Ever since the publication of William Hubbard's and Increase Mather’s accounts of Weetamoo’s death, historians have been relying largely upon the narrative they created to craft their own interpretations of what happened. While there is some subtle (and often historiographically telling) variation among the secondary accounts, they all agree on the basic details set out by these two, as follows:

August 6th, an Indian willing to shift for himself, fled to Taunton, offering to load any of the English that would follow him, to a party of Indians, which they might easily apprehend, which 20 persons attempted and accordingly seized the whole company, 26 in number all but the squaw Sachem herself, who intending to make an escape from the danger, attempted to get over the river, or arm of the sea near by, upon a raft or some pieces of broken wood ; but whether tired and spent with swimming or starved with cold and hunger, she was stark naked in Metapoiset, not far from the water side, which made some think she was first half drowned, and so ended her wretched life just in that place where the year before she had helped Philip to make his escape ; her head being cut off and set upon a pole in Taunton, Was known by some Indians then prisoners, which set them into a horrible lamentation (Drake edition of Hubbard 224)

This "colonial creation story" of Weetamoo’s fate is an intensely interesting and suggestive one, which resonates on a specific moment in King Philip's War--an act of violence against a woman (and more complexly still, a female Indigenous leader). A death signified by notions of feminine victimhood and loss of sovereignty over land, what "happened" to Weetamoo was marked in colonial writing by the ideology of inevitability. How is that all of her men were killed/captured but she somehow “escaped,” yet was not pursued? That then, somehow someone knew she had tried to escape on a raft, yet there are no witnesses to her death? What does half-drowned mean? And then, how did she actually die? Why is it that no one reported an account of her death? Or that no such account survives?  Such questions have driven our research. Over and over again we are confronted by the lack of materials on Weetamoo's death, which coupled with the dominance of Hubbard and Mather’s colonial narrative has made our pursuit a difficult one. But now, we have the knowledge we need to examine the established colonial viewpoint as a replacement narrative for an encounter that may have been unspeakably violent.

Lockety Fight on the map

Weetamoo’s people were not simply “easily apprehended,” as Hubbard testifies; they put up a fight - enough of a fight to leave a written mark on maps and deeds for years to come. Traditional colonial narratives have never given the exact location where the men from Taunton “seized the whole company,” but in order to reconcile with the account of Weetamoo crossing the Taunton river in an escape attempt, historians have typically placed it just outside the bounds of Taunton, near the river and probably upstream of Mattapoiset, where Hubbard and Mather claim her body was found. However, what historians have overlooked, blinkered by their allegiance to the traditional tragic story of Weetamoo as victim of a crime with no agent, is another battle that is said to have taken place the very same day as her death. For comparison with Hubbard’s account:

On the sixth of August, 1676, an Indian fled to Taunton, and seeking to make terms for himself, offered to conduct the English to a party of the enemy representing that they might be taken with little difficulty or danger. Twenty of the Tauntonians ventured out and surprised and captured the whole twenty-six. The place of this exploit is believed to be at Lockety Neck, between the Rumford and Coweset (or Wading) Rivers (now in Norton). About this time the head of the squaw sachem Weetamoe, was exhibited on a pole at Taunton, her dead body having been found at Metapoiset (Emery 388).

Emery places the two incidents right next to each other, yet he completely misses the overwhelmingly likely connection between them. The correspondence of the dates, the numbers of men, the indigenous informant - it all but confirms that these two events were actually one. There is one major difference between the way the two accounts are told, though - the location. The map, showing the site of the “battle,” itself defies the narratives. Lockety Neck is located at the confluence of the Rumford and Coweset or Wading Rivers, in a thick marsh. According to one account, which acknowledges only the presence of Native men, the warriors were driven toward the confluence and entrapped there. Most important, Lockety Neck is about six miles northwest of the town of Taunton, and correspondingly far from Taunton river. If Weetamoo had been “intending to make an escape from the danger” and “attempted to get over the river,” she would have had to run six miles straight toward Taunton - the hornet’s nest of the people she was allegedly fleeing (or down a nearby stream toward its junction with the Kteticut/Taunton River). Crossing the river, then, would have left her nowhere to go. Hence, the traditional assumption that the battle took place much closer to the river.

If Lockety Neck was, indeed, the site of the fight with Weetamoo and her men, and Weetamoo did turn up dead in Mattapoiset, the question remains: what really happened to Weetamoo, who was so deeply grieved by her relations, when she was displayed as a sign of conquest on the green in Taunton? If she did not “escape,” was she “seized” along with her men? To our mind, one explanation remains: Weetamoo was captured and taken along with her warriors to Taunton, where something so unspeakable was done to her that none of the narratives recorded it. Her body was then thrown into the Taunton river, where it washed up in Mattapoiset, and was pronounced “drowned” for over three hundred years of "histories" written afterward. The “lamentations” of her relations resonate, grieving not only her death and dismemberment but the silence that drowns out the possibilities of witnessing and re-membering.

Although Mather and Hubbard do not acknowledge her role in the Lockety Fight, Weetamoo's kin acknowledged their leader, their tears a symbol of great reverence to the rock woman who resisted, who fought so fiercely for them. Their cries were not only in grief, but to honor her “glory,” which they knew now must “fly beyond the stars.”