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Indians 101: The Wampanoag War of 1675-1676 [1]
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Date: 2025-05-01
The English invasion of North America during the seventeenth century was characterized by cultural misunderstandings, violence, and organized warfare.
In looking at the causes of the wars between the English Puritans and the Indians in New England, Wilcomb Washburn, in his chapter on seventeenth-century wars in the Handbook of North American Indians, writes:
“Traditional Indian tribal culture thus became a natural enemy that must be destroyed not for faults that its members may have committed but for existing as an example of a society contradicting the assumptions of Puritan society.”
Within this framework, the English viewed Indians as a kind of wild vermin to be exterminated. With regard to the English and their policies toward the Indians, historian Wilbur R. Jacobs, in his chapter on British Indian policies in the Handbook of North American Indians, writes:
“Native American people were seen as temporary owners of the North American continent rich in minerals, furs, fish, agricultural produce (maize, squash, and other food plants domesticated by Indians).”
He also says:
“Overall policy allowed no special place for the American Indian, who was regarded as a kind of nonperson.”
In their book Indian Wars, Historians Robert Utley and Wilcomb Washburn sum up the English approach to Indians by saying:
“The English showed little hesitation about attacking the Indians for whatever reason.”
In 1675, pushed by the Puritans who demanded that the Indians obey Puritan law and who severely punished the Indians who did not, the Wampanoag leader Metacom (known as Philip to the English) asserted the sovereignty of his people by going to war. As a result of this war – commonly called King Philip’s War – many of the smaller Indian nations were destroyed or scattered. According to historian Douglas Edward Leach, in his chapter on colonial wars in the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 4: History of Indian-White Relations:
“Philip may have been one of the first Indian leaders to catch a vision of a pan-Indian movement to halt English expansion and possibly drive the intruders back whence they had come.”
The prelude to the war was a murder trial. A converted Christian Indian named John Sassamon had told the English governor that Philip was plotting against the English and that he feared for his life. A short while later, Sassamon was found dead beneath the ice of Assawompsett Pond. The Puritans believed that Sassamon was murdered because he was a spy for the Puritans. Sassamon had served as Philip’s secretary. Three Wampanoags—Tobias (one of Philip’s counselors), Wampapaquan (Tobias’ son), and Mattashunnamo (a warrior)—were tried by the Puritans, found guilty, and hung. The executions of these three men stirred many Wampanoags to advocate violence against the Europeans. The English village of Swansea, on Wampanoag land, was evacuated and then looted by Wampanoag warriors.
In his Encyclopedia of American Indian Wars, 1492-1890, Jerry Keenan reports:
“Faced with conducting a war he was probably not ready to wage, Philip nevertheless launched a series of raids that virtually paralyzed the English settlements.”
Metacom evaded capture by basing his raids in the Pocasset territory of the female sachem Weetamoo (his sister-in-law). From here he carried out successful raids against five English towns. Jerry Keenan reports:
“Operating from deep within the Pocasset swamp, Philip completely frustrated a combined Plymouth-Massachusetts Bay campaign.”
Humiliated by these defeats, the English Christian ministers concluded that God was unhappy with them because of the wearing of wigs and the tolerance shown to the Quakers.
Historian Michael Oberg, in his book Uncas: First of the Mohegans, reports:
“The number of Indian groups taking part in attacks increases with each native success, and the colonists’ own offensives against the Algonquians proved little more than ill-led and poorly executed exercises in futility that killed needlessly large numbers of Englishmen.”
With regard to Metacom’s Wampanoag military strategy, Glen LaFantasie, in an article in American History, writes:
“If his plan was to fight the English rather than submit to their ways, his military strategy revealed an utter lack of careful thought or purposeful design.”
In his book American Indians and Christian Missions: Studies in Cultural Conflict, Henry Bowden puts it this way:
“His war started prematurely and was conducted sporadically, but those who flocked to him succeeded in waging one of the most devastating and costly wars in American history.”
While the English believe that Philip commands a large intertribal force, he actually has about 300 warriors, nearly all of whom are Wampanoag.
Wilcomb Washburn writes:
“While the conventional view of the war has seen it as a conspiracy of all New England Indians against the English, there is little hard evidence to suggest that this is so.”
In his book The Deerfield Massacre: A Surprise Attack, a Forced March, and the Fight for Survival in Early America, James Swanson writes:
“The war was the last serious attempt by the Indians to push back the ever-encroaching English off Native lands.”
In 1676, English forces attacked Wetamoo’s village. Wetamoo drowned while trying to escape down the Taunton River by canoe. The English cut off her head and displayed it on a pole at Taunton
The English captured Metacom’s wife, Wootonekanuske, and his nine-year-old son. They were held in a prison in Plymouth. The Puritan clergy debated the fate of Philip’s son: many felt that he should be executed, but others felt that the Bible said that no one should be executed for the sins of their fathers. After much debate, the boy was sold into slavery instead of being executed. In her book The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity, historian Jill Lepore writes:
“Slavery was considered to be just this kind of a compassionate compromise: notorious Indians, like Philip himself, were executed; harmless enemies, mainly women and young children, were forced into servitude for a period of years; and those who were neither notorious enough to be hanged nor harmless enough to remain in New England were routinely sold into foreign slavery.”
On the run to escape the English, Metacom was returning to his father’s old capital at Montaup when he stumbled into an ambush in which he was shot by an Indian ally of the English and killed. The English drawed and quartered the body and took his head to Plymouth where it was displayed to the public for 20 years. The Christian preacher Cotton Mather recalled that Metacom’s head:
“… was carried in triumph to Plymouth, where it arrived on the very Day that the Church there was keeping a Solemn Thanksgiving to God. God sent ‘em in the Head of a Leviathan for a Thanksgiving-Feast.”
The English colonists viewed the war as a rebellion rather than as a war against a sovereign nation and thus those Indians who were captured were not considered as prisoners of war, but rather as criminals who were charged with treason and murder and tried in civil courts. Historian James Drake, in an article in the New England Quarterly, reports:
“All of the Puritan colonies in King Philip’s War decided the fates of separatists by first trying to measure their degree of guilt and then doling out punishment according to the dictates of law and morality.”
The Wampanoags were nearly exterminated and only 400 survived. An estimated 3,000 Indians were killed during the war.
Mohegan
In Connecticut, Mohegan sachem Uncas pledged his assistance to the English in their war against the Wampanoags. His son Owaneco and 50 warriors joined the English forces.
In one battle, the Mohegan warriors overtook Metacom’s Wampanoag warriors, killing 30 men and capturing another. The Mohegans, however, did not pursue the Wampanoag after the battle and their English allies did not wish to proceed without them.
Niantic
In Rhode Island, English troops from Massachusetts and Connecticut attacked and burned the village of Niantic leader Queen Quaiapen. They destroyed 150 wigwams, killed seven Indians, and captured nine others.
Niantic leader Quaiapen was also known as Magnus, Matantuck, and Sunke Squaw. She was the sister of Ninigret and the widow of Makanno. She has been described as one of the most influential sachems among the Narragansetts.
Narragansett
The Narragansetts remained neutral during the war, but rumors in Boston claimed that the Narragansetts were harboring Wampanoag refugees, including Metacom. In response to these rumors, English soldiers attacked a fortified Narragansett village and killed an estimated 1,000 Indians. In the months that followed, English soldiers continued to pursue the Narragansetts. Jerry Keenan writes:
“Losses on both sides were heavy before the English managed to burn the stockade, driving the inhabitants out. Although the attack was a tactical success, it forced the Narragansetts into an alliance with Philip.”
In Rhode Island, the Narragansetts who were friendly with the English signed a treaty in which they agreed to deliver Metacom’s subjects dead or alive. To ensure peace, certain sachems were to be held captive by the English.
Other Indians
In Massachusetts, some English colonists used the war as an excuse to vent their hatred for Indians. In an article in the New England Quarterly, G. E. Thomas reports that:
“Captain Samuel Mosely, one of the most violent Indian haters, on the basis of later disproved allegations against the Indians of Marlborough, fasted ropes around the necks of fifteen Christian Indian men and marched them to Boston, where they were threatened by a lynch mob.”
In another incident, after questioning an Indian woman, Captain Mosely and his men had her torn to pieces by their dogs.
In Massachusetts, many English colonists believed that all Indians were involved in King Philip’s War even though many groups, particularly the praying villages (i.e. villages for Christian Indians), had declared their neutrality. The English colonists confined all “friendly” Indians to a few of the eastern praying towns and the colonists confiscated the crops and tools in the praying towns of Wamesit, Hassanamisset, Magunkaquag, and Chabanakongkomun. The Indians were confined to the village limits on penalty of death.
The colonists, however, continued to accuse the Christian Indians of supporting Metacom. The residents of the village of Okommakamesit were arrested and marched to jail in Boston. The court ordered the arrest of Wamesit and Punkapoag men. To avoid arrest the Penacook sachem Wannalancer and his followers fled up the Merrimac River.
The Naticks were forced from their homes and interred on Deer Island in Boston Harbor. The Punkapoags were also sent to Deer Island. The setting is described as a “windswept bit of rock” with little fuel and little shelter from the cold sea wind. Historian Daniel Mandell, in his book Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts, writes:
“Despite English hostility and abuse, Indian men on the island clamored to help in the war against Metacom, showing their deep loyalty to the Christian colony, an older dislike of the Wampanoags, or perhaps a strong desire to escape the conditions of the island.”
About 100 men enlisted in the colonial army as scouts.
More American Indian histories
Indians 201: American Indians and New Sweden
Indians 201: Plains Indians and the Spanish in the early 1600s
Indians 201: American Indians and the establishment of Jamestown
Indians 101: The English right to rule Indians in the 17th century
Indians 101: The English and Indian land in the 17th century
Indians 101: Indian rights under 17th century English rule
Indians 101: The French and American Indians in the 17th century
Indians 101: The Dutch and American Indians in the 17th century
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