No one seemed able to control events, least of all King Philip. If his plan was to fight the English rather than submit to their ways, his military strategy revealed an utter lack of careful thought or purposeful design. On June 24, the Indians attacked Swansea in force, killing a total of 11 white settlers (including the boy who had fired the war’s first shot) and wounding many others. Yet the approach of militia troops from Plymouth made it apparent that Philip could not remain in Swansea or even in Montaup.

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Fleeing Montaup, King Philip led his warriors east to the Pocasset country. A small group of white soldiers, commanded by militia Captains Benjamin Church and Matthew Fuller, tried to surprise Philip and his Wampanoags at Pocasset, but the Indians fled before the colonial troops could attack. Later, Church’s company was ambushed in a fierce attack by Philip’s Indians, who pushed the soldiers back to the Pocasset shore. Pinned down at the beach, Church and his men finally escaped when some Rhode Island patrol boats rescued them in the nick of time. Church later thanked the glory of God and his protecting Providence for helping to effect their narrow escape.

While soldiers from Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay assembled near Swansea and organized themselves into an army, Philip and his small force struck effectively at nearby undefended white settlements. During early July, Philip’s warriors attacked the towns of Taunton, Rehoboth, Middleborough and Dartmouth, killing settlers and burning houses. Stealth and speed became Philip’s greatest weapons, causing the English to live in constant fear of surprise attacks. Every noise in the forest sounded like the footsteps of moccasins or the echoes of war whoops.

On July 19, Church and his men, hoping once more to trap King Philip, returned to the swamps of Pocasset and fought a desperate battle with the Indians. The English suffered many casualties in the fight and withdrew, leaving behind seven or eight of their dead. After regrouping, Church and his men tried to surround the marshlands and force Philip to surrender. Instead, Philip and his Indians slipped through the swamp and disappeared into thick woods, leaving no trace. One English soldier observed that fighting in muddy swamps and tangled forests made victory for the whites nearly impossible. It was, he said, dangerous…to fight in such dismal woods, where the leaves muffled movements, thick boughs pinioned arms, and roots shackled feet and legs. It is ill fighting with a wild Beast in his own Den, he complained.

Philip’s escape from the clutches of Church and the colonial militia meant that the war would no longer be fought simply within the relatively small area around Mount Hope, Swansea and Pocasset. The conflict now burst out into the open country of New England, and the spread of its flames could not be contained. As Indian attacks multiplied throughout southern New England during the summer of 1675, white settlers believed that King Philip had taken supreme command of a large army of Indian allies, although such was not the case. At best Philip led a war party of some 300 Indians, most of whom were Wampanoags or members of other bands residing in the vicinity of Montaup.

At the end of July, Philip took his warriors out of Wampanoag territory to link up with the Nipmucks of central Massachusetts. No one knows precisely what he did or where he went for the next several weeks. Throughout August, reports came into Plymouth and Boston that he was spotted in Massachusetts, or seen in Connecticut, but most of the reports were unconfirmed or vague in their details. Actually Philip seemed to be everywhere at once, or nowhere at all.

Meanwhile, the frontier exploded from Connecticut to Maine with one Indian attack after another. The Narragansetts, who at first declared Philip their enemy, eventually allied with him as the fighting continued during the summer of 1675. But not all New England Indians rose up against the whites. The Niantics of southern Rhode Island, the Mohegans and Pequots of Connecticut, and several other smaller tribes throughout southern New England served with the English as scouts and warriors against Philip’s forces, or maintained a nominal neutrality during the conflict.

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