King Philip's War

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King Philip's War was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day southern New England and English colonists and their Native American allies from 1675–1676. Nearly one in twenty persons overall among Native Americans and English were wounded or killed. King Phillip's war was one of the bloodiest and most costly in the history of America.

The war is named after the main leader of the Indian side, Metacomet, Metacom, or Pometacom, known to the English as "King Philip".

Contents 1 Background 1.1 Disease and war 1.2 Failure of diplomacy 1.3 Population: two views 1.4 Religion 1.5 The war begins 2 The war 2.1 Early engagements 2.2 Indian victories 2.3 Colonial comeback 3 Aftermath 4 External Links 5 References 6 Bibliography 6.1 Primary sources 6.2 Secondary sources 6.3 E-Sources

[edit] Background

Tensions fluctuated between some groups of native peoples and other groups of native people. The colonists of what is now southern and northern New England, were constantly and disturbingly present. The treatment of the Wampanoag and allied native peoples by the English officials of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven colonies was considered heavy-handed.^{[citation needed]}

Incursions into the three separately confederated territories of the Narragansett, Mohegan, and Wampanoag by the New Englanders who were intent on continuing colonial expansion along the coastal plain, into the woodland interior, and up the Connecticut River valley.

The English Civil War and Oliver Cromwell's English Commonwealth was fought and won by New England's Puritan allies that remained in England. After Cromwell's death in 1659 and the English Restoration of 1660 and Charles II of England was "restored" back to England under restrictions set by the English Parliament. He was the son of the beheaded Charles I of England and a bitter enemy of all things Puritan. By 1664 Charles had declared war on the Dutch and captured New York; installing Edmund Andros as governor there. The French in Canada hated almost all things British and would more likely support the Indians than the colonists. Bacon's Rebellion of 1675 had tied down the Virginia government, the only other significant English presence in North America. So in 1675 the New England colonies were almost without allies in North America and would fight the war almost exclusively with their own money and militias.

[edit] Disease and war

The native population throughout the Northeast had been significantly reduced by pandemics of smallpox, spotted fever and measles abrought in by fishermen starting in about 1618--two years before the first colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts had been settled.^[1] Shifting alliances between different Algonkian peoples and the Haudenosaunee, represented by leaders such as Massasoit, Sassacus, Uncas, and Ninigret, and the colonial polities of Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, negotiated a troubled peace for several decades.

[edit] Failure of diplomacy

Metacom, known to the English as "King Philip" became Sachem of the Pokanoket and Grand Sachem of the Wampanoag Confederacy after the suspicious death of his older brother, the Grand Sachem Wamsutta in 1662. Well known to the English before his ascension to the Wampanoag chieftancy, Metacom's open distrust of the colony came to a head when Wamsutta suddenly died in Plymouth, while negotiating with colonial officials there and he succeed his brother.

Metacom began negotiating with other Indian tribes against the interests of Plymouth Colony soon after the death of the Plymouth colony's greatest ally, his father, Massasoit in 1661 and his brother Wamsutta in 1662. For almost half a century, Massasoit had been able to maintain an uneasy alliance with the English soon after their arrival as a source of much desired trade goods and even a counter-weight to his traditional enemies, the Pequot, Narragansett, and the Mohegan. Massasoit's price of having the English as allies and traders of iron age goods was colonial incursion into Wampanoag territory as well as English political interference. Keeping up good relations with the English became increasingly harder as Massasoit, Wamsutta and Metacom run out of Indian trade goods and started trading land for iron tools and weapons.

[edit] Population: two views

The English colonists, by 1670, had settled only a few towns in the region between New England's coastal plain and the Connecticut River Valley. This area was sparsely populated, with fewer than ten small colonial settlements scattered throughout the interior. These small interior frontier towns would suffer much during the coming war. Most New England settlements were clustered around the coast or on rivers like the Connecticut. The total New England population from various record sources is estimated at 50,000 to 60,000 in 1675.

The Indians in the same area had disunited tribal units, whose combined population, despite the devastation wrought by disease and warfare, was significantly larger than the colonial settlements in the interior. The total Indian population in New England is unknown with estimates differing by over a factor of ten from a few thousand to a few tens of thousands.

In 1671, the court in Plymouth hearing of on-going threats against the colonists, attempted to coerce Metacom's people, the Pokanoket, as well as allied Wampanoag groups to turn over many of their firearms to the colony. They had very limited success in this request. This only served to increase the suspicions of Metacom, and even some of his traditional enemies, the Narragansett, Pequot and Mohegan to the south.

[edit] Religion

The Puritans regarded one of the aims of colonization to be the conversion of native peoples. Thus a political, diplomatic, philosophical, and moral position increased tensions. Through conversion to Christianity, the Puritans hoped to further their colonial ambitions with the gradual religious, social and political integration of native peoples into English colonial society. However, only a handful of colonial missionaries, such as John Eliot and Thomas Mayhew, succeeded in gaining the trust of native peoples. Even Massasoit, one of the colony's staunchest Native allies, refused admittance to villages within greater Wampanoag territory to those intent on Christian conversion.

By 1660, John Eliot oversaw the establishment of seven "Praying Towns." By 1680, several more had been established in Nipmuc territory, among which were, Chachaubunkkakowok (Chaubunagungamaug), Okommakamesit (Ockoogameset), Hassanamisco, Magunkaquog (Makunkokoag, Magunkook), Maanexit (also spelled Mayanexit, located on the Quinebaug River near the old Connecticut Path to and from Massachusetts, Quinnatisset, located roughly "6 miles south of Maanexit", and Wabaquasset (Massomuck, Wabiquisset), the largest of the three northeastern Connecticut praying towns, located 6 miles west of the Quinebaug River in present-day Woodstock, Connecticut, Manchaug, Nashobah, Nashaway (Weshacum), Okommakamesit Pakachoog (Packachaug), Quabaug (Quaboag), Quantisset (Quinetusset), Wacuntug (Wacuntuc, Wacumtaug), and Wamesit. Here, Native peoples were expected to learn English customs and trades. In all there were several 100 "Praying Indians" converts and they would be used shabbily by both sides in the up-coming conflict. They may have wanted English goods and military protection. Praying towns developed quickly due to the efforts of native peoples themselves.

[edit] The war begins

The spark that ignited King Philip's War was a report from a "Praying Indian" translator and advisor to Metacom named John Sassamon. Sassamon relayed to Massachusetts Bay Colony officials the news of an impending Indian attacks on widely dispersed colonial settlements. Before colonial officials could investigate the charges, John Sassamon was murdered, his body found beneath an ice-covered pond, allegedly killed by few of Phillip's Wampanoag angry at his betrayal.

On the testimony of an Indian witness, Plymouth Colony arrested three Wampanoags, convicted them (with a jury with some Indian members) of John Sassamon's murder, and hanged them on June 8, 1675 at Plymouth. Some of the Wampanoag believed that the three had been framed; that in fact, both the trial and the court's sentence were an insult to Indian sovereignty. In response, on June 20, a band of Pokanoket, possibly without Philip's approval, assaulted several isolated homesteads in Swansea. Laying siege to the town, they then destroyed the town five days later. They killed several settlers.

Officials from Plymouth and Boston were quick to respond, and on June 28 they sent an expedition that destroyed the Wampanoag town at Mount Hope (modern Bristol, Rhode Island).

[edit] The war

[edit] Early engagements

The war quickly spread, and soon involved the Podunk and Nipmuck tribes. During the summer of 1675 the Indians attacked at Middleborough and Dartmouth (July 8),Mendon (July 14), Brookfield (August 2), and Lancaster (August 9). In early September they attacked Deerfield, Hadley, and Northfield (possibly giving rise to the Angel of Hadley legend.) The New England Confederation declared war on the Indians on September 9, 1675. The next colonial expedition was to recover crops from abandoned fields for the coming winter and included almost a hundred farmers/militia. They got careless and were ambushed and soundly defeated in the Battle of Bloody Brook[1] (near Hadley) on September 18, 1675. The attacks on frontier settlements continued at Springfield (October 5) and Hatfield (October 16).

The next expansion to the war came from the colonists. On November 2, Josiah Winslow led a combined force of colonial militia against the Narragansett tribe. The Narragansetts had not yet been directly involved in the war, but they had sheltered many of the Wampanoag's women and children and several of their men had been reportedly seen in several Indian raiding parties. The whole tribe was not trusted by the colonists. As the colonial force assembled and marched around Rhode Island several abandoned Indian towns were found and burned, but the Narragansett had retreated to a massive fort in the swamp. Led by an Indian guide, on December 16, 1675 on a bitterly cold storm filled day the main Narragansett fort near modern South Kingstown, Rhode Island was found. Crossing the frozen swamp, a combined force of Plymouth, Massachusetts and Connecticut militia of about 1000 men including about 150 Pequots and Mohicans attacked the fort. This bitter and hard fought battle is known as the Great Swamp Fight. Its believed that about 300 Indians were killed (exact figures are unavailable). The masssive fort (occuping an entire acre of land) was burned, and most of the tribe's winter stores, destroyed. Many of the warriors and their families escaped into the frozen swamp. Facing a winter with little food and shelter, the whole surviving Narragansett tribe was forced out of quasi-neutrality and joined the fight. The colonists lost many of their officers in this assault: about 70 of their men were killed and nearly 150 more wounded. ^[2]

[edit] Indian victories

Throughout the winter of 1675–1676 more frontier settlements were destroyed by the Indians, as well as the burning of Bull Garrison House. Attacks came at Andover, Bridgewater, Chelmsford, Groton, Lancaster, Marlborough, Medfield, Medford, Portland, Providence, Rehoboth, Scituate, Seekonk, Simsbury, Sudbury, Suffield,Warwick, Weymouth, and Wrentham.

Spring of 1676 marked the high point for the combined tribes when, on March 12, they attacked Plymouth Plantation itself. Though the town withstood the assault, the natives had demonstrated their ability to penetrate deep into colonial terrority. Three more settlements -- Longmeadow (near Springfield), Marlborough, and Simsbury -- were attacked two weeks later, as Captian Pierce and a company of Massachusetts soldiers were wiped out between Pawtucket and the Blackstone's settlement. The abandoned capital of Rhode Island (Providence) was burned to the ground on March 29. At the same time, a small band of Indians infiltrated and conflagrated part of Springfield, Massachusetts while the militia was away.

[edit] Colonial comeback

The tide of war began to turn. It became a war of attrition, and both sides were determined to eliminate the other. The Indians succeeded in driving their enemy back into the larger towns, but their supplies, nearly always only sufficient for a season or so, were running out. The colony of Rhode Island became an island colony for a time as the few hundred colonists there were driven back to Newport and Portsmouth RI on Aquidneck Island and Providence, Rhode Island was burned to the ground. The towns of Connecticut largely escaped unharmed although many Connecticut militia were killed helping their fellow colonist fight the war. The Connecticut River colonies such as Springfield, Massachusetts and Northampton, Massachusetts held their ground, though attacked several times. The colonists continued to be supplied by sea, and although the war ultimately cost them over £100,000, over 600 killed and 12 towns destroyed and many more damaged they emerged victorious. The Indians were dispersed or put on reservations and never recovered their former power.

The Indian hopes for supplies from the French in Canada were not met, except for some ammunition in Maine. The colonists allied themselves with the Mohegan tribe to the west, and King Philip found his forces continually harassed on the east and south. In January 1675/76 Philip travels westward to Mohawk territory, seeking, but failing to secure, an alliance. Their traditional crop growing areas and fishing places were continually attacked and they were had poor luck growing more food for the coming winter. The Mohawks, the traditional enemy of many of the warring tribes, prodeceeded to raid isolated groups of Indians. Many Indians drifted North into Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Canada. Some drifted west into New York and points further west to avoid their traditional enemies the Iroquois.

In April 1676 the Narragansett were completely defeated and their chief, Canonchet, was killed. On May 18th 1676 Captain William Turner of the Massachusetts Militia and a group of about 150 militia volunteers from Hadley, Northampton and Hatfield, Massachusetts managed to sneak up and attack a large fishing camp of hungry Indians at Peskeopscut on a falls on the Connecticut river (now called Turners Falls, Massachusetts). These Indians had been raiding the Colonists towns and fields along the upper Connecticut river. The surprise was nearly complete and its claimed that over one hundred Indians were killed as many jumped in the river to escape and were swept over the falls. Turner and as many as 40 of the militia were killed on the retreat.^[3] With the help of their long time allies the Mohegans, the colonists won at Hadley, Massachusetts on June 12, 1676, and scattered most of the survivors into the wilds of New Hampshire and points north. Later that month, a force of 250 Indians was routed near Marlborough, Massachusetts. Other forces, often a combined force of colonial volunteers and Indian allies, from Massachusetts and Connecticut continued to attack, kill, capture or disperse bands of Narragansetts as they tried drifting back to their traditional locations in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Amnesty was granted to Indians who surrendered and showed they had not participated in the conflict.

Philip's allies began to desert him. By early July, over 400 had surrendered to the colonists, and Philip himself had taken refuge in the Assowamset Swamp, below Providence, Rhode Island. The colonists began to form raiding parties of friendly Indians and volunteer militia. They were allowed to keep what warring Indian possessions they found and received a bounty on all captives. Phillip was ultimately defeated by one of these teams when he was tracked down by friendly Indians lead by Captain Benjamin Church of the Plymouth colony milita at Mt. Hope Rhode Island where he was shot and killed by an Indian named John Alderman on August 12 1676. The war was nearly over except for attacks in Maine lasting until 1677.

[edit] Aftermath

With Metacom's death, the war in the south was largely ended. Over 600 colonists and 3,000 Indians had been killed including several hundred native captives that were executed or sold as slaves in Bermuda [2], including Metacom's son (and, also, according to Bermudian tradition, his wife). Members of the sachem's extended family were placed for safekeeping among colonists in Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut. In Stonington, Connecticut, selectman John Starkweather married his Christianized captive. Other survivors were forced to join more western tribes, mainly as captives. The Narragansett, Wampanoag, Podunk, Nipmuck, and several smaller bands were virtually eliminated as organized bands,^{[citation needed]} while even the Mohegans were greatly weakened.

Sir Edmund Andros negotiated a treaty with some of the northern Indian bands on April 12, 1678 as he tried to establish his New York power structure in Maine's fishing industry. Andros was arrested and sent back to England at the start of the Glorious Revolution in 1689. Sporadic Indian and French raids would plague Maine and New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts for the next 50 years as France continued to encourage and finance raids on the New England settlers. Most of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were now nearly all open to New England's continuing settlements of new towns. Frontier settlements in New England would face Indian raids until the French and Indian War finally drove the French authorities out in 1762.

The war, for a time, seriously damaged the recently arrived English colonists prospects in New England. But with their extraordinary population growth rate of about 3%/year (doubling every 25 years) they repaired all the damage, replaced their loses and continued on with establishing new towns within a few years. For many native peoples, recovery from the conflagration of King Philip's War continues more than three hundred years later.

The colonist's defence of New England brought them to the attention of the British government who soon tried to exploit them for their own gain. This started with the revocation of the charter of Massachusetts Bay in 1684 (enforced 1686) At the same time, an Anglican church was established in Boston in 1686, ending the Puritan monopoly on religion. The legend of Connecticut's Charter Oak stems from the belief that a cavity within the tree was used in late 1687 as a hiding place for the colony's charter as Andros tried to revoke their charter and take over their militia. In 1690 Plymouth's charter was not renewed and they were forced to join the Massachusetts government. The Massachusetts General Court was brought under nominal British government rule; but all members except the Royal Governor and a few of his hencehmen were elected as always. Nearly all layers of government and church life remained Puritan and only a few of the so called "upper crust" joined the Anglican church. Most New Englanders lived in self governing towns and attended the Congregational churches that they had already been set up by 1690. New towns, complete with their own militsa, were nearly all established by the sons and daughters of the original settlers and were in nearly all cases modeled after these original settlements. The many trials and tribulations between The crown and British Parliament for the next 100 years made self government not only desireable but relatively easy to continue. The squabbles with the British government would eventually lead to Lexington, Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill by 1775, a century and four generations later. When the British were forced to evacuated Boston in 1776, only a few thousand of the over 700,000 New Englanders, went with them.

King Philip's War was not the first or last conflict between Europeans and Native Americans. Previous conflicts include the Spanish enslavement of natives in the Caribbean, Florida and New Mexico as Coronado's expediton of 1540-1542 to New Mexico and the midwest and Desoto's war of destruction to the Mississippi in 1538-1542 introduced the Indians to Spanish culture. The Powhatan war of 1622 in Virginia, the Pequot War of 1637 in Connecticut, the Dutch-Indian war of 1643 along the Hudson River[3] the second Powhatan war of 1644, [4] and the Iroquois Beaver Wars of 1650 [5] are a few of a long list of other battles or "wars" fought prior to 1675's Philip's War.

In her book, The Name of War, Boston University Professor Jill Lepore theorizes that King Phillip's War was the beginning of the development of a greater American identity, for the trials and tribulations suffered by the colonists made them into a group distinct of their English ties.

[edit] External Links

• Cape Cod Online: Worlds Rejoined.
• Genealogy.com: Massasoit
• The Royal Gazette: Bermudians (Mohegans) and Pequots Reconnect

[edit] References

1. ^ "Epidemics and Pandemics in the U.S."
2. ^ "Flintlock and Tomahawk--New England in King Philip's War" by Douglas Edward Leach, pg. 130-132
3. ^ "Flintlock and Tomahawk--New England in King Philip's War" by Douglas Edward Leach, pg 200-203

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Primary sources

• Easton, John, A Relation of the Indian War, by Mr. Easton, of Rhode Island, 1675 (See link below.)
• Eliot, John. ”Indian Dialogues”: A Study in Cultural Interaction eds. James P. Rhonda and Henry W. Bowden (Greenwood Press, 1980).
• Mather, Increase. A Brief History of the Warr with the Indians in New-England (Boston, 1676; London, 1676). (See link below.)
• ______. Relation of the Troubles Which Have Happened in New England by Reason of the Indians There, from the Year 1614 to the Year 1675 (Kessinger Publishing, [1677] 2003).
• ______. The History of King Philip's War by the Rev. Increase Mather, D.D.; also, a history of the same war, by the Rev. Cotton Mather, D.D.; to which are added an introduction and notes, by Samuel G. Drake(Boston: Samuel G. Drake, 1862).
• ______. "Diary", March, 1675-December, 1676: Together with extracts from another diary by him, 1674-1687 /With introductions and notes, by Samuel A. Green (Cambridge, MA: J. Wilson, [1675-76] 1900).
• Rowlandson, Mary. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: with Related Documents (Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 1997).

[edit] Secondary sources

• Cave, Alfred A. The Pequot War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996).
• Cogley, Richard A. John Eliot's Mission to the Indians before King Philip's War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
• Hall, David. Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
• Kawashima, Yasuhide. Igniting King Philip's War: The John Sassamon Murder Trial (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001).
• Lepore, Jill. The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Vintage Books, 1999).
• Phibrick, Nathaniel. "Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War" (Penguin USA, 2006)
• Webb, Stephen Saunders. 1676: The End of American Independence (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995).

[edit] E-Sources

• Increase Mather, A Brief History of the Warr with the Indians in New-England (1676) online edition
• John Easton, A Relation of the Indian War, by Mr. Easton, of Rhode Island, 1675 online edition