ting-house with his
armed warriors.

There he denied that war was planned against the English. He was
persuaded to sign a paper which admitted his guilt and bound him to
deliver up all his guns.

He decided not to do this latter thing. To give up his guns would
leave him bare to all enemies.

He was made to sign other papers, until little by little the Pokanokets
seemed to have surrendered their rights, except their guns. The white
people, and not Philip, ruled them.

Then, in the first half of 1675 the affair of John Sassamon occurred.

John Sassamon was an educated Indian who had returned to the
Wampanoags, after preaching. He spoke English, and was used by King
Philip at Mount Hope as secretary. He thought that he had found out
war plans, and he carried the secrets to Plymouth.

The Indian law declared that he should die. In March his body was
discovered under the ice of a pond of Plymouth Colony. His neck had
been broken.

To the Pokanoket idea, this had been legal execution ordered by the
sachem. The English called it a murder. They arrested three of King
Philip's men. These were tried in court before a jury of twelve
colonists and five Indians. They were found guilty. Two were hanged,
the third was shot.

That was the end of peace. Miantonomah of the Narragansetts had been
handed over by the colonists to the law of the Mohegans, but when the
Pokanokets tried a similar law against a traitor, they had been
punished. King Philip could no longer hold back his young men.

He had been working hard, in secret, to enlist all the New England
tribes in a league greater than the league of Opechancanough, and by
one stroke clean New England of the white colonists. The time set was
the next year, 1676. The Narragansetts had promised then to have ready
four thousand warriors.

But when the word from the English court was carried to Pokanoket, that
the three prisoners were to be killed, and that Philip himself was
likely to be tried, the warriors of the Wampanoags broke their promise
to wait.

They danced defiantly. They openly sharpened their knives and hatchets
upon the stone window-sills of settlers' houses, and made sport of the
English.

A sudden cold fear spread through New England. A blood-red cloud
seemed to be hovering over. Signs were seen in the sky--a great Indian
bow, a great Indian scalp, racing horsemen; a battle was heard, with
boom of cannon and rattle of muskets and whistling