It also enlarges aspects of what has become the standard narrative of the conflict: how Massachusetts abused and imprisoned Christian Indians on Deer Island; how the victors broke their pledges and sold surrendering Natives into slavery or executed them; and how, even after the death of
Metacom and Weetamoo, the Wabanakis continued their war in the North.
They sought English protection since they had "been informed of late that some persons had designed their destruction." (1) The sachems stated that their enemies wanted to harm them because they were "seeking after the knowledge of the true God and his ways." (2) The alliance seems to have been directed against
Metacom, who opposed the Christianization of Indians, but it may also have been designed to garner increased protection from land-hungry English colonists.
After all, as its subtitle indicates, his book stops at 1675--the year that saw the beginning of
Metacom's Rebellion, also known as King Philip's War, which nearly wiped out Puritan society.
Ironically, fifty years later his son,
Metacom aka King Philip, was murdered by Colonial soldiers who proceeded to put his head on a stake and parade it through the streets of Plymouth.
Mandell (Truman State U.) explores King Philip's War, between Europeans and Native Americans from 1675-1676, and describes how colonial expansion and encroachments on Wampanoag Indian sovereignty caused the war and how the leader
Metacom (Philip) sought to enlist the aid of other tribes against the colonists in Plymouth.
see Philip Gould, "Remembering
Metacom: Historical Writing and the
Fearful of their own desires to separate from these 'fathers' and consciously to embrace the cultural changes they have experienced since the Restoration, in the years after the conflict with
Metacom, such men not only renew and transform the jeremiadic rhetoric of generational declension by turning to a rhetoric of passivity, they also actively support the publication and republication of a new postwar type of providence tale--the narrative of an orthodox woman's captivity by Indians.
Colonists needed such reaffirmations in the midst of the horrific King Philip's War (1675-76), in which the Wampanoag sachem
Metacom, fearing the utter destruction of his tribe, led some united Indians in a powerful struggle against the colonists.
Almost a hundred years earlier, in the wake of the Indian removals (1830s), eight separate plays glorified
Metacom, known to the early colonists as King Philip, who died during King Philip's War of 1675-6, when over half the native population in New England was massacred (S.
Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, 386
Metacom Ave., Bristol, RI 02809 Phone: 401-253-2000 Fax: 401-253-8211
"Remembering
Metacom: Historical Writing and the Cultures of Masculinity in Early Republican America." Sentimental Men: Masculinity and the Politics of Affect in American Culture.