KING PHILIP'S WAR This research paper analyzes

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 n

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but many indians believed he had been poisoned. His younger brother, Metacomet, or, in English, Philip, as the new sachem at first took steps to allay the settlers' fears. Edmonds says that "from 1666 onwards rumors of Indian plots . . . began reaching Plymouth and Boston" (368). Philip was subjected to interrogations by colonial authorities and was forced in 1671 to pay a fine and to accept a treaty of submission. Philip began exploring the possibility of forming alliances against the settlers with other tribes and gradually came to the conclusion that peace with them was impossible except on unacceptable and humiliating terms. According to Drake, "the failure of their [the indians'] political bonds to preserve their groups autonomy justified their severance" (140). In 1674, a Harvard-educated Christianized Indian, John Sassamon, warned the Plymouth authorities that the Wampanoags were planning to attack the settlers. He was later found murdered. In June, 1675, three Wampanoags, including one of Philip's counsellors, were found guilty of Sassamon's murder by a white jury in Plymouth with whom an auxiliary indian jury concurred. Within a few weeks, indian raids near Swansea in Plymouth resulted in the outbreak of hostilities. Fi

Category: History - K