==Great Swamp Fight==
Finally the colonists overcame their weaknesses and devised a common strategy that worked. The Indians avoided pitched battles, but the had to defend their food stores of or they would starve in the harsh winter. They could hide the stores but they could not easily move them, so the colonies, using scouts from friendly tribes, discovered and destroyed the enemy food supplies in December-January, 1675-76 and defeated the Indians who were forced into a pitched battle on European terms because to flee meant starvation.
The colonists first preemptively destroyed the threat posed by the Narragansett in the Great Swamp Fight on Dec. 19, 1675, (at the present site of South Kingstown, Rhode Island). The combined forces of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut, over 1,000 soldiers under the command of Gov. Josiah Winslow, with about 150 Indian allies, marched through the snow to the island in the Great Swamp, which had been fortified by the Narraganset to protect their food supplies. The first assault by the colonists early in the afternoon, was turned back with heavy losses; after three hours of desperate fighting the fort was forced at the rear and the Indians routed. The Indian wigwams were set on fire, and many women and children died in the flames. The English lost six captains and 120 men and the Narraganset losses ran into the hundreds. This battle forever changed the power of the Narraganset and gave the settlers confidence they had a winning strategy, with unified commands, Indian scouts, and a systematic attack on heavily guarded food stores. Several thousand Narraganset warriors who had not been in the swamp now joined the insurgency.
Philip and a small band wintered near Albany, New York, in hopes of gaining aid from the Mohawk Indians and the French. In early 1676 he attacked the eastern settlements in order to concentrate English forces there while they planted food crops in the Connecticut Valley. On February 10, 1676, Narragansett and Nipmuck Indians raided Lancaster, Massachusetts. They burned most of the town, killed more than 35 villagers, and took 24 captives, including 41-year-old [[Mary Rowlandson]] and her three children; her 6-year-old daughter was killed for falling behind. Mary spent 12 weeks in captivity before she was freed for a ransom of £20. Indians threatened Plymouth, Providence, and towns within 10 miles of Boston.
The long run logistics advantage of the colonists now came into play. Colonists had plenty of food but the disruption of Indian life made them unable to plant, fish, or harvest; they depended on stored supplies and began to run short of food. Indians started deserting to forage and plant crops.
Colonists captured and executed Canonchet on Apr. 3. The Mohawks suddenly decided to attack the Narragansett from the west, thereby helping the colonists. Finally on May 18-19, 1676, Capt. William Turner with 180 men surprised and massacred the Indians at Deerfield and broke their resistance in the Connecticut River valley. By the end of May the tide had turned in the west. The colonials gained further victories in June and July, and bands of war-hungry Indians surrendered en masse. Capt. Benjamin Church, assisted by able Indian scouts, trapped Philip and his Wampanoag in swamps near Taunton and Bridgewater, killing Philip on August 12, 1676. Philip's death marked the end of the main war, though hostilities continued in New Hampshire and Maine, where the Abnaki and others, supplied with French arms and encouragement, wreaked havoc on settlement after settlement.
==Results==
On April 12, 1678, articles of peace were signed at Casco, Maine, with mutual restoration of captives and property. Since June 1675, sixteen towns in Massachusetts and four in Rhode Island had been destroyed, all colonists had fled Kennebec County (Maine), and all along New England frontiers, expansion had been retarded. But the Indians no longer posed a threat to the colonists in southern New England. Thereafter their struggle was confined to the northeast and northwest, where it merged with the struggle between the colonists and France for control of the continent.