Document Project 2 King Philip’s War

King Philip’s
War

King Philip’s War was proportionally one of the bloodiest conflicts in American history. Although Indians and whites had lived in relative peace for nearly forty years, tensions escalated during the mid-seventeenth century due to a steady decline in Indian population, territory, and cultural integrity. Metacom, whom the colonists called King Philip, became grand sachem of the Wampanoag Confederacy in 1662 after the death of his brother. Troubled by English encroachments on native lands and hunting grounds, King Philip negotiated an alliance with two-thirds of the region’s Indian population, including the Narragansett and Nipmuck tribes. They began coordinating attacks on white settlements in New England, burning fields, taking captives, and killing male colonists.

In 1675 Indian attacks on New England towns escalated. In Document 2.10, Mary Rowlandson describes her experiences when she was taken captive during an Indian raid on Lancaster, Massachusetts, in February of that year. As relations between settlers and Indians deteriorated, the Rhode Island colony sent representatives to meet with King Philip in June (Document 2.6). The colonists were hoping for a diplomatic solution, but the meeting was unsuccessful, and Indian attacks increased throughout the summer. The New England Confederation declared war in September, and fighting continued for a year, with one thousand whites and more than four thousand Indians killed in the conflict. The English, who had forged alliances with the surviving Pequots and powerful Mohawks, finally gained the upper hand in August 1676 when King Philip was ambushed in a swamp near Bristol, Rhode Island, by soldiers led by Captain Benjamin Church. Philip was shot and killed by John Alderman, an Indian ally of the colonists, which signaled the end of the war in southern New England.

Because there are fewer Indian written sources, historians have struggled to develop a balanced picture of the war. William Nahaton (Document 2.9) learned firsthand that the English would go to great lengths to infiltrate Indian communities, Christian or otherwise. Which other documents provide information about Indian perceptions of the war? What do disagreements among Englishmen reveal about English-Indian relations?