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When Samoset (Abenaki) walked into Plymouth Colony in March of 1621, he announced an unexpected meeting between the Pilgrims and the local Algonquians who were led by the Massasoit Osamequin. The following day, he returned to Plymouth with five Natives in regalia, who ritually prepared the designated meeting ground by dancing, singing, and making corn and tobacco offerings. This gathering was intentionally scheduled to coincide with the vernal equinox, an important ceremonial time for agricultural Algonquians. For both parties, the parley was portentous for Native–European relations and for Plymouthean survival. At this meeting, the Pilgrims negotiated for the Patuxet land on which they were living; they made a non-aggression pact with the Wampanoags; and they agreed to have Tisquantum (Squanto) and Hobomok live with them inside the palisade.

This chapter brings together multiple strands, and numerous archives, to explore the interconnections among regions and communities impacted by King Philip’s War, as it spread in the fall and winter of 1675. It shows the growing chaos of the conflict and increasing forcefulness of the colonial policy of containment in the Wampanoag, Narragansett, and Nipmuc countries, as well as the expansion of that conflict and policy into the Wabanaki coast and interior, including the fledgling settlements in northern New England. The chapter moves toward a wider view of the geography of King Philip’s War. It begins by following Weetamoo to Narragansett, where she cultivated crucial alliances; then shifts to the Northern Front of Wabanaki country, including Penacook and Abenaki communities; then returns to the Nipmuc country, conveying the story of James Printer’s “capture” by his Nipmuc relations in November 1675 and his travel to Menimesit, where James and his family were joined by Weetamoo and her kin, following the infamous Great Swamp massacre at Narragansett in December 1675. This chapter juxtaposes and interweaves multiple historical threads to show how all of these spaces and stories are intertwined, forming a wide and dynamic tapestry of Indigenous geography.

This book concludes where it opened, on the Northern Front of Wabanaki, where the war, and the negotiation of peace, continued long past the summer of 1676. This chapter focuses on a wave of raids that began on the Wabanaki coast, on the same day that Metacom was killed, as well as the efforts of multiple Penacook and Abenaki leaders to end the conflict through diplomacy. It highlights the complex context behind the “surprisal” at Cocheco, involving New Hampshire trader Richard Waldron, and explores the response of Indigenous leaders on the Kennebec River. The chapter concludes with the little-known treaties of Pemaquid and Casco Bay in 1677 and 1678, exploring a wide map of Indigenous communication, diplomacy, and alliance. This wider map also enables acknowledgment of the role of the colonies of New York and New France in both diplomacy and war.

Challenges to biblical linguistics made it increasingly difficult to map human diversity. Consequently, early eighteenth-century language philosophers turned to the specificity of place to integrate language and national genealogy. Edward Lhwyd designed a comprehensive study of British languages. I contrast Lhwyd and his philosophical coterie with Joseph-Francois Lafitau’s and Cotton Mather’s attempts to explain to a European audience how the peopling and languages of North America accord with Genesis. Unmoored from the need to fit indigenous words back into a Christian cosmology and somewhat detached from the broader Atlantic network of knowledge exchange, missionary and indigenous philosophers arrived at new insights into North American linguistics. Among the Wampanoag in Plymouth and Martha’s Vineyard, the Abenaki in Maine, and the Miami-Illinois, Experience Mayhew, Josiah Cotton, Sebastian Rale, Jacques Gravier, and Antoine-Robert Le Boullenger compiled massive dictionaries that in some cases remain the most lasting evidence we have of these languages.