The Deadly Ambush of John Sassamon

When John Sassamon heard rumors of impending danger for Plymouth Colony, he had to warn them. Sassamon was pivotal in the complicated relationship between colonists and Native Americans. Born in the Massachusett tribe around 1620 when the Pilgrims arrived, Sassamon became a living symbol of the collision of European and ancient American cultures.

Sassamon was mentored in the English language and Christian religion, becoming an interpreter and intermediary between settlers and native people. As an intelligent and eager learner, he was sent to Harvard College. He worked closely with missionary John Eliot to establish communities for Native American Christians and helped translate the Bible into native languages. 

The aging Massasoit, the Wampanoag leader who first formed the alliance with Plymouth Colony, relied on Sassamon as an interpreter and advisor. When Massasoit died, his son Metacom (known as King Phillip) eventually became chief, and the bridge of peace between the two communities fractured even more, with Sassamon caught in the middle. 

In the cold of winter, Sassamon went to warn Plymouth leaders of an impending attack by Metacom, but his warning was dismissed and he was sent home unprotected. On January 29, 1675, John Sassamon was found dead in an icy pond, his neck twisted. A native American said he witnessed three of Metacom's men kill Sassamon. The men were put on trial, and a jury of six colonists and six Wampanoags found them guilty. Their execution ignited one of the bloodiest conflicts on American soil – King Philip's War. 

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“The wicked watched the righteous, and seeketh to slay him.”

(Psalms 37:32; 1599 Geneva Bible)

A Gruesome Coroner's Report

Rachel Ramsden of Plymouth Colony happily went on an errand for her neighbor, Alice. When she returned with the buttermilk Alice requested, there was blood on the ladder leading to a child’s sleeping loft. Four-year-old Martha was dead. The coroner’s jury reported their findings to the Plymouth Court on August 1, 1648. Alice Bishop killed her daughter.

The jury said, “We declare, that upon entering the house of Richard Bishop, we saw at the foot of a ladder... much blood.” When they climbed up to the loft, they found little Martha in her nightgown “with her throat cut..., and a bloody knife lying by the side of the child.”

In a chilling confession, Alice “confessed she did commit the aforesaid murder, and is sorry for it,” but she claimed no memory of it. She was swiftly convicted and sentenced to hang, making Alice Bishop the first woman to be executed in the colonies. The shocked community could never discover a motive.

Theories abound regarding the factors that may have contributed to Alice's actions: depression, psychosis, the Puritanical expectations of perfection, or perhaps a mother’s common stresses with all the constant physical labor in New England’s rugged frontier. Alice’s struggles may have been intensified by unresolved mourning, common among immigrants facing anxiety from the drastic changes. To this day no one knows why Martha’s young life was taken by her own mother. Two months after the jury reported their findings, Alice was hanged from the branch of a tree. 

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"So is it not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish."

(Matthew 18:14; 1599 Geneva Bible)