"In the winter of the year 1674 an indian was found dead, and by a Corener iquest of Plimoth Coleny judged murdered.  he was found dead in a hole thro ies broken in a pond...the dead indian was called Sausimun and a Christian that could read and write."1

Who was John Sassamon and why was his murder so instrumental in starting King Philip's War?  Sassamon was Harvard-educated Wampanoag who had lived for many years in one of Reverend John Eliot's praying towns.  As a Christian Indian, he had fought on the English side during the Pequot War.      In 1660, he left behind his life among the English and went back to live among the Wampanoags.  Because of his knowledge of the colonists' ways, Sassamon became Wamsutta's advisor.  After Wamsutta's death, Sassamon carried on the same work for Metacom.      Sometime in 1673 or 1674, Sassamon was fired by Metacom.  The exact reason for this is unclear today.  Schultz and Tougias suggest it was either because of Sassamon's close ties to the English or some sort of land swindle the secretary had tried to work on the sachem.2      In January of 1675, Sassamon warned Massachusetts Governor Winslow that Metacom was actively plotting an uprising.  Not long after (despite Easton's placement of the murder in 1674), Sassamon's body was found crammed through a hole in an ice-covered pond.  A Christian Wampanoag came forward that summer and claimed to have witnessed Sassamon's murder at the hands of three other Wampanoags.  One of the men he accused was an advisor to Metacom.      A longstanding source of discontent among the natives was that they were required to submit to English law and justice.  The three men were put on trial before a jury of twelve whites and a token number of Indians.  The jury found them guilty as charged.  All three were sentenced to be hanged in June of 1675.       The show trial and the subsequent executions were the final straws for the already frustrated Wampanoag people.  Ever since Osamequin had first befriended and helped the English settlers, the natives had seen their way of life being slowly but steadily destroyed.  They would now do something about it.

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1 John Easton.  "A Relacion of the Indyan Warre, by Mr. Easton, of Roade Isld., 1675" in Narratives of the Indian Wars 1675-1699.  ed.  Charles H. Lincoln.  (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913; New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1966), 7.

2  Eric B. Schultz and Michael Tougias.  King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict.  (Woodstock: The Countryman Press, 1999), 25.