The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity

by Jill Lepore

Examines how the American colonists interpreted the brutal war that erupted between them and Native Americans in New England in 1675, showing how they looked to it during the Revolution and used it to justify nineteenth-century Indian removals. 10,000 first printing.

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

337 pages, Hardcover

First published January 20, 1998

About the author

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History, Harvard College Professor, and chair of Harvard's History and Literature Program. She is also a staff writer at The New Yorker.

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award for the best non-fiction book on race, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; The Name of War (Knopf, 1998), winner of the Bancroft Prize, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, and the Berkshire Prize and a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Award.

A co-founder of the magazine Common-place, Lepore’s essays and reviews have also appeared in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, American Scholar, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Daily Beast, the Journal of American History and American Quarterly. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Pew Foundation, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the Charles Warren Center, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. She has served as a consultant for the National Park Service and currently serves on the boards of the National Portrait Gallery and the Society of American Historians.
Jill lives in Cambridge,Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The story of King Philip’s War…is the story of how English colonists became Americans, and of the sometimes graceful, sometimes awkward, sometimes brutal posturing by which they positioned themselves in relation to the indigenous people of America and of Europe. It is a story of words and wounds and of resurrections…”
- Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity

“Had we been cannibals here might we feast.”
- Benjamin Tompson, recounting the massacre of Narragansett Indians at the “Great Swamp Fight” in 1675


On January 29, 1675, a Christian Indian named John Sassamon died at Assawampsett Pond, his body found beneath the ice. Perhaps he had fallen through. Perhaps life had become too much, and he drowned himself. According to Indian witnesses, however, he was murdered by three Wampanoag Indians who were confederates of Metacom, known to history as King Phillip. The theory was that Sassamon was killed for warning the governor of Plymouth Colony of a potential attack by King Philip’s forces.

The three alleged murderers were hanged in June. Shortly thereafter, Wampanoags raided the settlement of Swansea, then Rehoboth and Taunton.

The war that followed has carved itself a bloody niche in history as being one of the most brutal ever fought – on a per capita basis – in North America. A dozen towns burned and one-tenth of military-age colonists were killed. Some mark the end of the war as occurring on August 12, 1676, when King Philip was killed by an Indian fighting with the colonial forces of Benjamin Church. Others say the war did not end until December 29, 1890, when the Seventh Cavalry killed around 300 men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek, marking the symbolic end of the Indian Wars.

The story of King Philip’s War is fascinating and complex and it is definitely worth reading about.

But if you are looking for a standard history on this savage conflict, fought one-hundred years before Lexington and Concord, then you need to take a pass on Jill Lepore’s The Name of War.

Seriously. Just keep looking.

The Name of War is not interested in a chronological account of events; it is not interested in the character or biographies of the men and women caught in the vortex; it is most certainly not a military history. To give you an example: Lepore does not narrate a single battle or raid, yet devotes an entire chapter to a now-forgotten stage play called Metamora; or, the Last of the Wampanoags, which premiered in 1829 and ended its run sometime in 1887.

I say this not to warn you off a bad book, but to keep you from being disappointed by a good one.

The Name of War is a work of historiography. It tries to explain how King Philip’s War was written about and remembered. The concepts of memory and cultural identity that are explored here are often dense and hard to summarize.

This style of book is tricky, because it relies heavily on interpretations and generalizations that sometimes feels like a parody of academia. For instance, Lepore delivers lines like this:

In the context of King Philip’s War, concerns about the boundaries of the body became overlaid onto concerns not only about the boundaries of English property but also about the cultural boundaries separating English from Indian. Bodies were defined in relationship to houses, but houses, too, were metaphorical bodies…

Continuing this thought, Lepore talks about a man named Thomas Wakely, who refused to heed warnings about an impending raid, and died in his house. Of him, Lepore concludes:

If building a house on a piece of land makes that land your own, and if the land you own defines who you are, then losing that house becomes a very troubling prospect indeed.

Okay. On the one hand, sure, that makes sense. On the other hand, this reeks of overthinking. Chances are, Thomas Wakely died because he underestimated the risk, not because he feared losing his true self.

While I am not fully investing in what Lepore has to sell, The Name of War is insightful and interesting. There is a solid chapter on what Lepore calls “moral vocabulary,” which discusses how the colonists vilified the Indians who scalped and mutilated the dead, while ignoring the identical desecrations committed by their side. (King Philip, for instance, was quartered, and his head removed and displayed prominently in Plymouth for years and years and years).

Another worthy section is devoted to the fate of Philip’s nine-year-old son, who became the subject of a fierce debate among Puritan intellectuals as to whether he deserved to live (a position supported by Deuteronomy, where the son does not inherit his father's sins) or die (a position supported by the general, asshole-ish disposition of the Puritans). Eventually, these men of God showed their mercy and allowed the child to be sold into bondage, which gives Lepore an opportunity to explore this underdiscussed aspect of American slavery.

The Name of War does not try to stake out the moral high ground between the Indians and the colonists. In other words, this is not simple Puritan-bashing. As Lepore demonstrates, there was cruelty enough to go around. Of course, when the last bullet was fired, and the last dwelling burned, only one side got to write about it.

In a real sense, then, The Name of War is about how a group of people – soon to be a new nation – attempted to rationalize their deeds, and to find a way to live with the things they had done.

[Ram · Rating 1 out of 5]

"The colonists MUST have FELT, as the Indians' flaming arrows PENETRATED the SKINS of the white MAN'S houses, that they THEMSELVES WERE BEING PENETRATED by the DARK OTHERS whose own violence was now being WRITTEN ON the BODY as well as the LANDSCAPE in bold strokes."

If you like speculation and taking flimsy evidence and using it to put words in the mouths of historical actors, then you'll dig this book. Postmodern, literary techniques work sometimes to tell the stories of persons who cannot speak through the existing record. But, Lepore uses highly-suspect reasoning to tell a story of her own invention that is disrespectful to her subjects and will appeal only to those (guilty, white) readers who have a particular view of what "American identity" is. This book is the antithesis of what postmodernism promised.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly fantastic. Lepore has mastered the art of history-telling; she tells the story as straight as it can be told from the historical record, and makes incisive connections to other historical events, eras, and emotional epochs. If history had been old like this when I was in school, many fewer kids would have hated it. Also, many fewer kids would have turned into unthinking, racist, 'Merica First! assholes. Nuance and empathy are important parts of understanding what has happened before so that we can understand what is happening now, and better shape what will happen in the future. Excellent work.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thorough and intellectually ambitious. This isn't really a history of King Philip's War (1675-6); if you're looking for a narrative of the conflict you'll be disappointed. It is rather a study of the way that the experience and memory of the war was constructed by the English colonists of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Rhode Island, and Connecticut during the war years and immediately following, how that construction contributed to the construction of early American identity, and how it was actively used a century and a half after the war by the advocates and opponents of Indian removal west of the Mississippi. Good and thought-provoking.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the Name of War is a revisionist interpretation of King Philips War. This is not a history of the war and provides an example of how the colonists at the time interpreted various aspects of the war. From seizing of colonists to selling Indians into slavery the effects of the war were traced throughout the war period. The brutality of the war is captured through the narrative that she lays out but in the end you really have to be interested in the time period to get something out of it. Like many things written about Indians there is a general feeling that the author must apologize for not being an Indian writing about Indians and that comes through in this book. In the end it is lackluster and boring with little for those looking for a history of the war.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lepore's work here disappointed. She has obviously done substantial research, I just do not find her theoretical framework all that satisfying. Maybe I do not fancy books about "the worst fatal war in American history" that analyze language and memory and lack much human sympathy. A work that takes the "English" to task for not understanding the Wampanoag but seems fairly nonchalant in its lack of understanding (and frankly stereotypical portrayal) of the Puritan.

[Caleb Lagerwey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can see why this won the Bancroft Prize: I will read anything and everything Jill Lepore writes, and this book is an excellent example of her masterful command of the language.

The book is a story about King Philip's War, of course, but less about the chronology and events of the war than of how the war was remembered and discussed, from during the war itself up through the recent past. It was a novel and extraordinary piece of historiography, in a sense, that showcases the challenges facing historians of the early American period. Her research is impressive and extensive; her stories varied and well-written.

My only complaint was that the book didn't quite give enough chronological context for the events: if I hadn't read Philbrick's Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War recently, I would have had an even harder time following the non-chronological retelling of the events of the war. I know a straight-forward retelling was not her purpose, but the lack of a narrative at the beginning makes it harder to recommend or assign this book without another in tandem like the Philbrick.

I recommend this to historians of early America and to teachers and students of history interested in how we remember the past.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging history of the Native American and English colonists war of the 1670s. This account of the war, and its later cultural and political usages, explain much of the trajectory of US and Native American interactions and injustices. I found the account balanced in presentation. But there is plenty of non-Native American guilt to be acknowledged here by the historical facts.

LePore’s book is probably most interesting in her account of how this war was used culturally and politically by both non- and Native Americans in the ensuing decades and centuries. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the subject as well as to anyone interested in how war images and language are perpetuated and manipulated for further non-war ends.

My only criticism (this coming from a non-expert and non-specialist in history) is that some of LePore’s conclusions sometimes seemed more like suppositions than inductively established inferences. I found none egregious; but a few questionable. (But again, as an “armchair” historian, I may not understand the detailed dynamics of such research.)

Highly recommend. Not a long read.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like a 3.5 - not a history of the war (which was what I was looking for) but more an interpretation of contemporary and then subsequent reactions/understandings of the war (which in fairness I should have known had I bothered to read the back cover before purchasing).

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

FINALLY!! This is the year of finishing books I started years ago. Also, this book I think should be in some capacity a required reading, especially those who might not know how difficult historical writing is in the face of a lack of sources and a lack of objectivity.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Name of War is a thematically-structured meditation on the violent and significant conflict known as King Philip's War, fought between English colonists and Native Americans in 1675-6. The fighting occurred primarily in New England between, on the one hand, English colonists of the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies, the Mohegan and Pequot tribes along with so-called "praying Indians" who had converted to Christianity, and on the other hand, the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Abenaki and Pocumtuck tribes.

King Philip’s War produced a considerable number of (English-written) narratives and histories, most famously The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Mary Rowlandson’s tale of her captivity by Narragansetts and Wampanoags following their attack on Lancaster. Lepore makes a persuasive case that this and the other narratives of the war reasserted English colonial identity as English at least as much as engaging in the war itself did. Decades of close proximity with the native inhabitants of what the English absurdly called New England had not resulted in mass native conversion to Christianity, as the colonists had hoped. It had instead, asserts Lepore, created hybrid populations of Indians who, for instance, spoke English and wore English clothes but lived in wigwams, and English people who lived farther and farther from English-built towns, no longer attended church or had culturally or familially absorbed or been absorbed by native people. In other words, English colonists in the 1670s were beginning to experience an identity crisis. They could see breaking down the visual cues and behavioral codes they relied upon to differentiate people from each other; most importantly to them, to differentiate English from Indian.

While carefully dissecting the English war writings, Lepore also examines – to the extent sources allow – Indian motivations for and responses to war; all the while considering what it means for both the English and Native American visions of the war that the historical record contains only English-language narratives written by white people. The primary point of interest for me regarding this topic, is the particular position and vulnerability of the hybrid person in this context. Over and over again, Indians who knew English, acted as translators of language and culture, or had actually converted to Christianity, became the least trusted group of people, attacked by both sides equally. In fact, the murder of one such man, the Christian Indian John Sassamon, either caused or comprised (depending on how you dice it) the first hostility of King Philip’s War. Anglicized Indians who were captured by the Narragansetts or Wampanoags were sometimes tortured and at the very least intimidated by their Indian captors. Yet if they escaped and fled to an English town, they were put on trial for treason and usually only exculpated in the eyes of English colonists by murdering a certain number of combatant Native Americans and supplying proof in the form of severed heads. And this was a “best case scenario”. In a worst case, the English authorities forced entire towns of praying Indians into an internment camp on Deer Island in Boston Harbor, where most either died or were sold into slavery.

Lepore’s careful treatment of King Philip’s War, of colonial writings about the war, of later Native and Anglo-American remembrance (or ignorance) of the war, ultimately underscore the ways writing and memory about war are indivisible from war itself. More importantly, she reminds her readers about an under-discussed, over-obscure war that was, arguably, one of the most revealing and disturbing conflicts in the history of Anglo settlement in North America.

[Jeremy Perron · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my last post I described how a short while ago, I decided to do a straight reading up on the history of my country. Not by a series of biographies or of any particular event; but a simple march through the ages exploring all the eras of the United States of America. The first challenge is to find books that try their best to explore from multiple perspectives avoiding just one narrow view, without at the same time surrendering a general narrative that is both readable and enjoyable. The second challenge is determining where to start. I suppose I could start at the American Revolution or all the way back to Mesopotamia. I finally decided to start with A History of England by Clayton and David Roberts. After getting done with the mother county I moved on to this book by Jill Leopre, generally because of Leopre's reputation of exploring history with memory. Her book deals with early English colonists and how they related to and fought with Native American tribes. Lepore's dealing with both points of view (colonist and Native) during the colonial era surrounding the events leading up to, during, and aftermath of King Phillip's War.

Jill Lepore's book is about one of earliest wars in American history and how the conflict would shape the identity of both sides involved. Lepore writes of colonists that left England for the purpose of religious separatism yet are always concerned about losing their Englishness due to the Natives' presence, and also the Native tribes willingness to explore this relationship while it benefited them balanced with their concern about losing their tribal and cultural identity due to the presence of the English. This fear of loss of identity would be one of the primary reasons for the conflict that ironically would change the culture of both dramatically, making the English 'Americans' and the various tribes 'Indians'.

Lepore's work is very academic in tone and a very difficult narrative to at times follow. Each chapter has about a page and a half of narrative and the rest is analysis. I found the most interesting parts of the book to be the introduction, preface, and final chapter. Those sections contained fascinating insights to how war is interpreted down the generations.

"Clearly, literacy is not an uncomplicated tool, like a pen or a printing press. Instead literacy is bound, as it was for New England's Indians, by the conditions under which it is acquired; in this case at great cost. To become literate, seventeenth-century Indians had first to make a graduated succession of cultural concessions--adopting English ways and English dress, living in towns, learning to speak English, converting to Christianity. But these very concessions made them vulnerable. Neither English nor Indian, assimilated Indians were scorned by both groups and even were subject to attack. Because the acquisition of literacy, and especially English-language literacy, was one of last steps on the road to assimilation, Indians who could read and write placed themselves in a particularly perilous, if at the same time a powerful position, caught between two worlds but fully accepted by neither." p.27

I would recommend this book to advanced readers who would like an introduction into one of America's least understood conflicts, but I think the causal readers would best be served by looking somewhere else because this book does border on the technical side. Nevertheless, this work does a great job at exploring the conflict from many angles and explaining the context for which the war was fought.

[David Bates · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jill Lepore’s 1998 work The Name of War explores one of the flash points where violence blazed up in the late 17th century – the uprising known alternately as King Philips War and Metacom’s Rebellion. A meditation on war, and the way the colonists chose to portray it in words in order to understand its meaning and justify their actions, Lepore’s fundamental concern is to understand the issues of identity which were in her view both the war’s cause and lasting effect. The collapse of the political and commercial alliance established by Metacom’s father Massasoit due to increasing English encroachment and population pressure sparked the outbreak of violence, but Lepore suggests that the rejection was at root much more profound. In the attacks which the allied Algonquian tribes led by Metacom led on town after town, pushing back English settlement to the coast, a fundamental polarity of identities was being established – one which eliminated boundary crossers of doubtful loyalty first, leaving only the victorious English to codify the meaning of the conflict for history. There, for Lepore, lies the fundamental paradox of “the waging and writing of King Philip’s War: the same cultural tensions that caused the war – Indians becoming Anglicized and the English becoming Indianized – meant that literate Indians . . . those most likely to record their version of the events of the war, were among its earliest casualties.” Instead Metacom and his follwers would record their only arguments in the wounds they inflicted, as one Englishman observed “drawing his own report in blud not Ink.” From the ashes of the conflict would emerge influential rhetorical accounts of Indian savagery and threatened English identity Lepore contends set the stage for an American identity fundamentally hostile to coexistence. Despite the poignancy of her exploration of war as a contest of “wounds and words,” careful reconstruction so far as possible of Metacom’s side of the dispute, and her detailed analysis of English image making, Lepore may ultimately be reaching too far in claiming for the conflict the construction of core elements of American nationalist identity.

[Scottsdale Public Library]

When we read about history past, how can we know how much of what we read is true? Much of history is written based on what someone wrote down. Therefore, much of history could be said to be biased. Between the years of 1675 and 1682, there were twenty-one separate, printed, accounts of King Philip’s War which took place in southern New England, the majority published in London. King Philip, an Algonquian Indian whose real name was Metacom, was killed in August 1676 although the war did not end with his death. Did the colonists win the war or did the Indians? This is a story about the depiction of warring factions according to those who write it and how those warring factions view one another as well as themselves. A fascinating account of the events leading up to and after King Philip’s War as viewed by those involved vis-à-vis.--Anna Q.L.

[Doug · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started reading this book after I found out that one of my ancestors was killed in King Philip's War at the Battle of the Great Swamp, December 1675. The first two thirds of the book was OK - how did the war start? what was each side's greivance? But the last third was awful.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the start, it’s clear that this book is meticulously researched and more thoughtfully put together than nearly any work of non-fiction I’ve encountered. Lepore’s skills as a historian and her precision in delineating what is known, what was written, and what we can assume is clear on every page.

But it was *hard* for me to read this book. The number of unfamiliar names for people and places stretched over an area that I know in the present combined with the lengthy quotes from the 17th century that with all of the creative spelling and unusual grammar tripped me up, requiring more mental energy than I often had when I sat down to read the book. This combined with initially reading the book in hardback with a broken spine (from the library) meant that I often only finished a few pages before falling asleep, which made it even harder to follow the narrative thread.

It’s clear that we will never really know the details of King Philip’s War the way we know about 20th century wars, and where I came looking for a basic overview of the conflict’s particulars, they weren’t what this book is about.

What this book does well is explore the ways that early European (mostly English) colonists/settlers/occupiers in what are today the states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island needed to assert their identities in contrast to the native people living around them. That their fear and arrogance drove them to not only wage war with the indigenous population but also write about it with such self righteous disgust is telling.

I found the book most compelling in its final quarter where Lepore unpacks the way the war impacted perceptions of Americanness and Indianness in the 19th and even 20th century. Even if the war itself did not eliminate the Wampanoag and other tribes, it strangely laid the foundation for white Americans to imagine that those tribes and successive others had disappeared even as they persist today. It for this reason in particular that I would recommend this book.

[Elly Call · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is absolutely an underrated book. Even though it didn't have to define the entire American experience and could have just stuck to the war itself, Lepore perfectly encapsulated Colonist experience, racism, and hysteria. I can't speak as much to this because of holes in my own research, but from what I could tell she was extremely well researched and informed on the subject of Wampanoag, Narragansett, Delaware, Pequot and Nipmuck nation relations, cultural priorities, and experience as well. It has been almost impossible to find information on all these nations' experiences' of injustice at the hands of the English colonists, so Lepore's writing on the subject is a gift, and she lists historians she drew from, too, which is so so helpful! She's clearly a gifted writer, she is absurdly well-researched, and I'm so grateful to have found this book.

One problem though, and it's a big one—she constantly referred to the different tribes as "Indians." At first, I thought she was just quoting from the HEAVILY biased historical accounts of the war from Increase and Cotton Mathers, but she used it at every part of the book and it's distractingly wrong. I don't know everything about this subject—but I do know no one wants to use Christopher Columbus's geographic mistakes to refer to themselves. I'm not sure exactly how Wampanoag, Narragansett, Delaware, Pequot, and Nipmuck nationals prefer to be referred to, but using "Indian" for everybody told me that Lepore didn't work with people of any of these nations all that closely otherwise I think they would've told her off or corrected her. My best understanding is that "Indian" is offensive if used by white people. Or anyone non-first nations. I could be wrong, maybe she did work closely with people of these nations, but I'd be surprised.

So, loved this book—the impact of King Philip's war on the American psyche is def undertaught. But it had a few problems. Still informative. I'm gonna see if I can find some Narragansett writers who've addressed this topic though.

[Brianna Melick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fascinating look at what historians consider the bloodiest war fought in North America and how it has been written into American memory. The King Philip's War occurred during the 1670s, primarily in New England, between the Narragansett and Wampanoags against the English settlers. As much as I enjoyed the exciting comparisons that were made regarding the Indigenous people and the English, it was hard to take a lot of it as fact. Lepore has written a book that was thoroughly researched. Yet, the limited writings and the heavily opinionated writings of the time make this an interesting take on the history of King Philip's War. What was lacking in this narrative was a brief history of the war and the tensions leading up to it. It essentially banked on you already knowing a ton about the war.

[Greg Jablonski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an unexpected read as I was looking for a traditional wartime narrative. It was really a different book was extremely well written and described this war as the shaping the beginnings of the colonists self-perception as Americans. It also emphasized that both sides spiraled into a cycle of violence to try to get the advantage over their opponents. It makes me want to read more by Jill LaPore.

[John Reis · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is perhaps the worst history book I have ever read. It is not so much about the conflict, its origins and conduct. Rather, it is what a Northeastern liberal in the late 20th century can impute meaning to.

There is a drawing on the title page of what appear to be several colonists with muskets squaring off with several Indians armed only with bows and arrows. This selection must serve her agenda, though she admits that at least sixty percent of the Indians were armed with muskets, apparently supplied by the Dutch and the French.

There is a prologue which focuses on her discussion of the use of the word war. She mentions beginning this project right around the time of the Persian Gulf war. She claims that her purpose is : “this study asks other questions, too, of course, questions about cruelty, language, memory, and, most of all identity.”

There is then a chapter that she calls “the circle.”. This chapter focuses on a specific incident of the torture of an Indian by a group of Indians from another tribe and being witnessed by English colonists. She says, “what the English representation of this scene utterly fails to understand, of course, is the elaborate meanings of the Indians behavior. Yet, if the Indians perspective on this scene goes unstated or UN comprehend in the English account, it need not remain unstated or unexamined here.”

Chapter 1 spends a lot of time on the death of John Sassamon and the trial and execution of the three men accused of killing him. Those three men were Phillip’s men. And their execution enraged him.

Chapter 2 spends a lot of time on captivity narratives and other histories of the war.

Chapter 3 spends a lot of time on the idea that houses bounded the pilgrims and wigwam‘s bounded the Indians. There’s lots of psychological lingo as well as continental philosophical lingo.

Lepore sees a lot of meaning, modern meaning, in what was essentially chaos. From page 91, “if doors marked liminal spaces between inside and outside, order and chaos, and houses represented the English body, those same house is also represented the English family – our house destroyed was a family destroyed.“

“From page 94, “like so many chroniclers of the war Goodwife Thurston may have told her tale both as a way of making sense of her experience and as a way of reclaiming her identity.“

From page 96, “meanwhile, Algonquins had always celebrated their detachment from goods and property.“ “As their voluminous writing about the war demonstrates, most colonists were either unwilling or unable to place Indian “cruelty’s“ within the broader context of Algonquian culture, instead labeling them Barbarous violations of English ideas of just conduct in war, or understanding them only, and somewhat ironically, as messages from a brutal and furious God“.

Chapter 4 is about the role that religion played during the war. Puritans thought of the Indians as unclean but also as servants of God. They often saw the Indians as punishment for their own slacking off. This was an early early encounter with a non-Christian enemy which raises interesting points. The Indians were aware of Christian thought and suspicions and played that up.

Lepore sneers and almost condemns the colonists for not thinking of war in terms convenient to modern political theory.

From page 129, “a few colonists may have even believed that having lived among the Indians left a former captive contaminated by the influences of Indian society and Indian culture.“ This is just raw speculation on her part.

In chapter 6, Lepore discusses the enslavement of Indians both combatants and allies during and after the end of hostilities. She spends a lot of time discussing the racial component of the conflict. But she only examines the colonists of course because the colonists wrote a lot.

Chapter 8 revolves around a play called Metamora written by someone in the early 19th century. It was commissioned by an actor named Edwin Forrest who was looking for a new role to play. This is actually a very interesting chapter about how people used King Phillip’s War to present different sets of values. Washington Irving saw him as a valiant hero. Increase Mather saw him quite differently.

Throughout this book, the author takes the writings of the colonist experiences and gives her own modern liberal wise meaning to it. While she recognizes that there were many different tribes in the area at the time, she does seem to think that the Indian mind is monolithic. This seems to me to be at least mildly racist. As I mentioned above chapter eight was the most interesting. The rest of it is sophomoric psychologizing and philosophizing.

[Ann Haas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review written for class - UVM HCOL 2000
In The Name of War Jill Lepore takes on a daunting task: making sense of King Philip’s War, a war about which there are few primary sources from native perspectives and which is not well known in the general American consciousness. Lepore aims to ask questions about “cruelty, language, memory, and most of all identity” in King Philip’s War, and how these ideas can be expanded and applied to the broader American identity throughout the last 350 years of white settlement in North America (xxi). The book is divided into four sections: Language, War, Bondage, and Memory. Each of these sections deal with different aspects of how the war was fought, remembered, and memorialized, and how this war set the precendent for future wars in America.
Before the book even begins, Lepore uses a foreword to talk about the way that King Philip’s War has been documented. Not only is any source which discusses the war inherently biased, there is also a significant lack of primary sources from native perspectives. Lepore argues that writing is essential to winning a war, as war is as much about legacy as it is about the actual fighting, and therefore the English had a “literall advantage” in the winning of the war (ix). This means however, that Lepore is forced to make inferences about how native people viewed the war, as there are few written records. Lepore uses a wealth of records from the English however, including personal letters and histories written at the time of the war, as well as writings which speak of the war to memorialize it (such as calendar entries to memorialize important events in the war). She also uses Metamora, a play about a fictionalized King Philip written in the 19th century, extensively to discuss how ideas of the war, and of the American identity, shifted with time.
The book begins by recounting the murder of John Sassamon, a literate praying Indian, illustrating that Indians who were literate faced real danger as they were seen by other Indians as being too English, but could never be seen as truly English by white Englishmen. The few sources which Lepore has to work with that were written by Indians were therefore biased by the very fact that those Indians could write, which means the book has a difficult time presenting the perspectives of illiterate Indians whose stories were passed down only orally. This lack of resources is not Lepore’s fault, but it must be recognized that it caused the book to overemphasize the English’s ideas about the war, in comparison with native views. Lepore also seems to view English memories of the war as more trustworthy. For example in recounting the story of King Philip’s death Lepore spends an entire chapter discussing the English record of the event including the staking of Philip’s head in Plymouth for decades, and a mere paragraph discussing the Narragansett story of his death where Philip’s head was buried peacefully. This is partly due to the fact that there were far more resources referencing Philip’s death written by Englishmen, but also seems to imply that Lepore believes the English story is more trustworthy as it is written down, and that native storytelling is not a reliable medium for the telling of history.
Another central theme of the book is Lepore’s discussion of the English fear of becoming ‘indianized’. King Philip’s War was a brutal one, and yet the English needed to make sure that they maintained their ‘Englishness’ and their morals, which they believed to be far superior to the morality of the Indians: “concern with barriers [between the English and the Indians] was not limited to physical, geographical boundaries. It extended also to violations of English bodies, and perhaps most terrifyingly of all, to Algonquin encroachments on English culture” (74). A bloody war was being fought on both sides, however Englishmen and women need to make sure they set themselves apart from the Indians’ savagery. Lepore does a good job of emphasizing this idea, which can certainly be applied more broadly to the American identity in future wars, as a moral superior to the enemy. Americans always want to believe their way of fighting is the only fair one, like the colonists who “were either unable or unwilling to place Indian ‘cruelties’ within the broader context of Algonquin culture, instead labeling them as ‘barbarous’ violations of English idea of just conduct in war” (96). For example, in Vietnam this could be seen with the American condemnation of North Vietnamese ground traps, while the U.S. doused the country in Agent Orange. Lepore’s writing on this mindset of the early settlers is extremely relevant and well done, and can be applied to U.S. wars up through present times.
Lepore also does a good job of discussing the white American perception of native peoples. She spends a significant amount of time discussing the significance of the destruction of property during the war, especially in the burning of English houses. She emphasizes the English, and then American, cultural significance of property, a significance that is not shared by indigenous cultures. The perception that by building homes and clearing trees the English had clothed the landscape, and remedied its “nakedness”, is one that can be seen continuing through the American idea of wilderness, and rights to land through the centuries following King Philip’s War (79). The English belived that they had a God-given right to the land because they had “improved” it an idea which even after the war would continually be used to justify the removal of native lands from native peoples. Lepore does a brilliant job of analyzing the roots of this belief, which can be seen during King Philip’s War. This helps readers understand the why native Americans are depicted in novels, movies, and other popular literature burning houses and destroying property, and why this is so significant.
Lepore closes the book by discussing how King Philip’s War is remembered. Today it is not well known to the general public, but it was very influential in its time. An entire play, Metamora, was written in the 19th century which was a fictionalized account of the life of King Philip, also known as Metacom. The play drew large audiences for decades. Whereas before the English wanted to separate themselves from the Indians as much as possible during King Philip’s War, in following centuries Indians became a feature unique to America to set them apart from England. The ruggedness ad bravery which Indians were though to embody were admired American traits. At this time however many people believed Indians to be completely gone from New England, and many till believe that to this day. Lepore does a good job of showing that this is not true, for example by recounting how an entire Indian tribe attended a production of Metamora. Her work to show that native people have been an significant presence culturally and politically throughout the history of New England, and n the 19th centuryAmerica more broadly, is important, especially as many mascots and towns still use Indian logos and names.
The Name of War is a well written book which speaks about themes which can be applied to wars throughout American history. Lepore’s writing is well-structured and easy for the general public to read and understand. The book does lack Indian perspective on the war, which is partially due to a lack of resources, but does an excellent job of showing how the English perceptions of the war evolved into modern day understandings of war, culture, and the land The United States of America now occupies.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is quite simply outstanding. King Philip's War – or whatever it should best be called – is not only one of the forgotten conflicts of American colonial history but of colonial history in all – but then so much indigenous resistance is written out of memory and our experiences of the past. Jill Lepore's concern is not with reconstructing what happened, but with exploring how the war was understood at the time, remembered after the event, and deployed in 19th and 20th century US history and politics.

She shows clearly the ways Metacom (King Phillip), the Wampanoag people and their allies, have been (mis)appropriated in 19th century popular culture – but the more important part of the book (for me as a historian) is her careful exploration of the use of language to construct meaning during and after the war, and especially her use of the notion of killing by wounds and words. For historians of colonialism, much of this is not necessarily new – but in this case it is done quite brilliantly. More useful, I think, is her careful exploration of the writing out of our understandings of the past of the experiences of the indigenous peoples who sided with the British – a point she make explicit when she notes that 'settler' captivity narrative obscure the experiences of captive Native Americans.

Don't expect a simple narrative of the war here, a battle by battle retelling, an explication of grievances – expect an exploration of how and why a small war among time ago matters to contemporary US identities, and to be challenged to think about how contemporary discourses of war work. It is not an easy read, but it is illuminating, informative, and I suspect extremely important.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review title: War if words

I've read other books by Lepore--most recently "A" Is for American--and found her histories and analysis of what makes us uniquely American interesting. This early work shows her warring down that path focusing on the 1675-1676 battles between New England colonists and native Americans know known as King Philip's War. But from the beginning, writes Lepore, much of it was a war of words. "Each word in its title--'King,' 'Philip's,' 'War'--has been passionately disputed. Philip is said to have been neither a 'king' nor, truly, 'Philip', and not only historians but contemporaries, too, have insisted that what took place in New England in 1675 and 1676 was simply too nasty" to be called a war. (p. xv)

The war was triggered by the killing of the English-speaking "Christian Indian" named John Sassamon. Words immediately matter. Identification as a Christian Indian means he was one of those native Americans who lived close enough to the colonists to hear and accept the preaching of Puritan missionaries. The name John Sassamon is clearly a name given him by the English, not his birth name. And his literacy as an English speaker enabled him to serve as a translator between the colonists and the many groups of native peoples, some "Christian" and others not, with clear and important distinctions in how they were perceived and treated, of many different tribes. But

it was his linguistic skills, and especially his literacy, that made it possible for him to switch sides with such facility. But those same skills, and the untenable position they put him in, eventually led John Sassamon to his death, a death that signaled the failure of the English and native peoples to live together peaceably, the gradual loss of native political autonomy, and the eventual extinction of the [native] language. (p. 43)

Words worked against the native peoples in other ways as well. Lepore focuses on the sources of narratives of the war, who wrote them, when, and where they were published. And all of the published narratives we have were written by the colonists and published in Boston or London. The only native voices we hear are written and reported by the English. These narratives used language that corresponded to English expectations of war and culture, treating the war as "a message from God" expressed in official days of prayer, fasting, and thanksgiving (p. 102-104)--although not now, as just a few decades earlier in that first capital-T Thanksgiving, a shared celebration between native and English people, cultures, cuisines, and languages.

English colonists most often “read” and “translated” Indian cruelties either as random acts of savagery or as messages from God. What they utterly failed to consider was that the war might not only be an obscure message from a distant but reproachful God but also a loud shout from extremely disgruntled but very nearby neighbors, communicating a complex set of ideas about why they were waging war. (p. 129)

This disconnect contributed to the nastiness of the conflict. One colonial writer classified the battles as "rather Massacres, barbarous inhumane Outrages" (p. 113), not war as Europeans expected war (Lepore spends some time looking at contemporary standards of just, unjust, and holy wars). But again we're only reading the war from one side "while King Philip's War can be understood as a war between a non state society and an encroaching state, war was a serious and deadly matter in both cultures." (p. 118).

In every measurable way King Philip’s War was a harsher conflict than any Indian-English conflict that preceded it. It took place on a grander scale; it lasted longer; the methods both sides employed were more severe. . . . In some important ways King Philip’s War was a defining moment, when any lingering, though slight, possibility for Algonquian political and cultural autonomy was lost and when the English moved one giant step closer to the worldview that would create, a century and a half later, the Indian removal policy adopted by Andrew Jackson. (p. 166-167)

And in fact, some Christian Indians were removed from their homes to an island off shore for both their protection and to separate them from the warring natives with whom the English feared the Christian Indians may find common cause. As the narrators often wrote, and as John Sassamon learned to his eternal loss, the English had trouble telling a "good" Indian from a "bad" one. After the war ended, many of the Christian Indians were shipped into slavery along with the defeated Indians. (p. 156-158)

Lepore concludes her history by looking at how the war was treated years later. The centennial remembrances of the war coincided with a new revolutionary war, bringing different viewpoints to the relationship between the natives and the colonists (now identifying as "not British") as they tried to square their English language and culture against their land (expropriated from the Indians) into an acceptable "American"-ness. During the 1830s Edwin Forrest in his massive hit stage play "Metamora" was "most American when he played an Indian. Only by appropriating Indianness did Forrest most effectively distinguish himself from all that was English. Without its aboriginal heritage, America was only a more vulgar England, but with it, America was its own nation, with a unique culture and it's own ancestral past." (p. 200). This appropriation of Indian culture and past occurred as Jackson expropriated native lands east of the Mississippi River and added the horror of the Trail of Tears to the legacy of both our ancestral past and our lasting culture.

Lepore has grown as a writer in the 20-plus years since this first major history. The writing here is sometimes more tangled than it needs to be, although approaching the topic through the war of words was never going to result in a simple narrative history. And it is this approach that gives this easily-overlooked battle its deeper meaning.

As a footnote, one reason that I read this book was the genealogical research by a relative that concluded that my wife's family may be distant descendants of King Philip. Lepore reports that he had only one son, who was one of the Indians shipped into slavery....where the thread of his life is lost. He may have died at sea, ended up in Africa as some of the exported Indians did, or made his way back to America further south after being sent away by Caribbean countries who refused to accept these potential slave laborers.

[Kelli Peters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Throughout the early years of European settlement in North America, the language used to describe interactions with Native Americans played an important role in the early formation of American identity. As Jill Lepore describes in "The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origin of American Identity", early English settlers were concerned with their identity; they wanted to clearly define themselves as separate from Englishmen, but worried about becoming too similar to Native Americans in the area. English settler’s concern over the formation of their identity, contributed to they way in which they wrote about King Philip’s War. As Lepore says “the solution to the colonists’ dilemma between peacefully degenerating into barbarians or fighting like savages: wage the war, and win it, by whatever means necessary, and then write about it, to win it again”. Through language, English settlers in North America were able to control their history and the development of a new American identity.

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Name of War is a fascinating account of King Philip's War, a violent and bloody affair in which the second generation New England Colonists were pitted against King Philip (Metacom) and various indigeous peoples of the area. As each side fights this war to maintain their cultural identity, each group inevitably changes. These changes impact what later becomes a cultural identity unique to the United States. If you love history, Colonial American history, war history, or just enjoy reading about gory violence, this book is for you.

[Lucas Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still a five star read. Such a thoughtful and unique exploration of one of the most popular "forgotten" subjects of American history. Reading this in light of Lepore's celebrity (for a historian) as a public intellectual, textbook author, and podcast host, it is amazing to see that so much of her mature persona and style are here in a book that began it's life as her doctoral dissertation. I have not idea how students will respond to her work, but it was a pleasure to revisit, even if the end of part 3/beginning of part 4 drag.

[Pádraig Lawlor · Rating 5 out of 5]

In The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity, Jill Lepore seeks to analyze a conflict between Native Americans and colonists residing in New England. Both factions erupted into the brutal conflict known King Philip's War, named after Philip, the leader of the Wampanoag Indians. Exclusive to Lepore's argumentative framework is her concentrated focus on war and memory. Indeed, her examination concerns the role of recollection in the field of historical analyses and what dangers such an approach presents. In the enduring dispute, language, as Lepore contests, became a critical factor in our understanding of perhaps one of the bloodiest American wars. This line of enquiry drives Lepore's pursuit for the earliest expressions of "American identity." Lepore's analytical and theoretical style is best demonstrated in her fluent entwining of interpretive passages with an absorbing narrative. Her work encompasses both primary analysis and synthesis, utilizing materials from newspapers and personal correspondence to histories such as Frederick Jackson Turner's, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893). What is significant regarding her use of secondary material is the scarcity thereof from the past half-century. Lepore is advantageous in her use of primary material. King Philip's War compelled a large number of English colonists to justify the war. Consequently, they penned their reasons for warfare, much to the historians' delight. What transpires, Lepore argues, is a feud embroiled in identity issues. On the battlefield, English, Native Americans, and European Americans struggled over such predicaments. She depicts the horrors of this conflict, from gruesome tortures to the massacre of women and children, so explicitly barbaric that the term "war" barely applies.

Evading a chronological narrative, Lepore divides her arguments into four main parts: Language, War, Bondage, and Memory. In Part One, she demonstrates how literacy played an active role in igniting the war. Moreover, she examines how only the English captured stories in writing. Lepore illustrates her points by focusing on the case of John Sassamon, a Native American convert to Christianity and "praying Indian", who played a key role as a "cultural mediator" (p. 10). Sassamon's literacy, she claims, came a price. It allowed him the opportunity to speak to both groups, which adversely caused suspicion. In June 1675, English colonists charged and tried three Wampanoag Indians for the murder of Sassamon: Tobias, Wampapaquan, and Mattashunnamo. Although Historians have differed as to why the Wampanoags would have murdered Sassamon, Lepore suggests that "in a sense," it was literacy (p. 25). In Part Two, Lepore demonstrates the necessity of the captivity narrative in comprehending war. A narrative genre also utilized by contemporary historians such as Linda Colley and Pauline Turner Strong, she examines how the English settlers detested the uncivility the Native Americans portrayed. Their destruction of English houses, farms, crops, livestock, clothing, and bodies threatened to eradicate the colonists 'Englishness. The English considered writing about such action as a method to distinguish themselves from the uncivilized Native Americans. In Part Three, Lepore explores the differing experiences of those involved in the war such as Mary Rowlandson and Joshua Tift, an English renegade. Rowlandson, a colonial American woman who was captured by Native Americans during the war wrote of her ideal in, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682). Here, Lepore portrays the complications and contradictions involved in such memoir writings. Whereas Rowlandson was later ransomed, others encountered a darker fate. Those charged with treason were either executed or enslaved after the war. Finally, in Part Four, Lepore discusses John Augustus Stone's Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags (1829). She argues that this popular play exemplifies how later generations of European Americans remembered and learned about the war. Furthermore, she contests that this particular play serves as a single figure in a larger equation. When placed alongside Andrew Jackson's announcement of his Indian removal policy and William Apess's public lecture Eulogy on King Philip (1836), the play embodies the grander narrative involving the issue of sovereignty.

In short, Lepore's work is a success. Whilst recapturing the ongoing struggles faced by Native Americans and colonists residing in New England, she also reminds the reader of the vulnerabilities involved in truly understanding past wars. Reconstruction is no easy feat. It is susceptible to many weaknesses evoked by what is considered 'fact' and 'fiction.' Whereas plays such as Stone's Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags reflect the nineteenth century's outlook of the war, it is vital one places the conflict in its correct context. Additionally, it is essential one considers sources from both Native Americans and Colonists. Although the lack of primary evidence can often yield the historians pen, she contends that other methodologies can bring about results. Indeed, placing the feud into the larger framework of American sovereignty and identity, Lepore encapsulates a masterful narrative. She convincingly posits that history is written by the victors, but that should not compel one to neglect those overpowered.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

though the title suggests it, this book is not about King Philip's War--the battle between Wampanoags and white settlers in Mass--it is rather about how the narrative of history--through texts and plays--and collective memory of the conflict have been used to shape identity in the centuries since.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew I was going to love this book when the author quoted Jeanette Winterson on the first page.

[Frederick Channell · Rating 1 out of 5]

Had to read this for a Colonial History class in college. Three other classmates did also. We all hated it. As dated as Flintlocks and Tomahawks is, it is a far better book on the war.