The Narragansett Indians went on the war-path against the white men. Their headquarters were on an island in a swamp which was thought to be inaccessible. Here, in five hundred wigwams, were sheltered the women and children of the tribe and were stored their supplies of corn. By the treachery of one of Philip’s warriors, the path to the island was betrayed to the white men. In the depth of winter the colonists made their way through the swamp to the island, killed men, women, and children without mercy, and burned the fort and the whole settlement. King Philip’s wife and son had been taken prisoners and sent to the Bermudas where they were sold as slaves. Still the Indians refused to submit. One of the warriors who advised surrender was killed by King Philip’s own hand. At last in August, 1676, he was surrounded at his old home, Mount Hope, not far from Providence, Rhode Island, and was shot. His body was cut to pieces and fastened on trees, and his head was exposed on the top of a pole in Plymouth. The Puritans held a thanksgiving to celebrate their victory in King Philip’s War. The inevitable conflict between the white men and the red had come and the whites were the victors. But nearly one-tenth of the fighting force had been killed, and there was hardly a village or even a home in New England which had not suffered loss. Nathaniel Bacon The Leader of the Great Rebellion It was not only with outsiders--French, Dutch, Spaniards, and Indians--that the English settlers had trouble. One faction in the colonies warred against another. In Virginia the established order was almost overthrown in the seventeenth century by the “Great Rebellion.” For many years the governor of the colony was Sir William Berkeley, an aristocrat who would not allow the people to have any share in the government of the colony. He feared that if the House of Burgesses was dismissed and new members elected he would lose control of it. So he adjourned it from one session to another, and year after year called together men whom he could trust to obey his will. A very stubborn and overbearing will it was, opposed to all progress and firmly set against granting rights to common people. He approved of high taxes and did not wish the common people to vote; above all, he opposed public education and the liberty of the press. “I thank God there are no free schools nor printing presses,” he said in 1671, “and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years.”