remonstrate with the governor. Berkeley accused Bacon of treason and had him arrested when he
arrived in Jamestown with 500 men on June 6. Then having-as he thought-asserted his authority,
he let Bacon go, and the result was an angry confrontation in which Bacon demanded a
commission of inquiry into the government's failure to police the Indians, and authorization to
raise an army. The governor then fled, to the eastern shore, and Bacon rampaged for three
months in the capital, raising volunteers and plundering the estates of Tidewater grandees. He
denounced Berkeley and his clique' assponges' who sucked up the Publik Treasure.' But on October 26, 1676 he abruptly succumbed to what was calleda severe attack' of the bloody flux.' Without his leadership, the rebellion collapsed. When a party of English redcoats, summoned by the governor three months before, finally arrived in November from England, only eighty slaves and twentyservants' still defied the authorities, turning a serious white man's
revolt into a servile one, which was soon suppressed.
Bacon's Rebellion showed how fragile authority in America was in these early times. In the
same year there was another demonstration of its fragility in New England. The Puritans had not
been particularly assiduous in converting Indians to Christianity. But one of them, John Eliot
(1604-90), had done his best from 1646 onwards, preaching widely to the tribes and translating
the Bible into Algonquin. His converts were known as praying Indians,' and since they often became detribalized he settled them in what were known aspraying towns.' One of these
converts, Sassamon, actually attended Harvard, though he seems to have lapsed afterwards and
became a follower of `King Philip,' also known as Metacom, who was a chief and sacham, or
holy man. Sassamon was murdered early in 1676, and since he had once again become a
Christian before this occurred, three men of the Wampanoag tribe, who were heathen, were held
to be guilty and executed by the Plymouth authorities. That was the ostensible cause of King
Philip's War, a conflict between Christianity and Indian religious culture, but it is likely that
increasing pressure on Indian land by the rapidly expanding Massachusetts colony was the real
reason.
Throughout the summer and autumn of 1679, Philip and his men destroyed white farms and
townships over a large area, and at one point came within 20 miles of Boston itself. If Philip had
been able to organize a grand coalition of the Indians, it is quite possible he could have
extinguished the entire colony. However, the inability to unite against their white enemies was
always the fatal weakness of the Indians. The Massachusetts governor, another Winthrop, raised
the militia, which was dispatched in parties of armored dragoons, from 10 to 150 and more, to
meet the danger whenever large parties of Indians were reported to be gathering. This warfare
continued throughout the winter of 1676-7 and the spring, until in August Philip himself was
cornered and killed. Thereafter it was a question of isolating small groups of Indians, or hunting
them down in the backwoods, though some fighting went on in New Hampshire and Maine until
- The casualties on both sides were very heavy. Every white family in New England was
involved in one way or another. It is probably true to say that no war in American history
produced so many killed and wounded in proportion to the total population. It goes without
saying that no assistance was forthcoming from England. Without the local militia which proved
itself in the end a formidable fighting machine, far superior to its English counterparts, the
Indians could not have been held at bay. The war was fought with great bitterness. When Philip
was finally killed, his head was hacked off and sent for public display Boston, his hands to
Plymouth. It left deep scars among the survivor and it had a profound effect on the Puritan
ministry, who felt that the near-disaster indicated divine displeasure with New England. It had
been, as they put it, `So Dreadful a Judgment.'