King Philip's War

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King Philip's War scene and historical locations (red).

The rebellion of the Indians in southern New England in the years 1675–1676 against the expansion of the English colonists is called King Philip's War . The Indian leader was by the British King Philip called the Obersachem the Wampanoag in southeastern Massachusetts , whose real name but Metacomet was. 800 people lost their lives among the colonists, which corresponded to about a fifth of all men of military age. About 3000 people died on the Indian side. As a result, it is considered to be one of the bloodiest colonial wars in North American history. The war was a critical turning point for the young colonies as it disrupted the relationships between colonists and indigenous people and brought a new culture to the country in which the Indians became marginal figures in the society of the dominant white settlers.

Historical background

The land that the British called New England was a rich, fertile area where for centuries large numbers of Native American peoples had established a thriving culture. In 1620, however , the English pilgrim fathers landed on an almost deserted coast. The unusually dense Indian population that Samuel de Champlain had seen only a few years earlier had been decimated by a series of devastating epidemics .

The English were welcomed at first and only survived the first few years with the help of the Indians.

Attack of the colonists on the Pequot Fort on the Mystic River, 1637

In the eyes of the Puritans , the Indian population losses were a gift from God to make room for His chosen people. The English considered the seasonal migrations of the Indians chaotic and aimless. However, this was actually an exact sequence of moves in order to use regional resources as evenly as possible. Now the colonists demanded that they become small farmers overnight. In addition, great efforts were made to convert the Indian pagans to Christianity. The Wampanoag on the east coast of Massachusetts were the first target of the Puritan missionary zeal . One of the most famous missionaries was the Puritan clergyman John Eliot . When he began his missionary work, life was so hopeless for many Indians that even his form of Christianity was seen as a way out of misery. In 1650 he settled converts in Natick . On 6,000 acres (24.3 km²) of land, this settlement 27 km southwest of Boston was to become a model congregation of the Puritans - a prayer city . The experiment was successful and over time a number of other prayer cities emerged in the region.

The leader of the Wampanoag at that time was the Obersachem Massasoit . After his death in 1661, his eldest son Wamsutta followed , but after a short time he died under mysterious circumstances. He was succeeded by his younger brother Metacom, whom the English called King Philip. Philip was by no means a radical sachem, but under his leadership there was a dramatic change in the Wampanoag's attitude towards the colonists. By now it had become clear to them that the English would gradually take everything away from them, both their land and their traditional culture, way of life and religion.

Metacomet decided to prevent further expansion of English settlements. The Wampanoag alone were too weak for this, because they currently had fewer than 1,000 tribe members. From his home on Mount Hope , he began visiting other tribes in order to win them over to his plan. That too was an almost hopeless endeavor, because at that time the number of colonists in southern New England was already more than double that of the Indians - 35,000 colonists compared to 15,000 indigenous people. Philips efforts were not secret, because a network of spies, the Indians from the prayer cities, they were called Praying Indians (Engl. Praying Indians), told Philips plans to the English. In 1671 Philip was called to Taunton , listened to the allegations of the English and signed an agreement in which the Wampanoag undertook to surrender their firearms. However, he did not attend the dinner that followed, and the weapons were not later delivered.

There were reservations within the English population against further acts of war, but the Puritan elite pushed for a war solution. The English conquest continued and Philip gradually won the Nipmuck , Pocumtuc and Narraganset as allies. The beginning of the uprising was initially set for the spring of 1676.

In January 1675 the body of John Sassamon , a Christian Indian, was found. He was an interpreter for the English and was considered a traitor by the Wampanoag. Three of their warriors were then captured, charged with murder and hanged. After this obvious provocation, Philip could no longer hold back his warriors because, in addition, rumors circulated that the English were about to arrest Philip. Philip was holding a council of war at Mount Hope - most of the Wampanoag wanted to follow him, with the exception of the Nauset on Cape Cod and the small groups on the offshore islands. Other allies were the Nipmuck, Pocumtuc and some Penacook and Eastern Abenaki . The Narraganset, however, were forced to sign a peace treaty with the English.

The participants

The previously independent British colonies had formed a confederation in 1643 and faced almost all the tribes living in southern New England, plus some Abenaki from the north and Mohawk and Mahican from the west.

against

The war

Indian successes

Siege of Brookfield, Connecticut in King Philip's War

In late June 1675, a wampanoag was killed near the English settlement of Swansea ; so began the King Philip's War. The Wampanoag raided Swansea, Taunton , Tiverton and Dartmouth in southeastern Massachusetts. Despite the warnings and their outnumber, the English ran into big problems. The Wampanoag and their allies were well armed with firearms, partly by the French, but also by the English themselves. The Indians had even set up their own armories and workshops in the woods. Philip had over 1,000 warriors from virtually every New England tribe, and many officially neutral tribes provided room and board for the warriors. Only the Mohegan under Uncas ' son Oneko were loyal allies of the colonists. The English were particularly angry about the many defectors from the ranks of the Christian Indians (English praying Indians). When the Puritan missionaries checked the number of converted Indians, they found only about 500 of them in the prayer cities. The others had disappeared into the woods or joined Philip. Therefore, the remaining praying Indians were taken to Deer Island in Boston Harbor or other "safe" locations. Most of them did not survive the exile.

In July 1675, the Plymouth colonists assembled a force that marched to Mount Hope, Philips Village, near present-day Bristol , Rhode Island, and burned every Wampanoag village on their way there. They put the Wampanoag warriors in a swamp near Pocasset Neck , but they managed to evacuate their women and children by canoe across the bay near the Pocasset. Philip and his warriors escaped unnoticed; so the English besieged an empty swamp. Philip left his wives and children in the care of the still neutral Narraganset and moved his troops west to the Nipmuck in central Massachusetts. According to English reports, Philip was present at almost every battle, every engagement, but this was physically practically impossible. Philip had the Indian leadership, while others such as Anawon , Tuspaquin , Sachem Sam of the Nipmuck, and Sancumachu of the Pocumtuc led the individual battles.

After Philip moved to his new location in the west, the war took on a sharper pace than before. The Nipmuck raided Brookfield and Worcester , then united with the Pocumtuc and turned to the settlements in the Connecticut River valley . After an attack on Northfield , Captain Beers' auxiliaries were ambushed south of town and more than half of its members were killed. In September, the Indians attacked Deerfield and Hadley , forcing the colonists to evacuate their homes in the area. In view of the impending winter, the English marched 80 soldiers under Captain Thomas Lothrop to bring the abandoned harvest to safety at Hadley. On the march back, the troops were ambushed at Bloody Brook south of Deerfield and were attacked by 700 Pocumtuc and nearly destroyed. Another English unit, reinforced by 60 Mohegan warriors, came too late and found only seven survivors.

After the attacks on the northern settlements on the Connecticut River, Philips warriors moved south and raided the towns of Hatfield , Springfield , Westfield and Northampton . Despite Mohegan help, the settlers in western Massachusetts were doing poorly, and by late fall had withdrawn to a few forts. At the time, Philip felt strong enough to return to Rhode Island and get his family. He took her to his winter quarters in the Berkshire Mountains near Hoosick on the Massachusetts-New York border. Here he got reinforcements from the Western Abenaki and even some Mahican and Mohawk. The population in Philips Dorf in Hoosick grew to more than 2,000 and there was a prolonged famine in the winter of 1675/76.

For obvious reasons, the English saw neutral tribes helping the Wampanoag as enemies, thus expanding the war. When the fighting broke out, the Narraganset had gathered in a single swamped fortified village near Kingston, Rhode Island. They had also taken in Wampanoag women and children there, which the English accused them of supporting the enemy. In December 1675, Plymouth Governor Josiah Winslow led an army of 1,000 men along with 150 Mohegan scouts against the Narraganset Fort in the swamp. After Canonchet , the leader of the Narraganset, rejected the demand that the Wampanoag be surrendered in his village, the besiegers attacked. The English managed to penetrate the village and set the huts on fire. Many Indians fled into the swamp and watched in impotent anger as women, children and old people burned alive. In this battle, which as Great Swamp Massacre (Engl. Great Swamp Massacre) became known, the Narragansett lost more than 600 tribal members and 20 sachems. Canonchet, however, escaped and led a larger group of Narraganset warriors west to reunite with King Philip at Hoosick.

The defeat

Philip had meanwhile tried to get the Mohawk on his side. Edmund Andros , the king-appointed governor of New York , was not a friend of the Puritans in Massachusetts and was initially neutral. That only changed when Philip tried to win the Iroquois as allies. After a few Mohawk died in questionable circumstances near Hoosick, they turned down Philip's request and even forced him to leave Hoosick at Governor Andro's request. He moved with his warriors to Squawkeag in the Connecticut River Valley, near the Massachusetts- Vermont border . Philip no longer waited for warmer weather, but continued the war. In February, he raided large numbers of settlements across southern New England and reduced them to ashes.

The English troops were repeatedly ambushed and the Narraganset under Canonchet killed over 130 soldiers in two skirmishes. When these successes became known, more warriors moved to Squawkeag, but Philip was unable to provide for them all. He tried desperately to drive the English settlers out of the area so that the Indians could grow corn for their food. For this reason attacked in the spring of 1676 Pocumtuc and Narraganset united the places Deerfield and Northfield and suffered heavy losses. The Indians desperately needed seeds, and in April Canonchet returned to Rhode Island to bring Philip seeds from a secret hiding place. But on the march back Conanchet was captured by Mohegan, handed over to the British and later shot by a firing squad.

Canonchet's death seemed to have hit Philip hard; it marked the turning point of the war. Philip retired to his headquarters on Mount Wachusett . The actions of the English became more effective because they now used the Christian Indians from the prayer cities as scouts. In May 1676, Captain William Turner attacked an Indian camp at Turner's Falls, killing over 400 indigenous people including the Pocumtuc sachem Sancumachu. They also killed many gunsmiths and destroyed their workshops. The Indians counterattacked and Turner lost 43 men in the retreat to Hatfield. But the Indian losses had their effect and Philip's Confederation began to disintegrate. Each tribe now fought on its own, and some Nipmuck and Pocumtuc accepted the offer from New York to seek refuge with the Mahican in Schaghticoke . Others went to the Western Abenaki in Cowasuck in the north or even further to Missisquoi and Odanak in Quebec . Philip and the Wampanoag, however, moved back to their homeland in southeastern Massachusetts.

Throughout the summer the Wampanoag were hunted by troops and Indian scouts under Captain Benjamin Church. Philip withdrew to a hiding place at Mount Hope. On August 1, Philip escaped during an attack on his village, but his wife and son were captured and taken prisoner to Martha's Vineyard . Five days later, the English attacked a Pocasset village and Weetamoo , the widow of Philip's brother, drowned while trying to escape. The English cut off her head and exhibited it publicly in Taunton. Philip remained in hiding on Mount Hope until he was surrounded and shot by Benjamin Church's forces on August 12 after betraying him. His body was beheaded and quartered, and his head was displayed on a stake in Plymouth for 25 years. Many reports indicate that Philip's wife and son were sold as slaves to the West Indies , but some also state that they fled to the Sokoki in Odanak.

consequences of war

The war was actually over with Philip's death, but peace treaties were not concluded between the warring parties until two years later. During this time the English hunted Philips allies and members of the tribes who had supported him. Only two Penacook tribes had joined King Philip, the Nashua and the Wachuset , while the rest, under Sachem Wannalancet, stayed out of the fighting. However, the English were convinced that the Penacook were supporting the insurgents, and a punitive expedition under Captain Samuel Mosely attacked them in 1676. 200 Nashua were killed and the survivors were sold as slaves; the escaped Penacook fled to Canada under French protection. Later that year, Penobscot and Kennebec, who lived further north, were drawn into the war. In November 1676, an English force attacked Squagheag and destroyed the maize supplies for the coming winter.

The Native American Indians had proportionally the highest casualties compared to other colonial wars in North America. At the end of the war, 3,000 of the 20,000 indigenous people had lost their lives, which corresponds to about 15%. Although small groups lived on the Connecticut River until the 19th century , the Pocumtuc disappeared as an organized group. The war also brought heavy losses for the English: 600 colonists were killed, a total of 90 settlements were attacked and 13 of them were completely destroyed.

The British soldiers whom England had sent to put down the uprising remained mostly in the colonies because of the high costs of the return journey to England.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Eric B. Schultz, Michael J. Touglas: King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict . WW Norton and Co., 2000, ISBN 0-88150-483-1 , p. 5.
  2. ^ A b Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States, Harper Perennial, 2005, p. 16
  3. ^ The Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Connecticut - 1675 King Philip's War

literature

  • Washington Irving: Philip of Pokanoket. An Native American story in Gottfried Crayon's sketchbook , Frankfurt am Main, 1846.
  • Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 15. Northeast . Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1978, ISBN 0-16-004575-4 .
  • Stephan Maninger: War and Violence in Puritan New England , Back then, June 2007.
  • Stephan Maninger: The lost wilderness: The conquest of the American Northeast in the 17th century , Verlag für Americanistik, Wyk auf För, 2009.
  • Kyle F. Zelner: A Rabble in Arms: Massachusetts Towns and Militiamen during King Philip's War. NYU Press, New York 2009, ISBN 9780814797181 .
  • Christine M. DeLucia: Memory Lands: King Philip's War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast. Yale University, New Haven 2020, ISBN 978-0-300-24838-8 .

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