The Geography of Survival: Indigenous Kinship & King Philip’s War

The world that Massasoit Ousamequin and Edward Winslow found themselves navigating in 1621 was vastly different from the one inherited by their sons, Metacom and Josiah Winslow, little more than half a century later. When Ousamequin entered into an alliance with Plymouth, he did so from a position of calculated diplomacy rather than desperation. Although epidemic disease had devastated the Pokanokets and many of their Indigenous confederates, the Pokanokets remained among the most influential powers in southern New England. In 1621, Plymouth itself was little more than a fragile settlement of a few dozen colonists struggling to survive within the Pokanoket sphere of influence. Their continued existence depended as much upon Indigenous diplomacy as upon their own determination.

For Ousamequin did not simply permit an English settlement to exist within the domain of his confederation. Rather, he incorporated these newcomers into an already complex Indigenous political landscape. For generations, Indigenous nations had managed shifting alliances, rivalries, diplomacy, trade, and warfare long before Europeans arrived. Within that world, the English represented another political actor whose presence could be used to strengthen Pokanoket security against longstanding rivals, particularly the Narragansetts, whose power had increased dramatically after escaping the epidemic that had so severely weakened the Pokanokets.

The alliance that followed should not be mistaken for half a century of uninterrupted peace. While open warfare between Plymouth and the Pokanokets was avoided during Ousamequin's lifetime and for a few years thereafter, the relationship steadily deteriorated as English settlement expanded. Each passing decade brought increasing pressure on Indigenous lands as growing assertions of English legal authority, the unrelenting expansion of English settlements, missionary efforts to reshape Indigenous society, and mounting expectations that Indigenous nations would submit to colonial rather than sovereign governance. What had begun as a diplomatic alliance between two independent peoples gradually evolved over the following decades. By the 1670s, many New England colonists no longer viewed Indigenous nations as sovereign partners or allies. Instead, they increasingly regarded them as, at best, subjects expected to conform to English political, legal, and cultural authority and, at worst, as impediments to what they believed was God's providential design for New England and the expansion of the English colonies.

By the time Massasoit Metacom inherited his father's position, the political landscape had been transformed. The English population had grown from a small and vulnerable settlement into tens of thousands of colonists spread throughout New England. Indigenous nations, meanwhile, had been profoundly weakened by repeated epidemics, continuous intertribal conflicts, relentless land dispossession, expanding colonial jurisdiction, and the steady erosion of their sovereignty. The Pokanokets, Narragansetts, Nipmucs, and many other Indigenous nations no longer faced a handful of dependent settlers. They confronted an expanding colonial society whose population, military strength, and seemingly insatiable demand for land increasingly threatened the future of Indigenous self-government itself.

The conflict that followed did not erupt suddenly, nor can it be explained simply through the actions of a single leader such as Metacom. Rather, it emerged from decades of accumulating tensions, competing political visions, and fundamentally different understandings of sovereignty amongst English and Indigenous actors. By 1675, Indigenous peoples across New England faced choices unlike any their ancestors had confronted. At the heart of those choices was a single question: How do we survive? The answer was never simple, for survival required difficult decisions about alliances, adaptation, resistance, and ultimately who would be included, or excluded from the meaning of "we". Those choices were born not from a desire for war, but from the increasingly difficult challenge of preserving their families in a rapidly changing, uncertain, and dangerous world.

The Geography of Kinship

For the Pokanokets, geography meant far more than physical landscape. Rivers, bays, and ancient trails connected families, villages, and generations of diplomacy long before Europeans arrived. These waterways formed the arteries of an Indigenous world where political relationships were reinforced through kinship, marriage, trade, ceremony, and reciprocal obligations amongst allied communities. They were not barriers separating peoples but the principal highways of southern New England, carrying commerce, diplomacy, seasonal travel, and generations of intermarriage between Indigenous communities.[1] When King Philip's War erupted, those same Indigenous networks profoundly influenced the alliances that formed, the regions where the conflict unfolded, and the paths survivors later chose in its aftermath.

The Pokanokets tribal homeland occupied the region between the Seekonk and Pawtucket Rivers to the west and the Taunton River to the east, extending south through present-day Mount Hope Bay and Narragansett Bay. Although modern maps often encourage an east-west perspective toward Plymouth and Cape Cod, the historical geography of the Pokanokets was, in many respects, oriented along a north-south axis. The Taunton, Seekonk, and Blackstone River watersheds connected Sowams with the Quaboag Nipmucs, Namasket, Pocasset, Sakonnets and the interior of southern New England.[2] This fostered an extensive network of diplomacy, trade, and extended familial communities that long predated colonial boundaries. Naturally, those communities in close geographic proximity to one another, interacted more frequently, and over generations those repeated encounters fostered denser networks of kinship, intermarriage, and political obligation.

The surviving historical record reflects this pattern as the sachems who governed these neighboring communities were themselves often connected through family relationships, reinforcing alliances that extended beyond individual villages or territories. Ousamequin's own family illustrates this broader pattern. Contemporary and later historical accounts portray the ruling families of the Pokanoket, Pocasset, and Sakonnet as closely related through extended kinship, reflecting a regional system of governance in which political authority was frequently reinforced by familial ties.[3] Ousamequin strengthened relations with the Quaboag Nipmucs through his marriage to a daughter of the Quaboag sachem Nattawahunt. His daughter, known to the English as Amie, later married Tuspaquin, sachem of Namasket, further reinforcing Pokanoket influence along the Taunton River corridor. Wamsutta's marriage to Weetamoo likewise united the Pokanokets and Pocassets, making the renowned Pocasset sachem both the widow of Wamsutta and the sister-in-law of Metacom. These marriages were not simply family relationships. They represented diplomatic alliances linking neighboring Indigenous communities through reciprocal obligations of kinship, diplomacy, and mutual defense.[4] By 1675, many of the Pokanokets' closest political allies were also among their closest relatives. 

The Sakonnets provide another revealing example. Their sachem, Awashonks, was a close relative of Metacom and governed a community whose political and familial ties to the Pokanokets had developed over generations.[5] As war approached, many of her counselors and warriors favored joining their Pokanoket relatives in resisting English expansion, reflecting the strength of those longstanding relationships. Awashonks herself faced considerable pressure both from within her own community and from the Pokanoket warriors whom Metacom sent to rally her people's aid in the coming conflict. Yet she also recognized the changing balance of power and feared the devastating consequences that open war with the English could bring upon the Sakonnet's. Following negotiations with Benjamin Church, she ultimately chose to align with Plymouth later in the conflict which divided her people, and many Sakonnet warriors would serve as scouts and auxiliaries for the English.[6] Her decision was not a rejection of her Pokanoket relatives or of her Indigenous identity. Rather, it reflected another strategy for preserving her people under circumstances that offered no easy or consequence-free choices. Like other Indigenous leaders during the war, Awashonks was forced to weigh the survival of her community against the devastating consequences of continued resistance, including the brutal realities of English retaliation, dispossession, and the enslavement of her people should they be taken captive. 

The significance of these relationships is perhaps best illustrated by the final chapter of Ousamequin's life. Colonial records consistently place his death in 1661 at Quaboag, near present-day Brookfield, Massachusetts. When these contemporary accounts are read alongside the historical record identifying Quaboag as traditional Nipmuc territory, they strongly indicate that Ousamequin spent his final days living among the people of his wife.[7] Following his death, his body was carried back to Sowams for burial. His final journey reflected an Indigenous world connected not by colonial jurisdictions but by rivers, kinship, diplomacy, and reciprocal obligation. The same family networks that shaped Ousamequin's life would, only fifteen years later, influence the alliances formed during King Philip's War and the routes many Indigenous families followed in their struggle to survive. 

It should come as little surprise, then, that the principal theaters of King Philip's War emerged along these same Indigenous networks of kinship and communication. The rivers that had long carried diplomacy, trade, marriage, and ceremony now carried messengers, warriors, and refugees. At the same time, English settlements such as Swansea, Taunton, Brookfield, or Mendon increasingly occupied those same waterways, ensnaring these expanding colonial settlements into direct contact with longstanding Indigenous corridors of travel and alliance. The conflict therefore unfolded not across an arbitrary landscape but along the very routes where Indigenous political relationships intersected with English expansion.

This perspective also helps explain why Indigenous communities experienced King Philip's War so differently. Communities on Cape Cod and the Islands were by no means untouched by the conflict, nor should their decisions to distance themselves from Metacom's resistance be interpreted as evidence of diminished Indigenous identity or commitment. Rather, they occupied a fundamentally different geographic and political landscape. By the 1670s, many had already spent decades adapting to a region dominated by English settlement, colonial laws, and missionary influence. Their praying towns and Christian Indigenous communities were surrounded by expanding English populations, leaving little opportunity for sustained armed resistance. In contrast to the Pokankets, whose homeland hosted a smaller as well as less concentrated English population who bordered powerful Indigenous allies to the north and west. Therefore many Praying Indian communities found themselves geographically isolated and overwhelmingly outnumbered. Under such circumstances, openly joining Metacom would likely have resulted in their immediate destruction. Their decisions therefore reflected the realities of survival within a colonial landscape where military resistance was no longer a viable option, not a rejection of their Indigenous identity or their kinship with other Indigenous peoples. While kinship connections with the Pokanokets and other neighboring Indigenous nations certainly remained, the surviving historical record reveals comparatively fewer if any documented dynastic marriages between the House of Ousamequin and the principal sachems of Cape Cod compared to those found along the north-south river corridors linking Sowams with Sakonnet, Namasket, Pocasset, and portions of Nipmuc country. Geography naturally influenced the frequency of travel, diplomacy, and family interaction, and over successive generations those patterns helped shape political alliances, marriage networks, and mutual obligations. This does not suggest that Cape communities were less Indigenous or less connected to the Pokanokets. Rather, it reflects how geography influenced the strength and frequency of relationships, producing distinct political circumstances that shaped each community's response to English expansion and, ultimately, to King Philip's War.

Consequently, many Cape Cod and Island communities confronted the war from a markedly different political reality. Rather than joining Metacom's resistance, some remained neutral where circumstances permitted, while others, like the Sakonnets under Awashonks, sought accommodation with the English as a means of preserving their communities. Likewise, many Christian Indigenous men from the praying towns served as scouts, guides, interpreters, and auxiliaries alongside colonial forces.[8] As the war progressed, as well as in the conflicts that followed, the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Connecticut increasingly recognized the indispensable military value of Indigenous allies, incorporating them into expeditions far beyond Captain Benjamin Church's command. These decisions to fight alongside the English reflected neither betrayal nor diminished Indigenous identity. Rather, they represented a different strategy for ensuring the survival of their communities under circumstances fundamentally different from those confronting the Pokanokets. 

A similar pattern can be observed throughout southern New England. The Narragansetts, Mohegans, Pequots, and other Indigenous nations likewise maintained their own networks of kinship, diplomacy, and reciprocal obligation. Once the Narragansetts entered the conflict following the Great Swamp Massacre, the theater of war rapidly expanded through their own established political and familial networks. Likewise, the alliances of the Mohegans and Pequots reflected generations of relationships, rivalries, and strategic calculations unique to their own homelands. Understanding these regional kinship landscapes helps explain not only why different Indigenous nations made different decisions during the conflict, but also why the war itself expanded where it did, and perhaps more importantly where it did not.

The English colonies themselves were far from politically or culturally uniform. Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and Rhode Island each entered the conflict with their own priorities, interests, and relationships with neighboring Indigenous nations. Ironically, King Philip's War helped draw many of these colonies into closer military and political cooperation. Indigenous New England was no less complex. Understanding these landscapes of Indigenous kinship is therefore essential to understanding the war itself. The conflict did not spread randomly across New England, nor was it simply a struggle between two monolithic cultures. Rather, it expanded through overlapping Indigenous and colonial worlds whose alliances, rivalries, marriages, and family relationships had been cultivated over generations. Those same networks would later become the geography of survival, guiding refugees toward relatives, allies, and communities where they hoped their people, traditions, and, in many cases, a measure of sovereignty might endure despite one of the greatest upheavals in the history of Indigenous New England. 

Northward: Refuge and Resistance

If the geography of kinship shaped where King Philip's War was fought, it also shaped where survivors sought refuge. Understanding that movement requires us to recognize that King Philip's War was not a single, unified Indigenous uprising stretching from Mount Hope to the Gulf of Maine. Rather, it consisted of overlapping theaters of war that developed from different political circumstances while increasingly influencing one another. In southern New England, the conflict centered upon the Pokanokets and their allies resisting expanding colonial domination and the erosion of Indigenous sovereignty. Farther north, however, the Indigenous nations occupying present-day Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and portions of southern Quebec confronted English expansion for reasons rooted in their own territories, trade networks, and political interests.[9] These conflicts developed independently, pursued different objectives, and involved different Indigenous coalitions. Yet they became increasingly interconnected as refugees, intelligence, alliances, and military experience moved between them.

For survivors determined to preserve both their freedom and their ability to continue resisting English expansion, fleeing north offered the most viable strategic choice. Unlike southern New England, where English settlements increasingly dominated the landscape, the eastern Indigenous nations there still maintained military strength and sovereign control over large portions of their ancestral territories. These communities provided more than temporary refuge. They offered an Indigenous political world beyond direct English authority where displaced families could rebuild their lives, strengthen existing kinship ties, and for many, continue the struggle against colonial expansion.[10]

Long before 1675, the Penobscots, Kennebecs, Abenakis, Passamaquoddies, Maliseets, and Mi'kmaq maintained their own political alliances, trade networks, and diplomatic traditions. They were not simply fighting on behalf of Metacom or the Pokanokets. Their resistance emerged from their own experiences with English encroachment and reflected their determination to defend their homelands. Nevertheless, the arrival of southern refugees fundamentally altered this northern theater. Survivors fleeing the collapse of the Pokanoket led resistance did not enter an unfamiliar world. They followed established routes of familiarity, diplomacy, and kinship obligation that had connected Indigenous communities for generations. They carried with them not only their families but also military experience, political knowledge, and a continued determination to preserve their freedom.

English authorities immediately recognized the danger this migration posed. Writing in 1677, William Hubbard reported that many of the surviving southern warriors had "fled to the Eastward towards Kennebeck and Penobscot," where they joined the eastern Indigenous nations. Hubbard warned that these refugees were actively "enticing the Eastern Indians" to continue the war, bringing both experienced warriors and renewed determination into regions that remained beyond English control. Likewise, Increase Mather lamented that many Indigenous fighters had escaped English forces by fleeing into the northern forests, where they reinforced resistance beyond the reach of colonial authority. From the English perspective, the inability to prevent this migration threatened to transform a southern war into a broader regional conflict.[11]

For many Indigenous refugees however, the journey did not end in present-day Maine. Existing Indigenous trade routes and diplomatic relationships continued northward into colonial New France, where French officials and Jesuit missionaries welcomed many displaced Indigenous families. Following the collapse of resistance in southern New England, refugees from various communities including the Sokoki, Agawam, Pocumtuc, and others migrated toward the St. Lawrence Valley. Jesuit missionary Jean Enjalran recorded the arrival of these displaced families at the Sillery mission in 1676, noting that they had fled the devastating war between the English colonists and the southern Indigenous nations.[12] Governor Frontenac subsequently permitted many of these refugees to settle permanently within French territory, contributing to the development of mission communities such as Odanak (Saint-François). There, southern refugees preserved their languages, family lineages, and many traditional lifeways while becoming part of a broader Indigenous-French alliance that would continue resisting English expansion for generations.

These eastern nations did not initially fight as a formal political confederacy. Yet the pressures created by King Philip's War and the continuing expansion of English settlement encouraged closer cooperation among the Penobscots, Kennebecs, Abenakis, Passamaquoddies, Maliseets, and Mi'kmaq. These longstanding relationships gradually evolved into what became known as the Wabanaki Confederacy.[13] Rather than creating those alliances, the war strengthened and accelerated them in response to a shared colonial threat.

For many southern refugees, traveling north represented far more than escape. It represented movement through an existing Indigenous world connected by family, diplomacy, and shared experience. Some continued the armed struggle alongside their northern relatives. Others rebuilt their lives through adoption, marriage, and incorporation into existing communities. Their identities did not fully disappear. Instead, they became interwoven into the histories of the eastern nations and New France, demonstrating once again that Indigenous survival often depended not upon fixed territorial boundaries.

The northern theater also reinforces a broader truth about King Philip's War. Indigenous peoples did not respond to colonial expansion in a single, uniform manner. Different nations confronted different political realities, pursued different objectives, and adopted different strategies for ensuring the survival of their people. Yet these overlapping theaters of war remained connected through Indigenous networks of kinship and diplomacy that long predated European settlement. What English colonists often remembered as a single "Indian war" concluding at the Treaty of Casco in 1678, was from an Indigenous perspective, a series of interconnected struggles of resistance unfolding across an Indigenous world whose political relationships had been cultivated for centuries before the arrival of the English.

Westward: Alliance and Survival

Not every Indigenous family fleeing the destruction of southern New England traveled north. For many, the more immediate path lay westward into Connecticut, where the Mohegan sachem Uncas offered another strategy for survival. Unlike the Indigenous peoples of northern New England, whose resistance continued beyond English authority, the Mohegans had spent decades cultivating an alliance with the English while carefully preserving substantial autonomy over their own affairs. This political position created opportunities unavailable elsewhere in southern New England.

The Mohegan strategy for survival did not begin with the outbreak of King Philip's War. It can be argued that it was forged nearly four decades earlier during the Pequot War of 1636–1638, when Uncas aligned with the English against his Indigenous rivals. That decision was not simply an act of loyalty to the English but a calculated effort to preserve and strengthen the Mohegan nation within an increasingly competitive Indigenous and colonial political landscape. By leveraging English military support, Uncas secured Mohegan independence, expanded his regional influence, and retained a significant degree of internal sovereignty at a time when many neighboring Indigenous nations faced growing colonial pressure. By 1675, this alliance had become an established element of Mohegan diplomacy rather than a temporary wartime expedient.[14]

This long established political relationship provided another path of survival for Indigenous peoples devastated by King Philip's War. Rather than continuing armed resistance beyond English authority, many Narragansett, Nipmuc, Pocumtuck, Podunk and Pokanoket families amongst others sought protection within Mohegan territory, particularly around Shetucket, where Reverend James Fitch established communities of surrendered Indigenous people under Mohegan oversight.[15] Uncas accepted many of these displaced families, incorporating them into the Mohegan community through adoption, political affiliation, and colonial custody. In doing so, he simultaneously strengthened the Mohegan nation while shielding many refugees from immediate English retaliation.

Colonial officials viewed these actions with increasing suspicion. Connecticut correspondence and court records repeatedly accused Uncas of harboring "enemy Indians" and concealing their identities from colonial authorities.[16] Yet Uncas consistently used his political influence as a trusted English ally to negotiate, delay, or resist demands for the surrender of many who had sought refuge under his protection. What colonial officials regarded as obstruction may also be understood as an Indigenous leader employing diplomacy to preserve not only his own nation but also many displaced Indigenous tribes and families who otherwise faced execution, enslavement, or indentured servitude.

This westward route also illustrates how geography and political relationships influenced Indigenous decisions during the war. Existing diplomatic ties and established relationships made Connecticut a logical destination for many Pokanoket refugees willing to accept Mohegan authority. By contrast, remaining closer to home did not necessarily offer greater security. Although Ninigret of the Eastern Niantics maintained his neutrality during the conflict and continued to enjoy English favor, he honored his agreements with the colonies by refusing sanctuary to Pokanoket refugees while accepting many displaced Narragansetts.[17] Contemporary accounts note that this agreement with Ninigret would make flight into Niantic territory in Rhode Island a far less secure option for many followers of Metacom.

With this said, geography alone did not determine survival as political relationships and longstanding alliances mattered equally. Viewed solely through a colonial lens, Uncas appears as an English ally while Metacom stood as their adversary. Viewed through an Indigenous lens, however, both Indigenous sachems were confronted with the same fundamental question. How could their people survive in a world increasingly dominated by English colonial expansion?

The answers they reached were profoundly different. Decades before King Philip's War, Uncas concluded that an alliance with the English offered the greatest opportunity to preserve Mohegan autonomy, strengthen his nation's political position, and secure its future against both Indigenous and colonial rivals. Metacom inherited a dramatically different political landscape. By the 1670s, English settlements increasingly surrounded what remained of the Pokanoket homeland, colonial governments asserted jurisdiction over Indigenous affairs, and decades of diplomacy had failed to halt the steady erosion of Pokanoket lands, sovereignty, and political independence. In meetings with colonial officials immediately before the war, Metacom voiced longstanding grievances over expanding English settlements, disputed land transactions, the destruction of Indigenous cornfields by English livestock, and the unequal administration of colonial justice.[18] Faced with circumstances fundamentally different from those confronting Uncas a generation earlier, Metacom concluded that armed resistance offered the only remaining opportunity to preserve his people's sovereignty. 

Neither leader's decision was simple, nor was either without profound consequences. Both represented strategies of survival shaped by different historical experiences, political realities, and assessments of an uncertain future. Their choices illustrate the extraordinary complexity facing Indigenous leaders during King Philip's War. There was no single Indigenous response to colonial expansion. Some nations resisted through war. Others sought refuge beyond English authority. Others, like the Mohegans, pursued survival through diplomacy, strategic alliance, and the incorporation of displaced relatives and allies into their own communities. Each path reflected difficult decisions made in the hope that future generations might endure.

Within the English World: Accommodation and Survival

For thousands of Indigenous people, neither flight to the north nor refuge among the Mohegans proved possible. Many remained within the expanding reach of English authority, where survival required yet another set of painful choices. Some had adopted Christianity decades earlier and lived in the Praying Towns established through the missionary efforts of John Eliot, Richard Bourne, and others. Others surrendered during or after the war in the hope that cooperation might spare their families from execution or enslavement. Still others sought neutrality wherever it remained possible, hoping to spare themselves of reprisal. These decisions were not evidence of diminished Indigenous identity. Rather, they represented another strategy for preserving Indigenous communities, and surviving within a colonial world that increasingly offered few alternatives.

Decades before King Philip's War, many Indigenous communities had already begun adapting to profound social and political changes brought about by cataclysmic demographic decline caused by the introduction of new diseases and pathogens from across the Atlantic. This paired with the disruption of traditional Indigenous political centers and expansionary English settlements pushed surviving Indigenous communities to adapt in order to survive. The Praying Towns emerged not simply as missionary experiments but as Indigenous communities attempting to navigate an increasingly English dominated landscape while preserving family, community, and continuity under rapidly changing conditions. Their experiences during the war reflected those earlier decisions, placing them in circumstances very different from those confronting the Pokanokets, Narragansetts, or the eastern nations.

As the conflict intensified, many Christian Indigenous men served as scouts, interpreters, guides, and soldiers alongside colonial forces. Benjamin Church famously recognized the indispensable military value of Indigenous allies, but he was far from alone. Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Connecticut increasingly relied upon Praying Indians, Sakonnets under Awashonks, Mohegans, Pequots, and captured Indigenous warriors whose knowledge of the land, languages, and political relationships proved essential to colonial military operations.[19] Daniel Gookin later argued that without the service of these Indigenous allies, the English could scarcely have prosecuted the war successfully. However, these decisions came at tremendous personal cost. Christian Indigenous communities frequently found themselves distrusted by both sides. Despite years of alliance and service, many Praying Indians suffered imprisonment, dispossession,internment and even enslavement.[20] Hundreds were forcibly removed to Deer Island in Boston Harbor, where exposure, hunger, and disease claimed many lives during the winter of 1675–1676. Their loyalty offered little protection from colonial fear and suspicion. 

Yet these communities endured in places such as Mashpee, Natick, Punkapoag, Hassanamisco, Nantucket and Aquinah. Like the refugees who fled north or those incorporated into the Mohegan nation, they represent another reminder that there was no single Indigenous response to King Philip's War. Accommodation, neutrality, military service, and Christianity did not erase Indigenous identity. They were strategies, often imperfect and equally often tragic. They rarely were free of consequence as Indigenous families sought to preserve their people, and survive in a world transformed by colonial violence. There was no single Indigenous experience of King Philip's War, only multiple strategies of survival shaped by different political realities. 

"Philips Indians"

For many Indigenous people, the end of organized resistance in southern New England in 1676 did not bring peace. Instead, military conflict gave way to another struggle fought through colonial law, imprisonment, forced removal, enslavement, and surveillance. As English authority expanded across southern New England, Indigenous identity itself increasingly became subject to colonial control. The strategies of survival available during the war narrowed dramatically as colonial governments sought not only to defeat Indigenous resistance but also to prevent its reemergence. 

Colonial records reveal an increasingly determined effort to locate, capture, and prosecute those identified as "Philip's Indians" or "Enemy Indians."[21] Initially, these terms referred most directly to the Pokanokets and Metacom's immediate followers. Yet the conflict widened, colonial authorities increasingly relied upon these broad legal categories to classify diverse Indigenous peoples regardless of their specific tribal affiliations. Pokanokets, Pocasset, Narragansetts, Nipmucs, and many others who had participated in, or were merely suspected of supporting Metacom's war of resistance were often treated as members of a single hostile population. The distinctions that had long defined Indigenous political identities mattered far less within colonial courts than the perceived threat they represented. 

The experience of the Praying Towns illustrates this tragic transformation. Yet their service and sacrifices offered little lasting protection. Following the conflict, most of the original Praying Towns never fully recovered. Communities that had existed for decades before the war were left depopulated, dispersed, or abandoned, and only a handful continued as functioning Indigenous settlements. The disruption created by the war also opened the door for widespread abuse. Opportunistic colonists exploited the chaos by accusing Christian Indigenous people of being "Philip's Indians" or otherwise associating them with Metacom's resistance. Such accusations often served practical purposes. They justified the seizure of Indigenous lands, the confiscation of property, forced labor, and, in some cases, outright enslavement for private profit.[22] As colonial governments increasingly relied upon broad legal categories such as "Enemy Indians," distinctions between Christian Indigenous communities, surrendered peoples, neutral nations, and active combatants became increasingly blurred. Whether motivated by fear, prejudice, or economic self-interest, many colonial officials showed little willingness to distinguish between Indigenous communities that had remained loyal and those that had taken up arms. 

Captivity & Enslavement

The defeat of Metacom's resistance did not immediately end Indigenous resistance across New England, nor did it conclude colonial efforts to dismantle Indigenous political autonomy. Instead, the final campaigns of King Philip's War marked the beginning of a new phase in which military conquest gave way to captivity, enslavement, and an increasingly comprehensive legal system designed to prevent Indigenous peoples from rebuilding the alliances that had nearly destroyed the English colonies.

Colonial authorities understood that the execution or exile of prominent leaders alone would not secure lasting peace. The destruction of Indigenous political leadership therefore became a deliberate objective. Following the death of Metacom in August 1676, many of the remaining leaders who had continued the resistance met similar fates. Canonchet, the influential Narragansett sachem and one of the principal architects of the Indigenous alliance, had already been captured and executed earlier that year after refusing to submit to colonial demands. Likewise, the elderly Pokanket pniese war leader Anawan, one of Metacom's closest military commanders, was captured in Rehoboth after leading one of the final organized Pokanket bands of resistance. Despite his advanced age and peaceful surrender to Captain Benjamin Church’s forces, he too was executed shortly thereafter.[23] Their deaths symbolized more than the defeat of individual leaders, they represented an intentional effort to dismantle the political and military leadership of the Pokanoket-led confederacy itself.

There was little reprieve for the fate of those who survived as what they would have to endure would be less devastating, creating generational trauma that influences Indigenous identity and reliance for their descendants today. Thousands of Indigenous men, women, and children were imprisoned, indentured, separated from their families, or sold into slavery throughout the Atlantic world. Following Weetamoo's death in 1676, many of her surviving followers were captured and transported into bondage, while countless others were distributed among English households as “servants” or captive laborers.[24] For colonial governments increasingly viewed the enslavement of Indigenous captives not merely as punishment but as a practical means of eliminating future resistance while simultaneously rewarding soldiers and offsetting the enormous financial costs of the war.

Among the most poignant examples were the fate of Metacom's own family. His wife, Wootonekanuske, and their young son were captured shortly before he was killed. Despite objections raised by some colonial ministers concerning the enslavement of children, Plymouth authorities ordered that both be sold into perpetual slavery in the West Indies in Bermuda, separating them forever from their homeland.[25] The decision reflected the determination of colonial governments not merely to defeat Metacom's forces, but to extinguish the political legacy represented by the family of Massasoit Osaemquin. For the very tribe who once enabled the fragile candle Plymouth colony from extinguishing was not having the fire of their own people being smothered out by the descendants of those English travelers. Similar decisions affected countless Pokanoket, Narragansett, Nipmuc, and allied tribes whose names seldom appear in colonial records but whose descendants carried these memories through oral tradition.

As historian Margaret Ellen Newell has demonstrated, the enslavement of Indigenous people following King Philip's War represented one of the largest episodes of Indian slavery in 17th-century New England. Captives were sold locally throughout the colonies or transported to Bermuda, Barbados, Jamaica, and other English possessions in the Caribbean, where many disappeared permanently from the historical record. This influx of war-hardened captives deeply alarmed Caribbean planters, who feared these individuals would spark violent insurrections.Consequently, in 1675 and 1676, the colonial assemblies of Bermuda, Barbados, and Jamaica passed sweeping legislative bans and restrictions to halt the importation of Indigenous New England slaves.[26] Others were retained within New England under lengthy terms of indenture or compulsory servitude, supplying labor to colonial households while simultaneously preventing the reformation of Indigenous communities.[27] Military victory thus evolved into an expanding labor system that treated Indigenous captivity as both punishment and economic opportunity.

The surviving records of Plymouth Colony reveal both the scale and routine nature of this commerce in human lives. Major William Bradford recorded one such transaction with striking causality, noting that "we sold Captain Davenport forty-seven Indians, young and old, for eighty pounds in money."[28] Similar sales occurred throughout southern New England as colonial governments auctioned Indigenous captives, distributed them among soldiers as rewards for military service, or transported them overseas through ports including Plymouth, Boston, Salem, Providence, and Newport. What had begun as military conquest increasingly became an organized system of forced labor, dispersal, and permanent family separation.

Yet the destruction of Indigenous resistance did not end with enslavement alone. Colonial leaders increasingly concluded that military victories could be secured only if accompanied by laws preventing surviving Indigenous peoples from rebuilding political alliances or reclaiming their former autonomy. Even before organized resistance had completely collapsed, Plymouth's Council of War ordered that Indigenous children be removed from their families and apprenticed into English households, reflecting the belief that separating children from their communities would weaken Indigenous society for future generations. [29] Such policies marked the beginning of a profound transformation in colonial governance, as the battlefield circumstances gave way to the courtrooms and statute books of the colonial legal system, formalizing a shift from de jure to de facto law.

The enslavement and dispersal of Indigenous captives represented only one dimension of colonial policy. Equally significant was the rapid development of a legal framework intended to ensure that the Indigenous confederacies which had challenged English expansion could never again organize on the same scale. Military victory alone was considered insufficient. Colonial governments increasingly relied upon legislation to regulate where Indigenous people could live, travel, work, hunt, trade, and even whom they could associate with. The battlefield was gradually replaced by the courtroom and the statute book. 

Granted, many of these measures were enacted while the war still raged, demonstrating that colonial leaders viewed legal control as an essential component of military victory. In June 1675, Plymouth's Council of War ordered that Indigenous children be removed from their families and apprenticed into English households, believing that separating children from their communities would prevent future generations from rebuilding Indigenous political and cultural life.[30] As the conflict intensified, colonial governments increasingly viewed the removal of children, the dispersal of families, and the forced labor of captives as indispensable tools for securing English dominance. It is deeply ironic that a society founded on Puritan ideals would orchestrate the systemic destruction and separation of Indigenous families. Ultimately, John Winthrop’s vision of a "city upon a hill" was an idealized rhetoric that the colonists chose to idolize rather than practice in the wake of King Philip's War. 

From Warfare to Colonial Control

The years immediately following the war witnessed an extraordinary expansion of legislation regulating Indigenous life. In 1676, Plymouth declared that anyone convicted of selling firearms or ammunition to Indigenous people would suffer the death penalty, while Rhode Island required that Indigenous servants over the age of twelve be bound during the day when left unattended and locked securely at night. That same year, Rhode Island established lengthy terms of compulsory indenture for Indigenous captives according to their age. Children under five years old were required to serve until they reached thirty years of age, while older captives likewise faced years or decades of compulsory labor. Plymouth further ordered that captured Indigenous people entering the colony be "disposed of" for the safety and health of the colony, language that reflected the extent to which Indigenous people had come to be viewed not as neighboring nations but as a continuing security threat.[31] This pattern became more profoundly normalized in the years that followed as colonial legislatures continued tightening these restrictions. In 1677, Indigenous “servants” were forbidden from carrying firearms, even for hunting or fowling, while foreign vessels  were prohibited from entering colonial harbors to trade with Indigenous communities. By 1678, Plymouth prohibited Indigenous people from settling within the colony without official permission, effectively restricting freedom of movement throughout much of southern New England.[32] These laws were not isolated enactments but components of an increasingly comprehensive system designed to fragment Indigenous communities, regulate their movements, and prevent the reestablishment of independent political authority.

Perhaps the clearest expression of this new colonial order came in 1682, when Plymouth adopted a separate legal code governing Indigenous people. Justified as a means of encouraging Indians to live "orderly, soberly, and diligently," the legislation instead institutionalized colonial oversight by creating the office of overseer, granting English officials broad authority over Indigenous communities, and encouraging Indigenous people to inform colonial authorities about one another's activities.[33] Rather than restoring peace between neighboring peoples, the legislation placed Indigenous communities under a system of continuous surveillance that treated them as subjects within a police state requiring special regulation rather than as sovereign nations.

These restrictions did not disappear with the passing of the generation that fought King Philip's War. Instead, they became embedded within colonial society. In 1686, the town of Bristol prohibited Indigenous people from hunting within the township, directly restricting one of the most fundamental expressions of Indigenous subsistence and sovereignty. Three years later, Plymouth authorized rewards of ten pounds for the capture of any person identified as an "Indian enemy" alive and five pounds if killed, demonstrating that colonial authorities continued to view those associated with Metacom's resistance as legitimate military targets long after the war had officially ended. Even in 1751, Rhode Island law prohibited householders from entertaining Indians, Negroes, or mulatto servants and slaves, illustrating that the legal suspicion directed toward Indigenous people endured for generations.[34]

Taken together, these laws reveal that King Philip's War did not conclude with the military defeat of the Pokanokets and Metacom's pan-tribal coalition. Rather, the conflict evolved into a prolonged legal campaign against Indigenous autonomy. Through restrictions on movement, disarmament, compulsory labor, surveillance, separate legal codes, and continuing regulation of Indigenous daily life, colonial governments sought to accomplish through legislation what they could not permanently secure through military force alone. For English authorities, terms such as "Philip's Indians," "enemy Indians," and "Indian enemies" were no longer merely wartime descriptions but enduring legal categories of suspicion.[35] Since these labels principally referred to the peoples associated with Metacom resistance, surviving Pokanoket families had compelling reasons to avoid public associations that colonial authorities might interpret as connections to the recent rebellion which helps explain the absence of Pokanket in colonial documents after the conflict. Under such conditions, preserving family, kinship, and oral tradition often became far safer than the public expression of political identity.

Even Indigenous communities that attempted to provide refuge for those fleeing almost certain execution or enslavement remained under increasing pressure. Following the collapse of organized resistance in southern New England, many Pokanoket, Narragansett, Nipmuc, and allied refugees sought sanctuary among the Pennacook under their sachem Wonalancet near Cochecho (present-day Dover, New Hampshire). There they joined an Indigenous community that had largely remained neutral throughout King Philip's War and hoped to rebuild their lives beyond the immediate reach of Plymouth and Massachusetts authorities. Yet English officials remained determined to pursue those they continued to identify as "Philip's Indians," demonstrating that colonial efforts to suppress Indigenous resistance extended far beyond the original battlefield.[36]

In September 1676, Massachusetts dispatched Captains Joseph Syll and William Hathorne northward into Pennacook territory with orders to seize those they identified as "Philip's Indians." Major Richard Waldron subsequently orchestrated what became known as the Cochecho deception. Under the pretense of a routine military muster, Waldron invited the assembled Indigenous people to participate alongside his own soldiers. At a predetermined signal, the English suddenly turned upon their Indigenous counterparts, disarmed them, and bound them as prisoners. Although the Pennacook under Wonalancet had largely remained neutral throughout the war, colonial authorities increasingly made little distinction between local communities and the southern refugees who had sought sanctuary among them. Approximately 350 Indigenous men, women, and children, including many Pokanoket, Narragansett, Nipmuc, or other allied refugees whom the English collectively classified as "Philip's Indians" were taken prisoner. Eight men identified as participants in King Philip's War were later executed, while nearly two hundred others were marched to Boston, where many were sold into slavery or forced into indentured servitude.[37] Families that had escaped the destruction of southern New England now found themselves once again subjected to execution, dispersal, and bondage.

The events at Cochecho also demonstrate how colonial authorities increasingly abandoned distinctions between individual Indigenous nations in favor of broad legal categories such as "Philip's Indians," "enemy Indians," and "Indian enemies."[38] What had begun as a military resistance led by the Pokanokets evolved, in colonial law, into a continuing category of suspicion that followed surviving refugees long after the death of Metacom. In practice, these legal designations encompassed not only the Pokanokets themselves but also many of the Indigenous peoples who had joined, aided, or simply sought refuge with the Pokanoket or were part of their kinship network. Colonial authorities thus transformed a wartime alliance into an enduring legal identity that justified continued surveillance, prosecution, and punishment.

The Cochecho deception further illustrates that King Philip's War cannot be understood solely as a conflict confined to southern New England. Refugees carried with them long-established kinship networks, political alliances, and the determination to survive. Their arrival amongst the Pennacook and neighboring Abenaki communities strengthened Indigenous resistance already emerging throughout northern New England. At the same time, English efforts to pursue these displaced communities helped merge what had begun as overlapping regional conflicts into a broader struggle extending from the Connecticut River Valley to the Gulf of Maine. The violence that devastated the Pokanoket homeland did not simply end with Metacom's death as it flowed northward, influencing the conflict historians commonly identify as the not only the end of the King Philip's War but the First Abenaki War, which concluded only with the Treaty of Casco in 1678.[39]

For many Indigenous families, physical survival became the immediate priority, but their choices remained sharply constrained by colonial authorities. English governments carefully regulated where Indigenous people could live, travel, and settle.[40] Many within the English colonies remained under close supervision, served lengthy periods of indenture, or lived within designated communities subject to continual surveillance. Others sought refuge beyond English jurisdiction among the Wabanaki, the French mission communities along the St. Lawrence, or the Mohegans, whose alliance with Connecticut offered another path toward survival. In the years immediately following the war, movement between Indigenous communities remained severely restricted, and colonial officials closely monitored those they believed might renew resistance. Only gradually, over the following decades, and indeed centuries as the immediate fears of renewed warfare subsided, did greater interaction, intermarriage, and the rebuilding of kinship networks occur among the surviving Indigenous communities. While colonial governments increasingly grouped diverse peoples together under broad legal and administrative labels, Indigenous families continued preserving older histories, relationships, and identities through oral tradition, family memory, and enduring kinship ties.

Ultimately, colonial governments succeeded in dispersing Indigenous communities, restricting their movement, confiscating lands, dismantling long-established political structures, and criminalizing those they associated with Metacom's resistance. They did not, however, succeed in destroying the kinship networks, family relationships, oral traditions, and cultural memory that sustained Indigenous life. King Philip's War produced many paths toward survival, armed resistance, political alliance, accommodation, migration, incorporation, indenture, enslavement, and diaspora. Each carried profound costs. Yet together they ensured that Indigenous nations endured long after the smoke of King Philip's War had cleared.

The Many Paths of Survival

The history of King Philip's War cannot be understood through a single Indigenous perspective, any more than it can be understood through a single colonial one. Indigenous nations entered the conflict from different political landscapes, maintained different kinship obligations, confronted different demographic realities, and therefore reached different conclusions about how best to preserve their people. Some chose resistance. Others chose alliance, neutrality, accommodation, military service, or flight. None of these decisions reflected a lesser commitment to Indigenous identity. Rather, each represented a response to the particular circumstances confronting a community whose future had become increasingly uncertain.

Recognizing these different Indigenous landscapes helps explain not only why the war spread where it did, but why it unfolded so differently across New England. The conflict followed longstanding networks of diplomacy, marriage, trade, and reciprocal obligation that had shaped Indigenous life for generations before the arrival of the English. Those same relationships influenced the alliances that formed, the communities that remained neutral, the refugees who sought safety among relatives, and the leaders who concluded that survival required profoundly different courses of action.

The war also left behind profoundly different memories. Communities that resisted remembered the conflict differently from those that sought accommodation. Those who fled north carried different experiences than those who found refuge among the Mohegans or endured within the English colonies under increasingly restrictive legal systems. The generations that followed inherited not only different histories, but different understandings of what survival had required. Those diverse memories continue to shape Indigenous identity and historical interpretation today.

King Philip's War therefore cannot be reduced to a single Indigenous experience, nor can its consequences be understood through a single narrative of defeat or survival. Understanding those many paths of survival is essential to understanding not only how King Philip's War ended, but how Indigenous history continued. Although the war transformed the political landscape of New England, it did not bring an end to the histories of the Pokanokets, Narragansetts, Nipmucs, Mohegans, Pequots, Wabanakis, Mashpee, Aquinah, or the many other Indigenous nations whose descendants continue to remember these events from their own distinct perspectives. Their stories did not end in 1676. They continue today, carried through families, communities, oral traditions, and the enduring memories of the peoples who survived.

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Endnotes

1.  Frank G. Speck, Territorial Subdivisions and Boundaries of the Wampanoag, Massachusett and Nauset Indians, Indian Notes and Monographs 44 (New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1928), 17–30; Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 3–25. 

2. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), 75–81; Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, vol. 1 (Boston: William White, 1855), 49–56; Colin G. Calloway, The Indians of Southern New England and Long Island, 1500–1900 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 32–55. 

3. Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 1–35, 59–84; Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500–1643 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 27–55, 94–122; David J. Silverman, This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 13–38, 61–88. 

4.  Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England; Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin, 46–80; Colin G. Calloway, The Indians of Southern New England and Long Island, 76–90; John Pynchon Papers (Quaboag and Namasket diplomacy). 

5.  Benjamin Church, The History of King Philip's War, ed. Samuel G. Drake, 2nd ed. (Exeter, NH: J. & B. Williams, 1829), 104–16; Henry Melville King, "The Lives of Weetamoe and Awashunkes," in Sidney S. Rider, ed., The Rhode Island Historical Tracts, 2nd ser., no. 6 (Providence, RI: Sidney S. Rider, 1907), 62–63.

6.  Benjamin Church, The History of King Philip's War, ed. Henry Martyn Dexter (Boston: John Kimball Wiggin, 1865), 79–96; Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, vols. 5 and 10; Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 125–35; Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin, 177–205.

7. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 343–45; Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, 10:303–4; Josiah H. Temple, History of North Brookfield, Massachusetts (North Brookfield, MA: Published by the Town, 1887), 22–25; Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin, 55–60.

8. Benjamin Church, The History of King Philip's War, ed. Henry Martyn Dexter (Boston: John Kimball Wiggin, 1865), 79–96; Daniel Gookin, An Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England in the Years 1675, 1676, 1677, in Archaeologia Americana, 2 (Cambridge, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1836), 447–505; Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, vols. 5 and 10 (Boston: William White, 1855–61); Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, vol. 5, 1674–1686 (Boston: William White, 1854); Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 125–35; Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 177–205; Margaret Ellen Newell, Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 156–74. Church recounts the recruitment of Sakonnet warriors under Awashonks, Gookin documents the service of Christian Indigenous men as scouts, guides, soldiers, and interpreters, and the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay records demonstrate that the employment of Indigenous auxiliaries became an established colonial military practice rather than remaining unique to Church's command. 

9.  Colin G. Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600–1800 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), 19–52; Daniel R. Mandell, King Philip's War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 1–20; Emerson W. Baker and John G. Reid, The New England Knight: Sir William Phips, 1651–1695 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). 

10.  Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 239–300; Colin G. Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 53–86; Harald E. L. Prins, "The Mi'kmaq and Their Neighbors," in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast, ed. Bruce G. Trigger (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1978)

11.  William Hubbard, A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England (Boston: John Foster, 1677), 249–51; Increase Mather, A Brief History of the Warr with the Indians in New-England (Boston: John Foster, 1676), 52–54; Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin, 259–72. 

12.  Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, vol. 60 (Cleveland: Burrows Brothers, 1900), 205–21 (Jean Enjalran); Colin G. Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 87–106; Gordon M. Day, "The Identity of the Saint Francis Indians," Ethnohistory 25, no. 4 (1978): 357–76. 

13.  Colin G. Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 107–29; Bruce J. Bourque, The Swordfish Hunters: The History and Ecology of an Ancient American Sea People (Broomall, PA: Infinity Publishing, 2001), 267–78; Harald E. L. Prins, "The Mi'kmaq and Their Neighbors." 

14. Alfred A. Cave, The Pequot War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996); John Mason, A Brief History of the Pequot War (Boston, 1736); Richard A. Pierce, ed., The Correspondence of the Colonial Governors of Connecticut. 

15.  Richard A. Pierce, ed., The Correspondence of the Colonial Governors of Connecticut; James Fitch Papers; Daniel Gookin, An Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England in the Years 1675, 1676, 1677, in Archaeologia Americana 2 (Cambridge, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1836); Colin G. Calloway, The Indians of Southern New England and Long Island, 96–101. 

16. The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, 1636–1776, vols. 2–3, ed. J. Hammond Trumbull (Hartford: Brown & Parsons, 1852–59); Richard A. Pierce, ed., The Correspondence of the Colonial Governors of Connecticut; Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 265–84. 

17.  Samuel G. Drake, Indian Biography, vol. 1 (Boston: Antiquarian Institute, 1836), 234–35; B. B. Thatcher, Indian Biography, vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1836); Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1st ser., vol. 6.

18. John Easton, A Relation of the Indyan Warre, by Mr. Easton, of Rhode Island (1675), in Charles H. Lincoln, ed., Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675–1699 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913), 9–17; Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, vol. 5 (Boston: William White, 1856), 167–70 (Taunton conference, June 1675)

19. Benjamin Church, The History of King Philip's War, ed. Henry Martyn Dexter (Boston: John Kimball Wiggin, 1865), 79–126; Daniel Gookin, An Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians, 447–505; Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, vols. 5 and 10 (Boston: William White, 1855–61); Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, vol. 5 (Boston: William White, 1854); Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 177–205. 

20.  Daniel Gookin, An Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians, 447–566; Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 143–67; Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin, 207–35; Jean M. O'Brien, Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650–1790 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 25–41