Taunton had become a major military hub by the time of King Philip’s War. Its relative location to the Three Mile River, Narragansett Bay and its vicinity to the paths leading to Plymouth, Boston, Swansey, and Mt. Hope made the town a “rendezvous for the troops” (Hurd History of Bristol County 742). The town was advantageously located near waterways and en route to the colonial center at Plymouth, but it was also settled in the middle of a major network of Wampanoag territories and trails [link to native territories map; deed map].

Local 19th-century accounts present Taunton as a relatively neutral space prior to King Philip’s War, yet there was an understanding among settlers that their encroachment upon the land proffered the possibility of conflict: “While during all this time military discipline had been carefully attended to...it had really been a period of substantial peace” (Hurd 739). In 1643 the town composed a list of 54 males aged sixteen to sixty eligible to bear arms (Hurd; 8 Ply. Col. Rec. p. 195). To display its military power and capacity, “All abled bodied men were obliged to serve in the train bands and repair on muster days to the village green to drill” (Tisdale 1).

The Taunton Green, “then called the Training Field,” became a site of major military events and spectacle throughout the war: the failed Taunton Agreement in April 1671 and, later, the ground upon which Weetamoo’s body was put on display (Emery 383).  [link to page on secondary sources and violence]

Discrepancies remain over the exact number and locations of official garrisons in Taunton, but sources reveal that several houses were being utilized as military command posts. Secondary sources and genealogical volumes set the number between eight and nine (Tisdale says 9 pg.10, Schultz/Tougais pg.92, Emery p. 384 both say 8). Today, only the locations of three garrison houses are known in Taunton (Schultz & Tougias 92). “Tisdall’s farm” was possibly one of the early muster points (Hurd 741). The exact location of Tisdale’s farm is unknown, but Hurd notes that it was “near Assonet” [deeds map; machine page]

The homes of John Tisdale Sr. and his brother-in-law James Walker, both prominent men of Taunton, were attacked and burned on June 27,1675. Tisdale Sr., John Knolles, and Samuel Atkins (Eastham) were casualties. [see John Freeman letter below] Tisdale and Walker held distinguished bureaucratic roles in Taunton: Tisdale served as Constable (1655, 1659), Selectman (1650, 1658, 1672-4), and Taunton’s Representative to the General Court (1674-5); Walker was on the original 1643 list to bear arms, appointed to Council of Taunton (which allocated arms and ammunition), and selected as Chairman of Taunton’s Council of War in 1671, 1667, 1675 and 1678 (Meet the Tisdales, p.6; 8 Ply. Col. Rec. p. 195; James Bradford Richmond Walker, Memorial of the Walkers, 15). Walker’s position as Chairman to the “Councell of Warr” granted him authority over the town’s arms and ammunition (Walker, Memorial of the Walkers 12; 15). It was Walker who authored a letter to Philip on August 23, 1671 after he failed to relinquish his arms in Taunton and, earlier that year, he was appointed by the Court to “purchase the land of the Indians, in the behalfe of the towne of Taunton, lying on the west syde of the Taunton Riuer, from the Three Mile Riuer, downe to a place called the Store House.” Store house point was located at the confluence of the Teticut (Taunton) and Assonet rivers, across the river from Weetamoo's carefully "guarded” planting and fishing grounds at Assonet (Walker, 13; 15; A History of the Town of Freetown, Massachusetts (Fall River, JH Franklin, 1902), 207; Weinstein, 171).

“Tisdall’s farm” is never listed officially as a garrison or muster point in secondary sources, but its functionality is evidenced in the 1671 gathering that mustered about 100 troops from surrounding Plymouth settlements. During a meeting at the Council of War on which Walker served, plans were enacted for soldiers from surrounding Plymouth settlements to move against Awashonks in a calculated maneuver to seize land by intimidation or violence (Hurd 741). Under Major Winslow, troops from Taunton, Rehoboth, Bridgewater, and Swansey were to go to Sakonnet and compel the Native inhabitants there to relinquish their arms (Hurd 741). On August 8, 1671, troops were to meet “at or near Assonet, about John Tisdall’s farm,” and it nearly turned into an act of violence that would have likely sparked the war years earlier (Hurd 741) The burning of “Tisdall[‘s] farm” and Walker’s home were not random; that they were targeted and wiped out so early in the war by Wampanoag suggests that these spaces were well-known within Indigenous networks as hotbeds of military activity. Not only would Wampanoag and Narragansett peoples have known the locales, Tisdale and Walker’s constant and public attempts to usurp Indigenous rights over territory, access to arms, and their impending threat of violence marked them as prime targets.

Tisdale and Walker’s reputation as conspirators of colonial interest may have made them key targets. But the death of Tisdale was not the death of “Tisdall’s farm;” his property and lands were carefully deeded to his children and their “heires forever” (Tisdale 11). [link to "machine" page]

However, though colonial militarism in Taunton was surely an intentional and public display of power, it is surprising to learn how strapped for food and resources the families and soldiers of Taunton were throughout the war. At the war’s very beginning (when Tisdale’s home was burned), Taunton was overwhelmed by the highly effective tactics of the Wampanoag, and, nearly incapacitated, requested additional supplies and troops.

Freeman’s letter clarifies why the settlements around Taunton were abandoned; the remarkable strength and tactics of the Indigenous warriors left them crippled from the start. Mobility seemed to be a particular problem; without the ancestral knowledge of the landscape, one can imagine that food acquisition would have been difficult.

Even more striking is the effect which food shortage had toward the war’s end. It is known that there was a drought and corresponding food shortage among Indigenous peoples in the spring/summer of 1676, and it is clear that this affected operations at Taunton. In a letter dated July 6, 1676, George Shove, a prominent townsman whose name frequently appears on colonial record and appears to have been heavily involved in the land deeds of the area, plead for supplies.

The context of what Shove seems to characterize as starvation-like conditions at around the time of Lockety Fight and Weetamoo's death has the potential to change the way we imagine the hunt for her and her men. If the soldiers of Taunton were as hungry as Shove makes them out to be, how would that have affected morale? How does this change the way we continue to seek the identities and motives of the twenty Taunton men who were so eager to see Weetamoo dead?