In 1675, John Sassamon, a Christian Indian employed as a sort of private secretary by Philip, warned the Plymouth government that his master was plotting against it. Philip discovered the perfidy of Sassamon, and shortly afterward, the dead body of the latter was found beneath the ice in Assawamset Pond in Middleborough. The English doubted not that Sassamon had been put to death by the sachem’s order. They arrested three savages whom they charged with the murder, tried them before a jury composed of twelve Englishmen and four Indians, and sentenced them to death, though two of them maintained their innocence to the last. Philip had been summoned to Plymouth to testify regarding his own connection with the murder, but he was too wise to obey an injunction, so fraught with peril. Instead, he openly hurled defiance at his accusers. His first overt act was committed within the limits of Sowams. “A little before the Court,” the Plymouth Records tell us, “Philip began to keep his men in armes about him and to gather strangers unto him and to march about in armes toward the vper end of the Necke on which he lived and neare to the English houses whoe began thereby to be somewhat disquieted but tooke as yett noe further notice but only to sett a military watch in the next Townes as Swanzey and Rehoboth.” The Indians, however did not long confine themselves to stalking about and flourishing their weapons. Their powwows, or priests, having prophesied defeat to which ever party should shed the first blood in the conflict, they sought to provoke the English to attack them by shooting their cattle, frightening women, and insulting travellers. On the 18th or 19th of June, Job Winslow’s house[22] was “broken up and rifled” by them. On Sunday, June 20th, a party of eight warriors fully armed, invaded the hamlet. They knocked at the door of a colonist and demanded permission to grind their hatchets. Upon being told that the grinding of hatchets on the Lord’s Day was a sin they replied, “We know not who your God is and we shall grind our hatchets for all you or your God either.” They then proceeded to another house where they helped themselves liberally to food. Continuing along the road they met an Englishman whom they took prisoner, but later dismissed, after enjoining him not to work on the Lord’s Day and to tell no lies.