The ancestors, although long gone, have gently nudged me in directions that have taught me things that I was never told in all my years in school. Every turn has made clearer to me the path that was taken to get the world to the place it is in now, good or bad.
While reading on Baptiste Smedley I noticed a term that I have never heard of before, Praying Indians. Praying Indians were Christian converts and their villages were set up as an outlying wall of defense for the colony.
When King Philip’s War broke out, the Praying Indians were caught in the middle, despised by Native Americans as traitors and feared by the colonists because they were Native Americans. The Praying Indians were trying to help the colonists by informing them of the plans of King Philip to attack the colony in the summer. John Sassamon, a Christian Indian, tried warning the governor of the Plymouth Colony and was not believed, simply because he was a Native American.
They had pledged their faith to the English, participating in fighting the hostile Indians that were following King Philip and for their reward, the survivors were herded on to Deer Island in Boston Harbor for two years following the end of the war.
Lee Sultzman has an interesting article that covers the years prior to the coming of the Pilgrims through King Philip’s War.