After King Philip S War

New perspectives on three centuries of Indian presence in New England

The period of the Indian war of 1676, known as King Philip's war, is one of the most interesting in the early history of the New England colonies. It was the first great test to which the New England Commonwealths were subjected, and it enforced upon them in blood and fire the necessity of a mutual policy and active cooperation. The lesson that union is strength was learned at that time and was never forgotten. New England, after the war, free from fear of any Indian attacks, was able to turn her attention to her own peaceful industrial and political development undisturbed.

Noted historian Christine DeLucia offers a major reconsideration of the violent seventeenth-century conflict in northeastern America known as King Philip’s War, providing an alternative to Pilgrim-centric narratives that have conventionally dominated the histories of colonial New England. DeLucia grounds her study of one of the most devastating conflicts between Native Americans and European settlers in early America in five specific places that were directly affected by the crisis, spanning the Northeast as well as the Atlantic world. She examines the war’s effects on the everyday lives and collective mentalities of the region’s diverse Native and Euro-American communities over the course of several centuries, focusing on persistent struggles over land and water, sovereignty, resistance, cultural memory, and intercultural interactions. An enlightening work that draws from oral traditions, archival traces, material and visual culture, archaeology, literature, and environmental studies, this study reassesses the nature and enduring legacies of a watershed historical event.

King Philip's War--one of America's first and costliest wars--began in 1675 as an Indian raid on several farms in Plymouth Colony, but quickly escalated into a full-scale war engulfing all of southern New England. At once an in-depth history of this pivotal war and a guide to the historical sites where the ambushes, raids, and battles took place, King Philip's War expands our understanding of American history and provides insight into the nature of colonial and ethnic wars in general. Through a careful reconstruction of events, first-person accounts, period illustrations, and maps, and by providing information on the exact locations of more than fifty battles, King Philip's War is useful as well as informative. Students of history, colonial war buffs, those interested in Native American history, and anyone who is curious about how this war affected a particular New England town, will find important insights into one of the most seminal events to shape the American mind and continent.

"With rigorous original scholarship and creative narration, Lisa Brooks recovers a complex picture of war, captivity, and Native resistance during the "First Indian War" (later named King Philip's War) by relaying the stories of Weetamoo, a female Wampanoag leader, and James Printer, a Nipmuc scholar, whose stories converge in the captivity of Mary Rowlandson. Through both a narrow focus on Weetamoo, Printer, and their network of relations, and a far broader scope that includes vast Indigenous geographies, Brooks leads us to a new understanding of the history of colonial New England and of American origins. In reading seventeenth-century sources alongside an analysis of the landscape and interpretations informed by tribal history, Brooks's pathbreaking scholarship is grounded not just in extensive archival research but also in the land and communities of Native New England."--Jacket flap.

Metacomet, younger son of Massasoit, was also known as King Philip. In 1662, he succeeded his brother Wamsutta as sachem or chief of the Wampanoag tribe. Metacomet earnestly attempted to maintain his father's peaceful policies with the Colonists, but the English pushed ever farther into Wampanoag lands, imposing their laws on the native people. Eventually, a reluctant Metacomet united the disparate tribes of the region and led an uprising later known as King Philip's War. The war that is known as King Philip's War ranged from the Mt. Hope peninsula in Rhode Island to the outermost colonial settlement of Northfield, Massachusetts. King Philip's War began with a massacre of colonists at Swansee, Plymouth, by a band of Indians. The war was started by King Philip after three of his people were executed by the English for murdering an Indian in English employ. Brookfield was attacked and destroyed by Indians and they were later forced to retreat under an assault led by Major Simon Willard. Deerfield was set aflame by attacking Indians. Lancaster was attacked by Indians led by King Phillip. The settlement was destroyed by fire after all the men were killed and the women and children taken prisoners. Soon, the Narragansetts joined Metacomet to form an army of three to five thousand men. For a time, his armies' guerrilla-style tactics confounded the enemy, but the British eventually prevailed. Colonial militia surrounded and killed some of the army. With the number of men growing smaller and smaller, Metcomet continued attacking villages. King Philip's War was ended when the Wampanoag leader was surprised and shot by an Indian in the service of Capt. Benjamin Church on August 12, 1676.Metacomet's head was on display in Plymouth for twenty years.

BANCROFF PRIZE WINNER • King Philip's War, the excruciating racial war—colonists against Indigenous peoples—that erupted in New England in 1675, was, in proportion to population, the bloodiest in American history. Some even argued that the massacres and outrages on both sides were too horrific to "deserve the name of a war." The war's brutality compelled the colonists to defend themselves against accusations that they had become savages. But Jill Lepore makes clear that it was after the war—and because of it—that the boundaries between cultures, hitherto blurred, turned into rigid ones. King Philip's War became one of the most written-about wars in our history, and Lepore argues that the words strengthened and hardened feelings that, in turn, strengthened and hardened the enmity between Indigenous peoples and Anglos. Telling the story of what may have been the bitterest of American conflicts, and its reverberations over the centuries, Lepore has enabled us to see how the ways in which we remember past events are as important in their effect on our history as were the events themselves.

Between 1675 and 1676, King Philip's War shattered native tribes and devastated the new English colonies in one of the most significant American wars of the 17th century. The conflict that triggered this terrible war developed over 50 years, as Indians found their lands shrinking and their resources threatened by the colonists. The powerful Pequot and Narragansett tribes were subjugated, and Wampanoag leader King Philip (Metacom) saw his lands taken and his counselors executed. In July 1675, his warriors started an uprising that gained the support of other tribes and sent refugees streaming into Boston. King Philip's War is a penetrating account of this decisive confrontation, which ultimately led to the end of native independence in the area.