Introduction

The aftermath of King Philip’s War (1675–1678) was not merely a colonial victory, as it created a great diaspora for the surviving Indigenous nations of southern New England. Tribes such as the Narragansett, Pokanoket, and Nipmuc endured massacres, land seizure, enslavement, and forced dispersal. While many were sold into bondage in the Caribbean, others fled northward into the territories of Abenaki and Pennacook peoples. These diasporic pathways became conduits of resistance, cultural preservation, and intertribal resurgence. Contrary to colonial narratives, survivors overwhelmingly rejected Praying Indian communities, which were deeply embedded within colonial missionary and surveillance infrastructure.

The Scattering: War, Enslavement, and Flight

The Great Swamp Massacre of December 1675 marked a pivotal and tragic turning point in King Philip’s War. It foreshadowed the brutal consequences that awaited those Indigenous nations who dared to resist colonial domination and defend their sovereignty. In a coordinated assault, colonial militias attacked a fortified winter encampment in what is now South Kingstown, Rhode Island, slaughtering over 600 Narragansett and Pokanoket non-combatants, many of them women, children, and elders who took refuge there. This massacre shattered one of the last strongholds of Indigenous resistance in southern New England. In the conflict's aftermath, the survivors of both Narragansett and Pokanoket tribes were scattered. Some were captured and sold into slavery in Bermuda and Barbados, while others fled into dense forests, coastal marshes, and hidden river valleys, seeking refuge among allied tribes and distant kin to the north and west.(1)

As Christine M. DeLucia writes:

Recognizing the existential threat posed by English expansionism, many southern Algonquian nations after the war sought sanctuary among northern Algonquian-speaking kin, including the Pennacook and Abenaki.

Northern Refuge and Cultural Continuity

Narragansett, Pokanoket, and Nipmuc survivors fled northward into the territories of the Abenaki Confederacy and their allies in Pennacook country as the King Philip's War in southern New England came to a close. These movements reflected deliberate strategies of cultural survival and political realignment. Historian Colin Calloway explains that the mission towns of Odanak (St. Francis) and Missisquoi were composed of “a mosaic of Native refugees from southern New England who became central to Wabanaki resistance.”(3)

These northern sanctuaries, far from being passive settlements, became dynamic crucibles of resistance. Former warriors, women, and elders from this conflict brought with them knowledge of English military strategy, trade routes, and diplomacy. Lisa Brooks calls these villages "living archives," where memory, ceremony, and historical grievances were preserved across generations.(4) Jean M. O’Brien and David J. Silverman emphasized that such communities actively sustained Indigenous sovereignty under new social and geographical configurations.(5)

Moreover, less than a generation later, many of these diasporic communities, now integrated into northern Indigenous polities, would participate in coordinated military campaigns against English settlements as part of the French-Wabanaki alliance.(6) Indigenous veterans of King Philip's War driven by memories of loss, orchestrated retaliatory violence along the northern frontier. As Christine DeLucia notes, these refugees became “agents of memory and resistance, mobilized by the unresolved violence of the 1670s.”(7)

The Rejection of Mashpee and the Praying Town System

Contrary to romanticized or simplified narratives, Pokanoket survivors did not flee to Praying Indian communities like Mashpee. These towns were not sanctuaries but instruments of colonial control. The community of Mashpee, founded by missionary Richard Bourne in the 1650s under the authority of Plymouth Colony, was established not to empower Indigenous peoples, but to convert and govern them through English legal, religious, and political frameworks.(8)

Daniel Gookin, writing in 1674, praised the "orderliness" of Mashpee's church led community, a trait encouraged by its colonial sponsors. However, as Jean M. O’Brien points out, such order reflected the imposition of English legal and political frameworks over traditional Indigenous governance.(9) Indigenous scholar David Silverman reiterates this distinction, describing Mashpee as “a distinct Christian Indian community formed under colonial Christianity, separate from the Pokanoket political body that had been destroyed.”(10)

By the outbreak of King Philip’s War in 1675, many of the Praying Towns had already aligned themselves willingly, or under duress, with the English colonies. Leaders from coastal communities along the Cape such as the Nauset had pledged loyalty or at least professed neutrality as early as 1671.(11) To those who joined the armed resistance under Massasoit Metacom (King Philip) and the Pokanoket, these alliances were viewed as acts of betrayal.

Colonial authorities, however, made little distinction between hostile and neutral Indigenous people. As historian Richard Slotkin observes, English officials often treated all Natives with suspicion, with many being executed or enslaved regardless of actual involvement in the war.(12)  This indiscriminate policy culminated in the forced internment of hundreds of Christianized Native men, women, and children on Deer Island in Boston Harbor. There, they endured exposure, starvation, and death during the harsh winter of 1675–1676.

If such was the fate of those who had sought peace with the English, an even more brutal end awaited those branded as “Indian enemies.” For the surviving, scattered remnants of the Pokanoket and other Indigenous nations who resisted English domination during the conflict, the coastal regions and Praying Towns under colonial control offered no refuge, only betrayal, capture, exile, or execution.

For Pokanoket survivors, particularly those who had resisted English domination, Praying Towns like Mashpee were symbols of submission and assimilation. Therefore, they would have seen those communities who maintained close cooperation with English missionaries and Plymouth authorities with deep distrust rather than a safe harbor of refuge.(13) Survivors sought freedom not in proximity to the English, but in the arms of their distant kin in territories beyond grasp.

Some refugees would move westward into Indigenous held territories such as those governed by the Mohegan under Uncas or the Eastern Niantic, where the structures of kinship and diplomacy offered relative safety. Unlike the militarized and closely surveilled Praying Towns, where professed neutrality was no guarantee of protection and where residents were often disarmed, interned, or forcibly relocated, these regions provided a measure of cultural continuity and self-determination. As Lisa Brooks explains in Our Beloved Kin, many Native people chose flight over submission, seeking refuge among the Mohegan, Eastern Niantic, and Abenaki, whose communities upheld Indigenous governance, ceremonial life, and intertribal alliance beyond direct colonial reach.(14) While Mohegan lands were not entirely free from colonial influence due to Uncas’s strategic alliance with the English, they nonetheless maintained a level of autonomy that made them a haven for those who distrusted colonial promises of “safety.”(15) As Neal Salisbury and others have noted, these western sanctuaries offered not only physical refuge but a space to carry forward language, memory, and resistance in the wake of Metacom’s death and the scattering of the Pokanoket Tribe.

However, the west was not the only refuge for those escaping colonial subjugation as many fled northward as well, where they preserved their traditions, asserted sovereignty, and continued the struggle for land and identity. Through mobility, kinship, memory, and alliance, they ensured that the fire of resistance did not die with Metacom’s fall but burned brighter in exile. As Lisa Brooks demonstrates in Our Beloved Kin, the descendants of these refugees carried with them the trauma and memory of King Philip’s War, embedding it in new geographies, kinship networks, and acts of cultural resurgence far beyond the battlefield.(16) The end of King Philip’s War  did not mark a conclusion, but rather the beginning of a broader Indigenous diaspora in which memory and resistance remained deeply intertwined.