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Explores how King Philip's War and debates over the halfway covenant contributed to the emergence of a racialized “tribalism” during the 1670s. This was a time when ordinary colonists manifested fear not only of enemy Indians but also of Christian Indian allies and military leaders. These leaders’ vested interest in frontier exchange was thought to have blinded them to the dangers of Indians, who only pretended to be Christian converts and allies. The chapter pays particular attention to the career of Daniel Gookin, who aided the efforts of the missionary, John Eliot. Additionally, Gookin's commitment to the integration of Indian peoples into colonial life was shaped by his family's experiences as colonizers of Ireland with ties to the family of Robert Boyle, president of the Company for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England.

This chapter details events from 1675 to 1750. These include the start of Plymouth's policing of its southern coast by late June 1675 to capture “any Indeans that may be found passing over” Narragansett Bay or headed to the outlying glacial islands; King Philip's War and its connections to the sea; the imprisonment and enslavement of Native Americans at the hands of the English; how whaling shaped coastal Natives' postwar world; the role of colonists in the near extinction of whales; and efforts to bring Christianity to the Natives led by Native ministers, the most famous being the Mohegan Samson Occom.

Chapter 6 asks how, in the context of King Philip's (or Metacom's) War, martyrdom rhetoric contributed to the reformulation of colonial and Native American identities. Colonists saw Algonquian offenses as yet another of the Antichrist's attacks on the saints. New Englanders became less and less interested in distinguishing between friendly and enemy Indians, eventually exiling the remaining Praying Indian communities to Deer Island, where they almost starved. Remarkably, the Massachusetts magistrate for Indian affairs, Daniel Gookin, attempted to defend Praying Indians from harassment and violence by incorporating their stories of suffering into the broader history of Christian martyrdom.

In 1675, King Philip's War – a war redolent of sin and flesh – broke out in New England between English settlers and Indians. All of the antagonists in this war saw each other as sinners: the Puritans blamed Quakers for drawing the wrath of God upon them in the form of angry Indians; the Quakers blamed Puritans for persecuting fellow Christians; the Indians felt the English had abused them in multiple ways; the English saw the Indians as Godless, and so as sinners as well. As for flesh, the physical costs of war were devastating: the Indians suffered massive losses of population, and 12 English towns were utterly destroyed. The major leaders when war erupted were King Philip of the Wampanoags, Canonchet of the Narragansetts, the Quaker Governor William Coddington of Rhode Island, Governors John Leverett of Massachusetts Bay, Josiah Winslow of Plymouth, and John Winthrop Jr. of Connecticut. Quakers dominated the Rhode Island government and sent Quaker John Easton to negotiate with Philip in a failed effort to forestall hostilities.

This chapter examines how towards the end of the 17th century, efforts on the part of Indians and colonists to resolve problems caused by livestock gave way to conflict. It argues that the colonists' growing populations and burgeoning herds placed great pressure on Native Americans and led to appropriations of Indian land. At the same time, Indians frustrated by the colonists' inability to control their animals sought revenge by killing livestock. Tensions over livestock contributed to King Philip's War in New England and Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia.

The introduction establishes the significance of King Philip’s War, called the “great watershed” for the powerful ways in which it reshaped Native and colonial communities, lives, and memories in the Northeast. It provides a general overview of historiographical debates on the topic, including the importance of localizing scholarly studies of North America and the Atlantic World; incorporating material culture and ethnography sources as well as documentary/archival evidence; and pursuing “decolonizing methodologies” in which researchers create more reciprocal relationships with tribal descendant communities. The introduction also stresses the necessity of locally grounded “fieldwork,” and highlights some considerations in choosing to focus on historical violence. It emphasizes that the violences of the seventeenth century continue to reverberate among descendant communities—Native as well as Euro-American—and that these legacies merit serious attention.

This chapter looks at the war between the colonists and many of the surrounding Native peoples in New England, which began in late June 1675. Initially, it involved only the English of Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoags under their sachem Philip Metacom—also known as King Philip—but the conflict quickly spread to Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and northern New England, drawing in English and Indian combatants from all of those locales, including the Nipmucs of the central Massachusetts highlands. Few groups suffered more during King Philip's War than the Christian Indians, caught as they were between the distrust of their Indian kin and the English to whom they had pledged their loyalty. Their treatment by the English during and after King Philip's War fueled John Wompas's growing anger against the Massachusetts government, which would explode on his return to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1677.

This chapter focuses on King Philip's War (1675–76) and its impact on Indian–English relations and the Native American experience. Most historical narratives of the war mention the captivity and enslavement of Indians. In these accounts, captivity largely forms a coda for some Indians and a marker of English victory. Putting captives at the center of King Philip's War does not completely revise our understanding of the war's progress and outcomes. It does, however, help explain the behavior of civil and military leaders on both sides of the conflict. Like the Pequot conflict, King Philip's War began for complex reasons but quickly became a war about captives. These were different wars, yet the outcomes with regard to captivity and enslavement proved curiously similar.

This chapter explores the long presence of Nipmuc people such as the Wabbaquasset tribe in southern New England for millenia. It reaches back into the pre-contact period and acknowledges the culture change of Native people in this region over time and up to the present. A central topic is the memorialization of places connected to historic figures such as John Eliot, combined with the erasure of Native people who have had connections to this landscape deep into the past, long before European colonization. The history of the praying town period and Christianization of Nipmuc Indians through the efforts of John Eliot in the 17^th century and of the seminal King Philip’s War (or Metacom’s Rebellion), and its aftermath on Nipmuc people, are summarized.

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 chapter explores how colonists in seventeenth-century New England used gender ideologies about women’s roles as actors in public spheres to frame their understanding of women who fought in the region’s wars. The chapter explores this idea from three different angles. First, it examines how New England’s colonies incorporated women’s martial activities into their colonization strategy, sometimes even requiring women to remain in remote fortified towns, living in garrison houses that simultaneously served as military and household spaces. Second, it looks at how Native women participated in the region’s wars as leaders (sachems), spies, combatants, and in ritual torture. The chapter investigates how English politicians used their own concepts about women’s public roles to shape their ideas about Native female combatants. This section also features a case study of Weetamoo of the Pocasset, a prominent female sachem who died while leading an anti-colonial coalition in King Philip’s War (1675-76). Third, the chapter explores how English women attempted to shape military and colonial policy through mob violence.

This chapter starts with an overview of the changes made to Massachusetts's militia amid King Philip's War and continues with an examination of the committees of militia and their role in impressment. By the time of King Philip's War, the militia committees had amassed a tremendous amount of authority to oversee the militia in their towns. The most important of their powers was their sole responsibility to select soldiers in times of war. Therefore the chapter briefly traces the history of recruitment in Massachusetts Bay from the colony's founding to 1675 and then focuses on the recruitment role of the militia committees during the war, as well as the alternatives thereof. The fundamentals of impressment are explored, including details on how the system worked and the roles of the different individuals and institutions involved.

This chapter explores the diverse, complex ways in which war entered into Indigenous communities and homelands by approaching the beginning of King Philip’s War from multiple places and viewpoints—ranging from mothers and leaders like Weetamoo and her sister Wootonakanuske to scouts embedded in colonial companies like James Quananopohit and his brother Thomas—bringing multifaceted Indigenous characters and perspectives to the fore, while also considering the tactics and experiences of colonial leaders and soldiers from Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. The chapter evokes the experience of the “storm” of war as it spirals through the land, using interpretive frameworks drawn from Indigenous studies. This chapter begins at Weetamoo’s homeland of Pocasset and moves to neighboring Wampanoag and Narragansett territories, including Montaup, Sakonnet, and Nipsachuck.

The sub-discipline of documentary archaeology is explored in Chapter 4. Layers of information about the Magunkaquog site and its inhabitants—and the story of Isaac Nehemiah, in particular—are revealed through analysis and interpretation of centuries-old primary documents connected to this site. This chapter unfolds around details surrounding the loss of Magunkaquog land through a controversial sale in 1715, granting it to Harvard College. Diverging interpretations of how this sale was perceived by the Native and Euroamerican peoples involved are explored. The documents reveal satisfaction among the Euroamerican men responsible for the sale and a clear sense of loss among the Native inhabitants (culminating in the death of a central figure at this settlement). The praying town period and effects of King Philip’s War are also discussed. Documents can reveal many details about the past, but must also be “read” in a deeper way to be better understood, and to help tell the more complex history of interactions between Native and European peoples of the past.

This chapter analyzes the origins of King Philip’s War from within Wampanoag territory, highlighting the perspectives of Wampanoag leaders, including Metacom (or Philip) and Weetamoo, as recorded by Rhode Island lieutenant governor John Easton, a Quaker, on the eve of the war. These accounts center colonial encroachment on Wampanoag land and governance as a key motivating factor for both Indigenous resistance and colonial containment.

This chapter unravels and questions the “ends” of King Philip’s War, inviting continuing community engaged research. It examines the “ends of war” from multiple places and perspectives, including Nashaway, Boston/Cambridge, Nipsachuck, Pocasset, and the Northern Front of Wabanaki, to present a wide view of a complex, dynamic historical space. The chapter explores a treaty process initiated with the return of Mary Rowlandson, the recruitment of Native scouts, and the diplomatic measures through which these scouts protected their kin, as well as the escalating forces of colonial containment, particularly in the colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Rhode Island. It also highlights particular environmental and political factors which influenced the impacts of containment, especially in the summer of 1676.