when the English could be expelled from the country. He threw
his influence with the older warriors, and for a while succeeded in
holding the younger men in check. He felt that the Indians could never
be successful in a war with the English when the tribe owned only thirty
guns and had no provisions laid aside to carry them through the war.

XII. KING PHILIP'S WAR

Philip did his best to keep at peace with the English. For a while he
succeeded. But his young warriors began to steal hogs and cattle
belonging to the settlers, and on one pleasant Sunday in June, 1675,
when the people were at church, eight young Indians burned a few houses
in the village of Swansea, the nearest town to the Wampanoag
headquarters at Mount Hope. The whites immediately raised a few troops,
marched after the Indians, and had a little skirmish with them.

Philip was not with his warriors at the time. The attack on the whites
had been made against his express orders. When he heard that the Indians
and settlers had really had a battle, he wept from sorrow, something
which an Indian rarely does.

Everything seemed to go wrong. He tried to make peace with the whites,
but they would not listen to him. The young warriors no longer paid any
attention to what he said. They went on destroying property and killing
cattle.

After leaving Swansea, they went to Taunton and Middleboro, where they
burned several houses and killed a few persons. But troops soon arrived
from Boston and Plymouth, and in a few days the Indians were driven back
to their homes at Mount Hope.

The English hurried on after them, and the war that followed is known in
history as King Philip's War.

Philip and the Indians swam across Narragansett Bay and went to some of
their friends in the Connecticut Valley. There they obtained the help of
the Nipmucks, who had never been very friendly towards the English.

We do not know where Philip was during the war. He knew that he would be
held responsible for it, although he had done everything in his power to
prevent it. For a year the war was carried on, one hundred miles away
from his home, and never once was he known to have been connected with
any fighting, nor was he even seen by the English during that time. Some
of them thought that he was directing the war, but really it was carried
on by other tribes of Indians that had not been very friendly towards
the whites. The Wampanoags seem to have had very little connection wit