Bloody New England

King Philip’s War

Photo Credit: MPI / Getty Images

Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty

by Daniel R. Mandell

Johns Hopkins, 176 pp., $45

Among the many curious episodes of New England’s early history, about the only event that has struck a chord among most Americans—at least the few who are conscious of their historical past—is the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s. Beyond that, much of the first century and a half of America’s emergence towards statehood is a murky blank, perhaps smudged in the later decades by the French and Indian War of the late 1750s.

This is unfortunate because one of the most terrifying threats to the survival of the colonists lodged precariously in the New England coast and hinterland was a conflagration called King Philip’s War, which lasted from 1675 to 1677. The war, of course, was eventually won by the colonists, but at a huge price: Of the approximately 80,000 residents of New England at the time, including both colonists and Indians, more than 10 percent—9,000 men, women, and children—lost their lives. One third of these were English immigrants to the New World. An incredible 52 of New England’s 90 towns were attacked, and 17 razed to the ground. (The list of pillaged towns, to be sure, does not include the numerous far-flung trading posts and infant settlement communities that were also attacked and burned.)

The Native Americans paid an even higher price for their rebellion against the colonists. Thousands of them were packed off to slave labor in Bermuda, and then to the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. Those fortunate enough to convince the English of their loyalty found their traditional tribal territory and their fishing preserves nibbled at inexorably over subsequent years by sometimes-shadowy real estate deals.