"Praying Indian" was found murdered. The white people accused three
of Philip's men of having killed him. They were tried, found guilty,
and hanged.


90. Beginning of the war at Swansea;[3] burning of Brookfield.--Then
Philip's warriors began the war in the summer of 1675. Some white
settlers were going home from church in the town of Swansea,
Massachusetts; they had been to pray that there might be no fighting.
As they walked along, talking together, two guns were fired out of
the bushes. One of the white men fell dead in the road, and another
was badly hurt.

[Illustration: Map of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.]

The shots were fired by Indians. This was the way they always fought
when they could. They were not cowards, but they did not come out
boldly, but would fire from behind trees and rocks. Often a white
man would be killed without even seeing who shot him.

At first the fighting was mainly in those villages of Plymouth Colony
which were nearest Narragansett Bay; then it spread to the valley
of the Connecticut River and the neighborhood. Deerfield,
Springfield, Brookfield,[4] Groton,[5] and many other places in
Massachusetts were attacked. The Indians would creep up stealthily
in the night, burn the houses, carry off the women and children
prisoners if they could, kill the rest of the inhabitants, take their
scalps home and hang them up in their wigwams.

[Illustration: AN ATTACKING INDIAN.]