King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict

by Eric B. Schultz, Michael J. Tougias

At the Pilgrim's first Thanksgiving in 1621, chief among the honored guests was Massasoit, the sachem of the Wampanoag. Half a century later, Massasoit's son, King Philip, had been shot at the end of a bloody two-year conflict. The war began as a skirmish between the Wampanoag and the English on the frontier of Plymouth colony and ended with many of the New England's settlements reduced to ashes.

As many as 800 colonists were killed, but the Native Americans suffered even greater losses in their pivotal struggle against the colonists. Devastated by disease and famine, the native peoples of southern New England were violently removed from their ancestral homelands. Three hundred years later, their fight for justice has been all but erased from the history books.

At once an in-depth history of this pivotal war and a guide to the historical sites where the ambushes, raids, and battles took place, King Philip's War expands our understanding of American history and provides insight into the nature of colonial and ethnic wars in general.

Through a careful reconstruction of events, first-person accounts, period illustrations, and maps, and by providing information on the exact locations of more than fifty battles, King Philip's War is useful as well as informative.

Students of history, colonial war buffs, those interested in Native American history, and anyone who is curious about how this war affected a particular New England town, will find important insights into one of the most seminal events to shape the American mind and continent.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Native American, Indigenous, Military History, Native American History

416 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1999

About the author

Eric has spent his career in entrepreneurial and leadership roles, including as senior vice president of Midwest operations for American Cablesystems, co-founder and president of Atlantic Ventures, and chairman and CEO of Sensitech, a venture-backed business twice named to the Inc. 500 before being acquired by Carrier Corporation. Eric served as a CEO-partner with Ascent Ventures, as executive chairman of HubCast, on the board of advisors of the Avedis Zildjian Company and Windover LLC, and as a mentor for student start-up teams in the Brown University B-Lab.

His nonprofit historical work includes chairing the Gettysburg Foundation and the New England Historic Genealogical Society. He is co-author of Food Foolish: The Hidden Connection Between Food Waste, Hunger, and Climate Change, and King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict, and author of Weathermakers to the World. Eric has a bachelor's degree in history from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Eric's blog is "The Occasional CEO" at theoccasionalceo.blogspot.com where he posts updates to Innovation on Tap. He can also be found on Twitter at @ericebs and on LinkedIn.

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

My third book in my 2021 challenge on American history. Not a great addition. Only the first third deals in any kind of narrative on the war. And that narrative was just not very interesting. The rest of the book is a travel book to help you find the corresponding sites in today's world. At the end, some personal accounts by participants and the only one I found intriguing was by Mary Rowlandson, who was captured during the war, lived among the Indians and was returned at the end. What I learned was that King Philip had little to do with the war after the start. Pretty dull overall. 2 Stars for me

[Cameron Rhoads · Rating 5 out of 5]

12 hours, listened to on Audible and thoroughly enjoyed.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

The co-authors provide a detailed overview of the events making up King Philip's War in a book that looks the details in three different ways: in chronological order, by geographic locations like villages and towns and battle sites, and through the presentation of content from primary documents of three people who lived during this time period. Despite living in New England, I have to admit that I did not know a lot of detail about these events. I knew the basics of the time period end the end resul,t, but having the whole set of events and the individuals involved laid out in this narrative was really interestin and helpful for my understanding of what happened. I do feel that that the writers were trying to present the details with the viewpoints of both sides in mind.

I think it is defintiely worth picking up if someone is interested in learning more about this time period.

[Jay Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had looked forward to reading this book, but was somewhat disappointed. This is not a proper history. Generally, one writes histories due to finding new source material or because previous works were inadequate. This is not the case in this instance. The book covers what has been done before and then in a travelogue format tells the reader where the action occurred. This is not a true work of any significance. However, there were many interesting passages and thus an average rating.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very thorough telling of King Philip's War, a series of skirmishes between the Native American populations and the English settlers prior to the American Revolution.

To be honest, my interest in this area is because my hometown is central to the conflict and it was interesting to discover more about the local history of the area. While it was interesting, it is a bit dry and might not be of interest for general reading.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first section of the book was written well and provides a great summary of the war, and I applaud the authors for bringing such a level of detail to this book, but I found the debates and constant questioning of exact locations on many occasions throughout the book, to be redundant

[Dylan Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very solid material and well sourced, really liked the details though this is a very specific niche to find fascinating

[Mel Foster · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great resource--an unusual one. Just understand what you are getting here. The first 82 pages are a broad overview of King Phillip's War. The second section--by far the largest--discusses the war by region and community. This section is great if you will have the opportunity to travel through these areas and are looking for a field guide to sites and action. The section also has many gems of local history, some integrally and some very distantly related to King Phillip's War. The last section are primary documents, to wit accounts by Benjamin Church, Mary Rowlandson, and Thomas Wheeler.
It makes a great stand-alone resource on the topic. But reading through section two is laborious, especially for a non-New Englander like myself, because it is composed of countless little local threads and sites. It's not the kind of history I am used to reading, and I daresay I prefer the details to be worked into the bigger narrative, though I can understand its value as is for the traveling local history buff.
The work expresses sympathy towards both the natives and the English settlers.

[Troy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exhaustively researched, a terrific record of the first conflict for survival between European settlers and American Indians. Lacks any real narrative direction, reading more like a laundry list of dates, historical figures, battle records, and such. Eventually, I found myself just reading around, looking for places I knew and people who seemed interesting. Still, a terrific record of an important time in American history.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first part of this book gives a concise description of nearly all the battles and actions for the King Philip's War and is done well. The very large part of this book which describes each battle in detail, including what tree Philip stood by and the Costco which now stands on a former battle site, should be considered a reference guide for intrepid armature historians who want to visit each site. Not something a casual reader wants to plow through.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay. I was hoping for more of a historical narrative, but it focused more on locations, trying to find them, retrace steps, where each house used to be located, etc. I think it accomplished what the author intended, but I wasn't engaged by the focus on connecting modern locations to what used to be here during King Philip's war.

[Patricia O'Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fabulous resource for battle information. I used it to write a historical fiction novel about King Philip's War called Legend of the Dead. http://www.amazon.com/Legend-of-the-D...

[Tony Mistretta · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well researched and comprehensive documentary of King Philip's War, a war that was not studied in my high school, or at least not that I can remember. This was especially of interest to me because I live in Massachusetts and I see so many landmarks, trails and even a high school that was named after King Philip, I felt compelled to learn more about him and the conflict between the native American tribes and the European settlers. This was not an easy book to read because of the way the material was presented, sometimes in the words of the first hand witnesses and earlier historians, but it certainly covered the details of the events leading up to the war and the many battles that took place. I found it fascinating that both the native Americans and the European settlers made the best of some very hard times, living off the land with harsh weather, disease and war conditions. It was sad to learn that the people could not get along and had to kill each other to resolve their differences.

[Miroslav · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vojna kráľa Filipa (vlastným menom Metacomet) bola vo všetkých knihách o histórii, čo sa mi dostali do ruky, vybavená niekoľkými riadkami, ak sa vôbec do takýchto kníh dostala. Jej význam je z pohľadu dejín možné bagatelizovať len s fokusom na jej výsledok, no z hľadiska jej priebehu, bol jej význam nesmierny. Kmeňové zväzy Wampanoag, Nipmuc i Narragansett, zdecimované desaťročiami chorôb, nakoniec povstali proti britským kolonialistom a nahnali strach aj vtedajšiemu hlavnému mestu Boston. V priebehu jediného roka (1675-1676) asi 2.000 bojovníkov vypálilo celé mestá a ďalšie vážne poškodili. Kolonistom sa dlho nedarilo Indiánov poraziť, zväčša len nakráčali do vopred pripravených pascí. Keby nie niekoľkých zhôd okolností, možno by sa dejiny Severnej Ameriky písali inak. Prípadne by sa nepísali vôbec, pretože šlo o síce druhú, no vo svojej podstate jedinú indiánsku vojnu, ktorá mala potenciál vyhnať kolonistov (v tom čase ich bolo na východnom pobreží okolo 65.000) a tým úplne zmeniť históriu Severnej Ameriky.

[James Richardson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brilliantly researched and written, however hovering between a narrative-based non-fiction and an academic non-fiction.

Reading this one directly after Nathaniel Philbrick's "Mayflower" will make anything seem a little dry and dusty. That's no reflection on Schultz's brilliantly researched work or his ability to tell a story, just that Philbrick's work is very difficult to match. I found this book to be a good companion piece to "Mayflower" in that the specific stories and delved into a little deeper. Where Philbrick might mention a fact, this goes into more detail and gives the reader more of an account of that particular fact. However, unlike "Mayflower", this fails to give the reader more of a narrative that flows and really puts the reader into the history of the war.

[Gretchen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because an ancestor of mine, Lawrence Clinton, fought in the war. The authors discuss the history of the war that has been passed to us, the fact that the first victims were literate Indians, and the use of the war, including in the controversy over removal of Cherokees from Georgia to Oklahoma. "King Philip" was a Sachem named Metacom. I think he was a Wampanoag. The war began after three Indians were convicted of murdering Christian Indian and minister John Sassamon at his behest after John had tried to warn Plymouth Colony Governor Josiah Winslow that Metacom was trying to gather the other Sachems in a war against the English.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Recent personal genealogy research uncovered some ancestors who survived King Philip's War and having found this audio book readily available I thought I'd give it a listen. The narrative in the first third of the book was interesting, but beyond that the book painfully dissected previous historians' research efforts of events, settings, people, and pretty much all the minutiae that just didn't make it into modern day school text books or into folk lore. At the half way point into the audio book I finally just skipped to the final chapter, but I didn't find the dissection to be any more engaging.

[Jeff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a very good narrative history. The bulk of this book is more like a field guide describing modern intersections, parking lots, school playgrounds, factories, rocks, trees, and houses where significant events took place during King Philip's War. Yes, virtually everything has been bulldozed over, paved over, or the local legends are incorrect. Unless you're from or in Rhode Island or Massachusetts and can actually retrace the events, these descriptions are entirely vapid. So, so boring. The only redeeming feature is the diary excerpts from major characters at the end of the book.

[Lghamilton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting history about King Philip's War (King Philip being the son of the Wampanoag chief Massasoit, who was a guest at the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving). The first chapter was the history; the next batch of chapters was the detailed description of each swamp, hillock, and homesite where the battles took place, what is on these locations today, and what the historic markers say about each - ho hum. I picked up this book because I have ancestors that were killed in this war (John Keep and Sarah Keep, and their infant son Jabez Keep). Luckily for me the other siblings were left at home.

[Joe Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! I listened to the audiobooks version, but there was so much information on where to find some of the sites or articles from the war in addition to the history of the conflict, that I broke down and bought the book to try to line up some road trips. Definitely a worthwhile read if you have any interest in early colonial history in the USA.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked how this was set up: The whole story, locations, battles and then actual excerpts of diaries and books of participants (like Mary Rowlandson). Broke it down so you could follow what happened and where and why. Nice collaboration.

[Graham Bradley]

Tapped out at around 30%, it's well-researched but it does its best work as a reference/geographical guide, as opposed to a narrative. Still, it fills a vital role in consolidating important information about KPW.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book offers everything for the history nerd. There is an account of the war, an examination of public history in all of the battle sites, and exposure to the narratives that inform some of our understanding of the event.

[Justin Soares · Rating 4 out of 5]

The summary of the conflict is concise and all but Part 2 (the majority of the book) reads like a travel guide of important locations during the war. If I wasn't local to New England and so familiar with the geography of the area, I don't think I'd appreciate this as much.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part history of a large-scale conflict in colonial New England, part travelogue of the important sites. Also includes some 1st person accounts of the period, which are fascinating.

[Christine McCloud · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though somewhat dry, it did provide a lot of good information. It did jump around a bit & would have been greatly improved with more maps.

[Matt Holloway · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent detail, and well told. Lacking an overarching historical argument, but sometimes that’s a good thing.

[Jane Barber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Native American and Early Colonial History. Recommended by Will. I do not remember specifics, it has blended into general knowledge on subject, but very scholarly, first read. Eye opening.

[Norman Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was very interesting, but it got bogged down at points with too many details. At times, it read kind of like a research paper. Overall though, I found it very interesting and learned a lot.

[Justin Mohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well-executed survey of the war, though the choice to focus on a site narrative makes it difficult to form a narrative understanding of the war.