| Notes |
- The Great Swamp Fight (also known as the Great Swamp Massacre) was a crucial battle fought during King Philip's War between the combined colonial militia in New England and the Narragansett tribe.
On November 2 1675, Josiah Winslow led a combined force of over 1000 colonial militia including about 150 Pequot and Mohegan Indians against the Narragansett tribe living around Narragansett Bay. The Narragansett tribe had not yet been directly involved in the war, but had allegedly sheltered many of King Philip's men, women and children and several of their warriors had reportedly been seen in Indian raiding parties[citation needed]. The colonists distrusted the Narragansett and feared the tribe would join King Phillip's cause come spring, which caused great concern due to the tribe's location. The decision was made to preemptively strike the Narragansett before an assumed uprising. Several abandoned Narragansett Indian villages were found and burned as the militia marched through the cold winter around Narragansett Bay. The tribe had retreated to a large fort in the center of a swamp near Kingston, Rhode Island. The building of such a defensive structure gives credence to the argument that the Narragansett never intended aggressive actions, thus the colonist's preemptive attack may have been unwarranted and overzealous.
Led by an Indian guide, on December 16, 1675 on a bitterly cold storm-filled day, the main Narragansett fort near modern South Kingstown, Rhode Island was found and attacked by the colonial militia from Plymouth Colony, Connecticut Colony and Massachusetts Bay Colony. The massive fort occupying about 5 acres (20,000 m2) of land and was initially occupied by over a thousand Indians was eventually overrun after a fierce fight. The Indian fort was burned, its inhabitants, including women and children, killed or evicted and most of the tribe's winter stores destroyed. It is believed that about 300 Indians were killed (exact figures are unknown) in the fighting. Many of the warriors and their families escaped into the frozen swamp. Facing a winter with little food and shelter, the whole surviving Narragansett tribe was forced out of quasi-neutrality some had tried to maintain in the on-going war and joined the fight alongside Philip. The colonists lost many of their officers in this assault and about 70 of their men were killed and nearly 150 more wounded. The dead and wounded colonial militiamen were evacuated to the settlements on Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay where they were buried or cared for by many of the Rhode Island colonists until they could return to their homes.
The Great Swamp Fight was a critical blow to the Narragansett tribe from which they never fully recovered.[1] In April 1676, the Narragansett were completely defeated when the Wampanoag sachem Metacom was shot in the heart by John Alderman, a Native American soldier.
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1656 - 1675 (19 years)
