He literally pissed on their graves
Added 2021-07-25 01:26:52 +0000 UTCThere's my dog Sal, looking self-satisfied (and very cute) after taking a whizz on the grass covering a mass grave containing Captain Samuel Wadsworth, Captain Samuel Brocklebank, and about fifty of their men who fell together during the Sudbury Fight in April 1676. Horribly disrespectful, I know. In my defense, I halfheartedly rebuked him after the fact.
As you can probably tell, I drove into Massachusetts today, and on the way to my destination stopped by the battlefield in Sudbury to walk Sal and look around.
The monument, erected in 1852, gets a few things wrong, namely the date of the battle (it was April 21st) and the fact that Metacomet, aka King Philip, commanded the Native forces there (no primary sources corroborate this).
Sal and I also explored Green Hill, where the fighting was thickest. Hundreds of Wampanoag, Nipmuc, and Narragansett warriors surrounded and overwhelmed a company of eighty English militiamen, most of whom were killed after they routed and attempted to escape down the western slope of the hill.
I was struck by the short distances between all the major sites of conflict. The base of the hill, where Wadsworth's men were butchered and later buried, was no more than an eighth of a mile from the summit of Green Hill. The Native warriors at the Sudbury Fight were clearly an efficient and ruthless fighting force.
