The Death of Metacom
Over the past year-and-a-half I have shared nine posts from KPW350, a series founded
by Bristol Historical and Preservation Society of Rhode Island which followed the day-
to-day historical events that occurred during King Philip’s War (1675-76). I selected
specific posts because they highlighted the parallels between the true history of
that traumatic confrontation of Native Americans and English colonists and the narrative
contained in my historical novel Conflicting Roots (2025, Maine Authors Publishing).
This is the last KPW350 post I'll share here. It details the murder of Native leader Metacom (Philip) just as it happens in my novel, although some of the more gruesome elements were omitted from Conflicting Roots because they were too horrible to fit my style of writing.
The Death of Metacom
The Mount Hope Lands, now known as Bristol, Rhode Island, had been the ancestral homelands of the Pokanoket for thousands of years. On August 12, 1676, they became the site of Metacom’s death.
Nearly fourteen months after the start of King Philip’s War (also known as Metacom’s Resistance), Captain Benjamin Church and his combined forces of Englishmen and Indigenous allies caught up with and attacked Metacom and the Pokanoket at Mount Hope. Church and his forces were guided by John Alderman, a “Christian Indian” whose brother was aligned with Metacom and, according to authors Eric B. Schultz and Michael J. Tougias, “may have been killed by [Metacom] for suggesting surrender.”
Church and his men arrived at Mount Hope on the morning of the 12th and hid in the swamplands that surrounded Metacom’s encampment. (1) Then, Alderman, Church, and their troops launched a surprise attack, from which an estimated fifty-one people escaped, including Anawan, one of Metacom’s war chiefs.
During the attack, John Alderman shot and killed Metacom. As had happened to the bodies of other significant figures of the war, such as Weetamoo and Canonchet, Metacom’s body was treated as an enemy of the state. First he was desecrated, decapitated and dismembered. Then his body was quartered. After this, Alderman sold Metacom’s head to Plymouth Colony while personally keeping one of Metacom’s hands as a trophy. In the town of Plymouth, the seat of the colony, Metacom’s head was paraded through the village on August 17. After the parade, his head was mounted on a pike and displayed for more than two decades. (2)
Metacom was approximately thirty-eight years old at the time of his death.
Those who fled Mount Hope during this attack, including Anawan, moved through what is now Bristol County, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where they were pursued by English forces for nearly two weeks. On August 28, in Rehoboth, MA, Anawan and a number of Wampanoag men were surrounded and captured at Squannakonk Swamp. Accused of treason, Anawan was executed several days later in Plymouth. (3)
Although the war continued for at least another month and would not officially end for another two years, the deaths of Metacom and Anawan marked the end of its major events.
Eric B. Schultz and Michael J. Tougias, King Philip’s War: The History and Legacy of America’s Forgotten Conflict. N94. There is conflict among the secondary sources as to who John Alderman was. While all agree that he was an Indigenous man who aligned himself with Benjamin Church and the English - at least in this moment - there is great debate over whether he was Wampanoag, Natik, or of another tribe. There is also disagreement as to his reason for aligning with Church.
There is conflict across multiple sources as to whether Metacom’s head was displayed for up to twenty years or whether it was closer to twenty five years.
In 2017, a large portion of the Squannakonk Swamp was donated to the Rehoboth Land Trust as the “Roy Wheaton Horton Preserve.” The supposed site where Anawan and his men were captured has been identified as “Anawan Rock,” located off of Rehoboth’s Winthrop Street and marked by a historic placard. https://www.rehobothlandtrust.net/roywheatonhorton
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