With ominous
scowls and grunts some seventy muskets were given up, but this was all.
Through the summer there was much uneasiness, and in September Philip
was summoned to Plymouth with five of his under-sachems, and solemnly
warned to keep the peace. The savages again behaved with humility and
agreed to pay a yearly tribute of five wolves' heads and to do no act of
war without express permission.
For three years things seemed quiet, until late in 1674 the alarm was
again sounded. Sausamon, a convert from the Massachusetts tribe, had
studied a little at Harvard College, and could speak and write English
with facility. He had at one time been employed by Philip as a sort of
private secretary or messenger, and at other times had preached and
taught school among the Indian converts at Natick. Sausamon now came to
Plymouth and informed Governor Winslow that Philip was certainly engaged
in a conspiracy that boded no good to the English. Somehow or other
Philip contrived to find out what Sausamon had said, and presently
coming to Plymouth loudly asseverated his innocence; but the magistrates
warned him that if they heard any more of this sort of thing his
arms would surely be seized. A few days after Philip had gone home,
Sausamon's hat and gun were seen lying on the frozen surface of
Assowamsett Pond, near Middleborough, and on cutting through the ice his
body was found with unmistakable marks of beating and strangling.
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