King Philips War (Essay Sample)

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KING PHILIP’S WAR
King Philip’s war was the bloodiest war in the America’s history. It took place in 1675 in the New England. Metacom was the leader of the Pokanokets which was a tribe within the Wampanoag Indians Federation. Ironically, King Philip was the son of Massasoit who had aided the survival of pilgrims in the new world. The war broke on the arrival of Mayflower when the English had prospered and expanded their settlements. However, natives’ number was declining as a result of diseases introduced by the Europeans (Malone).
By 1675, Philip took stage and in a prophetic moment signaled warning to the whites about his plans. He said, "I am with determination about to not living until I have no country" (Malone) The war actually began after Wampanoag braves killed some cattle owned by the English near their tribal headquarters in the presently, Bristol, Rhode Island. English livestock was ever the source of friction as cattle now and then trampled the Indian corn. A farmer made a retaliation of killing an Indian, an action that set forth a trigger effect that would eventually threaten to wipe out of existence Plymouth Bay and Massachusetts Bay Colonies (Malone).
Nipmucks Indians joined forces with Philip’s Wampanoag and raided and staged an attack on Brookfield turning its siege into a most dramatic incidence in the entirety of the war. The natives made ambush and killed eight soldiers in the snare making the rest of the company barely making it back to the Brookfield garrison (Malone). They pursued the surviving soldiers and burned every building within the town. They strategized on surrounding the wooden garrison where survivors and settlers huddled and watched the building being on fire. The settlers used their drinking water to succeed in slowing the blaze (Rowlandson).
In autumn of 1675, the Nipmucks and Wampanoag’s got joined on the warpath by the Norwottocks and the Pocumtucks Squakheags. They ranged attack on the Pioneer Valley and Deerfield town leading to the abandonment of the town by the English (Malone). After the attack on the Deerfield, Captain Lothrop retrieved any remaining grains and brought them to Hadley garrisons. In October, Indians, with hostility, struck again with raids on the town of Hatfield, Springfield and Northampton where thirty houses were torched. As winter set in, the attacks diminished. The English feared the powerful Narragansett tribe might enter the war. They had lived peacefully with the followers of Roger Williams but meant little in the Colonial New England (Malone).
In 1675 December, the colonialists made a preemptive hit against the neutral Narragansett tribe. The result would become what is known as the Great Swamp Massacre. In this, a thousand soldiers from Massachusetts Bay Colony, Connecticut Colony, and Plymouth Colony marched into Narragansett territory in the Southern Rhode Island and celebrated an Indian Fighter, Benjamin Church (Malone).
An Indian traitor conspirator betrayed his people and informed the English the location of a large number of Narragansett winter camp which led to a massacre of many soldiers (Malone). The Narragansett, however, feared worse as over five hundred people were killed in the Great Swamp Massacre with many wigwams put to the torch (Malone).
The surviving Narragansett warriors entered the war on the side of Philip and raided attack and burned down towns. On February of 1676, the Indians invaded Lancaster garrison where settlers had taken refuge (Rowlandson). Among those inside was Mary Rowlandson, who gave this account: "At length they came and beset our own house and quickly it was the dole fullest day that my eyes have ever seen. The house stood upon edge of a hill. Some of the Indians got behind the hill, others behind anything that would shelter them, from all which places they shot against the house, so that bullets seemed to fly like hail " (Rowlandson).
Inside the house, "some were fighting for their lives, others wallowing in their own blood, the house was ablaze above our heads, and the bloody heathen was ready to knock us on the head if we stirred out. Now might we hear mothers and children crying ...