Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Speaker 1: In our recent episode about Paul Cuffey, we mentioned just
Speaker 1: really briefly that after King phillips War, indigenous men in
Speaker 1: New England were enslaved and sent to the Caribbean, and
Speaker 1: that felt like a pretty big thing to just drop
Speaker 1: into an episode without explaining it more, especially since we
Speaker 1: have only really mentioned King Philip's War in passing on
Speaker 1: the show. It came up as part of the context
Speaker 1: and our episodes on Bacon's Rebellion also way back in
Speaker 1: It was part of the context for our our show
Speaker 1: on the Sham Battle and the Cohico Massacre, which we're
Speaker 1: gonna have as a Saturday Classics soon. For folks who
Speaker 1: haven't heard that King Phillip's War was an armed conflict
Speaker 1: primarily between English colonists and indigenous nations and what's on
Speaker 1: New England, although there were also some indigenous peoples who
Speaker 1: were allied with the colonists, and it took place primarily
Speaker 1: between sixteen seventy five and sixteen seventy six. In terms
Speaker 1: of per capita deaths. That's been described as the deadliest
Speaker 1: war in US history, and it had a massive ongoing
Speaker 1: collection of ramifications for indigenous people and for the colonists
Speaker 1: in and around New England. Sometimes it's called the First
Speaker 1: Indian War, but that name and King Phillip's War are
Speaker 1: both misnomers, and we will be talking about that as
Speaker 1: we go along. So to set up some context, Plymouth
Speaker 1: Colony was the first permanent British settlement in New England,
Speaker 1: established after about one people arrived aboard the Mayflower in
Speaker 1: sixteen twenty. About forty of the people aboard the Mayflower
Speaker 1: were Puritans. These were members of a religious reform movement
Speaker 1: that believed that the Church of England was corrupt and
Speaker 1: retained too many Catholic influences after the Protestant Reformation. Other
Speaker 1: English colonies followed to that one. This included the Massachusetts
Speaker 1: Bay Colony, established in sixteen twenty nine and named after
Speaker 1: the indigenous Massachusetts Nation living in the area. Roger Williams
Speaker 1: founded Rhode Island Colony in sixteen thirty six after being
Speaker 1: banished from Massachusetts. The Connecticut Colony was established the same
Speaker 1: year with its name coming from an Algonquin word meaning
Speaker 1: beside the long title river. Throughout this whole time, between
Speaker 1: sixteen thirty and sixteen forty, thousands more people migrated to
Speaker 1: North America from Britain, many of them Puritans who believed
Speaker 1: that this so called New World was theirs by divine decree.
Speaker 1: The region where English colonists were establishing settlements was home
Speaker 1: to numerous indigenous tribes and nations, many of them Algonquin
Speaker 1: speaking people's. The Wampanag nation alone included sixty nine different tribes,
Speaker 1: and these societies were highly interconnected through economics and through kinship,
Speaker 1: including an extensive trading network that spans throughout New England.
Speaker 1: The colonists became part of and influenced this network as
Speaker 1: they brought different trade goods, including firearms, to this whole system.
Speaker 1: English colonization of North America required colonists to get land,
Speaker 1: or at least the rights to use the land, from
Speaker 1: the local indigenous people, and especially in the earlier decades
Speaker 1: of colonization, a lot of these land deeds read a
Speaker 1: lot more like treaties than straightforward purchase agreements. In a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, the colonist was given the right to
Speaker 1: use the land, but the deed also included some kind
Speaker 1: of provisions for an Indigenous family or community to keep
Speaker 1: living on or using that land in some way. Deeds
Speaker 1: also often included some kind of lifetime payment on the
Speaker 1: part of the colonists, something along the lines of a
Speaker 1: bushel of corn. This was similar to what Indigenous families
Speaker 1: were expected to contribute to their own communities. So from
Speaker 1: the Indigenous point of view, English colonists were becoming part
Speaker 1: of their interconnected community that was already made up of
Speaker 1: lots of different nations and people's The colonists were gaining
Speaker 1: access to the land but also contributing to the community
Speaker 1: with the goods that the land produced. But from the
Speaker 1: English point of view, it was more like they were
Speaker 1: buying the land outright and continuing to have some kind
Speaker 1: of payment long term with this bushel of corn or
Speaker 1: something similar every year. And this disparity on how each
Speaker 1: side understood this was complicated by the fact that very
Speaker 1: few people in the colonies were fluent in both English
Speaker 1: and an Algonquin language, and most cases the negotiating parties
Speaker 1: might speak some of what another's language, but not fluently.
Speaker 1: This gives me a brief flashback to Thomas Harriet and
Speaker 1: his visit to the America's under Sir Walter Raleigh, and
Speaker 1: how he put some of these ideas in motion that
Speaker 1: led to all of these problems going forward. On top
Speaker 1: of having fundamentally different ways of understanding these transactions, English
Speaker 1: colonists all so wanted access to more and more land
Speaker 1: as their population grew, and as the first generation of
Speaker 1: English children born in North America reached adulthood, it was
Speaker 1: expected that firstborn sons would inherent land from their fathers.
Speaker 1: These firstborn sons thought of this inheritance as their birthright
Speaker 1: and something that was exclusively There's not something that they
Speaker 1: shared with their indigenous neighbors. So, because of this need
Speaker 1: to get more and more land, negotiations for the land
Speaker 1: and the deeds that came out of those negotiations became
Speaker 1: increasingly exploitive and absolute in terms of the rights that
Speaker 1: the English people were getting. More and more of the
Speaker 1: deeds were signed under duress. This included things like the
Speaker 1: English taking someone captive and refusing to release them until
Speaker 1: they had signed their land over. A lot of these
Speaker 1: deeds included no more provisions about the indigenous people's continued
Speaker 1: use of the land, and then that led to disputes
Speaker 1: within indigenous communities as people, especially women, realized that the
Speaker 1: land that they had been cultivating or living on had
Speaker 1: been sold without their involvement and with no provision made
Speaker 1: for them. It also wasn't just people who were encroaching
Speaker 1: onto indigenous land. As this situation progressed, colonists introduced a
Speaker 1: lot of domesticated livestock to North America, including cattle and pigs.
Speaker 1: Colonists fenced their own crops and then allowed their livestock
Speaker 1: to roam and graze freely. Much of the plant life
Speaker 1: and grazing land back in Britain was well adapted to
Speaker 1: being eaten and stomped on by grazing livestock and then
Speaker 1: having the seeds of those plants propagated through dung. The
Speaker 1: plants in North America were not adapted in the same
Speaker 1: way as the colonists. Animals encroached onto indigenous land, they
Speaker 1: tore up that land, and they were incredibly destructive to
Speaker 1: cultivated crops. This wasn't restricted to just you know, planted
Speaker 1: crops that someone was cultivating, which the animals did trample
Speaker 1: and eat. A lot of the colonists. Domestic animals also
Speaker 1: destroyed things like claim and beds and woodland berry bushes
Speaker 1: that people gathered from, and when Indigenous people complained about
Speaker 1: this destruction of their crops and their other food sources,
Speaker 1: for the most part, the colonists just told them to
Speaker 1: build fences rather than doing anything to contain their own animals.
Speaker 1: Among the Wampanog and other Algonquin speaking people's women were
Speaker 1: generally the people who cultivated and managed this crop land,
Speaker 1: producing food for their own families and their whole communities
Speaker 1: and for trade with the colonists and other indigenous nations.
Speaker 1: And colonial records are full of indigenous women's efforts to
Speaker 1: resolve this and to protect and fairly distribute what remained
Speaker 1: of their communities food stores. Whether something was about a
Speaker 1: land deed or animal encroachment, or some other dispute, the
Speaker 1: English colonists expected Indigenous people to follow English colonial law
Speaker 1: and to seek restitution through colonial courts. One justification for
Speaker 1: this on the part of the colonists was their belief
Speaker 1: that the Indigenous people were primitive and Huthens who needed
Speaker 1: to be converted to Christianity and taught the ways of
Speaker 1: English society. Another justification was that in a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: an indigenous leader or someone else speaking for a tribe
Speaker 1: had made some kind of allegiance to the colony, which
Speaker 1: the colony regarded as a commitment to follow colonial law.
Speaker 1: But in general, these courts were skewed in favor of
Speaker 1: the colonists, so the colonists were forcing Indigenous people to
Speaker 1: resolve disputes in a legal system that was stacked against them.
Speaker 1: Court decisions could be particularly egregious, like enforcing the terms
Speaker 1: of a land deed only if an indigenous family surrendered
Speaker 1: all its weapons, when those weapons were needed for both
Speaker 1: hunting and defense and were necessary to the family survival.
Speaker 1: All of this was also happening in the context of
Speaker 1: an indigenous population that had been reduced dramatically due to
Speaker 1: introduced diseases, especially smallpox. A smallpox epidemic in sixteen thirty
Speaker 1: three and sixteen thirty four killed an estimated seventy per
Speaker 1: scent of the indigenous population of the Northeast. King Philip's
Speaker 1: War wasn't the first time that all of this fed
Speaker 1: into a violent conflict, which is why it's not really
Speaker 1: accurate to call it quote the First Indian War, as
Speaker 1: it is sometimes known. You'll read that in various uh places.
Speaker 1: Although there had been violent conflicts on a smaller scale
Speaker 1: going back to the beginning of a European presence in
Speaker 1: what is now New England, the first sustained conflict in
Speaker 1: these English colonies was the Peaquot War, fought mainly in
Speaker 1: what is now Connecticut in sixteen thirty six and sixteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven. In addition to all these things that we've
Speaker 1: just discussed, another influence in the Peaquot War was trading
Speaker 1: relationships with the Dutch and the Peaquat nations existing relationships
Speaker 1: with its indigenous neighbors. The Peaquat nation had extended its
Speaker 1: influence throughout the region through military conquest and inner marriage
Speaker 1: and diplomacy, and it had become the most powerful indigenous
Speaker 1: nation in the area. At the end of the war,
Speaker 1: though most of the Peaquat fighting force had been killed,
Speaker 1: the surviving women and children were mostly captured and enslaved
Speaker 1: and sent to two tribes that had sided with the
Speaker 1: English in this conflict. After the Peaqua War, relationships between
Speaker 1: the indigenous people and the colonists were relatively free from
Speaker 1: violence for the next few decades. We're gonna get to
Speaker 1: how that changed after we have a quick sponsor break.
Speaker 1: The King Philip of King Philip's War was Medicom also
Speaker 1: known as Medicomet or Po Medicom. These kinds of name
Speaker 1: changes were really common among the Wampanag. He was the
Speaker 1: stm or leader of the poconoc At Wampanag, and the
Speaker 1: name King Philip came from the English colonists. They basically
Speaker 1: gave him a name after Philip of Macedon. Medicom's father
Speaker 1: was osa Mequin, also known as the massasoit Stum or
Speaker 1: Great Statum. You'll often see him called massasoit as though
Speaker 1: that was his name, but that is really a title.
Speaker 1: He was the inter tribal leader of the Wampanog nation.
Speaker 1: When the Mayflower arrived in sixteen twenty, he signed a
Speaker 1: treaty with the Colonists and maintained relatively peaceful relations with them.
Speaker 1: He was present at the meal that has become commemorated
Speaker 1: as the First Thanksgiving that colonists basically survived with the
Speaker 1: help of osam Equin and the rest of the Wampanog.
Speaker 1: Osam Aguin died in sixteen sixty one, and his son,
Speaker 1: Wemsuda became stageum. English colonists called Wemsuda Alexander, after Alexander
Speaker 1: the Great, but he died suddenly in sixteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: The English had arrested him under suspicion that he was
Speaker 1: planning some kind of uprising with the Narraganset people, something
Speaker 1: there was not actually any evidence for, and he had
Speaker 1: suddenly become very ill while he was imprisoned. A lot
Speaker 1: was suspicious about this. English authorities also maintained that Wamsuda
Speaker 1: had been ordered to appear in court over this suspicion,
Speaker 1: but that he hadn't shown up and authorities had to
Speaker 1: go bring him in, but there is absolutely no core
Speaker 1: documentation to back that up. Many of the Wampanag, including Medicom,
Speaker 1: believed that Wemstuda had been poisoned, and then Medicom was
Speaker 1: also summoned before the court, also on suspicion of plotting
Speaker 1: against the English. And this case, what the colony interpreted
Speaker 1: as signs of an uprising was probably just a traditional
Speaker 1: spring festival. Combined with everything that we talked about before
Speaker 1: the break, this really eroded the last of the goodwill
Speaker 1: that osam Equin had maintained with the colony. Although all
Speaker 1: the people that we have just mentioned were men. Women
Speaker 1: were also a critical part of the Wampanag leadership and
Speaker 1: in diplomatic relationships with the colony. In particular, Medicalm's sister
Speaker 1: in law, Wamu, was heavily involved in the events leading
Speaker 1: up to and during King Philip's war. She was a
Speaker 1: song squaw or a squaw statum, which was a role
Speaker 1: English colonists often described as queen. It was a role
Speaker 1: that was on equal footing with a shm and held
Speaker 1: by a woman. But this wasn't a position that she
Speaker 1: had because of her marriage to Wamsuda. It predated that marriage,
Speaker 1: and it continued after his death in sixto. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: the colonists referred to the statims and the squaw statims
Speaker 1: as like kings and queens, but the leadership structure was
Speaker 1: really a lot more about leading and about diplomacy than
Speaker 1: it was about being a ruler with like authoritative ordering
Speaker 1: right over people. They were trying to fit it into
Speaker 1: the European model of monarchy, which it was not. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So all the factors that we talked about before the
Speaker 1: break led to the start of King Philip's War, but
Speaker 1: it's immediate precursor was the death of a man known
Speaker 1: as John Sassamon. Sassamon was an Indigenous man whose parents
Speaker 1: had died in an epidemic, and he was raised in
Speaker 1: a praying town. These were communities that were established by
Speaker 1: Puritans for the purpose of converting Indigenous people to Christianity
Speaker 1: and encouraging them to live under English law and following
Speaker 1: English customs. So the Indigenous people that were living in
Speaker 1: these praying towns were people who converted to Christianity and
Speaker 1: we're adopting like an English colonial lifestyle. Sassamon also attended
Speaker 1: Harvard for a time before the Indian College there was
Speaker 1: formerly established. Sasamon had worked as an interpreter for the
Speaker 1: English before becoming one of Medicom's secretaries, and his motivations
Speaker 1: and actions in all of this really are not clear.
Speaker 1: There is some suggestion that the English sent him to
Speaker 1: spy on Medicom, and in late sixteen seventy four he
Speaker 1: reportedly told authorities in Plymouth that Medicom was planning and uprising.
Speaker 1: The colonial government doesn't seem to have taken this warning seriously,
Speaker 1: and then sometime in early sixteen seventy five, Sassamon's friends
Speaker 1: reported that he was missing After a search, his body
Speaker 1: was found under the ice an assawamps at Pond in
Speaker 1: what's now southeastern Massachusetts. Forensics was really not an established
Speaker 1: discipline at this point, but apart from that, there wasn't
Speaker 1: much of an ex himanation of Sassamon's body at all.
Speaker 1: A witness came forward and said that he had seen
Speaker 1: three of Medicom's counselors murder Sasamon and throw his body
Speaker 1: into the lake. Authorities had concluded that it had been
Speaker 1: because Medicom really was planning an uprising, and that he'd
Speaker 1: ordered Sassamon to be killed for betraying him to the English. However,
Speaker 1: there really was not any evidence for any of this,
Speaker 1: and there are also a couple of complicating factors. The
Speaker 1: witness that testified to all of this also owed a
Speaker 1: gambling debt to one of the counselors that he implicated
Speaker 1: in the crime, and a sawaps that Pond was at
Speaker 1: the heart of a land dispute involving many of these
Speaker 1: same people. So it's possible that he was killed and
Speaker 1: it like was something that was ordered because of this
Speaker 1: whole warning that there was an uprising being planned. It's
Speaker 1: also possible that he was killed and it was something
Speaker 1: related to this land dispute, or he might have just drowned,
Speaker 1: like it's totally unclear. Colonial authorities brought the three counselors
Speaker 1: involved to trial to create the appearance of fairness. They
Speaker 1: assembled a jury that included six indigenous men and twelve colonists,
Speaker 1: but the trial itself was still pretty shoddy. Uh. This
Speaker 1: one witnesses testimony was really the only thing connecting Medicom's
Speaker 1: counselors to Sassamon's death, which may or may not have
Speaker 1: even been a murder, as Tracy said, could have been
Speaker 1: an accident. The evidence presented at court included a report
Speaker 1: that when Sassimon's body was brought to Medicom's counselor Tobias,
Speaker 1: that the corps started bleeding, and that that was evidence
Speaker 1: of Tobias's guilt. The three counselors were found guilty and
Speaker 1: sentenced to be hanged on June eighth, sixteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: Two of them were executed on that day. The third
Speaker 1: was given a reprieve after the rope broke, and then
Speaker 1: he said that he had seen the other two men
Speaker 1: commit this crime but hadn't participated in it or intervened
Speaker 1: by the end of June, though he had also been
Speaker 1: executed by firing squad. Regardless of what their meta coom
Speaker 1: really had been planning, some kind of action against the colonists.
Speaker 1: Violence began shortly after these hangings. In early June, several
Speaker 1: English farms were burned, apparently in retaliation. Then on June
Speaker 1: a colonist in Swansea fatally shot a Wapanog man while
Speaker 1: defending his farm from a wapanog graid. The next day,
Speaker 1: in retaliation for that death, a Wapanog party killed seven
Speaker 1: colonists in Swansea, which is generally marked as the start
Speaker 1: of King Philip's War, So if you go read articles
Speaker 1: about this, you'll often see it described as this series
Speaker 1: of events that started with the death of John Sassmont,
Speaker 1: with the trial and the execution leading to this escalating
Speaker 1: back and forth that tipped into an all out war.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, a few weeks before the
Speaker 1: trial even happened, which was a month before these seven
Speaker 1: colonists were killed in Swansea, we Tamu had been talking
Speaker 1: to colonial authorities about her fears that the Wampanag We're
Speaker 1: going to face persecution by the English, so tense had
Speaker 1: clearly been increasing before this trial even began. There was
Speaker 1: heavy fighting in what is now Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: and Maine. Over the next six months. Many of the
Speaker 1: area's indigenous nations formed an alliance with the wampanag The
Speaker 1: Mohegans allied with the colonists, as did many of the
Speaker 1: indigenous people who had converted to Christianity and we're living
Speaker 1: in praying towns. Some including the Narragansett, tried to stay neutral.
Speaker 1: At first. Colonial forces fared really poorly in the fighting.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were new recruits to the militia.
Speaker 1: They really did not have a lot of training, and
Speaker 1: the training that they did have was really geared towards
Speaker 1: the style of fighting that was used in Europe. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the indigenous forces tactics were more like what we might
Speaker 1: describe as guerrilla warfare today. They were a very highly
Speaker 1: mobile fighting force with marksman and snipers and just superior
Speaker 1: knowledge of the terrain. As this was happening, English authorities
Speaker 1: viewed Indigenous people in general with increasing suspicion. This included
Speaker 1: people who had converted to Christianity and we're living in
Speaker 1: praying towns. One example was James Printer, who was Nipmuck
Speaker 1: but had been raised in an English household and educated
Speaker 1: at Harvard Indian College. In August of sixteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: he was captured and accused of participating in a raid
Speaker 1: when he had actually been in church at that time. Similarly,
Speaker 1: between thirty and forty Indigenous people were arrested and imprisoned
Speaker 1: in Cambridge for burning down a haystack that belonged to
Speaker 1: a man named Amos Richardson, even though Richardson himself insisted
Speaker 1: that none of them were the culprits. On September eighteenth,
Speaker 1: an indigenous force ambushed an English convoy that was trying
Speaker 1: to remove what was left of the harvest from the
Speaker 1: town of Deerfield. Deerfield had been abandoned. In the wake
Speaker 1: of the fighting, at least sixty people from the convoy
Speaker 1: were killed in what came to be known as the
Speaker 1: Battle of Bloody Brook or the bloody Brook Massacre. In
Speaker 1: October of sixteen seventy five, the Narragansett signed a treaty
Speaker 1: of neutrality with the ma Instachusetts Bay Colony. Once they
Speaker 1: had signed, colonial authorities demanded that they surrender. Wampanag and
Speaker 1: other refugees who were being sheltered in Narragansett territory. The
Speaker 1: Narragansett refused this. They considered the refugees to be their
Speaker 1: kin and under their protection. So the English took this
Speaker 1: as a sign of duplicity on the Narragansetts part and
Speaker 1: a suggestion that they might abandon this treaty and joined
Speaker 1: with Medicom. There had also overtime been individual Arrogancett people
Speaker 1: who had participated in raids and things like that. So
Speaker 1: the colonies mustered a militia of about a thousand people,
Speaker 1: along with about a hundred and fifty indigenous allies, and
Speaker 1: they marched to Narragancet Territory, burning the indigenous settlements that
Speaker 1: they passed along the way. On December nineteenth, fighting began
Speaker 1: in a swamp in what is now West Kingston, Rhode Island.
Speaker 1: This became known as the Great Swamp Fight or the
Speaker 1: Great Swamp Massacre, with the violence stretching into December twentieth.
Speaker 1: At first, the Narragansett were able to drive the English
Speaker 1: force back, but at the English regrouped and reinforcements arrived.
Speaker 1: They took the main Narragance at fort, burning it down
Speaker 1: with people, mostly elders, women, and children still inside. At
Speaker 1: least seventy people were killed among the colonial force. With
Speaker 1: the indigenous death tool much harder to estimate, it was
Speaker 1: at least a hundred and fifty people, but it may
Speaker 1: have been hundreds more. This was really a turning point
Speaker 1: in the war, so we're going to take a quick
Speaker 1: sponsor break before we move on. After the Great Swamp Massacre,
Speaker 1: the Narragansett Nation unsurprisingly went to war against the colonies.
Speaker 1: Narragansett sat Conanchet formed a coalition with other indigenous tribes
Speaker 1: and nations, which mustered a fighting force of about two
Speaker 1: thousand and what's now Rhode Island. He then moved into
Speaker 1: central Massachusetts and organized another force of about fift hundred people.
Speaker 1: As Canancha was forming this coalition, the weather was hampering
Speaker 1: the colonists efforts in the war. Late December of sixteen
Speaker 1: seventy five was very snowy, with militia commanders reporting depths
Speaker 1: between two and three feet of snow. It wasn't at
Speaker 1: all conducive to the militia's movements, especially since they didn't
Speaker 1: know exactly where the indigenous forces were at any point.
Speaker 1: The indigenous forces were affected as well, but they continued
Speaker 1: to be a lot more mobile than the colonial forces were,
Speaker 1: thanks to having more experience dealing with this kind of
Speaker 1: weather and being more familiar with a lot of the
Speaker 1: territory outside the colonial towns. It was also just a
Speaker 1: lot easier for a small like raiding party in snow
Speaker 1: shoes to come in and hit a place and leave
Speaker 1: than it was for like a militia unit to march somewhere.
Speaker 1: In the early months of sixteen seventy six, these two
Speaker 1: indigenous fronts moved northward and eastwards through southern New England.
Speaker 1: They converged in Providence, Rhode Island, which the Indigenous force
Speaker 1: burned down in March of sixteen seventy six. By the spring,
Speaker 1: in the face of these two advancing armies, the English
Speaker 1: had abandoned at least eleven towns in Massachusetts, and the
Speaker 1: Indigenous force had destroyed most of the colonial towns in
Speaker 1: Rhode Island on the west side of Narragance at Bay.
Speaker 1: But as the weather got warmer in the spring, there
Speaker 1: was another shift. New England's Indigenous community had been on
Speaker 1: the move through the winter. Whether it was the fighting
Speaker 1: force advancing through the colony, or women, children, and elders
Speaker 1: who were trying to stay out of the way of
Speaker 1: the war. Fewer crops had been planted because people couldn't
Speaker 1: stay in one place to tend them, and what did
Speaker 1: get planted was often destroyed by the colonial militia. For example,
Speaker 1: in May of sixteen seventy six, an English force attacked
Speaker 1: a Nipmuck camp that had been established specifically for fishing
Speaker 1: and planting. The colonial militia massacred many of the people
Speaker 1: who were there, who were mostly again women, children, and elders.
Speaker 1: This was about two hundred people. Then an indigenous force
Speaker 1: that was nearby regrouped and killed about forty of the militia.
Speaker 1: This continued to June, with the colonial militia arranging raids
Speaker 1: to destroy the indigenous people's crops and to force them
Speaker 1: away from their cultivated fields. Indigenous forces and refugees alike
Speaker 1: simply started running out of food. Then, on July twenty,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Church led a force that attacked Medicom's encampment, capturing
Speaker 1: his wife and child and selling them into slavery. Medicom
Speaker 1: was also captured and was assassinated. On August twelfth of
Speaker 1: sixteen seventy six. His body was drawn and quartered, and
Speaker 1: his head was placed on a pike and displayed outside
Speaker 1: of Plymouth. That same month, we to Moo drowned while
Speaker 1: trying to cross a river as she was fleeing from
Speaker 1: colonial forces. Cananchet was also captured and killed in sixteen
Speaker 1: seventy six. Medicom's death is often described as the end
Speaker 1: of King Philip's War, but in reality, the indigenous forces
Speaker 1: had been losing ground for months and fighting continued, particularly
Speaker 1: in what's now Maine, for months. A treaty formally ended
Speaker 1: the fighting along the Northern Front in April twelfth, sixteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight, almost two years after Medicom's death. The idea
Speaker 1: that the war was King Phillips and that it ended
Speaker 1: with his death really came from Benjamin Church's entertaining History
Speaker 1: of King Philip's War, which was published in seventeen sixteen.
Speaker 1: That story recounted his own role in pursuing and killing
Speaker 1: Medicom's through the stories that he had told to his son.
Speaker 1: Church's account is one of many written from the colonial
Speaker 1: perspective in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Colonists actually
Speaker 1: started writing books about this war before the war was
Speaker 1: even over. Increase Mather published a brief History of the
Speaker 1: War with the Indians in New England in sixteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: and William Hubbard published a narrative of the Trouble with
Speaker 1: the Indians in New England in sixteen seventy seven. We
Speaker 1: also have Mary Rowlinson's A Narrative of the Captivity and
Speaker 1: Restoration of Mrs Mary Rowlinson, which was published in sixteen
Speaker 1: eighty two. Rowlinson and her children were taken captive after
Speaker 1: a raid on lancast Her. One of her children was
Speaker 1: injured and died shortly afterward, and Rowland and her surviving
Speaker 1: children spent almost three months as captives. They wound up
Speaker 1: with a party led by Wamu as she tried to
Speaker 1: guide refugees to safety. Rawlinson's account has been described as
Speaker 1: North America's first bestseller, and it launched the genre of
Speaker 1: the captivity narrative. By the end of this war, about
Speaker 1: six hundred colonists and British soldiers had been killed, about
Speaker 1: seventeen English settlements were completely destroyed or abandoned, and at
Speaker 1: least fifty others were heavily damaged. The death toll on
Speaker 1: the indigenous side is harder to say precisely, but it
Speaker 1: was probably in the thousands. It's estimated that about five
Speaker 1: percent of New England's white population was killed as a
Speaker 1: result of the war, with forty percent of the indigenous
Speaker 1: population either being killed or fleeing the region. At least
Speaker 1: one thousand Indigenous people were also enslaved and sent out
Speaker 1: of New England. This included people who surrendered with the
Speaker 1: hope that they would be treated leniently. The colonists had
Speaker 1: enslaved indigenous people starting before the war, but they really
Speaker 1: expanded the practice during and afterward. Prior to the war,
Speaker 1: colonists had enslaved indigenous people to make money, to take
Speaker 1: their land, and to punish and remove anyone who was
Speaker 1: viewed as a negative influence on other indigenous people. During
Speaker 1: and after King Philip's War, most of the enslaved Indigenous
Speaker 1: men were sent to Barbados or to other British territory
Speaker 1: in the Caribbean, but a few were sent to other
Speaker 1: places as well. Enslaved Indigenous women and children were often
Speaker 1: forced to work in British households and businesses in North America,
Speaker 1: and in some cases this enslavement became hereditary, with children
Speaker 1: who were born to enslaved Indigenous women being claimed as
Speaker 1: the property of the households where these women were being
Speaker 1: forced to work. English attitudes toward the Indigenous people became
Speaker 1: much harsher in the wake of the war. The colonies
Speaker 1: passed prohibitions on selling weapons to Indigenous people, and that
Speaker 1: was later expanded to selling anything to them. The colonies
Speaker 1: also organized patrols to police indigenous communities and their movements.
Speaker 1: In May of seventeen sixty six, Massachusetts ordered that all
Speaker 1: Indigenous people in the colony's territory had to live in
Speaker 1: one of four praying towns. Further laws were passed in
Speaker 1: the early eighteenth century, often with laws targeting the indigenous
Speaker 1: population being looped into laws that were related to enslaved Africans.
Speaker 1: As for the colonists, the British government dispatched Edward Randolph
Speaker 1: to investigate the causes of the war and to assess
Speaker 1: the damage. He reported that the colonists generally believed that
Speaker 1: it had been divine punishment for their own sinfulness. After
Speaker 1: he made this report, the English colonies in New England
Speaker 1: lost a lot of their autonomy. They became part of
Speaker 1: the Dominion of New England, which was placed under the
Speaker 1: control of New York Governor Edmund Andros. Of the hundreds
Speaker 1: of indigenous tribes and nations in New England before and
Speaker 1: during King Philip's War, only a few remain today. In
Speaker 1: terms of nations that have come up in today's episode,
Speaker 1: there's the Mohegan tribe of Indians of Connecticut, the Narragansett
Speaker 1: Indian tribe of Rhode Island, and in Massachusetts the mashp
Speaker 1: Wampanag and the Wampanog tribe of gay Head Aquinna. Of course,
Speaker 1: there are also tribes that still exist but don't have
Speaker 1: federal recognition. The Nipmuck nation is recognized by the Commonwealth
Speaker 1: of Massachusetts but not by the federal government, and there
Speaker 1: are also tribes that existent are not recognized by any
Speaker 1: state or a government body. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: books about King Philip's War, and they all offer their
Speaker 1: own interpretation of what happened and why. And this includes
Speaker 1: a lot of books written within the last few decades,
Speaker 1: and that understanding is going to continue to evolve. In
Speaker 1: terms of the Wampanoag perspective, in particular, the Wampanag adopted
Speaker 1: reading and writing from the colonists in the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: but the Wampanag language was nearly lost in the centuries
Speaker 1: that followed. That has changed recently thanks to the work
Speaker 1: of Jesse Little Doe Baird, who was awarded a MacArthur
Speaker 1: Grant for her efforts to revive the want Banag language.
Speaker 1: In so as more people become fluent in Wapanag, that's
Speaker 1: going to open another avenue of research for historians. I
Speaker 1: read a lot of resources for this show, but the
Speaker 1: book that I read um was Our Beloved Kin, A
Speaker 1: New History of King Phillip's War by Lisa Brooks. That
Speaker 1: is not so much if you're thinking of a book
Speaker 1: about a war in history. It's not a book that's
Speaker 1: like this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened.
Speaker 1: It is more looking at all the factors of the
Speaker 1: war from different angles, including like close readings of different
Speaker 1: land deeds and letters and captivity narratives and all of
Speaker 1: that stuff. Um. It is really interesting and is a
Speaker 1: lot more about um the Wanpanag perspective and other indigenous
Speaker 1: perspectives than some of the other books that are out there.
Speaker 1: Folks are interested in that. It also has a really
Speaker 1: fascinating companion website that is full of maps and pictures
Speaker 1: and all kinds of other stuff. So I feel like
Speaker 1: the point about the revival of UM the Wampano language
Speaker 1: and that opening a new avenue of research is either
Speaker 1: something that was in that book or something and one
Speaker 1: of other things that I read as I was researching this.
Speaker 1: Do you also have a little bit of listener mail, Jurie,
Speaker 1: it's a correction. Sometimes we make mistakes and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. That's an error I made. Sometimes
Speaker 1: we make mistakes and I did know that, and that's
Speaker 1: extra embarrassing UM, And that's what happened this time. This
Speaker 1: is a letter from Mark and Marcus, one of a
Speaker 1: few people that wrote to us about this. Mark says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Holly and Tracy, I recently discovered your podcasts and I'm
Speaker 1: so very glad I did. Fascinating topics, coupled with your
Speaker 1: fun and fetching presentation styles, have made up my favorite
Speaker 1: podcast for my early morning sixty minutes commute to work.
Speaker 1: I was listening to a recent six Impossible Episodes show
Speaker 1: and heard you mentioned the impeachment of Nixon. I'm sure
Speaker 1: a lot of listeners have already reached out about this,
Speaker 1: but just a reminder that Nixon was not impeached. He
Speaker 1: was threatened with impeachment but resigned before suffering through what
Speaker 1: appeared to be an inevitable end. I know you two
Speaker 1: like to be accurate, So there it is. They keep
Speaker 1: it coming. We are listening. Cheers, Mark, Thank you Mark
Speaker 1: and the others who have written to us or tweeted
Speaker 1: at us or Facebook commented on us about this. UH.
Speaker 1: To recap the impeachment process of Richard Nixon had started.
Speaker 1: There had been months of impeachment hearings and investigations, and
Speaker 1: the House Judiciary Committee had approved articles of impeachment on
Speaker 1: three different charges that happened in late July of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, but the House did not actually vote on
Speaker 1: those articles because Nixon announced his resignation on August eight
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy four, and he left the White House
Speaker 1: the next day, so there was no one left in office.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was someone left in office, but like Nixon,
Speaker 1: was not in office to impeach anymore. So instead, the
Speaker 1: House adopted a resolution that accepted that the House Judiciary
Speaker 1: report on the whole at or this all gets shorthanded
Speaker 1: to impeached a lot because like it had gone on
Speaker 1: for all of that time and included various impeachment proceedings,
Speaker 1: but like there was no actual vote on the impeachment articles. Um,
Speaker 1: it really seemed incredibly likely that he was going to
Speaker 1: be impeached by the House and then convicted by the Senate.
Speaker 1: But technically that vote never happened. So um, even though
Speaker 1: it gets glossed over with the word impeachment a lot,
Speaker 1: technically not impeach, impeached resigned from office to avoid that fate. Uh. Anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew that from eighth grade Civics class or whatever,
Speaker 1: and that's I just wrote it wrong. I wrote it
Speaker 1: wrong in the thing and didn't catch it anyway. So
Speaker 1: thank you to the folks who have brought that up
Speaker 1: gave me a chance to say it the right way.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us, we're at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at i heeart radio dot com. We're also
Speaker 1: all over social media at missed in History. That's where
Speaker 1: you'll find our Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram, and you
Speaker 1: can subscribe to our show on Apple podcast the I
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Speaker 1: You Missed in History Class is a production of I
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