Lancaster Raid

During the winter months spanning 1675 and 1676, Wampanoag forces launched what would become the opening strike in a sequence of five intended assaults on colonial settlements, an effort that unfolded within the broader context of King Philip's War. At the head of these warriors stood Metacom, a Wampanoag sachem whom English settlers referred to as King Philip, and it was under his direction that the campaign took shape. Joining forces with allies from the Nipmuc and Narragansett peoples, his fighters struck Lancaster and prevailed there, seizing supplies and taking captives that would sustain their broader push through the season's fighting.

Mounting tension

For years before the raid struck Lancaster, relations between the town's English settlers and nearby Native Americans, especially those at Nashaway, had been steadily fraying. Several forces fed this discord: the fur trade had withered from overhunting, European diseases had cut native populations sharply while unraveling their societies, and English livestock kept encroaching on Indian lands, sparking constant competition over resources. The Wampanoag sachem Metacom captured the mood in 1675, pointing to English cheating, discrimination, and the relentless pressure to sell land, bow to Plymouth colony's rule, embrace Christianity, and take up alcohol.

In an effort to ease these strains and secure native loyalty, Daniel Gookin, who oversaw the Christian Indians, journeyed among Nipmuc settlements hoping to plant praying towns and win converts. Yet Nashaway's Nipmuc broke from the pattern seen elsewhere. Their deep suspicion of the English and their missionaries kept them from ever accepting praying town status.

Attack on Lancaster, 1675

By August of 1675, mounting strain between the two sides finally broke into open violence when Monoco, sachem of the Nashaway Nipmuc, led his warriors against the settlers of Lancaster. The raid claimed the lives of seven residents. In response, the town erected a handful of garrison houses, sturdy buildings meant to shelter large groups of colonists whenever fighting threatened, and stationed fourteen soldiers there for protection. From that point forward, the conflict pushed steadily westward, as Indians of various nations carried out repeated assaults against a range of English settlements.