Causes and Consequences of King Philip's War

 

[caption id="attachment_9004" align="aligncenter" width="461"] "Early American Conflict" is by an unknown artist who was not a witness to King Philip's War.[/caption]

In my previous post, we saw that the New England Indians in the 1600's were selective at first in what aspects of white culture and Christianity they would take on.

But, as often happens, one thing led to another and the once tentative converts gradually became the praying Indians, taking on more white ways than before. So missionaries like John Eliot and other influential English people helped the converted Indians gain status outside of traditional Native social systems. And that created tensions - or intensified existing tensions - between the praying Indians and the Indians who were still trying to walk a traditional path.

 

Exactly why King Philip (aka Metacomet, a Wampanoag chief) decided to attack the English is a complex question, but his intention of doing so didn't start the war. As word spread among that Natives that King Philip was preparing to fight, John Eliot's scribe, a Natick Indian named John Sassamon, warned his white friends. Sassamon was murdered. Three Indians were accused and tried based on the testimony of only one witness. Maybe a war over race and culture would have happened anyway, but the murder of Sassamon and the trial that came after it made war a sure thing.

And, as I stated in an earlier post, King Philip's War was one of the bloodiest in American history. It was devastating to the "traditional" Indians, devastating to the praying Indians and devastating to the English. Harold Van Lonkhuyzen tells us that King Philip's War:

changed the context of English-Indian relations and terminated the special relationship that had allowed the two communities to derive mutual benefits from each other. Engendering a wave of vicious anti-Indian feeling, the war encouraged the English to believe that all Indians were 'fiendish sons of Satan' and threats to God's people.

And the hard feelings were mutual. The Christian Indians never regained the trust they had for the English.