By Paul Carrier
Many years ago, I was a newspaper reporter whose beat included the town of Swansea, Mass., the first community to be attacked in 1675 when war broke out in southern New England between Native Americans and English colonists. During one of my first visits to the Swansea Town Hall, I spotted a large plaque listing wars in which the town’s residents have fought, stretching all the way back to King Philip’s War itself. We have long memories in New England. One of my ancestors fought on the English side during that war, in the western Massachusetts town of Deerfield.
The war takes its name from Metacom (or Metacomet), the Wampanoag leader known to the English colonists as King Philip. It began as a series of Indian attacks in Plymouth Colony, now a part of Massachusetts, and spread quickly as a confederation of Indian tribes faced off against the colonists and their allies. The conflict ended some time after Metacom was killed in August 1676, leaving devastation in its wake.
As historian Jill Lepore explains in her 1998 book, The Name of War, more than half of all the English settlements in New England had been ruined by the time of Metacom’s death. “Those Algonquians who fought the English saw their communities decimated,” Lepore writes, with thousands of Indians killed in the fighting and thousands more enslaved or killed by disease and starvation. King Philip’s War has been described as the bloodiest in American history, in proportion to the population.
Now comes Lisa Brooks, an associate professor of English and American studies at Amherst College, with Our Beloved Kin, which bills itself as a new history of the war.
The scholarly, deeply researched study breaks ground by documenting how some Native Americans, including powerful female leaders and bilingual Christians with English and Indian ties, resisted colonialism or adapted to it. Brooks focuses in large part on Weetamoo, Metacom's sister-in-law and a Wampanoag saunkskwa, or female sachem; and James Printer (aka, Wawaus), a Nipmuc scholar who lived at various times in the colonial and indigenous worlds. Weetamoo and James Printer both figure in the tale of Mary Rowlandson of Lancaster in Massachusetts, who was captured by Native Americans during the war and later wrote a highly popular memoir about her experience.
“An influential Wampanoag diplomat, Weetamoo presented a political and cultural challenge to the Puritan men who confronted her authority,” Brooks writes. As for James Printer, “another compelling figure absent from most histories,” he hailed from a leading Nipmuc family, attended English preparatory schools in Massachusetts, worked as a printer before and after the war, and played a series of seemingly conflicting roles in both camps during the conflict.
Brooks’ work gives voice to the voiceless and helps to set the record straight about what happened and why, but it is not as sharply focused as it could be. Much of Our Beloved Kin deals with the years — even decades — preceding the war, laying the groundwork for it, but at great length. Brooks devotes several pages to an “eloquent epistle” on the Greek myth of Orpheus written in 1663 by Caleb Cheeshateaumuck, a Harvard-educated Wampanoag.
Our Beloved Kin is undeniably authoritative, however. And it introduces a perspective — that of the Native Americans — that is generally missing from accounts of the war based largely on the (often dubious) claims of colonial writers. In fact, Brooks, who has Abenaki roots, seeks to “decolonize” accounts of the war.
As is often the case when we delve into history, particularly from a rarely seen vantage point such as that of Brooks, the past proves to be more complex and surprising than we might have imagined. The author carefully demolishes stereotypes, misconceptions and outright lies.
Brooks notes, for example, that despite the fact that King Philip’s War takes its name from one man, Metacom did not call the shots. Indian decision-making during the war was decentralized, based on different tribal priorities and geographical considerations. Moreover, the war did not unite all of New England’s Indians against the colonists. The Wampanoags of Plymouth Colony and the Nipmucs of Massachusetts took the lead, but there were dissenters among the Nipmucs. The Narragansetts of Rhode Island were latecomers to the fight. Other tribes, including the Mohegans and Pequots of Connecticut, sided with the English colonists.
Although the war was initiated by the Wampanoags and the colonists tried to portray their retaliation as just, colonial provocations abounded, not least because of the colonists’ greed and duplicity. Yet for much of the war, the colonists were not really up to the task. Brooks notes that the colonists, although well-established along the coast and, to a lesser extent, in what is now western Massachusetts, had little or no understanding of New England’s interior. The Wabanaki lands to the north (today’s Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine) were largely unknown to the settlers. They even needed Indian guides to find the native stronghold of Menimesit, which was located within a few miles of the English towns of Lancaster and Brookfield in Massachusetts.
Brooks has an impressive feel for the landscape of the war, the roots of the conflict, and the desperation of indigenous people who saw their way of life slipping away before their eyes. Some English-allied Indians felt torn — or even stranded — between two worlds. James Printer worked as a printer at Harvard, was later falsely accused of murder by the English, was kidnapped by Nipmucs at war with the colonists, and played an ambivalent role while in Nipmuc custody.
Not only did the colonists seek vengeance against the natives who rebelled against European settlement and expansion, but they often failed to differentiate between enemies and neutral or allied natives, assuming that even so-called “praying Indians,” who had converted to Christianity and adopted English ways, were foes.
It is commonly believed that the war was confined to southern New England and that it drew to a close with Metacom’s death in 1676, but neither “fact” is true.
Brooks explains that, at about the time Metacom was assassinated, Indian refugees fleeing north and the Wabanakis of northern New England carried the war to that region, opening a whole new front even as the conflict cooled to the south. Unlike the outcome in the south, however, the Wabanakis effectively won the war in the north, thanks in part to the intervention of colonial negotiators from New York who seem to have been more skillful, respectful and flexible than the hard-hearted, devious leaders of Massachusetts and Connecticut.
The war takes its name from Metacom (or Metacomet), the Wampanoag leader known to the English colonists as King Philip. It began as a series of Indian attacks in Plymouth Colony, now a part of Massachusetts, and spread quickly as a confederation of Indian tribes faced off against the colonists and their allies. The conflict ended some time after Metacom was killed in August 1676, leaving devastation in its wake.
As historian Jill Lepore explains in her 1998 book, The Name of War, more than half of all the English settlements in New England had been ruined by the time of Metacom’s death. “Those Algonquians who fought the English saw their communities decimated,” Lepore writes, with thousands of Indians killed in the fighting and thousands more enslaved or killed by disease and starvation. King Philip’s War has been described as the bloodiest in American history, in proportion to the population.
Now comes Lisa Brooks, an associate professor of English and American studies at Amherst College, with Our Beloved Kin, which bills itself as a new history of the war.
The scholarly, deeply researched study breaks ground by documenting how some Native Americans, including powerful female leaders and bilingual Christians with English and Indian ties, resisted colonialism or adapted to it. Brooks focuses in large part on Weetamoo, Metacom's sister-in-law and a Wampanoag saunkskwa, or female sachem; and James Printer (aka, Wawaus), a Nipmuc scholar who lived at various times in the colonial and indigenous worlds. Weetamoo and James Printer both figure in the tale of Mary Rowlandson of Lancaster in Massachusetts, who was captured by Native Americans during the war and later wrote a highly popular memoir about her experience.
“An influential Wampanoag diplomat, Weetamoo presented a political and cultural challenge to the Puritan men who confronted her authority,” Brooks writes. As for James Printer, “another compelling figure absent from most histories,” he hailed from a leading Nipmuc family, attended English preparatory schools in Massachusetts, worked as a printer before and after the war, and played a series of seemingly conflicting roles in both camps during the conflict.
Brooks’ work gives voice to the voiceless and helps to set the record straight about what happened and why, but it is not as sharply focused as it could be. Much of Our Beloved Kin deals with the years — even decades — preceding the war, laying the groundwork for it, but at great length. Brooks devotes several pages to an “eloquent epistle” on the Greek myth of Orpheus written in 1663 by Caleb Cheeshateaumuck, a Harvard-educated Wampanoag.
Our Beloved Kin is undeniably authoritative, however. And it introduces a perspective — that of the Native Americans — that is generally missing from accounts of the war based largely on the (often dubious) claims of colonial writers. In fact, Brooks, who has Abenaki roots, seeks to “decolonize” accounts of the war.
As is often the case when we delve into history, particularly from a rarely seen vantage point such as that of Brooks, the past proves to be more complex and surprising than we might have imagined. The author carefully demolishes stereotypes, misconceptions and outright lies.
Brooks notes, for example, that despite the fact that King Philip’s War takes its name from one man, Metacom did not call the shots. Indian decision-making during the war was decentralized, based on different tribal priorities and geographical considerations. Moreover, the war did not unite all of New England’s Indians against the colonists. The Wampanoags of Plymouth Colony and the Nipmucs of Massachusetts took the lead, but there were dissenters among the Nipmucs. The Narragansetts of Rhode Island were latecomers to the fight. Other tribes, including the Mohegans and Pequots of Connecticut, sided with the English colonists.
Although the war was initiated by the Wampanoags and the colonists tried to portray their retaliation as just, colonial provocations abounded, not least because of the colonists’ greed and duplicity. Yet for much of the war, the colonists were not really up to the task. Brooks notes that the colonists, although well-established along the coast and, to a lesser extent, in what is now western Massachusetts, had little or no understanding of New England’s interior. The Wabanaki lands to the north (today’s Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine) were largely unknown to the settlers. They even needed Indian guides to find the native stronghold of Menimesit, which was located within a few miles of the English towns of Lancaster and Brookfield in Massachusetts.
Brooks has an impressive feel for the landscape of the war, the roots of the conflict, and the desperation of indigenous people who saw their way of life slipping away before their eyes. Some English-allied Indians felt torn — or even stranded — between two worlds. James Printer worked as a printer at Harvard, was later falsely accused of murder by the English, was kidnapped by Nipmucs at war with the colonists, and played an ambivalent role while in Nipmuc custody.
Not only did the colonists seek vengeance against the natives who rebelled against European settlement and expansion, but they often failed to differentiate between enemies and neutral or allied natives, assuming that even so-called “praying Indians,” who had converted to Christianity and adopted English ways, were foes.
It is commonly believed that the war was confined to southern New England and that it drew to a close with Metacom’s death in 1676, but neither “fact” is true.
Brooks explains that, at about the time Metacom was assassinated, Indian refugees fleeing north and the Wabanakis of northern New England carried the war to that region, opening a whole new front even as the conflict cooled to the south. Unlike the outcome in the south, however, the Wabanakis effectively won the war in the north, thanks in part to the intervention of colonial negotiators from New York who seem to have been more skillful, respectful and flexible than the hard-hearted, devious leaders of Massachusetts and Connecticut.
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