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As long as he lived Massasoit remained the firm friend of the colonists. Upon his death, in 1662, his son Wamsutta (or Alexander) headed the Wampanoag tribe for a year, and then came Philip, Massasoit’s second son. Philip was a foe to the white men, made such by English treatment of his tribe. He was one of the ablest Indian leaders this country has produced, a wonderful organizer, a skillful diplomatist. From tribe to tribe he journeyed, inducing them to rest from their interminable wars and to turn their weapons against the common enemy of all. But for an accident which caused hostilities to begin a little while before the year (1676) Philip had fixed upon, the colonists would have been swept from the land. The war began in 1675, and Capt. Benjamin Church, the conqueror of Philip, wrote an account of it. Benjamin Church was one of our greatest “Indian fighters.” He had lain in their wigwams, he had studied their character. Naturally and inevitably he came at last to the leadership of the colonial forces. When Philip’s plans had all come to naught, the Wampanoag sachem came back to Mt. Hope, to make his last stand and to die. Death came to him from a bullet fired by one of his own men who had taken service in Capt. Church’s company. In 1876, on the two hundredth anniversary of his death, the Rhode Island Historical Society, with appropriate ceremonies, placed a boulder monument on the top of Mt. Hope, with this inscription: