Beyond The Bridgewater Triangle: history

The following is excerpted from "The History of Raynham," By Patrice White

MASSASOIT WAS KING PHILIP'S DAD;
WHEN HE DIED, THE WHITE MEN WERE SAD

Massasoit, sachem of the Wampanoags, had established peaceful relations with the white men, and when he died, Massasoit' s sons Alexander (Indian name, Wamsutta) and Philip (Indian name Metacom or Pometacom) pledged to keep the peace. This was not easy, however, as the English and the Indians struggled for survival and land. At times Philip and his men felt humiliated by the English.

The primary causes of the bloody conflict known asKing Philip's War go far back of the outbreak of hostilities in 1675. It was undoubtedly inevitable, sooner or later. When Philip became sachem of the Wampanoags in 1662, it became evident that he was not likely to maintain the friendly relations with the English - so firmly established by his father. He was jealous of the progress of the settlers in occupation of the lands they had purchased, and he early began plotting with the Narragansetts and other Indians for their
extermination.

It took some time before the Indians realized that they were losing their land. The Indians did notpossess the land in the same sense that the white men owned it. The land, the woods, the lakes, the streams, belonged to the Indians as they belonged to the birds and the beasts. They did not realize what they were selling.

Later, however, the Indians' children realized what possession meant to the white man, and they became resentful. They obtained the same kind of weapons as the white man used, and when finally the Indians' anger rose to fighting pitch, there was a bitter struggle as the Indians were driven from their home. An early book evidencing sympathy for the Indian included this passage. "The savage, the child of a wild environment, knew none of the restraints common to the stranger who broke over the horizon of his solitude, his freedom of living, and his independence of movement, with the advent of that first ship from Plymouth." The English, uninvited, were trying to take over the land of the New England Indians. Anger and resentment had been rising, and when three of Philip' s warriorsmurdered an informer, John Sassamon, and then were themselves executed for the murder, Philip's young braves started war.

KING PHILIP COULD NO LONGER HOLD HIS BRAVES;
THEY PUT MANY WHITE MEN IN THEIR GRAVES.

Although war had been contemplated, no coordinated plan had been worked out. In proportion to population, the King Philip War was one of the most costly, in lives, ever fought in North America. Neither side had been ready for war. Philip became a symbol of the struggle, but he was never really in command and might not have been the great leader he was once assumed to be. However, he was influential enough to
protect the area that is now Raynham. Philip had spent many summers at his summer residence on Fowling Pond, which was near the Leonards' iron forge. (Fowling Pond has now grown up to be woods. It's on King Philip Street near the end of Mill Street.)

He had become friendly with the Leonards, and they had supplied Philip with beef, repaired his muskets, and furnished him with tools. He remembered these acts of friendship and gave orders to the warriors that they were not to injure any member of the Leonard family. Although King Philip War spread terror and desolation through many towns nearby, the inhabitants of Raynham were saved from savage invasion.

Although the Leonards shared the feelings of friendship with Philip, the Leonard house just east of the forge was surrounded by palisades for protection and provisioned, just in case.

The white men lived in fear of Indian attack. "By day, or by night, no white man was safe. As the white man ploughed or reaped, the fences along his fields were the crouching places of his inveterate enemy. The thickets by the roadside were likely at any moment to breathe forth a wisp of musket smoke when the fatal bullet would speed to his heart."

Shortly before Philip' s death, his wife and nine-year old son were taken prisoners by the English, an event that crushed the heart and life of the sachem. On Saturday, August 12th, early in the morning, Philip was shot by a faithless Indian, and Captain Church cut off his head, and it was carried on a pole to Plymouth.

KING PHILIP'S HEAD WAS CUT OFF ONE DAY;
IT WAS THEN IN PLYMOUTH AND IN RAYNHAM - ON DISPLAY

Present Day Wampanoags

There are still some Wampanoag Indians in this area. At one of their New Year' s celebrations in Middleboro, they emphasized the importance of cooperation and communication among people of all races.

Lightning Foot, a tribal leader, said, "There is only one race, the human race, and we are all members."

The Wampanoag New Year is celebrated around May 1 because the nature-loving Wampanoags believed that life returned to the earth at that time. The group expressed the desire that a study of the American Indian be a part of every school curriculum, andthey felt that the American Indian is entitled to a national holiday.

"They lodged the first night on Nemasket, where so many Indians had died a few years before that the living could not bury the dead, but their sculls and bones lied in many places where the dead had been."
From "History of the Town of Middleboro," by Thomas Weston

The Wampanoag lived peacefully in a territory now known as the town of Middleboro (or Middleborough) for thousands of years. When the pilgrims arrived the New World, they were mystified to find entire villages abandoned by the plagues that had decimated local tribes in the years between 1617 and 1620. In those years of pestilence, some tribes lost 90% of their people. Middleboro was no exception. When colonists first discovered the area, the land of Middleboro was covered in skulls and bones, for there were so many that were ravaged by sickness "that the living could not bury the dead."

Middleboro, or Middleborough--the town still can't decide on the correct spelling--was originally called Middlebury, named for it's midpoint location between Boston and New Bedford. The Natives who walked this territory thousands of years before it was discovered by the colonists in 1621 called it "Nemasket."

In Eastern Algonquin, Nemasket translates to English as meaning "place of many fish," named for the river so abundant with Alewife, legend has it that the fish would leap of the river, right into the hands of Natives. Each spring the alewife (herring) make their journey from Narraganset Bay, up the Taunton River and finally to the "magical" waters of the Nemasket.

The waters of Nemasket were rumored to have healing properties. Doctors would prescribe the water to heal a long list of ailments and physicians would continue doing so all the way up to the beginning of the turn of the century. At one point, even scientists studied the water's composition to see what made it so special.

It was here in Nemasket that Weetamoo (meaning 'sweetheart'), the Sachem Princess lived seasonally at their royal camp with her father, Chief Corbitant, and her younger sister, Wootonekanuske. As was customary for the sons and daughters of powerful sachems, Weetamoo would marry into another royal family as would Wootonekanuske. The sisters would both marry brothers from the Pokonet tribe, Weetamoo to Massasoit's son Alexander and her sister to King Philip, the sons of the famous Chief Massasoit. The Sachem Squaw Princess Weetamoo was the most powerful woman of all the tribes, poised to inherit the title of Sachem upon Corbitant's passing. Weetamoo would never get the chance to lead her people, dying within weeks of her father in King Philip's War. Both father and daughter would share the same horrific fate: Their heads would be cut off and placed proudly on spikes at the hands of the English. Weetamoo's head paraded through the streets of Taunton and Corbitant's head displayed at Plymouth Fort near King Philip's and the rest of the Sachems captured.

Weetamoo died in August of 1676, when she (according to the English version) drowned in the Taunton River "slipped and fell attempting escape across a fallen tree." When her body "washed ashore," the Plymouth Colony Militia mutilated her and and finally cut off her head. (It was reported that she was naked when her body was found. It was also reported that her body was "taunted." Whether she was captured, raped and killed in the river or if she really drowned...we will never know. All we have is the written history of the colonists to tell us, and while those references are good information for locations and dates, they are often inaccurate descriptions of what really occurred.)

Just before the death of Weetamoo, many of her Pocasset people were taken prisoner out of the Hockomock Swamp where they were taking temporary refuge from the Colonists. They were so frightened upon capture, that they surrendered without a fight. The prisoners were marched to Taunton where a gully served as their prisoner camp. They were then forced to bare witness to the horror of the parading of Weetamoo's head upon a spike back and forth in front of there disbelieving eyes.

Some days later, "someone of Taunton finding an Indian squaw in Metapoiset, newly dead, cut off her head, and it happened to be Weetamoo, squaw sachem, her head, which, placed on a pole and paraded through Taunton, was greeted by the lamentations of the captive Indians who knew her, crying out that it was their queen's head.

Reverend Increase Mather, of Salem Witch Trials fame, was present at the beheading event. Of the grieving and horrified Pocasset prisoners as they were taunted with their Queen's head, Mather callously would recount, "They made a most horrid and 'diabolical' lamentation, crying out that it was their queen's head."

Haunted Woods?

One day, a local woman was walking her dog in an area of Middleboro where the unbeknown to her, the Nemaskets once lived. She was shocked when the figures of what looks like an Indian family appeared in the photo. She was not even aware that the woods where she took the photo was sacred land. This was in the same area where Weetamoo lived (near Oliver Mills park.)