|
|
The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is
resolved. |
King Philip's War, sometimes called Metacom's War or Metacom's Rebellion,[1] was an armed conflict between Indian inhabitants of present-day southern New England and English colonists and their Indian allies from 1675 – 1676. Nearly one in twenty persons overall among Indians and English were
wounded or killed. King Philip's war was one of the bloodiest and costliest 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."
Background
Plymouth, Massachusetts was established in 1620 with significant early help
from the Indians, particularly Squanto and Massasoit,
Metacomet's father and chief of the Wampanoag tribe. Salem, Massachusetts, Boston, Massachusetts and
several other small towns were established around Boston in the period of 1628-1640. Towns like Windsor, Connecticut (est. 1635), Hartford,
Connecticut (est. 1636), Springfield, Massachusetts (est. 1636) and
Northampton, Massachusetts (est. 1654) on the Connecticut River and towns like Providence, Rhode
Island in Narragansett Bay (est. 1638) were being progressively built into
Native American territories. Prior to King Philip's War tensions fluctuated between different groups of native people and the
colonists; but were generally peaceful. The colonists of what is now southern and eastern New England, were an increasing
presence as their small population grew inexorably larger over time and the number of towns increased. The Wampanoag, Nipmuck, Narragansett, Mohegan, Pequot tribes and
other small tribes were each treated individually (many were traditional enemies) by the English officials of Rhode Island, Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and
New Haven. The New Englanders continued to expand their settlements along the coastal
plain, and up the Connecticut River valley. By 1675 they had even established a few
small towns in the interior between Boston and the Connecticut River The Indians were
running out of trade goods and territory and felt progressively squeezed by the colonists out of some of their traditional
territories.
The English Civil War and Oliver
Cromwell's English Commonwealth was fought and won by New England's
Puritan allies who remained in England. After Cromwell's death in 1659 and the English
Restoration of 1660, 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 II 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. 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.
Disease and war
The native population throughout the Northeast had been significantly reduced by pandemics
of smallpox, spotted fever and measles brought in by fishermen starting in about 1618 — two years before the first colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts had been settled.[2]
Shifting alliances between different Algonkian peoples and the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), 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.
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. Metacom succeeded 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
for having the English as allies and traders of Iron Age goods was colonial incursion into Wampanoag territory as well as English
political interference. Maintaining good relations with the English became increasingly difficult as Massasoit, Wamsutta and
Metacom ran out of Indian trade goods and started trading land for iron tools and weapons.
Religion
Many Puritans regarded one of the aims of settling anywhere to be the conversion of people
around them to share their Puritan beliefs. This political, diplomatic, philosophical, and moral position sometimes increased
tensions--as the Indians had their own beliefs. Through conversion to Christianity, the
Puritans hoped to share their moral convictions with the gradual religious, social and political integration of native peoples
into Puritan 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.
Initial Anglo-Indian contacts were mutually beneficial without any religious content. As relationships developed some Puritans
eventually attempted to convert Indians to Christianity, as this was what they believed
their Bible taught--everyone should hear the word of the God in their Bible. By the 1650s, many Indian had converted and moved to
"praying towns." Towns where the inhabitants were all Christian Indians and where English customs and trades were taught in
addition to religious instruction.
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, Indian peoples were expected to learn English
customs and trades. In all there were several hundred "Praying Indians" converts and they would be used shabbily by both sides in
the upcoming conflict. They may have wanted English goods and military protection as well as instruction in new trades, reading,
writing and religion. Praying towns developed quickly due to the efforts of native peoples themselves who voluntarily moved
there.
The war begins
The spark that ignited King Phillip's War was a report from a Indian Christian convert ("Praying Indian") early Harvard graduate, translator, and adviser to Metacom named John Sassamon. Sassamon relayed to Plymouth Colony officials the news of King Philip trying to arrange
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 Philip's Wampanoag angry at his betrayal
On the testimony of an Indian witness, Plymouth Colony arrested three Wampanoags, (including one of Metacomet's councilors)
convicted them (with a jury having some Indian members) of John Sassamon's murder, and hanged them on June 8, 1675 at Plymouth. Some of
the Wampanoag believed that 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--a small Plymouth colony settlement. First, laying siege to
the town, they then destroyed it five days later and killed several settlers and others coming to help the settlers.
Officials from Plymouth and Boston were quick to respond, and on June 28 they sent an
military expedition that destroyed the Wampanoag town at Mount Hope (modern Bristol,
Rhode Island).
The war
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. It's believed that about 300 Indians were killed (exact
figures are unavailable). The massive fort (occuping an over five acres 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. [3]
Native American 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, Millis, Medford, Portland, Providence, Rehoboth, Scituate, Seekonk, Simsbury, Sudbury, Suffield,Warwick, Weymouth, and Wrentham. The famous captive
story of Mary Rowlandson, captured in Lancaster Massachusetts, gives a Colonial captives perspective on the war [2].
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 burned part of Springfield, Massachusetts while the militia
was away.
Colonial comeback
The tide of war slowly began to turn in the colonist's favor later in the spring of 1676 as it became a war of attrition, and
both sides were determined to eliminate the other. The Indians had succeeded in driving their colonists back into their larger
towns, but the Indian's 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 Connecticut River towns with their thousands of acres of
cultivated crop land--known as the bread basket of New England, had to cut down on their crops as they had to work in large armed
groups for self protection. Towns such as Springfield, Hatfield, Hadley and Northampton, Massachusetts fortified their towns, reinforced their militias and held their
ground, though attacked several times. The small towns of Northfield,
Massachusetts and Deerfield, Massachusetts and several others were
abandoned as settlers retreated to the larger towns. The towns of the Connecticut colony largely escaped unharmed although over a
100 Connecticut militia were killed helping their fellow colonists. The colonists continued to be re-supplied by sea from where
ever they could buy supplies (the English government essentially ignored them). The war ultimately cost the colonists over
£100,000--a lot of money then when most families earned less than £20/yr, that caused taxes to sky rocket. Over 600 colonial men,
women and children were killed and twelve towns totally destroyed with many more were damaged. Despite this they eventually
emerged victorious. The Indians lost many more killed and were dispersed out of New England or put on reservations. They never
recovered their former power in New England. The hopes of many to integrate Indian and colonial societies was abandoned.
The Indian hopes for supplies from the French in Canada were not met, except for some small amounts of ammunition obtained in
Maine. The colonists allied themselves with the Mohegan and Pequot tribes in Connecticut as well as several Indian groups in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. King Philip and
his allies found their forces continually harassed nearly everywhere they went. In January 1675/76 Philip traveled westward to
Mohawk territory, seeking, but failing to secure, an alliance. The Mohawks, the
traditional enemy of many of the warring tribes, instead of aiding King Philip proceeded to raid isolated groups of Indians,
scattering and killing many. Their traditional Indian crop growing areas and fishing places in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and
Connecticut, were continually attacked by roving patrols of combined Colonials and friendly Indians. They had poor luck finding
any place to grow more food for the coming winter. 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 nearly 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 to
two 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.[4] 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, close to where
the war had started. 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. Philip was ultimately killed 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. He was beheaded, drawn and quartered (a traditional treatment of
criminals in this era). His head was displayed in Plymouth for many years. The war was nearly over except for a few attacks in
Maine that lasted until 1677.
Aftermath
With Metacom's death, the war in the south was largely ended. Over 600 colonists and 3,000 Indians had died; including several
hundred native captives that were tried and executed or sold as slaves in Bermuda [3]. The
majority of these Indians and many of the colonials died as the result of disease--typical of all armies in this era. Those sent
to Bermuda included Metacom's son (and, also, according to Bermudian tradition, his wife), and a sizable number of Bermudians,
today, claim ancestry from these exiles. Members of the sachem's extended family were placed for safekeeping among colonists in
Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut. Other survivors were forced to join more western tribes, mainly as captives or lower caste
tribal members. 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 based, royal
power structure in Maine's fishing industry. Andros was arrested and sent back to England at the
start of the Glorious Revolution in 1689 when James II, Charles II's son, is thrown
off the British throne. 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--free from interference by the
Indians. Frontier settlements in New England would face sporadic Indian raids until the French and Indian War (1754-1763) finally drove the French authorities out of North America in
1763.
King Philip's 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 losses, rebuilt the destroyed towns and continued on with establishing new towns within a few years.
The colonist's defense of New England brought them to the attention of the British Royal 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 in Massachusetts. 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 unsuccessfully 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 equally small
colony of Rhode Island, with its largely Puritan dissident settlers, maintained its charter--mainly as a counter weight and
irritant to Massachusetts. The Massachusetts General Court (their main legislative and judicial body) was brought under nominal
British government control; but all members except the Royal Governor and a few of his henchmen were elected from the various
towns as always.
Nearly all layers of government and church life (except in Rhode Island) 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 or
dissident churches that they had already set up by 1690. New towns, complete with their own militias, 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 British crown and British Parliament for the next 100 years made self government not
only desirable 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 evacuate 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 Indians. Previous conflicts include the Spanish
enslavement of natives in the Caribbean, Florida and New Mexico as Coronado's expedition 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
[4], the second Powhatan war of 1644 [5] and the Iroquois Beaver Wars of 1650 [6] 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 Philip'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 from their English ties.
External links
References
Bibliography
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).
- Rowlandson, Mary, The Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary
Rowlandson (1682)online edition
- Belmonte, Laura. "Edward Randolph, the Causes and Results of King Philip's War (1675)"
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).
- Philbrick, Nathaniel. Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (Penguin USA, 2006) ISBN 0-670-03760-5
- Webb, Stephen Saunders. 1676: The End of American Independence (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995).
E-Sources
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
