The Name of War

“Not only had the English taken Indian lands and disrupted traditional systems of trade and agriculture, but they also had corrupted the power of native rulers, or sachems, and attempted to eradicate the influence of powwaws, native religious leaders." 

The arrival of English settlers puts enormous pressure on Native American culture and religion, which are undercut by European ways and the missionary zeal of the settlers. 

“The Indians, Wampanoags, Narragansetts, and Nipmucks, as well as Pocomtucks and Abenakis, attacked dozens of English towns, burning as many houses and killing as many inhabitants as they could. And the English, with occasional help from Mohegan, Pequot, Mohawk, and Christian Indians, burned wigwams, killed women and children, and sold prisoners into slavery. Both sides practiced torture and mutilation of the dead." 

King Philip’s War, with its back-and-forth raids, quickly features the worst cruelties from both sides. English settlers wrestle with guilt but come to decide that frontier battles involve practices they would otherwise deplore.

“New England’s Algonquians waged war against the English settlers in response to incursions on their cultural, political, and economic autonomy and, at least in part, they fought to maintain their Indianness. Meanwhile, New England colonists waged war to gain Indian lands, to erase Indians from the landscape, and to free themselves of doubts about their own Englishness."

The arrival of European settlers onto Native territory pits the two cultures against one another. Each side believes its way of life cannot survive in the presence of the other; each side fights for total victory and the elimination of the other. 

“[…] the same cultural tensions that caused the war—Indians becoming Anglicized and the English becoming Indianized—meant that literate Indians like John Sassamon, those most likely to record their version of the events of the war, were among its earliest casualties." 

Native interpreters make possible the interaction of Indian and English civilizations, but this merely exacerbates the perceived threat by each side that its way of life is being diluted by the other’s folkways. Some of the blame falls on the Indian interpreters who straddle the two societies. The war is fought over cultural identity as much as for any other reason. 

“Not all colonists, of course, were so careful about verifying the reports they sent and received. ‘People are apt in these dayes to give credit to every flying and false report,’ Samuel Gorton complained, ‘and not only so, but they will report it againe, as it is said of old, report and we will report; and by that meanes they become deceivers and tormenters one of another, by feares and jealousies.’” 

At a time when information is hard to come by and can take days or weeks to arrive, people yearn for news of their loved ones, especially in time of war. Reports are rushed, fueled by anger, and glorified by exaggeration; it’s hard for recipients to separate fact from fiction.

“In a physical reality of such traumatic intensity, in a world where wounds, fire, and famine spread as fast as lies, rumors, and fictions, language itself had become inadequate." 

Not only must honest reporters struggle against the chaff of false information being sent abroad, they also have to grapple with the sheer impossibility of describing adequately the shocking horrors of a conflict as brutal as King Philip’s War. The wanton destruction, the torture and killing of innocents, the witnessed deaths of loved ones, the sudden loss of farms and towns that have taken decades to build—all of this tragedy overwhelms the heart and mind, and the hand and pen don’t know where to begin in describing so much loss. 

“When William Hubbard briefly digressed from the war’s action in his Narrative, he quickly returned to the subject to ‘pursue the Rebellious Indians, and keep Pace with them in our History, though our Forces as yet could never overtake them in the Woods.’” 

If muskets and pikes can’t defeat the foe, perhaps words will. The power of published narrative, especially when the enemy is largely mute in print, ultimately wins the battle for hearts and minds long after the killing has stopped. Indians may achieve victories in battle, but in the long run their grievances are vastly outnumbered by the sheer volume of words written against them. This will, in time, seal their fate more effectively than bullets and swords. 

“Thou English man hath provoked us to anger & wrath & we care not though we have war with you this 21 years for there are many of us 300 of which hath fought with you at this town[.] we hauve nothing but our lives to loose but thou hast many fair houses cattell & much good things." 

Possibly written by Nipmuck James Printer, this note is tacked to a tree after an Indian raid. The words encapsulate the Indians’ chief advantage, that they are a mobile force that can withstand withering attacks while the colonists' permanent farms and built-up towns remain highly vulnerable. Indeed, half of those settlements are destroyed during the war, most of the destruction visited on the westernmost parts of the colonies. The colonists must retreat to their eastern settlements, and it takes decades to recover from the devastation.

“If building a house on a piece of land makes that land your own, and if the land you own defines who you are, then losing that house becomes a very troubling prospect indeed. With this in mind, Thomas Wakely’s willingness to die with his house becomes easier to understand. Separated from his property, Thomas Wakely would no longer be Thomas Wakely, farmer, no longer Thomas Wakely, Englishman."

What good does it do a settler to survive but lose everything of meaning? Better it may be to stand and die defending the things that uphold one’s identity and sense of purpose than to run away and, losing those things, lose oneself. 

“Often enough, the chief difference between English and Indian ‘cruelties’ was simply the words they used to describe them: since Indian homes were ‘wigwams,’ not ‘houses,’ their settlements ‘camps,’ not ‘towns,’ fights in swamps were ‘courageous battles,’ not ‘massacres.’” 

The English excuse their destructiveness by downgrading the things they destroy. When enemies’ lives and property are devalued, the damage done to them seems minor and acceptable. 

“‘Some in our house were fighting for their lives, others wallowing in their blood, the house on fire over our heads, and the bloody heathen ready to knock us on the head, if we stirred out. Now might we hear mothers and children crying out for themselves, and one another, Lord, What shall we do?’ ‘But,’ she resolved, ‘out we must go, the fire increasing, and coming along behind us, roaring, and the Indians gaping before us with their guns, spears and hatchets to devour us.’” 

Indians set fire to houses, forcing the settlers within to run outside, whereupon they are killed by the Indians. Once a fire begins, all those inside are doomed, and there is an agonizing moment when parents and children look at each other and realize that their beloved family is about to be destroyed. Mary Rowlandson is a rare survivor of such an attack; through her words, the world comes to understand some of the horrors of King Philip’s War that might not otherwise be known. 

“The idea that English bodies were physically distinct, and somehow purer than other peoples’ bodies, gained considerable favor in the seventeenth century. In the shape of their noses, the fineness of their hair, the suppleness of their skin, Englishmen and -women were encouraged to think of themselves as closer to God’s image, unaltered versions of the model of humankind, while foreign peoples, with their tanned skin, strange body piercings, tattoos, and mutilations, had distorted, artificially altered bodies." 

Not only do New England settlers think themselves superior for their Protestant Christian beliefs and European arts and technologies, but they also believe they look more attractive than other people, especially the Indians. This makes it hard for the colonists to see Native Americans as anything other than inferior examples of humanity. Such a belief leads to contempt and the inability to listen to Indian grievances. Eventually, a people so disrespected will rebel. 

“By telling about the war, and most especially by writing about it, the colonists could reclaim civility, could clothe their naked war with words. The writing itself would “dress” the English back up; it would undo the damage of the war by making clear once again who was English and who Indian, and what made a massacre and what a victory." 

Words that explain the war can take away the humiliation and chaos of English losses. If they can describe the war as an aberration, as not their fault, then the colonists can reclaim their dignity and sense of purpose. 

“[…] discovery-era Europeans were able to see Indians as either the same and equal or different and inferior; different and equal was not an option." 

Throughout history, groups have seen competing groups as inferior. This helps them justify their own cruel treatment of those outside groups. Since both sides of a conflict usually treat each other with the same contempt, the idea that they can live together harmoniously never really takes root. 

“Philip had listed among his grievances against the English that ‘if 20 of there [h]onest indians testefied that an Englishman had dun them rong, it was as nothing, and if but one of ther worst indians testefied against ani indian or ther king when it plesed the English that was sufitiant.’” 

One of the reasons Philip goes to war is that his people agree to participate in the English colonial court system but usually are treated unfairly under it. If they cannot get a fair hearing of their grievances, their last remaining option is to fight for their needs.

“What happens when a state society wars against a nonstate society? Usually we call that conquest." 

The conquest begins with the initial immigration of settlers. Natives soon are overwhelmed by the sheer size of the colonial population. Indians adopt English ways, but this merely speeds their cultural defeat. Though Indians have several tactical advantages during war—multiple sharp weapons, arrows, and guns acquired from the settlers, along with superior woodcraft and stealth—they are outnumbered by better-organized armies and hit hard by disease and starvation. 

“English colonists most often ‘read’ and ‘translated’ Indian cruelties either as random acts of savagery or as messages from God. What they utterly failed to consider was that the war might not only be an obscure message from a distant but reproachful God but also a loud shout from extremely disgruntled but very nearby neighbors, communicating a complex set of ideas about why they were waging war." 

The colonists think themselves superior to the Natives; they disregard Indian concerns as barely worthy of attention. When war breaks out, settlers search everywhere for an explanation except the one place where they would find the truth, in the vocal protests of the Natives. Such a realization might call into question their sense of themselves as saved Christians and superior English subjects who ought to be able to manage a primitive people; this doubt is studiously avoided. 

“For the Indians, the colonists’ (perhaps willful) misunderstanding of the nature of Indian political authority had far-reaching consequences, the most important of which was the denial of Indian sovereignty, a perception that formed the underpinnings of the legality of their enslavement." 

A common trope among early-modern Europeans is that so-called primitive societies are worthy of little more than enslavement. The idea that Native Americans can manage their own affairs intelligently is foreign to the English, who tend to think of Indians as talking apes. 

“Questions about the sovereignty of Indian peoples and the legitimacy of English land claims had been more avoided than answered, and, most distressingly, the colonists’ fears about ‘degenerating’ into Indians had only been exacerbated by their own ‘savage’ conduct in the war. The incompleteness of the colonists’ victory meant that preserving the memory of the war, and preserving a particular kind of memory, one that depicted Philip as a barbarous villain, became as desperately critical to the colonists’ sense of themselves as waging the war had been in the first place." 

King Philip’s War doesn’t end so much as peter out. Except for two battles—the wholesale entrapment and slaughter of a large Narragansett village hidden in a swamp, and the capture and execution of Philip himself—the colonists can’t really prove they’re militarily superior to the Natives. The settlers’ desperate cruelty in battle also chips away at their sense of themselves as more civilized than the Indians. Hence, they use a lot of print, conversation, speeches, and sermons to convince themselves that they are worthy and in control of their fate. 

“Algonquians in southeastern New England did not vanish, but at least to whites, they did become invisible." 

King Philip’s War decimates the Algonquian population of New England. Survivors lie low, adopt English culture, and intermarry, especially with blacks. Their quietude is mistaken for extinction. 

“For Indians in New England, the American Revolution signaled not a gain but a loss of liberty." 

New England Algonquians fight for the Revolution, but many other Indians fight for the British. At war’s end, whites conclude that all Indians are pro-British, and the Algonquians suffer further losses of territory and rights. 

“My curses on you, white men! May the Great Spirit curse you when he speaks in his war voice from the clouds! Murderers! The last of the Wampanoags’ curse be on you! May your graves and the graves of your children be in the path the red man shall trace! And may the wolf and panther howl o’er your fleshless bones, fit banquet for the destroyers! Spirits of the grave, I come! But the curse of Metamora stays with the white man!" 

With this speech, the final scene of the play Metamora, King Philip lays a curse upon the settlers who kill him. 1830s audiences romanticize Indians and feel some shame over their ancestors’ treatment of Philip and his people, and they applaud his death speech with vigor.

“Irving’s Philip was ‘a patriot attached to his native soil—a prince true to his subjects, and indignant of their wrongs—a soldier, daring in battle, firm in adversity, patient of fatigue, of hunger, of every variety of bodily suffering, and ready to perish in the cause he had espoused.’” 

Washington Irving’s 1814 essay on “Philip of Pokanoket,” which paints the Wampanoag leader as noble, wise, and brave, is widely admired and later reprinted alongside reviews of the play Metamora. It is part of the early nineteenth century infatuation with Native Americans.