On July 29, 2025, the New Braintree Historical Commission posted a film from 2009 on YouTube of a discussion about Wheeler’s Surprise, the 1675 Indigenous ambush of Colonial Troops by Native warriors in Brookfield and New Braintree, MA. The video was produced by Robert Wilder of Brookfield

The video begins at an historic marker in Brookfield, MA with an introduction by Dick Revy, a resident of New Braintree and a member of New Braintree’s Quabog Plantation 350th Anniversary Committee. Jeff Fisk, author of Wheel of Surprise, the Lost Battlefield of King Phillip’s War, and Joe Salvadore, a member of the Anniversary Committee, then narrated the video which began with the story of the Great Dying of 1616-1619. [Note: Salvadore’s statement that there was “a harvest feast to mark the occasion” of the March 1621 treaty is incorrect. The feast that was described occurred in the fall and was not related to the treaty.

The Mass Bay Governor John Leverett commissioned Captain Edward Hutchinson with Thomas Wheeler to meet and negotiate with the Nipmucs on the island where Ephriam Curtis had found them earlier. William Pynchon (pictured above), who founded Springfield, was very much involved with the Brookfield settlement. Filmmaker Robert Wilder asked Fisk if the Indians were inhabiting the area at the northern end of the Winnamesit Valley prior to the raid.

Fisk points to the site of the actual ambush where the brook ends and expands into a wide swampy area. Bill Jenkins, chairman of the Anniversary Committee, then described what happened at the Quabog Plantation after Captain Hutchinson’s return following the ambush. The film ends with a picture of an unidentified stone marker describing the August 2, 1675 attack. Click here for another film produced by the Committee in 2023 to honor Brookfield’s First Inhabitants.