King Philip's War

King Philip's War (1675–1678) was a colonial war in which a coalition of Algonquian tribes of the Northeastern Woodlands—the Wampanoags, the Pocomtucs, the Nipmucs, and the Narragansetts—fought against the Puritan settlers of the New England Colonies and their Indian allies—the Mohegans, the Pequots, and Christian Indians. The war continued in the most northern reaches of New England until the signing of the Treaty of Casco Bay on April 12, 1678.

The British colonization of the New England began in the 17th century, with roughly 20,000 Puritan settlers establishing and joining colonies in North America—primarily Plymouth Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony—in the Great Migration of 1620–40 alone. Massasoit, chief sachem of the indigenous Wampanoag tribe, had made and maintained an agreement with the colonists. Massasoit's younger son Metacom (c. 1638–1676), named King Philip by the settlers, became the sachem in 1662 after the death of his father and his older brother Wamsutta (c. 1634–1662). Metacom, however, forsook his father's alliance between the Wampanoags and the colonists after repeated violations by the latter. The colonists insisted that the 1671 peace agreement should include the surrender of Native guns; then three Wampanoags were hanged in Plymouth Colony in 1675 for the murder of John Sassamon, a Wampanoag schoolmaster and interpreter, which increased tensions. Native raiding parties attacked homesteads and villages throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maine over the next six months, and the colonial militia retaliated. The colonies assembled the largest army that New England had yet mustered, consisting of 1,000 militia and 150 Native allies.