Sudbury Fight

On April 21, 1676, colonial forces and Native warriors clashed in the area now known as Sudbury and Wayland, Massachusetts, in an episode remembered as the Sudbury Fight. This confrontation formed part of the wider King Philip's War, when a force numbering roughly five hundred warriors drawn from the Wampanoag, Nipmuc, and Narragansett peoples descended upon the exposed frontier town of Sudbury within Massachusetts Bay Colony. In response, separate militia companies from surrounding settlements set out to defend the town, but two of these units found themselves lured into traps set by their Native adversaries, resulting in devastating casualties. This engagement stands as the final significant triumph for Native forces during the conflict, coming before their ultimate defeat across southern New England that August of 1676.

Background

During the winter months of 1676, King Philip's War quieted somewhat across eastern Massachusetts, only for Native American fighters to renew their assaults on Puritan settlements once spring arrived. Marlborough, Massachusetts, home to a fort of considerable strategic value, suffered two separate attacks from the Native coalition, one on March 16 and another on April 7, which left much of the town in ruins and compelled many inhabitants to flee. These assaults, coupled with the earlier abandonment of Lancaster and Groton, prompted the colonial Council of War to send Captain Samuel Wadsworth along with fifty soldiers toward Marlborough to bolster the weakened frontier defenses. On the evening of April 20, Wadsworth's men made their way through Sudbury en route to their destination.

At roughly the same time, a substantial force of Native warriors left the Nipmuc stronghold at Mount Wachusett and assembled atop Pompositticut Hill, a location known today as Summer Hill in Maynard, Massachusetts. Following a pow wow among the gathered fighters, they chose Sudbury as their target rather than Concord. According to tradition, Metacomet commanded the Native forces during the ensuing fight at Sudbury, although this claim finds no support in any primary sources. Some local historians instead propose that the Nipmuc sachem Muttawmp actually held overall command of the campaign.

Battle

Under cover of darkness, Native warriors slipped into Sudbury and struck as morning broke, setting fire to homes and barns and killing, in the words of Puritan chronicler William Hubbard, "several persons." Most of the town's English inhabitants lived along the eastern bank of the Sudbury River, in what is today Wayland, and they fled their dwellings for the safety of fortified garrison houses scattered throughout the settlement.

For the entire morning, Native fighters laid siege to the Haynes garrison on Water Row Road, but the civilians sheltering inside mounted a determined resistance. At one point the attackers sent a burning cart loaded with flax rolling down the slope toward the structure, hoping to set it ablaze, but the cart struck a rock, tipped over, and caused no harm. The garrison never fell, and historians George Ellis and John Morris have suggested that the entire siege may have been staged merely to lure English reinforcements into the area.

A group of roughly a dozen men from Concord, alerted to the trouble, marched out to help defend Sudbury. They walked into an ambush and were slaughtered in plain sight of those holed up in

Aftermath

Darkness prompted the Native fighters to pull back from Sudbury. The following morning, English troops, joined by allied Praying Indians, made their way to the site of the fighting to lay the dead to rest.

According to Rowlandson, the Native coalition returned home subdued rather than triumphant, despite having won the engagement. She described them as coming back without the usual celebration of victory, likening them instead to dogs that had lost their ears. She noted that this dejection did not seem to stem from significant losses among their own ranks, since they claimed only five or six had fallen, and she herself could account for casualties in just one wigwam. Rowlandson observed that the warriors had set out believing the Devil had promised them success, yet returned behaving as though that same Devil had foretold their downfall. She admitted she could not confirm whether this was truly the case, but noted that from that point on, their fortunes declined steadily, continuing through the summer until they faced complete devastation.

Hubbard and Mather offer a different account, claiming that Native losses actually reached a hundred and twenty. Leading residents of Sudbury, speaking that autumn, likewise described inflicting a "considerable slaughter" upon the attacking force. Adding to the confusion over casualty numbers, Native warriors gathered near Marlborough on the morning of April 22 and taunted the militiamen there, shouting seventy-four times, the number they claimed to have slain at Sudbury.