KING PHILIP'S WAR OF 1675-1676.   Term Paper ID:23774 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Analyzes origins, causes, issues involved, major figures & aftermath of war between English settlers & Algonquin Indians in Amer. colonies.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Analyzes origins, causes, issues involved, major figures & aftermath of war between English settlers & Algonquin Indians in Amer. colonies. Paper Introduction: KING PHILIP'S WAR This research paper analyzes the causes, course and effects of King Philip's War in 1675-1676 between the English settlers in the New England colonies and various Algonquian Indian tribes. The origins of the war lay in the inevitable clash between expansionist-minded settlers in the Puritan Northeast and indians who eventually resisted the loss of their lands and their cultural autonomy. The war was one of the bloodiest in American history and set back for decades the economic development of western New England and the expansion of the settlers over the Appalachian range. For the Indian tribes involved, the war effectively destroyed their civilization in New England. Introduction: Origins of the 1675-1676 War Seeds of Conflict. American schoolchildren are taught that Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. The probable full-scale entry of theNarragansetts on the side of the other warring tribes represented a seriousthreat because they "were the most formidable in numbers and the best armedof all the hostile tribes" (Edmonds 375). According to Edmonds, "slow,inexorable encroachments" and "the sale of Indian lands lay at the root ofthe growing hostility between the Wampanoags and the Plymouth settlers"(365). Philip was subjected to interrogations by colonial authorities andwas forced in 1671 to pay a fine and to accept a treaty of submission.Philip began exploring the possibility of forming alliances against thesettlers with other tribes and gradually came to the conclusion that peacewith them was impossible except on unacceptable and humiliating terms.According to Drake, "the failure of their [the indians'] political bonds topreserve their groups autonomy justified their severance" (14 ). Calloway, 97-126. Works CitedCalloway, Colin G. . The Colonial Wars 1689-1762. and then'rescuing' him from the debt he was unable to pay by discharging the finein return for a tract of his land" (Nash 8 ). Within a few weeks, indian raids near Swansea in Plymouthresulted in the outbreak of hostilities. Norman, OK: U of Oklahoma P, 1988.Jennings, Francis. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1996.Edmonds, Walter B. "Indians and the Law." In New Directions in Indian History, ed. The NewEngland Confederation was on its own and could not expect outside help. New York: Knopf, 1984.----------------------- 12 His wife and son werecaptured near Taunton on July 31. In general, however, Leach says that "the early spring offensiveof the United Colonies . Edmonds says that"unlike the Frenchman, the English settler was temperamentally unable toaccept the Indian for what he was . Founding the American Colonies 1586-166 . Before the colonists couldgain the initiative, the indians made successful raids very close toPlymouth and not far from Boston. The Connecticut settlers withmilitary assistance from Massachusetts put down the uprising within threeweeks. Leach says that "thewhole July campaign must go down as a failure [by the English] of the firstmagnitude" (7 ). So long as the war wentbadly for the colonists, most British newspapers and pamphlets said that"puritan exclusivity, greed and self-righteousness had provoked the war,and that Massachusetts' autarchy had prolonged it" (Webb 221). (Ed.). The Formative Years 16 7-1763. The Pequots reactedviolently to seizures of their lands by settlers and carried out a numberof successful raids on frontier settlements. As thecolonial militias began to win victories, albeit at high cost incasualties, some of the indian tribes began deserting the cause, such asthe Pennacocks, the Sakonnets and many of the Narragansetts. . Introduction: Origins of the 1675-1676 War Seeds of Conflict. The indians had not bargained for such alarge influx. barbarism broke out on both sides.The Indians scalped and tortured . OnOctober 4, 1675, Springfield, Mass. American schoolchildren are taught that thePilgrims after their arrival at Plymouth in 1619 were saved from the rigorsof their first New England winter by friendly Indians. he [the Englishman] was too race-conscious and . The Connecticut militia scored somevictories, including the capture in April of the Narragansett sachem,Canonchet. During February and March, 1676, Leach says that "the war wasentering a new and terrible phase" (16 ). Colin G. Drake's revisionist view is that earlier accounts such as Leach'soverstress the incompatibility of the two cultures. Edmonds says that "from 1666onwards rumors of Indian plots . instinctively antagonistic" (145). The militia, however, suffered very heavy casualties,forcing them to retreat. Although peace generally prevailed after 1637between the white settlers and the redskins, tensions escalated over "tradedisputes, conflict over territory, and Indian apprehension of the swellingtide of white settlers" (Ver Steeg 156-157). Although Grossman says that the Puritan legalsystem was "strict," but not "harsh" as it was initially applied to theindians, often when land was purchased from indians, who had little conceptof private property, the indians would fall prey to sharp practice (1 9).One such trick was "fining [an] Indian for minor abuses . Turn of the Tide of Battle. bogged down" (17 ). In killing one another, they had killed a part of themselves"(x) and 349). The small numbers of Pilgrims, only 3 by1622, represented no immediate threat to the indians. In the masshysteria that developed, some friendly or 'Praying Indians' were massacredor sold into slavery. As theseforays succeeded, more and more tribes began to take part in the revolt,but for the time being the colonists succeeded in neutralizing theNarragansetts who nevertheless sheltered warriors from other tribes. In June and July, Plymouth forces led byCaptain Benjamin Church won a series of battles against Philip's remainingforces in the swamps near where the war had begun. Jennings maintains that the Puritans instigated the subsequent warby fraudulently confiscating land around Narragansett Bay (297). Although the four New England colonies, theMassachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth, Rhode Island and Connecticut, weredisunited by boundary and other disputes, all but Rhode Island united forcommon defense in the loose New England Confederation after 1643. . Leach says that in the fifteen weeks after Philip escaped from theswamps, "the New England colonies had received a severe setback. Pomfret says that"The Pilgrims were reasonable in their dealings with the natives andenjoyed unusually good relations with them" (114). Conclusion King Philip's War was the first of many sanguinary chapters in thestruggle between white settlers and indians which was to seal the latter'sfate in North America. New York: Harper & Row, 197 .Ver Steeg, Clarence L. The origins of the war layin the inevitable clash between expansionist-minded settlers in the PuritanNortheast and indians who eventually resisted the loss of their lands andtheir cultural autonomy. . . Leach saysthat they looked "down upon them as complete savages, little better thanwild beasts, perhaps even children of the Devil" (6). Together, the two tribes carried out in August a series ofsuccessful raids on frontier settlements such as Brookfield, Mass. their victims, while the Englishslaughtered the inhabitants of native villages en masse" (75). After Osamequin, died in 1661, his eldest son, Wamsutta, calledAlexander by the settlers, became sachem. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1966.Nash, Gary B. In the Great Swamp Fight ofDecember, 1675, combined Massachusetts and Plymouth militia under PlymouthGeneral Josiah Winslow inflicted severe damage on the palisaded fort of theNarragansetts at Pettaquamscut (which is near the present West Kingston,Rhode Island). with Shumway, Floyd E. Drake points out thatprior to 1675, "Indians and English had been so interdependent, that insevering their pre-war ties, both groups had to make dramatic culturaladaptations. In logistics,supplies, food, arms and manpower, the colonists had greater resources andby the spring of 1676, the colonial militias were learning how to beat theindians at their own game. New York: Norton, 1975.Laraben, Benjamin W. New Directions in Indian History. New York: Macmillan, 1958.Master, Caleb More. There was a lull in the fighting in the late fall, but in November,1675, the Commissioners of the New England Confederation decided to launcha preventative war against the Narragansetts. . America's Nation-Time: 16 7-1789. "From the day when the first English settlerslanded on New England shores and built permanent homes there, King Philip'sWar became virtually inevitable. According to Drake, the Narragansetts and other tribes near RhodeIsland skillfully thereafter invoked the protection of the Crown as aprotection against settler encroachments and attempted to play the colonialauthorities off against each other (13 ). The firststeps toward unity were forged in reaction to the uprising of the Pequottribe in the upper Connecticut Valley in 1637. Here in the wilderness two mutuallyincompatible ways of life confronted each other" (Leach 1). What was left of the Algonquian tribes were forced to fleeto the West and accept colonial domination. They rejected the view expressed by Roger Williams that the landbelonged to the indians. Finally, on August 12, Church, aided byan indian who betrayed Philip, surrounded the Wampanoag camp in the MountHope area. Hisyounger brother, Metacomet, or, in English, Philip, as the new sachem atfirst took steps to allay the settlers' fears. Amity between thePilgrims and the indians was facilitated by the presence among the indiansof Squanto, an indian who had been kidnapped by the English a few yearsbefore the arrival of the Mayflower and who understood the ways of theEnglish. Laraben says that "villageafter village went up in flames . The coastal indians whom the Pilgrims first encountered, theWampanoags, were inclined to be peaceful. The mopping up phase of the war continuedinto the early fall and fighting continued in Maine with the Abenakis fortwo years. Leach says that "Philip's stealthy raiding parties brought terrorand destruction to a widespread area" (66). . By the early 167 s, the colonists outnumbered the indians by6 , to 18, (Drake 142). Leach says that "the long shadows of defeat werealready upon the great wigwam" and that "by the first week of May, the tideof victory was beginning to shift toward the English" (199). Aftermath and Consequences. The war was one of the bloodiest in Americanhistory and set back for decades the economic development of western NewEngland and the expansion of the settlers over the Appalachian range. In June, 1675, three Wampanoags,including one of Philip's counsellors, were found guilty of Sassamon'smurder by a white jury in Plymouth with whom an auxiliary indian juryconcurred. . A friendly indian shot Philip as he attempted to flee. . In the battle of Lancaster, the wife of a pastor,Mary Rowlandson, saw her children butchered before her own eyes, then spentseveral months in captivity before she was ransomed in May, 1676 (Edmonds386). At this point, Massachusetts, Plymouth andConnecticut failed to obtain help from New York, which was embroiled in aboundary dispute with Connecticut, Rhode Island, which was neutral, and theBritish Crown, which stood aloof from the struggle. Their numbers had been reduced bya recent epidemic of smallpox. . "The Warr in New-England, 1677." In King Philip's War Narratives. The indiansproved far superior in raiding and ambushes and kept the initiative. Mutuallybeneficial trade in furs and other items flourished. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974.Peckham, Howard H. Drake's point of view is interesting, but after one considersthe fate of the indians all over North America, Leach appears to havecorrect in surmising that war was virtually inevitable, sooner or later. The ordeal of New England had endedbut at a staggering cost, one out of every 5 whites a casualty, dozens oftowns destroyed, military costs of over 1 , pounds and economicdisruption which prevented the colonists from reaching for another centurypre-war per capita income levels (Laraben 53; Leach 243-244). He was later found murdered. Leach faults Philip as a war leader stating that "the uprisingbegan prematurely, was poorly organized and soon escaped from Philip'scontrol" (241). Accordingto one contemporary account, "this Fashionable Prey was soon divided, theycut off his head, and hands, and conveyed them to Rhode-Island, andquartered his body, and hung [it] upon four Trees" (Master 2). The warlike Narragansetts in southern Plymouthwere largely neutralized by alliances between the Puritans and theNarragansetts' traditional enemies, the Mohegans. As a result of it, thesecurity of the New England colonies was assured and the stage was set forthe exploration and settlement of their western territories and beyond. The Course of the War Earlier Indian Successes. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1964.Pomfret, John E. The indians could easily have driven out the settlers in the early tomid 17th century, had they been united, but they "were divided into warringtribes of varying cultural levels who spoke a bewildering variety oflanguages and did not appear to be permanently domiciled in any one spot"(Ver Steeg 35; Peckham 16). Flintlock and Tomahawk New England in King Philip's War. . Massachusetts sent troops toaid Plymouth and for a time in July, 1675 had Philip's forces bottled up inthe southern swamps, but they escaped encirclement. Norman, OK: U of Oklahoma P, 1988.Drake, James David. Red, White, and Black. Until 1637, the indians in the New England colonies and the settlersco-existed with only relatively minor incidents of violence. Drake pointsout that the New England colonies, weakened by the war, never fullyrecovered the degree of independence from the Crown which they had beforethe war (348-349). KING PHILIP'S WAR This research paper analyzes the causes, course and effects of KingPhilip's War in 1675-1676 between the English settlers in the New Englandcolonies and various Algonquian Indian tribes. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964.Webb, Steven S. A new Indian offensive in centraland southern Massachusetts resulted in the full or partial destruction of anumber of frontier towns such as Lancaster. The Musket and the Cross. Philip joined up with the Nipmucks in centralMassachusetts. 1676 The End of American Independence. . . Triggering Events. Boston: Little, Brown, 1968.Grossman, George B. Finally, on April 2 , an attack onSudbury, only 17 miles east of Boston, was repelled. There were, however,nasty incidents, usually precipitated by settlers, such as the killing oftwo indian chiefs or sachems by the colonists, after they had been invitedto visit Plymouth by Miles Standish, a Pilgrim leader. . The most serious conflict arose over the possession of the land,large portions of which were need to support the indians' pastoral economy.The Puritans basically regarded the land in the wilderness as free for thetaking. On thefrontier the loss of life and property had been extremely heavy, while thenormal activity of the people had been painfully upset" (1 ). was burned to the ground and abandoned. Some of the colonialleaders, such as the Reverend John Eliot and Roger Williams of RhodeIsland, attempted to convert the indians to Christianity and urgedtolerance on their compatriots; however, the dominant attitude of thePuritans toward the indians was a mixture of fear and contempt. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1972.Leach, Douglas E. The clash of these civilizations became a war ofextermination in which neither side gave quarter. Washburn says that "in terms ofthe percentage of white casualties among the total population and in theextent of destruction of villages, homes, and property, it was the mostcostly war in American history" (131). The Invasion of America: Indians: Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest. The Pilgrim's successors, the Puritans, arrived in greater numbers inthe 163 s and later and cleared large portions of the eastern parts ofMassachusetts and Connecticut. The various coastal Algonquin tribes, the Abenakis to the north, theMassachusetts, the Wampanoags, the Narragansetts and the Pequots, probablynever exceeded 25, . Most of theNipmucks deserted Philip in June. He died of a fever while inEnglish territory but many indians believed he had been poisoned. The war began in Southwestern Plymouth butquickly spread to Connecticut and central Massachusetts as well asPlymouth. In 1674, a Harvard-educated Christianized Indian, John Sassamon,warned the Plymouth authorities that the Wampanoags were planning to attackthe settlers. They found their alliance with the settlers auseful counterbalance to the depredations of their more numeroustraditional enemy, the Narragansetts. Forthe Indian tribes involved, the war effectively destroyed theircivilization in New England. Attempts by Philip to obtain reinforcements fromthe Mohegans in New York failed. In 1643 with theMohegans' help, a troublesome Narragansett sachem, Miantonomo, wasexecuted. Fighting may have broken outbefore Philip had completed his preparations for war because of theinfluence of young braves upset by the trial (Leach 49). The Wampanoags, who started King Philip's War,remained peaceful until 1675 under the leadership of their sachem,Massasoit or Osamequin. Severing the Ties That Bind: Reconceptualization of King Philip's War. began reaching Plymouth and Boston"(368). Edmonds says that "in 1637, in one hour, seventy-seven Englishmenhad killed over seven hundred Pequots in a palisaded town" and that "afterthat divine intervention no local Indian dared attack a white man in NewEngland until 1675" (146). Thesettlers were slow to use friendly Indians as scouts and to learn how tocope with the indians' hit and run tactics. Divided counsels, starvation and disease weakened the indians. The Narragansetts continued toplay a double game during the fall, except for the Niantic tribe whichremained loyal to the English. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.