It is easy to mock past attempts to venerate and sanctify the Pilgrims, especially given what their sons and grandsons did to the Native Americans. And yet, we must look with something more than cynicism at a people who maintained more than half a century of peace with their Native neighbors. The great mystery of this story is how America emerged from the terrible darkness of King Philip’s War to become the United States. A possible answer resides in the character of the man who has been called America’s first Indian fighter, Benjamin Church.
In the years after King Philip’s War, as the country came to be defined by its relentless push west, a new American type came into being: the frontiersman. As a roughneck intermediary between civilization and savagery, the frontiersman had a natural distrust of authority and relied on his own instincts, bravery, and skill to survive. What makes Church unique is that he was one of the first New Englanders to embrace the wilderness his forefathers had shunned. When war erupted in June 1675, he was the right man in the right place to become a truly archetypal American.
Out of the annealing flame of one of the most horrendous wars ever fought in North America, he forged an identity that was part Pilgrim, part mariner, part Indian, and altogether his own. That so many characters from American history and literature resemble him — from Daniel Boone to Davy Crockett to Natty Bumppo to Rambo — does nothing to diminish the stunning originality of the persona he creates in Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War. That Church according to Church is too brave, too cunning, and too good to be true is beside the point. America was destined to become a nation of self-fashioned and self-promoting men. Church personifies what would become a recurrent American type: the indignant critic of authority who, despite his best intentions, finds himself dragged into moral compromise, violence, and tragedy. What makes his story so special, I believe, is that he shows us how the nightmare of wilderness warfare might one day give rise to a society that promises liberty and justice for all.
Early in the war, Church railed against the Plymouth officials’ decision to enslave the Indians who surrendered at Dartmouth. But by the end of the war, as he relentlessly pursued Philip through the swamps of Plymouth Colony, he had become New England’s premier slave catcher. Late in life, Church remained proud of his role in bringing an end to the fighting. But unlike the Puritan historians and other memorialists, such as Mary Rowlandson, who saw the ultimate course of the conflict as inevitable and just, Church had his doubts – and therein resides whatever promise this story holds for America.
Church concludes his account of the war with a vignette. In January 1677, the Plymouth magistrates asked him to lead a few minor mop-up operations. Over the course of the winter he succeeded in capturing several additional Indians. One of the captives was an old man to whom Church took an immediate liking, and he asked the Indian his name.
“Conscience.”
“Conscience,” the old man replied. “Conscience,” Church repeated with a smile; “then the war is over, for that was what they were searching for, it being much wanting.”
Church was supposed to deliver the old man to Plymouth, where he would undoubtedly have been shipped off as a slave to the West Indies. Instead, Church asked him where he wanted to live out the rest of his life. The Indian told him the name of an Englishman in Swansea he had known before the war. Church made some inquiries, and soon Conscience had a new home.
It was a small victory to be sure, but in the winter of 1677 it was the best that Benjamin Church could do.
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