page_title: Great Swamp Fight
section_title: Battle
hierarchical_section_title: Great Swamp Fight / Battle
caption_attribution_description: English: Captain Benjamin Church (c. 1675)
context_page_description: The Great Swamp Fight or the Great Swamp Massacre was a crucial battle fought during King Philip's War between colonial militia of New England and the Narragansett tribe in December 1675. It was fought near the villages of Kingston and West Kingston in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. The combined force of the New England militia included 150 Pequots, and they inflicted a huge number of Narragansett casualties, including many hundred women and children. The battle has been described as "one of the most brutal and lopsided military encounters in all of New England's history." Since the 1930s, Narragansett and Wampanoag people commemorate the battle annually in a ceremony initiated by Narragansett-Wampanoag scholar Princess Red Wing.
context_section_description: On December 15, 1675, Narraganset warriors attacked the Jireh Bull Blockhouse and killed at least 15 people.  15-year-old James Eldred escaped from the blockhouse and was pursued a considerable distance; he survived having a tomahawk thrown at him at close range and a hand-to-hand encounter with a Narraganset warrior.  This occurred along Indian Run Brook in Wakefield-Peacedale, Rhode Island.
  Four days later, the Great Swamp Battle took place on the bitterly cold and stormy day of December 19, 1675. The colonial militia from Plymouth Colony, Connecticut Colony, and Massachusetts Bay Colony were led to the main Narragansett settlement in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, by an Indian guide named Indian Peter.  The massive fort occupied about 5 acres (20,000 m²) of land and was initially occupied by over a thousand people, but it was eventually overrun after a fierce fight. The settlement was burned, its inhabitants (including women and children) killed or evicted, and most of the tribe's winter stores destroyed. It is believed that at least 97 Narragansett warriors and 300 to 1,000 non-combatants were killed, though exact figures are unknown.
  Many of the warriors and their families escaped into the frozen swamp; hundreds more died there from wounds combined with the harsh conditions. The colonists lost many of their officers in this assault, and about 70 of their men were killed and nearly 150 more wounded. The dead and wounded militiamen were evacuated to the settlements on Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay where they were buried or cared for by many of the Rhode Island colonists.
caption: Benjamin Church, the first American ranger.
exif: {}