The History Book Club discussion

This is the thread to discuss the King Philip's War.

During the days of Massasoit, sachem (chief) of the Wampanoag, the tribe occupied the lands from the eastern side of Narragansett Bay to Cape Cod, including Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Massasoit had cultivated harmonious relations with the colonists, being especially helpful to the Pilgrims in their early travails, but tribal lands diminished sharply as the colonists expanded. In 1662, Metacom, a son of Massasoit and known to the colonists as King Philip, became sachem.

The Wampanoags' dependence upon English manufactured goods led them into ever-increasing land sales, resulting in further resentment and tension. In 1675, three tribal members were tried and executed by the English for the murder of a converted Wampanoag, touching off more than a year of hostilities.

Beginning in June 1675, the Wampanoag, outfitted with rifles and armor, attacked a series of settlements and took the lives of dozens of colonial men, women and children. English forces retaliated in kind by destroying native villages and slaughtering the inhabitants. Soon other tribes, including the Narragansett, joined the fray and the entire region fell into conflict.

The tide turned in April 1676, when the Narragansett were decisively defeated and their chief killed. Hostilities ground to a halt a few months later when Philip was betrayed, captured and killed. His corpse was drawn and quartered and his severed head placed on a stake to be paraded through Plymouth Colony. Philip's son was sold into slavery in Bermuda and many other captives were forced into servitude in homes throughout New England.

Also suffering tremendously during the conflict were the so-called "Praying Indians," who had been converted to Christianity, but were distrusted by both sides.

The colonists prevailed in King Philip's War, but the cost was tremendous. It would be more than two decades before all of the devastated frontier settlements could be reoccupied, and longer still before they began further expansion in the West. The New England Native Americans had been decimated to the extent that their impact on future events would be almost nonexistent.

Source: United States History

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h578...

Other links:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/militar...

and

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history...

and

http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/histor...

I have seen this book before that covers this period of Native American history but have not actually read the book; "King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict" by Eric B. Schultz.

by Eric B. Schultz
Review:
"For those who think that savage ethnic conflict is largely restricted to the Old World, this superb study of the most destructive war of our colonial period will prove instructive. Beginning in 1675 in Massachusetts, this two-year struggle between colonists and various allied Native American tribes ravaged New England settlements and Native American villages on an unprecedented scale. As Schultz and Tougias indicate, this war was one of attempted annihilation, during which both sides routinely committed merciless atrocities and were unwilling to acknowledge the humanity of their opponents. Although the authors are not professional historians, their research and utilization of sources are outstanding, and they write with a riveting narrative style that captures the horror and tragedy of the struggle. This is a grindingly depressing saga but one that should be read by anyone wishing to comprehend subsequent relations between Native Americans and westward-moving pioneers. The text is well supported by maps and period illustrations." - Book List

Thank you for all of these adds, Aussie Rick.

The story of King Philip's war is well told in Philbrick's Mayflower, a fascinating and sobering postscript for the pilgrim story we all think we know....but mostly do not.

One very interesting and well documented episode in the war is the kidnaping of one Mary White Rowlandson--her story is available as a free ebook. I read it (right after Mayflower) and recommend it. Goodreads description is below.

For A Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson: Who Was Taken Prisoner by the Indians, with Several Others, and Treated in the Most Barbarous and Cruel Manner by Those Vile Savages: With Many Other Remarkable Events.
"In February 1676, during King Philip's War, the frontier village of Lancaster, Massachusetts, was attacked by a party of Nipmuck Indians and completely destroyed. As relief from Concord approached, the attackers withdrew, taking with them 24 captives, including Mrs. Mary Rowlandson and her three children.
For almost three months the little family was forced to live with their captors and endure exposure to a New England winter.The youngest child, who had been injured during the attack, failed to survive. Eventually ransom was paid and the family released.
Mrs. Rowlandson's account of her experience was published in 1682. It became a"best-seller" of its day and created a new literary genre, the captivity narrative. Such accounts were in part responsible for the mistrust and hatred of the Indians that plagued the country for centuries. It is also the first publication in English by a woman in the New World. "

by Nathaniel Philbrick

by Mary Rowlandson (no image)

The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity

by Jill Lepore

Synopsis

King Philip's War, the excruciating racial war--colonists against Indians--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."

It all began when Philip (called Metacom by his own people), the leader of the Wampanoag Indians, led attacks against English towns in the colony of Plymouth. The war spread quickly, pitting a loose confederation of southeastern Algonquians against a coalition of English colonists. While it raged, colonial armies pursued enemy Indians through the swamps and woods of New England, and Indians attacked English farms and towns from Narragansett Bay to the Connecticut River Valley. Both sides, in fact, had pursued the war seemingly without restraint, killing women and children, torturing captives, and mutilating the dead. The fighting ended after Philip was shot, quartered, and beheaded in August 1676.

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 Indians and Anglos. She shows how, as late as the nineteenth century, memories of the war were instrumental in justifying Indian removals--and how in our own century that same war has inspired Indian attempts to preserve "Indianness" as fiercely as the early settlers once struggled to preserve their Englishness.

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.

A Rabble in Arms: Massachusetts Towns and Militiamen During King Philip's War

by Kyle Zelner

Synopsis

While it lasted only sixteen months, King Philip's War (1675-1676) was arguably one of the most significant of the colonial wars that wracked early America. As the first major military crisis to directly strike one of the Empire's most important possessions: the Massachusetts Bay Colony, King Philip's War marked the first time that Massachusetts had to mobilize mass numbers of ordinary, local men to fight. In this exhaustive social history and community study of Essex County, Massachusetts's militia, Kyle F. Zelner boldly challenges traditional interpretations of who was called to serve during this period.

Drawing on muster and pay lists as well as countless historical records, Zelner demonstrates that Essex County's more upstanding citizens were often spared from impressments, while the "rabble" -- criminals, drunkards, the poor-- were forced to join active fighting units, with town militia committees selecting soldiers who would be least missed should they die in action. Enhanced by illustrations and maps, A Rabble in Arms shows that, despite heroic illusions of a universal military obligation, town fathers, to damaging effects, often placed local and personal interests above colonial military concerns.

More - thank you - Jerome and Becky

Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King Philips's War

by Douglas Edward Leach (no photo)

Synopsis:

This classic account of King Philip’s War, first published in 1958, offers a bird’s-eye view of the conflict, from the Wampanoag sachem’s rise to his ultimate defeat. The battles, massacres, stratagems, and logistics of this war are all detailed, with the leaders of both sides figuring prominently in this tale of bloodshed, privation, and woe. The author weighs all the factors contributing to the Native Americans’ defeat and surveys the effects of the war on the lives of both Indians and colonists in the years to come. With insight, balance, and compassion, Leach portrays the tragedy of the war and points toward the future of the nascent American republic

King Philip's War: Civil War in New England, 1675-1676

by James David Drake (no photo)

Synopsis:

Sometimes described as "America's deadliest war, " King Philip's War proved a critical turning point in the history of New England, leaving English colonists decisively in command of the region at the expense of native peoples. Although traditionally understood as an inevitable clash of cultures or as a classic example of conflict on the frontier between Indians and whites, in the view of James D. Drake it was neither. Instead, he argues, King Philip's War was a civil war, whose divisions cut across ethnic lines and tore apart a society composed of English colonizers and Native Americans alike.According to Drake, the interdependence that developed between English and Indian in the years leading up to the war helps explain its notorious brutality. Believing they were dealing with an internal rebellion and therefore with an act of treason, the colonists and their native allies often meted out harsh punishments. The end result was nothing less than the decimation of New England's indigenous peoples and the consequent social, political, and cultural reorganization of the region.

In short, by waging war among themselves, the English and Indians of New England destroyed the world they had constructed together. In its place a new society emerged, one in which native peoples were marginalized and the culture of the New England Way receded into the past.

King Philip's War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty

by Daniel R. Mandell (no photo)

Synopsis:

King Philip's War was the most devastating conflict between Europeans and Native Americans in the 1600s. In this incisive account, award-winning author Daniel R. Mandell puts the war into its rich historical context.

The war erupted in July 1675, after years of growing tension between Plymouth and the Wampanoag sachem Metacom, also known as Philip. Metacom’s warriors attacked nearby Swansea, and within months the bloody conflict spread west and erupted in Maine. Native forces ambushed militia detachments and burned towns, driving the colonists back toward Boston. But by late spring 1676, the tide had turned: the colonists fought more effectively and enlisted Native allies while from the west the feared Mohawks attacked Metacom’s forces. Thousands of Natives starved, fled the region, surrendered (often to be executed or sold into slavery), or, like Metacom, were hunted down and killed.

Mandell explores how decades of colonial expansion and encroachments on Indian sovereignty caused the war and how Metacom sought to enlist the aid of other tribes against the colonists even as Plymouth pressured the Wampanoags to join them. He narrates the colonists’ many defeats and growing desperation; the severe shortages the Indians faced during the brutal winter; the collapse of Native unity; and the final hunt for Metacom. In the process, Mandell reveals the complex and shifting relationships among the Native tribes and colonists and explains why the war effectively ended sovereignty for Indians in New England. This fast-paced history incorporates the most recent scholarship on the region and features nine new maps and a bibliographic essay about Native-Anglo relations.

An upcoming book:
Release date: August 22, 2014

Connecticut Unscathed: Victory in the Great Narragansett War, 1675-1676

by Jason W Warren (no photo)

Synopsis:

The conflict that historians have called King Philip’s War still ranks as one of the bloodiest per capita in American history. An Indian coalition ravaged much of New England, killing six hundred colonial fighting men (not including their Indian allies), obliterating seventeen white towns, and damaging more than fifty settlements. The version of these events that has come down to us focuses on Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay—the colonies whose commentators dominated the storytelling. But because Connecticut lacked a chronicler, its experience has gone largely untold. As Jason W. Warren makes clear in Connecticut Unscathed, this imbalance has generated an incomplete narrative of the war.

Dubbed King Philip’s War after the Wampanoag architect of the hostilities, the conflict, Warren asserts, should more properly be called the Great Narragansett War, broadening its context in time and place and indicating the critical role of the Narragansetts, the largest tribe in southern New England. With this perspective, Warren revises a key chapter in colonial history. In contrast to its sister colonies, Connecticut emerged from the war relatively unharmed. The colony’s comparatively moderate Indian policies made possible an effective alliance with the Mohegans and Pequots. These Indian allies proved crucial to the colony’s war effort, Warren contends, and at the same time denied the enemy extra manpower and intelligence regarding the surrounding terrain and colonial troop movements. And when Connecticut became the primary target of hostile Indian forces—especially the powerful Narragansetts—the colony’s military prowess and its enlightened treatment of Indians allowed it to persevere.

Connecticut’s experience, properly understood, affords a new perspective on the Great Narragansett War—and a reevaluation of its place in the ongoing conflict between the Narragansetts and the Mohegans of Connecticut, and in American history.

Igniting King Philip's War: The John Sassamon Murder Trial



Synopsis:

The subjugation of Native Americans by European immigrants grew out of a violent clash of cultures that, in retrospect, hid real opportunities for peaceful coexistence. Key elements of this tragic tale can clearly be seen in Yasuhide Kawashima's chronicle of the events surrounding a criminal trial in Puritan New England-perhaps the earliest landmark case in American law.

In 1675, Wampanoag Indian John Sassamon was allegedly ambushed and murdered on his way home from Plymouth, where he had warned the colonists about his people's plan to attack them. An investigation led to the trial and execution of three Indians based on the testimony of only one suspect witness. The verdict aggravated tensions between Indians and settlers and ultimately ignited King Philip's War, after which Indians were subjugated, their villages effectively became reservations, and all hope of bicultural existence vanished.

Although it is usually considered from a political or cultural standpoint, Kawashima retells the story of the murder and trial from the perspective of legal history and overlapping jurisdictions. He shows that Plymouth's aggressive extension of its legal authority marked the end of four decades of legal coexistence between Indians and colonists, ushering in a new era of cultural and legal imperialism.

Kawashima views this seminal legal conflict as a reflection of much larger cultural differences between the two groups. Within that context, however, he also questions the validity of the proceedings themselves. In the end, Kawashima suggests, the murder verdict was a rush to judgment that rested on the shaky foundations of neglected forensic evidence as well as procedural violations of colonial law that ignored the rights of the accused. That decision marked a turning point in Euro-Indian relations and set the pattern for the ultimate marginalization of all Indians in North America. Kawashima's explication of those events casts history in a new light and shows us the critical importance of this landmark case.

After King Philip's War: Presence and Persistence in Indian New England

by Colin G. Calloway

Synopsis:

New perspectives on three centuries of Indian presence in New England

Thank you Bryan.

King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of the 17th Century Conflict Between Puritan New England and the Native Americans

by Charles River Editors (no photo)

Synopsis:

“With many such reasons, but whatever be the cause, the English have contributed much to their misfortunes, for they first taught the Indians the use of armes, and admitted them to be present at all their musters and trainings, and shewed them how to handle, mend and fix their muskets, and have been furnished with all sorts of armes by permission of the government, so that the Indians are become excellent firemen. And at Natick there was a gathered church of praying Indians, who were exercised as trained bands, under officers of their owne; these have been the most barbarous and cruel enemies to the English of any others. Capt. Tom, their leader, being lately taken and hanged at Boston, with one other of their chiefs.” – An account of the war written by Edward Randolph, an English emissary for King James II

What was the bloodiest war in American history? Most people with at least a little knowledge of history would quickly say that it was the Civil War (1861-65), and they would certainly be correct overall. In recently-updated numbers, it is thought that over 750,000 Americans died in the Civil War from battle wounds, diseases and other causes. In a single day at the battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, almost 27,000 soldiers were killed, wounded and missing.

However, when historians go farther back in time and include colonial wars and look at casualties per capita, the correct answer would be the much-lesser known conflict known as “King Philip's War” (1675-76). While a significant 2.5% of the U.S. population perished in the Civil War, 5% of New England's white settler population died during King Philip’s War, during which 13 towns were destroyed and 600 dwellings were burned by the natives. A larger, indeterminate number of the native population also died in the war. A hundred thousand pounds, an enormous sum of money in those days, was expended by the colonies in defeating the Indians.

Edward Randolph, who was sent to the colonies a few years after the war, bemoaned just how ruinous and unnecessary the fighting had been: “The losse to the English in the severall colonies, in their habitations and stock, is reckoned to amount to £150,000 there having been about 1200 houses burned, 8000 head of cattle, great and small, killed, and many thousand bushels of wheat, peas and other grain burned (of which the Massachusets colony hath not been damnifyed one third part, the great losse falling upon New Plymouth and Connecticot colonies) and upward of 3000 Indians men women and children destroyed, who if well managed would have been very serviceable to the English, which makes all manner of labour dear. The war at present is near an end. In Plymouth colony the Indians surrender themselves to Gov. Winslow, upon mercy, and bring in all their armes, are wholly at his disposall, except life and transportation; but for all such as have been notoriously cruell to women and children, so soon as discovered they are to be executed in the sight of their fellow Indians.”

King Philip’s War: The History and Legacy of the 17th Century Conflict Between Puritan New England and the Native Americans examines one of the most important wars fought in the colonial era. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about King Philip’s War like never before, in no time at all.

An upcoming book:
Release date: January 9, 2018

Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War

by Lisa Brooks (no photo)

Synopsis:

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. Brooks’s pathbreaking scholarship is grounded not just in extensive archival research but also in the land and communities of Native New England, reading the actions of actors during the seventeenth century alongside an analysis of the landscape and interpretations informed by tribal history.

Another:
Release date: January 9, 2018

Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast

by Christine M. DeLucia (no photo)

Synopsis:

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.

Jerome you have been a regular machine with your postings.

Another:
Release date: January 7, 2025

The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America's First People

by Matthew J. Tuininga

Synopsis:

Over several decades beginning in 1620, tens of thousands of devout English colonists known as Puritans came to America. They believed that bringing Christianity to the natives would liberate them from darkness. Daniel Gookin, Massachusetts's missionary superintendent, called such efforts a "war of the Lord," a war in which Christ would deliver captive souls from Satan's bondage.

When Puritan armies slaughtered hundreds of indigenous men, women, and children at Fort Mystic in 1637, during the Pequot War, they believed they were doing God's will. The same was true during King Philip's War, perhaps the bloodiest war in American history. The Puritan clergyman Increase Mather described this conflict, too, as a "war of the Lord," a war in which God was judging the enemies of his people.

Matthew J. Tuininga argues that these two "wars" are inextricably linked. Puritan Christianity, he shows, shaped both the spiritual and military conquests of New England from beginning to end. It is not only that the people who did these things happened to be Christians; it is that Christianity was the framework they used to guide, interpret, and defend every major act of peace or war. They made sincere efforts to treat Natives according to Christian principles of love and justice as they understood them, and their sustained missionary efforts demonstrate how serious they were about saving native souls. Yet they appealed to Christianity just as confidently when they subjugated, enslaved, or killed native peoples in the name of justice. A mission they saw as spiritual, peaceful, benevolent, and just devolved into a military conquest that was virtually genocidal.

This book tells the story of how this happened from the perspective of those who lived it, both colonists and Native Americans.