The causes of — and responsibility for — every American war are much debated, and the war of 1675–1676 between Puritans and Native Americans is no exception. The English settlers called it King Philip’s War, suggesting that the Wampanoag chief Metacom (King Philip) instigated it. Was that the case? We have no firsthand Indian accounts of its origins, but three English accounts offer different versions of events. Given the variation among the accounts and their fragmentary character, how can historians reconstruct what “really happened”?

John Easton

A Relacion of the Indyan Warre

John Easton was the deputy governor of Rhode Island and a Quaker. Like many Quakers, Easton was a pacifist and tried to prevent the war. He wrote this “Relacion” shortly after the conflict ended.

In [January 1675], an Indian was found dead; and by a coroner inquest of Plymouth Colony judged murdered. … The dead Indian was called Sassamon, and a Christian that could read and write. …

The report came that … three Indians had confessed and accused Philip [of employing them to kill Sassamon, and that consequently] … the English would hang Philip. So the Indians were afraid, and reported that … Philip [believed that the English] … might kill him to have his land. … So Philip kept his men in arms.

Plymouth governor [Josiah Winslow] required him to disband his men, and informed him his jealousy [his worry about land seizure] was false. Philip answered he would do no harm, and thanked the Governor for his information. The three Indians were hung [on June 8, 1675]. … And it was reported [that] Sassamon, before his death had informed [the English] of the Indian plot, and that if the Indians knew it they would kill him, and that the heathen might destroy the English for their wickedness as God had permitted the heathen to destroy the Israelites of old.

So the English were afraid and Philip was afraid and both increased in arms; but for forty years’ time reports and jealousies of war had been very frequent that we did not think that now a war was breaking forth. But about a week before it did we had cause to think it would; then to endeavor to prevent it, we sent a man to Philip. …

He called his council and agreed to come to us; [Philip] came himself, unarmed, and about forty of his men, armed. Then five of us went over [to speak to the Indians]. Three were magistrates. We sat very friendly together [June 14–18]. We told him our business was to endeavor that they might not … do wrong. They said that was well; they had done no wrong; the English wronged them. We said we knew the English said that the Indians wronged them, and the Indians said the English wronged them, but our desire was the quarrel might rightly be decided in the best way, and not as dogs decide their quarrels.

The Indians owned that fighting was the worst way; then they propounded how right might take place; we said by arbitration. They said all English agreed against them; and so by arbitration they had had much wrong, many square miles of land so taken from them, for the English would have English arbitrators. …

Another grievance [of the Indians]: the English cattle and horses still increased [and that] … they could not keep their corn from being spoiled [by the English livestock]. …

So we departed without any discourtesies; and suddenly [c. June 25] had [a] letter from [the] Plymouth governor, [that] they intended in arms to [subjugate] Philip … and in a week’s time after we had been with the Indians the war thus begun.

Source: John Easton, “A Relacion of the Indyan Warre, by Mr. Easton, of Roade Isld., 1675,” in Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675–1699, ed. Charles H. Lincoln (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 7–17.

Edward Randolph

Short Narrative of My Proceedings

Edward Randolph, an English customs official in Boston, denounced the independent policies of the Puritan colonies and tried to subject them to English control. His “Short Narrative,” written in 1675, was a report to his superiors in London.

Various are the reports and conjectures of the causes of the present Indian war. Some impute it to an impudent zeal in the magistrates of Boston to Christianize those heathen before they were civilized and enjoining them the strict observation of their laws, which, to a people so rude and licentious, hath proved even intolerable. … While the magistrates, for their profit, put the laws severely in execution against the Indians, the people, on the other side, for lucre and gain, entice and provoke the Indians … to drunkenness, to which those people are so generally addicted that they will strip themselves to their skin to have their fill of rum and brandy. …

Some believe there have been vagrant and jesuitical [French] priests, who have made it their business, for some years past, to go from Sachem to Sachem [chief to chief], to exasperate the Indians against the English and to bring them into a confederacy, and that they were promised supplies from France and other parts to extirpate the English nation out of the continent of America. … Others impute the cause to some injuries offered to the Sachem Philip; for he being possessed of a tract of land called Mount Hope … some English had a mind to dispossess him thereof, who never wanting one pretence or other to attain their end, complained of injuries done by Philip and his Indians to their stock and cattle, whereupon Philip was often summoned before the magistrate, sometimes imprisoned, and never released but upon parting with a considerable part of his land.

But the government of the Massachusetts … do declare [that because of the sins of the people] … God hath given the heathen commission to rise against them. … For men wearing long hair and periwigs made of women’s hair; for women … cutting, curling and laying out the hair. … For profaneness in the people not frequenting their [church] meetings.

Source: Albert B. Hart, ed., American History Told by Contemporaries (New York: Macmillan, 1897), 1: 458–460.

Benjamin Church

Entertaining Passages

Captain Benjamin Church fought in the war and helped end it by capturing Metacom’s wife and son and leading the expedition that killed the Indian chieftain. Forty years later, in 1716, Church’s son Thomas wrote an account of the war based on his father’s notes and recollections.

While Mr. Church was diligently settling his new farm … Behold! The rumor of a war between the English and the natives gave a check to his projects. … Philip, according to his promise to his people, permitted them to march out of the neck [of the Mount Hope peninsula, where they lived]. … They plundered the nearest houses that the inhabitants had deserted [on the rumor of a war], but as yet offered no violence to the people, at least none were killed. … However, the alarm was given by their numbers, and hostile equipage, and by the prey they made of what they could find in the forsaken houses.

An express came the same day to the governor [c. June 25], who immediately gave orders to the captains of the towns to march the greatest part of their companies [of militia], and to rendezvous at Taunton. …

The enemy, who began their hostilities with plundering and destroying cattle, did not long content themselves with that game. They thirsted for English blood, and they soon broached it; killing two men in the way not far from Mr. Miles’s garrison. And soon after, eight more at Mattapoisett, upon whose bodies they exercised more than brutish barbarities. …

These provocations drew out the resentment of some of Capt. Prentice’s troop, who desired they might have liberty to go out and seek the enemy in their own quarters [c. June 26].

Source: Benjamin Church, Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War Which Began in the Month of June, 1675, ed. Thomas Church (Boston: B. Green, 1716).