December is typically not a month for war, even today, but during the cold winter of 1675 the United Colonies decided that war was needed against the previously neutral Narragansett people in King Philip’s War. Click here for a 26-minute description of events posted by Historian Stan Svec of Fishing Historic Places on December 18, 2025.

(Above, left) Svec began with a description a typical garrison house in South Deerfield that colonists relied on for protection from Native attacks. (Above, center) In December, 1675, King Philip traveled to New York State in an attempt to enlist the Mohawks in his war against the English. (Above, right) Peaceful “Praying Indian” towns across the region were disenfranchised by their Puritan neighbors, with the inhabitants confined on one of Mass Bay’s windswept Harbor Island’s, Deer Island, to spend a long and desolate winter with little food or shelter.

A mania appeared to have descended on the Puritan Colonies after the attacks that began in June with any talk of peace or accommodation with the neighboring tribes shouted down. Thus, there were no voices raised in disagreement in December following multiple attacks on colonial villages when Josiah Winslow raised an army of 1,000 men to attack the Great Swamp!

In December of 1675, the horrors of the Great Swamp Battle took place with a costly storming of the Narragansett fortified village. It turnedt into a holocaust as much of the village was burned along with hundreds of non-combatant. An historic market sits at what is presumed to be the site of the massacre.

Click here for Landgeist: The Land Remembers, Svec’s reflections on sacred sites of King Philip’s War.