The attack on Medfield in February 1676 — only 18 miles from Boston — caused panic throughout Massachusetts Bay. Despite having a garrison of about 100 soldiers specifically assigned to protect the town, Native forces burned about half the houses and killed 18 settlers. The attack demonstrated that no frontier town was safe. A note left on the bridge, likely by Sagamore Sam, taunted English readers: "Know by this paper that the Indians that thou hast provoked to wrath and anger, will war this twenty-one years."
European colonization of North America accelerated after 1600, with England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands establishing competing settlements along the Atlantic coast, the St. Lawrence River, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi Valley. The first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia (1607) struggled with starvation and conflict; the Plymouth colony (1620) and the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630) followed. By the mid-1700s, thirteen English colonies stretched along the Atlantic seaboard, governed through a mix of royal charters, proprietary grants, and elected assemblies. The colonial economy depended on tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, rice and indigo in the Carolinas, and maritime trade in New England — all increasingly reliant on enslaved African labor after 1619. Conflict with Indigenous peoples over land was continuous, punctuated by major wars including King Philip's War (1675–1676) in New England and the Yamasee War (1715–1717) in the South. The French and Indian War (1754–1763), part of the global Seven Years' War, ended French power in North America and left Britain deeply in debt — triggering the taxation disputes that would lead to revolution.
18 English killed; half the town burned
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