King Philip's War
King Philip's War (1675–77).The first large‐scale military action in the American colonies, King Philip's War pitted bands from various tribes against the New England colonists and their Indian allies. The causes of the war were rooted in the frictions between an expanding, assertive culture and a threatened, increasingly dependent one. Native Americans, whose currency (wampum) was losing value, had to sell land to acquire trade goods. Tribal leaders also resented the imposition of European authority and the decline of their own power. Indians had other grievances as well.
The war began in Plymouth Colony in 1675, then spread throughout New England. Although colonists blamed “King Philip,” principal sachem of the Wampanoags, for starting hostilities, his warriors probably acted independently, not as part of an intertribal conspiracy. The colonists' clumsy reaction to a local uprising soon produced a major rebellion. Nipmucks,...
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