War and Slavery

Some residents of Wamesit fled north, to modern New Hampshire, early in the war. The colonial government forcefully removed the remaining residents of Wamesit to Cambridge, leaving behind those too old or ill to make the journey, where they stayed briefly and then returned to Wamesit. While the Pennacook people of Wamesit were in Cambridge, a militia of English colonists from Andover burned the village, with those left behind still inside.

During negotiations at the end of the war, Major Richard Waldron, an English solider, betrayed the 400 native people who remained in nearby Cocheco (now Dover, NH) by engaging them in a mock battle, after which he took many of them prisoner. Eight of the captured native people were executed and the others were sold into slavery in Barbados.

Primary Document

"Petition of John Eliot Against the Sale of Indians.

To the Hon. Gov. and Council, sitting at Boston, this 13^th of the 6^th, 1675.

THE HUMBLE PETITION OF JOHN ELIOT SHEWETH:

That the terror of selling away such Indians unto the Islands [West Indies] for perpetual slaves, who shall yield themselves to your mercy, is like to be an effectual prolongation of the war [Metacom’s War], and such an exasperation of them, as may produce we know not what evil consequence upon all the land.

… When we came we declared to the world (and it is recorded) yea, we are engaged by our Letters Patent from the King’s Majesty, - that the endeavor of the Indians’ conversion, not their extirpation, was one great end of our enterprise in coming to these ends of the earth. The Lord hath so succeeded that work as that, by his grace, they have the Holy Scriptures, and sundry of themselves able to teach their countrymen the good knowledge of God. And however some of them have refuse to receive the gospel, and now are incensed in their spirits unto a war against the English, yet I doubt not that the meaning of Christ is to open a door for the free passage of the gospel among them.

My humble request is, that you would follow Christ’s design in this matter, to promote the free passage of religion among them, and not destroy them…."

Secondary Source

“In 1675, the Indians (Oct. 27 and Nov. 4) had been provoked by English who had repeatedly fired upon them, at Chelmsford and elsewhere, upon suspicion that the Wamesits had been guilty of burning a barn, by and for which some of the natives had been killed… As Philip’s war progressed, the Wamesits at one time went away, deserting the station, leaving only some few old men and women here, too old to get away. Sad to relate, soon after the young Indians left, their wigwams at night were set fire to, and all those that remained perished. Their ashes, no doubt, are somewhere in this ground on which we tread.”