On March 26, 1676, during King Philip's War, Captain Michael Pierce led approximately 60 Plymouth Colony militia and 20 Wampanoag warriors in pursuit of the Narragansett tribe, who had burned down several Rhode Island settlements and attacked Plymouth Colony. The engagement occurred as colonial forces sought to contain the Narragansett threat that had grown increasingly violent in the region.
Pierce's troops caught up with combined forces of Narragansett, Wampanoag, Nashaway, Nipmuck, and Podunk fighters in what is now Central Falls, Rhode Island, but were ambushed by the larger allied force. The colonial militia and their Wampanoag allies fought the Narragansett warriors for several hours before being surrounded. Captain Pierce and the Wampanoag allies were killed alongside nearly all of the colonial militia in what became one of the biggest defeats of colonial troops during King Philip's War.
The battle resulted in the capture of ten colonists, nine of whom were subsequently tortured to death by Narragansett warriors at the site now known as Nine Men's Misery in current-day Cumberland, Rhode Island. The Narragansett tribe lost only a handful of warriors in the engagement. The site's significance was further cemented when a stone memorial was constructed in 1676, which is believed to be the oldest war monument in the United States.
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.
Nearly all colonial militia killed; Narragansett losses: a handful of warriors; ten colonists taken prisoner, nine tortured to death
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