The English colonists seem never to have inflicted on the Indians any cruelty resulting from sensual vices, but of barbarity of another kind there was plenty, for it was a cruel age. When the Narraganset fort was taken by the English, December 19, 1675, the wigwams within the fort were all set on fire, against the earnest entreaty of Captain Church; and it was thought that more than one-half the English loss--which amounted to several hundred--might have been saved had there been any shelter for their own wounded on that cold night. This, however, was a question of military necessity; but the true spirit of the age was seen in the punishments inflicted after the war was over. The heads of Philip’s chief followers were cut off, though Captain Church, their captor, had promised to spare their lives; and Philip himself was beheaded and quartered by Church’s order, since he was regarded, curiously enough, as a rebel against Charles the Second, and this was the state punishment for treason. Another avowed reason was, that “as he had caused many an Englishman’s body to lye unburied,” not one of his bones should be placed under ground. The head was set upon a pole in Plymouth, where it remained for more than twenty-four years. Yet when we remember that the heads of alleged traitors were exposed in London at Temple Bar for nearly a century longer--till 1772 at least--it is unjust to infer from this course any such fiendish cruelty as it would now imply. It is necessary to extend the same charity, however hard it may be, to the selling of Philip’s wife and little son into slavery at the Bermudas; and here, as has been seen, the clergy were consulted and the Old Testament called into requisition. While these events were passing in the eastern settlements there were Indian outbreaks in Virginia, resulting in war among the white settlers themselves. The colony was, for various reasons, discontented; it was greatly oppressed, and a series of Indian murders brought the troubles to a climax. The policy pursued against the Indians was severe, and yet there was no proper protection afforded by the government; war was declared against them in 1676, and then the forces sent out were suddenly disbanded by the governor, Berkeley. At last there was a popular rebellion, which included almost all the civil and military officers of the colony, and the rebellious party put Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., a recently arrived but very popular planter, at their head. He marched with five hundred men against the Indians, but was proclaimed a traitor by the governor, whom Bacon proclaimed a traitor in return. The war with the savages became by degrees quite secondary to the internal contests among the English, in the course of which Bacon took and burned Jamestown, beginning, it is said, with his own house; but he died soon after. The insurrection was suppressed, and the Indians were finally quieted by a treaty.