This research paper analyzes the causes, course and effects of King Philip's War in 1675-1676 between the English settlers in the New England colonies and various Algonquian Indian tribes. The origins of the war lay in the inevitable clash between expansionist-minded settlers in the Puritan Northeast and indians who eventually resisted the loss of their lands and their cultural autonomy. The war was one of the bloodiest in American history and set back for decades the economic development of western New England and the expansion of the settlers over the Appalachian range. For the Indian tribes involved, the war effectively destroyed their civilization in New England.
Introduction: Origins of the 1675-1676 War
Seeds of Conflict. American schoolchildren are taught that the Pilgrims after their arrival at Plymouth in 1619 were saved from the rigors of their first New England winter by friendly Indians. Pomfret says that "The Pilgrims were reasonable in their dealings with the natives and enjoyed unusually good relations with them" (114). Amity between the Pilgrims and the indians was facilitated by the presence among the indians of Squanto, an indian who had been kidnapped by the English a few years before the arrival of the Mayflower and who understood the ways of the English. The coastal indians whom the Pilgrims first encountered, the Wampanoags, were inclined to be peaceful. Their numbers had been reduced by a recent epidemic of smallpox. The small numbers of Pilgrims, only 300 by 1622, represented no immediate threat to the indians. There were, however, nasty incidents, usually precipitated by settlers, such as the killing of two indian chiefs or sachems by the colonists, after they had been invited to visit Plymouth by Miles Standish, a Pilgrim leader.
The various coastal Algonquin tribes, the Abenakis to the north, the Massachusetts, the Wampanoags, the Narragansetts and the Pequots, probably never exceeded 25,000. T...