0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

0:03

a production of I Heart Radios How

0:05

Stuff Works. Hello,

0:12

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson

0:15

and I'm Holly Fry. In our recent

0:17

episode about Paul Cuffey, we mentioned

0:19

just really briefly that

0:21

after King phillips War, indigenous

0:24

men in New England were enslaved and sent to the Caribbean,

0:26

and that felt like a pretty big thing

0:28

to just drop into an episode without explaining

0:31

it more, especially since we have only

0:33

really mentioned King Philip's War in passing

0:36

on the show. It came up as part of the

0:38

context and our episodes on Bacon's Rebellion

0:41

also way back in It

0:43

was part of the context for our

0:46

our show on the Sham Battle and the Cohico

0:48

Massacre, which we're gonna have as a Saturday Classics

0:50

soon. For folks who haven't heard that King

0:53

Phillip's War was an armed conflict primarily

0:56

between English colonists and indigenous

0:59

nations and what's on New England, although there

1:01

were also some indigenous peoples who were

1:03

allied with the colonists, and

1:05

it took place primarily between sixteen seventy

1:07

five and sixteen seventy six. In

1:10

terms of per capita deaths. That's

1:12

been described as the deadliest war

1:14

in US history, and it had a massive

1:17

ongoing collection of ramifications

1:19

for indigenous people and for the

1:21

colonists in and around New England.

1:24

Sometimes it's called the First Indian

1:26

War, but that name and King

1:28

Phillip's War are both misnomers,

1:31

and we will be talking about that as

1:33

we go along. So to set up some context,

1:36

Plymouth Colony was the first permanent

1:38

British settlement in New England, established

1:41

after about one people arrived aboard

1:43

the Mayflower in sixteen twenty.

1:45

About forty of the people aboard the Mayflower

1:47

were Puritans. These were members of a religious

1:50

reform movement that believed that the Church

1:52

of England was corrupt and retained

1:54

too many Catholic influences after

1:56

the Protestant Reformation. Other

1:58

English colonies followed to that one. This included

2:01

the Massachusetts Bay Colony, established

2:03

in sixteen twenty nine and named

2:05

after the indigenous Massachusetts Nation

2:07

living in the area. Roger Williams

2:10

founded Rhode Island Colony in sixteen

2:12

thirty six after being banished from

2:14

Massachusetts. The Connecticut

2:17

Colony was established the same year

2:19

with its name coming from an Algonquin word

2:21

meaning beside the long title river. Throughout

2:25

this whole time, between sixteen thirty

2:27

and sixteen forty, thousands more

2:29

people migrated to North America from

2:31

Britain, many of them Puritans who

2:33

believed that this so called New

2:35

World was theirs by divine

2:38

decree. The region where English

2:40

colonists were establishing settlements was

2:42

home to numerous indigenous tribes

2:45

and nations, many of them Algonquin

2:47

speaking people's. The Wampanag

2:49

nation alone included sixty

2:51

nine different tribes, and these

2:53

societies were highly interconnected through

2:56

economics and through kinship, including

2:58

an extensive trading network that spans

3:00

throughout New England. The colonists

3:03

became part of and influenced this

3:05

network as they brought different trade goods, including

3:08

firearms, to this whole system.

3:10

English colonization of North America

3:12

required colonists to get land,

3:15

or at least the rights to use the land, from

3:17

the local indigenous people, and

3:19

especially in the earlier decades of

3:21

colonization, a lot of these land

3:23

deeds read a lot more like treaties

3:26

than straightforward purchase agreements.

3:28

In a lot of cases, the colonist was

3:30

given the right to use the land, but the

3:32

deed also included some kind of provisions

3:35

for an Indigenous family or community

3:37

to keep living on or using that land

3:40

in some way. Deeds also often

3:42

included some kind of lifetime payment

3:44

on the part of the colonists, something along

3:47

the lines of a bushel of corn. This

3:49

was similar to what Indigenous families

3:51

were expected to contribute to their own communities.

3:54

So from the Indigenous point of view, English

3:56

colonists were becoming part of their interconnected

3:59

community that was already made up of lots

4:01

of different nations and people's The

4:04

colonists were gaining access to the land

4:06

but also contributing to the community

4:08

with the goods that the land produced. But

4:11

from the English point of view, it was more

4:13

like they were buying the land outright

4:15

and continuing to have some kind of payment

4:17

long term with this bushel of corn

4:20

or something similar every year. And

4:22

this disparity on how each

4:24

side understood this was complicated

4:27

by the fact that very few people in the

4:29

colonies were fluent in both English

4:31

and an Algonquin language, and

4:34

most cases the negotiating parties

4:36

might speak some of what another's language,

4:39

but not fluently. This

4:41

gives me a brief flashback to Thomas Harriet

4:43

and his visit to the

4:46

America's under Sir Walter Raleigh, and how

4:48

he put some of these ideas in motion that

4:51

led to all of these problems going forward.

4:54

On top of having fundamentally different

4:56

ways of understanding these transactions, English

4:59

colonists all so wanted access to

5:01

more and more land as their population

5:03

grew, and as the first generation

5:05

of English children born in North America

5:08

reached adulthood, it was expected

5:10

that firstborn sons would inherent land

5:12

from their fathers. These firstborn

5:14

sons thought of this inheritance as their birthright

5:17

and something that was exclusively There's

5:19

not something that they shared with their

5:21

indigenous neighbors. So,

5:24

because of this need to get more and more land, negotiations

5:27

for the land and the deeds that came

5:29

out of those negotiations became increasingly

5:32

exploitive and absolute in terms

5:34

of the rights that the English people were getting. More

5:37

and more of the deeds were signed under

5:39

duress. This included things like the

5:42

English taking someone captive and refusing

5:44

to release them until they had signed their land over.

5:47

A lot of these deeds included no more

5:49

provisions about the indigenous people's

5:51

continued use of the land, and then that

5:54

led to disputes within indigenous

5:56

communities as people, especially

5:58

women, realized that the land that

6:00

they had been cultivating or living on had

6:02

been sold without their involvement and with no

6:04

provision made for them. It also wasn't

6:07

just people who were encroaching onto indigenous

6:09

land. As this situation progressed, colonists

6:13

introduced a lot of domesticated livestock

6:15

to North America, including cattle and pigs.

6:18

Colonists fenced their own crops and then

6:20

allowed their livestock to roam and graze

6:23

freely. Much of the plant life

6:25

and grazing land back in Britain was well adapted

6:27

to being eaten and stomped on by grazing

6:30

livestock and then having the seeds

6:32

of those plants propagated through dung. The

6:35

plants in North America were not adapted

6:37

in the same way as the colonists.

6:39

Animals encroached onto indigenous land, they

6:42

tore up that land, and they were incredibly

6:44

destructive to cultivated crops.

6:47

This wasn't restricted to just

6:50

you know, planted crops that someone

6:52

was cultivating, which the animals did trample

6:54

and eat. A lot of the colonists.

6:57

Domestic animals also destroyed

6:59

things like claim and beds and woodland

7:01

berry bushes that people gathered from,

7:03

and when Indigenous people complained about

7:06

this destruction of their crops and their other

7:08

food sources, for the most part, the colonists

7:10

just told them to build fences rather

7:13

than doing anything to contain their own animals.

7:16

Among the Wampanog and other Algonquin

7:18

speaking people's women were generally

7:20

the people who cultivated and managed this

7:22

crop land, producing food for their

7:24

own families and their whole communities

7:26

and for trade with the colonists and

7:28

other indigenous nations. And

7:30

colonial records are full of indigenous

7:33

women's efforts to resolve this and

7:35

to protect and fairly distribute

7:37

what remained of their communities food stores.

7:39

Whether something was about a land

7:42

deed or animal encroachment,

7:44

or some other dispute, the English

7:46

colonists expected Indigenous people

7:49

to follow English colonial law and

7:51

to seek restitution through colonial

7:53

courts. One justification

7:56

for this on the part of the colonists was their

7:58

belief that the Indigenous people were primitive

8:00

and Huthens who needed to be converted to Christianity

8:03

and taught the ways of English society. Another

8:06

justification was that in a lot of cases,

8:08

an indigenous leader or someone else speaking

8:11

for a tribe had made some kind of allegiance

8:13

to the colony, which the colony

8:15

regarded as a commitment to follow colonial

8:18

law. But in general, these courts

8:20

were skewed in favor of the colonists,

8:23

so the colonists were forcing Indigenous

8:25

people to resolve disputes in a legal

8:27

system that was stacked against them. Court

8:30

decisions could be particularly egregious,

8:32

like enforcing the terms of a land deed

8:34

only if an indigenous family surrendered

8:37

all its weapons, when those weapons

8:39

were needed for both hunting and defense

8:41

and were necessary to the family survival.

8:44

All of this was also happening in the

8:46

context of an indigenous population

8:48

that had been reduced dramatically due to

8:50

introduced diseases, especially smallpox.

8:53

A smallpox epidemic in sixteen

8:56

thirty three and sixteen thirty four killed

8:58

an estimated seventy per scent

9:00

of the indigenous population of the Northeast.

9:03

King Philip's War wasn't the first time

9:05

that all of this fed into a violent conflict,

9:07

which is why it's not really accurate to call

9:09

it quote the First Indian War, as

9:12

it is sometimes known. You'll read that in

9:14

various uh places. Although

9:17

there had been violent conflicts on a smaller

9:19

scale going back to the beginning of a European

9:21

presence in what is now New England, the

9:23

first sustained conflict in these English

9:25

colonies was the Peaquot War, fought

9:27

mainly in what is now Connecticut in sixteen

9:30

thirty six and sixteen thirty seven. In

9:32

addition to all these things that we've just discussed,

9:35

another influence in the Peaquot War was

9:37

trading relationships with the Dutch

9:40

and the Peaquat nations existing relationships

9:42

with its indigenous neighbors. The

9:44

Peaquat nation had extended its influence

9:47

throughout the region through military conquest

9:49

and inner marriage and diplomacy, and it had

9:52

become the most powerful indigenous nation

9:54

in the area. At the end of the

9:56

war, though most of the Peaquat fighting

9:58

force had been killed, the surviving

10:00

women and children were mostly captured and enslaved

10:03

and sent to two tribes that had sided

10:05

with the English in this conflict. After

10:08

the Peaqua War, relationships between

10:10

the indigenous people and the colonists were

10:13

relatively free from violence for the next

10:15

few decades. We're gonna get to how

10:17

that changed after we have a quick sponsor

10:19

break.

10:27

The King Philip of King Philip's

10:29

War was Medicom also known

10:31

as Medicomet or Po Medicom. These

10:33

kinds of name changes were really common among

10:36

the Wampanag. He was the stm

10:38

or leader of the poconoc At Wampanag,

10:40

and the name King Philip came from the

10:43

English colonists. They basically

10:45

gave him a name after Philip of Macedon.

10:47

Medicom's father was osa Mequin,

10:49

also known as the massasoit Stum

10:52

or Great Statum. You'll often see

10:54

him called massasoit as though that was his name,

10:56

but that is really a title. He

10:59

was the inter tribal leader of the Wampanog nation.

11:01

When the Mayflower arrived in sixteen twenty,

11:04

he signed a treaty with the Colonists and

11:06

maintained relatively peaceful relations

11:08

with them. He was present at the meal

11:11

that has become commemorated as the First

11:13

Thanksgiving that colonists

11:15

basically survived with the help of osam

11:17

Equin and the rest of the Wampanog. Osam

11:20

Aguin died in sixteen sixty one, and

11:22

his son, Wemsuda became stageum.

11:24

English colonists called Wemsuda

11:27

Alexander, after Alexander the Great,

11:29

but he died suddenly in sixteen sixty

11:31

two. The English had arrested

11:34

him under suspicion that he was planning

11:36

some kind of uprising with the Narraganset

11:39

people, something there was not actually any

11:41

evidence for, and he had suddenly

11:43

become very ill while he was imprisoned.

11:46

A lot was suspicious about this. English

11:49

authorities also maintained that Wamsuda

11:51

had been ordered to appear in court over this suspicion,

11:54

but that he hadn't shown up and authorities had

11:57

to go bring him in, but there is absolutely

11:59

no core documentation to back that

12:01

up. Many of the Wampanag, including

12:04

Medicom, believed that Wemstuda had

12:06

been poisoned, and then Medicom

12:08

was also summoned before the court, also

12:11

on suspicion of plotting against the English.

12:13

And this case, what the colony

12:16

interpreted as signs of an uprising

12:18

was probably just a traditional spring festival.

12:22

Combined with everything that we talked about before

12:24

the break, this really eroded

12:26

the last of the goodwill that osam Equin

12:28

had maintained with the colony. Although

12:30

all the people that we have just mentioned were men.

12:33

Women were also a critical part of the Wampanag

12:35

leadership and in diplomatic relationships

12:38

with the colony. In particular,

12:40

Medicalm's sister in law, Wamu, was

12:42

heavily involved in the events leading

12:45

up to and during King Philip's war. She

12:48

was a song squaw or a squaw statum,

12:50

which was a role English colonists often

12:52

described as queen. It was a

12:54

role that was on equal footing with a shm

12:57

and held by a woman. But this wasn't

12:59

a position that she had because of her marriage

13:01

to Wamsuda. It predated

13:03

that marriage, and it continued after his death

13:05

in sixto. Yeah,

13:08

the the colonists referred to

13:10

the statims and the squaw statims as

13:12

like kings and queens, but

13:14

the leadership structure was really a lot more about

13:17

leading and about diplomacy

13:19

than it was about being a ruler with

13:22

like authoritative ordering

13:24

right over people. They

13:26

were trying to fit it into the European

13:28

model of monarchy, which it was not. Yeah.

13:32

So all the factors that we talked about before

13:34

the break led to the start of King Philip's

13:37

War, but it's immediate precursor

13:39

was the death of a man known as John

13:41

Sassamon. Sassamon was an

13:43

Indigenous man whose parents had died in

13:45

an epidemic, and he was raised in a praying

13:48

town. These were communities that

13:50

were established by Puritans for the

13:52

purpose of converting Indigenous people to

13:54

Christianity and encouraging them to

13:56

live under English law and following

13:58

English customs. So the Indigenous

14:01

people that were living in these praying towns were

14:03

people who converted to Christianity and we're

14:05

adopting like an English colonial

14:08

lifestyle. Sassamon also

14:10

attended Harvard for a time before

14:12

the Indian College there was formerly established.

14:15

Sasamon had worked as an interpreter for

14:17

the English before becoming one of Medicom's

14:19

secretaries, and his motivations

14:22

and actions in all of this really are not

14:24

clear. There is some suggestion

14:26

that the English sent him to spy on Medicom,

14:29

and in late sixteen seventy four he

14:31

reportedly told authorities in Plymouth that

14:34

Medicom was planning and uprising. The

14:36

colonial government doesn't seem to have taken

14:38

this warning seriously, and then

14:41

sometime in early sixteen seventy five, Sassamon's

14:44

friends reported that he was missing After

14:46

a search, his body was found under

14:48

the ice an assawamps at Pond

14:51

in what's now southeastern Massachusetts.

14:53

Forensics was really not an established

14:56

discipline at this point, but apart

14:58

from that, there wasn't much of an ex himanation of

15:00

Sassamon's body at all. A

15:02

witness came forward and said that he

15:05

had seen three of Medicom's counselors

15:07

murder Sasamon and throw his body into

15:09

the lake. Authorities had

15:12

concluded that it had been because Medicom really

15:14

was planning an uprising, and that he'd

15:16

ordered Sassamon to be killed for betraying

15:18

him to the English. However,

15:20

there really was not any evidence

15:23

for any of this, and there are also

15:25

a couple of complicating factors. The

15:27

witness that testified to all

15:29

of this also owed a gambling debt to

15:31

one of the counselors that he implicated

15:34

in the crime, and a sawaps that

15:36

Pond was at the heart of a land dispute

15:38

involving many of these same people.

15:41

So it's possible that he was

15:43

killed and it like was

15:45

something that was ordered because of this whole warning

15:48

that there was an uprising being planned. It's

15:50

also possible that he was killed and it

15:52

was something related to this land

15:54

dispute, or he might

15:56

have just drowned, like it's totally

15:59

unclear. Colonial authorities brought

16:01

the three counselors involved to trial to

16:04

create the appearance of fairness. They assembled

16:06

a jury that included six indigenous men

16:08

and twelve colonists, but the trial

16:11

itself was still pretty shoddy.

16:13

Uh. This one witnesses testimony was really

16:16

the only thing connecting Medicom's counselors

16:18

to Sassamon's death, which may

16:20

or may not have even been a murder, as Tracy

16:22

said, could have been an accident. The evidence

16:25

presented at court included a report

16:27

that when Sassimon's body was brought to Medicom's

16:29

counselor Tobias, that the corps

16:31

started bleeding, and that that was evidence

16:34

of Tobias's guilt. The three

16:36

counselors were found guilty and sentenced

16:38

to be hanged on June eighth, sixteen

16:40

seventy five. Two of them were executed

16:43

on that day. The third was given

16:45

a reprieve after the rope broke,

16:47

and then he said that he had seen the other two

16:50

men commit this crime but hadn't participated

16:52

in it or intervened by

16:54

the end of June, though he had also been

16:56

executed by firing squad. Regardless

16:59

of what their meta coom really had been planning,

17:01

some kind of action against the colonists. Violence

17:04

began shortly after these hangings. In

17:07

early June, several English farms were burned,

17:09

apparently in retaliation. Then

17:12

on June a colonist

17:14

in Swansea fatally shot a Wapanog

17:17

man while defending his farm from a

17:19

wapanog graid. The next day,

17:21

in retaliation for that death, a Wapanog

17:23

party killed seven colonists

17:26

in Swansea, which is generally marked

17:28

as the start of King Philip's War,

17:30

So if you go read articles about

17:32

this, you'll often see it described as

17:35

this series of events that started with the

17:37

death of John Sassmont, with the trial

17:39

and the execution leading to this escalating

17:41

back and forth that tipped into an all out war.

17:44

But at the same time, a few weeks before

17:46

the trial even happened, which was a month

17:48

before these seven colonists were killed

17:50

in Swansea, we Tamu had been

17:52

talking to colonial authorities about her

17:55

fears that the Wampanag We're going to face

17:57

persecution by the English, so tense

18:00

had clearly been increasing before this

18:02

trial even began. There was heavy

18:04

fighting in what is now Massachusetts,

18:06

Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maine. Over

18:09

the next six months. Many

18:11

of the area's indigenous nations formed

18:13

an alliance with the wampanag The

18:15

Mohegans allied with the colonists,

18:17

as did many of the indigenous people who

18:19

had converted to Christianity and we're living

18:21

in praying towns. Some

18:24

including the Narragansett, tried to stay

18:26

neutral. At first. Colonial

18:28

forces fared really poorly in the fighting.

18:31

A lot of them were new recruits to the militia.

18:33

They really did not have a lot of training, and the

18:35

training that they did have was really geared

18:38

towards the style of fighting that was used in Europe.

18:41

Meanwhile, the indigenous forces tactics

18:43

were more like what we might describe as guerrilla

18:45

warfare today. They were a very highly

18:47

mobile fighting force with marksman

18:49

and snipers and just superior knowledge

18:52

of the terrain. As this was happening,

18:54

English authorities viewed Indigenous people

18:56

in general with increasing suspicion.

19:00

This included people who had converted to

19:02

Christianity and we're living in praying towns.

19:05

One example was James Printer, who was Nipmuck

19:08

but had been raised in an English household

19:10

and educated at Harvard Indian College.

19:13

In August of sixteen seventy five, he was

19:15

captured and accused of participating in

19:17

a raid when he had actually been in church

19:19

at that time. Similarly,

19:22

between thirty and forty Indigenous people

19:24

were arrested and imprisoned in Cambridge

19:26

for burning down a haystack that belonged to

19:28

a man named Amos Richardson, even

19:31

though Richardson himself insisted

19:33

that none of them were the culprits. On

19:35

September eighteenth, an indigenous force

19:37

ambushed an English convoy that was trying

19:40

to remove what was left of the harvest

19:42

from the town of Deerfield. Deerfield

19:45

had been abandoned. In the wake of the fighting, at

19:47

least sixty people from the convoy

19:49

were killed in what came to be known as

19:51

the Battle of Bloody Brook or the bloody

19:53

Brook Massacre. In October of

19:55

sixteen seventy five, the Narragansett

19:57

signed a treaty of neutrality with the ma

20:00

Instachusetts Bay Colony. Once

20:02

they had signed, colonial authorities demanded

20:04

that they surrender. Wampanag and other refugees

20:07

who were being sheltered in Narragansett

20:09

territory. The Narragansett

20:11

refused this. They considered the refugees

20:13

to be their kin and under their protection.

20:16

So the English took this as a sign of duplicity

20:19

on the Narragansetts part and a suggestion

20:21

that they might abandon this treaty

20:23

and joined with Medicom. There had also

20:25

overtime been individual Arrogancett

20:27

people who had participated in raids

20:29

and things like that. So the colonies

20:32

mustered a militia of about a thousand

20:34

people, along with about a hundred and fifty indigenous

20:36

allies, and they marched to Narragancet Territory,

20:40

burning the indigenous settlements that they passed

20:42

along the way. On December nineteenth,

20:44

fighting began in a swamp in what

20:46

is now West Kingston, Rhode Island. This

20:49

became known as the Great Swamp Fight

20:51

or the Great Swamp Massacre, with the violence

20:54

stretching into December twentieth. At

20:56

first, the Narragansett were able to drive the

20:58

English force back, but at the English

21:00

regrouped and reinforcements arrived.

21:02

They took the main Narragance at fort, burning

21:05

it down with people, mostly elders,

21:07

women, and children still inside. At

21:10

least seventy people were killed among the

21:12

colonial force. With the indigenous

21:14

death tool much harder to estimate, it

21:17

was at least a hundred and fifty people, but it

21:19

may have been hundreds more. This was

21:21

really a turning point in the war, so

21:23

we're going to take a quick sponsor break before we move

21:25

on. After

21:33

the Great Swamp Massacre, the Narragansett

21:35

Nation unsurprisingly went to war against

21:37

the colonies. Narragansett sat

21:40

Conanchet formed a coalition with

21:42

other indigenous tribes and nations, which

21:44

mustered a fighting force of about two thousand

21:46

and what's now Rhode Island. He

21:48

then moved into central Massachusetts

21:50

and organized another force of about fift

21:53

hundred people. As Canancha was

21:55

forming this coalition, the weather was

21:57

hampering the colonists efforts in the war.

22:00

Late December of sixteen seventy five was very

22:02

snowy, with militia commanders reporting

22:05

depths between two and three feet

22:07

of snow. It wasn't at all

22:09

conducive to the militia's movements, especially

22:11

since they didn't know exactly where the indigenous

22:13

forces were at any point. The

22:16

indigenous forces were affected as well,

22:18

but they continued to be a lot more mobile

22:20

than the colonial forces were, thanks to

22:22

having more experience dealing with this kind

22:24

of weather and being more familiar with

22:26

a lot of the territory outside the colonial

22:29

towns. It was also just a lot easier

22:31

for a small like raiding

22:34

party in snow shoes to

22:36

come in and hit a place and leave

22:39

than it was for like a militia unit

22:41

to march somewhere. In

22:44

the early months of sixteen seventy six, these

22:46

two indigenous fronts moved northward

22:48

and eastwards through southern New England.

22:51

They converged in Providence, Rhode Island,

22:54

which the Indigenous force burned down

22:56

in March of sixteen seventy six. By

22:59

the spring, in the face of these two advancing

23:01

armies, the English had abandoned

23:03

at least eleven towns in Massachusetts,

23:06

and the Indigenous force had destroyed

23:08

most of the colonial towns in Rhode

23:10

Island on the west side of Narragance at

23:12

Bay. But as the weather got warmer

23:14

in the spring, there was another shift. New

23:17

England's Indigenous community had been on the

23:19

move through the winter. Whether it was the

23:21

fighting force advancing through the colony,

23:24

or women, children, and elders who were trying

23:26

to stay out of the way of the war. Fewer

23:29

crops had been planted because people couldn't

23:31

stay in one place to tend them, and

23:33

what did get planted was often destroyed

23:35

by the colonial militia. For

23:37

example, in May of sixteen seventy six,

23:39

an English force attacked a Nipmuck

23:41

camp that had been established specifically

23:44

for fishing and planting. The colonial

23:46

militia massacred many of the people

23:48

who were there, who were mostly again women,

23:51

children, and elders. This was about two

23:53

hundred people. Then an indigenous

23:55

force that was nearby regrouped and killed about

23:57

forty of the militia. This continued

23:59

to June, with the colonial militia

24:02

arranging raids to destroy the indigenous

24:04

people's crops and to force them away

24:06

from their cultivated fields. Indigenous

24:09

forces and refugees alike simply started

24:11

running out of food. Then,

24:13

on July twenty, Benjamin Church led

24:16

a force that attacked Medicom's encampment,

24:18

capturing his wife and child and

24:20

selling them into slavery. Medicom

24:23

was also captured and was assassinated.

24:25

On August twelfth of sixteen seventy six.

24:28

His body was drawn and quartered, and his

24:30

head was placed on a pike and displayed

24:32

outside of Plymouth. That same

24:35

month, we to Moo drowned while trying to

24:37

cross a river as she was fleeing from colonial

24:39

forces. Cananchet was also

24:41

captured and killed in sixteen seventy six. Medicom's

24:44

death is often described as the end of King

24:47

Philip's War, but in reality,

24:49

the indigenous forces had been losing ground

24:51

for months and fighting continued, particularly

24:54

in what's now Maine, for months. A

24:57

treaty formally ended the fighting along the

24:59

Northern Front in April twelfth, sixteen

25:01

seventy eight, almost two years

25:03

after Medicom's death. The

25:05

idea that the war was King Phillips

25:07

and that it ended with his death really came from

25:10

Benjamin Church's entertaining

25:12

History of King Philip's War, which was published

25:14

in seventeen sixteen. That

25:17

story recounted his own role in pursuing

25:19

and killing Medicom's through the stories

25:21

that he had told to his son. Church's

25:24

account is one of many written from the

25:26

colonial perspective in the seventeenth

25:28

and early eighteenth centuries. Colonists

25:30

actually started writing books about this war

25:32

before the war was even over. Increase

25:35

Mather published a brief History of the

25:37

War with the Indians in New England in

25:39

sixteen seventy six, and William

25:42

Hubbard published a narrative of the Trouble

25:44

with the Indians in New England in sixteen

25:46

seventy seven. We also have Mary

25:48

Rowlinson's A Narrative of the Captivity

25:51

and Restoration of Mrs Mary Rowlinson,

25:53

which was published in sixteen eighty two.

25:56

Rowlinson and her children were taken captive

25:58

after a raid on lancast Her. One

26:01

of her children was injured and died shortly

26:03

afterward, and Rowland and her surviving

26:05

children spent almost three months as captives.

26:08

They wound up with a party led by Wamu

26:11

as she tried to guide refugees to safety.

26:14

Rawlinson's account has been described as North

26:16

America's first bestseller, and

26:18

it launched the genre of the captivity

26:20

narrative. By the end of this war, about

26:23

six hundred colonists and British soldiers

26:25

had been killed, about

26:27

seventeen English settlements were completely

26:30

destroyed or abandoned, and at least fifty

26:32

others were heavily damaged. The

26:35

death toll on the indigenous side is harder

26:37

to say precisely, but it was probably

26:39

in the thousands. It's estimated

26:41

that about five percent of New England's

26:43

white population was killed as a result of the

26:45

war, with forty percent

26:47

of the indigenous population either being

26:50

killed or fleeing the region. At

26:52

least one thousand Indigenous people

26:54

were also enslaved and sent out of New

26:56

England. This included people who

26:58

surrendered with the hope that they would be treated

27:00

leniently. The colonists

27:02

had enslaved indigenous people starting before

27:05

the war, but they really expanded

27:07

the practice during and afterward.

27:09

Prior to the war, colonists had enslaved

27:12

indigenous people to make money, to take

27:14

their land, and to punish and remove

27:16

anyone who was viewed as a negative influence

27:18

on other indigenous people. During

27:21

and after King Philip's War, most of the

27:23

enslaved Indigenous men were sent to Barbados

27:26

or to other British territory in the Caribbean,

27:29

but a few were sent to other places as well.

27:31

Enslaved Indigenous women and children

27:34

were often forced to work in British

27:36

households and businesses in North America,

27:39

and in some cases this enslavement became

27:41

hereditary, with children who were born

27:43

to enslaved Indigenous women being

27:45

claimed as the property of the households

27:47

where these women were being forced to work. English

27:50

attitudes toward the Indigenous people

27:52

became much harsher in the wake of the war. The

27:55

colonies passed prohibitions on selling

27:57

weapons to Indigenous people, and that was later

28:00

expanded to selling anything

28:02

to them. The colonies also

28:04

organized patrols to police indigenous

28:06

communities and their movements. In

28:09

May of seventeen sixty six, Massachusetts

28:11

ordered that all Indigenous people in the colony's

28:14

territory had to live in one

28:16

of four praying towns. Further

28:18

laws were passed in the early eighteenth century,

28:21

often with laws targeting the indigenous

28:23

population being looped into laws

28:25

that were related to enslaved Africans.

28:28

As for the colonists, the British government

28:30

dispatched Edward Randolph to investigate

28:33

the causes of the war and to assess

28:35

the damage. He reported that

28:37

the colonists generally believed

28:39

that it had been divine punishment

28:41

for their own sinfulness. After

28:44

he made this report, the English colonies

28:46

in New England lost a lot of their autonomy.

28:48

They became part of the Dominion of New England,

28:50

which was placed under the control of New York

28:52

Governor Edmund Andros. Of the

28:55

hundreds of indigenous tribes and nations

28:57

in New England before and during King Philip's

28:59

War, only a few remain today.

29:02

In terms of nations that have come up in today's

29:04

episode, there's the Mohegan tribe of Indians

29:07

of Connecticut, the Narragansett Indian

29:09

tribe of Rhode Island, and in Massachusetts

29:11

the mashp Wampanag and the Wampanog tribe

29:14

of gay Head Aquinna. Of course,

29:16

there are also tribes that still exist but

29:18

don't have federal recognition. The

29:20

Nipmuck nation is recognized by the Commonwealth

29:23

of Massachusetts but not by the

29:25

federal government, and there are also

29:27

tribes that existent are not recognized

29:29

by any state or a government

29:32

body. There are a lot of books

29:34

about King Philip's War, and they all offer

29:36

their own interpretation of what happened

29:38

and why. And this includes a lot of books

29:40

written within the last few decades, and that

29:42

understanding is going to continue to evolve.

29:45

In terms of the Wampanoag perspective,

29:47

in particular, the Wampanag

29:49

adopted reading and writing from the colonists

29:51

in the seventeenth century, but the Wampanag

29:53

language was nearly lost in the centuries

29:56

that followed. That has changed recently

29:58

thanks to the work of Jesse Little Doe Baird, who

30:00

was awarded a MacArthur Grant for her efforts

30:03

to revive the want Banag language. In so

30:06

as more people become fluent in Wapanag,

30:09

that's going to open another avenue of

30:11

research for historians. I read

30:13

a lot of resources for this show,

30:16

but the book that I read um

30:18

was Our Beloved Kin, A New History of King

30:20

Phillip's War by Lisa Brooks. That

30:24

is not so much if you're thinking of a book

30:26

about a war in history. It's not a book that's like

30:28

this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened.

30:31

It is more looking at all the factors

30:33

of the war from different angles, including

30:35

like close readings of different land deeds

30:38

and letters and captivity

30:40

narratives and all of that stuff. Um.

30:42

It is really interesting and is a lot

30:44

more about um the Wanpanag

30:47

perspective and other indigenous perspectives

30:49

than some of the other books that are out

30:51

there. Folks are interested in that. It also

30:53

has a really fascinating companion

30:55

website that is full of maps and pictures

30:57

and all kinds of other stuff.

31:00

So I feel like the point

31:02

about the revival of

31:04

UM the Wampano language and that opening a new

31:07

avenue of research is either something that was in

31:09

that book or something and one of other things that I read

31:11

as I was researching this. Do you also

31:13

have a little bit of listener mail, Jurie, it's

31:16

a correction. Sometimes

31:18

we make mistakes and it's like, oh,

31:21

I didn't know that. That's an error

31:23

I made. Sometimes we make mistakes

31:25

and I did know that, and that's extra

31:27

embarrassing UM,

31:30

And that's what happened this time. This is

31:32

a letter from Mark and Marcus, one

31:34

of a few people that wrote to us about this. Mark

31:36

says, Hi, Holly and Tracy, I recently

31:38

discovered your podcasts and I'm so very glad I

31:40

did. Fascinating topics, coupled with your fun

31:42

and fetching presentation styles, have made up my favorite

31:44

podcast for my early morning sixty minutes

31:47

commute to work. I was listening

31:49

to a recent six Impossible Episodes show

31:51

and heard you mentioned the impeachment of Nixon.

31:54

I'm sure a lot of listeners have already reached out about

31:56

this, but just a reminder that Nixon

31:58

was not impeached. He was threatened with impeachment

32:00

but resigned before suffering through

32:03

what appeared to be an

32:05

inevitable end. I know you

32:07

two like to be accurate, So there it is. They keep it

32:09

coming. We are listening. Cheers, Mark,

32:11

Thank you Mark and the others who have written

32:14

to us or tweeted at us or Facebook

32:16

commented on us about this.

32:19

UH. To recap the

32:22

impeachment process of Richard Nixon

32:24

had started. There had been months of

32:26

impeachment hearings and investigations,

32:29

and the House Judiciary Committee had

32:31

approved articles of impeachment

32:33

on three different charges that happened in late July

32:35

of nineteen seventy four, but the

32:37

House did not actually vote on

32:40

those articles because Nixon announced

32:42

his resignation on August eight of nineteen

32:44

seventy four, and he left the White House the next day, so

32:47

there was no one left in office. I

32:49

mean, there was someone left in office, but like Nixon,

32:52

was not in office to impeach anymore. So

32:54

instead, the House adopted a resolution that accepted

32:57

that the House Judiciary report

32:59

on the whole at or this all gets

33:01

shorthanded to impeached a

33:04

lot because like

33:06

it had gone on for all of that time and

33:08

included various impeachment proceedings,

33:10

but like there was no actual vote

33:13

on the impeachment articles. Um,

33:16

it really seemed incredibly likely that

33:18

he was going to be impeached by the House and then

33:20

convicted by the Senate. But technically

33:23

that vote never happened. So um,

33:25

even though it gets glossed

33:27

over with the word impeachment a lot, technically

33:31

not impeach, impeached resigned

33:33

from office to avoid that

33:35

fate. Uh.

33:38

Anyway, Yeah, I knew

33:41

that from eighth grade Civics class or whatever,

33:44

and that's I just wrote it wrong. I

33:46

wrote it wrong in the thing and didn't catch it

33:48

anyway. So thank you to the folks who have brought

33:51

that up gave me

33:53

a chance to say it the right way.

33:56

If you would like to write to us, we're at History

33:59

Podcast at i heeart radio dot com. We're also

34:01

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34:03

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