Siege of Springfield

In 1675, Native Americans laid siege to Springfield, a colonial settlement in New England, as part of King Philip's War. This made Springfield the second New England settlement, after Providence Plantations, to be reduced to ashes during the conflict. Even today, King Philip's War holds the distinction of being the deadliest war in American history when measured by population size.

Background

In 1636, settlers hailing from the Massachusetts Bay Colony founded a community along the Connecticut River, and from the start they navigated an intricate set of dealings with the Indian tribes nearby. Commerce in furs sat at the core of these interactions, a profitable enterprise that shaped countless other choices the settlers made. Wampum, cloth, and metal goods changed hands for pelts in this exchange. At times the tribes pledged land as security, banking on future beaver harvests to cover the cost of colonial goods. Yet the demand generated by trading with the settlers drove hunters to strip the region of beaver at an unsustainable pace. Pelt totals plunged from a peak of 3,723 in 1654 to just 191 ten years afterward, and this collapse left tribes with no choice but to surrender the lands they had pledged as collateral.

In Springfield, a colonist named Samuel Marshfield took land from the Agawam inhabitants at such a pace that they were left with scarcely any ground to farm. The situation grew severe enough that the Massachusetts General Court intervened, compelling Marshfield to set aside fifteen acres for them. Facing these pressures, certain tribes began erecting palisaded strongholds and gathering within them. The Agawam built theirs on Long Hill just outside Springfield, though popular belief mistakenly places it within a present-day park bearing the name King Philip's Stockade.

By 1675, tensions boiled over when Metacomet, a Wampanoag sachem from eastern Massachusetts whom the settlers called King Philip, rallied his people and allied groups to take up arms against the New England Colonies. His brother Wamsutta had recently died, and this loss set the stage for the uprising, which quickly engulfed the wider region of New England.

Aftermath and legacy

By the time John Pynchon and his men reached the scene, Springfield had already burned to the ground, and this delay may well explain why Samuel Appleton soon took over as chief commander in his place. Among those seized during the attack on the settlement was an indigenous woman, who revealed to the colonists where Metacomet planned to strike next and where he intended to spend the winter. For sharing this information, dogs tore her apart.

The broader conflict known as King Philip's War claimed the lives of over 800 settlers, while roughly 8,000 Indians were killed, sold into slavery, or driven from their homes. Metacom's death in the summer of 1676 is treated by some historians as the war's conclusion, though fighting persisted further north in Maine, where the Wabanaki Confederacy managed to fight the colonial forces to a deadlock that ended in truce.

Once the war ended, most of the Indian population departed from Western Massachusetts, even as land transactions between tribes and settlers went on into the 1680s. A great many who fled the violence found refuge among the Wabanaki Confederacy to the north, and their descendants live there still. Decades later, during the Seven Years' War, Indian warriors came back to Western Massachusetts fighting alongside the French, and records show Abenaki descendants visiting Deerfield as late as the 1830s and beyond.

Today, a plaque near the entrance of The Student Prince and The Fort Restaurant in Springfield marks the former location of Pynchon's brick residence, once called the "fort house." The defense of the settlement during the siege is also honored through bronze statues of Miles Morgan and Toto, the former standing before City Hall and the latter placed within King Philip's Stockade in Forest Park, Springfield.