as issued. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR.-Six books; and fourteen pamphlets. UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.-The Sixth Annual Report. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.-Their Register for 1886-87. VEREIN FÜR ERDKUNDE ZU LEIPZIG.-Their Publications, as issued. VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY.-Their Historical Collections, Volume VI., STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN.-A Catalogue of their books on the War of the Rebellion and Slavery; Biographical Sketches of Lyman C. Draper and Mortimer Melville Jackson; and one book. WORCESTER COUNTY MECHANICS ASSOCIATION.-Eighteen files of newspapers. WORCESTER SOCIETY OF ANTIQUITY.-"The Abolitionists in a Review of Eli Thayer's Paper on the New England Emigrant Aid Company," by Oliver Johnson. YALE UNIVERSITY.-The Obituary Record of Graduates, 1886-87. KING PHILIP'S WAR; WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE ATTACK ON BROOKFIELD IN AUGUST, 1675. BY GRINDALL REYNOLDS. THIS paper does not propose to give an account of King Philip's War, as a whole. To do that with any thoroughness would require a volume. It would rather confine itself to a statement of the reasons why the war happened to take place, and to a somewhat full sketch of a single event of that war. The subject has for me what I may call a traditional attraction. My ancestor, Captain Nathaniel Reynolds, was one of the original settlers, who after the war took possession of Mount Hope, the home of the Wampanoags, and named it Bristol. My great-grandfather, Benjamin Reynolds, was the first boy christened in the new town; while my grandfather, John Reynolds, and my father, Grindall Reynolds, first saw the light and were reared to manhood amid the associations of the ancient hamlet. No historian, as it seems to me, has pointed out with sufficient clearness the causes which made this war, not only probable, but inevitable. A little sketch of the First Church, Bristol, R. I., appeared in 1872. In that sketch you find this statement. It refers to the grant of the township in 1681.1 "The whole of Plymouth County was then settled, except this territory, which was the only spot left uncovered in the western march of English population." This is literally true. When the Mayflower dropped anchor off Plymouth the Wampanoags held the whole region as 1 Historical Sketch of the First Church, Bristol, R. I., by J. P. Lane, p. 8. their hunting ground. Of this great tract all they retained in 1675 was a little strip, called then Mount Hope, scarcely six miles long and two miles wide. The southern line of English possession had been drawn right across Bristol Neck, enclosing, and almost imprisoning, the tribe in a little peninsula, washed on all sides, except the north, by the waters of Narragansett and Mt. Hope bays. As if to emphasize this fact, their neighbors, the people of Swanzey, "set up a very substantial fence quite across the great neck." That some freedom to fish and hunt in the old territory was granted is probable. But in the nature of the case each year narrowed its scope. Governor Winslow saysBefore these troubles broke out the English did not possess a single foot of land in the Colony, but was fairly obtained from the Indians."2 No doubt this may have been true. No less true was it that the owners of the soil hardly comprehended the meaning of transactions by which they sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. Even what remained was coveted. To protect them in it, in 1668 it was necessary to order,3 that noe person shall . . . on any pretence whatsoever buy or receive any of those lands that appertaine unto Mount Hope." Yet one year later the same court granted one John Gorham a hundred acres within the bounds of Bristol, provided it could be purchased of the Indians. Another change had come just as hard to bear. To the men who landed at Plymouth Rock the Wampanoags seemed to be, and no doubt were, a dirty, half-naked and half-starved lot of barbarians.5 But these barbarians were independent, and exercised a controlling influence over the tribes of central Massachusetts. "Massasoit," says Drake, "was for an Indian a great King." As an equal he made a 1 Hubbard's Indian Wars. 2 Plymouth Records, x., 363. 3 Plymouth Laws, 221. 4 See Hist. of 1st Church, Bristol. 5 See Palfrey, i., 183. 2 treaty with the whites; and was assured that1"King James would esteem him his friend and ally." Fifty years pass. The son of Massasoit, according to the Puritan annalist had divested himself of all independence. He had meekly acknowledged himself and his people to be subjects of the King of England and New Plymouth and under their laws. Nor was this subjection a dead letter. The chiefs were summoned to appear and answer accusations often illfounded. Restrictive laws were applied to trade and even to personal habits. Sachems were arrested, tried and executed for acts committed by order of their chief. Of King Philip the Plymouth Commissioners write that he was in arms, from a guilty feare that we should send for him and bring him to tryall with the other murderers." All this may have been the necessary result of the contact of the strong with the weak. It may indeed, as Palfrey argues, have benefited the Indian himself. But it subjected him to restraints which to a savage were well nigh intolerable. 3 Add, now, that the colonists, having obtained the land. and tethered the owners, had no faith in him; that they were haunted with the feeling that he was "plotting mischiefe"; that repeatedly Philip and his brother were summoned as suspected criminals and forced to submit to humiliating conditions; that the brother actually died of a fever, occasioned in part by the hardship endured on one of these arrests, and in part also by the rage and shame engendered by this very humiliation. This is the way matters stood in 1675 according to the conquerors' own statement. Read Philip's pathetic story recorded in Arnold's history and you will know how it looked to the conquered. Said he to John Borden of Rhode Island :—1 "The English who came to this country were but a handful of people, forlorn, poor and distressed. My father 1 Drake's Indian Wars. 2 See Hubbard's Indian Wars. |