King Philip's War (1675–1678) was a colonial war in which a coalition of Algonquian tribes of the Northeastern Woodlands—the Wampanoags, the Pocomtucs, the Nipmucs, and the Narragansetts—fought against the Puritan settlers of the New England Colonies and their Indian allies—the Mohegans, the Pequots, and Christian Indians. The war continued in the most northern reaches of New England until the signing of the Treaty of Casco Bay on April 12, 1678.
The British colonization of the New England began in the 17th century, with roughly 20,000 Puritan settlers establishing and joining colonies in North America—primarily Plymouth Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony—in the Great Migration of 1620–40 alone. Massasoit, chief sachem of the indigenous Wampanoag tribe, had made and maintained an agreement with the colonists. Massasoit's younger son Metacom (c. 1638–1676), named King Philip by the settlers, became the sachem in 1662 after the death of his father and his older brother Wamsutta (c. 1634–1662). Metacom, however, forsook his father's alliance between the Wampanoags and the colonists after repeated violations by the latter. The colonists insisted that the 1671 peace agreement should include the surrender of Native guns; then three Wampanoags were hanged in Plymouth Colony in 1675 for the murder of John Sassamon, a Wampanoag schoolmaster and interpreter, which increased tensions. Native raiding parties attacked homesteads and villages throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maine over the next six months, and the colonial militia retaliated. The colonies assembled the largest army that New England had yet mustered, consisting of 1,000 militia and 150 Native allies. Governor Josiah Winslow marshaled them to attack the Narragansetts in November 1675. They attacked and burned Native villages throughout Rhode Island territory, culminating with the attack on the Narragansetts' main fort in the Great Swamp Fight. An estimated 600 Narragansetts were killed, and their coalition was taken over by Narragansett sachem Canonchet. They pushed back the borders of the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Rhode Island colonies, burning towns as they went, including Providence in March 1676. However, the colonial militia overwhelmed the Native coalition following the Mohawk decision to side with the colonial alliance. By the end of the war, the Wampanoags and their Narragansett allies were almost completely destroyed. On August 12, 1676, Metacom fled to Mount Hope where he was killed by the militia. However, fighting by the Abenaki continued in the New England-Acadia borderlands.
The war was the greatest calamity in seventeenth-century New England and is considered by many to be the deadliest war in Colonial American history. In the space of little more than a year, 12 of the region's towns were destroyed and many more were damaged, the economy of the Plymouth and Rhode Island Colonies was ruined and their population was decimated, losing one-tenth of all men available for military service. Hundreds of Wampanoags and their allies were publicly executed or enslaved, and the Wampanoags were left effectively landless. At the same time, more than half of New England's towns were involved in the conflict and it would not be until 1700 that English colonists would occupy their pre-war borders again.
King Philip's War was the last-ditch effort by Native tribes to expel the colonists from New England. Instead, it turned out to be the beginning of the development of an independent American identity. The New England colonists faced their enemies without support from any European government or military, and this began to give them a group identity separate and distinct from England.
Names
The war is sometimes called the First Indian War, Metacom's War, Pometacomet's Rebellion, or Metacom's Rebellion.
The name King Philip's War refers to the Pokanoket chief and sachem of the Wampanoag, Metacom (c. 1638–1676), sometimes referred to as 'Metacomet' or 'Pometacom'. 'Philip' was the name the English gave to Metacom when he and his brother appeared before an English court in 1660.
Historical context
The British colonization of the New England began in the 17th century. In what is sometimes called the Great Migration, roughly 20,000 Puritans migrated to establish and join British colonies in North America from 1620 to 1640, primarily Plymouth Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The early Plymouth Colony claimed preemptive rights to the entirety of Wampanoag country through early alliances with some Native leaders, like Squanto (Tisquantam) and Massasoit (Ousamequin). However, English claim to the land relied entirely on misinterpretations of Native leadership, which viewed Ousamequin as the Native "king" of the land, despite the existence of other territorial claims under local leaders like Namumpum (Weetamoo).
Subsequent colonists founded Salem, Boston, and many small towns around Massachusetts Bay between 1628 and 1640, during a time of increased English immigration. The colonists progressively expanded throughout the territories of the several Algonquian-speaking tribes in the region.
Prior to King Philip's War, tensions fluctuated between Native tribes and the colonists. The Narragansetts fought alongside the English colonists in the Pequot War and participated in the Mystic massacre but were horrified afterwards. With the defeat of the Pequots, Narragansett leader Miantonomoh gathered groups of Algonquians together in the 1640s in the hope that they could face the colonists together. He was captured by colonists in Connecticut and executed by Mohegan sachem Uncas, shattering the coalition.
The Rhode Island, Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven colonies each developed separate relations with the Wampanoags, Nipmucs, Narragansetts, Mohegans, Pequots, and other tribes of New England, whose territories historically had differing boundaries. Many of the neighboring tribes had been traditional competitors and enemies. As the colonial population increased, the New Englanders expanded their settlements along the region's coastal plain and up the Connecticut River valley. By 1675, they had established a few small towns in the interior between Boston and the Connecticut River settlements.
Meanwhile, with the death of Ousamequin, Native diplomacy between Native Americans and settlers fell apart, as colonists tried negotiating with Wamsutta in the same role they did with Ousamequin, but while slighting female Native rulers (saunkswkas) of the land. The colonists erroneously claimed Sakonnet and Pocasset land as freely given. This created further tension between colonists and Natives, as colonial Puritan beliefs did not recognize female leaders as legitimate, despite the great power they held within Algonquin societies. On one such occasion of land dispute, saunkswkas Weetamoo and Awashonks appeared in a colonial court to protest illegitimate deeds signed by Wamsutta that gave colonists lands that were not his to give. This conflict strengthened complaints among natives while simultaneously bolstering Plymouth claims to the land and served as an omen for conflict that was yet to come.
Eventually, the Wampanoag tribe under Metacomet's leadership entered into an agreement with the Plymouth Colony and believed that they could rely on the colony for protection. However, in the decades preceding the war, it became clear to them that the treaty did not mean that the Colonists were not allowed to settle in new territories.
Failure of diplomacy
Metacom became sachem of the Pokanoket and Grand Sachem of the Wampanoag Confederacy in 1662 after the death of his older brother Grand Sachem Wamsutta (called "Alexander" by the colonists), who had succeeded their father Massasoit (d. 1661) as chief. Metacom was well known to the colonists before his ascension as paramount chief to the Wampanoags. But, he ultimately distrusted the colonists.
Conflict increased between the Wampanoags and settlers due to the continual intrusion of settlers' unfenced livestock—swine and cattle imported from Europe—onto Wampanoag farms, food stores, and hunting grounds, with few colonists taking more than half-hearted steps to prevent this in spite of regular complaints by the Wampanoags. The colonizers also sought punishments for livestock killed by Wampanoag hunters and their traps. Another grievance held by many Wampanoags was the attempts by colonial missionaries to convert them to Christianity; among those who expressed such grievances was Metacom himself, who declared that he and other Wampanoag leaders possessed a great fear that any of their people "should be called or forced to be Christian Indians". Metacom began negotiating with the other Algonquian tribes against the Plymouth Colony in the winter of the years 1674–1675.
However, conflict abounded, even amidst tribes and families. Two months before the outbreak of the war, Mammanuah, the son of Awashonks, leader of the Sakonnet, had signed a deed granting English colonizers the right to all the land from Pocasset Neck south to the sea, without first seeking his mother's approval.
At the start of the planting season, conflict erupted when new settlers began to plant on lands tenured under the rule of Awashonks. Mammanuah was confronted by his mother and other members of his tribe. He was stripped of his title by his relatives but allowed to leave with his life. Mammanuah sought restitution at Plymouth, where his title was reinstated by colonial authorities who had noticeably ulterior motives for wanting the land deed to remain valid.
Internal conflict between native tribes and their families was motivated by competing concepts of colonial patrilineal rule and the existing matrilineal rule of many native women. As conflict mounted, native tribes turned against other tribes as well as their own people, with families taking sides across different lines.
Population
The population of New England colonists totaled about 65,000 people. They lived in 110 towns, of which 64 were in the Massachusetts Bay colony, which then included the southwestern portion of Maine and southern New Hampshire until 1679. About half these towns participated in the war. The towns had about 13,000 men of military age. Universal training was prevalent in all colonial New England towns for these men, barring clergy and those with disabilities. Many towns had built strong garrison houses for defense, and others had stockades enclosing most of the houses. All of these were strengthened as the war progressed. Some poorly populated towns were abandoned if they did not have enough men to defend them.
Each town had local militias based on all eligible men who had to supply their own arms. Only those who were too old, too young, disabled, or clergy were excused from military service. The militias were usually only minimally trained and initially did relatively poorly against the warring Natives, until more effective training and tactics could be devised. Joint forces of militia volunteers and volunteer Indigenous allies were found to be the most effective. The Indigenous allies of the colonists numbered about 1,000 from the Mohegans and Praying Indians, with about 200 warriors.
By 1676, the regional Indigenous population had decreased to about 10,000 (exact numbers are unavailable) largely because of epidemics. These included about 4,000 Narragansetts of western Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut, 2,400 Nipmucs of central and western Massachusetts, and 2,400 combined in the Massachusett and Pawtucket tribes living around Massachusetts Bay and extending northwest to Maine. The Wampanoags and Pokanokets of Plymouth and eastern Rhode Island are thought to have numbered fewer than 1,000. About one in five were considered to be warriors. By then, the Natives had almost universally adopted steel knives, tomahawks, and flintlock muskets as their weapons. The various tribes had no common government. They had distinct cultures and often warred among themselves, although they all spoke related languages from the Algonquian family.
Trial
John Sassamon was a Native convert to Christianity, commonly referred to as a "praying Indian". He played a key role as a cultural mediator, negotiating with both colonists and Natives while belonging to neither party. He was an early graduate of Harvard College and served as a translator and adviser to Metacomet. He reported to the governor of Plymouth Colony that Metacomet planned to gather allies for Native attacks on widely dispersed colonial settlements.
Metacomet was brought before a public court, where court officials admitted that they had no proof but warned that they would confiscate Wampanoag land and guns if they had any further reports that he was conspiring to start a war. Not long after, Sassamon's body was found in the ice-covered Assawompset Pond, and Plymouth Colony officials arrested three Wampanoags on the testimony of a Native witness, including one of Metacomet's counselors. The jury, which consisted of twelve colonists and six Indigenous elders, convicted the men of Sassamon's murder, and they were executed by hanging on June 8, 1675 (O.S.) at Plymouth.
Most importantly, the pond where Sassamon’s body was found in was at the center of a heated land claim, under which Plymouth men were attempting to purchase vast swaths of land at Nemasket. His death became the necessary pretext for Plymouth Colony’s arrest of a counselor tied to suppressing the purchasing of land around Nemasket. Under captivity, the counselor and block to the signing of a land grant for the Plymouth Colony, Tobias, and the other arrested men were forced to sign the rights away of all of their land at Nemasket. With Sassamon dead and the land deed signed, the land surrounding the pond became formally acknowledged as part of the town of Middlebury and was open for English settlement. With the killing of Sassamon, the proverbial first shots of the war were fired.
Southern theater, 1675
Raid on Swansea
According to Benjamin Church, a band of Pokanokets attacked several isolated homesteads in the small Plymouth colony settlement of Swansea on June 20, 1675, likely against Phillip's approval. They burned several homes. On June 23, a local boy saw a Pokanoket in front of his home and was instructed to fire, killing him. Pokanokets became enraged and on June 24 launched a full-scale attack on Swansea, killing three. On June 27, 1675, a full Lunar Eclipse occurred in the New England area, and various tribes in New England thought it a good omen for attacking the colonists. Officials from the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies responded quickly to the attacks on Swansea; on June 28, they sent a punitive military expedition that destroyed the Wampanoag town at Mount Hope in Bristol, Rhode Island.
The war quickly spread and soon involved the Podunk and Nipmuc tribes. During the summer of 1675, the Natives attacked at Middleborough and Dartmouth, Massachusetts (July 8), Mendon, Massachusetts (July 14), Brookfield, Massachusetts (August 2), and Lancaster, Massachusetts (August 9). In early September, they attacked Deerfield, Hadley, and Northfield, Massachusetts.