Mount Hope (Rhode Island)
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Mount Hope (originally Montaup in Pokanoket) is a hill in Bristol, Rhode Island overlooking the part of Narragansett Bay known as Mount Hope Bay. Mount Hope was the site of a Wampanoag (Pokanoket) village and is remembered for its role in King Philip's War.[1]
Today, Brown University's Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology owns 376 acres of woodland on Mt. Hope off of Tower Street in Bristol. The Museum grounds on Mount Hope include King Philip's Seat (or "chair"), a large rock formation where Wampanoag chief King Philip held meetings, and the site of King Philip's death in Miery Swamp is nearby. Mount Hope Farm is also nearby.
The first battle of King Philip's War took place near here in 1675; although Philip was eventually defeated, his Indian name, Metacom, is now the name of a main road in nearby Bristol.
King Philip made nearby Mount Hope his base of operations. "King Philip's Chair," a rocky ledge on the mountain, was a lookout site for enemy ships on Mount Hope Bay and is viewable as part of the Haffenreffer Museum grounds. The site of where Captain Benjamin Church's men killed King Philip in 1676 is located in nearby Miery Swamp. Church eventually became an owner of Mount Hope.
After that war concluded, the town surrounding Mt. Hope was settled in 1680 as part of the Plymouth Colony. Mt. Hope remained a part of Massachusetts until the Crown transferred Bristol to the Rhode Island Colony in 1747.
