King Philip's War in New England
King Philip's War ran from 1675 to 1676 and was, in proportion to population, among the deadliest conflicts in American history. Metacom, the Wampanoag leader whom the English called Philip, was the son of Massasoit, who had made the treaty with the Plymouth colonists in 1621 that kept peace for half a century. By the 1670s that peace had become subordination. The settler population had grown to perhaps 50,000 against some 20,000 native people; land was being acquired by purchase under pressure, by debt and by court judgments; livestock destroyed unfenced crops; and Plymouth had begun summoning Wampanoag leaders to answer in English courts, which is the point Metacom identified as the loss of sovereignty. The trigger was the murder of John Sassamon, a Christian Wampanoag who had warned the English of Metacom's preparations, and the hanging of three Wampanoag men for it on the evidence of a single witness. Fighting began in June 1675 and spread across New England as the Nipmuc, Pocumtuck and eventually the Narragansett joined. More than half the English towns in New England were attacked and a dozen destroyed. In December 1675 colonial forces attacked a fortified Narragansett winter village in a swamp and burned it with several hundred non-combatants inside. Around 800 colonists and perhaps 3,000 native people died. Metacom was shot in August 1676 by a Christian native soldier, and his body was quartered and his head displayed at Plymouth for two decades. Hundreds of survivors were sold into slavery in the Caribbean.
- Year: 1675 CE
- Category: Military
