The Battle of Bloody Brook was fought on September 28, 1675 (September 18, 1675 OS) between an indigenous war party primarily composed of Pocumtuc warriors and other local indigenous people from the central Connecticut River valley, and the English colonial militia of the New England Confederation and their Mohegan allies during King Philip's War.
The crop fields of the Pocumtuc and other Connecticut River valley nations were desired by the English, however the Pocumtuc in particular were resistant to ceding their land. The Pocumtuc were the dominant power in the central Connecticut river valley, orchestrating powerful alliances and forcing the English-allied Mohegans into tribute. However, after a 1664 war with the Kanienkehaka (Mohawk) fractured both nations and destabilized the region, the Pocumtuc were inclined to begin selling land.
Subsequently, the Connecticut River valley would represent the western border of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. However, English involvement in the Pocumtuc-Kanienkehaka war, and subsequent dealings in obtaining Pocumtuc land, contributed to local and region-wide resentment against English inhabitation of New England. Although the English were tolerated, the Pocumtuc Confederacy quickly joined Metacomet's forces at the outbreak of King Philip's War.
In the early stages of King Philip's War, English forces in the Southern Theatre experienced many smaller defeats on the western frontline, which sent the English scrambling to reinforce their settlements in the Connecticut River valley. Looking to act defensively in this Connecticut River campaign, the English set out to gather the considerable amount of corn grown at Pocumtuc (Deerfield) to feed their garrisons.
Led by Pocumtuc sachem Sangumachu, the Pocumtuc Confederacy was reinforced by their Nipmuc and Wampanoag allies. The Indigenous war party ambushed and annihilated a company of militia escorting a train of wagons carrying the harvest from Pocumtuc to Hadley in the Connecticut River valley, killing at least 58 militia men and 16 teamsters. A short while after, this was followed by an extended battle against waves of pro-English reinforcements.
The battle had a significant impact on English consciousness in the war. This major defeat amongst others elicited aggressive responses by the English, such as a preventive war against the Narragansett that winter, and the 1676 Peskeompscut Massacre, which ended Indigenous dominance of the Connecticut River valley. Pocumtuc refugees fled to New York and the Wabanaki Confederacy. Bloody Brook was particularly commemorated by Euro-American residents of Massachusetts in the 1800s.
Background
Context
The central Connecticut River valley was primarily inhabited by agriculturalist eastern Algonquian peoples, namely the Pocumtuc, Agawam, Woronoco, Norwottuck (Nonotuck), Sokoki and Quabog. Together, these nations have been antiquatedly referred to as "River Indians", with the first five being sometimes referred to as the Pocumtuc Confederacy.
Although related linguistically, the nations of the central Connecticut River valley operated their trade and diplomacy autonomously, participated in far-reaching intertribal alliances, and transacted agreements that preserved traditional access to natural resources. When relations with their neighbors (such as the English) failed, tribes drew upon existing alliances to seek refuge in friendly villages. Material and social interactions aside, alliances were customarily encoded by the exchange of the spiritually/politically significant wampum. Among the strongest peoples were the Pocumtuc and Norwottuck, whose independence & extensive alliances limited English settlement in the valley.
Around the time of King Philip's War, the nations were organized into villages of about 500 people, with an approximate total population of 5,000 Indigenous people in the central valley. Pre-contact sites were already cleared and planted with corn on rich alluvial flatlands, which proved desirable to the newly arrived English settlers. Several fortified settlements were of particular importance- the Norwottuck fort, located on a high bluff above the Connecticut River in the Northampton-Hadley-Hatfield triangle, and the Agawam fort on Long Hill just south of Springfield housed some 80 to 100 families combined, with the Pocumtuc fort in present-day Deerfield also being noteworthy.
In contrast, the total population of the seven small English towns spread along the 66 miles of the mid-Connecticut River valley (the western border of the Massachusetts Bay Colony) was approximately 350 men and women, and roughly 1,100 children.
Tensions between Pocumtuc & English
Pocumtuc dominance
During the 1630s, the Connecticut River valley nations invited the English to the valley for trade. They set up accounts with fur trader and land broker William Pynchon, along with his son John Pynchon, and other associate traders to purchase cloth and other goods in exchange for corn and beaver fur. Wampum beads were also used by colonial settlers as a means of monetary exchange. These connections soon proved fruitful for the English, with bushels of Pocumtuc corn saving the Connecticut Colony from famine in 1638.
The Pocumtuc nation was centered on either side of the sandy banks of the Connecticut river in present-day Deerfield and Greenfield. Despite their friendly trade relations, the Pocumtuc were respected as a powerful force by the English. The New England Confederation paid particularly close attention to Pocumtuc hostilities against the Mohegans and Long Island nations for fear these would impact the English colonies. The Mohegans under their sachem Uncas had separated from their Indigenous neighbors and aligned themselves with the English in Connecticut. Although an English threat of intervention averted a Pocumtuc invasion in 1648, by the late 1650's the Pocumtuc had weakened the Mohegans to the point of tribute. New York and Massachusetts colonial leaders feared that the Pocumtuc posed a serious threat to long-term English settlement due to their powerful and extensive alliances.
Kanienkehaka War & decline
Although an anti-Kanienkehaka alliance with the Pocumtuc, Sokoki, Pennacook, Kennebec Abenaki, Mohicans, French Jesuit missionaries and the Narragansett was formed in 1650, friendly relations were restored with the Kanienkehaka (Mohawks) by the late 1650's. The English had refused to join this alliance, not only due to fear of Kanienkehaka raids, but also because the eventual desire to lure away the Kanienkehaka and wider Haudenosaunee fur trade from the New Netherlands. However, tit-for-tat attacks between the Kanienkehaka and Sokoki was dragging the Sokoki's Pocumtuc allies into war. European intervention included a 1663 letter by John Pynchon writing to the Dutch & Kanienkehaka absolving New England's Pocumtuc Confederacy trading partners, with the Dutch brokering an initial peace accord between the Kanienkehaka and the Connecticut River valley nations in May 1664, with a primary objective freeing Kanienkehaka captives taken by the Sokoki and being held by the Pocumtuc.
Almost simultaneously in May 1664, some of John Pynchon’s primary sub-traders (David Wilton, Henry Clark, Thomas Clarke and Joseph Parsons), rode up from Northampton to deliver a message- if these differences with the Kanienkehaka could not be settled, the English would have no alternative but to force the Pocumtuc to leave the valley. Some of these sub-traders were also present in the ensuing negotiations between Dutch, Kanienkehaka and Mohican emissaries, potentially as translators. Thereafter, the emissaries were escorted out of Pocumtuc territory, and promised to return to provide a wampum tribute to seal the peace. However the Kanienkehaka sachem Saheda and other Kanienkehaka ambassadors were killed a month later in Pocumtuc territory whilst en route to delivering the wampum. A retaliatory Kanienkehaka attack in February 1665 killed the Pocumtuc sachem Onapequin and his family, and destroyed the Pocumtuc fort.
In February 1665, John Winthrop Jr. told Roger Williams that the Kanienkehaka had killed Onapequin by mistake and that Pocumtuc had fled to Norwottuck seeking assistance. By July of 1665, Winthrop Jr. reported that a multitude of Indigenous people were at arms, “all in a combination from Hudson’s River to Canada,” as this incident rippled across the region. Pynchon may have been disinclined to broker peace as in September 1664, the Dutch relinquished New Netherlands to the English, and subsequently a deal was signed on the 24th of September 1664, between Kanienkehaka & Seneca authorities and English officials in Fort Amsterdam (New York), in the aftermath of Saheda's death.
The deal promised no English assistance for the Pocumtuc and their Sokoki and Pennacook allies, along with safe refuge for the Kanienkehaka should they lose a conflict against either three nations. The death of Saheda, in particular, was held up as a reason for English leaders to form a new alliance with the Kanienkehaka and Mohicans against the Connecticut River valley nations. In effect, the deal secured the Kanienkehaka peoples' southern flanks by incorporating the Mohicans in the new alliance, and safeguarded powder and shot sales from New York traders. The deal also secured safe access to the newly acquired lucrative Hudson Valley fur trade for Pynchon and his sub-traders, and redirected Kanienkehaka retribution towards the Pocumtuc and their allies.
Before the transfer from Dutch to English administration, Dutch Commissary Gerrit Slichtenhorst heard the Kanienkehaka sachem Cajadogo’s testimony in Fort Orange's Court (Albany) that John Pynchon and his associates had orchestrated Saheda’s murder:
. . . the English have told and directed the savages, to fight or kill the Dutch and Mohawks and the English have threatened, if you do not do as we tell you, we shall kill you. They say also, that 40 ships shall come across the sea to make war here and ask for the surrender of this country and if we were not willing to give it up, they intend to kill us all together . . . They say further, that at the time when the messengers of the Mohawks had come to the fort of the Pocumtuc savages to confirm the peace, several Englishmen were in the fort, who [urged] the savages to kill the Mohawks and they are dead now.
Pynchon denied this account, claiming that Clarke and Wilton were at the fort to make peace. New Netherlands Governor Peter Stuyvesant suspected that the story might have been fabricated to secure a Dutch alliance, but the records are not entirely clear. Regardless, John Pynchon & the English were well positioned to take advantage of this significant reversal in Pocumtuc fortunes. Conversely, English involvement in the Pocumtuc-Kanienkehaka war, interference with indigenous diplomacy, extrajudicial appointments of sachems, and subsequent opportunism in obtaining Pocumtuc land left lingering resentments which, compounding with other conflicts in New England, contributed to the outbreak of hostilities in King Philip's War.
Land transactions
Even when the Pocumtuc were at full-strength, their Agawam and Norwottuck neighbors were already bargaining their independence with the English through land transactions. However, these agreements are better interpreted as "joint use" agreements, reserving rights for harvesting game, wood, and corn from pre-existing cornfields, and to even set up wigwams on the town common, with some parcels being "sold" multiple times.
Nevertheless, the Pocumtuc were not as initially inclined to cede land to the English settlers as other nations. However, after the Kanienkehaka War and the destruction of Pocumtuc fort, English settlers from Dedham were empowered by Pynchon to negotiate buy-outs with Pocumtuc survivors. A 1665 survey by Joshua Fisher, drawn up before the land was even sold, appears to preserve usufruct rights, however made no mention of Indigenous presence. This is despite the existing Pocumtuc planting fields, wigwam sites, burial grounds, and trails, with Fisher instead depicting 8000 acres of empty land. Noting this, Margaret Bruchac states that "it’s doubtful that the English actually intended to honor Native rights in the long run".
A Quabog deed with the English in 1665 reflected this transition, making no provision for continued Indigenous use of the land and resources. It does, however, 'highlight shared tribal interests'. As some of the land was also claimed by the Pocumtuc, both nations shared the pay-out; enough wampum to manufacture at least 100 wampum belts. Bruchac argues that the wampum generated from these sales may have been particularly attractive to the Pocumtuc, in their desire to exchange them as tributes of peace with the Kanienkehaka, contributing to the repair of Pocumtuc-Kanienkehaka relations in subsequent years. This may have been a significant factor behind the shift in the Pocumtuc's strategy, as four subsequent land deeds were signed in quick succession between 1667 and 1674, with at least two directly dealt to John Pynchon also neglecting traditional rights.
King Philip's War & Connecticut River Campaign
The Wampanoag sachem Metacomet (King Philip) drew on his alliances with the Nipmuc and Connecticut River valley nations, as King Philip's War raged across the Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island colonies from June 1675 onwards. John Pynchon, now a Major and commander-in-chief of the Connecticut River campaign, had hoped that the Connecticut River valley peoples would not join the war due to a lack of support from the Kanienkehaka (entreating that they "not to entertain or favor" the Pocumtuc and their allies), but this was ultimately not a deterrence.