King Philip's War

King Philip's War (1675–1676), also called Metacom's War and Metacom's Rebellion.The war resulted from a transformation of Anglo‐Indian relations in southern New England. Except during the Pequot War, Indians and the English settlers had avoided war since colonization began. But in the 1660s, the region's fur trade ended as overhunting depleted the beaver population and English demographic and economic growth created pressures on Indians to cede additional lands. Natives’ abilities to resist these pressures were limited by their continued population decline owing to European diseases and by the colonies’ growing assertions of authority over them. These issues came to a head in March 1675 when a Christian Indian informed authorities of the Plymouth Colony that the Wampanoag sachem, Metacom (“King Philip” to the English), was plotting all‐out war. Metacom was the son of Massasoit, who had earlier befriended the Plymouth colonists. After the informer was murdered, three associates of Metacom were found guilty and hanged. In late June, bands of Wampanoags warriors began attacking Plymouth towns.

With the advent of war, Plymouth gained support from New England's other colonies and from Mohegans, Pequots, and many Christian Indians. Metacom's cause was aided by Nipmuc, Pocumtuc, and other Indians in central and western Massachusetts, who raided English towns during the Summer and Fall of 1675. Massachusetts's ability to respond was limited by many colonists’ distrust of Christian Indians. Although “praying Indians” had proven themselves as warriors and scouts, the colony interned them on Deer Island in Boston harbor. In December 1675, the colonists launched a surprise attack on the Narragansetts in their Great Swamp Fort in Rhode Island, hoping to weaken them before they could join Metacom's cause. Despite killing several hundred warriors and noncombatants, they could not prevent the Narragansetts and Wampanoags from escaping southeastern New England and joining their western sympathizers. Metacom attempted to expand the war in January 1676 by meeting with French‐allied Indians at Hoosic, New York, but a Mohawk attack broke up the gathering. Returning eastward, Metacom's forces launched attacks on outlying Massachusetts towns in hopes of pushing the line of settlement eastward, but disease and starvation weakened their ranks. In March, the western Indians began negotiating for peace while the Wampanoags and Narragansetts returned to their homelands in search of food. By July, English troops and their Indian allies had quashed the last pockets of resistance. Metacom himself was slain by a Christian Indian. Plymouth troops carried his head to the colony's capital, also called Plymouth, and put it on public display.

With the deaths of about 5,000 Indians of New England and 2,500 colonists (40 and 5 percent of their respective populations), King Philip's War is one of the bloodiest in American history relative to population size. The English precluded future resistance by executing and enslaving those most actively hostile and by replacing the alliances and trade networks, which formerly characterized their ties to Indians, with reservations and legislation that rendered all natives—whether supporting or opposing them during the war—as outcast subjects.
See also Colonial Era; Indian History and Culture: From 1500 to 1800; Indian Wars.

Bibliography

Douglas Edward Leach , Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King Philip's War, 1958.
Neal Salisbury , Introduction, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, ed. Neal Salisbury, 1997, pp. 1–60.

Neal Salisbury