"Philip began his war preparations by sending the women and children of the tribe away from Mount Hope to the Narragansetts for protection. Then he warned some of the whites with whom he was friendly of the coming storm, that they might seek places of safety, and, when they were gone, bade his followers swear eternal hostility to the whites.
"A dreadful war followed, beginning on the 24th of June, 1675, and lasting for more than a year. The whites suffered a great deal, but the Indians still more. Particularly the Narragansetts, who were treated with great cruelty because they had given shelter to the Wampanoags and their families.
"They had a fort on an elevation of three or four acres surrounded by a swamp, studded with brambles and thick underbrush. There were three thousand Indians in it--mostly women and children. The whites surprised them, burned their palisades and straw-covered wigwams, and the poor creatures were burned, suffocated, butchered, frozen, or drowned. Six hundred warriors and a thousand women and children were killed, and all the winter provision of the tribe destroyed. Their chief, Canonchet, escaped then, but was captured and killed the next summer.
"It was on the 12th of the next August that a renegade Indian guided a large party of white men to the camp of the Wampanoags. The Indians were asleep, King Philip among them. After the first shot or two he woke, sprang to his feet, gun in hand, and tried to escape, but, as he stumbled and fell in the mire, was shot dead by a treacherous Indian. His death ended the war."
"Poor fellow!" sighed Grace. "He was certainly treated with great injustice and cruelty. I don't see how the whites could be so blind to the fact that the Indians had the best right to this country, and that it was wicked to rob them of their lands."
"Self-interest is apt to have a very blinding influence," said her father. "And I am afraid we must acknowledge that the whites were the first aggressors, in their grasping seizure of so much of the land of which the Indians were the original and rightful possessors."
All having now looked their fill, they returned to their carriages and drove to other points of interest, one of them Whitehall, the old residence of Bishop Berkeley. It was a place that all cared to see, especially a room in it formerly occupied by the dean, where was a fireplace, ornamented with Dutch tiles, placed there by the dean himself.