Great Swamp Massacre: King Philip's War Turns Brutal

Hundreds of Narragansett people, mostly women, children, and elderly, were sheltering inside the Great Swamp Fort when colonial forces arrived on December 19, 1675. Not warriors. Civilians. The fort was a massive palisaded encampment built on high ground in a frozen swamp in southern Rhode Island, and the Narragansetts had retreated there during King Philip's War, hoping their declared neutrality would protect them. It did not. Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and Connecticut had assembled a combined force of over a thousand soldiers under Josiah Winslow, the largest colonial army yet raised in New England. The English commanders claimed the Narragansetts were harboring Wampanoag fugitives and ordered an assault despite the Narragansetts not having formally entered the war. The colonial forces breached the fort's palisade and set fire to the wigwams inside. Between three hundred and six hundred Narragansetts died that December afternoon. English casualties were also heavy, with over two hundred killed and wounded, including several officers. The survivors fled into the winter swamp, where many more died of exposure and starvation in the following weeks. But the massacre did not break the Narragansett nation. It united it. Canonchet, the Narragansett sachem, committed his warriors to Metacom's cause, and Narragansett fighters joined the devastating spring raids of 1676 that destroyed twelve English towns. The Great Swamp Massacre did not end King Philip's War. It extended it by giving the Narragansetts a reason to fight that they had previously lacked. The site is now a national historic landmark, marked by a monument erected in 1906.