The measures adopted by the Commissioners certainly went far toward carrying out Mrs. Pray’s suggestion.  The demeanour of the Narragansetts had become very threatening, and their capacity for mischief exceeded that of all the other tribes together.  In July the Commissioners had made a treaty with them, but in October it became known in Boston that they were harbouring some of Philip’s hostile Indians.  When the Commissioners sharply called them to account for this, their sachem Canonchet, son of Miantonomo, promised to surrender the fugitives within ten days.  But the ten days passed and nothing was heard from the Narragansetts.  The victory of their brethren at Bloody Brook had worked upon their minds, so that they no longer thought it worth while to keep faith with the white men.  They had overcome their timidity and were now ready to take part in the work of massacre. [33] The Commissioners soon learned of their warlike preparations and lost no time in forestalling them.  The Narragansetts were fairly warned that if they did not at once fulfil their promises they must expect the utmost severities of war.  A thousand men were enlisted for this service and put under command of Governor Winslow, and in December they marched against the enemy.  The redoubtable fighter and lively chronicler Benjamin Church accompanied the expedition.

The Indians had fortified themselves on a piece of rising ground, six acres in extent, in the middle of a hideous swamp impassable at most seasons but now in some places frozen hard enough to afford a precarious footing.  They were surrounded by rows of tall palisades which formed a wall twelve feet in thickness; and the only approach to the single door of this stronghold was over the trunk of a felled tree some two feet in diameter and slippery with snow and ice.  A stout block-house filled with sharpshooters guarded this rude bridge, which was raised some five feet from the ground.  Within the palisaded fortress perhaps not less than 2000 warriors, with many women and children, awaited the onset of the white men, for here had Canonchet gathered together nearly the whole of his available force.  This was a military mistake.  It was cooping up his men for slaughter.  They would have been much safer if scattered about in the wilderness, and could have given the English much more trouble.  But readily as they acknowledged the power of the white man, they did not yet understand it.  One man’s courage is not another’s, and the Indian knew little or nothing of that Gothic fury of self-abandonment which rushes straight ahead and snatches victory from the jaws of death.  His fortress was a strong one, and it was no longer, as in the time of the Pequots, a strife in which firearms were pitted against bow and arrow.  Many of the Narragansetts were equipped with muskets and skilled in their use, and under such circumstances victory for the English was not to be lightly won. [Sidenote:  Expedition against the Narragansetts]