Winslow, Josiah, - 1680

Josiah Winslow was the son of Plymouth Colony Governor, Edward Winslow and Susanna Fuller White of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Winslow removed with his family to Marshfield, where he became a captain of the town’s militia and a representative to the Colony’s Court of Assistants.  From 1658 to 1672 he was a member of Plymouth’s Council of War and in 1658 became a commissioner of the United Colonies.  Winslow served as governor of Plymouth (1673-1680) and was its military leader during King Philip’s War.  His bellicose management of Indian affairs reflected a radical departure from the accommodating policies of his father, becoming as one modern writer has suggested, an “increasing arrogant opportunism towards the colony’s Native Americans.” In 1671, he leveraged an outstanding debt owed to him by Philip’s nephew as means to acquire a large tract of Pokanoket land.  In early 1675, he presided over the controversial trial of Tobias, accused of the death of John Sassamon.  In December of that year, Winslow, as commander of the English forces, led the attack at the Great Swamp Fight and later pursued fleeing Indians in what became known as the Hungry March.  Later, he and Massachusetts Bay Governor John Leverett provided legal cover for the authorities’ enslaving captive Indians.  In late 1675, Winslow and Thomas Hinckley wrote an unpublished account of the war called “A Brief Narrative of the Beginning and Progress of the Present Trouble between Us and the Indians.” 

 

ANBO.  Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 50, 151, 162-163.  Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), xiv, 214, 221-222.  Image, Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, MA, courtesy of Wikipedia.

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