King Philip's War

King Philip's War (1675-76) was a bloody war in eastern New England between a coalition of Wampanoag and Narragansett and other Indians and the English colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut. It was the most devastating war, for both sides, in the history of the Northeast, and resulted in a decisive victory for the settlers.

Causes

The settlers demanded that the Indians recognize the sovereignty of the colonial government. Indians could no longer be independent. In economic terms, they were not useful to the colonists. Land was a minor issue (the settlers lived on small farms and did not hunt for game, and so rarely entered Indian hunting grounds.) On the other side, Wampanoag and Narragansett Indians wanted to remain autonomous, did not want to be subject to English courts, and resented Christian missionary efforts. The leader Massasoit had been friendly but after his death in 1662 new Indian leaders challenged the settlers. They ignored the fate of the Pequot in 1637, and looked about for alliances with various tribes. The key leader was Massasoit's oldest living son, Metacom (1638-1676), called Philip by the colonists, who became sachem of the Wampanoag in the eearly 1660s. Philip renewed the peace covenant with Plymouth Colony, and sold more and more land to the colonists; the settlers established towns closer to the Wampanoag villages, including the nearby settlement of Swansea. The colonial authorities decided to regulate Philip's real estate transactions by requiring him to obtain permission from the Grand Court before selling any more land; that is, they asserted colonial soverignty over the Wampanoags. Repeated reports of plots with the Narragansett, the French, and the Dutch (still based in New Amsterdam) led Plymouth in 1671 to call him to account. Philip haughtily protested peaceful intentions, and agreed to surrender firearms. Sullen peace followed, but the Wampanoag surrendered suspiciously few arms. Philip did not seem to take his agreements seriously and held the colonial authorities in utter contempt. He once complained that the Plymouth magistrates were too lowly; if they wanted him to obey them, they should send their king to negotiate with him, not their governors. "Your governor is but a subject," he said. "I shall treat only with my brother, King Charles of England. When he comes, I am ready."

When three Wampanoag were tried in court and executed for the murder of a Christian Indian informer, the warriors attacked and plundered nearby farms. Neither side was ready for war. Philip 's alliances were not concluded, and the English were unprepared and widely scattered.

The war

In June 1675, Wampanoag marauders threatened Swansea settlers. who fired back. Swift, devastating raids on Swansea and neighboring towns threw the colonists into panic, intensified when the militia found no Indians to fight--for the Indians never made a stand. The war was a series of Indian raids (lasting a few hours followed by sudden withdrawal), followed by retaliatory expeditions by the settlers. The counterattack was ill planned and indecisive and antagonized other tribes. There was no unified command among the colonies that joined in, cooperation was spotty, the soldiers were under-equipped and ignorant of Indian warfare, and the troops lacked scouts to track the enemy and refused at first to employ friendly Indians. When combined Plymouth and Massachusetts forces drove Philip and his Wampanoag warriors into the swamps (June 30, 1675), he easily slipped away.

Suspicious of the Narragansett, colonial forces raided their country and compelled a few lingerers to sign a treaty of neutrality on July 15, but most Narragansett warriors, led by Canonchet, had joined alongside the Wampanoag. The English sale of captives into West Indian slavery and the slaughter of innocent Christian Indians drove Nipmuck, Abnaki, and even some converted Indians into opposition--though they never united under one leader.

The most effective Indian tactic was to raid a small settlement, besiege the garrison, burn abandoned farms and homes and then waylay relief parties. The men were killed, the women and children killed or kidnapped. At first the Indians set fires in patches of woods and ambushed detachments of troops sent to investigate. The Indians always refused a pitched battle, where the disciplined drilling and firepower of the colonists would overwhelm their individualistic fighting tactics based on ambushes and hatchets.

By late 1675, disaster overtook the colonies on all sides. Numerous frontier towns (such as Mendon, Brookfield, Deerfield, and Northfield), were devastated, abandoned, or both; two small colonial units were ambushed and destroyed (Sawmill Brook, Sept. 3; Muddy Brook, Sept. 18). Hundreds of miles out similar raids devastated some colonial villages in New Hampshire and Maine.

Mobilization

Massachusetts Bay drafted over a thousand men, employing a recruitment system that evolved from the colony's founding in the 1630s. The militia system was a variation on the English militia, with more local control. Thus, the Massachusetts system was created to be centralized in command, but local in recruitment. When real war was at hand the coloby created new companies of soldiers to fight the enemy, leaving the town militia companies mostly intact for defense. The decision of which men would serve locally and which colony-wide was made by the town militia committees, comprised of civilian and military leaders from the community.

Rhode Island was politically controlled by Quakers, but they enthusiastically supported the war in alliance with their theological enemies the Puritans. Many Quakers were in the militia, and noncombatants helped out.

Great Swamp Fight

Finally the colonists overcame their weaknesses and devised a common strategy that worked. The Indians avoided pitched battles, but the had to defend their food stores of they would starve in the harsh winter. They could hide the stores but they could not easily move them, so the colonies, using scouts from friendly tribes, discovered and destroyed the enemy food supplies in December-January, 1675-76 and defeated the Indians who were forced into a pitched battle on European terms because to flee meant starvation.

The colonists first destroyed the Narragansett in the Great Swamp Fight (Dec. 19, 1675) in the Narraganset country (at the present site of South Kingstown, Rhode Island). The combined forces of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut, over 1,000 soldiers under the command of Gov. Josiah Winslow, with about 150 Indian allies, marched through the snow to the island in the Great Swamp, which had been fortified by the Narraganset to protect their food supplies. The first assault by the colonists early in the afternoon, was turned back with heavy losses; after three hours of desperate fighting the fort was forced at the rear and the Indians routed. The Indian wigwams were set on fire, and many women and children died in the flames. The English lost six captains and 120 men and the Narraganset losses ran into the hundreds. This battle forever the power of the Narraganset and gave the settlers confidence they had a winning strategy, with unified commands, Indian scouts, and a systematic attack on heavily guarded food stores.

Philip and a small band wintered near Albany, New York, in hopes of gaining aid from the Mohawk Indians and the French. In early 1676 he attacked the eastern settlements in order to concentrate English forces there while they planted food crops in the Connecticut Valley. On Feb. 9 Indians attacked Lancaster--where [[Mary Rowlandson was captured--and threatened Plymouth, Providence, and towns near Boston.

Colonists captured and executed Canonchet on Apr. 3. The Mohawks suddenly decided to attack the Narragansett from the west, thereby helping the colonists. Finally on May 18-19, 1676, Capt. William Turner with 180 men surprised and massacred the Indians at Deerfield and broke their resistance in the Connecticut River valley. By the end of May the tide had turned in the west. Capt. Benjamin Church, assisted by able Indian scouts, trapped Philip and his Wampanoag in swamps near Taunton and Bridgewater, killing Philip on August 12, 1676. Philip's death marked the end of the main war, though hostilities continued in New Hampshire and Maine, where the Abnaki and others, supplied with French arms and encouragement, wreaked havoc on settlement after settlement.

Results

On April 12, 1678, articles of peace were signed at Casco, Maine, with mutual restoration of captives and property. Since June 1675, sixteen towns in Massachusetts and four in Rhode Island had been destroyed, all colonists had fled Kennebec County (Maine), and all along New England frontiers, expansion had been retarded. But the Indians no longer posed a threat to the colonists in southern New England. Thereafter their struggle was confined to the northeast and northwest, where it merged with the struggle between the colonists and France for control of the continent.

Estimates were that about 6,000 men, women and children were killed or captured. Many of those captured were sold into slavery to allied Indians, or to the West Indies sugar plantations. About 2,500 settlers--men, women and children--died during the war. Colonial expenses during the war amounted to 100,000 pounds sterling, a huge amount for the time. The frontier of settlement had been pushed back 20 miles. Northfield, Deerfield, Brookfield, Worcester, Lancaster, Groton, Mendon, Wrentham, Middleborough, Warwick, Wickford and Simsbury had been destroyed, and Springfield, Westfield, Marlborough, Scituate, Rehoboth and Providence had been heavily damaged. Boston was threatened but was never hit. The war weakened the colonial economy for years, requiring infusions of British resources and denying dividends to London investors. Henceforth, the American settlers would feel an increasingly heavy hand of the royal government.

Memory and memorials

Philip did not exercise any over-all operational control of events. With a tribal culture and tradition based upon decentralization of political and military power, such control was probably impossible. The colonists however needed an enemy to personify and he fit the bill; his head was exhibited for years afterward.

The war shaped New Englan'd memory and self-image. It had been a close call and proved divinine providence was at work, according to the leading Puritan divine Increase Mather. His Brief History of the Warr with the Indians (1676) is mostly religious; Mather uses the war (with few factual details) as as a platform for an expanded sermon on God's punishment for the decline of religious virtue and moral behavior among second-generation New England colonists. By contrast William Hubbard, in Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians (1677) provided abundant specifics, usually quitye accurate, along with the first map of New England produced in the colonies. Hubbard wrote a much more objective and impartial account of the war, although he also interprets events in terms of God's benevolent intervention, which Hubbard attributes to the barbarity of ungodly Indians and the perfidy of the French and Dutch, who provided local tribes with weapons.

In the 21st century by far the most studied memory is Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative, a first-hand account of capture and torture. One of the first great achievements of American literature, it set the tone of writing about Indian- white relations for 300 years.

Bibliography

• Adams. James Truslow. The Founding of New England () online
• Bourne, Russell. The Red King's Rebellion
• Domer, Ronald G. "King Philip's Ferocious War," Military History, Dec 2004, Vol. 21#5 online at EBSCO
• Edney, Matthew H. and Susan Cimburek, "Telling the Traumatic Truth: William Hubbard's Narrative of King Philip's War and His 'Map of New-England.'" William and Mary Quarterly 2004 61(2): 317-348. Issn: 0043-5597 Fulltext: History Cooperative
• Ellis, George W., and John E. Morris. King Philip's War
• Lafantasie, Glenn W. "The Long Shadow of King Philip." American History 2004 39(1): 58-67. Issn: 1076-8866 Fulltext: Ebsco
• Lepore, Jill.
• Lougheed, Pamela. "'Then Began He to Rant and Threaten': Indian Malice and Individual Liberty in Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative." American Literature 2002 74(2): 287-313. Issn: 0002-9831 Fulltext: Project Muse
• Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692. (2002). 436 pp. argues that fears of Indian raids caused fears of witches
• Roman, Joseph. King Philip, Wampanoag Rebel
• Zelner, Kyle Forbes. "The Flower and Rabble of Essex County: A Social History of the Massachusetts Bay Militia and Militiamen during King Philip's War, 1675-1676." PhD dissertation College of William and Mary, 2003. 466 pp.

DAI 2004 64(12): 4599-A. DA3116187 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Primary Sources

• Church, Thomas. History of King Philip's War

See also

• Pequot War
• New England