King Philip's War
King Philip's War (1675-76) was a bloody was between a coalition of Indians and the English colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut. It was the most devastating war, for both sides, in the history of the Northeast, and resulted in a decisive victory for the settlers.
Causes
The settlers demanded that the Indians recognize the sovereignty of the colonial government. Indians could no longer be independent. In economic terms, they were not useful to the colonists. Land was a minor issue (the settlers lived on small farms and did not hunt for game, and so rarely entered Indian hunting grounds.) On the other side, Indians wanted to remain autonomous, did not want to be subject to English courts, and resented Christian missionary efforts. The leader Massasoit had been friendly but after his death in 1662 new Indian leaders challenged the settlers. They ignored the fate of the Pequot, and looked about for alliances with various tribes. The key leader was Massasoit's oldest living son, Metacom, or Philip, sachem of the Wampanoag. Philip renewed the peace covenant with Plymouth Colony, but repeated reports of plots with the Narragansett, the French, and others led Plymouth (1671) to demand an account. Philip haughtily protested peaceful intentions, and agreed to surrender firearms. Sullen peace followed, but the Wampanoag surrendered suspiciously few arms. When three Wampanoag were tried in court and executed for the murder of a Christian Indian informer, the warriors attacked and plundered nearby farms. Neither side was ready for war. Philip 's alliances were not concluded, and the English were unprepared and widely scattered.
The war
In June 1675, Wampanoag marauders threatened Swansea settlers. who fired back. Swift, devastating raids on Swansea and neighboring towns threw the colonists into panic, intensified when the militia found no Indians to fight--for the Indians never made a stand. The war was a series of Indian raids (lasting a few hours followed by sudden withdrawal), followed by retaliatory expeditions by the settlers. The counterattack was ill planned and indecisive and antagonized other tribes. There was no unified command among the colonies that joined in, cooperation was spotty, the soldiers were under-equipped and ignorant of Indian warfare, and the troops lacked scouts to track the enemy and refused at first to employ friendly Indians. When combined Plymouth and Massachusetts forces drove Philip and his Wampanoag warriors into the swamps (June 30, 1675), he easily slipped away.
Suspicious of the Narragansett, colonial forces raided their country and compelled a few lingerers to sign a treaty of neutrality on July 15, but most Narragansett warriors, led by Canonchet, had joined alongside the Wampanoag. The English sale of captives into West Indian slavery and the slaughter of innocent Christian Indians drove Nipmuck, Abnaki, and even some converted Indians into opposition--though they never united under one leader.
The most effective Indian tactic was to raid a small settlement, besiege the garrison, burn abandoned farms and homes and then waylay relief parties. The men were killed, the women and children killed or kidnapped. At first the Indians set fires in patches of woods and ambushed detachments of troops sent to investigate. The Indians always refused a pitched battle, where the disciplined drilling and firepower of the colonists would overwhelm their individualistic fighting tactics based on ambushes and hatchets.
By late 1675, disaster overtook the colonies on all sides. Numerous frontier towns (such as Mendon, Brookfield, Deerfield, and Northfield), were devastated, abandoned, or both; two small colonial units were ambushed and destroyed (Sawmill Brook, Sept. 3; Muddy Brook, Sept. 18). Hundreds of miles out similar raids devastated some colonial villages in New Hampshire and Maine.
Great Swamp Fight
Finally the colonists overcame their weaknesses and devised a common strategy that worked. The Indians avoided pitched battles, but the had to defend their food stores of they would starve in the harsh winter. They could hide the stores but they could not easily move them, so the colonies, using scouts from friendly tribes, discovered and destroyed the enemy food supplies in December-January, 1675-76 and defeated the Indians who were forced into a pitched battle on European terms because to flee meant starvation.
The colonists first destroyed the Narragansett in the Great Swamp Fight (Dec. 19, 1675) in the Narraganset country (at the present site of South Kingstown, Rhode Island). The combined forces of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Connecticut, over 1,000 soldiers under the command of Gov. Josiah Winslow, with about 150 Indian allies, marched through the snow to the island in the Great Swamp, which had been fortified by the Narraganset to protect their food supplies. The first assault by the colonists early in the afternoon, was turned back with heavy losses; after three hours of desperate fighting the fort was forced at the rear and the Indians routed. The Indian wigwams were set on fire, and many women and children died in the flames. The English lost six captains and 120 men and the Narraganset losses ran into the hundreds. This battle forever the power of the Narraganset and gave the settlers confidence they had a winning strategy, with unified commands, Indian scouts, and a systematic attack on heavily guarded food stores.
Philip and a small band wintered near Albany, New York, in hopes of gaining aid from the Mohawk Indians and the French. In early 1676 he attacked the eastern settlements in order to concentrate English forces there while they planted food crops in the Connecticut Valley. On Feb. 9 Indians attacked Lancaster--where [[Mary Rowlandson was captured--and threatened Plymouth, Providence, and towns near Boston.
Colonists captured and executed Canonchet on Apr. 3. The Mohawks suddenly decided to attack the Narragansett from the west, thereby helping the colonists. Finally on May 18-19, Capt. William Turner with 180 men surprised and massacred the Indians at Deerfield and broke their resistance in the Connecticut River valley. By the end of May the tide had turned in the west. Capt. Benjamin Church, assisted by able Indian scouts, trapped Philip and his Wampanoag in swamps near Taunton and Bridgewater, killing Philip on August 12, 1676. Philip's death marked the end of the main war, though hostilities continued in New Hampshire and Maine, where the Abnaki and others, supplied with French arms and encouragement, wreaked havoc on settlement after settlement.
Results
On April 12, 1678, articles of peace were signed at Casco, Maine, with mutual restoration of captives and property. Since June 1675, sixteen towns in Massachusetts and four in Rhode Island had been destroyed, all colonists had fled Kennebec County (Maine), and all along New England frontiers, expansion had been retarded. But the Indians no longer posed a threat to the colonists in southern New England. Thereafter their struggle was confined to the northeast and northwest, where it merged with the struggle between the colonists and France for control of the continent.
Estimates were that about 6,000 men, women and children were killed or captured. Many of those captured were sold into slavery to allied Indians, or to the West Indies sugar plantations. About 2,500 settlers--men, women and children--died during the war. Colonial expenses during the war amounted to 100,000 pounds sterling, a huge amount for the time. The frontier of settlement had been pushed back 20 miles. Northfield, Deerfield, Brookfield, Worcester, Lancaster, Groton, Mendon, Wrentham, Middleborough, Warwick, Wickford and Simsbury had been destroyed, and Springfield, Westfield, Marlborough, Scituate, Rehoboth and Providence had been heavily damaged. Boston was threatened but was never hit. The war weakened the colonial economy for years, requiring infusions of British resources and denying dividends to London investors. Henceforth, the American settlers would feel an increasingly heavy hand of the royal government.
Memory and memorials
Philip did not exercise any over-all operational control of events. With a tribal culture and tradition based upon decentralization of political and military power, such control was probably impossible. The colonists however needed an enemy to personify and he fit the bill; his head was exhibited for years afterward.
Bibliography
- Adams. James Truslow. The Founding of New England () online
- Bourne, Russell. The Red King's Rebellion
- Domer, Ronald G. "King Philip's Ferocious War," Military History, Dec 2004, Vol. 21#5 online at EBSCO
- Ellis, George W., and John E. Morris. King Philip's War
- Lapont, Jill.
- Roman, Joseph. King Philip, Wampanoag Rebel
Primary Sources
- Church, Thomas. History of King Philip's War