Off With Their Heads

King Philip's luck had run out. Though he escaped capture by the skin of his teeth twice before in Hockomock Swamp, in Miery Swamp he had nowhere to hide. Philip was shot in the chest by John Alderman, a praying Indian whose brother King Philip had ordered executed after a being deemed a traitor. Alderman was accompanied by Captain Benjamin Church himself, the most famous Indian hunter of the day. (It is interesting to note that in the scene depicted in the picture below of the death of King Philip, it is Church and not Alderman who is holding the gun.)




Church ordered Philip's body to pulled up to higher ground to begin the act of his mutilation. His body was beheaded and dismembered. Quartered, Church picked four nearby trees and ordered four pieces of philip's body to be tied to them for the birds to pluck. His hand was given to Alderman as a trophy of the kill. Philip's hand was very unique. It had been disfigured when a pistol misfired years before. Alderman took the mamed hand happily and later would place it in a jar preserved with rum. Alderman would take the jar to taverns where he would allow the owners to display it in exchange for free drinks.

Philip's head was spiked and proudly carried through the steets of Plymouth before it would meet it's final resting place upon Plymouth Colony Fort, now Burial Hill Cemetery. It would soon be joined by the heads of Chief Anawan and Tispaquin. How long the other Wompanoag leader's heads remained displayed on the fort is unknown. But we know that Philip's head remained on the fort for at least 25 years. As if sight of Philip's skull was not horrific enough, one day Cotton Mather removed the jawbone, to keep "the devil from speaking from the grave."

Taunting in Taunton
The Sachem Squaw Princess Weetamoo was a powerful woman--even before she became the wife of Philip's brother Alexander. The union of Alexander and Weetamoo was a very strong one. The strength created in the marriage of the Pocasset and Pokanoket tribes was no secret to the English and no doubt contributed to the suspicions toward Alexander which led to the conspiracy of his death in 1662.

Weetamoo died in what is now Bridgewater, Massachusetts toward the end of the war. She was attempting escape across a fallen tree over the Taunton River when she allegedly slipped in the river and drowned. When her body washed ashore, it was beheaded. Just before the death of Weetamoo, many of her Pocasset people were taken prisoner out of the Hockomock Swamp where they were taking temporary refuge from the Colonists. They were so frightened upon capture, that they surrendered without a fight. After all, these were not warriors. These were tribe's women, children and elderly. And they were weak from hunger and travel. The prisoners were marched to Taunton where a gully served as their jail. They were then forced to bare witness to the horror of the parading of Wetamoo's head upon a spike back and forth in front of their disbelieving eyes.