Metacom’s War

Sources

Origins. Also called King Philip’s War (1675–1676), Metacom’s War was a bitter and bloody conflict named for Metacom (or Metacomet), a chieftain of the Wampanoags. It arose out of cultural conflict and population pressure, as English settlers slowly surrounded the ancestral lands of the Wampanoags on Narragansett Bay. Concerned about encroachments and the divisions in native culture caused by missionaries, the Indians attacked nearby settlements. Metacom led a campaign that completely destroyed twelve of the ninety Puritan towns and attacked forty more.

Significance. In the spring of 1676 Wampanoag forces evacuated to New York, but the Mohawks refused to help them, and the colonists gained the upper hand. Metacom was captured and killed, and his head was severed and kept on public display for twenty years. Many of the Wampanoags, including Metacom’s wife and son, were sold into slavery in the Caribbean. The war not only broke the power of the coastal tribes in New England but also led to political changes in the colonies. Massachusett’s colonial charter was revoked. Also, before the conflict was over about 10 percent of the total adult male population of New England was killed—making it the most costly war in American history, measured by the proportion of casualties to total population.

Sources

Alvin M. Josephy, “The Betrayal of King Philip,” in The Patriot Chiefs: A Chronicle of American Indian Resistance (New York: Viking, 1969), pp. 31–62.

Richard Slotkin and James K. Folson, eds., So Dreadfull a Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip’s War, 1676–1677 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1978).