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This Indian maiden married a warrior of her tribe, who was also in the employment of the English, and in all his interests had become identified with them. Sassamon was a subject of King Philip, but he and his family were on the most intimate and friendly relations with the colonists. Philip needed a private secretary who could draw up his deeds and write his letters.
I shall not treat with a subject. I shall only treat with the king, my brother. When he comes, I am ready." Such was the alarming aspect of affairs at the close of the year 1674. Enthusiasm of the young Indians. John Sassamon. Betty's Neck. Private secretary of Philip. The conspiracy. Incredulity of the English. Sassamon to be murdered. Death of Sassamon. Indians arrested. Proof of the murder.
Sassamon soon after resigned his situation as Philip's secretary, and returned to Middleborough, where he resumed his employment as a preacher to the Indians and teacher of a school. By some unknown means Philip ascertained that he had been betrayed by Sassamon.
John Sassamon was an educated Indian who had returned to the Wampanoags, after preaching. He spoke English, and was used by King Philip at Mount Hope as secretary. He thought that he had found out war plans, and he carried the secrets to Plymouth. The Indian law declared that he should die. In March his body was discovered under the ice of a pond of Plymouth Colony. His neck had been broken.
But Sassamon had been so much with the English, and had been for years so intimately connected with them as their friend and agent, that it was feared that they would espouse his cause, and endeavor to avenge his death. It was, therefore, thought best that Indian justice should be secretly executed. Early in the spring of 1675 Sassamon was suddenly missing.
He accordingly took John Sassamon into his employment. Sassamon, thus introduced into the court and cabinet of his sovereign, soon became acquainted with the conspiracy in all its appalling extent and magnitude of design. He at once repaired to Plymouth, and communicated his discovery to the governor.
"I do solemnly protest," says Governor Winslow, in a letter written July 4th, 1675, "we know not any thing from us which might have put Philip upon these motions, nor have heard that he pretends to have suffered any wrong from us, save only that we had killed some Indians, and intended to send for himself for the murder of John Sassamon."
They became very insolent and boastful, and would sharpen their knives and tomahawks upon the door-sills of the colonists, vaporing in mysterious phrase of the great deeds they were about to perform. There was at this time a Christian Indian by the name of John Sassamon, who had learned to read and write, and had become quite an efficient agent in Christian missions to the Indians.
He decided not to do this latter thing. To give up his guns would leave him bare to all enemies. He was made to sign other papers, until little by little the Pokanokets seemed to have surrendered their rights, except their guns. The white people, and not Philip, ruled them. Then, in the first half of 1675 the affair of John Sassamon occurred.
Most of the Massachusetts colonists thought the Plymouth people unnecessarily alarmed. They listened to the story of Sassamon with great incredulity. "His information," says Dr. I. Mather, "because it had an Indian original, and one can hardly believe them when they do speak the truth, was not at first much regarded."
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