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King Philip's War

Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty

Daniel R. Mandell

Publication Date
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2010 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine

King Philip's War was the most devastating conflict between Europeans and Native Americans in the 1600s. In this incisive account, award-winning author Daniel R. Mandell puts the war into its rich historical context.

The war erupted in July 1675, after years of growing tension between Plymouth and the Wampanoag sachem Metacom, also known as Philip. Metacom’s warriors attacked nearby Swansea, and within months the bloody conflict spread west and erupted in Maine. Native forces ambushed militia detachments and burned towns, driving the colonists...

2010 Outstanding Academic Title, Choice Magazine

King Philip's War was the most devastating conflict between Europeans and Native Americans in the 1600s. In this incisive account, award-winning author Daniel R. Mandell puts the war into its rich historical context.

The war erupted in July 1675, after years of growing tension between Plymouth and the Wampanoag sachem Metacom, also known as Philip. Metacom’s warriors attacked nearby Swansea, and within months the bloody conflict spread west and erupted in Maine. Native forces ambushed militia detachments and burned towns, driving the colonists back toward Boston. But by late spring 1676, the tide had turned: the colonists fought more effectively and enlisted Native allies while from the west the feared Mohawks attacked Metacom’s forces. Thousands of Natives starved, fled the region, surrendered (often to be executed or sold into slavery), or, like Metacom, were hunted down and killed.

Mandell explores how decades of colonial expansion and encroachments on Indian sovereignty caused the war and how Metacom sought to enlist the aid of other tribes against the colonists even as Plymouth pressured the Wampanoags to join them. He narrates the colonists’ many defeats and growing desperation; the severe shortages the Indians faced during the brutal winter; the collapse of Native unity; and the final hunt for Metacom. In the process, Mandell reveals the complex and shifting relationships among the Native tribes and colonists and explains why the war effectively ended sovereignty for Indians in New England.

This fast-paced history incorporates the most recent scholarship on the region and features nine new maps and a bibliographic essay about Native-Anglo relations.

Reviews

Reviews

Mandell has written the best concise account of this total war... Although there are numerous books on this war... none are so accessible to general readers or college undergraduates... Highly recommended.

Mandell has made a very valuable contribution to our understanding of Native American history in a period long overlooked.

A carefully crafted, well-researched book... This review does not do justice to this rich account of the complex interactions of race, ethnicity, class, and gender in the survival of native peoples.

Mandell's superb book on a long-neglected subject should affect the way the larger narrative of this era of American history is written.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
176
ISBN
9780801896286
Illustration Description
9 line drawings, 3 halftones
Table of Contents

Prologue
1. Struggles in New England
2. King Philip and Plymouth
3. The War Widens
4. Indians Ascendant
5. Colonists Victorious and Wounded
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Suggested Further Reading
Index

Author Bio
Daniel R. Mandell
Featured Contributor

Daniel R. Mandell

Daniel R. Mandell is a professor of history at Truman State University. He is the author of Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts, King Philip's War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, End of Indian Sovereignty, and Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts, and The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America, 1600–1870.