War and Colonization in the Early American Northeast 2022050696, 2022050697, 9781032223292, 9781032223285, 9781003272113

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WAR AND COLONIZATION IN THE EARLY AMERICAN NORTHEAST

This book takes a new approach by synthesizing the work of scholars of military and Indigenous history to provide the frst chronologically ordered, region-wide, and long-term narrative history of confict in the Early American Northeast. War and Colonization in the Early American Northeast focuses on war and society, European colonization, and Indigenous peoples in New England from the pre-Columbian era to the mid-eighteenth century. It examines how the New English used warfare against Native Americans as a way to implement a colonial order. These conficts shaped New English attitudes toward Native Americans, which further aided in the marginalization and the violent targeting of these communities. At the same time, this volume pays attention to the experiences of Indigenous peoples. It explores pre-Columbian Native American confict and studies how colonization altered the ways of warfare of Indigenous people. Native Americans contested New English eforts at colonization and used violent warfare strategies and raids to target their enemies—often quite successfully. However, in the long run, depending on time and geographic location, confict and colonization led to dramatic and violent changes for Native Americans. This volume is an essential resource for academics, students, academic libraries, and general readers interested in the history of New England, military, Native American, or U.S. history. Christoph Strobel is Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA. He is the author of Native Americans of New England (2020), The Global Atlantic: 1400–1900 (2015), The Testing Grounds of Modern Empire (2008), and many other publications.

WAR AND COLONIZATION IN THE EARLY AMERICAN NORTHEAST

Christoph Strobel

Designed cover image: Troops of the Colonial Armee under the command of Captain John Mason (c. 1600–1672) destroyed a Pequot Indian village during the Pequot War in New England, 1637. Coloured engraving of the 19th century. Photo © North Wind Pictures/ Bridgeman Images First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Christoph Strobel The right of Christoph Strobel to be identifed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Strobel, Christoph, author. Title: War and colonization in the early American northeast / Christoph Strobel. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifers: LCCN 2022050696 (print) | LCCN 2022050697 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032223292 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032223285 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003272113 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Indians of North America—Wars—1600–1750. | Indians of North America—Colonization—New England. | Indians of North America—Government relations—To 1789. | New England—History— Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. Classifcation: LCC E82 .S76 2023 (print) | LCC E82 (ebook) | DDC 974/.02—dc23/eng/20230111 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022050696 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022050697 ISBN: 978-1-032-22329-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-22328-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-27211-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003272113 Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

For Anne, Lora, and Kristin

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments Chronology Introduction: “By the Sword We Seek Peace:” War and Colonization in the Early American Northeast 1 2

3

viii ix

1

War Before New England: Confict and Society in Dawnland

14

“It is too furious, it slays too many”: English Colonization and Confict in Southern New England Through King Philip’s War

50

“For every Scalp . . . as Evidence of their Being Killed”: Wars and the Colonization of Northern New England

83

Epilogue: War and its Legacies Bibliography Index

124 131 141

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As the endnotes, bibliography, and text acknowledge, this book benefted from the work of many researchers. Their publications contributed tremendously to my understandings about war and colonization in the Early American Northeast and the United States. As I was working on this book, I learned from discussions with students in my courses on “Wars and Native Americans in New England,” “Native Peoples of the Northern Eastern Woodlands,” and “Native American History.” My thinking about war, colonization, genocide, and Euro-Indigenous relations also benefted from the scholarly infuences and feedback of several colleagues and mentors. I want to especially acknowledge the late Neal Salisbury, Alice Nash, William Bauer, John Higginson, Joye Bowman, Bob Forrant, Abby Chandler, Peter d’Errico, Sigrid and David Anderson, Deirdre Hutchison, and one reviewer who remained anonymous. Moreover, I owe thanks to the excellent editorial team at Routledge involved in the making of this book: Kimberly Smith, Allison Sambucini, Emily Irvine, Suvitha Raj, Rhona Carroll, and Denise File. My gratitude to my family—Anne, Lora, and Kristin—cannot be expressed in words. You lived with this book for a long time. Moreover, and as always, Kristin served as a frst sounding board and read as well as commented on the entire manuscript.

CHRONOLOGY

ca. 2,500 BP–ca. 1,500 CE ca. 1490s–early 1600s

1524

1534–1542

1603–1608 1607 1608 1611 1613 1615

Woodland period Early Contact period: An era defned by the increasing presence of European fshermen, traders, whalers, slave raiders, several failed attempts to establish colonial settlements, and disease outbreaks among the Indigenous peoples in the region Mariner Giovanni da Verrazzano interacts with various coastal Indigenous groups in New England Jacques Cartier attempts to establish a colony in the St. Lawrence River Valley in modernday Canada Samuel de Champlain leads various expeditions throughout the Northeast Short-lived English colony on the Sagadahoc River (in today’s Maine) Champlain establishes a French foothold at today’s Quebec City French eforts to establish a colonial foothold in modern-day Maine Virginian mission to target French holdings in Maine Dutch settlers establish the colonial outpost of Fort Nassau (Albany, NY)

x

Chronology

1616–1619 1620 1621

1630 1632–1642 1633–1635 1636–1637 1640s–1680s

1646–1675

1675–1676 1689–1697

1702–1713 1722–1727 1744–1748 1754–1763 1763 1775–1783

New England’s Native American populations face a series of deadly disease outbreaks Puritans establish a colony at Patuxet/ Plymouth The Pauquunaukit Wampanoag (Pokanoket) sign a treaty of defensive alliance with Plymouth Colony Founding of Boston “Great Migration” of Puritan colonists English colonization of Connecticut River Valley commences Pequot War Various attacks by the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) against Native American groups in New England John Eliot’s outreach to several southern New England communities leads to the creation of several “praying towns” King Philip’s War Nine Years War also known as War of the League of Augsburg (War of the Grand Alliance) and King William’s War War of Spanish Succession/Queen Anne’s War Dummer’s War War of Austrian Succession/King George’s War Seven Year’s War/“French and Indian War” Treaty of Paris American Revolution

INTRODUCTION “By the Sword We Seek Peace:” War and Colonization in the Early American Northeast

Maybe curiously at frst glance, we begin this history about war in the Early American Northeast by taking a look at the fag of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. On a white background, the fag features a blue and yellow seal that depicts a Native American. There is also a Latin inscription that comes from the era of the American Revolution on the side of the seal. It reads: “Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem.” “By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty” is the often-used English translation of the motto. This fag has a long and complex history. It is inspired by the seventeenthcentury seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which depicts a Native American who is covered by only a few leaves. He pleads with the English colonizers: “Come over and Help us.” The historic seal provides a glimpse into U.S. mainstream society’s strained history with Native Americans. The Anglo American tropes of Native American “backwardness” and “naked savagery” are exposed in the image, and refect European views throughout the early modern era. At this time, many Europeans, often without ever setting foot into the Americas, or encountering a Native American person, described the Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere as scantily dressed, “wandering,” and “uncivilized.” Furthermore, and while the seal makes an aspirational claim that the English who established Massachusetts Bay Colony came to the region to assist the Indigenous populations, this reality did not play itself out on the ground. The colonists’ desire to build a stable, prosperous, and secure colony was in direct opposition to Native American goals to maintain their sovereignty and remain in control of their homelands. Thus, rather than being refective of the moral aspirations of English colonists, the seal’s purpose, in large part, was to help fundraise but also to justify the imperial endeavor of the colony.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003272113-1

2

Introduction

To the casual eye, the contemporary fag of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts appears less controversial, as it seems to have resolved some of the issues of its historic predecessor. The depiction of the Native American appears to be more sophisticated and less ofensive. Most notably, the Indigenous person is dressed and the speech bubble is gone. Yet, the fag has some odd features that are easily missed without context. The face and head is based on that of a nineteenth-century Native American model from out west and was added to the body that represents an Indigenous person of Massachusetts background. The choice of a western Native American in this composite might seem curious, given the continuous presence of Indigenous peoples in Massachusetts. Yet, by the late nineteenth century, when this version of the seal was designed, mainstream society had convinced itself that Indigenous peoples had “disappeared” from New England. Those communities that remained, at least in the minds of those in dominant society who bothered to think about them at all, were just not “Indian” enough due to their intermarriage with African Americans and European Americans. The puzzling assembly of features embodied in the Native American fgure is only the beginning of the concerning elements of this fag. The weaponry and the material objects depicted in the image also have disturbing histories. The bow the Native American holds in one of his hands, for instance, is believed to have been modeled on the weapon carried by an Indigenous person who was killed around Sudbury, Massachusetts, in the 1650s. It is today part of the collection at Harvard’s Peabody Museum. A further peculiar element is the sword hanging over the Native American head, especially given the history of Native American beheadings that was part of New English warfare in the seventeenth century. Miles Standish, for instance, who served as the military advisor to the Puritans on the Mayfower and then as the commander of Plymouth Colony, led a group of English colonists in one of their frst violent encounters with the Massachusetts. During this engagement, one Indigenous fghter’s head was cut of. English colonists then displayed the war trophy outside the gate of Plymouth. Such severing and piking of heads was not a one-time occurrence during the Puritan colonization of New England. The heads of various important Indigenous leaders, such as the Wampanoag sunksquaw Wetamoo or the sachem Metacom, known to the English as King Philip, also met such a fate. Both were among the leaders of an Indigenous resistance movement against the New England colonies in the 1670s—today called King Philip’s War. Wetamoo’s head was piked in Taunton, and Metacom’s head was displayed in Plymouth for two decades after his killing. Such historic incidents make the placement of the sword above the Native American head particularly awkward. To add to the sardonicism of the seal, Metacom’s actual belt, today also at Harvard’s Peabody Museum, was supposedly used as the model for the one shown on the fag.1 While the use of the seal has met strong opposition from Indigenous peoples and activists in the Commonwealth, who fought for decades for the fag to be

Introduction

3

abolished, and the seal, after a unanimous recommendation of a State Committee in May 2022, will likely be replaced, most residents in Massachusetts do not have much time to think about, and often are unaware of, the previously raised issues. To a historian specializing in colonial-Indigenous relations, however, the assembled body and objects in the image are a reminder of the legacies of colonization and war in New England and the United States. The seal and its motto—“by the sword we seek peace”—point to the pervasiveness of symbols of white settler colonialism as well as the foundational role that war and violence have played in the region’s history. They underscore that, as in other parts of North America, violence and war played a central role in the conquest and colonization of New England. Native Americans played a central role in this dramatic contest. But as Indigenous scholar Ned Blackhawk reminds us, academics have often “failed to gauge the violence that remade much of the continent before U.S. expansion. Nor have American historians fully assessed the violent efects of such expansion on the many Indian peoples caught within these continental changes.”2 The seal and the state’s motto also underscore the power of historic memory, and in this particular case, the power of forgetting. Just like most residents in Massachusetts are unaware of the awkward symbolism on their state fag, the central role that war against Indigenous peoples played in the history of the creation of New England and the United States is one that is often ignored. As the history of violence and colonization challenges conventional mainstream versions of history, it is a past that is often avoided, quickly glossed over, and preferred to be forgotten. In fact, there is little public discussion about the Massachusetts state seal and even less of an efort to situate the fag in this historic context.3 This book argues that war played a signifcant role in shaping the history of the Early American Northeast—the place we today call New England. From precolonial times through the wars of the eighteenth century, confict had a decisive impact on both Native American and European American societies in the region. War involved, energized, strengthened, stressed, and weakened Native American and European communities. In the long run, however, and depending on time and place, conficts with the English undermined the ability of Indigenous peoples to resist militarily and pushed Native Americans into marginal positions. For the English and Anglo American colonists, war became a means to establish colonial control over the region. These struggles reshaped the lives, worlds, and political sovereignty of Indigenous peoples. War and colonization created a complex situation, shaped not only by military skirmishes but by diverse interactions, Indigenous-European alliances, disease, land loss, captive taking, servitude, and slavery. For Native Americans in New England, as for Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas, colonization was a process of dramatic political, social, and cultural changes; challenges; loss; destruction; and survival. Thus, by the means of the “sword,” New English colonization subjugated the region’s Indigenous people into “peace.”

4

Introduction

This strategy was shaped by attacks and raids against Indigenous settlements and by military missions which were, by the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, often part of larger trans-Atlantic wars that were fought throughout the Northeast. Such campaigns, intended to kill non-combatants and combatants alike, sought to burn and destroy Indigenous farmlands and food storages, and aimed to raid for “war captives.” Captured individuals were often either enslaved, became indentured servants, used as bargaining chips, or, an untraceable number, were killed. Through various wars, New England colonies ofered high bounties for Native American scalps, including those of women and children. Often the fear, or the potential, of attack let Indigenous communities to abandon their settlements to escape from the reach of colonial forces. Over time, warfare and military campaigns wore down Indigenous communities, undermined their ability to resist, aided in the spread of disease, famine, and spurred an Indigenous refugee diaspora. During many such campaigns and the wars in general, European colonists relied on recruiting Native American allies, to assist and to guide them in their attacks on Indigenous peoples and their European competitors. Native Americans and European Americans alike lived in an extremely violent and dangerous world shaped by a series of wars and conficts. Ultimately, warfare had the most devastating impact on the Indigenous populations. To some readers, the aforementioned warfare tactics against Indigenous peoples in the Early American Northeast might raise the specter of genocide, a topic that is hotly debated among scholars. Much of the popular scholarship on war and Native Americans denies that genocide occurred during the “Indian Wars” of “westward expansion.”4 Moreover, the historian James Axtell cautions about the use of genocide in the context of Early American history. “Genocide, as distinguished from other forms of cruelty, oppression, and death, played a very small role in the European conquest of the New World.” Axtell argued that the word “genocide” “was coined in 1944 to describe the infamous Nazi attempts to annihilate the Jews, a religious and cultural group they chose to classify as a biological sub-species of race,” but could not be used to describe the “vast majority of encounters between Europeans and Indians.”5 Axtell is certainly right in his desire to caution scholars in the overuse of the term “genocide.” At the same time, genocide cannot only be equated with the horrors of the Nazi regime. Moreover, Axtell opens himself up to the criticism of relativizing the violence that was committed against Native Americans throughout the history of the Americas. Other scholars have taken a more nuanced tone. Some researchers maintain that some acts committed against Native Americans might have had genocidal tendencies or that genocide “occurred sporadically,” while others raise concerns about applying the twentieth-century concept of “genocide” retroactively onto history.6 In his book Native America and Genocide, Alex Alvarez argues that Native American boarding schools might ft the description of genocide. Nevertheless, Alvarez maintains in a nuanced discussion that the treatment of Native Americans, despite its horrors, does not constitute a policy of genocide.7

Introduction

5

In recent years, a number of historians have started to consider the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in a North American context. The convention defnes that genocide is perpetrated if any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inficting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.8 By using this defnition, and by examining the role that federal and state ofcials played, by scrutinizing persons who fnanced the violence, and by studying those who perpetrated the killings, Benjamin Madley makes the case that Native Americans faced genocide in California in the nineteenth century.9 Applying the same classifcation, and by closely examining the experience of Native Americans with dispossession and forced relocations east of the Mississippi River from the 1770s to the 1850s, historian Jefrey Ostler argues that the United States perpetrated a broader campaign of genocide against Native Americans.10 Moreover, studying roughly the same region and time period as Ostler, Robert Owens, in his book on Anglo American wars with Indigenous peoples, also contends that Native American genocide occurred.11 Historians of New England have so far avoided the genocide question. Yet, a careful consideration of the genocide convention, as well as the issues raised by the work of the aforementioned historians, raises important questions in the context of the Early American Northeast. The cumulative impact of violence and massacres, the New English scalp bounties, the targeting of non-combatants by colonial forces, the movements of Indigenous refugees, and the statements by colonial ofcials and colonists underscore atrocious and genocidal elements, motivations, and intent during the Anglo-Indigenous wars in the Early American Northeast. Moreover, the experience of Native American children and their separation from their relatives as a result of boarding schools, the so-called welfare policy of family separation, or due to enslavement or indenture, as well as the reports of the forced sterilization of Indigenous persons in the frst half of the twentieth century in New England, all underscore the perpetration of what the UN convention defnes as genocidal policies or acts.12 While the question of genocide is a neglected topic in the scholarship of Early America, many writers pay attention to the phenomenon of war. There is a large body of academic and popular non-fction literature on this topic. Many of these books discuss the histories of specifc wars, battles, campaigns, or raids, and, given

6

Introduction

its centrality in New England history, numerous works have been written about King Philip’s War and, to a lesser degree, conficts such as King William’s War, Queen Anne’s War, and the Pequot War.13 There is a proliferation of narrative histories in this genre, but no writer in the feld has matched the output, readability, and infuence of the nineteenth-century amateur historian Francis Parkman. Several of his books dealt with the imperial and Euro-Indigenous wars of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Parkman was a great writer and storyteller, which likely explains his continued infuence, but his works also provide insights into the white, Anglo Saxon, and Protestant supremacist thought prevalent during his lifetime. Thus, his attitudes toward the French and Native Americans were often dismissive and chauvinistic. Native Americans often appear as one-dimensional fgures who played the role of the pawns of the French. Moreover, he drew a picture of North America as a continent steeped in “wilderness” and “savagery”—a place ready to be taken over by a “superior” Anglo American population on a mission to fulfll its “manifest destiny.” The representations, myths, and stereotypes utilized by Parkman continue to be infuential in mainstream U.S. culture today, and they have been recycled in a number of popular narrative histories.14 The academic literature that examines European-Indigenous war in New England and Early America focuses on a variety of issues. Scholars study issues such as military tactics, technology, cross-cultural martial infuences, and gender. Several researchers also explore how the wars with Native Americans have shaped Anglo American culture, ways of waging as well as conduct in war, and settler colonialism. Thus, there is a developed feld that explores multiple aspects of war and culture in the region. The issue of war and gender has been given some attention in the literature of the Early American Northeast. Ann Little’s book Abraham in Arms: War and Gender in Colonial New England, for instance, shows how diferent understandings and perceptions about gender played a central role in shaping English, French, and Native American interpretations and dynamics of the wars in the region. Moreover, Gina Martino’s Women at War in the Borderlands of the Early American Northeast pays special attention to the role that women played during conficts.15 Scholars examine other aspects of war and culture in the context of the colonial Northeast, eastern North America, and the Atlantic World. In Barbarians & Brothers: Anglo American Warfare, 1500–1865, Wayne Lee, for example, examines how a multifaceted military culture emerged that sought to impose “restraint” on forces, while, at the same time, allowing for “atrocities” of enemies in combat. It was both violence and restraint, Lee argues, which came to defne English and Anglo American warfare in Britain, Ireland, and North America. It did so in diverse, complex, chaotic, and confusing ways. Lee argues that the massive escalation of violence between Native Americans and English colonists in North America was due to the fact that Native American “systems of restraint did not mesh or synchronize with the European systems.”16

Introduction

7

Historians have especially debated how confict between Europeans and Native Americans infuenced and altered warfare. Howard Peckham in his study The Colonial Wars, 1689–1762, for instance, argues that English colonists modifed their way of fghting in response to their experiences of war with Native Americans.17 Patrick Malone, who focuses on the period from the 1620s to 1670s in southern New England, maintains that it was the adaptation of Native American modes of warfare, and the assistance of Indigenous allies, which enabled English colonists to prevail during King Philip’s War.18 In Rustic Warriors: Warfare and the Provincial Soldier on the New England Frontier, 1689–1748, Steven Eames discusses that the “merger of approaches”—Native American and European—led to a truly “American way” of fghting that blended the strategies.19 Several historians who focus on warfare in eastern North America throughout the colonial period, such as Guy Chet, Armstrong Starkey, and Ian Steele, instead contend, and while acknowledging some hybridization between Indigenous and European ways of fghting, that it was the prevalence of European strategies and modes of warfare that aided in deciding wars in Early America. The analysis of these historians focuses on the large and conventional battles, and they argue that by the eighteenth-century war became “Europeanized.” The contributions by Native Americans were marginal in the outcomes of conficts.20 Yet, in their analysis, Chet, Starkey, and Steele largely ignore or dismiss the Anglo American campaigns against Native Americans in the borderlands of the Early American Northeast, especially in the eighteenth century. This book examines how military units, as well as scouting or ranging parties, often assisted by Indigenous allies, sometimes consisting of a dozen fghters, at other times of a few hundred, scoured Native American homelands of the colonial Northeast. Such campaigns were driven by a desire to kill enemy combatants and non-combatants including children, women, and the elderly, and often forced Indigenous communities to retreat before sufering an attack. When opportunity arose, these attackers killed and scalped Native Americans for a bounty and burned Indigenous settlements, farm felds, and food storages in an efort to undermine the ability of Native Americans to survive in their homelands. Other scholars, while not focusing on New England and concentrating on a later period, emphasize the importance of such campaigns, which are often called by their French name: la petite guerre. The military historian John Grenier argues that “early Americans created a military tradition that accepted, legitimized, and encouraged attacks upon the destruction of non-combatants, villages, and agricultural resources,” and that this irregular and violent warfare helped “to achieve their goals of conquest.” He calls these campaigns the First Way of War and contends that la petite guerre played a key role in “American war making on the frontier” and beyond.21 The historian “Pete” Kakel also underscores the centrality that violence and war played during this period. United States “history is best understood,” he argues, “as the story of a supplanting society, a society intent on a land grab of Indigenous space and driven by a logic of elimination and a

8

Introduction

genocidal imperative to rid the new settler living space of its existing Indigenous inhabitants.”22 A number of scholars emphasize the importance of Indigenous-focused perspectives of confict in the Early American Northeast. Works by Matthew Bahar and David Silverman, for instance, highlight the efective use of European technologies, such as frearms and sailing ships, in Native American warfare.23 Furthermore, Bahar, and especially the work by historian Andrew Lipman, underscore the role that Native Americans played in the contest for the coastal regions, and the complexity of Indigenous-European relations in these maritime spaces.24 Thomas Wickman emphasizes how the New English adoption of the Native American technology of the snowshoe aided in the colonization of northern New England and led to the “imposition of a new political ecology in the Northeast.”25 Two books about King Philip’s War are also insightful additions to the feld. Lisa Brooks provides a study of the experience of several Native American individuals and communities in the war. Christine DeLucia’s book Memory Lands explores questions about memory and violence during King Philip’s War.26 The monographs listed earlier underscore the active, complex, and diverse role that Indigenous people played in the conficts in New England. Historians of European as well as of Anglo American warfare and scholars who prioritize Indigenous perspectives of war tend to engage little with the debates in each other’s felds. Armstrong Starkey’s book from 1998, European and Native American Warfare, 1665 to 1815, was the last attempt to combine military and ethnohistorical methods to explore the evolution and the impact of both Indigenous and European ways of war. Yet, as mentioned earlier, his analysis mirrored that of several of his contemporary historians of warfare. His work focused on warfare tactics, and, his discussion of the eighteenth century, focused on the large battlefelds of eastern North America.27 War and Colonization in the Early American Northeast takes a new approach by synthesizing the work of scholars of both felds, and it provides the frst chronologically ordered, region-wide, and long-term history of confict in the Early American Northeast. It is a study that focuses on the role of confict in New England, from the pre-Columbian era to the mid-eighteenth century. This book underscores Native American agency, capacity, and competence in confict, often stressed by scholars who emphasize Indigenous perspectives.28 But it also examines the role that New English violent attacks against Indigenous settlements played, especially the eforts to target Native American non-combatants such as children, women, and the elderly.29 These two sides of New English-Indigenous confict were both a central feature in the contest for the Early American Northeast. In addition, this text acknowledges Indigenous-European interaction, accommodation, collaboration, hybridity, adaptation, and exchange. This book explores the role that violence, race, and genocidal elements of confict played during war and colonization in the Northeast. It examines how the New English used warfare against Native Americans as a way to implement

Introduction

9

a colonial order and to obtain Indigenous lands. These conficts shaped New English attitudes toward Native Americans, which further aided in the marginalization and the violent targeting of these communities. At the same time, this volume pays attention to the experiences of Indigenous peoples. It examines pre-Columbian Native American confict and studies how colonization altered the ways of warfare of Indigenous peoples and Europeans alike. Native Americans contested New English eforts at colonization and used violent warfare strategies and raids to target their enemies. However, confict and colonization led to dramatic changes for Native Americans. Violence played a central role in the colonization of their homelands. These processes spurred death as a result of war, famine, deadly disease, imperial and inter-tribal competition, land loss, captive taking, servitude, and slavery. New English military campaigns aided in the violent targeting of Native American communities, but they were often inefective and frequently incompetently executed. Still, some New English campaigns of la petite guerre hit certain Indigenous communities hard. Such attacks, alongside the constant threat of war, forced a signifcant number of Native Americans to evacuate their homelands to seek refuge further distance from the English. This study underscores that in their eforts to improve their position in trade, to strengthen their regional position, or to defend their homelands and their independence, Native Americans in the Early American Northeast, sometimes alongside European allies, attacked colonial as well as enemy Indigenous settlements. Like the attacks by the New English against Native American settlements, these campaigns targeted enemy combatants and civilian populations. The military goal of these attacks was to strike fear and terror into the opposing side but also to take captives. Colonization was a contested, long drawn out, and dangerous process for all involved. There are only limited sources that provide a glimpse into the experiences of Indigenous people during conficts, especially compared to those of European Americans, but even on the New English side, sources are often imperfect. This fact makes the process of uncovering the history of Euro-Indigenous confict a challenging endeavor. There are some documents and accounts about the conventional battles that occurred in North America, which is a reason why historians have analyzed these events at length. Moreover, the experience of New English colonists during Indigenous attacks—their captivities, tribulations, and losses in life—were written about by some, and these accounts highlight the severity of the assaults committed by Native Americans. But what the producers of these narratives often failed to mention are the reasons and causes that led Native Americans to conduct such attacks, as well as how Indigenous peoples themselves were at the receiving end of violence and destruction. Instead, New English colonists often saw themselves as the victims of attacks of Indigenous “savagery,” and, by the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they argued that Native Americans assailants were also being manipulated by the French.30 The

10

Introduction

campaigns against Indigenous communities and the fghts with Native American war parties are often only alluded to in the historic record. To uncover these stories is challenging, and one often has to rely on fragmentary and sparse evidence to gain a limited glimpse into this history. This book is divided into three chapters. The frst chapter covers the period from pre-contact to 1620—the year in which a group of English, arriving on a ship called the Mayfower, established a colony at a place today known as Plymouth, Massachusetts. The frst section of this chapter examines the history of society and confict in pre-Columbian New England. It provides a glimpse into the cultural, economic, and social history of Native American communities. The text pays special attention to the role that confict played in the region before the coming of Europeans. The chapter also examines the dramatic transformations initiated by early colonial interactions in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It explores the impact that the increasing presence of European fshermen, traders, slave raiders, and several eforts at creating colonies had on the Indigenous peoples of the region. Colonization helped to alter Native American material culture and warfare. The European colonial intrusions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led to dramatic population decline as a result of disease and confict. The second chapter discusses the period from around 1620 through King Philip’s War in the 1670s. English colonial settlements led to conficts between Europeans and Native Americans. The founding of Plymouth Colony in 1620, for instance, was accompanied by several episodes of violence and tensions. The text examines the Pequot War as well as several other fashpoints in the region and the diverse Native American involvement and the impact that these tensions had on Indigenous peoples. The taking of Pequot war captives had an impact on the debate over slavery in New England. This chapter also examines how New English colonists benefted from the assistance of Indigenous allies in these wars. Moreover, the chapter studies the continued impact that inter-tribal war and tensions had on Indigenous communities in the region. The fnal part of this chapter discusses “King Philip’s War.” This confict was a cataclysmic and destructive event for the Indigenous societies in southern New England. The third chapter examines the wars that took place from the 1680s to the mid-eighteenth century. Native Americans in New England were tied into four major wars, which resulted from the Anglo-French competition over control in Europe, North America, the Atlantic World, and around the globe. English colonists called these conficts King William’s War (1688–1697), Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713), King George’s War (1744–1748), and the French and Indian War (1754–1763). Moreover, there was Dummer’s War (1722–1727), during which the Wabanaki in northern New England aimed to push back New English colonization in their homelands. Indigenous peoples from all over the Northeast participated in the power struggles between the British and the French empire. Some fought alongside the British, while others fought alongside the French,

Introduction

11

decisions often motivated by a complex set of reasons. During these conficts, and with gradually growing skill, the New England colonies used ranging and scouting warfare to hit Native Americans to the north and east. Such campaigns aided in the gradual weakening of Native American resistance, and, little by little, helped Anglo American colonists to entrench their position in northern New England. The epilogue examines the legacies of the wars in the Early American Northeast. It explores how the United States continued to deploy the kind of military campaigns against Native Americans across North America, which Anglo American colonists had staged in the Northeast. It also surveys the continuous presence of Native Americans in New England. It examines the challenges these communities faced and continue to face today, as well as the impact that the memory of war had in the Northeast. This book argues that war played a signifcant part in the colonization of New England, but it also proposes that conficts between Anglo Americans and Indigenous peoples were central in U.S. history. The Massachusetts state motto, “by the sword week seek peace,” captures this reality. Patterns of colonization, war, genocidal violence, dispossession, forced relocation, and survival that occurred in the Northeast in the seventeenth and the frst half of the eighteenth centuries, took place in other parts of North America, as the United States encroached onto the lands of an ever-growing number of Indigenous nations throughout the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. These were, however, often complex, diverse, and nuanced processes throughout North America. Nevertheless, wars with, and the colonization of, Indigenous peoples were an intrinsic part of U.S. expansion.31

Notes 1 Christoph Strobel, “ ‘By the Sword We Seek Peace’: The Massachusetts State Flag and Its Legacies in 2020,” American Studies Blog, March 18, 2020. http://blog.asjournal. org/by-the-sword-we-seek-peace-the-1620-massachusetts-state-fag-and-legaciesin-2020/. Accessed on April 27, 2021. Christoph Strobel, “A State Flag and the Violent History of Colonization,” NPR: The Academic Minute, March 22, 2022. https:// academicminute.org/2022/03/christoph-strobel-university-of-massachusettslowell-a-state-fag-and-the-violent-history-of-colonization/. Accessed on May  10, 2022. Christoph Strobel, “The Massachusetts Flag Glorifes the Violence Committed by Colonizers—Native Americans Want It Changed,” The Conversation, December 22, 2021. https://theconversation.com/the-massachusetts-fag-glorifesthe-violence-committed-by-colonizers-native-americans-want-it-changed-173626. Accessed on May 10, 2022. 2 See Ned Blackhawk, Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), for quote, see pg. 1. 3 My argument draws from the political theorist Benedict Anderson. He underscores that forgetting and misrepresenting unfavorable and horrible events and actions in history play a central role in the memory of nation-states. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Refections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (New York: Verso, 1991), chapter 11. On this issue, see also Blackhawk, 3–10.

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4 See, for instance, Peter Coozens, The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016). See also S. C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Tribe in American History (New York: Scribner, 2010). 5 James Axtell, Beyond 1492: Encounter in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 260–263. 6 See, for instance, Laurence M. Hauptman, Tribes and Tribulations: Misconceptions about American Indians and Their Histories (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), chapter 1. 7 Alex Alvarez, Native America and the Question of Genocide (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefeld, 2014). 8 “United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” December  9, 1948. www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/ atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20 Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf. Accessed on May 22, 2021. 9 Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). 10 Jefrey Ostler, Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019). 11 Robert M. Owens, “Indian Wars” and the Struggle for Eastern North America, 1763–1842 (New York: Routledge, 2021). 12 See, for instance, Christoph Strobel, Native Americans of New England (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2020), 116–117, 129–130, 148, 156–158; Frederick Matthew Wiseman, The Voice of the Dawn: An Autohistory of the Abenaki Nation (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001), 145–150. 13 For interesting works in these areas, see Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A  New History of King Philip’s War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018); Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); Fred Anderson, The Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York: Random House, 2000); Alfred A. Cave, The Pequot War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996); Michael G. Laramie, King William’s War: The First Contest for North America (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2017); Evan Haefi and Kevin Sweeney, Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfeld (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003); Robert E. Cray, Lovewell’s Fight: War, Death, and Memory in Borderland New England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014). 14 See especially Francis Parkman’s seven volumes on the British and French confict in North America. For an accessible edition of these works, see, for instance, Franics Parkman, France & England in North America, 2 vols. (New York: The Library of America, 1983). For a recent example of the infuence of Parkman on contemporary writers, see Jay Atkinson, Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston’s Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America (Lanham, MD: Lyons Press, 2015). While Atkinson is a gifted writer and storyteller, the second part of the book draws heavily from Parkman’s writing and also refects many of Parkman’s unfortunate attitudes. 15 Ann M. Little, Abrahams in Arms: War and Gender in Colonial New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Gina M. Martino, Women at War in the Borderlands of the Early American Northeast (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2018). R. Todd Romero, Making War and Minting Christians: Masculinity, Religion, and Colonialism in Early New England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011). 16 Wayne E. Lee, Barbarians & Brothers: Anglo American Warfare, 1500–1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), for quote see pg. 130.

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17 Howard H. Peckham, The Colonial Wars, 1689–1762 (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1965). 18 Patrick M. Malone, The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics among the New England Indians (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 2000). 19 Steven C. Eames, Rustic Warriors: Warfare and the Provincial Soldier on the New England Frontier, 1689–1748 (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 15–16. 20 Guy Chet, Conquering the American Wilderness: The Triumph of European Warfare in the Colonial Northeast (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003); Armstrong Starkey, European and Native American Warfare, 1675–1815 (New York: Routledge, 1998); Ian Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 21 John Grenier. The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), for quote, see pg. 10. 22 Carroll P. Kakel III, A Post-Exceptionalist Perspective on Early American History: American Wests, Global Wests, and Indian Wars (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Pivot, 2019), for quote, see pg. 1. 23 Matthew R. Bahar, Storm of the Sea: Indians and Empires in the Atlantic’s Age of Sail (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019); David J. Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2016). 24 Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). 25 Thomas M. Wickman, Snowshoe Country: An Environmental and Cultural History of Winter in the Early American Northeast (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 26 Brooks; Christine M. DeLucia, Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2018) 27 See Starkey. Compare with Steele and Chet. 28 See, for example, Bahar, Silverman, Lipman, and Wickman. 29 Grenier, The First Way of War; Kakel. See also John Grenier, The Far Reaches of Empire: War in Nova Scotia, 1710–1766 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008). 30 My thinking on violence and colonization has been infuenced by Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1968). 31 My thinking here is infuenced by Anderson, chapter 11; Blackhawk, 3–10. See also John Corrigan, Religious Intolerance, America, and the World: A History of Forgetting and Remembering (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2020).

1 WAR BEFORE NEW ENGLAND Confict and Society in Dawnland

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War Before New England

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This chapter discusses the history of the Early American Northeast from the pre-Colombian period to 1620—the year in which English colonists established Plymouth Colony on the site of the former Native American town of Patuxet. The frst part explores the history of Indigenous societies and confict before the European presence in the region. It also problematizes the methodological challenges for researchers in their eforts to uncover this past. The remainder of the chapter discusses the changes brought about by early colonization from the late ffteenth and early sixteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. It explores the European roots of colonization and examines the impact that the increasing presence of European fshermen, traders, slave raiders, and the creation of the frst colonial beachheads had on Native Americans. Such contacts and early European eforts at colonization spurred signifcant changes in the use of material culture, technology, and warfare among the Indigenous peoples of New England. This phenomenon can be especially observed through the wide adoption of frearms, the use of which proliferated throughout the region in the seventeenth century. In addition, the Wabanaki peoples in the coastal regions of the Northeast adopted European sailing technology. The increasing European presence in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had a signifcant demographic impact because it spurred inter-Indigenous warfare and the spread of disease.

Indigenous Societies and Confict in Dawnland When the First People learned that the Great River had stopped to fow, their council sent one of their representatives to investigate. The Great River was a vital life giver to the First People. It provided them with drinking water. But it was also a home for shell fsh and fsh as well as a source of water for many of the land animals the First People hunted. Like the First People, deer, moose, water fowl, bears, and many other living things were losing a source of drinking water. The creatures of the river and those who drank from it were an important source of food for the First People. The Great River also fertilized the farm felds on the foodplains. There the First People grew the three sisters—corn, squash, and beans—the essential crops in their daily life. Moreover the river was a source for transportation for trade and to visit kin. When the Great River stopped fowing, the very survival of the First People and their world was threatened. Travelling upstream the envoi of the First People learned that a giant monster blocked the Great River’s fow. It rested in the riverbed and sucked up all the water. When pleading with the scary looking creature to please move so that the river could be released to its natural bed, the monster refused and told the representative that it would not yield. The giant water monster threatened the emissary and told him that it was the First People who needed to move. Frightened and in shock the envoi hurried home to let the council know about the dangerous creature. The First People were terrifed by their prospects. Seeing his people’s anguish, Glooscap, the protector and brave warrior of the First People, emerged from his hideout in the forest. He prepared for war with the giant water monster. He painted his body red, adorned himself with eagle feathers, grew himself to the

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size of 12 feet, shaped a knife of fint stone, and signaled his intentions with a tremendous war cry. Traveling to the location where the giant water monster resided, Glooscap asked the creature to release the river. The monster, which was many times his size, laughed at him. It threateningly attempted to swallow Glooscap with its giant mouth and tried to kill him many times with a blow of one of its colossal tusks. Glooscap expertly avoided these assaults as he battled the giant water monster. As the fght raged on, Glooscap was fnally able to cut the creature’s stomach with his specially prepared fint knife. This act killed the giant water monster, and through the mortal belly wound, the Great River returned to its natural bed in time. Having fulflled his duty as protector to his community, Glooscap returned to his home, waiting for the next time his people would need his protection.1 The account of the fght between the giant water monster and Glooscap, the Wabanaki culture hero, provides us a glimpse into war in pre-colonial Indigenous societies. The Wabanaki peoples who tell related versions of this story, and who see themselves as the descendants of the First People, were a loose alliance system of Indigenous communities in the colonial era. In the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century, they controlled much of what is today northern New England and the neighboring areas in southeastern Canada. The descendants of the Wabanaki Confederacy include the Maliseet, Penobscot, Abenaki, Mi’kmaq, and Passamaquoddy of today. In Wabanaki histories, Glooscap played an important role in the creation of their homelands—Wôbanakik—which is often translated as “Dawnland” or the “Land of the Dawn.” The word “Wabanaki” is often translated as “People of the Dawn.” This name derives from the Wabanaki’s homeland’s easterly geographic location, which results in the sun rising and dawn breaking there earlier than in other parts of North America. Similarly, the Wampanoag of southeastern New England are known as the “People of the First Light.” Thus, this chapter refers to New England before European colonization as Dawnland. Accounts of wars and battles, it needs to be underscored, are not only unique to the Wabanaki’s telling of their past but a common feature in the histories of other Indigenous peoples of the Northeast. According to some accounts, Moshup, a culture hero of the Wampanoag, created the island of Noepe, today also known as Martha’s Vineyard, to escape the fghting and wars that occurred on the southern New England mainland.2 The Wabanaki and Wampanoag examples of Indigenous histories given earlier provide a window into Native American views on war. War sometimes is best avoided, as in the case of Moshup. Or, as in the case of Glooscap, sometimes a fghter needs to meet the challenge of a powerful enemy bravely, in order to protect the survival of the community. The frst part of this chapter not only explores the history of pre-Columbian confict in Dawnland but also critically engages with how we examine this past. The text looks at the long debate about the existence and the nature of confict in pre-Columbian North America. It provides a defnition of confict and war and examines the methodological challenges we face in gaining a deeper understanding. Moreover, the chapter surveys the connections of daily life and confict in Indigenous societies, and how these shaped the deep history of Dawnland.

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Debating Pre-Columbian Confict The topic of war in pre-Columbian Native North America is controversial, and a series of seemingly simple questions preoccupies those who try to understand this ancient past. Did Native Americans even engage in conficts in pre-colonial times? And, if so, what did Indigenous war and confict look like? Such questions concern Native American activists, archaeologists, anthropologists, Indigenous studies scholars, and, to a lesser degree, historians. On the one end of this argument, scholars and activists have downplayed the role of confict in pre-Columbian North American society. The late Native American activist Russell Means captured this view concisely. “Before the whites came our conficts were brief and almost bloodless, resembling far more a professional football game than the lethal annihilations of European conquest.” Scholars and activists who adhere to a similar view often argue that the claim of a violent and warlike pre-colonial past in Indigenous North America serves as a way to rationalize the historic violence committed by European Americans against Native Americans and to justify the takeover of Indigenous land.3 A number of researchers contradict this view and argue that our understanding of confict in pre-Columbian North America is complicated by “romanticized” and “politicized” views of the past, which have led to a broad failure to consider the impact that war had on Indigenous societies before 1492. Scholars and popular opinion alike, this school of thought puts forth, have embraced long romanticized notions of Native Americans based on “noble savage” stereotypes. The term “noble savage” was coined by the French-speaking Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), and the term “savage” itself was also adopted into English from the French word “sauvage.” The root of this word in French is “sauf voir,” which translates into English as a person “without faith,” meaning, in this context, without Christian belief. Rousseau argued that the “noble savage” existed in the original state of human society and that they lived in harmony and peace with their fellow “man” and “nature.” The philosopher then projected this theoretical state of existence onto the Indigenous peoples of North America—and a stereotype was born.4 In the past few decades various archaeologists, anthropologists, and other researchers maintain that there exist many examples to contradict this “noble savage” stereotype. They maintain that archaeological, ethnographic, and ethnohistorical evidence demonstrates that Indigenous warfare and ritual violence happened in North America. Confict was a widespread phenomenon.5 While these scholars certainly provide a legitimate critique of the power of the legacies of the “noble savage” stereotype, some, at the same time, seem to refect several theoretical insights espoused by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588– 1679). Like Rousseau, Hobbes theorized about early societies that lived in a “state of nature.” But he argued that there every person was against the other and

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that violence prevailed.6 The writings of Hobbes and other European and European American thinkers aided in the creation of a “bloodthirsty” or “ignoble savage” stereotype, which also had a dramatic infuence on Western thought. Thus, as we try to gain a deeper understanding of confict in Dawnland, we have to be careful not to replace a “noble” with a “bloodthirsty savage” stereotype. Both of these tropes have prevailing intellectual and cultural infuences in Western and Anglo American thought and cultural production. They shape how Western and U.S. culture portray Indigenous peoples and histories. The late Native American scholar and activists Vine Deloria reminds us: “Experts” depict Indigenous North Americans the way they would like them to be, and “the American public feels most comfortable with the mythical Indian of Stereotypeland.”7 An imagined “evil savage,” just like the “noble savage” stereotype, presents a dehumanizing image of Native Americans. This chapter does not negate the presence of confict and violence in preColumbian Dawnland. At times, the search for resources or the desire to gain a comparative advantage or domination over a neighboring society led groups to become outwardly aggressive. Moreover, the Indigenous peoples of the region, just like communities all over the world, fought to defend their peoples against outside threats. At the same time, we need to raise some qualifying questions and concerns. Can researchers put too much emphasis on the impact of “war,” by overinterpreting the often limited archaeological evidence? Did phenomena such as “war” and “ritual violence” in Indigenous societies difer throughout North America’s many regions? Moreover, given that pre-colonial history encompasses thousands of years, did the nature of violence and confict also change over time? We need to realize that the archaeological, oral historical, and primary source evidence is limited and can only provide inadequate insights. Much of the work here relies on contextualization and interpretation of imperfect data.

War and Confict: Toward an Imperfect Defnition War and warfare, it needs to be underscored, are also concepts that emerge from the English language and out of a European cultural framework. These understandings shape our contemporary understandings of these phenomena. As such, they have obtained their own cultural meanings and norms in Western society. But what did Native Americans in Dawnland call confict and war in their languages? What cultural meanings and understandings did they ascribe to these terms? How did their societies explain and rationalize these phenomena? What practices and norms did they have and how did their meanings and understanding change over time? How much of this understanding was lost in translation? Over 400 years of New English and more than 500 years of European colonization brought war, disease, dispossession, slavery, servitude, and genocidal violence. These developments had a devastating impact on Indigenous societies and

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languages in New England, and make it very difcult to grasp pre-Columbian meanings of concepts. Thus, it is helpful to have a working defnition of “war” from the outset. For this chapter, and throughout the book, the defnition of war constitutes fghting that involved diferent communities. Thus, war is a strategy used to strengthen the position of one group over another. This defnition does not necessarily require martial engagements to be large scale, but it involves communities collectively against each other.8 Archaeologists suggest that there likely was great diversity and complexity in the types of warfare that were conducted throughout the Americas but also that the intensity of confict varied throughout the long history of the Hemisphere before European colonization. We need to examine this history on a regional or case-by-case basis, given the range and intricacies of this past through time and place. This chapter in particular focuses on the long history of societies and confict in the region that we now know as New England. At the same time, the text will be cognizant about developments in much of North America east of the Mississippi River. Archaeologists and anthropologists call this region the Eastern Woodlands. War between diferent groups in the pre-Columbian Eastern Woodlands, archaeologists suggest, was often motivated by political, economic, and/or, cultural factors. Confict likely ebbed and fowed in severity, scale, intensity, duration, and frequency through time and place as it saw temporal and geographic variations throughout the region. Several researchers suggest that relatively smallscale martial engagements prevailed. Yet, some also suggest that larger battle events, with ritualized violence, could happen, a position supported by archaeological sites such as Mulberry Creek in modern northwest Alabama or Crow Creek on the Missouri River in South Dakota. Moreover, resources, cultural dynamics, levels of political organization, as well as demographic, environmental, and climate factors (such as the Little Ice Age), and developments in technology, such as the emergence of farming or the development of weapons such as the bow and arrow, all had an impact on the frequency and intensity of confict in Indigenous societies east of the Mississippi River.9 Among Native American societies in Dawnland, as limited oral histories, archaeological evidence, and colonial records suggest, confict occurred before the arrival of the frst Europeans in the sixteenth century.

Understanding War and Society in Dawnland: Methodological Challenges As the Native American presence in Dawnland likely reaches back at least 13,000  years, it is important to underscore that a lot of evidence that could provide us more conclusive insights into the history of Indigenous peoples disappeared. This development is a result of the passage of time and the destructive

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impact of colonization. Nonetheless, archaeological evidence suggests a long and continuous Indigenous presence in the Northeast. To better understand the impact that confict had on the communities in the place we today call New England, this chapter provides a glimpse into the histories, societies, and the role that war played in the region before the arrival of Europeans. This early history is essential to understand the lives that Indigenous peoples lived. Moreover, this past helps us to better understand Native American entanglements and engagements with Europeans during the colonial era, and how they engaged in confict.10 Due to the scarcity of evidence, those interested in the history of confict have to use a wide array of sources to attempt to gain a glimpse into the world of war and society in pre-Columbian Dawnland. Some archeological fnds from sites indicate the existence of confict. The discovery of weapons such as bows and arrows, spears, axes, and war clubs of wood, antler, or bone are such examples. Mass graves, or smaller groups of bodies, with evidence that suggest combatrelated injuries such as skeletal trauma, spear points or arrowhead wounds, cranial depression fractures indicating a blow to the head, and other evidence of injuries likely caused by violent combat, also serve as evidence. Native American oral traditions, like the ones discussed earlier, also speak about intergroup confict before the coming of Europeans. Pre-colonial war seems well established in the oral traditions of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking communities that live in the northeastern Woodlands. Early European sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by seafarers, traders, travelers, missionaries, ofcial observers, and colonists, also provide ethnographic information about Native Americans. Researchers often draw from these sources to gain a better understanding of Indigenous societies before colonization. All of these diferent disciplinary approaches, while providing us a glimpse into the societies and conficts in Dawnland, also have their limitations. The over 500 years of colonization that wrecked devastation on Indigenous societies, dramatically interrupted the transference of oral histories. European colonization led to a demographic catastrophe among Indigenous peoples. Societies, cultures, and traditions were lost as a result of disease, war, slave raiding, and diaspora, forcing Indigenous peoples to maintain and reinvent their communities under extremely challenging circumstances. Indigenous ways of knowing were repressed, challenged, and destroyed by eforts of mainstream society to challenge Native American communities. As a result, the surviving stories and oral histories are only a small part of what was once a vast reservoir of ancient knowledge. Their endurance is evidence of the tenacity of the culture of Indigenous peoples of Dawnland. Written or primary sources also pose challenges to historians and ethnographers. These writings can reveal biases, prejudice, and ignorance about Native Americans. European writers often displayed attitudes of cultural superiority and racism toward Indigenous peoples. Even writers who were respectful and

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immersed in Indigenous culture could misunderstand customs, traditions, practices, and subtleties as well as nuances in language. Thus, we need to approach written sources critically and discriminatingly when we try to gain a better understanding of the Native American past. There are additional issues with written sources as well as oral histories, especially in the way they address confict and war. Such sources often amplify and can provide a glimpse into bias, chauvinism, questionable heroism, the denigration and vilifcation of opponents, and justifcations and rationalization of violence. They often show a skewed and manipulated memory of what happened. As such, they are as much of interest for the insights they provide about the author or narrator, and what he, she, or they decide to tell about an event. Archaeologists interested in questions about war and society advance various theoretical observations about confict in pre-Columbian Native North America. Some scholars with an interest in this subject assume that Paleo Indian (ca. 15,000 to ca. 9,000  years ago), and Early Archaic communities (ca. 9,000 to about 8,0000 years ago) might have engaged in sporadic low-level conficts over territorial violations or valuable resources. There are some Archaic sites in the contemporary southeastern United States, such as in the Tennessee Valley, or the Windover site in east central Florida (estimated to be from about 6,000 to 5,000 BC), which suggest that communities were involved in some violent altercations with outside groups. It is important to emphasize though that evidence of confict in the archeological record, especially going back so far into the past, is rare, fragmentary, and often inconclusive. Archaeologists working on eastern North America assume that during the period from roughly 5,000 to 1,000 BC, settlements grew and populations expanded. Especially during the late Archaic Period (about 6,000 to ca. 4,000 years ago), some researchers argue, this expansion led to an increasing segmentation in communities and saw the emergence of “tribal” societies. This development, they maintain, was accompanied by an increased occurrence of confict, which was likely spurred by “feuding.” Such observations are generally based on archaeological evidence from the mid-South and lower Midwest. During the Woodland period, starting about 2,500  years ago, when agriculture became increasingly central to the lives of Indigenous peoples across eastern North America, this change also led to the creation of more “lineagebased societies.” These developments occurred especially among the societies that practiced monumental construction in the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys and their tributaries and also saw an increase in warfare. Sites throughout the modern U.S. South and Midwest, several archaeologists argue, suggest evidence of confict. As agrarian states emerged in these regions, there likely was also an increase in confict. There is archeological evidence that connects human remains with likely injuries incurred in battle, as well as evidence of bodily trauma caused by weaponry that caused death, which indicates the occurrence of war in these societies. Some sites have evidence that suggests the occurrence of trophy taking and scalping, as evidenced by the use of body parts as burial accompaniments.

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Moreover, some of the art and ceramics produced in these societies indicate that war was part of life.11 Compared to the lineage-based societies that practiced monumental construction in the Midwest and South, the Indigenous nations of the pre-Columbian Dawnland were smaller and less socially stratifed, diferences that likely also had an impact on how conficts were conducted in the region. Moreover, and compared to other regions of the Eastern Woodlands such as the Midwest and the South, archeologists often overlook or marginalize New England in their analysis. Elizabeth Chilton, one of the best-known researchers in the feld of New England archaeology, explains that archaeologists frequently consider the pre-Columbian history of the region as a “backwater of cultural evolution.” She argues that Dawnland’s Indigenous Peoples defy archaeologists’ “social evolutionary models.” Archaeological categories or concepts such as “horticulturalist,” “hunter gatherers,” or “complex state” are not easily applied as organizing principles to describe the “mobile farmer” lifeways that had emerged in the Early American Northeast prior to European colonization. Nevertheless, Chilton reminds us that “New England Algonquians ofer us an important historical example of great social and ecological stability—as well as social complexity—over more than 10 millennia.” The way pre-Columbian peoples of Dawnland farmed, subsisted, and lived in the region in a sustainable way, as well as how they fought and settled conficts provides “an alternative pathway to human history.”12

Native American Societies, Daily Life, Confict, and the Deep History of Dawnland As mentioned earlier, archaeological evidence suggests that a likely Native American presence in Dawnland reaches back at least 13,000  years. Sites studied by archeologists suggest that several locations around the region had been occupied for extended periods reaching from several hundred to thousands of years. An often-cited example is the Neville site at the Amoskeag waterfalls in today’s city of Manchester in New Hampshire. Data suggests a continuous human presence there for at least eight millennia.13 Waterfalls throughout New England, such as Amoskeag, or Pawtucket Falls, today in the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, served as popular gathering places during spawning season. In spring, fsh such as salmon, alewife, or shad traveled upstream to procreate. Thus, people from various communities from around the region gathered at waterfalls, often already sites of semi-permanent or permanent settlement. They came there to catch fsh, which provided an essential source of protein, minerals, and vitamins in the diet of Indigenous people. Yet, spawning season was not only a time during which associated groups from diferent communities gathered at the falls to catch and to feast on fsh. This was also a time during which to celebrate, to diplomatically engage with allies, and, at times, to negotiate if confict with rival groups was becoming a necessity or was deemed desirable.14

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It is, however, a challenge to fnd archeological evidence that provides us a glimpse into the deep history of Dawnland. New England’s acidic soil, so destructive to material culture items and other forms of organic evidence, combined with the passage of time, make it difcult to reconstruct the ancient history of the region. Archaeological evidence of confict in the Paleo Indian and the Early Archaic period is virtually absent. Osteological evidence, which provides proof of confict, connecting wounds to the impact of weapons, is challenging to fnd. To fnd well-preserved organic materials, located underground for thousands of years, is difcult. Archaeologists and other researchers thus have little evidence to draw from in their discussions about conficts in early societies. On the evidence, and supposing that confict occurred, we also cannot be sure how confict might have manifested and what forms it took in these societies. At the same time, one cannot necessarily assume that the scarcity of osteological evidence necessarily means that no or little confict existed. Indigenous and European settlement patterns also help to explain the scarcity of evidence. Native Americans knew the best places for settlement and farming, located especially in the fertile river valleys and coastal regions. Many New England towns, cities, and farm felds were built on top of former Native American settlements and agricultural lands. This fact is the reason why former Indigenous communities like Patuxet became the locations for English towns like Plymouth. The construction and development of English and New English villages, towns, cities, suburbs, and exurbs have had a destructive impact on archaeological evidence, which is an additional reason why we have only limited information about New England’s Indigenous past. The importance that agriculture played in both Native American and European societies explains why New English colonists moved onto the fertile lands once utilized by Indigenous peoples.15 Despite the centrality of farming in the two cultures, there existed many diferences between Native American and New English agricultural practices. Unlike in European societies, where men did the majority of feldwork, among Native Americans in the Eastern Woodlands it was common that women did much of this labor, though men helped with the work of clearing farmland. Native Americans of Dawnland practiced a slash-and-burn agriculture, and moved their farm felds and settlements on occasion when the soils became depleted. This was a mobile system of agriculture that was quite sustainable. The three sisters—corn, squash, and climbing beans—stood at the center of Indigenous farming. But women also grew pumpkins, gourds, and herbs in the same feld. Due to the absence of beasts of burden in the Eastern Woodlands, such as horses or oxen, Native Americans never developed a system of plow agriculture as people in Europe had done. Native American women of Dawnland used a hoe. This tool was often a long stick with a saltwater or freshwater shell at the end. It was used to clear the felds in the spring, to get rid of weeds, and also to push little earth piles around the corn stocks when those began to grow in early summer. Native American women also planted beans into the earth piles. The synergy of the

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bean plant growing up the corn stalk provided both plants with more stability. At the same time, the bean plant also provided nitrates to the soil that served as a fertilizer. The squash plants that spread out at the bottom of the corn aided in the prevention of the growth of weeds. The practice of hilling the corn, alongside the use of multiple plants in the same feld, increased the fertility but also the drought resistance of crops. Their expertise at food preservation and storage, using ceramics and other containers, grinding, pounding, smoking, drying their usual fare, and stockpiling these supplies in underground spaces, enabled Indigenous communities to live in relative food security and stability. Paradoxically, while Anglo Americans adopted Indigenous crops and certain farming methods, New English observers frequently disparaged Native American agriculture. Colonists had learned from Native Americans how to farm Native American crops, and Indigenous plants played an essential role in the survival of early European settlements. But in their written comments at least, many English observers failed to see the sustainability and efciency of this agrarian system. Spurred by a sense of cultural superiority, the diferences in the modes of Native American farming were met with frequent disparagement by New English observers. They often described the lives of Indigenous women as “drudgery” and caricatured Native American men as “lazy.”16 Agriculture not only helped to sustain the communities of Dawnland but also aided in war eforts. Ample food storages could feed a community even in times of confict. Moreover, what the seventeenth-century Puritan minister and founder of Providence Plantation, Roger Williams, called “nokehick,” could feed the fghters of a community when they set out on a military mission. This sustaining corn four was used to make breads, but it could also, with added water, be eaten as a paste, especially in times when it was not safe, or there was no time, to make a fre.17 The seventeenth-century Massachusetts Bay colonist and Superintendent of Praying Indians, Daniel Gookin, wrote that “this meal . . . is so sweet and toothsome and hearty that an Indian will travel many days with no other food but this meal, which he eatheth as he needs.”18 As women grew the corn and processed four, is it possible that their input was required before a party of men could launch a raid or engage in confict? Oral histories and other sources from several nations throughout the Eastern Woodlands seem to at least suggest that this was the case in several communities in pre-contact times. But the settled lifeways of farming also created vulnerabilities. During conficts, communities could face deadly attacks. Because of such susceptibilities, communities, when warned of an impending attack, quickly packed up their belongings and evacuated. In fact, Native Americans could partially uninstall their houses. In an emergency, in a relatively short amount of time, they could take of and move the roofs and walls, as they were often constructed of mats made of cattails or bark, thus, only leaving behind their houses’ frame structure made of polls. The evacuating community generally dispersed into smaller groups, which expertly avoided and dodged enemy attacks.19

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To protect their communities, Native Americans also built palisade structures. According to William Wood, who described Native American cultures in the Northeast in the early 1630s, these defensive formations could be built around their settlements; parts of their villages, or communities, constructed a fort in close vicinity to their towns where they could head to “if the enemies should unexpectedly assail them.” The palisades consisted of log walls “ten or twelve foot high, rammed into the ground, with undermining within, the earth being cast up for their shelter against the dischargements of enemies, having loopholes” out of which the defenders shot at the attackers. Over the years, there has been some scholarly debate about whether the Indigenous peoples of Dawnland built defensive structures before contact with Europeans. Work by archaeologists, like Ralph Solecki, seems to strongly suggest that at least in parts of New England, forts “were built as defensive measures against hostile neighbors” before the coming of Europeans. The construction of such forts seems to have proliferated in times of war. With European colonization, however, the construction of wooden palisaded structures became increasingly dated. As we will explore later, in their military engagements with Native Americans, the English put fres to the wooden wall structures, which rendered forts increasingly useless and even dangerous in times of war. While fre might have been occasionally used as part of warfare in other parts of the Americas, to the pre-Columbian peoples of Dawnland, it seems, the deployment of fre on a settlement was considered an inhumane military tactic. Native Americans in the region only appeared to have adopted the setting of fre to houses, settlements, and forts as a result of their confrontations with Europeans.20 The destruction of forts and settlements by fre was not the only dramatic change to the modes of fghting brought about by European colonization, but English troops also targeted Native American farm felds in their military campaigns. This fact underscores that the English understood the centrality that agriculture played in Indigenous survival, despite the frequent dismissal of Indigenous farming by commentators. Throughout the Indigenous-colonial wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English forces attacked Indigenous groups during the summer as this was the best time to burn Native American farm felds and to cause maximum damage. Moreover, during such assaults colonial troops also sought out and destroyed the food storages of Native American communities. The English deployed such total warfare in pursuit of their goals to starve their opponents, force them to retreat beyond the reaches of the New English colonies, or compel Native American communities and groups to acquiesce to their authority. While conventional narratives often assume that Native Americans fought guerilla, or a “skulking” type of, war, some early European records suggest that Native Americans had a more diverse martial culture prior to the seventeenth century. William Wood observed that Native Americans wore armors made of bark or animal skins, which were “made by their art as impenetrable, it is

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thought, as steel.” They also wore “head pieces of the same.” Native Americans used a spear and a war club according to Wood, as “they march securely and undauntedly” and considered the use of “bows” in this type of military engagement “a cowardly fght.”21 Archaeological evidence and other sources also suggest that fghters used shields in these types of engagements. That said, the occasional fnd of human remains indicates that mortal battle wounds were caused by arrow injuries. Or, they suggest, arrow wounds were inficted but then a victim was dispatched with a blow to the head, or an additional spear wound, which suggests that ambushes were also part of conficts.22 Such evidence hints that Native Americans in the Northeast were fexible with their combat strategies and willing to change, learn, and adapt. With the ever-growing European presence and colonization in the sixteenth, and especially the seventeenth, century, as we will explore later, Native American martial strategies changed quickly. The bow and arrow, and, especially, European frearms, became Native Americans’ weapons of choice in the Northeast. Despite the central role that agriculture played in many Native American societies in Dawnland, Indigenous peoples also gathered a wide variety of edible plants, nuts, and berries to enrich their diet—a task performed predominantly by women and children. They knew what berries, roots, nuts, shoots, bulbs, blossoms, leaves, and tubers they could eat. These could be added to stews, meals, or mush, or they could be eaten fresh or dried. Some plants like cattails, nuts, and Jerusalem artichoke were pounded into four and used to make breads and cakes, or were added as a thickener in soups or gruel. Tapping maple and birch trees produced naturally occurring sugars used as sweeteners. Plants such as sassafras, milkweed fours, and coltsfoot were just some of several plants that Native Americans used to make spices for their food. Moreover, the Indigenous peoples of Dawnland also knew of the medicinal qualities of many of the plants in the region. A concoction brewed from a liquid gained from the hazelnut plant, for instance, helped with hives and fevers but was also used as a wound ointment. Parts from plants such as the sassafras and the winged sumac were also used for a variety of treatments such as dysentery, hives, and fevers.23 Their knowledge as gatherers and hunters was also key to Indigenous communities’ survival during war. During conficts, often while the men were fghting, women, children, the elderly, but, in later years when fghting with Europeans, even entire settlements, relocated and hid in thick swamps and wetlands.24 During those periods, women’s ability to gather a wide variety of foods, and their knowledge of edible and medicinal plants, along with men’s skills as hunters discussed later, could help provide Indigenous wartime refugees with at least some food in extremely challenging periods. Moreover, Native Americans of Dawnland gathered saltwater and freshwater shellfsh, and also fshed in the ocean, rivers, brooks, ponds, and lakes. Shellfsh and fsh were great sources of minerals, proteins, and vitamins. Depending on their location, which dictated their access, Native Americans gathered

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and trapped clams, quahogs, oysters, crayfsh, crabs, lobsters, and scallops. As we already discussed, the waterfalls in spawning season were popular fshing sites. In fact, Indigenous peoples built scafolding and fshing platforms around waterfalls so they could maximize their catch when fsh migrated upstream in the spring. Native Americans had developed an impressive material culture around fshing. The ropes and lines, called “Indian hemp,” which Native Americans used to make fshing lines and to weave nets, were well known for their sturdiness among English colonists. These nets and lines were weighted down with pebbles. Native Americans also used fshing weirs and hooks, leisters, harpoons, and bone gorges to catch fsh.25 Due to absence of domestic animals, other than the dog, Native Americans had to hunt to procure meat. Thus, just as the absence of domestic animals led to diferent ways of farming, Native Americans also developed diferent methods to obtain meat, compared to Europeans. Hunted meat was an essential part of Native American subsistence. Like fsh and shellfsh, meat provided a source of protein and minerals in their diet. Native Americans trapped and hunted many animals: deer, wild turkey, rabbits, waterfowl, birds, moose, squirrels, turtles, beavers, raccoons, otters, caribou, bears, coyotes, lynx, wolves, catamounts, as well as snakes and other reptiles. Indigenous peoples in Dawnland, and in other regions of North America, actively involved themselves in the management of their forest landscapes, just like Europeans managed their pastures for their domestic animals. Forest management made this ecological system more productive and favorable to their use. Native Americans in New England put the dense brush and undergrowth of the forests on fre, which opened up the sylvan landscape. This clearing of the landscape by fre spurred the growth of plants that appealed to deer and other animals, making the managed forest more attractive to them. To the hunter, of course, the opened-up terrain provided improved visibility to spot animals and the fre clearings allowed their projectiles to hit their target more easily as brushes and undergrowth did not impede their aim. The increasing European colonial presence, starting in the sixteenth, and dramatically increasing in the seventeenth, century, led to dramatic changes in the hunting and material culture of Native Americans and put strains on the natural resources of the northeastern Woodlands. One observer wrote: “The hunting by Indians in old times was easy for them. They killed animals only in proportion as they had need for them. When they were tired of eating one sort, they killed some of another.” But the coming of the Europeans resulted in an increase in fur trade and the old ways in which Native Americans “never made accumulation of skins of Moose, Beaver, Otter, or others” and only used what they required “for personal use” began to break down.26 Hunting and warfare had strong connections in the aboriginal societies of Dawnland. As we will see later, it was through the fur trade with Europeans that frearms made their way into Indigenous communities, which had a dramatic

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impact on Native American societies and modes of warfare. Hunting also had an impact on Native American martial culture, as the skills learned and practiced during the hunt had useful military applications. The frequent use of bow and arrow, and during the period of European colonization, frearms, prepared Native American fghters. They were known and appreciated as renowned marksmen in the wars of the region. Moreover, tracking, quietly stalking their prey, and traveling for long distances in pursuit of meat, and later fur, in often harsh weather and conditions, skills so essential to the hunt, these abilities also proved to be valuable assets during military campaigns. These qualities made Native American soldiers particularly useful as scouts and rangers to their European allies.27 Hunting also helped to produce fur and leather, which were essential raw materials for Indigenous clothes making. Native American dress was adapted to Dawnland’s rough climate, dominated by cold winters and hot summers. Deer and moose skin were tanned and turned into a partially water-resistant and quickdrying leather, which could be used for dresses, shoes, and leg covers. Women wore aprons as undergarments and dresses over them. In the hot summer months, men would wear breaches, and when the weather got colder they would also wear leg and upper body covers. During the winter months, men and women would also wear mantles made of moose, beaver, otter, or raccoon skin.28 Native Americans also used a variety of bodily decorations to adorn themselves for cultural reasons, and at times such adornments indicated an intent to participate in confict. William Wood observed that some Native Americans had images such as “bears, deer, moose, wolves . . . eagles, hawks,” tattooed on their faces by making “incision, or else by raising their skin with a small sharp instrument which makes the desired form apparent and permanent.”29 Moreover, Daniel Gookin observed that Native Americans paint their faces with vermilion, or other red. . . . Also they use black and white paints, and make one part of their face of one colour, and another, of another, very deformedly. The women do thus; some men also, especially when they are marching to their wars. According to Gookin, Indigenous soldiers believed themselves to be “more terrible to their enemies” in this way.30 Psychological warfare was part of Indigenous confict. During attacks, Native Americans often made noise by yelling, screaming, and shrieking—an acoustic soundscape that battle observers described as intimidating, terrifying, or as sheer dread. Once the element of surprise was gone during a sneak attack, the purpose of this tactic was to scare the enemies. In other situations, especially when a smaller force surprised a larger one, the purpose of this uproar was to infate the size of the attackers in the minds of their opponents. In either situation, the desired goal was to scare, overwhelm, and, ideally, panic the opponent into a retreat.

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The dynamics that defned political leadership in New England’s Indigenous communities, such as good consensus-building skills, were also important in wartimes. Military leaders needed a community’s support to muster defense or to take aggressive action against enemies. Daniel Gookin pointed out that a leader’s “harsh dealing” with and coercion of their communities was an ill-advised strategy. Whether in political or military roles, leaders had to gain wide support in their community. Only with the assistance of the members of the community could a Native American settlement prosper. Such rank-and-fle support was garnered, according to Gookin, by having leaders that were “acting obligingly and lovingly unto their people.” There were good reasons for employing this goodwill. If community members did not feel well protected, supported, represented, or neglected, and if they felt unhappy about decisions made by their leaders, “lest they should desert them,” and could “go and live under other sachems that can protect them.” Such a removal by members of a group weakened “the strength, power, and tribute” of leaders but also potentially undermined the long-term survivability of a community.31 Great physical condition and knowledge of the land served Native American soldiers well. “They are generally quick on foot,” observed Roger Williams. “I  have known many of them to” travel “betweene a fourscoure [eighty] or a hundred miles in a Summer’s day, and back within two days.” Young men trained as runners, Williams noted, and “they also practice running of Races.” Hunting and running prepared Native American males for combat, as “they are so exquisitely skilled in all the body and bowels of the Countrey.” Underscoring Native Americans’ great sense of orientation, Williams refected “that I have been often guided twentie, thirtie, sometimes fortie miles through the woods, a streight course out of any path.”32 Long-distance travel networks provided mobility to the Indigenous societies, which enabled exchange, and, at times, war. The Indigenous inhabitants of Dawnland had created a network of pathways that connected communities throughout the region and beyond. In northern New England, Native Americans also used snowshoes to travel in the winter for the hunt and warfare. Moreover, wrote Daniel Gookin: For their water passage, travels and fshing, they make boats, or canoes, either of great trees, pine or chestnut, made hollow, and artifcially; which they do by burning them; and after with tools, scraping, smoothing, shaping. Of these they make greater or lesser. Some I  have seen will carry twenty persons, being forty or ffty feet in length, and as broad as a tree will bear. They make another sort of canoes of birchen bark, which they close together, sewing them with some sort of bark, and then smearing the places with turpentine of the pine tree. They are strengthened in the inside with some few timbers and ribs, yet they are so light, that one man will, and

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doth, ordinarily carry one of them upon his back several miles, that will transport fve or six people.33 Canoes were used to travel Dawnland’s rivers and along the seashore. Through portages over short overland routes, on which Indigenous peoples often carried their canoes and cargoes, Native Americans could travel throughout much of New England and beyond. River and maritime travel, alongside with the pathways, was used to connect the diferent regions of Dawnland, but it also connected New England to other parts of North America. Rivers and pathways became networks and avenues for long-distance trade, to visit kin, to pursue diplomacy, and, sometimes, to engage in conficts. In fact, in later years, European newcomers adopted Indigenous technologies, such as snowshoes, canoes, or toboggans, into their daily life and into the ways they conducted warfare in the Early American Northeast. In Dawnland, evidence suggests that pre-Columbian wars had lower levels of violence and were less deadly. Observing an engagement between Mohegan and Pequot soldiers, Captain John Underhill described “the nature of Indian war” in terms that underscored the inefectiveness of Indigenous warfare from an English perspective. He maintained that they might fght seven years and kill seven men. They came not near one another, but shot remote, and not point blank, as we often do with our bullets, but at rovers [into the air], and then they gaze up in the sky to see where the arrow falls, and not until it is fallen do they shoot again. This fght is more for pastime, than to conquer and subdue enemies.34 Roger Williams who had been a studious observer of the Narragansett similarly recorded that “their warres are far less bloudy, and devouring, then the cruell Warres of Europe.” The martial engagement saw so much “leaping and dancing, that seldome an arrow hits.” What Williams called “pitch feld” battles, fghts out in the open, and which according to him occurred seldom, would rarely lead to “twenty slain.” Most engagements occurred in wooded areas, according to Williams, and they were by far less deadly as “every Tree is a Bucklar [shield].”35 Such comments in the writings of early English observers, like Underhill and Williams, display biases and often a tone of condescension, but, if read critically, they are of value to those who study the history of Indigenous confict, as they suggest that Native Americans in pre-colonial and early colonial Dawnland showed a lot of restraint in the use of violence and killing during warfare. This assessment fnds refection in some of the theoretical scholarship that provides us a glimpse into Indigenous war strategies before European colonization in the Americas. John Keegan and Richard Holmes observe that in less-stratifed societies such as the pre-Columbian Indigenous societies of New England “warfare

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takes a form quite other than that known in ‘advanced’ societies. Much of it is of a low-level endemic quality—ambush and raiding.” They argue that [s]ince there is no intention to win, however, the fghting is conducted at long distances, usually with missiles, and casualties are few. . . . A death, even a serious wounding, is normally the signal for the battle to be brought to an end and overtures of peace to be initiated.36 Such observations seem to be relevant in the way that pre-Columbian Indigenous societies in Dawnland approached confict.37 Historian James Axtell reminds us of the value given to the power of life in Eastern Woodland societies, where an understanding existed that such a force “could be acquired and lost.” Indigenous soldiers were members and providers to close-knit communities, and during confict each side understood what could be lost in uncertain and potentially dangerous confrontations. Oral histories and primary sources suggest that these understandings were represented in Indigenous cultural values and norms before European colonization and shaped behaviors in later years. Thus, Axtell writes, Native Americans “avoided competition, fostered respect for other persons, and approached all encounters as if potentially dangerous,” a cultural notion, which might explain why Native Americans tried to avoid direct close contact fghting on the battlefeld, if it could be avoided.38 Dawnland’s Indigenous bow and arrow technology, while praised by European observers for its craftsmanship, was also not necessarily designed to be a deadly weapon on the battle feld. Martin Pring described the bows he saw in 1603 “as fve or six foot long of witch hazel, painted black and yellow, the strings of three twists of sinews, bigger than our bow strings.” As with the bows, Pring also appreciated the workmanship of arrows, which were made “of a fne light wood very smooth and round with three long and deep black feathers of some eagle, vulture, or kite, as closely fastened with some binding matter as any fetcher of ours can glued them on.” One early English observer described these weapons and Native Americans use of them as “quick, but not very strong.” That said, it is important to note, and while the arrow launchers of Indigenous Dawnland might have not had the force of English long-bows, soldiers could still yield them as deadly weapons in combat if necessary. Shot from the right distance and with adequate force, arrowheads would penetrate deeply into the fesh and could create a mortal wound.39 The fring of arrows in the air, which some early European observers witnessed, thus refects a clear understanding by Indigenous soldiers of the deadliness of their weapons. In the ritualized fghting in pre-Columbian New England, such battlefeld behavior might have been implemented as a strategy of harm reduction while still displaying a soldier’s martial powers. Early English observers frequently faulted Native Americans for disorderly conduct on and of the battlefeld. In their minds, these failures emerged out of a defcient Indigenous martial culture. A major point of criticism was the lack of

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battle formation and discipline. This kind of behavior was trained into European military and militia through frequent drills. William Wood wrote, for instance, that “the antic warriors make towards their enemies in a disordered manner, without any soldier like marching or warlike postures, being deaf to any word of command, ignorant of falling of or falling on, of doubling ranks or fles.”40 But the efectiveness of this way of fghting, as we will explore in more detail in later chapters, was frequently demonstrated to the English on the battlefelds of the Early American Northeast. In fact, both the French and the English adopted their fghting styles and used Native American strategies, material culture, and ways of war. The use of Indigenous-infuenced confict making demonstrates the value and utility that European colonists and military ofcials saw in these fghting strategies. They made use of them throughout their military campaigns in eastern North America.41 The early seventeenth-century narratives by English authors like Wood, which depicted Native Americans as weak in military terms, likely did so for strategic reasons as well. For one, such accounts helped to strengthen the belief that there was little threat to New English colonies and colonists from Native Americans, as they were portrayed as weak and disorganized. Such narratives suggested that Native Americans would be inept at resistance. Thus, such portrayals not only sent a message of safety to potential colonists, but they also implied that future territorial acquisition and expansion should meet little opposition.42 Anglo American ofcers were also often dismissive and derogatory in their comments about Native American fghters, but such attitudes were often more indicative of their contempt for Indigenous peoples, rather than presenting historical realities. At times, depicting Indigenous allies as poor soldiers, also served as a justifcation in pursuit of colonial interests such as taking Native American lands or cutting promised funds to aboriginal allies after confict ceased. During the Seven Years War, for instance, Lord Jefrey Amherst, the commander of the British forces in North America, argued that his Indigenous allies were an “idle good for nothing crew.” Mirroring the sentiments of their commander, throughout the 1750s Amherst’s subordinates referred to Native American allies as “dogs,” “Inhuman Villains,” and “bastards.” They described Native American troops as “fckle and Wavering” in their support of the British cause. But it was only with the French defeat that the British felt that they “can now talk to our new Allies in a proper Stile.” With the French out of North America, Native American “services” were no longer “Necessary.” Thus, it was the changed new military realities, rather than the poor service of Native American allies imagined by Amherst and his ofcers, that enabled the commander to cut Indigenous peoples of their annual diplomatic gifts. “To save unnecessary expenses to the Government  & our provisions,” Amherst wrote, “I got rid of the Indians.”43 As we will explore in the subsequent chapters, Native American performance on the battlefelds of the Indigenous-colonial wars more than matched those of Europeans, and Indigenous allies served as valuable strategic assets to the French and the English

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throughout the conficts in the Early American Northeast. In fact, after Amherst cut the British Indigenous allies of from receiving gifts, the British faced substantial Indigenous resistance in the Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley region— a confict now known as Pontiac’s War. During this confict Native American troops fought the British to a stalemate, eventually forcing British ofcials to pass the Proclamation of 1763. This declaration made it a policy that declared colonial settlements east of the Appalachian Mountains illegal—a clear ofer to appease Native Americans and to avoid further confict.44 New English colonists in the eighteenth century also had disdain for Native American conduct in war. Cotton Mather’s commentaries from the early eighteenth century, for instance, underscored Native Americans’ ability to strike English territory, while, at the same, disparaging their character: Mischievous Enemy; but a cowardly one. The Cowards never durst Assault you, but when they can surprise you. Though they have come Three or Four Hundred miles to molest you, yet if they fnd you Awake when they come they Go again.45 Commentaries such as the one by Mather underscore the New English trope of “skulking” Native American attackers. But they also provide a glimpse into New English frustrations with the efectiveness of Native American tactical abilities, as well as their difculties to efectively counteract Indigenous raids. Native American assumptions about warfare, masculinity, and leadership in the northern Eastern Woodlands, difered, however, dramatically from those of Europeans, and it was these cultural understandings and values that shaped Indigenous behavior during confict. James Smith, who in the mid-eighteenth century had lived as a captive for four years in an Indigenous community in the Ohio Country, observed that when one party sufered from disproportionately high casualties on the battlefeld, it led the impacted party to fall back to avoid further deaths. Smith maintained such behavior “proceeds from a compliance with their rules of war, rather than cowardice.” To leaders of Indigenous war campaigns, to return with one’s entire company was considered a successful enterprise.46 We have fewer glimpses into what Native Americans thought about European and colonial modes of warfare. James Smith observed the disdain that Indigenous fghters in the northern Eastern Woodlands had about the strategic choice in traditional European warfare, in which rival armies lined up on opposite sides, only to fre at and kill each other. Smith argued that Native Americans saw this form of combat as a way to expire “like dogs.”47 Fragmentary evidence provided in colonial records gives us insights into a world in which Native Americans displayed bravery and decisiveness in combat. A more open-minded reading of the evidence suggests that what English observers described as “cowardice” on the battlefeld was often a strategic retreat that saved lives. Indigenous forces disdained wasting human life in an engagement

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when the disadvantages became apparent or if a situation appeared increasingly bad or hopeless. At the same time, and given difering circumstances, it was, however, equally as likely that a much smaller war party would attack a much larger force or a well-defended settlement, if they felt that they had a strategic advantage or that the element of surprise might help carry the day for the attackers.48 Some English observers saw some to them positive martial qualities displayed by the Indigenous peoples in the Northeast, which provide us a glimpse into Native American military ideals and cultural values. William Wood described Native Americans’ ability to remain calm in the face of danger and imminent death. The “unexpected approach of a mortal wound by a bullet, an arrow, or sword strikes no more terror, causes no more exclamation, no more complaint or wincing than if it had been shot into a tree.” This demeanor was part of a Native American code of conduct on the battlefeld that had deep cultural motivations. They were infuenced by Indigenous ideas about masculinity and the interaction with the supernatural worlds, in which a display of fear and weakness was seen as a danger to one’s spiritual force and power.49 As in other parts of the Eastern Woodlands, the pre-Columbian peoples of the Northeast took human trophies, although the extent of this phenomenon, and when and where it exactly occurred, is difcult to determine. There is some archaeological evidence, and references in the primary sources record this practice. In the 1630s, for instance, William Wood wrote about New England’s Algonquian speakers: their captains have long spears on which, if they return conquerors, they carry the heads of their chief enemies that they slay in the wars, it being the custom to cut of their heads, hands, and feet to bear home to their wives and children as true tokens of their renowned victory.50 Given that both Wood and Williams wrote about decapitation and the cutting of hands and feet, it is likely that this was a battlefeld practice that was utilized by the 1630s by Native Americans.51 But how far back did this practice reach in Indigenous societies in Dawnland, and how widespread or widely used of a practice was it in the deep history of the region? Moreover, given that the beheadings of enemies were frequently used in early modern English warfare to set an example with a foe, did English observers exaggerate the practice among the Indigenous peoples of Dawnland? It is hard to answer these questions with certainty on the existing evidence. Scalping among Native Americans is arguably the most fercely debated issue in human trophy taking. While this practice was decried by New English settler historians and chroniclers of the “Indian wars,” who described it as an act committed by their “savage” neighbors, earlier English observers of Indigenous Dawnland complicate such statements.52 Wood, for instance, does not mention the existence of scalping. Williams argued that Native Americans in southern

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New England did not scalp but decapitated opponents.53 Some scholars have suggested that scalping was in fact worsened by the presence of Europeans in the region.54 Other researchers, however, fercely debate this claim, arguing that scalping was established before the coming of Europeans in New England.55 As we shall see subsequently, scalping and scalp money, whatever its origins in the Early American Northeast, were used with a vengeance by the New English colonies. As in other parts of the Eastern Woodlands, captive taking was also part of the Indigenous warfare in New England. As various primary sources from the seventeenth century indicate, the destiny of captives was varied, and this was likely the scenario for many in the pre-Columbian northern Eastern Woodlands. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), who live in what is today the state of New York, for instance, had a reputation for frequently taking captives during so-called mourning wars. A  number of these captives ended up ritually tortured, while others were adopted into Haudenosaunee society. While seventeenth-century European observers were often appalled by the brutality, and were graphic in their descriptions of ritualized torture, to the Haudenosaunee, as well as other peoples in the Eastern Woodlands, such incidents were seen as a way to extract retribution, perceived or real, for war crimes and abuse directed against them. Thus, raids on enemies, as much as the taking of captives, were a way to avenge losses. But raids were also a way to replenish the ranks with new members, as numerous captives became adoptees. While the dynamics in Dawnland were not as formalized and ritualized as among the Haudenosaunee, elements of captive taking, ritualized torture, adoption, and use of captives as labor were also practiced by New England’s Algonquian societies. Moreover, as we will discuss later, the Haudenosaunee’s mourning wars often took the Five Nations, especially the easternmost members of this alliance, the Mohawks, to New England, and these conficts involved Dawnland’s Algonquian speakers in diverse ways.56 English and Anglo American colonists often referred to the killings of captives and ritualized torture as “savage” or brutal. Such European condescension was, however, not without its ironies. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European militaries and colonial militia also committed a wide array of killings, violent acts, and attacks on Native American combatants and noncombatants alike. Brutality accompanied warfare and was committed by all sides during the wars in the Early American Northeast.

Confict in Pre-Columbian Dawnland: Conclusions, Legacies, and Conceptual Challenges While colonization introduced dynamics and technologies that changed Native American warfare, Indigenous pre-colonial understandings of confict and how to conduct oneself in combat continued to shape Native American behavior in warfare to some degree. Native Americans in the Northeast had only a selective

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need for European military conventions. Indigenous peoples fought following their needs, logic, and rules—a fact that often frustrated European allies. Targeting ofcers on the battlefeld, torturing and killing prisoners of war, while, at the same time, incorporating captives into one’s community, and retreating in battle for strategic reasons, these elements were all part of Indigenous warfare. They often met disdainful comments of some European and Anglo American observers. That said, and revealing a certain degree of hypocrisy, while Europeans often spared and treated European ofcers and regulars respectfully, Anglo Americans did not pay the same kind of respect to Indigenous combatants and non-combatants. This section merely provides a glimpse into pre-colonial confict in Dawnland, a feld of study with many questions that are difcult to answer. Archaeology as well as oral and written histories can provide only limited insights into the impact that war had on demography, settlement patterns, what motivated fghters, or the causes of war in the pre-colonial Northeast. We also know little about the specifc cultural impact and role that war had on Native American societies in the region. What rituals and practices accompanied this social phenomenon? What role did the community and individuals play in wartimes? What practices, decorum, and motivations accompanied not only confict but also the pursuit of peaceful relations and accommodation with neighboring groups? What role did politics and diplomacy play in Dawnland during confict and peace, and what did these interactions, processes, and transactions look like? What was the frequency, as well as the nature, of these conficts and how deadly were they? How did all the previously discussed dynamics change over time? These are all areas of inquiry, where educated theorizing and speculation are on far less solid ground. The evidence for these, as well as many other basic questions, is very limited. It is difcult to come up with little more than suggestions and guesses, given the sources. The archaeological record and the historical evidence (oral as well as written) for New England, at least, suggest that confict, while occurring, seems to have been less violent than the wars that took place after a European presence emerged in the region. But, the proof to support such a broad statement is limited. Dynamics in the Northeast began to change after 1500. As we explore in the next section, European colonization led to dramatic changes. Epidemics, slave raiding, trade, exchange, accommodation, and confict came to defne the complex and diverse early encounters of cultures in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Moreover, European colonization led to the introduction of new technologies, which had an impact on the ways Native Americans conducted confict in New England.

Early Colonial Interactions and Confict This part of the chapter examines the period from the arrival of Europeans in the late ffteenth and early sixteenth centuries to the establishment of the frst

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permanent English colony in the Northeast at Plymouth. The text examines briefy the roots of colonization in European societies and its impact on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic World. Moreover, this section concentrates on the increasing European colonial presence in Dawnland during this period, which led to signifcant social and cultural changes among Indigenous communities. These developments were accompanied by the devastating spread of disease among Native Americans and brought about changes in inter-tribal warfare that were spurred by the adoption of new technologies.

Europe and Colonization The early European forays in the coastal Northeast emerged out of a long and complex history of conquest and colonization involving Europe. These developments reached back to at least the medieval period. European colonization was motivated by political, religious, cultural, as well as economic forces. The Christian European territories feared and experienced attacks from non-Christian invaders such as the Vikings, Slavic peoples, and Muslims. These attacks underscored to many in western Christendom the weakness of their region and were often perceived as God’s punishment for an abandonment of religious ideals, often liberally interpreted by European elites to ft their specifc ideological, political, and economic interests. Such vulnerabilities, perceived and real, spurred elites into complex processes to increase and consolidate their power and wealth. These goals were often achieved through outwardly aggressive behavior and war. At the center of such pursuits was a desire to strengthen Christianity, increase wealth, as well as to bolster and expand domains and land holdings.57 In the medieval period, spurred by these developments, European territorialities sought to colonize regions beyond their original control. Such eforts at colonization occurred not only on the peripheries of eastern and northern Europe. But they also reached beyond the borders of Europe. The expansion outside of Europe was often motivated by a combination of religious fervor and political and economic interests. European elites were in constant search of more agricultural lands as well as natural and mineral resources. In the ffteenth century, for instance, the Kingdom of Portugal occupied signifcant portions of modern-day Morocco, which the Portuguese used for wheat production. Moreover, already earlier, with the Crusades, expansion was religiously motivated, but it was also driven by a search for power and economic opportunities. During their occupation of the Levant, Europeans in the feeble Crusader states became familiar with the production of sugar. European invaders grew this plant on agricultural estates that they managed. They raised sugar as a cash crop to procure much-needed funds. With the expulsion of the Crusader states, sugar production moved and expanded gradually throughout the islands of the Mediterranean, and, by the ffteenth century, onto the islands of the Atlantic. Sugar plantation labor throughout the Mediterranean and beyond was increasingly flled

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with enslaved workers. Trading, as well as raiding, for people to enslave, came to play a central role in Europe’s expansion into the Atlantic Ocean. The source for enslaved labor increasingly became Africa. But, especially from the ffteenth through the seventeenth centuries, Europeans also captured and traded for Indigenous peoples such as the Guanches of the Canary Islands of the coast of Africa and Native Americans from all over the Americas. Moreover, European mariners and merchants, often backed by their rulers, searched for precious metals, such as gold and silver, as well as access to expensive agricultural crops and wild products, such as spices and animal skins and fur. These commodities were of value not only on European but also on global markets.58 After 1492, European overseas expansion extended into the Americas. Throughout the early modern period, the Spanish, French, Portuguese, English, Dutch, and several other European states began to establish growing colonial footholds in many parts of the Western Hemisphere. On the one hand, these eforts at colonization were shaped by the determination in trans-Atlantic sending societies. On the other hand, these developments were also infuenced by the Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere and their ability to challenge and interact with European invaders. During these diverse and complex processes throughout the Americas, Europeans sought land for settlements and to cultivate crops. They also searched for natural resources and access to trade. As Europeans aimed to establish a colonial order, Indigenous peoples attempted to maintain their sovereignty and independence as best as they could. Thus, colonization frequently led to tensions, violence, and war.59 Christianity as well as a sense of cultural superiority and chauvinism actively justifed colonization in the minds of Europeans. By the early modern period, in part spurred by the conficts of the Reformation era between Catholics and Protestants, Christianity took on an even stronger zeal. Spreading the right kind of Christianity—informed, of course, by the denomination embraced by the elites of the colonizing power—became a major justifcation for colonization. Eforts to save Native Americans through conversion to Christianity was an often-cited rationalization of a European presence in the Americas. Moreover, the chauvinistic attitudes of European colonizers also served as a justifcation for the invasion of Indigenous lands. This belief is epitomized by the earlier mentioned seventeenthcentury seal of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the speech bubble, “come over and help us.” Other European states used the “right of discovery” claims that they were entitled to trade and explore, pretended that they were authorized to take “wilderness” from Indigenous peoples, or maintained fctitious arguments that they were taking over a “vacant land” as justifcations for colonization.60 As we explored earlier, the English colonists either ignored Native American farming or dismissed Indigenous agriculture as inferior. One reason for this dismissal was likely gender as this was work performed by women in the Eastern Woodlands, and not, as in Europe, by men using plows and draft animals. In the minds of Europeans, through this so-called misuse of land, Native Americans and

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other colonized peoples forfeited their right to the territories where they lived. This argument was made either on religious grounds, because Native Americans did not work the land as desired by God, or on legal grounds. In their self-serving defnitions and understandings, Europeans used the work by early modern intellectuals such as Hugo Grotius or Emerich de Vattel. Often seen as the “founders” of “international law,” these two writers argued that the ways non-European peoples produced and procured food disqualifed them from legal ownership of land. By dismissing farming without plows, pastoralism, as well as hunting and gathering as inadequate forms of land use, they provided a widely used “legal” justifcation for the dispossession of Native Americans and other colonized peoples. Thus, at least to themselves, Europeans rationalized the takeover and invasion of Indigenous lands on religious, and, increasingly, on “legal” grounds. Describing Native Americans and other colonized peoples as “tribal” or as “savage,” and drawing a clear contrast with the “civilized” European colonizers, aided in the dehumanization of these nations and served as a tool to rationalize dispossession and empire building.61 Confict was frequently part of colonization. Local societies did not want to be colonized by outsiders and often resisted such attempts. Thus, European eforts at overseas expansion were often shaped and curtailed by the capacities of Indigenous peoples to infuence the balance of power between colonizers and colonized. In these power struggles, Native Americans worked hard to maintain their sovereignty and independence, as local populations attempted to maintain their autonomy, authority, and control. Moreover, European states often had conficting territorial claims and aspirations overseas. This competition and opposing claims of sovereignty over certain parts in the non-European world also led to confict between rivaling states. It is important to underscore here though that European claims of having sovereignty did not necessarily mean that they had actual control over an area that they claimed as part of their colony or empire.62 Europeans often overstated their control over vast Indigenous territories and often faced limits to their power. Throughout the early modern period, and despite the often devastating impact of disease and colonization on Indigenous societies, Native American communities were de facto rulers of many areas claimed by competing European empires and colonists. As we will explore later, in the context of the Early American Northeast, Europeans, at times, depended on Native American toleration for their survival, or they had to rely on Native American allies to strengthen their military position. Hence, cooperation as much as confict was an intrinsic part of colonization. Thus, in the Americas, as elsewhere, colonization was shaped by European–Indigenous alliances, collaboration, hybridity, and cross-cultural interaction through, for instance, trade, diplomacy, and other forms of cultural exchange and adaptation.63 While Spain had a dominant position in Central and South America, compared to other European states with colonial aspirations, its presence in North America was more limited. It had colonial footholds in what is today the southwestern and

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southeastern United States.64 Hence, throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, other European states such as France, England, the Dutch Low Countries, Russia, and Sweden attempted to establish colonial footholds in North America, not only to compete with the Spanish but also to augment their position of power and wealth. It was in the regions today known as New England and the mid-Atlantic of the United States as well as southeastern Canada, where in the sixteenth, and, especially, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an active contest took place over who among the Europeans would gain and hold power and control. In the Early American Northeast, these struggles involved many Native American communities and nations, as well as the colonists and forces of European states such as France, England, and, into the 1670s, the Dutch Low Countries.

Native Americans, Early Colonization, and Confict in Dawnland As a result of early colonization, from the late ffteenth to the early seventeenth centuries, the Indigenous peoples of the Northeast experienced an ever-increasing European presence in their homelands. In growing frequency and numbers, European fshermen came across the Atlantic to take advantage of the region’s rich fshing grounds. Other European mariners came to investigate the coastal regions as potential sites for trade, resource extraction, and colonization. The resulting encounters between Indigenous peoples and Europeans led to a variety of exchanges and interactions. Over time, these contacts became ever more complex. A number of the European expeditions to coastal Dawnland also led to the capture of Native Americans, many of whom were eventually enslaved or forced into servitude in other parts of the Atlantic or the Mediterranean World. As part of their complex and diverse early presence, some European states also launched failed eforts at creating colonies in the region. Even before the establishment of permanent European settlements, the growing European presence at times led to confict and spurred changes in inter-tribal warfare. During this period, coastal Dawnland became a European-Indigenous zone of interaction, but it is also important to underscore that exchanges between Native American communities still played a much more central role in the region. Native Americans had long used coastal waters to collect shellfsh and to fsh. But the ocean, just like the region’s rivers, also helped to facilitate long-distance exchange with neighboring peoples. The increasing commercial European presence was integrated into the older trade networks during this period. European-Indigenous trade led to the exchange of a wide array of desired goods. In these exchanges, European traders were most interested in fur, whereas Native Americans favored metal tools and utensils, cloth, blankets, glass and metal beads, and, of growing importance, especially by the seventeenth century, frearms. Many of these commodities were further distributed in Indigenous regional trade networks. As

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European mariners actively participated in these Indigenous exchange networks, Native Americans considered them at times as potential partners. On other occasions, Indigenous peoples considered Europeans as competitors or a threat. Native American understandings and norms, just like European ones, shaped, and at times derailed early contacts, and interactions, which sometimes led to confict.65 An examination of early encounters between Native Americans and Europeans underscores the complexity of such interactions but also the potential of violence. Already long before the sixteenth century, smaller Viking parties attempted to colonize Newfoundland, and their presence led to conficts. The frst mission was led by Leif Erikson. Archaeologists recently estimated this voyage to have taken place in 1021. The initial small Viking party apparently did not encounter Native Americans. According to the Viking sagas, it was during the second mission that contact occurred. The second party, which left Greenland for Newfoundland a few years later, was led by Leaf ’s younger brother, Thorvald, as the older sibling took on a leadership role in the Viking colony of Greenland following their father’s death. After riding out the winter, Thorvald and his party encountered a group of nine Native Americans. They killed eight, but the lone survivor escaped and returned with reinforcement. In the ensuing combat, Thorvald was mortally wounded and his party abandoned its mission and returned to Greenland. Several years later, the sagas report another Viking mission, which attempted to reestablish the colony. Initially, interactions and exchange with the area’s Indigenous peoples were peaceful. Yet, during a later encounter, a member of the party killed a Native American. Again, violent confict broke out, and the Vikings once again abandoned the region. A fourth attempt at colonization was once again abandoned a few years later. This time, the sagas suggest, due to fghting between Viking factions from Iceland and Greenland. Still, the Vikings are believed to have returned to North American waters and its coasts into the fourteenth century. They likely came for fsh, to trade with Indigenous peoples, and to harvest timber.66 In the sixteenth century as well, European-Indigenous encounters could be a source of confict. The mariner Giovanni Verrazano, who investigated a signifcant portion of the eastern North American coast for the French King in the mid-1520s, described the following encounter with Native Americans at Casco Bay in Maine. “If we wanted to trade with them,” Verrazano observed they would come to the seashore on some rocks where the breakers were most violent while we remained on the little boat, and they sent us what they wanted to give on rope, continuously shouting to us not to approach the land. The cautious Native Americans “gave us barter quickly, and would take in exchange only knives, hooks for fshing, and sharp metal.” Native Americans had reasons to be distrusting. Not explaining why, and against the clear demands of

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the Indigenous peoples of the area, Verrazano and 20 armed men “disembarked on the shore” anyways. The force was quickly challenged by an Indigenous group of defenders who fred arrows at the intruders, vocalized their displeasure with the European territorial violation with “loud cries,” and then proceeded to retreat “into the woods.”67 While it is not clear whether Verrazano and his men were trying to capture Native Americans during their land incursion at Casco Bay, the raiding of captives by Europeans in the Northeast was a common occurrence in the sixteenth century and the frst decades of the seventeenth century. At the time of the encounter between Native Americans and Verrazano’s crew, French mariners had abducted Native Americans further to the north with the intention of bringing them to Europe. In addition, a crew led by Estevao Gomez returned to Portugal in 1525 with Indigenous peoples they had captured. Indigenous peoples at Casco Bay and elsewhere in the Northeast were likely aware of such kidnappings and protected their communities accordingly. Such raids for captives, individuals that often ended up enslaved, or lived out an existence of unfree servitude, were not unique to the 1520s but occurred widely in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Most famously, Tisquantum, still often better known by the diminutive of his name, Squanto, was captured by an English crew with a large group of other Native Americans. Tisquantum, who was to be sold on the markets of Spain, was released by Franciscan monks. He eventually became a servant in the household of a wealthy Englishman, Ferdinando Gorges, who was a major investor in colonial enterprises on the North American eastern seaboard. The raiding for captives led to tense European-Indigenous relations, which, at times, led to confict. Tisquantum, for instance, who was sent back to New England to serve as a translator and guide to an English crew, was liberated by a group of Native Americans on Martha’s Vineyard. The fght cost the lives of several Englishmen and Native American fghters.68 European colonization also brought deadly diseases to the Northeast. Disease had a devastating demographic impact. Because of the geographic isolation of the Americas, and due to the lack of domestic animals in the Western Hemisphere, Native Americans before 1492 lived in a divergent disease environment. Thus, Indigenous people had little or no immunity to the new diseases that arrived in the Western Hemisphere as a result of European colonization and became especially vulnerable to multiple new epidemic outbreaks. While exact population numbers and demographic losses are hard to determine, several scholars estimate that the population decline caused by disease reached as high as 80–90%.69 Other historians caution us not to overestimate or single out the impact of disease on Native American demographic decline. These scholars underscore that war, land loss, captive raiding, and slavery, as well as Indigenous removal also had a devastating demographic impact on Native American populations.70 With such dramatic devastation among Native American populations, Indigenous societies reorganized. Settlements and communities devastated by disease,

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such as the Native American town of Patuxet (later Plymouth), were completely abandoned and survivors had to join new communities. Other communities lost people and needed to either create new towns with other survivors from diferent villages or take in people whose settlements had been weakened by disease and had to be abandoned. The high population losses brought by disease, thus not only spurred devastation but also led to social and ethnic fuidity between diferent groups. Epidemics and the loss of life within a community, as discussed earlier, could also trigger aggressive behavior against neighboring groups. In addition, the impact of epidemics and the mass mortality they brought, as well as the ever-increasing threat and demographic impact that war with European colonizers had on Indigenous populations, meant that many communities were willing to take in refugees from neighboring groups, as a way to strengthen their numbers. Disease also had an impact on Indigenous warfare and military capabilities. An English colonist wrote in the 1630s that the Native American communities in close vicinity to Massachusetts Bay Colony had sufered in military terms, as “their old soldiers [were] being swept away by their plague which was very rife among them about fourteen years ago.”71 From the late ffteenth to the early seventeenth century, inter-tribal warfare occurred among Dawnland’s Indigenous populations. In southern New England, for instance, various European observers described that Native American communities lived in settlements “resembling a fort for protection against attacks of their enemies.” Some of these sites were perhaps built in response to a growing European presence, for protection and, or, as trading stations. A need for communities to protect their homeland and community, or not to become a tributary to a neighboring nation, likely also motivated the construction of forts. Some researchers suggest that during this period, parts of Dawnland saw population movement and that forts protected established communities from attacks by outsiders in search of new territory. Evidence also suggests that the rivalry between the Haudenosaunee and some Indigenous groups in New England, which we will discuss in more detail in the next chapter, reached at least as far back as the sixteenth century. Moreover, Indigenous forts were often in the vicinity of rich fshing grounds and fur hunting grounds or served in the production of wampum, all valuable resources that a local population wanted to protect from competing groups.72 While Native Americans were interested in many items in their trade with Europeans, frearms became an especially desired commodity. The Indigenous peoples of Dawnland came to see frearms as an asset not only in the hunt but also during warfare. The introduction of frearms accelerated an arms race and inter-tribal warfare. Groups that obtained frearms gained a strategic advantage on the battlefelds, and thus, communities that did not have frearms were seeking access to them through trade. This dynamic likely increased inter-tribal warfare, but frearms also made fghting more deadly and destructive. In addition, and as we will discuss in the next chapter, Native Americans often paid for the guns and

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other trade commodities in beaver skins as well as other furs. Over time, this fur trade had a depopulating impact on wildlife, and hunters were forced to travel to new hunting grounds as they exhausted their own. Encroaching on and hunting on the land of neighboring groups further increased tensions and inter-tribal warfare. In the Long Island sound, the access to and control of the wampum trade, which were beads made from whelk and quahog shells used by Indigenous societies all over the Eastern Woodlands, also led to tensions and confict. These competitive dynamics increased dramatically in the frst decades of the seventeenth century. Inter-tribal confict coincided with a series of devastating disease outbreaks. These developments happened right at the time when Europeans began to establish several successful permanent colonies in the Northeast. For many Indigenous peoples, this was a moment of crisis, devastation, and dramatic political, social, and cultural realignment.73 Firearms were not the only European technology that changed Indigenous warfare in Dawnland, as several coastal groups also adopted European maritime technology. Especially communities among the Wabanaki Confederacy of coastal Maine and southeastern Canada incorporated European sailing ships. Historian Matthew Bahar argues that by the sixteenth century, some Wabanaki began to use sailing boats left behind by European fshing excursions. Fishermen had either abandoned those ships for good or left them in the region over the winter with the intention to reuse these boats again the next fshing season. Wabanaki took such boats, and, with growing experience and skill, also began to seize European sailboats through piracy. Moreover, in their conficts with the English, the Wabanaki often successfully deployed their ships and navy to their strategic advantage in maritime combat. As we will explore in the next chapter, evidence suggests that some Wabanaki used sailboats in the early seventeenth century in their attacks on other Native American communities. Thus, and very much like frearms, starting in the sixteenth, and especially throughout the seventeenth and into the eighteenth centuries, Wabanaki used their boats to trade, access fshing grounds, for piracy, but also during several wars and conficts. In the complex, diverse, and ever-growing struggle for power and control in the Early American Northeast, the Wabanaki used sailing boats in the same way that they and other groups employed frearms. They became weapons and tools in their fght to strengthen their communities as well as to maintain their independence and sovereignty.74 The eforts by various European players to create colonial footholds in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries also spurred tensions and confict. The French mariner Jacques Cartier, who led several expeditions to the Saint Lawrence region in the 1530s and early 1540s, established a colonial settlement in the area of modern-day Quebec City in 1542. Little information is available on what happened during the following winter after Cartier left. Maybe the local Indigenous peoples were unhappy about the fact that Cartier had established the colony without their permission, or there were other reasons or events that had angered the Native American population of the area. At any rate, Native

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American fghters besieged the settlement and fort, and Native American pressures and the harsh conditions in the settlement led the French to abandon the colony.75 It took until the early seventeenth century, with the establishment of Quebec in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain, for the French to begin to establish permanent colonies in the region. Early on, Champlain sought an alliance and cooperation with his colony’s neighboring Algonquian speakers, while he, at the same time, helped to initiate hostile relations with the easternmost nation of Haudenosaunee—the Mohawks. In 1609, encouraged by his Native American allies, Champlain and several French soldiers joined a battle against the Mohawks close to a lake that today bears the name of the French governor. As the two sides lined up in battle formation, Champlain joined his Native American allies while his French companions hid in the woods. Seeing that the Mohawk were getting ready to deploy their weapons, Champlain aimed his musket “directly at one of the three chiefs.” He recognized the Mohawk leaders by the “large plumes” they wore, “which were much larger than those of the companions.” Champlain had put four balls in his musket and noted that “[w]ith the same shot two fell to the ground.” Shocked by this incident the Mohawks “were greatly astonished that two men had been so quickly killed, although they were equipped with armor.” French frearms sowed further confusion. As Champlain “was loading again, one of my companions fred a shot from the woods, which astonished them anew.” The shot killed the third leader, and “seeing their chiefs dead,” the Mohawk soldiers “lost courage and took to fight.” The French and their Native American allies “pursued them, killing still more of them . . . and took ten or twelve prisoners.” The casualties on the French-Indigenous side were minimal. “Fifteen or sixteen” wounded “with arrow shots, but they were soon healed.” But the rivalry between the French and the Haudenosaunee initiated by this event was long lasting. As we explore in chapter 3, French-Haudenosaunee relations remained tense and bloody for much of the 1600s.76 The encounter with frearms led Native Americans to quickly abandon the battle formations that could be witnessed at Lake Champlain in 1609. Lined up in close distance from the next soldier, wearing armor, out in the open without cover, rendered Indigenous fghters vulnerable to enemies with muskets. Hence, Native Americans in the Northeast quickly abandoned such formations and focused on warfare strategies that had already long been used in conficts throughout the region. In combat, Indigenous soldiers often sought the protection of the woods. They generally deployed their attacks in wide formation, sought the element of surprise, and were ready to adapt to a quickly changing course of battle and to stage a quick strategic retreat. Yet, eforts at empire building in the Northeast not only led to Euro-Indigenous confict but also caused warfare among Europeans. European maritime operations or forces occasionally targeted, and, if they were able to, destroyed newly established bases of an imperial competitor. In 1613, for instance, the

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English mariner Samuel Argall led a mission from Jamestown in Virginia, to destroy the newly established French colonial footholds on Mount Desert Island and the Bay of Fundy. Such operations aimed to strengthen the claim of an attacker in a contested region and were an efort to undermine the position of their competitors. As both the French and English claimed control over, what the French called Acadia, and what Anglo Americans and British ended up calling Maine and Nova Scotia, such incidents were just the opening salvos in the rivalry of these two colonial powers. Their competition played a central role in the history of the Northeast in the late seventeenth and the frst half of the eighteenth centuries. It involved the region’s Indigenous peoples, as Native Americans were entangled in the wars between the two imperial powers in complex and diverse ways. The establishment of Plymouth Plantation in 1620, which was soon followed by the creation of several other English colonial settlements in the region, amplifed the transformations that were already taking place in Dawnland in the prior century. As we explore in the next two chapters, English colonization continued to bring about dramatic changes for the Indigenous peoples of the Northeast. Native Americans in Dawnland continued to sufer from epidemics. English colonies implemented a system of slavery that impacted peoples of Native American and African origin. The economic importance of trade and exchange with Indigenous peoples came to be increasingly outweighed by English colonists’ desire for Native American land, which in turn spurred Indigenous dispossession and marginalization. As we explore later, confict and war with Native Americans became a major tool for English colonists in their eforts to implement a colonial order in New England.

Notes 1 My account here draws from Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Micmac, Abenaki, and Maliseet oral histories. See “Glooscup fghts the Water Monster,” in American Indians Myths and Legends, eds. Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 181–84. For Glooscap and his infuence in the Wabanaki worlds, see, for example, Joseph Nicholar and his cultural history of the Penobscot originally published in 1893. See Joseph Nicholar, The Life and Traditions of the Red Man, ed. Annette Kolodny (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), chapter 1. 2 Megan Dooley, “Moshup  & Me: Tribal Story Spurs Neighbor’s Movie,” Vineyard Gazette, August  5, 2010. https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2010/08/05/moshupme-tribal-story-spurs-neighbors-movie. Accessed September  2, 2020. On Glooscap and Moshup as culture heroes, see Christoph Strobel, Native Americans of New England (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2020), 8–9. 3 Russell Means with Marvin J. Wolf, Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 16. 4 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur L'origine et les Fondements de L'inégalité Parmi les Hommes (Amsterdam: Marc-Michel Rey, 1755). 5 See Lawrence Keeley, Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage (New York: Saint Martin's Press, 2003); and Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature:

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6 7

8

9

10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26

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Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011). See also the essays in Richard J. Chacon and Ruben G. Mendoza, eds., North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence (Tucson: The University Press of Arizona, 2007). Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, eds. G. A. J. Rogers, G. A. J. and Karl Schuhmann (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006). Vine Deloria, Custer Died for your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (New York: Avon, 1969), 9–10. For a good reassessment and contextualization of the debate discussed earlier, which also sets it into a broader world historical context, see David Gerber and David Wegrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). My defnition here draws from George R. Milner, “Warfare, Population, and Food Production in Prehistoric Eastern North America,” in North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence, eds. Richard J. Chacon and Ruben G. Mendoza (Tucson: The University Press of Arizona, 2007), 183–184; Raymond Kelly, Warless Societies and the Origins of War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000). David H. Dye, War Paths, Peace Paths: An Archaeology of Cooperation and Confict in Native Eastern North America (Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2009); Milner, 200–201; Patricia M. Lambert, “The Osteological Evidence for Indigenous Warfare in North America,” in North American Indigenous Warfare and Violence, eds. Richard J. Chacon and Ruben G. Mendoza (Tucson: The University Press of Arizona, 2007), 219–220. See Neal Salisbury, “The Indians’ Old World: Native Americans and the Coming of Europeans,” William and Mary Quarterly 53, no.3 (July 1996): 435–458. For an Atlantic World perspective see Christoph Strobel, The Global Atlantic, 1400–1900 (New York: Routledge, 2015), chapter 1. Dye, War Paths, Peace Paths, 35–50, 62, 67, 70–71, 84–85, 172–174. Elizabeth S. Chilton, “New England Algonquians: Navigating ‘Backwaters’ and Typological Boundaries,” in The Oxford Handbook of North American Archaeology, eds. Timothy Pauketat. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 262–263. Dena Ferran Dincauze, The Neville Site: 8000 Years at Amoskeag Manchester, New Hampshire (Boston: Peabody Museum Press, 1976). Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 46–47. Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 13–14. Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 39–41. Roger Williams, Key into the Language of America (Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1936), 11. Daniel Gookin, Historical Collections of the Indians of New England: Of Their Several Nations, Numbers, Customs, Manners, Religion, and Government before the English Planted There (Boston: Belknap and Hall, 1664), 10–11. Williams, Key into the Language of America, 46–47. William Wood, New England Prospect, ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977), 102; Ralph Solecki, “Indian Forts of the Mid-17th Century in the Southern New England-New York Coastal Area,” in From Prehistory to the Present: Studies in Northeastern Archaeology in Honor of Bert Salwen, ed. N. A. Rothschild and D. Wall. Special Issue, Northeast Historical Archaeology 21–22 (1992–1993), 64–78. Wood, 77. See, for example, Lucianne Lavin, Connecticut’s Indigenous Peoples: What Archaeology, History, and Oral Traditions Teach Us about Their Communities and Cultures (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 297–299. Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 47–48. Williams, Key into the Language of America, 72–73. Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 46–47. For quote and a discussion on hunting and forest management, see Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 44.

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38 39 40 41

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43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

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Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 42–44. Strobel Native Americans of New England, 44–45. Wood, 85. Gookin, Historical Collections, 13. Gookin Historical Collections, 13. Williams, Key into the Language of America, 71. Gookin, Historical Collections, 9. “Underhill’s Narrative” in History of the Pequot War the Contemporary Accounts of Mason, Underhill, Vincent and Gardener, ed. Charles Orr (Cleveland, OH: The Helman Taylor Company, 1897), 82, 84. Roger Williams, Complete Writings of Roger Williams, 7 vols., ed. Perry Miller (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), 1: 204. John Keegan and Richard Holmes, Soldiers: A  History of Men in Battle (New York: Elisabeth Sifton Books, 1986), 206. Francis Jennings, Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 150, 147; Patrick M. Malone, The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics among the New England Indians (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 2000), chapter 1. James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 16. Malone, 15–16. Wood, 103. For the English adoption of Indigenous ways of fghting in New England, see, for example, Malone; and Steven C. Eames, Rustic Warriors: Warfare and the Provincial Soldier on the New England Frontier, 1689–1748 (New York: New York University Press, 2011). For these developments in New France, see Louise Dechêne, Le Peuple, L'État Et La Guerre Au Canada Sous Le Régime Français (Montreal: Boreal, 2008); and Rene Chartrand, Raiders from New France: North American Forest Warfare Tactics, 17th–18th Centuries (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2019) On this issue see, for instance, Christoph Strobel, “Indigenous Peoples of the Merrimack River Valley in the Early Seventeenth Century: An Atlantic Perspective on Northeastern America,”  World History Connected  16, no.1 (February  2019).  https:// worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu/16.1/forum_strobel.html. Accessed on February 11, 2021. Quotes from Claudio Saunt, West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 (New York: Norton, 2014), 146–147. See, for instance, Gregory E. Dowd, War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). Cotton Mather, Frontiers Well Defended (Boston: T. Green, 1707), 22. James Smith, Scoouwa: James Smith’s Indian Captivity Narrative (Columbus: Ohio Historical Society, 1978), 179. Ibid., 179. Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 50. Wood, 93. Wood, 103. Williams, Key into the Language of America, 59, 152. See, for example, William Hubbard, A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New England: From the First Planting thereof in the Year 1607, to this Present Year 1677, but Chiefy of the Late Troubles in the Two Last Years, 1675 and 1676: To which is Added a Discourse about the Warre with the Pequods in the year 1637 (Boston: John Foster, 1677), 206. Williams, Key into the Language of America, 59, 152. James Axtell and William C. Sturtevant, “The Unkindest Cut, or Who Invented Scalping,” William and Mary Quarterly 37, no.4 (July 1980): 451–472.

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55 Dean R. Snow, The Archaeology of New England (New York: Academic Press, 1980), 314–315. 56 On mourning war see, for instance, Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 32–38. 57 Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). 58 Strobel, The Global Atlantic, 52–64. 59 Christoph Strobel, “Conquest and Colonization,” in  The Routledge Handbook to the History and Society of the Americas, eds. Olaf Kaltmeier et. al. (New York: Routledge, 2019), 75–83. 60 Strobel, “Conquest and Colonization,” 75–76. 61 See especially Robert A. Williams, The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourse of Conquest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). See also Robert A. Williams, Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012). My argument here is also infuenced by Susan Sleeper-Smith, who makes a related argument for a later point in time in the Ohio River Valley. SleeperSmith, Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690–1792 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018). 62 Ran Greenstein, “Rethinking the Colonial Process: The Role of Indigenous Capacities in Comparative Historical Inquiry,” South African Historical Journal 32 (May 1995): 114–137; Christoph Strobel, The Testing Grounds of Modern Empire: The Making of Colonial Racial Order in the American Ohio Country and the South African Eastern Cape (New York: Peter Lang, 2008), 6–12; Strobel, The Global Atlantic, 63–64. 63 Strobel, “Conquest and Colonization,” 81. 64 David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). 65 Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest of the American Coast (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015). 66 Strobel, The Global Atlantic, 17–18. 67 Kenneth M. Morrison, The Embattled Northeast: The Elusive Ideal of Alliance in AbenakiEuroamerican Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 16–17. 68 Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 67–71. 69 On Native Americans, colonization, and disease, see Henry Dobyns, Their Numbers Became Thinned: Native American Population Dynamics in Eastern North America (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983); Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1973); and Russel Thornton, American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A  Population History since 1492 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987). 70 Catherine Cameron, Paul Kelton, and Alan Swedlund, eds. Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2015). 71 Wood, 102. 72 Lavin, 297–298. 73 See, for instance, David Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of North America (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2016), chapter 3; Malone, chapter 2; Michael Dekker, French and Indian Wars in Maine (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2015), 18–20. 74 Matthew R. Bahar, Storm of the Sea: Indians and Empires in the Atlantic’s Age of Sail (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), chapters 2 and 3. 75 Morrison, 16. 76 Samuel de Champlain, Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, 1604–1618, ed. W. L. Grant (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907), 164–166. On Champlain, see David Hackett Fisher, Champlain’s Dream (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008).

2 “IT IS TOO FURIOUS, IT SLAYS TOO MANY” English Colonization and Confict in Southern New England Through King Philip’s War

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As we have seen in the prior chapter, the European presence in the Northeast led not only to interactions, accommodations, and exchanges but also to confict and war. These earlier patterns continued with the establishment of permanent European colonies in the early seventeenth century. Over time, growing colonial expansion led to increasing tensions over land, trade, and sovereignty. For Indigenous societies, the colonization of their land spurred disease, malnutrition, alcoholism, and enslavement. English colonization in the Northeast was

DOI: 10.4324/9781003272113-3

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also accompanied by several conficts involving Native American populations throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In addition, war drove a signifcant number of Indigenous people out of the region. All the aforementioned factors resulted in a rapid demographic decline of the Native American population of southern New England. The English presence became well established in the frst few decades of the seventeenth century in the Northeast. After some coastal colonial outposts were started and then quickly abandoned, the establishment of Plymouth Plantation in 1620 saw the creation of the frst permanent English colony in the region. Over time, Plymouth Colony would remain a minor player among the English colonies and was absorbed by the more powerful Massachusetts Bay Colony in the late seventeenth century. Massachusetts Bay Colony, to the north of Plymouth, came to take shape in the late 1620s and early 1630s with the establishment of colonial beachheads at Salem, Boston, and various other places. Massachusetts emerged as the most powerful among the New England colonies. A few years later, English colonists also established colonies in places that came to be known as Connecticut and Rhode Island. With the establishment of a growing number of English colonies, southern New England became a site of accommodation but also of tensions between English colonists and Native Americans. This chapter examines the period from 1620 through the 1670s, especially in southern New England. The text discusses inter-Indigenous conficts spurred by the European colonial presence in the Northeast. This chapter discusses the tensions between early Puritan colonists who settled at Plymouth and Native Americans; the Pequot War; and the tensions between the Narragansett tribe, Mohegan nations, various other Native American nations, and the New England colonies. The chapter concludes with a discussion of King Philip’s War, an incredibly violent confict in the mid-1670s, which dramatically weakened the position of Indigenous peoples in southern New England. By the late 1670s, war against Native Americans had played a central role in the consolidation of the English position in southern New England. It is important to reiterate though, that the Indigenous participation during the wars in New England, just as in other parts of eastern North America, was complex and defes easy characterization. Colonization in North America was not only defned by confict between Indigenous peoples and Europeans. European powers such as England, France, Spain, and the Dutch also competed for control in various other parts of the world. In these struggles for dominance and power, which also played a central role in the history of the Early American Northeast, Native Americans participated on all sides of the wars in complex and fuid systems of alliances. Indigenous peoples did so to secure trade and access to goods, to strike against traditional Native American rivals but also out of a desire to secure their homelands, independence, and sovereignty against the increasing colonization of their territories.1 In New England as well, during the conficts from the 1620s through the 1670s, the English did not merely fght against Native

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Americans. In fact, and as we explore later, the support of Indigenous allies played a central role in English military successes in conficts against Native American opponents in the Northeast. War and violence were not only part of English colonization in the seventeenth-century Northeast, but they occurred in other parts of the Atlantic World. For instance, England’s conquest of Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which preceded and ran parallel to English eforts at colonization in North America, served in many ways as a testing ground for colonization. English colonization was accompanied by military campaigns of conquest, the dispossession of local Irish populations, and the settlement of colonists from the British Isle. As with Native Americans, English colonial propaganda also referred to the Irish as “savages.” English campaigns of conquest were incredibly destructive and violent. Massacres targeted men, women, children, the elderly, disabled, and the sick. Moreover, military campaigns sought to burn Irish settlements and crops. In the Chesapeake Bay as well, in the colony that became known as Virginia, English colonization was accompanied by incredible violence. The establishment of Jamestown in 1607 led to several violent conficts between English colonizers and local Native American communities. From 1609 to 1614, English colonists and local Indigenous populations engaged in the First Anglo Powhatan War. Tensions in Virginia led to renewed war in the 1620s, during the Second Anglo Powhatan War, and again in the mid-1640s, during the Third Anglo Powhatan War. In their campaigns against the Chesapeake Bay’s Indigenous peoples, the English quickly learned of their disadvantaged positions when engaging with Native Americans in forest warfare. Thus, early in the First Anglo Powhatan War, the English colonists focused their eforts on brutal attacks on Native American settlements and pursued this strategy again, in the Second Anglo Powhatan War from 1622 to 1632. Similar strategies were again practiced in the Third Anglo Powhatan War. During these wars, and like the patterns of warfare against civilian populations that came to defne the fghting in Ireland, English militia launched campaigns against Native American towns and villages. English campaigns especially targeted women, children, and the elderly. During such attacks, militia also sought to destroy farm felds and any food storages they could fnd. They pursued such a strategy to starve Native Americans into submission. In the 1670s violence against Indigenous people broke out again during an event called “Bacon’s Rebellion.” English colonists in Virginia once again violently lashed out against neighboring Native American populations.2 In New England as well, it was colonial militias and volunteer forces, which fought many of the campaigns against Native Americans. They committed acts of violence and atrocities, as New English volunteer forces and militia played a role beyond defensive functions. In both the English and the French colonies, colonists were actively engaged in carrying the war into enemy communities. Ranging warfare was widely used in the conficts of the region. The use of the terms “ranger” and “ranging” dates back in the English records to at least the

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thirteenth century and was applied by the sixteenth century to irregular militia units who patrolled the violent English and Scottish borderlands. These terms also came to be used in North America. Given the lack of regular forces in seventeenth-century North America, colonial militia adopted ranging warfare to fght both ofensively and defensively against enemies. John Smith might have been the frst English person to apply this term in a North American context. During conficts with the Powhatan, Smith recommended that Jamestown raise a force to go “ranging the countries and tormenting the Saluages.” It was during the Anglo Powhatan Wars that English militia forces made violent use of ranging warfare against Native American populations. In New England, the use of ranging warfare is usually credited to Benjamin Church, who actively recruited, trained, and practiced ranging warfare during King Philip’s War. While Church certainly formalized ranging warfare as part of English militia campaigns, colonists in New England had applied elements of ranging warfare in their strategic toolkits in prior campaigns.3

The Dynamics of Inter-Indigenous Conficts The Indigenous Northeast was a world of “frequent confict and feeting alliances,” writes historian Patrick Malone, a “dynamic system of organized violence.” But, as we alluded to in the last chapter, European colonization altered the dynamics of inter-Indigenous conficts.4 European colonization and the incorporation of technologies, such as frearms and sailing ships, had an impact on warfare dynamics in the region. These developments aided in changing combat traditions, norms, and strategic goals. They also likely undermined existing restraints on the ferocity of war that existed in the pre-colonial Northeast. Recall that exchanges played a central role in the early interactions between Native Americans and Europeans, and that this trade kindled clashes not only between local populations and colonizers but also among Indigenous groups. In the seventeenth-century Northeast, the trade in fur played a signifcant part in European-Indigenous relations. This trade emerged out of a long history of longdistance exchange and interactions among the Indigenous peoples of Dawnland. In pre-colonial times, the exchange of goods between diferent communities played a central part and could occur over long distances. Exchange had symbolic, political, and diplomatic signifcance, thus, having a far more complex impact than merely serving economic functions. Early exchanges with Europeans were treated much in the same fashion, and European goods were distributed into the long-distance exchange networks of Indigenous peoples. By the frst half of the seventeenth century, Native Americans had absorbed imported textiles, kettles, frearms, axes, knives, alcohol, and many other goods into their daily life. They obtained these commodities through their trade with Europeans. On the European side, beaver was the most desired animal skin, as the fur was widely used in hat making. In fact, its centrality leads several historians to

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describe the inter-Indigenous conficts in the seventeenth century as “beaver wars.” Moreover, the use of the term “beaver wars” serves as a helpful reminder that even though we are talking about inter-Indigenous conficts, it was the European presence and eforts at colonization that helped to spur war among Native American societies. Thus, even though we speak of inter-Indigenous conficts, it is important to acknowledge that these tensions and competitions were also driven by European colonization. The dynamics of inter-Indigenous warfare among Native American communities are not easily characterized and was shaped by regional complexities and diversity. It will likely, given the limited existing evidence, never be fully understood. Yet, certain dynamics, trends, and tendencies, which were reinforced by European colonization, had a broader impact on the Indigenous peoples of the Northeast and beyond. Trade with Europeans introduced frearms to the region, and this new technology made conficts more deadly among Native Americans. Moreover, the acquisition of frearms by various nations, alliance systems, kinship networks, and communities led these historic actors to exploit their military advantage to target other peoples. In turn, the Indigenous groups that faced these threats also attempted to obtain frearms, and, or European allies. All these strategies were pursued by Native American communities to make themselves less vulnerable to attacks by enemies. Alongside the horrifc impact that pandemics had on Native Americans in the early modern Northeast, inter-Indigenous and colonial warfare also led to dramatic disruptions and destruction, but they also likely spurred the re-creation of communities and new political alignments among the region’s aboriginal peoples. As mentioned earlier, we know little about the pre-Columbian political, ethnic, and social organization of Indigenous peoples. Evidence suggests that fuid kinship associations of Native American settlements and communities played a central political role. In times of confict, several communities could group together into an alliance. Moreover, gauging from seventeenth-century observations, during moments of internal divisions and strain, members of a village or town could up and leave, a reality that required Indigenous leaders to show fexibility and adaptability as the heads of their communities. Thus, in the Early American Northeast, academic organizing principles, such as “community,” “kinship,” “tribe,” or “nation” were fuid and fexible concepts on the ground. The political and ethnic reality might have been diferent in the ffteenth century prior to the European presence in the region. The records left by some of the earliest European observers suggest that Indigenous societies in the Northeast were much more centralized and they imply that leaders had more power. It is possible that disease and confict weakened political centralization and brought about dramatic social changes in Indigenous societies. However, it is also feasible that records were skewed by the biases of early French and English observers, who used the, to them, more familiar centralized structures of Europe to describe the Indigenous societies they encountered.

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In the seventeenth-century Northeast, Native American communities were engaged in several inter-Indigenous conficts. Two outside alliances had an especially notable impact on confict in New England: these were the Mi’kmaq (from today’s Canadian Maritimes and northern New England) and the Haudenosaunee (from contemporary New York).

Mi’kmaq Wars In the frst decades of the seventeenth century, the Mi’kmaq launched several military expeditions beyond their homelands. These attacks were motivated by complex factors. They were carried out over long distances and sustained over long periods. The Mi’kmaq launched strikes to hit old rivals, but they also conducted raids to obtain resources such as agricultural products, valuable material objects, and captives. The English colonist William Wood, for instance, mentioned a Mi’kmaq attack on a Native American settlement in the vicinity of Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s. The community had been surprised by the attack as most men of fghting age had been “busy about their accustomed huntings.” The unexpected attackers killed several members of the community, and the rest, including their injured leader, fed to the English settlement for safety. Wood argued that the Mi’kmaq “are the more insolent by reason they have guns which they daily trade for with the French . . . for beaver.”5 The Mi’kmaq deployed maritime campaigns as part of their attacks on other Indigenous communities. These marine assaults likely reached from southern New England all the way north into the Inuit territory. While little information on such expeditions is available, the historic record provides us the occasional glimpse. An attack in the summer of 1631, near a Native American settlement close to Ipswich, north of Boston, and possibly the same assault mentioned by Wood earlier, provides some insights into Mi’kmaq maritime assault logistics and operations. The Mi’kmaq arrived on two sailing ships landing close to their target. They stormed the settlements and killed and maimed several Native Americans and carried of food, valuables, and several captives. Jesuit missionaries who resided in the Mi’kmaq homelands on the Gaspé Peninsula also reported maritime assaults on the Inuit to bring back captives and other valuables. Moreover, Plymouth Governor William Bradford observed that Native Americans in southern New England were “afraid of ” the Mi’kmaq, who came at “harvest time and take away their corn, and many times kill their persons.”6

Inter-Indigenous Confict Between Algonquian Speakers and Haudenosaunee The Haudenosaunee and among them especially the easternmost nation of this alliance system—the Mohawks—also frequently participated in inter-Indigenous

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conficts in seventeenth-century New England. As mentioned in the prior chapter, the Haudenosaunee had already been signifcant players during conficts in Dawnland prior to English colonization. They continued to do so in the seventeenth century. The Haudenosaunee’s desire to pursue their interests, exert their infuence, and demonstrate their power led to conficts with various Indigenous nations in New England. At the same time, their active involvement in the region also led to alliances and close relations with local tribes.7 The Haudenosaunee assaults on Indigenous communities in New England were part of a series of military campaigns and conficts that reached into the areas we today call the Great Lakes region, southeastern Canada, the midAtlantic, and the upper South. Thus, the attacks covered signifcant geographic portions of North America east of the Mississippi River. They were spurred by the earlier discussed phenomenon called mourning wars. The cultural belief in the need to replace and avenge dead members in their communities only became more intense throughout the seventeenth century, as European colonization had a far-reaching depopulating impact. Inter-Indigenous confict was also spurred by the desire for prestige, war trophies, and tribute in sought-after commodities and goods. Moreover, the desire to get frearms, usually obtained from Europeans in exchange for beaver and other animal skins, also drove the Haudenosaunee to encroach onto the territory of Indigenous communities throughout eastern North America, to hunt for fur. These encroachments were often accompanied by assaults on the settlements of competing Native American societies, which further spurred inter-Indigenous confict. Several historians have underscored the impact that Haudenosaunee attacks had and have explained their depopulating impact in the Susquehanna River Valley and the eastern portions of the Great Lakes region. Thus, New England’s Indigenous peoples were among many Native American nations east of the Mississippi River that were tied into wars that resulted from Haudenosaunee aggression, and which saw an ever-wider adoption of frearms by Indigenous peoples. The desire to obtain frearms had a dramatic impact on the nature of colonial-Indigenous trade all over North America. Moreover, inter-Indigenous wars and the challenges they provided to the survival of Native American peoples also infuenced the nature and conduct of diplomacy throughout the region. Among the Haudenosaunee, the mourning wars led to the adoption of other Native Americans. These new members served as intermediaries, cultural brokers, and translators in negotiations with communities from which they had originated. Those adoptees who originated from Native American groups who were allied to the French were often relied upon to serve as intermediaries in negotiations between French colonial ofcials and Haudenosaunee communities. Adoptee negotiators became especially useful to the Haudenosaunee as they experienced increasing pushback from Eastern Woodland peoples in the later seventeenth century. As neighboring groups also obtained frearms and created defensive alliances, the Haudenosaunee lost some of their comparative advantages. Their

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power became more checked, they experienced setbacks, and, at times, they were forced to negotiate for peace.8 English colonists in the Northeast frequently observed Haudenosaunee attacks. In the early 1630s William Wood published, for instance, that the Mohawk were “a cruel and bloody people.” He explained that “they come down upon their poor neighbors with more than brutish savageness, spoiling their corn . . . slaying men,” and taking captives.9 The Mohawks, the Keepers of the Eastern Gate among the Peoples of the Longhouse, had long-standing rivalries with a number of New England nations. Being the closest among the Haudenosaunee to New England, they had frequently attacked their neighbors there. In the 1620s, for instance, the Mahicans of the Hudson River Valley and the western foothills of the Berkshires were drawn into a confict with the Mohawks. The Mohawks successfully pushed the Mahicans out of their dominant position in the Hudson River Valley, where they had been a main player in the fur trade with the Dutch. The successful campaigns enabled the Mohawks and other Haudenosaunee to access trade with the Dutch, and later the English, through their trading posts on the Hudson River. This development provided the Peoples of the Longhouse with reliable access to European trade—especially frearms. The Mohawks also frequently raided far into New England. In the following decades, they attacked smaller tribes such as the Quinnipiac, Sokoki, and Pocumtuc in western New England, as well as nations further away such as the Pennacook of the Merrimack River Valley and the eastern Wabanaki nations in present-day Maine.10 It was likely that outside attacks led some Native Americans, like the Pennacook in the 1640s, to seek closer association with the New English colonies. The English in their legal and political understanding argued that these nations submitted themselves under colonial authority. Native Americans likely had a diferent understanding of their situation, assuming they had retained their sovereignty. Instead, they sought the English out as allies in hope of gaining help against Mohawk attacks. But Native American groups looking for English support were deeply disappointed. New English authorities did little to support their Native American neighbors, despite the fact that they were colonial “subjects” under English law. For the Pennacook nation, just as for several other groups in New England, attacks by Mohawk raiding parties continued for several decades despite their alliance with Massachusetts Bay Colony. In such instances, the colonies provided little-to-no military assistance and support. Such neglectful treatment by allies did not go unnoticed by Native Americans.11 It is important to underscore, however, that various groups in New England also had close relations and alliances with the Haudenosaunee at certain points. The wampum trade provides an example of the symbiotic exchange that existed between some southern New England nations and the Haudenosaunee. The exchange of wampum could also lead to diplomatic ties.12 In the 1640s, for example, during tense relations with the colonies, as we explore later, the Narragansett

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reminded English colonists of their relations with the Mohawks. The potential of a regional involvement by the powerful Mohawk nation certainly concerned and was discussed among colonial ofcials. But relying on alliances with the Mohawks could also be fraught for Indigenous peoples in New England, as the Pequot experienced in the 1630s. In the seventeenth century, alliances and diplomatic ties were fuid and complex. These realities required Native Americans to be strategic, fexible, and constantly calculating. By the 1650s, Native Americans in southern New England gradually developed stronger ties with the Wabanaki nations of northern Dawnland, and the resentment against the Haudenosaunee grew, even among former close relations. This development was likely spurred by an increase in Mohawk raiding throughout the region in the 1650s and 1660s. An attempt by an alliance of New England Native American nations to attack the Mohawk ended in disastrous defeat in 1669.13 Throughout the seventeenth century, Native American wars played an important role in New England. These conficts aided in the weakening of the position of the Indigenous peoples of Dawnland. As we shall see later, and just to give one example, the Mohawk attack on Native Americans who resisted English colonization in New England in the 1670s played a contributing factor in undermining Indigenous resistance in the confict today known as King Philip’s War.

English Colonization and Confict With Native Americans, 1620–1675 As we have seen, the intermittent presence of Europeans in the sixteenth century occasionally led to European-Indigenous confict in the Northeast. The establishment of a growing number of permanent European colonial settlements in the seventeenth century escalated the potential for tensions, confict, and war even further. This section examines how the colonists at Plymouth engaged in a few military altercations with Native Americans in the early years of the colony. The text also surveys how, by the second half of the 1630s, English colonists with Native American allies fought an atrocious war against the Pequot. Moreover, this section analyses the decades following the Pequot War, when tense relations prevailed between the Narragansett tribe and their relations on the one side, and the New English colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, New Haven, as well as their Indigenous allies the Mohegan nation on the opposite end. The frst military engagement between the colonists traveling on the Mayfower and local Native Americans occurred before the establishment of Plymouth in mid-December of 1620. Several men on the Mayfower, led by the earlier mentioned Miles Standish, explored potential settlement sites on Cape Cod. During their excursions they came across Native villages, whose inhabitants had fed into the forests. The English party disturbed some Native American burial sites and raided the food storages of one community. To repel the intruders, the

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local Indigenous population acted. On the morning of December  7, while in the process of fortifying their base camp, the Mayfower crew faced a challenge from a small Native American force. Both sides deployed warning shots, quickly withdrew from the battle, and no blood was spilled. Mayfower colonists withdrew from the Cape a few days later, and they established a settlement across Cape Cod Bay on the former site of the Native American town of Patuxet. In fact, the Mayfower colonists later compensated the Nauset community on Cape Cod for taking their food, via their Wampanoag contacts. Such events were indicative of the complicated history of Anglo-Indigenous relations in what is today southeastern Massachusetts. In the months and years that followed the establishment of Plymouth Colony, there emerged a largely non-violent, albeit often tense, relationship between Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag. Given that the population at Plymouth in December of 1620 was barely over 100, and that the settlement lost almost 50% of its people during their frst North American winter, the colonists were eager to avoid confict. In fact, during their frst months, Plymouth colonists buried their dead at night and hid the graves, hoping that their Native American neighbors would not notice their vulnerabilities. Of course, the Wampanoag, an alliance of Indigenous communities from throughout today’s southeastern Massachusetts, also had to decide what to do with this new English settlement on their territory. Like many Indigenous societies on the eastern seaboard, the Wampanoag communities were tremendously weakened by the massive outbreak of disease. Still, a decisive Native American attack could have wiped out Plymouth, and there were certainly some in the alliance who advocated for such a strategy. Nonetheless, the leader, or Massasoit, of the Wampanoag alliance, a man named Ousamequin, opted to pursue peaceful relations with Plymouth. Given the weakening impact that epidemics had on his people, maybe he believed that having the English as an ally might strengthen the Wampanoag nation’s position in the region. Ousamequin likely also imagined that his standing could increase through the inland trade of European goods. Violence erupted between Native Americans and Plymouth in 1623. Miles Standish led a colonial force against the Massachusetts, who lived to the north of Plymouth. Several Massachusetts men were killed in this engagement and the rest of the force fed into a swamp. Plymouth’s company returned with the head of a Massachusetts leader and piked the war trophy at the gate of their fort at Plymouth. This display certainly did not go unnoticed by Wampanoag visitors who saw it as an act of provocation. One Wampanoag openly challenged the English colonists. “[I]f we are allies how cometh it to pass that when we come to Patuxet you stand upon your guard with the mouths of your pieces presented to us.” Such voices and the fact that the English had their guns at the ready when Wampanoag guests came provide us a glimpse into the fragility of Anglo-Wampanoag relations, which would weaken further in the next few decades.14

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In the following years, as colonial settlements proliferated throughout southern New England, the attention of the English colonists switched to the homelands of the Pequot tribe and other Native American nations in today’s Connecticut. There the English pursued a brutal war against the Pequot people in the 1630s. This confict was a pivotal event in the colonization of New England. It serves as a case study of how Puritan elites deliberately pushed for war and used genocidal violence to pursue their colonial ambitions. Anglo-Indigenous relations became tense again by the 1630s, and alongside the English and the Pequot nation, involved the Narragansett people, the Mohegan tribe, as well as the Dutch. The Pequot tribe was a powerful player in the area, as they controlled signifcant parts of the fertile lower Connecticut River Valley. The Pequot people, alongside the Narragansett nation, were also a major producer of wampum shell beads. These beads were an important trade item in Indigenous long-distance exchange networks going far back into pre-Columbian history. During the frst decades of the early seventeenth century, wampum also began to serve as a key mode of payment in the fur trade. As a result of the shortage of minted coins into the 1650s, New English colonists, for instance, also used wampum as a currency. Given the importance of this resource to the peoples in the Northeast and beyond, there existed an active and at times violent competition over who had access to and controlled the distribution of wampum. Thus, by the 1630s, the Pequot people had found themselves in a confict with the Narragansett and the Dutch over the wampum trade. This was a small-scale war defned by raids and counterraids. During one such attack, Dutch raiders killed the great sachem of the Pequot nation, a man named Tatoban. Tatoban’s successor and son, Sassacus, to strengthen the weakening position his people found themselves in by the 1630s, likely sought an entente with the English—a strategy that backfred on the leader and the Pequot nation. In hope to garner English support, the Pequot tribe permitted colonists to open a trading post in the Connecticut River Valley. Yet, English support was not forthcoming, and the colonists exploited the situation. The English instead used this invitation and claimed all the Pequot land in the Connecticut River Valley, and quickly established several settlements and defensive structures in the area. In addition, the English demanded an extremely high payment in wampum as tribute, a sum which some historians estimate amounted to about half of the tax income of all New English colonies combined at the time. This incredible demand further strained the position of the Pequot people. The situation grew worse when some Pequot men killed a ruthless English trader of ill-repute, named John Stone, believing he was a Dutchman. Stone’s death was ultimately used as the justifcation by the English to start a war against the Pequot communities. Seeing the writing on the wall, losing faith in their great sachem’s leadership, and underscoring the fuid political nature of Indigenous nations, several Pequot communities abandoned Sassacus and sought closer allegiance with the Mohegan tribe or the English.

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The situation quickly escalated into war. Puritan apologists at the time also blamed the Pequot tribe for the killing of another Englishman on Block Island. This was done even though the Pequot nation had tenuous relations with the Native American villages there. In August 1636, Massachusetts Bay Colony organized an expedition of 90 soldiers under the command of Colonel John Endicott. This force launched a punitive attack against the Manissean tribe on the island. Despite the orders to “slaughter or to enslave” the island’s Indigenous inhabitants, the English raiders were not able to track down any. Instead, the Native Americans expertly evaded the attackers in the island’s swamps and wetlands, and only a few Manissean soldiers engaged with the English in smaller clashes. Thus, the Puritan invaders shifted to a campaign of “burning and spoiling.” The English raiders hit the Indigenous communities hard by burning down their settlements, harvests, and food storages. By striking their homes and resources, it became harder for the Manissean communities to survive once the English attackers left. Meanwhile, on the mainland, Endicott and his company sought to pressure the Pequot people to surrender the murderers of Stone. After some diplomatic exchanges, an impatient Endicott declared the negotiations with the Pequot tribe a failure. The English attacked and destroyed a Pequot settlement, and “spend the day burning and spoiling the country.”15 The raid by Endicott and his company pushed the Pequot nation into war. Pequot forces retaliated with some smaller raids in the Connecticut River Valley, where they laid siege to Saybrook Fort and attacked some of the newly established English settlements. These counterattacks led to a harsh New English response of total warfare. The Pequot War was a confict in which colonial forces were assisted by Mohegan and Narragansett allies, who likely assumed that joining the English forces could strengthen their position in the region at the expense of the Pequot nation.16 The most atrocious attack of the war happened at a fortifed Pequot settlement on the Mystic River. On May 26, 1637, a joint English, Mohegan, and Narragansett force attacked a village predominantly occupied by women and children. The attacking forces put fre to the settlement and indiscriminately killed Pequot fghters as well as non-combatants. William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth, observed: “It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fre and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and the scent thereof.” What happened on the banks of the Mystic River was a genocidal massacre. The attackers killed more than 500 Pequot. Most of the victims were children, women, and the elderly. The purpose of the assault was to set an example and to terrorize the Pequot. In the aftermath of the engagement, a Narragansett stated in shock about English brutality in warfare—“it is too furious, it slays too many.”17 While the remainder of the war lacked dramatic events like the Mystic massacre, smaller raids and ranging expeditions by the English and their Indigenous allies certainly matched the terror and violence, if not the scale. The Pequot sachem Sassacus, for instance, sought to fnd protection among the allied Mohawk

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people. Yet, the Mohawks brutally killed and disfgured him, and send Sassacus’ head and hands to the English as an ofer to establish diplomatic relations. Meanwhile, the English and their Native American allies engaged in various small-scale battles, raids, and massacres against the Pequot. These attacks undermined the Pequot’s ability to resist and made it hard for them to survive in their homelands. Uncounted women and children were killed in these raids. Moreover, hundreds of Pequot were taken to the New English colonies as war captives, while other communities were able to go into hiding or found protection among Mohegan and Narragansett communities. To justify their actions, English commentators depicted the Pequot War as a confict against a “savage” enemy in the service of “Satan,” and the colonists saw themselves as the victims in their interactions with Native Americans. In their propaganda, they were a threatened people under siege. Only divine intervention could save them from a violent “savage” enemy. After the Mystic massacre, Bradford observed that the victory seemed a sweet sacrifce, and they gave the praise thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and given them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.18 The harsh treatment of the Pequot was thus justifed as a divine act. It was a sign that the Puritans had been destined by God to win. Such tropes accompanied Anglo American colonization through many centuries and culminated in the myth of the United States’ “Manifest Destiny” in the nineteenth century. A further justifcation of the war by the English was the allegation that there was a Pequot “conspiracy” against the colonists. The trope of “Indian conspiracies” became another popular Anglo American justifcation for attacks against Native Americans throughout U.S. history.19 The Pequot War enabled the colonists to strengthen and reinforce their position in Connecticut, but it also helped to shape New England’s colonial racial order. The English and their Native American allies led a disproportionately violent and punitive campaign against the Pequot, which included the slaughter of non-combatants. English colonists also summarily executed Pequot prisoners of war. The success of the English and their Native American allies was brought about through a war of attrition that assisted the brutal defeat of the Pequot nation. In addition, the war resulted in the introduction of several hundred Pequot war captives to the English colonies, seen by the English at least, as compensation for the costs they had incurred for fghting a “just war.” Many Pequot prisoners of war were used as unfree labor, while others were sold into the Caribbean, a practice that continued in other conficts during the seventeenth century. In exchange for the Pequot captives, the English also brought people of African descent to Massachusetts Bay, a development that tied the New England

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colony in the Atlantic World slavery complex. The debate over the legal status of the Pequot prisoners of war, as well as the presence of people of African descent, argues historian Margret Newell, was instrumental in Massachusetts Bay Colony being the frst English-speaking colony in North America to codify the enslavement of Indigenous and black peoples in the early 1640s.20 In the decades after the defeat of the Pequot nation, the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth increasingly focused their indignation on the Narragansett tribe, living in what is today the state of Rhode Island. The Narragansett people were one of the more populous nations in southern New England. Through shrewd diplomacy and reciprocity, they created a network of allies among various communities in the Indigenous Northeast. Throughout the late 1630s to the 1670s, there were various tense fashpoints between English colonies and the Narragansett nation. Before King Philip’s War, the Narragansett people and their allies never directly engaged in military confict with the English. Still, there were several violent confrontations between the Narragansett alliance system and the Mohegan tribe, who were closely allied with the English colonies. As with the Pequot War, the background of the tensions between the English and the Narragansett nation was complex and is difcult to reconstruct on the limited evidence. From the perspective of Narragansett leaders, this development was likely surprising. They had reason to feel optimistic that their alliance with the English colonies had been strengthened due to their support of the New English colonies in their war with the Pequot nation. However, already during the Pequot War, Puritan military and colonial elites had expressed distrust and frustration toward the Narragansett people. Complaints by New English ofcials about Narragansett’s behavior worsened in the following years. Puritan elites’ grievances often were based on tropes that the Native Americans lacked reverence in their treatment of the English and that they displayed cowardice in military matters. Furthermore, the English, not incorrectly, alleged that the Narragansett were harboring Pequot refugees in their towns and villages. But so were Mohegan communities, and that nation faced no repercussions. Inter-English competition was also a source of tension. The Narragansett nation’s close relations with the English settlements that were united into one colony known as Rhode Island by a royal charter in 1663, also met Puritan displeasure. The Rhode Island English communities had been founded and had attracted colonists, who were resented by the Puritan elites in the other New England colonies. They begrudged the presence of these settlements, which were seen as violating their strict puritanical norms. Thus, they considered them as dangerous competitors in the region. Moreover, through the mid-seventeenth century, wampum remained a cause for frictions. Even though New English colonists had begun to manufacture these beads, the Narragansett and their allies continued to be important producers.

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Wampum provided these communities with a signifcant source of diplomatic and commercial power. The Narragansett people, on the other hand, felt that the English colonies had not held up their promises since the Pequot War ended. They believed that they were entitled to Pequot captives as a reward for having entered the confict on the side of the English. These captives had not been forthcoming. The Narragansett also believed that the alliance with the English colonies had entitled them, and their Niantic allies, to settle, hunt, and fsh on Pequot territory. Thus, relations between the Narragansett and the Niantic nations on the one end, as well as several of the New England colonies on the other, grew only tenser in the years that followed the Pequot War. The pressure against the Narragansett people and their allies continued into King Philip’s War. They often played out in tense diplomacy but could also result in incidents of brutal violence and confict. Several factors spurred tensions and at times led to confict. First, between the Pequot and King Philip’s War, the English colonists were only too keen to take control of Indigenous lands, which caused tensions with the Narragansett people and their allies. The English colonies of Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay were also eager to weaken this alliance system whenever they could. Moreover, Puritan elites and colonists throughout this period continued to obsess about Native American conspiracies and threats. They projected these sentiments on the Narragansett and Niantic peoples. Such attitudes often spurred hostilities. Second, the machinations of the leader of the Mohegan nation, Uncas, helped to bring about confict. At times, he sought to manipulate Connecticut’s and other colonial elites and often executed or assisted in the implementation of New English demands. He pursued such strategies to strengthen his and the Mohegan nation’s position in the region. Third, Narragansett and Niantic leaders also promoted tensions and confict. Sachems like Miantonomi of the Narragansett tribe or Ninigret of the Niantic nation did this in pursuit of their interests and to extend their own as well as their peoples’ reach and power. By the early 1640s, the tensions between the English and the Narragansett tribe fared up. The English frst feared a Narragansett and Mohawk alliance, and later thought that Miantonomi sought a pact with the Montauk on Long Island, to conspire against the colonies. Some meetings and attempts at fnding diplomatic solutions between the two parties went nowhere and tended to excite emotions and temperaments further on either side. From a Narragansett perspective, things were not helped by the fact that the English colonies demanded huge tribute payments in wampum. Connecticut also favored Uncas and the Mohegan nation, and the sachem was likely the source of questionable intelligence that pushed for a preemptive strike against the Narragansett tribe. The Narragansett’s sale of land to English dissenters on their homelands angered political elites in other New English colonies. It also led Roger Williams, a leading colonist in the dissenter communities, to head to London to seek a royal charter for the settlements, which eventually made up the colony of Rhode Island. Angered by

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this move, colonial elites created the United Colonies of New England in 1643. This alliance of New English colonies excluded the Rhode Island communities. Meanwhile, the situation between the United Colonies, the Narragansett people, and the Mohegan nation, whose homelands are in the modern state of Connecticut, quickly escalated. The Narragansett tribe became embroiled in a confict with the Mohegan people in July of 1643. Narragansett leaders attempted to assist one of their allied groups that had been in a confict with Uncas’ tribe. Yet, their force was routed and Miantonomi, the Narragansett leader, was taken prisoner. At the request of the English, Uncas executed Miantonomi. After the execution of their leader, the situation between the Mohegan nation and the English on the one end, and the Narragansett and their allies on the other, remained strained. Inter-Indigenous raids continued and in 1645 Mohegan and Narragansett soldiers fought a large one-day battle. Following the violent fght, diplomatic discussions remained tense. The English again interfered on the side of the Mohegan nation, and colonial ofcials demanded two thousand fathoms of wampum as war reparations from the Narragansett tribe and their allied nations. As one fathom was about 6 feet of string flled with around 360 beads, this was an incredibly large sum, and the Narragansett and Niantic nations did their best to dodge and slow walk these payments. Moreover, the United Colonies forced the Narragansett nation to surrender any claims to Pequot lands. Uncas’ aggression against allied people of the Narragansett tribe and the payment of debt remained a source of tension for several years to come. Hostilities continued into the 1650s and 1660s. In 1653, for instance, the United Colonies declared war and had negotiations with Ninigret, the sachem of the Niantic and now also the Narragansett nations, because his peoples had done some small raids against the Montauk on Long Island. Anglo-Niantic-Narragansett diplomatic relations remained challenging. Hostilities also prevailed between the Mohegan nation, Native American groups in the Connecticut River region, as well as the Narragansett and the Niantic peoples. These nations participated in several Indigenous raids and attacks, especially involving Mohegan communities and Indigenous communities in the Connecticut River Valley. Still, and while the role of the Narragansett people was not central, the United Colonies blamed the tribe as the main culprit for these frictions. As a punishment, the United Colonies imposed a controversial agreement on the Narragansett nation called the Atherton Deed in 1660, through which the nation lost about 400 square miles of land. For much of the period from the late 1630s through to the mid-1670s, the United Colonies, the Narragansett people, and their respective allies were in a period of tensions that had the characteristics of a cold war. While the Narragansett and the United Colonies did not engage in direct fghting with each other during this period, each side attempted to diplomatically and politically shape the outcomes they desired. Both sides were involved in various proxy wars during this period. Yet, this cold war situation turned extremely hot and violent with the outbreak of King Philip’s War in 1675.21

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English Colonization and the Transformation of Southern New England While the situation between the New English colonies, the Mohegan nation, as well as the Narragansett and their allied peoples was dominated by diplomatic standofs and by smaller, often proxy conficts, some observers of English colonization instead emphasize that the period from 1620 to 1675 was one of accommodation and peaceful relations between colonists and Native Americans in southern New England. One historian has even termed this period “a half century of peace.” Some authors suggest that this era of relative nonviolence was due to the tolerant policies and the restrained behavior of Puritan colonists toward Native Americans.22 An alternative explanation, especially given the destructive impact that disease and confict had on Indigenous societies, is that Native Americans sought out peaceful relations or tried to avoid confict with the English. As we have seen earlier with Ousamequin, some Native Americans believed that closer association with the English might strengthen the position of their communities and alliance systems. Some Indigenous communities, having seen the impact frsthand, or having heard from others about, the severe violence directed against the Pequot nation by the English, likely learned an important lesson about the dangers that a confict with the English could bring. A few Indigenous leaders put their territories and communities under partial English authority, while trying to retain as much of their sovereignty as viable. In addition, and to varying degrees, Indigenous people also participated in the colonial economy in diverse ways. Other Native Americans decided to gain some distance from the English, moving further away from the colonies. This strategy was pursued by entire communities that relocated, or by individuals and smaller groups who joined other Indigenous communities located in what is today northern New England, New York, and southeastern Canada. The growing number of adopted refugees but also the destructive impact of disease, and the fuid and open nature of Native American societies, meant that many Indigenous communities were quite mixed with far-reaching and fexible kinship relations.23 The subsequent section explores the impact that English colonization had on Indigenous peoples from the 1630s to the 1670s. During this period, the presence of New English colonists and colonies certainly created numerous challenges for Indigenous societies all over southern New England. It was these issues and tensions, which helped to spur the outbreak of King Philip’s War. English colonization created several problems for Indigenous peoples in the region. The New English population signifcantly expanded as a result of a large wave of Puritan migrants coming to the region from England, a phenomenon often called a “Great Migration.”24 Thus, by the 1670s, colonial settlements covered signifcant portions of southern New England. These developments spurred dramatic loss of land among Native American nations as colonial settlements

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expanded away from the coast into New England’s interior. Increasingly, Indigenous peoples realized that the pressure on their homelands would not subside, especially given the expanding English population with ever-increasing demands for Native American lands. English demographic expansion and colonization also had environmental impacts that infuenced Indigenous communities. Colonial expansion spurred deforestation. Colonists exploited the New England forests for wood to construct houses, to fuel their fres, and to help to build more ships to satisfy the ever-growing maritime needs of a burgeoning English society. The loss of forest reduced signifcantly the available hunting grounds to Indigenous men. Moreover, the overhunting of the region’s beaver population, alongside deforestation, also helped to alter southern New England’s wetlands and natural environment. In New England, as in many other parts of the Americas and the world, colonization led to “biological imperialism,” which led to the global redistribution and exchange of fora and fauna in a larger process that researchers call the “Columbian Exchange.” English construction of dams at rivers, which undermined the spawning runs of various fsh species, as well as the aggressive fshing in coastal and inland waters, also led to a decline of the fsh and shellfsh population.25 An additional frustration to Indigenous peoples in the region was that freeroaming English cattle and pigs got into their farm felds, their food storages, and, in coastal areas, into their clam felds. Cattle and pigs wreaked destruction, but, and despite Native American complaints, colonial ofcials remained largely inactive on these issues. Instead, they often faulted Native Americans for not having built fences around their farm felds. The destructive impact of English livestock increasingly complicated Native American daily life in the region. It spurred resentment against English colonization, in general, and elucidates why a number of Indigenous people joined an anti-colonial resistance movement in the 1670s.26 It is also important to underscore, that from 1620 to the 1670s, Indigenous peoples adapted to the new realities created by colonization. Given the legacies of war and economic hardship, some Native Americans ended up working for colonists, as either slaves, indentured workers, or free labor. Especially in close vicinity to the New English colonies, Native American settlement patterns changed, with communities becoming larger and more permanent, as the Indigenous land base was reduced. Some Native Americans adopted Christianity and formed what was called “praying towns” as well as other Christian communities. “Praying towns” could be found in several areas of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Christian communities were found all over the Northeast. Native Americans in “praying town” communities adopted English religion, dress, and other aspects of material culture. Yet, at the same time, these Christian communities also retained a degree of political sovereignty, autonomy, and control over their land. To varying degrees, other Native Americans across New England also adopted European clothing, housing styles, technology, and lifeways. In southern New

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England, Native Americans often paid for European goods through land sales. Some Indigenous communities and individuals also adopted animal husbandry, such as raising pigs, which they sold on colonial markets. Native Americans’ adoption of pigs raised the ire of some colonists, who accused Native American competitors of selling their animals at too low of a price. Such allegations provide a glimpse into New English resentment of Native Americans. But they also underscore that Native Americans could actively contribute and compete in a colonial economy, if the right circumstances prevailed. During periods of tension and when trying to get issues resolved, Indigenous peoples in southern New England also had to deal with New English laws, law enforcement, the colonial courts, and ofcials. The cards in the colonial courts were often stacked against Native Americans. For one, Indigenous people often did not appear at trials or during hearings as they had no knowledge of this requirement. There were further challenges, as Native Americans often faced language and cultural barriers in court. To add to the list, colonists were generally better at manipulating the legal system and could, for example, push through land sales, even questionable or illicit ones, or they got away with other violations. The court fees and fnes that resulted from trials often forced Native Americans to sell land. Hence, Native American community leaders were disproportionately targeted by the colonial legal system. They found themselves much more often in the courts than the average member of their community, likely because Indigenous leaders had the authority to move forward with land sales. In other instances, English colonists and authorities, seeking restitution or trying to address a violation, approached Indigenous leaders. Often, however, colonists and New English authorities overestimated the power that leaders had in their communities, holding them accountable when issues were not resolved to their satisfaction. Likewise, at times, colonists and ofcials believed that a Native American had committed a crime without little supporting evidence or knowledge from which community he or she had come, or if the alleged individual had even committed the ofense.27 By the 1670s, southern New England’s most dramatic transformation was of a demographic nature. In fact, the region’s Indigenous population had experienced a demographic catastrophe. Historian David Silverman suggests that the Native American population in the region plunged from an estimated 140,000 to 120,000 in the early seventeenth century down to about 30,000 by the 1670s. The English population, on the other hand, had dramatically grown to over 50,000, from a mere few handfuls of people that had arrived on the Mayfower in 1620.28

King Philip’s War For many Native Americans in southern New England, King Philip’s War was an earth-shattering experience. The war, which began in 1675, involved various Indigenous nations and communities from all over the Northeast. Historian

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Daniel Mandell argues that King Philip’s War was a “devastating” confict. It was a “fundamental turning point in relations between” Native Americans and Anglo Americans in southern New England. King Philip’s War served as “an archetype for many of the conficts in North America through the late nineteenth century.”29 The war brought death and enslavement to many Indigenous communities in the region. Historians estimate that as many as 50–70% of the Native American populations in southern New England perished as a result of the confict. By the time the war was over, many Native American communities had sufered tremendously. The English sold over a thousand Indigenous people into Caribbean slavery. During and in the aftermath of the war, many Native Americans up and left southern New England. Given the intensity and centrality that King Philip’s War played in New England’s history, it has fascinated many scholars.30 In the years and decades after King Philip’s War, those Indigenous communities that survived in the region saw increased eforts by New English societies to undermine their land base, sovereignty, and survival. Indigenous communities experienced this type of treatment regardless of which side of the confict they supported, even those who had sided with the English in King Philip’s War and the many wars with New France were targeted.31 King Philip’s War plays a contentious role among historians engaged in the debate about the strategic conduct of Anglo Americans on the battlefeld, and in their arguments of whether English colonists “Americanized” their conduct in confict through the adoption of Native American tactics, or, if they continued to stick to European ways of fghting. Some historians argue that the English won this confict by adopting Native American’s tactics and modes of fghting.32 Other scholars maintain that the English colonists’ adaptation of Indigenous ways of war were quite limited, had limited efectiveness, and their impact on the outcomes of the confict were overblown. This school of thought argues that European combat behavior and strategies continued to prevail through King Philip’s War and beyond.33 This same question was also debated among New English colonists during King Philip’s War. The seventeenth-century colonist and observer William Hubbard, for instance, dismissed eforts to adopt Native American fghting styles. He used the heavy casualties sufered by a force of colonists whose commander had “taken up a wrong notion about the best way and manner of fghting with the Indians,” as a lesson why such behavior was fraught with problems for the English. This ofcer, according to Hubbard, had ordered his “Company” to fght “with the Indians in their own way,” by “skulking behind Trees and taking their aim at single persons.” Hubbard advocated for colonists to reject Native American battlefeld conduct and “to March in a body,” as practiced in European warfare. To Hubbard fghting in close European battlefeld formation was not only strategically but also morally superior. Indigenous warfare distinguished itself in little more than “subtlety and cruelty.”34 Other colonists advocated diferent solutions. Realizing that too often English forces had been challenged and sufered heavy

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casualties during combat in wetlands or forests when marching in close formation, Benjamin Church, a New English colonist and military ofcer, came to advocate a diferent strategy. He advised the colonies that “if they intended to make an end of the War, by subduing the Enemy, they must make a business of the War, as the Enemy did.”35 Scholars who argue that English military success was either a result of “Europeanized” or “Americanized” ways of waging war, both overstate their case. Colonists were more pragmatic and adaptable in the ways they fought. Over time, they blended, changed, and adopted strategies in their military campaigns throughout the Northeast. In fact, it was the lack of resources, food, and confict fatigue that, more than anything else, undermined Indigenous peoples’ capability to resist in the extremely violent King Philip’s War. Moreover, the English’s continued use of a scorched earth policy against their Indigenous opponents proved to be an efective strategy. War rendered women, children, and the elderly especially vulnerable. Indigenous communities had to constantly relocate and determine how to keep their noncombatants safe through the fghting. At the same time, with harvests and food storages often destroyed or inaccessible, and with hunting curtailed due to war, keeping communities fed was especially challenging. While the gathering skill of women and hunting supplied some foods, reports of malnutrition and famine among Native Americans who were part of the anti-colonial resistance provide us a glimpse into the difculties these communities faced.36 Hitting Native American targets hard, destroying their supplies, and undermining their ways of subsistence weakened Native American resistance. New English forces applied these strategies with gradually increasing efectiveness in this and future conficts. Nevertheless, such successes were rarely straightforward nor easily achieved by English colonists. It was the efective tutoring of, the intervention by, and collaboration with Native American soldiers and allies that aided in the eventual success of the New English colonies. Native Americans in the colonial Northeast not only adopted European technologies, but, like the English, they were also fexible in their combat strategies if the realities of war required them to do so. In southern New England, at the outbreak of King Philip’s War, Native Americans used far more advanced gun technology, compared to the colonists. While the New English still largely used the more dated matchlock muskets, Native Americans had adopted the more technologically advanced fintlock frearms. As hunters, Native American men also had much more practice with frearms. Thus, they tended to be much better shots in combats, and were generally more adept at using frearms in war, compared to New English militiamen. The use of frearms, however, also created Native American vulnerabilities. As the war continued, and unlike the English colonies that were able to ship in supplies from metropolitan England, Native Americans in southern New England ran into severe shortages of frearms, gunpowder, and lead. Like the New English, Native Americans were also fexible

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and adaptive in their fghting techniques. Church, for instance, observed during one martial encounter with Indigenous opponents that “a Volly of ffty or sixty Guns” were fred at his force, which stood exposed in a feld. Hence, in this battle, the Native American attackers used the European strategy of fring all at once. They did not use the mid-seventeenth-century Indigenous tactic, where part of a Native American force held their fre, so that “the Enemy should” not “take the advantage of such an opportunity to run upon them with their Hatchets.” In their struggle to survive and to maintain their communities’ sovereignty, Indigenous peoples had to be pragmatic, fexible, and adaptive in dealing with the changes and challenges they encountered. An additional and signifcant change in Indigenous societies in southern New England on display in King Philip’s War was that Native Americans in the region seemed to have developed a higher acceptance toward violence. They adopted extirpate war tactics and a broader willingness to use fre against buildings and civilian populations.37 Colonization led to dramatic cultural and social changes, which required adaptations from Indigenous peoples as well as Europeans, and it had implications on how wars were fought in the Northeast in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Europeans as well as Native Americans came to use a blend of military strategies, technologies, and ways of fghting in their conduct of warfare. They aimed to be adaptable in their desire to carry a military victory and to protect their communities. In 1675, the factors discussed previously created tensions across the region that exploded into a confict later called King Philip’s War. At the center of the confict was the worsening relations between the Wampanoag communities and New English colonists. Land loss, run-ins with colonial authorities and the law, English farm animals’ destructive behavior in farm felds, food storages, as well as other Indigenous resource areas, alongside the lack of access to hunting grounds—all these issues created hostile sentiments. English-Wampanoag relations deteriorated further after Ousamequin died in 1661, which led to a change in the leadership of the alliance system. The new leaders made decisions on the shifting situation around them. Ousamequin was briefy replaced by Wamsutta, who the English called Alexander. Wamsutta died in 1662, having fallen sick, after he was seized by the court in Plymouth after agreeing to controversial land sales to Rhode Island. Many in the Wampanoag communities suspected foul play by Plymouth Colony, among them Wamsutta’s brother Metacom, whom the English called Philip, and who now assumed the leadership position. Plymouth’s establishment of the settlement of Swansea, close to Metacom’s seat at Mount Hope, as well as the continuous demands for more land, also put pressure on the leader and his people. Moreover, responding to Plymouth’s pressure to meet, and surrounded by angry English colonists in Taunton in the spring of 1671, Metacom probably felt forced to sign an unfavorable treaty. In it, he declared himself responsible for breaching prior agreements with Plymouth, agreed to his status as a “subject” of the colony, and consented to the

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surrender of his people’s frearms, although the Wampanoag only surrendered older weapons and kept most of their newer ones. As a result, by the 1670s, the situation between Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag peoples had grown tense. Rumors of a Native American conspiracy to start a war were also rampant among the colonists at that time, and the murder of an Indigenous man named John Sassamon further fed this anxiety and created a major fashpoint in Wampanoag-colonial relations. Sassamon, who had worked as the scribe and translator for Wamsutta and Metacom, had been released from service by Metcom late in 1671. Metacom suspected his secretary of enriching himself during land sales and for providing him false information. Several years later, in January 1675, Sassamon met with the Plymouth governor and accused his former employer of creating an anti-colonial alliance against the English. This allegation fed an already active New English rumor mill, especially after Sassamon’s dead body was discovered in February. Despite questionable evidence and testimony, three Wampanoag men were put on trial by Plymouth for having committed the murder and they were punished. Metacom saw the trial as an illegitimate scam, and having three of his citizens tried and punished in the colonial system, undermined his legal and political sovereignty. Despite these developments, various representative of the Wampanoag alliance repeatedly expressed their desire for peace. In the second half of June, the situation began to escalate in the Swansea and Mount Hope area, located in the border region claimed by the colonies of Plymouth and Rhode Island. There, some younger Wampanoag men harassed colonists verbally, stole food, and damaged some property. Plymouth Colony responded quickly and disproportionately by deploying 70 militiamen to Swansea, mobilizing another force of 150, and sending for help from Massachusetts Bay Colony. Conditions escalated quickly as militia arrived and the frst human life was lost—a Wampanoag who was killed by a colonist on June 23. As more reinforcements arrived from other parts of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, by the end of the month, a colonial force of over 350 men planned to decisively strike against Metacom. Yet, when they arrived at Metacom’s settlement they found it abandoned, only seeing the display of some English heads and hands. The Pokanoket tribe, members of the Wampanoag alliance, who lived on the Mount Hope Peninsula had escaped. Thus, the English had not only proven unable to provide a decisive blow against Metacom and his forces, but their failure led to an escalation and a widening of the war beyond the peninsula. Given the colonies’ heavy-handed approach, and Metacom’s diplomatic skill, several other Wampanoag factions, such as the Pocasset led by the infuential Weetamoo, also joined the resistance. The Pocasset likely helped Metacom’s Pokanoket people in their evacuation across Narragansett Bay. An additional strategic blunder from the colonists’ perspective was their decision not to pursue Metacom and his forces. In addition, it is important to underscore that not all Wampanoag communities sided with Metacom. Especially the communities on the Cape and the islands

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never joined the war efort. Yet, the quick escalation of the war and the abuse, arrest, and enslavement of several neutral Wampanoag who were sold on the Atlantic market by the English led to a growing portion of this confederation of Indigenous communities to join the resistance. As they were not pursued by colonial forces, Metacom’s retreating army attacked Middleborough, where they destroyed and burned much of the town. They then proceeded to Dartmouth, where they killed several colonists and destroyed 30-some houses.38 Puritan writers and colonists blamed Metacom and the Wampanoag peoples for the outbreak of the war, arguing that they had escalated the crisis. They felt that the Wampanoag needed to be taught a lesson for their aggression. At the same time, the English colonists, for much of the 1660s and 1670s, had feared a number of Native American plots of war, which never materialized. Such attitudes and the colonies’ harsh and inept military response, certainly also aided in the perpetration and escalation of the confict. Metacom and his men fed to Nipmuc Country in present-day central Massachusetts. While Massachusetts Bay Colony had negotiated with Nipmuc communities in the lead-up to the confict and attempted to keep them out of the war, it also needs to be underscored that relations between the colony and Indigenous peoples all over central and western Massachusetts had increasingly deteriorated. As they watched what was happening to their Massachusetts and Wampanoag neighbors to the east or to the Indigenous communities in the Connecticut River further south, Nipmuc, Pocumtuc, and other groups in the region experienced English settlement expansion onto their land and saw their resources increasingly curtailed. The nations in central and western Massachusetts were loose political confgurations and were conficted on how to respond. As in other Indigenous communities, it was especially the young men who were eager to join the confict, while a few local communities and individuals, especially among the Nipmuc who had converted to Christianity, attempted to remain neutral. The situation in central and western Massachusetts escalated quickly as summer progressed. In early August, a small English reconnaissance force of around 30 was attacked in an ambush. Eight soldiers were killed, and their commanding ofcer mortally wounded. But the survivors of the company were able to retreat to the nearby settlement of Brookfeld. There they faced a two days’ siege at the garrison alongside the local colonists. The Native American force abandoned the siege when English reinforcements arrived. But, like many colonial settlements all over New England, Brookfeld was abandoned for the duration of the war. In response to the attack on the New English force and on Brookfeld, the United Colonies sent troops to address what they perceived as the Indigenous threat in central Massachusetts and the Connecticut River Valley. One of the units deployed pursued an Indigenous community in the Connecticut River Valley, who had refused the request to disarm. The Native Americans fed to Hopewell Swamp located between Deerfeld and Hatfeld, which were among Massachusetts Bay Colony’s most northwesterly settlements during King Philip’s

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War. There the Native Americans engaged in a fght with the militia unit killing nine soldiers. To Indigenous communities in the Connecticut River Valley, such a display of heavy-handed colonial demands and aggressive behavior against Native Americans who had not been hostile likely helped to grow the ranks of the anti-colonial resistance movement. In early September about half of a force of 36 New English men were killed by Native Americans in the forests south of Northfeld. Two weeks later, this time a few miles south of Deerfeld, at a place today known as Bloody Brook, 64 colonial soldiers were killed in an engagement with an Indigenous force. As the war dragged on, all eight Massachusetts’ towns in the Connecticut River Valley faced signifcant Indigenous attacks, and several were abandoned as a result of the pressure of Native American campaigns.39 As the colony faced more Indigenous attacks, New English public sentiment turned against even the friendly communities, including praying town residents who had fought with the colonial forces. In late October, Massachusetts Bay authorities ordered the residents of the praying town of Natick to be incarcerated on Deer Island in Boston Harbor. There, exposed to the harsh elements of a winter, on an exposed harbor island, with inadequate housing and poorly supplied with food, the community sufered from disease and a high death toll. In February of 1676, the residents of the praying town of Nashoba (presently Littleton, MA), who were initially held in Concord since the beginning of the war, were also incarcerated on Deer Island. Yet, and despite death, mistreatment, and sufering, several of the praying town men volunteered their service to the colony for reconnaissance work and helped to negotiate for the release of English captives. Other praying towns were also drawn into the maelstrom of war. For instance, colonists attacked the praying town of Wamesit (presently downtown Lowell, MA) twice. In the frst assault, in mid-November of 1675, they killed one person and wounded fve. In the second attack, in early February of 1676, the raiders burned six elders alive as they destroyed the, at this point, largely abandoned settlement. The murdered individuals had been left behind as they were too weak to fee with other Wamesit residents, when they joined the Pennacook further to the north. The Pennacook had already vacated their lower Merrimack River Valley homelands at the outset of King Philip’s War, seeking instead safety in the northern New England interior.40 As King Philip’s War erupted and the ranks of the anti-English resistance began to rise, the Narragansett nation was a particular concern to the United Colonies. While Narragansett leaders had professed throughout the early months of the war that they were neutral, the New English mistrusted these assurances. The English colonists alleged that Narragansett communities harbored their enemies and secretly participated in campaigns against the colonists. These New English claims were not without base. Some younger Narragansett, defying their own leadership, had joined up with the Indigenous anti-colonial resistance. Moreover, and following Indigenous customs, the Narragansett harbored Wampanoag refugees—mostly women and children—who sought safety in their communities

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from English attacks. While the New English believed that the Narragansett nation was aiding and abetting the enemy, to Indigenous peoples this was common practice. It was seen as a way to extend kinship ties to people in need, who, over time, might also become integrated into one’s community. Yet, the escalation of the confict with the Narragansett people was based on more than mere cultural misunderstandings. Given Anglo-Narragansett tensions in the prior decades, King Philip’s War provided the English an opportunity to strike. The potential threat that the Narragansett posed was thus exaggerated out of political expediency. The escalated rhetoric provided the New English colonies with a rationalization and justifcation for military action. The New England colonies mustered 1,000 men, including 150 Mohegan and Pequot soldiers, to strike a Narragansett fort located in what is today’s southern Rhode Island, where a signifcant portion of the tribe’s non-combatant population took shelter. The fort was located in a wetland with thick vegetation, in an area that was deemed hard to penetrate by enemy forces. However, the colonial expedition benefted from extremely cold weather late in December of 1675. The army was led by a Narragansett guide and the ground was frozen, which sped up their advance. A  brutal assault ensued, in which the attackers put the fort on fre and killed the occupants, including women and children, in an event often remembered as the Great Swamp massacre. While the battle and sweepingup operations were costly in life for the English, the onslaught killed hundreds of Narragansett, with estimates ranging from 300 to close to 1,000 casualties.41 The brutal attack moved many Narragansett men to join the Indigenous anticolonial resistance struggle, which efectively hit many colonial targets in the early months of 1676. Indigenous forces attacked Lancaster in Massachusetts on February 10, killing at least 14 colonists and taking more than 20 captives. In the following days and months, numerous other colonial targets were hit throughout Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth, and Rhode Island, killing more colonists and taking captives. The targets included towns such as Medfeld, Weymouth, Groton, Warwick, Marlborough, Providence, and Sudbury. Much of this military activity was launched from the Mount Wachusett’s area, where a large intertribal camp was located. But dwindling food and ammunition supplies became an increasing problem for the Indigenous anti-colonial resistance. The tide of war began to turn in favor of the English by the spring and especially the summer of 1676, and it was the strategic use of Native American allies and the English adoption of Indigenous war tactics that aided in their ultimate success in King Philip’s War. The frst massive blow to the Indigenous anti-colonial resistance movement occurred in February, while Metacom attempted to negotiate with the Mohawk for their support against the New English. A  Mohawk force instead attacked and decimated Metacom’s troops near Schaghticoke in New York. The Mohawks had been encouraged by the thenEnglish governor of New York, Edmund Andros, to attack Metacom and his allies. The Mohawk’s assistance not only improved their standing with the colony

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of New York, but the Haudenosaunee likely were also not interested in seeing the emergence of a powerful confederation of Indigenous peoples in New England. Thus, for many months after this battle, and even after King Philip’s War was over, destructive Mohawk raids against Native American communities in New England continued. The next setback for the anti-colonial resistance was the capture and killing of the Narragansett war leader Canonchet in April. A joint force of Connecticut, Niantic, Pequot, and Mohegan soldiers had detected the Indigenous leader. Assaults against Indigenous peoples continued for several more months. In the summer, for instance, a joint force of Connecticut and Indigenous soldiers engaged with Narragansett communities and their allies in various parts of Rhode Island. These campaigns often targeted non-combatants the hardest. This force committed a particular horrifc and violent attack on July  2. The joint colonial-Indigenous unit assaulted a settlement, where they killed 34 men and 137 women and children. Only 45 women and children survived the attack, and only because the Mohegan soldiers assured the English commander of the company that they would take them into their tribe. The same company also attacked a group of around 80 Narragansett who had surrendered to colonists at Providence and killed 67 of the group. In addition, the Connecticut and Indigenous forces engaged in several smaller fghts and massacres in Rhode Island, the casualties of which are unknown. While Connecticut’s forces had integrated Indigenous soldiers and combat strategies from the onset of the war, Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies had been slower to embrace such changes. Strategic modifcations came in the spring of 1676. In April, Massachusetts Bay Colony began to actively recruit Native Americans from the Deer Island prison camp, to join the colony’s military. At the end of the war, Daniel Gookin estimated that the Christian Indians of Massachusetts Bay Colony had killed 400 Native Americans and obtained many scalps. Out of their “loyalty” to the colony, they did not claim their scalp bounty money. While Plymouth long resisted Benjamin Church’s suggestion to use Native American soldiers, in May 1676, colonial leadership fnally gave in. They provided Church a commission of a force of 200 men, which consisted of 2/3 Plymouth colonists and 1/3 Wampanoag soldiers. William Bradford, the son of Plymouth’s frst governor, was granted command of a force of 150 colonists and 50 Native Americans from Cape Cod. The ranks of Church’s force grew with additional Indigenous soldiers, as he was willing to accept Native Americans who had sided with Metacom into his forces. He saw this approach as the best way to entice anti-colonial fghters to end their resistance. At this stage of King Philip’s War, and in the aftermath, however, most Native Americans who participated in King Philip’s War, as well as a number of neutral or friendly individuals, faced execution or were sold into Atlantic slavery as punishment. In the Connecticut River Valley, the Native American settlement of Peskeompskut experienced a massive attack in May 1676. The site of the bloodbath is in today’s Turner Falls, named after the ofcer who had commanded the attack.

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English forces attacked the sleeping settlement, which did not expect an assault. Most of the deaths were women, children, and the elderly. Numerous victims who tried to escape drowned in the rapids of the river, or died going down the waterfalls. As many as 200 Native Americans might have been killed in this attack. New English soldiers also burned the town and destroyed substantial food storages. Once again colonial forces had struck against predominantly non-combatants. Native American fghters quickly consolidated parties to pursue Turner and his men who fed in haste, killing the commanding ofcer as well as 30-some New English, but the substantial damage had already been done. Ranging campaigns against Native American opponents continued in the spring and through the summer. Colonial forces from Massachusetts and Connecticut, with Native American allies, for instance, staged a two-pronged campaign through Indigenous homelands, hitting targets in central Massachusetts and the Connecticut River Valley. On June  12, many of Connecticut’s 400-some New English and Native American soldiers who were part of this campaign were present at Hadley when an army of 700 Native Americans failed to take this Massachusetts town, an event that broke Indigenous resistance in that region. Further to the east, in the spring and summer, Church’s and Bradford’s forces ranged in pursuit of remaining pockets of resistance and engaged in several fghts, during which Wampanoag leaders like Metacom, Wetamoo, and many others were killed. Both Wetamoo and Metacom were beheaded and their heads were displayed at Taunton and Plymouth, respectively.42 A parallel war, often called the frst Anglo-Wabanaki War, which involved the English colonists and the Indigenous peoples of coastal Maine, lasted from 1675 to the spring of 1678. As in southern New England, tensions occurred over colonial livestock destroying Native American farm felds, the growing English demand for more aboriginal lands, the disruption that mills caused to fshing grounds and populations, and the overall altering impact that colonization had on the environment and Indigenous subsistence. The trigger for the frst Anglo-Wabanaki War was the killing of the infant son of a Sokoki leader in the summer of 1675 by three English colonists, who threw the baby in the water. This act spurred a number of attacks by Wabanaki forces on New English communities and homesteads. The war in northern New England involved raids and counterraids as well as various military confrontations that were fought at land and sea. Native American raids were efective at striking English settlements, led many colonists to fee the region, and spurred the wide abandonment of colonial settlements. Trying to undermine Indigenous resistance and attacks, the English launched a larger military counter campaign, which aimed to destroy Native American settlements and farm felds, and tried to disrupt means of subsistence reaching as far as the Mi’kmaq homelands. As in southern New England, English ofcials also ofered cash rewards for Native American scalps, the frst of many such bounties in the wars with the Wabanaki alliance. Still, in the conficts in northern Dawnland in the 1670s, the English reach and military efectiveness were limited. English

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colonists were unable to undermine the sovereignty and military capabilities of the local Wabanaki peoples. Moreover, the treaty signed by the warring parties did not resolve the issues between the Wabanaki and the English. As we explore in the next chapter, renewed confict broke out again by the 1680s.43 Signifcantly, King Philip’s War hardened and reinforced negative attitudes toward Native Americans in New England. Expressing the sentiment of many New English soldiers and the brutality of warfare, a Connecticut ofcer, leading his force against anti-colonial resistance fghters, ordered his men “to kill and destroy them, according to the utmost power God shall give you.”44 In the aftermath of the confict, Puritans like Cotton Mather rationalized the violence against Indigenous peoples, and the tribulations of colonists. Southern New England had once been “covered with nations of barbarous Indians and infdels,” he wrote, “whose whole religion was the most explicit sort of devil-worship.” Native Americans, Mather maintained, had been convinced “by the devil to engage in some early bloody actions, for the extinction of a plantation so contrary to his interests, as that of New England was.” Postwar rationalizations and victimization narratives depicted the ordeals of the war as a test and a sign by God. Ultimately, however, to intellectuals like Mather, New English victory confrmed the legitimacy and righteousness of their colonial project.45 Such notions of cultural and racial superiority and Indian hating could spill quickly over into public displays of aggression and vigilante justice. In Marblehead in 1677, for instance, a mob attacked a group of Wabanaki prisoners from the northern theater. The mob attacked the Native Americans with rocks and sticks abusing the prisoners until “they saw them lye dead & all their heads, bones & fesh pulled.”46 Thus, King Philip’s War further deepened the racial divide between New English and Native Americans. Notions of us against them, good versus evil, the followers of God opposed to those of Satan, such dichotomies and attitudes, already observed in the earlier writings of colonists, seemed to have only toughened, and became even more widespread with the confict in the 1670s.47 Besides the incredibly high Indigenous death rates that resulted from King Philip’s War, the confict was also used as a justifcation for survivors to be sold into slavery, while other Native Americans decided to uproot and to fee the region. Historians estimate that at least 1,000, and maybe as many as 2,000, Native Americans were sold into Atlantic slavery. Among the many victims were King Philip’s wife and his son, as well as Indigenous refugees, who had found shelter among the neutral Pennacook, and who were seized by colonial authorities in the fall of 1676 under false pretenses. For the vast majority, enslavement in the Caribbean meant a shortened life of hardship and a death sentence far from home. Moreover, in the aftermath of King Philip’s War, numerous Native American children were pushed into servitude with colonial families. Given the tense situation, other Native Americans decided to leave the region permanently. They either relocated their settlements to safer distance from the English or joined communities in northern New England, New York, or Canada.48

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Conclusion King Philip’s War brought devastation to southern New England. On the New English side, the fghting led to the destruction of communities and housing stock, killed about a tenth of the male population, and was a huge fnancial burden on the cofers of the colonies. For many Native Americans, however, the confict was devastating. A signifcant portion of the Indigenous population was killed, sold into slavery, or fed the region. Yet, the Indigenous presence in southern New England continued, even though Native American communities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries faced land loss and increasing eforts by New English society to undermine their land base and sovereignty. Moreover, conficts like King Philip’s War or the Pequot War demonstrate the impact that atrocious warfare against Native Americans had on undermining the Indigenous position in the Northeast. While Native Americans provided efective resistance against the English, as the confict continued, their lack of military supplies and growing inability to feed their communities on the run proved devastating. Simply put, Indigenous peoples lacked material sources to engage in prolonged war. Violent attacks against Native American non-combatants and communities, farm felds, and other means of subsistence, had an impact. Such strategies came to defne the experiences of Indigenous peoples in northern New England and other parts of North America as they faced aggressive colonization. As we explore later, and while military scholars and historians of war of the eighteenth century often focus on the large battles between Europeans, it was the smaller scale, atrocious campaigns, which, over time, had a destructive impact on the Indigenous communities in northern New England. The seventeenth-century English military campaigns against Native Americans in New England but also in Virginia established a devastating and efective pattern of colonization. They spurred Indigenous population decline and dispossession. Violent warfare that frequently targeted Native American non-combatants, destroyed Indigenous settlements and farm felds, and sought to undermine other means of subsistence played a central role during colonization. Anglo American colonists used these patterns as tools of expansion into Indigenous territories through the nineteenth century. English colonists in the seventeenth century learned that through atrocious war they could not only defeat Native American societies in confict, but such strategies helped to push Native American peoples into a weakened position. War became an efective way to undermine Indigenous sovereignty and survival.

Notes 1 Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A  Native History of Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 152–153; Walter L. Hixson, American Settler Colonialism: A History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 47; and Carroll P. Kakell III, A Post-Exceptionalist Perspective on Early American History: American Wests, Global Wests, and Indian Wars (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 14.

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2 My argument here draws from Francis Jennings The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), part 1; Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 179, 193, 197, 204; Karen Ordahl Kupperman, The Jamestown Project (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), see especially 194–195; Kakell, 14–15, 17; John Grenier, The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 21–26; Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton, The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500–2000 (New York: Viking, 2005), 44. For the concept of “testing ground” and colonization, see Christoph Strobel, The Testing Grounds of Modern Empire: The Making of Colonial Racial Order in the American Ohio Country and the South Africa Eastern Cape, 1770s–1850s (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2008). 3 See Steven C. Eames, Rustic Warriors: Warfare and the Provincial Soldier on the New England Frontier (New York: New York University Press, 2011), chapter 1; and John F. Ross, War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rodgers and the Conquest of America’s First Frontier (New York: Bantam Books, 2009), for quote and in general, see 43–44. 4 Patrick Malone, The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics among New England Indians (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1991), 7. 5 William Wood, New England’s Prospect, ed. Alden T. Vaugan (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977), 79. 6 Matthew R. Bahar, Storm of the Sea: Indians & Empires in the Atlantic Age of Sail (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 56–58. 7 For a discussion of this subject, see Neal Salisbury, “Toward the Covenant Chain: Iroquois and Southern New England Algonquians, 1637–1684,” in Beyond the Covenant Chain: The Iroquois and Their Neighbors in Indian North America, 1600–1800, eds. Daniel K. Richter and James M. Merrell (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 61–73. 8 For an excellent synthesis of Haudenosaunee expansion, see David J. Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America (Cambridge, MA; Belknap Press, 2016), chapter  1. On this issue, see also Dean R. Snow, “IroquoisHuron Warfare,” in North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence, eds. Richard J. Chacon and Ruben G. Mendoza (Tucson, AZ: The University Arizona Press, 2007), 152–154; David H. Dye, War Paths and Peace Paths: An Archaeology of Cooperation and Confict in Native Eastern North America (Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2009), 119–123. 9 Wood, 75–78. See also Daniel Gookin, Historical Collections of the Indians of New England: Of Their Several Nations, Numbers, Customs, Manners, Religion, and Government Before the English Planted There (Boston: Belknap and Hall, 1674), chapter 4. 10 Christoph Strobel, Native Americans of New England (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2020), 82. 11 Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 82. 12 Salisbury, “Toward the Covenant Chain,” 63–64; Lucianne Lavin, Connecticut’s Indigenous Peoples: What Archaeology, History, and Oral Traditions Teach Us About their Communities and Cultures (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 300–303. 13 See Gookin, Historical Collections of the Indians of New England, 166–167; and Salisbury, “Toward the Covenant Chain,” 66–68. 14 For a more elaborate study of Wampanoag-Plymouth relations, see David J. Silverman, This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019). See also Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayfower: A  Story of Courage, Community, and War (New York: Viking, 2006). 15 Alfred A. Cave, The Pequot War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), 110–112. 16 Cave, chapters 2 and 3.

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17 For quote, see William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647, ed. Samuel Eliot Morrison (New York: Knopf, 2002), 296. 18 For quote, see Bradford, 296. 19 For a more elaborate discussion of the Pequot War, see Cave, chapter 4. 20 Margret Ellen Newell, Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists and the Origins of American Slavery (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). 21 For a more expansive general discussion, see James A. Warren, God, War, and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians Against the Puritans of New England (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018), chapter 5; and Daniel Mandell, King Philip’s War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 19–27. For Uncas and the Mohegan nation, see Michael Leroy Oberg, Uncas: First of the Mohegans (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). For Ninigret, the Niantic and Narragansett peoples see Julie Fisher and David J. Silverman, Ninigret, Sachem of the Niantics and Narragansetts: Diplomacy, War, and the Balance of Power in Seventeenth-Century New England and Indian Country (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014). 22 For quote and in general, see Armstrong Starkey, European and Native American Warfare, 1675–1815 (New York: Routledge, 1998), 59–61; and especially Alden T. Vaughan, New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620–1675, Third Edition (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995). 23 Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 99. 24 Virginia DeJohn Anderson, New England’s Generation: The Great Migration and the Formation of Society and Culture in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 25 On these issues, see especially William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983); Alfred W. Crosby, Biological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986); and Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972). 26 Virgina DeJohn Anderson, “King Philip’s Herd: Indians, Colonists, and the Problem of Livestock in Early New England,” The William and Mary Quarterly 51, no. 4 (1994): 601–624. 27 Mandell, King Philip’s War, 28–29, and DeJohn Anderson, “King Philip’s Herd,” 601– 624; David J. Silverman, “ ‘We Chuse to Be Bounded:’ Native American Animal Husbandry in Colonial New England,” The William and Mary Quarterly 60, no. 3 (2003): 511–548. 28 Silverman, Thundersticks, 105. 29 Mandell, King Philip’s War, 4. 30 Numerous books and academic articles have been written on King Philip’s War. For some interesting perspectives, see Mandell, King Philip’s War; Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A  New History of King Philip’s War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018); Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); Silverman, Thunderstick, chapter 3; James D. Drake, King Philip’ War: Civil War in New England, 1675–1676 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000); Russell Bourne, The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England, 1675–1678 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Starkey, chapter 4; Kyle E. Zellner, A Rabble in Arms: Massachusetts Towns and Militiamen during King Philip’s War (New York: New York University Press, 2009). For an excellent study on historic memory and King Philip’s War, see Christine M. De Lucia, Memory Lands: King Philip’s War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018). 31 For insightful studies of this topic, see Daniel R. Mandell, Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996);

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35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

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and Amy E. Den Ouden, Beyond Conquest: Native Peoples and the Struggle for History in New England (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005). See also Daniel R. Mandell, Tribe, Race, History: Native Americans in Southern New England, 1780–1880 (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). Malone, 7. See especially Guy Chet, Conquering the American Wilderness: The Triumph of Warfare in the Colonial Northeast (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003). William Hubbard, A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New England: From the First Planting thereof in the Year 1607, to this Present Year 1677, but Chiefy of the Late Troubles in the Two Last Years, 1675 and 1676: To which is Added a Discourse about the Warre with the Pequods in the year 1637 (Boston: John Foster, 1677), 38–39 Benjamin Church, “Entertaining Passages Relating to King Philip’s War,” in So Dreadful a Judgement Puritan Responses to King Philip's War, 1676–1677, eds. Richard Slotkin and James K. Folsom (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1999), 419. For insights on these issues, see the captivity narrative of Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, ed. Neal Salisbury (Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s Press, 1997). For the quote, see Church, “Entertaining Passages,” 406–408. See also Silverman, Thunderstick, chapter  3; Malone, 31–36, 56–59, 65–66, 99–100, 105–106; Grenier 29–34. Mandell, King Philip’s War, 34–39, 42–46, 48–55. Mandell, King Philip’s War, 60–77. Mandell, King Philip’s War, 83–85. For a good discussion, see De Lucia, 124–133. My discussion on the last several months of King Philp’s War draws from Mandell, King Philip’s War, 111–130. Bahar, 75–77, 88–97; Michael Dekker, French and Indian Wars in Maine (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2015), 30–34. J. Hammond Trumbull and Charles J. Hoadly, eds. The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, 1636–1776, 2 vols. (Hartford, CT: Lockwood and Brainard, 1850–1890), 444. Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana; or the Ecclestical History of New England: From its frst Planting in the Year 1620, unto the Year of Our Lord 1698, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1979), 479–480. Gina M. Martino, Women at War in the Borderlands of the Early American Northeast (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 52–53. Lepore, 150–170. Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 106–107.

3 “FOR EVERY SCALP . . . AS EVIDENCE OF THEIR BEING KILLED” Wars and the Colonization of Northern New England

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MAP 3.1

Map of 18th-century New England and New France

War continued to play a central role in the Northeast after King Philip’s War, but, it is important to note, the dynamics of confict changed toward the end of the seventeenth century. The wars discussed in the prior chapter had been conficts involving Native Americans and English colonizers. Such dynamics, as we have seen, did not preclude Indigenous peoples from fghting alongside English colonists during conficts. Native American communities, groups, and individuals

DOI: 10.4324/9781003272113-4

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often did so for various reasons. Yet, the wars analyzed in this chapter, which began in the 1680s and lasted into the second half of the eighteenth century, were often partially shaped by conficts in Europe. As nations like Britain, France, and Spain sought to strengthen their colonial footholds overseas, conficts fought in Europe also spilled over into North America, and, by the mid-eighteenth century, around the world. It is important to underscore, though, that the Northeast was not a periphery of wars fought in Europe. Rather, and while trans-Atlantic dynamics infuenced developments, the communities of the Northeast were caught up in their own struggles, which were distinct local conficts often motivated by diferent dynamics. This chapter examines the conficts that took place from the 1680s to the 1760s and focuses especially on the Wabanaki homelands of northern New England. Native Americans in the Northeast were tied into four major wars, which resulted from a long Anglo-French rivalry. English colonists called these conficts “King William’s War” (1688–1697), “Queen Anne’s War” (1702–1713), “King George’s War” (1744–1748), and the “French and Indian War” (1754–1763). Since the conficts in northern Dawnland, which involved Indigenous inhabitants and New English colonists, ran often parallel to the Anglo-French hostilities, and had their own dynamics, scholars also often call them the Anglo-Wabanaki wars. Moreover, there were Indigenous-European conficts in northern New England during this period, such as Dummer’s War (1722–1727), which occurred outside of the European power struggles in North America. Thus, for Indigenous peoples in the Northeast, the aforementioned conficts were fueled by local factors and circumstances, and their participation and motivations were driven by complex reasons and rationales. Native Americans fought in these wars for their own specifc aims, and they pursued varying and diverse alliances. Moreover, Native Americans were efective fghters in forest and raiding warfare, modes of confict, which played a central part in the wars from the late 1680s into the 1750s. Their skills as scouts also made Native American soldiers valuable assets to their European American allies. There were strategic challenges and unique features to the warfare in the Northeast, especially compared to the military theaters in Europe. Settlements were spread out, and there was less population density. Moreover, the region’s woodlands were a unique environment that required special skills. Endurance to travel long distances in difcult climatic conditions and the ability to snowshoe or to travel the waterways by boat was a strategic asset. These facets made warfare challenging and were the reason why ranging and raiding warfare played a central role in the region’s conficts until the 1750s. In their conficts with the Wabanaki peoples, Massachusetts Bay Colony, which controlled the British settlements in what is today the state of Maine, frequently used ranging warfare. While the New English successes against Indigenous targets were limited, pursuing this strategy, in the long run, weakened Native Americans. Over time, the sovereignty and ability of Indigenous peoples to control

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their homelands were undermined by New English attackers, who burned their farm felds, food storages, and towns and villages. This type of warfare was often incentivized by generous bounties, which paid for the scalps of Native American men, women, and children. The persistent state of war in northern New England interrupted Wabanaki subsistence. Confict led to the destruction of crops, poor harvests, and the reduction of available natural resources. In addition, New English ranging and scouting parties sought to interfere with the fshing and hunting subsistence of Indigenous groups. All of these developments challenged the Wabanakis’ ability to survive in their homelands. They led to a growing dependence on Europeans, not only for frearms and powder but also for resources such as cloth, tools, and food. As during King Philip’s War in southern New England, the wars from the 1680s through the 1750s in northern Dawnland spurred a growing Algonquian refugee diaspora out of the region. During the wars of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the New English colonies also faced serious challenges. Raids by Wabanakis, French, and other Indigenous forces hit many New English settlements hard and resulted in the death and capture of many colonists. The New English bitterly objected to the capture of English colonists.1 Complaints about the injustices of English captivity ignored, of course, the fact that New English colonists had enslaved people of Native American and African descent for several decades. The Native American and Indigenous-French assaults were especially efective in the dead of winter. Indigenous and French forces used snowshoes to travel long distances through the heavy snow pack of northern New England, which provided them with a strategic advantage. With the eventual adoption of the Native American technology of the snowshoe by the eighteenth century, however, New English strategic abilities gradually improved on the backcountry battlefelds of the Northeast.2 Moreover, until the 1750s, and compared to the other more southerly British colonies in North America, with little outside support, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island carried the brunt of the fghting in the wars with the French and their Native American allies. The colonies had only limited naval resources and often complained about the lack of support provided by the metropolitan British navy. Both in regard to metropolitan Britain and the other colonies, these sentiments were at times justifed, at others perceived, or based on unrealistic expectations. The challenges that the French faced in the Northeast were even more pronounced. By the early eighteenth century, the English colonies had almost eight times the population of their French neighbors to the north. Increased migration to the Anglo American colonies, not only from the British Isles but also from mainland Europe spurred further population growth in the eighteenth century. By 1750, the European American population in the British colonies had far surpassed 1 million and likely exceeded that of the French colonies 20 times. Despite their relatively small geographic size, the New England colonies, with which the

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French were most directly competing, especially Massachusetts and Connecticut, ranked among the largest British colonies of the eighteenth century in terms of population. In addition, as became apparent throughout the eighteenth century, New France’s trans-Atlantic and global trade connections were less developed than those of the New England colonies. These economic and infrastructural realities left New France poorer, compared to its English neighbors to the south. Still, for the frst half of the eighteenth century, French-Indigenous allied forces were more than a match for the British colonies.3 Given their structural and demographic weaknesses, the French had to depend on Native American allies to strengthen their military capacities, but Wabanaki peoples and other Native American nations had their own reasons to participate in the wars. They saw the British colonial presence as a more imminent threat to their homelands. Given the large number of Algonquian refugees from southern and coastal New England in Wabanaki communities and in the Canadian Native American mission towns, the Indigenous allies of New France were well aware of the destructive impact of New English colonization. Participation in confict became a way to slow the British advance and to fght to maintain Native American sovereignty. Moreover, war was an opportunity for Native Americans to seek revenge for the mistreatment of their kin and to take captives in Anglo American colonies.

Global 1688 and the Dynamics of Wars in the Early American Northeast 1688 was a year, which, according to the historian John Wills, exemplifed the ever-increasing global connections that came to defne the “modern world.” Worldwide exchange and contacts had a growing impact on the various peoples around the globe and involved the Americas and Europe. The economic power of China under the Qing dynasty and other Southeast and South Asian states spurred an intensive global trade that also involved silver and furs from the Americas. The wealthy Muslim empires of Asia and northern Africa were tied into this system through multiple long-distance exchange networks. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, several states in Europe had pushed onto the global scene. The European players aimed to access lucrative foreign trade. But they also attempted to establish, and then expand, their colonial footholds in the Americas and around the world in search for resources and land.4 Confict and war against, and often with the assistance of, local populations, became a way for European states to establish their colonies. Throughout the early modern period, several European intellectuals were infuenced by these global interactions in their writings, and, in turn, these texts infuenced Europe’s views and interactions with other parts of the world as well as their ideas and strategies about colonization. The German-speaking philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646–1716), for instance, wrote

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frequently about his perceptions and impressions of China. Like later European thinkers, such as the French philosopher Voltaire (1694–1778), he was infatuated with Chinese society and Confucianism. Leibniz saw the Kangxi Emperor (1654–1722), who ruled China during much of his lifetime, as a “virtuous ruler.”5 Other writers were preoccupied with the Indigenous peoples of North America in their work. We already discussed Rousseau and Hobbes in a prior chapter. Moreover, the English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) was inspired in his works by insights about North America. Intellectual perceptions by intellectuals like Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau had long-lasting legacies on the European American representations of Native Americans. Locke’s writings on private property, published in 1689 and 1690, were directly infuenced by and sought to rationalize the English colonization of North America. To justify the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, Locke deliberately portrayed Native Americans as “hunter gatherers” even though he knew, gauging from the book titles in his library, that Native Americans were agriculturalists. Depicting Native Americans as “hunter gatherers,” as discussed earlier, spurred Europeans in their beliefs that they could dispossess Indigenous peoples who had no right to their land. Such portrayals occurred despite the fact that Indigenous societies had clear territorial understandings of their own. Thus, Locke’s use of Native Americans in his writing on private property refected English imperial aspirations and rationalizations, rather than existing ethnographic realities among Indigenous peoples. Locke’s work underscores that the takeover of Indigenous land played a central role in the colonial ambitions of Britain by the late seventeenth century, if not already before.6 1688 was also the year in which King James II, the last Roman Catholic to rule over the British Isles, was deposed by the English Parliament, in an event that history textbooks usually call “the Glorious Revolution.” After a series of conficts, James II, whose absolutist aspirations concerned enough powerful players in English Parliament, was replaced with William of Orange, a stadhouder (a powerful government ofce holder) of several Dutch Lowland provinces and the city of Utrecht, and his wife Mary. Mary was James’ daughter and a member of the British royal family, which provided the couple with a claim of legitimacy in the eyes of a majority of the members of the English Parliament. Moreover, and most importantly to their backers in the English elite, William and Mary were staunch Protestants. In the seventeenth-century world of Europe, where conficts such as the Thirty Years War had been, at least in part, motivated by the schism between Catholics and Protestants, this event had international ramifcations. With James II, an ally of Louis XIV, the ruler of France, out of power, the British Isles began to lean into a confict in mainland Europe against the French. This war, known in Europe as the Nine Years War, the War of the League of Augsburg, or the War of the Grand Alliance, also involved the European colonies and Native American nations in North America, where the English colonists called it King William’s War.

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Thus, the late 1680s saw the emergence of more complicated trans-Atlantic dynamics that also involved the European colonies and Native American communities in eastern North America. While European thinkers like Locke, or the earlier discussed Grotius and de Vattel, might have provided an intellectual, philosophical, and legal rationalization to dispossess Native Americans, it was the wars discussed later that spurred Indigenous land loss in northern New England. These conficts helped the New English to implement a colonial order to undermine Indigenous sovereignty and to marginalize Native Americans.7 Thus, King William’s War (1688–1697) was the frst of several conficts that involved the Early American Northeast in a European, Atlantic, and, increasingly, global power struggle between France and Britain. The region was in many ways a tangential, yet, also, a central borderland in this Anglo-French competition. King William’s War was the opening salvo in a contest that would last into the second half of the eighteenth century in North America. In Europe, the Anglo-French competition would continue through the Napoleonic Wars into the 1810s. After King William’s War ended, this power struggle again turned violent during the War of Spanish Succession (Queen Anne’s War), the War of Austrian Succession (King George’s War), and the Seven Years War (“French and Indian War”), which lasted in the European theaters from 1756 to 1763, although fghting between French and English commenced earlier in North America. Even though the Anglo-French imperial competition changed the dynamics of confict, from an Indigenous perspective, there were also many continuities that carried from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century. Thus, the categorizations of “King Williams War,” “Queen Anne’s War,” “King George’s War,” and “French and Indian War” largely only make sense from the perspectives of Anglo American colonists. From a Native American vantage point, these conficts were very much interrelated and were caused by the continuous colonization by, and the imperial presence of, Europeans. For the Wabanakis in northern Dawnland, these conficts were a continuation of “King Philip’s War,” or the frst AngloWabanaki War. This confict was spurred by the growing New English colonial presence in the Wabanaki peoples’ homelands in what is today coastal Maine. To the Indigenous peoples in northern New England, the fghting lasted until the end of the Seven Years War. The dynamics and motivations that shaped Native American strategies of involvement in these wars, as well as the challenges that Indigenous peoples faced during this period, were shaped by local circumstances and situations. While Native Americans participated in the imperial power struggles between France and Britain, they engaged in parallel conficts and campaigns that had a diferent logic. Thus, these conficts are often called the Anglo-Wabanaki wars. Some authors, like the earlier discussed Francis Parkman, argue that the Indigenous peoples of the Northeast were the “pawns” or “subjects” of the French. Echoing the arguments of New England colonists in the eighteenth century, these writers claim that the French manipulated Native Americans into attacking

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English colonial settlements. The New English fell victim to these attacks, they argue, and the colonists were forced to fght in a “just” war to defend themselves and to guarantee their survival. The claim that Native Americans were “subjects” or “pawns” of New France helped to popularize an unfortunate misrepresentation. Yet, the dynamics that existed in the Northeast from the 1680s through the 1750s were much more complicated than New English settler myths suggest.8 The actual dynamics of the French-Indigenous alliance system were more complex. Given the French demographic weaknesses compared to the English colonies, Native American allies played an important strategic role in New France’s war eforts. Since the early seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries had made inroads into Indigenous communities in what is today southeastern Canada and northern New England. Beyond their religious obligations, missionaries also provided counsel and served as diplomatic conduits with French colonial administrators. Moreover, mission towns in the St. Lawrence River Valley had attracted Huron and New England Algonquian refugees throughout the seventeenthcentury wars. Especially from the 1670s on, mission communities such as St. Francis and St. Xavier in Canada saw a frequent in-and-out migration of Native Americans from northern New England who sought refuge and safety in these communities during their conficts with New English colonists. Alas, Native American allies had their own motivations, rationalizations, and reasons to pursue ties with the French. Generally speaking, Native Americans fought alongside Europeans only as long as such an alliance served their interest. This fact frequently frustrated European ofcers. The foremost strategic consideration for Indigenous peoples located in northern New England and southeastern Canada was the maintenance of their sovereignty and independence. Many Native American refugees from Anglo American colonization lived among the Wabanakis and other French-allied nations. Thus, these communities had frsthand accounts of the danger that the English advance posed to their nations. Captive taking, which, in the past, had ritual purposes and was a strategy to replace lost members of a community, became by the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, increasingly a way to raise cash or supplies. Thus, captive taking not only became a means through which Indigenous societies could stabilize their shrinking numbers, or avenge their deaths, but it also became a strategy that enabled Native American soldiers to feed and supply their relations. Thus, for the Native Americans of northern New England and southeastern Canada, captives increasingly became commodities. Moreover, throughout this period, the Native American allies of the French faced war and perpetual crisis. They witnessed attacks and the destruction of their homes, settlements, and farmlands. Political tensions and divisions prevailed in communities over what course to take with respect to the British or the French colonies. These developments challenged community cohesion and consensus.9 Authors often neglect to discuss the use of Native American allies by the British colonies during the wars in the Northeast from the 1680s through the 1750s.

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For instance, during King William’s War, Haudenosaunee assistance to the northern English colonies, especially New York, was essential. In fact, as we explore later, Haudenosaunee forces were able to strike French colonial settlements much more frequently and efectively than their English allies. They often voiced their frustration with English ineptitude or unwillingness to strike the French. In addition, and also of importance in the military theaters of the Northeast, Native American men from reserves and communities in southern New England served as soldiers in the New English military. This service exposed them to potential death in combat, crippling battle injuries, and a wide array of deadly diseases that were often brought home to their communities, as well as alcoholism. The wideranging participation by Native American men from southern New England in military service aided in the signifcant decline of the male population, a development that had a signifcant demographic impact on the Indigenous communities there. Given the shortage of men on reserves and in Indigenous communities, a growing number of Native American women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries chose to fnd relationships or marriage partners from outside.10 Just as Native American allies continued to play an important role on the battlefelds of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as soldiers, allies, scouts, and guides, so did Indigenous modes of warfare. French militia and the Companies Franches de la Marine, which consisted of regulars, as well as New English provincial scouting and ranging units, blended European ways of war with Indigenous strategies and technologies. As in the seventeenth century, raid-style attacks continued to be a feature in the wars discussed in this chapter. Several historians argue that for much of the Anglo-French wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the French and their Native American allies were more apt at raiding warfare, as they were more profcient in executing strikes over long distances. The English colonists, on the other hand, were much more limited in their raiding and were largely incapable of preventing Indigenous-French raids.11 While this overall point is certainly not incorrect, New English forces had some successes on the battlefelds and did play catch up in the area of raiding and scouting warfare. As during King Philip’s War, several New English units and fghters continued to use Indigenous ways of warfare and technologies in their military tactics. They used these methods for defensive patrols, to guard settlements, to gather intelligence, and to perform ofensive raids with gradually improving efectiveness.12 The wars in the Northeast between the English and French were entangled with at least two regionally distinct conficts, which were shaped by local dynamics. The frst of them occurred between the French in Canada and the Haudenosaunee. The Haudenosaunee received frearms from the English and actively attempted to divert some of the fur trade that went to New France. The FrenchHaudenosaunee rivalry, which began in the early seventeenth century, escalated into a parallel confict in the 1680s and 1690s. A more central focus of this chapter, however, are the Anglo-Wabanaki Wars that were fought in northern New

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England. These conficts, which had escalated in northern Dawnland during King Philip’s War, continued into the eighteenth century. During these struggles, the Wabanakis and their Native American and French supporters often struck the New English efectively. At times, these strategic successes curtailed the New English advances and forced colonial authorities to make concessions. Scholars often argue that during King William’s War, Queen Anne’s War, and, to a lesser degree, King George’s War, there existed a military disparity between the French and the English colonies. They argue that the French held an advantageous and stronger position in these conficts, despite the signifcantly smaller population and fewer resources. Researchers attempt to explain how the French outperformed the English during these wars. Several military historians argue that the discrepancies were due to a lack of professionalism among the English militia, especially compared to the French forces in North America. Others blame incapable colonial leadership and tactical ineptitude.13 Other historians have tested this argument. Steven C. Eames’ detailed study, Rustic Warriors, for instance, demonstrates that English provincial soldiers were not as inefective as other historians argue. By the eighteenth century, New English raiding parties dispatched with growing frequency. Their purpose was to search and destroy Native American settlements as well as to interrupt FrenchIndigenous raiding parties. Native Americans frequently served as soldiers and scouts in these New English forces.14 The English colonies faced other challenges that undermined their military position. Through much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the New English colonies received only limited support from metropolitan Britain despite their repeated lobbying for military assistance. It was only by the 1750s that the British Empire was able, and, or, willing, to provide large-scale maritime and logistical support to its North American colonies.15 Raiding warfare was a central element of the wars between France and Britain in the Early American Northeast, but historians have long debated how strategically important these strikes were in deciding the outcomes of war. There is a debate over the efectiveness of New English ranging parties in killing Native Americans, and historians frequently discuss the Anglo American ineptitude in protecting their communities against French-Indigenous raids.16 Historians less frequently discuss, however, how difcult it was to efectively protect communities against raids, given how large a geographic area these attacks targeted. The same historians tend to entirely neglect to look at the French colonies in the Northeast for comparisons with New England or New York. During King William’s War, for instance, and as we discuss later, several settlements in New France experienced Haudenosaunee attacks, and the French had difculties preventing such raids as well. Such a comparison underscores the defensive and military challenges that Native American raids posed to European colonies.17 Moreover, as Steven Eames reminds us, the critique of the New English scouting system misses

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the point as it so often focuses on “body counts.” Instead, a war of “attrition” to weaken Indigenous communities and not the “scalps” of dead Native Americans “proved to be the real purpose of the raids and patrols.”18 New English raids into Native American territory, while generally not leading to mass killings, still led to the destruction of Indigenous settlements, felds, and grain supplies. These missions undermined communities’ ability to hunt for food and led to the capture of Native Americans, who were used as hostages. New English raiding parties frequently sought to undermine fshing and planting seasons, thereby striking at the ability of Indigenous communities in northern New England to feed themselves and causing widespread hunger. Such attacks against the Wabanaki peoples in northern New England had a long-term impact. Over time, these raids wore down the Wabanakis’ ability and will to resist and undermined Indigenous sovereignty. While New English scouting parties often reached empty settlements and usually only caused a few casualties, on occasion they hit a Native American target hard, causing havoc, death, and destruction. Raiding and scouting into enemy territory required long marches, was otherwise physically demanding, and also posed logistical supply chain challenges. Unlike the French and their Indigenous allies, the New English had little experience with long-distance campaigns. Throughout the eighteenth century, however, Anglo Americans learned and improved these strategies and technical skills.19 As we have seen in earlier chapters, New English society harbored deep resentments against Native Americans, which worsened in the eighteenth century. Such attitudes not only manifested themselves in colonial culture, but they also infuenced colonists’ conduct in war. New English writings provide us a glimpse into deep-seated racist sentiments. Indigenous peoples were consistently connected to “evil” and the “Devil.”20 Moreover, colonial rhetoric depicted the Wabanaki peoples as in rebellion against legitimate English rule.21 New English scouting and ranging missions were motivated and driven at least in part by anti-Native American sentiment. The earlier discussed Benjamin Church, who led various scouting and ranging attacks against Native American communities from King Philip’s to Queen Anne’s War, and who advocated for New English forces to adapt Indigenous ways of fghting into their warfare, believed that his recruits and soldiers were motivated by accounts of Native American “savagery” against New English colonists. Feeding such sentiments, Church described in gory detail acts of violence committed by Native Americans against a New English woman and mother. “Those barbarous savages had taken and killed” the woman, and had “exposed” her “in a most brutish manner . . . with a young child seized fast with strings to her breast.” The “infant,” Church elaborated, “had no apparent wound, which doubtless was left alive to suck its dead mother’s breast, and so miserably to perish and die.” New English soldiers were even more horrendously treated according to Church. He told of a straggling soldier, who was found at Casco, exposed in a shameful and barbarous manner. His body being staked up, his head cut of, and a hogs

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head set in the rood; his body ripped up, and heart and inwards taken out, and private members cut of, and hung with belts of their own, the inwards at one side of his body, and his privates at another, in scorn and derision of the English soldiers.22 References such as this, which depicted acts of extreme Native American brutality, were widely written about by New English writers in books and pamphlets. Such writings further stirred anti-Indigenous sentiment and racism in the New English colonies. Works like this helped to dehumanize and vilify Native Americans. Church’s dwelling on this act by “barbarous savages,” however, belied his reliance on and wide use of Native American soldiers. Alongside many other brutal acts of war, New English colonists also mutilated Indigenous bodies and propped them up in similar fashion as reported by Church. Yet, the documentary evidence on such incidents is far less descriptive, condemning, and much more evasive. Just as their Native American opponents, the New English war parties used such tactics to strike fear among their Indigenous enemies. Hatred toward Native Americans also justifed the killing of Indigenous prisoners of war after they surrendered, a treatment New English forces were far less likely to apply to French soldiers.23 Moreover, and as earlier mentioned, New English governments also ofered scalp bounties during the wars in the Early American Northeast as a means to encourage the killing of Native Americans. During the conficts discussed in this chapter, violence proliferated on all sides, but while the primary source record is often eloquent and prolifc on the suffering of the New English, the sources largely remain quiet, or unsympathetic at best, when it comes to the experience of Native Americans. There was no equivalent commentator to Benjamin Church, Cotton Mather, or historians like Francis Parkman, Samuel Penhallow, and Benjamin Belknap, to put a human face to and provide context for the violent acts committed against Native American women, children, the elderly, or men of fghting age.24 The dynamics of New English scouting and ranging warfare were complex and played a central role in the war efort of the English colonies against Native American communities. The military historian John Grenier reminds us that during King William’s, Queen Anne’s, and King George’s War, it was the New English ranging and scouting parties that saw most of the combat action.25 Over the course of the eighteenth century, while these missions were often hard to execute, and there was a steep learning curve involved, the New English colonies used raiding and scouting warfare to hit Indigenous targets as a means to weaken Native American communities, and to eventually force Indigenous peoples to accept a New English colonial order.

King William’s War Beginnings of conficts are often tricky to determine as tensions and military engagements often precede the ofcial outbreak of war and such was the case in

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King William’s War. By the time the Nine Years War began in Europe, several violent fashpoints in North America had already preceded any ofcial declaration. Such prior tensions underscore that the fghting in the Northeast had its own dynamics and was fought due to diverging motivations. Thus, King William’s War was a confict between New France and the English colonies, while, at the same time, there were also two additional conficts that complicated and had a long history that predated this war. Given their disparate dynamics, these conficts are often categorized as parallel wars. The frst of these parallel wars was spurred by a long rivalry between the French and the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). Enmity had shaped French-Haudenosaunee relations for much of the seventeenth century, and it had frequently led to confict. Reigniting the long-standing confict once again, on the eve of King William’s War, the French launched an assault against the Haudenosaunee’s homelands in 1687. The second parallel war was between the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Wabanaki peoples in coastal Maine. This confict is often called the Second Anglo-Wabanaki War. The frst clashes between these two rivals, as we have seen, had already broken out during the First Anglo-Wabanaki War, which ran parallel to King Philip’s War. The Second Anglo-Wabanaki War, like the FrenchHaudenosaunee War, had also preceded the ofcial beginning of King William’s War. In the fall of 1688, Edmund Andros, now the Governor of the newly created Dominion of New England, a short-lived political construct that consisted of the New England colonies and New York, sent a force of 700 provincial soldiers against the Wabanaki peoples of coastal Maine. It was only in May 1689 that the English ofcially joined several European states in a war against the French and their allies in the Nine Years War (1688– 1697). The war quickly involved the English and French colonies in North America. While King William’s War was the frst of several Anglo-French wars in the Early American Northeast, the rivalry between these imperial competitors had certainly fared up before 1689. In 1686, for instance, French forces had raided and captured several English trading forts on Hudson Bay. Moreover, in the seventeenth century, there had been several violent altercations between the English and French, which usually aimed to undermine the other side’s eforts at establishing colonial beachheads in what is today coastal Maine and the Canadian Maritimes. The earlier alluded to “Glorious Revolution” in England also had repercussions in the Northeast. It led, for instance, to the sacking of Governor Andros, who several powerful members of the New England elite despised. His New English opponents instigated the governor’s removal and arrest, dismantled the short-lived Dominion of New England, and targeted Andros’ “allies” in the northeastern colonies. The elimination of Andros resulted in the purging of several capable administrators and ofcers, key positions that on several occasions remained unflled. Such a development weakened the military and the defensive

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capabilities of the New English colonies, just as the region headed into the war with New France.26 King William’s War was not defned by large battles and military confrontations between English and French armies. Through much of the confict, with few exceptions, both the English and the French avoided large military engagements with each other and focused instead on raids on enemy settlements, generally using Indigenous allies in these assaults. The French-Haudenosaunee and Anglo-Wabanaki parallel wars were also part of the Anglo-French power struggle in the Northeast. Both French and New English forces targeted Native American communities during attacks. New France continued its rivalry with the Haudenosaunee and targeted their homelands, while the New English renewed their war with the Wabanaki peoples in a confict that lasted from 1688 to 1699. Both French and New English raiders and their Indigenous allies aimed to attack Native American settlements. When they found that the occupants of towns and villages had fed and there was no one left to attack, the invaders usually burned the settlements, farm felds, and food storages. These strategies were pursued in hope that eventually such missions would help to starve Native Americans into a peace settlement or submission.

The French-Haudenosaunee Parallel War The French-Haudenosaunee rivalry reached back to the early seventeenth century, when Samuel de Champlain, as we discussed earlier, and some of his soldiers, assisted Native American allies in a battle, which routed a force of Mohawks into a quick retreat. For much of the seventeenth century, the French-Iroquois relationship did not improve, as the Haudenosaunee were tied into a series of conficts with several French-allied Indigenous nations. Recall that the Haudenosaunee were motivated by their mourning war culture but that they were also spurred by their search for new fur supplies. These factors drove the Five Nations of the Iroquois to encroach and raid the homelands of Native American nations in many parts of eastern North America. These conficts had a devastating impact on Indigenous populations. They were made worse by the acquisition and the wide use of frearms, a trade fueled by the European presence on the North American eastern seaboard, and colonial trading companies’ tremendous appetite for fur.27 Even though the French and Haudenosaunee had engaged in various conficts throughout much of the seventeenth century, the situation changed somewhat in the 1670s, as both sides showed some interest in normalizing relations. This change was in part shaped by the Haudenosaunee’s realization that they were fghting in too many conficts, with ever-better-armed competitors. Moreover, during his frst term as governor of New France from 1672 to 1682, the Comte de Frontenac also saw benefts to engaging diplomatically with the powerful Haudenosaunee as the tense relations with the Iroquois Confederacy had put a strain on the resources of New France. Thus, French-Haudenosaunee relations

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briefy turned less aggressive. The situation between Haudenosaunee and the French unraveled, however, quickly after Frontenac was forced to vacate his ofce under pressure from powerful members of the Sovereign Council of New France. When Frontenac returned to the position of governor of New France again in 1689, a position he held to his death in 1698, the tenuous dynamics between the French and Haudenosaunee had dramatically changed. The diplomatic rapprochement between two major players in the Early American Northeast, was, thus, only a short-lived interlude, as French and Haudenosaunee interests repeatedly competed. Throughout the seventeenth century, the French continuously increased their presence in the Great Lakes and the Ohio and Mississippi river drainage systems. This pursuit of a westward and southerly continental expansion in the North American interior became a powerful vision among many in the colonial elite at the time, but it also ran counter to the Haudenosaunee’s ambitions. In New France, French continental aspirations were accompanied by a strengthening of the colonial militia system and a general military built up in the last few decades of the seventeenth century. Such developments were also accompanied by the construction of forts in New France, and also in areas of peripheral French infuence, such as the Great Lakes region. These forts served to protect French strategic and economic interests in the region. Forts in the North American interior strengthened France’s military position and served as trading centers for the fur trade with Native American allies. France’s ambitions and alliances with Native Americans in the Great Lakes and the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys were not only seen as a challenge by the Haudenosaunee, but the English also saw them in opposition to their colonial aspirations. In response to some small-scale raids on New France by Haudenosaunee forces but also to appeal to the French King, Louis XIV, and to establish his credentials in the region, the ambitious new governor of New France, the Marquis de Denonville, planned an aggressive campaign against the Haudenosaunee. Displaying his eagerness and drive, Denonville had already ordered an attack on English fur trading stations in the Hudson Bay in 1686, despite the fact that France and Britain were not at war. In 1687, he set his sights on the westernmost nation of the Haudenosaunee—the Seneca. First, however, Denonville invited the leaders of the Haudenosaunee to the French Fort Frontenac. This garrison was strategically located on the eastern tip of Lake Ontario, where the Saint Lawrence River leaves that body of water. The Haudenosaunee leaders were invited for negotiations under truce. But Denonville had set a trap, arrested the group, and put them in chains to be sent to Quebec. Estimates vary, but of the 50 to 80 hostages taken, 30 to 50 were sent to France to serve as enslaved labor on the French Mediterranean feet. Thus, the Haudenosaunee lost many of their established leaders and diplomats—an excruciating blow and insult to the Five Nations. The following military campaign against the Seneca, while also treacherous, was far less successful. The French-Indigenous force consisting of over 2,000 troops, roughly the same number consisting of Compagnies franches (regulars) as

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well militiamen from New France and maybe as many as 400 Native American allies, were challenged by an estimated 300 to 500 Seneca soldiers. Heavily outnumbered, the initial assault of the Seneca still almost broke Denonville’s forces, but his troops were able to regroup, and the Seneca chose to retreat. Casualties reported, like the accounts of the battle accounts, vary so widely in the sources that it renders them unreliable. This much is clear though, outnumbered, the Seneca chose to abandon their settlements throughout the region and went into hiding. Denonville’s forces, like so many invading European American armies before and after, burnt the Seneca towns, crops, and food storages they could fnd, and quickly retreated. In the aftermath of Denonville’s assault, the Haudenosaunee responded quickly. They launched several small attacks against New France. For instance, Haudenosaunee troops killed a few French civilians and soldiers outside of Montreal, and they took several captives at Chambly. Haudenosaunee pressures, and a signifcant disease outbreak among the garrisons, forced Denonville to order the abandonment of the strategically valuable Fort Niagara, located on the confuence of the Niagara River with Lake Ontario, and the earlier mentioned Fort Frontenac. Moreover, the Haudenosaunee aimed to undermine the French-Indigenous trade routes on Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.28 With the beginning of the Anglo-French confict in North America, the Haudenosaunee increased their anti-French eforts, and members of the Five Nations expressed hopeful attitudes that their English allies would strike New France hard. Yet, the frst efective strategic blow of the confict was struck by the Haudenosaunee against Lachine. A large party ransacked and burned much of the settlement. While casualties and violence were much exaggerated in New France at the time, further spurring terror and fear among the colonial population, casualties at 20-some individuals and over 40 captives taken were still quite signifcant, given the complicated dynamics of long-distance raid warfare. While there were plenty of troops available to challenge the Indigenous attackers, soldiers were reluctant to leave the garrisons, and when fnally pursuing the Haudenosaunee army, the French forces found their match in several skirmishes. Throughout their involvement in the war, Haudenosaunee raiding parties continued to hit smaller targets throughout New France and spread fear, terror, and death among the colonial population there. In fact, and as mentioned earlier, during King William’s War, the Haudenosaunee proved much more efective at striking targets in New France than Anglo American forces. It was the English inability to strike New France efectively, or to provide their Indigenous allies with assistance and protection, despite the repeated pleas by emissaries of the Five Nations, which increasingly frustrated and discouraged the Haudenosaunee.29 The continuous raids by the Haudenosaunee frustrated Frontenac, who had returned to New France to replace Denonville as governor. In early 1693, Frontenac decided to launch an expedition against the Mohawks, as they were the closest among the Five Nations to Montreal. The French also perceived the

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Mohawk as being the most aggressive and most reluctant to engage in negotiations among the Haudenosaunee. Leaving in the dead of winter, about 600 French and Indigenous fghters left New France. The force consisted of about half colonial militia volunteers, as well as French regulars and Native American allies. In mid-February the force reached and destroyed two smaller Mohawk settlements. When the forces reached a third, and larger settlement, a battle ensued. The French sources reported 30 deaths on their side, claimed the Mohawks’ casualties as “considerable,” and celebrated the capture of 300 prisoners of war—about a third of them Mohawk men of fghting age. The invading force put fre to the settlements and burned the food stocks they could fnd. While English troops who lived in close vicinity had spotted the French-Indigenous expedition, and the colonial settlements in the Hudson River Valley had been put on high alert, apparently the Mohawks were not notifed. Furthermore, the English colonists did nothing to assist their Mohawk allies in the defense of their homelands and towns. In the end, English militia only put up a cautious pursuit of the FrenchIndigenous force because of the pleading of the enraged Mohawks, who had been stationed in Schenectady to protect this English settlement. Yet, this mission was abandoned after a short pursuit out of an abundance of caution.30 While the intensity of the Haudenosaunee raids declined after the 1693 attack, the Five Nations, nonetheless, continued to strike and trouble New France, which led Frontenac to send another force to attack the Haudenosaunee in 1696. This time, Frontenac decided to especially target the Onondaga, whose homelands were located to the southeast of Lake Ontario. Besides their participation in raids on New France, the Onondaga had also arrested and handed over to the British a French ofcer who Frontenac had sent to negotiate with them. Furthermore, the Onondaga earned the special ire of New France for undermining the French-Indigenous fur trade on Lake Ontario. In early July, a force of over 2,000 left Montreal. A quarter of the army consisted of Indigenous allies, and the rest of the force was made up of about evenly distributed between soldiers of the Compagnies franches and militia volunteers. Frontenac, the almost 70-year-old, charismatic, and colorful governor was at the helm of the army. While no direct military engagement took place between the Haudenosaunee and the French-Indigenous force, the invaders frst destroyed multiple Onondaga communities and then focused their ire on the neighboring Oneida nation. Many Onondaga and Oneida towns and villages were destroyed and their farm felds went up in fames. The attackers also destroyed grain and other food reserves. The purpose of the attack, so close to harvesting season, and the specifc targeting of the food storages, indicates that the aim of the excursion was to starve the Onondaga and Oneida into submission. In the fall of 1696, somewhat exaggerating the impact of the mission, Frontenac wrote to King Louis XIV of France that the Onondaga and Oneida had been “reduced by the lack of food,” and that “more would perish.” The targeting of crops and food storages was more destructive than the “saber and musket.”31

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As the Haudenosaunee faced increasing French attacks, and small-scale raids by New France’s Indigenous allies, their frustrations with the English colonists grew. Time and again, they raised the issue that New York had remained on the sideline in their time of crisis. With the shortage of food, arms, and gunpowder, the Haudenosaunee grew increasingly frustrated with the English inability or unwillingness to provide them with much-needed supplies. These realities led the Haudenosaunee to increasingly realize that they needed to normalize their relations with New France. Their military reach had become overextended and untenable. This reality led the Haudenosaunee to pursue a far less aggressive stance toward New France for the frst half of the eighteenth century.

New English Ranging Warfare in the Second Anglo-Wabanaki War Like the French and their Native American allies who targeted the Haudenosaunee, New English forces, often supported by Native American soldiers from communities in southern New England, sought to target Indigenous settlements in the northern portions of Dawnland. As already mentioned, this confict is often called the Second Anglo-Wabanaki War. As further west, in the FrenchHaudenosaunee confict in Iroquoia, the New English raids in Wôbanakik were generally not efective at causing mass casualties. Frequently, Native American settlements had been abandoned by the time invading forces attacked. Sometimes, the New English troops were even unable to locate enemy settlements. Until the eighteenth century when the New English adopted the use of snowshoes, such campaigns were confned to the warmer months. Thus, over time, New English scouting and ranging missions became more efective in northern Dawnland. By Queen Anne’s War, or the Third Anglo-Wabanaki War, English provincial soldiers as well as private parties of scalp hunters were slowly adapting to staging routine winter raids. New English colonies also began to gradually increase winter patrols that aimed to keep the enemy of balance. During Dummer’s War, or the Fourth Anglo-Wabanaki War in the 1720s, several New English raids against Wabanaki settlements helped to weaken the position of Indigenous peoples in northern New England. The use of the strategies of la petite guerre by the New English and their Native American allies against Indigenous groups, thus, played a central role in the colonization of northern New England. At the same time, and as we will see later, the military actions of the Wabanakis, alongside their French and other Indigenous allies, often hit the New English hard and repeatedly fought them to a standstill. At times, the Wabanaki peoples’ military capacities, especially during the winters, forced the New English to concede ground. From the Wabanakis’ perspective, these successes tended to be short lived as colonial pressures on Native Americans and their resources led to renewed Anglo-Indigenous tensions. The issues and tensions that had caused the First Anglo-Wabanaki confict from 1676 to 1678 did not improve in the 1680s. Anglo-Indigenous relations

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remained tense after the Treaty of Casco Bay (1678), which was supposed to normalize the situation. Foremost, the territorial encroachments, pushed by everincreasing demands from English colonists for Indigenous land, continued to be a major challenge to Wabanaki communities in the region. As English colonists returned to coastal Maine in the aftermath of the confict and their population began to grow, more Native American land was acquired, reinforcing old tensions. Abusive trade practices, as well as the sale of alcohol, also tested AngloIndigenous relations in the region. The construction by English colonists of mills and damns at popular Native American fshing sites was another fashpoint, as such developments interrupted Native Americans’ access to vital food sources. The damns and mills also disrupted the migratory and reproductive patterns of various fsh species, which resulted in the decline of a once healthy and abundant population. In addition, free-roaming English livestock that fed on Native American farm felds was a continuous source of tensions. From the Wabanakis’ perspective, these infringements, encroachments, and violations of their rights and sovereignty should have ceased with the Treaty of Casco Bay. Hence, Anglo-Wabanaki relations remained tense in the aftermath of the First Anglo-Wabanaki War. In response to English land violations and other increasing pressures, the Wabanaki launched some small-scale attacks in 1685. These strikes provide us a glimpse into Indigenous frustrations with the repeated violations of treaty obligations by the English. Ignoring New English culpabilities, however, Andros blamed the attacks on a minor French nobleman—the Baron de St. Castin. The claim that the French instigated the Wabanaki peoples became a popular English narrative during the Anglo-French wars. Castin himself had arrived as a teenage ofcer in the French colonies in the mid-1660s. After several years in the service, he married the daughter of a prominent Penobscot leader named Madokawando. In a short amount of time, the charismatic Castin gained infuence and high rank among the Penobscot. Governor Andros believed that a strike against Castin would pacify the Wabanakis. Thus, while Castin and many of his Penobscot relations were fghting with Denonville against the Seneca, English forces sacked and plundered his fort, house, and stores at Pentagouet (today Castin in Maine). The tense situation fnally erupted into violent altercations in the Saco Bay area in the summer of 1688, where the heavy-handed response by New English ofcials to another small-scale attack by Wabanaki led to a fast escalation of the situation. Frustrated that once again New English livestock had gotten into their felds, some Wabanakis lost patience, killing the cattle that had destroyed their crop. In response, colonial authorities seized 20 Native Americans as hostages and demanded that the guilty culprits surrender. The capture of kin, along with the long list of additional grievances, was the fnal straw for the Wabanakis in the area. They attacked Yarmouth and killed several soldiers. The attack led a number of families in coastal Maine to abandon their homes to move to safer locations. Native Americans burned abandoned settlements and attacked

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Merrymeeting Bay, Newcastle, Newtown, and Sheepscot to destroy these communities, take captives, and kill colonists. In response to the attacks, Governor Andros demanded that the Wabanakis release New English captives and hand over the participants in the attacks to colonial authorities. The Wabanaki communities ignored the demands, and without much hesitation, Andros ordered a punitive expedition the same summer. The governor set out with two companies of regulars, supported by about 300 volunteers. The large force embarked to reinforce the existing garrisons that protected the New English colonial footholds in the region, but they also launched various strikes against Wabanaki settlements, just as Andros was relieved of his ofce. The New English military operation against the Wabanakis led to renewed confrontations after only a short reprieve in fghting since 1678. Thus, the Anglo-Wabanaki parallel war, just like the French-Haudenosaunee confict, preceded what was later called King William’s War. Many of the Wabanaki military actions, just like those of the Haudenosaunee, morphed into or were part of the Anglo-French war, once direct fghting between the two colonial powers broke out. Even before the outbreak of the Anglo-French struggle, the Wabanakis put efective pressure on the easternmost English settlement of Pemaquid (today Bristol, ME) and the adjacent fort. In early August, a Wabanaki force, surprising colonists and garrison, positioned itself between the village and the fort. This enabled the Wabanaki attackers to take maybe as many as 50 colonists captive, as Pemaquid’s scared population was scrambling toward the fort in search of safety. After a brief standof between Wabanaki forces and the fortifcation, the commanding ofcer decided to abandon the garrison. The Wabanaki guaranteed safe passage to the soldiers and the colonists who had reached the safety of the fort.32 With colonists largely vacating their settlements in Maine east of Casco (today Falmouth, ME), it was through ranging parties that New English colonists, helped by Indigenous allies from southern New England, attempted to target the Wabanaki nations. As during King Philip’s War, Massachusetts Bay Colony looked to Benjamin Church “to pursue, fght, take, kill or destroy the said enemies.” Church led a number of assaults against the Wabanakis, always requesting colonial authorities to provide him with experienced soldiers—New English as well as Native American.33 Soon, Church was joined by other military leaders who led ranging parties into northern and eastern Dawnland. Church proved to have impeccable timing during his frst mission in coastal Maine in late September 1689. Just as he arrived on the scene, the now-easternmost settlement, Casco, faced a considerable Native American force. Church’s ranging party, consisting of about 250 New English and Native American soldiers, was able to prevent the capture of Casco, but the remainder of the campaign proved to be less efective. The local Wabanaki populations eluded Church’s army, and they were forced to return to Boston in order to avoid the arrival of winter without attacking a single Native American target. Moreover, Church’s strategic

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victory at Casco was short lived. As we explore later, a French-Wabanaki army returned in late May in 1690 and sacked the settlement and fort. English colonial ofcials also dispatched Church to lead a force to go after the Pennacook led by Kancamagus. In June of 1689, they had deployed an attack against Sacco Falls (today Dover, NH). They attacked the settlement to especially target Richard Waldron, a hated trader. Waldron had arrested several Native Americans who found refuge among the Pennacook, after tricking them to hold negotiations under a fag of truce after King Philip’s War. In September 1690, Church’s force, consisting of provincial and Mohegan soldiers, aimed to target the Pennacook. During one attack, New English forces killed Kancamagus’ sister, captured his wife and children, and withstood a counter attack by the Pennacook. Church took the Pennacook hostages to safer ground and sent Kancamagus an ultimatum to surrender. By the end of 1690, Kancamagus complied with New English pressures. The New English fed into the continuing colonial narrative by blaming the Pennacook’s entrance into the confict on the French. As part of their larger campaign against the Pennacook, New English forces claimed to have killed 21 Native Americans and to have liberated several English captives. Several New English war parties raided in Maine in the early 1690s. In the fall of 1691, a New English force under the leadership of John March, a businessman in Newbury and an ofcer in the Massachusetts Bay militia, disembarked at Maquoit Bay. The force intended to strike the Wabanaki populations in the region hard but proved unable to locate any settlements or engage any Indigenous targets. To add insult to injury, as the colonial forces embarked on their boats to leave, Wabanaki forces shot at them from a distance, killing several soldiers, as the English hunkered down in their grounded vessels waiting for the tide. In 1692, during the constructions of a stone fort at Pemaquid, a force led by Church ranged in the region to keep Native Americans from attacking while the construction continued. James Converse, a provincial ofcer and local politician from Woburn in Massachusetts Bay Colony, led another force in 1693, which ranged the Maine coastal region from the Piscataqua to the Pemaquid River. While the colonial ranging parties did not bring decisive victories and certainly did not end French-Indigenous raids into the English colonies, the Kennebec and Penobscot communities of the Wabanaki confederacy were certainly worn down by the frequent military activity and their eforts to elude New English attacks. New English scouting and raiding made it difcult for these communities to subsist. Moreover, the constant shortages of French supplies spurred a desire by some in these communities to trade with the English. Thus, renewed Anglo-Wabanaki negotiations led to a signed treaty supported by several of the leaders in the Kennebec and Penobscot communities. Certainly, some leaders and rank and fle, as well as Wabanaki communities beyond the southern parts of Maine, disagreed with, and ignored, the treaty.34 Anglo-Wabanaki relations in the aftermath of the 1693 treaty were dominated by negotiations over prisoner exchanges. While the dangers, trials, and

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tribulations of Anglo American captives among Indigenous peoples are widely discussed, the experiences of Native American prisoners of war are a neglected subject. Few are mentioned in English documents, and there seems to be a very low number of male Native American captives of fghting age that were taken alive. Such low numbers raise more questions than they answer. While some cultural reasons and other dynamics could explain lower numbers to some degree, they do not account for the dramatic disparity. How many Native American soldiers were captured alive and killed? Given the limited available evidence, we can merely speculate. An incident in late November  1693, at Fort Pemaquid that angered the Wabanaki peoples, underscores the English treatment of Native American prisoners. A small group of prominent Wabanaki entered the fort under a fag of truce. The English sent three of the negotiators in chains to Boston to be held as bargaining chips and killed the four remaining members of the party. The English argued that these Wabanakis deserved death as they had participated in attacks. In similar negotiations, of course, such treatment was not extended to French ofcers who had participated in campaigns against the English. Understandably, the Wabanakis were frustrated by such diplomatic double standards. This incident, along with other failed prisoner exchanges, and many of the Wabanakis’ resentments of the 1693 treaty, led to renewed violence in coastal Maine in 1695. In July 1696, and through a combination of land and sea raids, a Wabanaki, Micmac, and French force captured the English fort at Pemaquid in a strategically important victory.35 Despite the setback at Pemaquid, the English continued to make their presence known in coastal Maine. One month later, Church returned with his fourth mission to coastal Maine. He led an expedition from the Penobscot River to the Bay of Fundy, and following the usual strategic pattern, engaged with Indigenous troops, devastated settlements, burned crops, destroyed food storages, and aimed to interrupt other eforts of Native American food procurement. This goal was pursued through rapid deployments often using whaleboats. Moving eastward along the coast, Church’s expedition then proceeded to hit several French targets. In the summer of 1697, March returned with 500 provincial soldiers to Maine, to reinforce the garrisons and to range in the region. Overall, such defensive missions were difcult and had limited success. At the Damariscotta, however, one New English patrol challenged a Wabanaki force that had disembarked on the bank of this tidal river and killed about two dozen members of this party.36 While the campaigns against the Wabanakis during King William’s War far from decided this confict, these raids still established a blueprint that New English forces followed in the wars to come. The campaigns aimed to destroy Indigenous settlements, farmland, and food storages. Whenever possible, New English forces sought to attack Native Americans—combatants and non-combatants alike. Over the course of the eighteenth century, this strategy slowly weakened the Wabanakis’ position.

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King William’s War as an Anglo-French-Indigenous Confict Native Americans contributed signifcantly in various other theaters of King William’s War. New France’s military leadership embraced long-distance raids to strike against the English colonies and also relied on the use of Indigenous allies. During King William’s War, long-distance raids turned out to be the most efective way to hit enemy targets. It was New France and their Indigenous allies who proved to be more successful at waging this kind of confict in the 1690s, especially in the wintertime. In the winter of 1690, New France prepared to strike the English colonies in New England and New York. The late winter and early spring assaults by the French and their Indigenous allies were planned as a three-pronged attack. The frst expedition, a party of 114 French and 96 Native Americans, marched in snowshoes from Montreal toward Albany in the colony of New York. Realizing the town was too well defended, they turned their attention to neighboring Schenectady. There, around 60 colonists were killed, and about 20–30 prisoners were taken, after the surprise attack. The other two expeditions set to strike at English targets in the present-day state of Maine. The smaller expedition, consisting of 50 French and 25 Wabanaki soldiers, left from Trois-Rivières. Their initial target was Salmon Falls (today Berwick, ME). Claiming to have lost only one man, the small French-Indigenous force killed 34 colonists and took 54 captives. When a local militia set out in pursuit of the raiding party, the New English pursuers walked into a classic ambush set up by French and Indigenous soldiers at a bridge crossing the Wooster River. The New English militia fed in panic after being hit by several volleys fred by their concealed attackers. French-Indigenous fre moved down 18 militiamen—8 of them dead. In the engagement, only one French Canadian soldier was reported killed and another one injured. While part of the force brought the loot and the captives back to New France, the other troops joined the third portion of the campaign. At Casco, several members of the Salmon Falls party joined a force of about 50 Canadians and 60 Native American allies, who had traveled overland from Montreal, as well as a large force of Wabanakis led by the Baron de Castin. The force now numbered over 400 and attacked the settlement as well as the adjacent Fort Loyal. Recall that the English fort and settlement had only months earlier been rescued from a Wabanaki attack by Church and his soldiers. After a ferce engagement and days of siege warfare, costing lives and leading to the capture of many English colonists, the last occupants of the fort ofered to surrender if guaranteed safe passage. While a French commanding ofcer agreed to these conditions, Wabanaki soldiers rushed the fort and killed a number of the defenders, until the French intervened to safeguard the remaining guard. This act became a rallying cry to English colonists and reinforced anti-Native American and French sentiment.37

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In response to the attacks, the English colonies met in New York City in the spring of 1690, to fgure out a way to strike back. There, the colonies determined a two-pronged approach, one via the sea, the other over land. But the negotiations also underscored the fssures and prevailing local interest among Anglo Americans, as the colonies outside of the Northeast provided little assistance. As during the later conficts in the frst half of the eighteenth century, the northeastern colonies also repeatedly complained about the lack of support from metropolitan Britain during King William’s War. Colonial elites lobbied and demanded more assistance from Britain, which found itself overextended and tied down in the European theaters of the Nine Years War. For the New England colonies, especially Massachusetts, King William’s War meant tremendous fnancial loss. Throughout the confict, Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was also in charge of the colonial footholds in what is today the state of Maine, faced a dire security and economic situation, as well as a constant shortage of troops. The maritime attacks on French targets in the Northeast were led by Massachusetts Bay Governor William Phips. He was a colorful personality, treasure hunter, adventurer, land speculator, and a man with no military experience. Phips coordinated the strike on Port Royal (today Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia), the center of the French colony of Acadia. The fort had become an understafed post with poor defenses, and Port Royal quickly surrendered to the much larger New English force. Phips then focused on the main prize. He recruited a feet of over 30 ships and 2,300 militia soldiers from mostly Massachusetts Bay Colony but also New Hampshire and Rhode Island, to launch an attack on the seat of the government of New France—the city of Quebec. The invading troops arrived in mid-October at the heavily fortifed city, way too late, and very short on supplies, to even consider an efective siege. During the early days of the campaign, the French repeatedly outmaneuvered the English in military engagements that proved costly in New English lives. Moreover, a smallpox outbreak began to devastate the New English forces, and after only a week, humiliated and diminished, they set sail to return to Boston. More soldiers died of smallpox during the return trip, and Phips’ force’s arrival in Boston spurred an outbreak of smallpox in the city and throughout New England. The English overland attack against Montreal in the summer of 1690, which was supposed to run parallel to the assault on Quebec City, proved to be an even less convincing display of English military ability. It was emblematic of the Anglo American colonies’ inability to strike New France. A contingent of 850 soldiers from the colonies of New York and Connecticut left Albany along with Haudenosaunee fghters. After advancing a little bit over 100 miles north, the mission was abandoned as disease broke out, and the force proved ill supplied. Only a unit of about 40-some colonists from New York with wilderness fghting experience and over 100 Haudenosaunee allies were able to strike a target in New France. Staging a surprise attack on the settlement of La Prairie, located on the

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Richelieu River not far from Montreal, the Anglo-Indigenous force killed a few French colonists and a lot of livestock, and captured 19 prisoners. In the summer of 1691, another Anglo-Indigenous party left Albany in an efort to strike targets in New France. Again, this force did not advance past La Prairie, as they were bogged down in combat with French militia forces. Expecting French reinforcement, and soon to be outnumbered, the Anglo-Indigenous force made a hasty and costly retreat in human life, while being pursued by a smaller French unit that gave them chase. Thus, the English maritime and overland campaigns of the early 1690s underscore the English inability to efectively strike New France.38 Native American and French-Indigenous war parties frequently attacked New English settlements overland. Along with the earlier discussed targets in Maine, Native Americans also raided Scarborough and Exeter in New Hampshire in 1689. In June 1691, an attack by 200 Wabanaki soldiers failed on Wells, but the force regrouped to ambush York, where they attacked a crew loading ships and destroyed some isolated New English farmsteads. 1693 saw a few isolated attacks on settlements in what is today Maine and New Hampshire. In response to the raids, Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law that prohibited English settlers from leaving borderland towns in 1694. Fearing for their lives, many New English families ignored the law and continued to leave, an indicator of how serious many colonists took the Native American threat. 1694 also saw several Native American raids most notably the attack on Oyster Bay in New Hampshire (today Durham) and Groton in Massachusetts. Several other smaller attacks occurred throughout King William’s War in various parts of New England.39 Overall, Native American and French-Indigenous raids proved difcult to undermine, as defensive actions by New English militia and provincial troops tended to be inefective. Small enemy forces were hard to detect, moved swiftly, and could quickly abandon an attack only to fnd an alternative target, and quickly escape into the forest. One of the last raids during the war targeted Haverhill in 1697, and during the attack 27 colonists were killed and 13 captives were taken, among them Hannah Duston, whose captivity story had an incredible impact on New England and American popular culture. In fact, Duston was the frst woman in U.S. history to be memorialized in the form of not only one but two statues in the nineteenth century. Today, sources of controversy, one of the statues stands in Haverhill, MA, and the other in Boscawen, NH. Reinforced by the writings of Cotton Mather in the early eighteenth century, and nineteenth-century writers like Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and John Greenleaf Whittier, Duston’s experience was used as a tool to reinforce anti-Indigenous sentiment, while, at the same time, turning her into a celebrated heroine of Anglo American settler colonialism. Beyond myth, Duston’s captivity experience provides us a glimpse into the moral ambiguities but also the extreme personal violence that defned warfare between Anglo Americans and Native Americans in the Early American Northeast. Like many non-combatant victims of attack and captivity, Duston likely

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experienced trauma and tremendous stress. When her captors moved up north, Duston was left behind in a small Indigenous camp at the confuence of the Merrimack and the Contoocook rivers (today the location of the Boscawen statue). There, one night, sources suggest, she and two other English captives proceeded to kill the only male of fghting age, an old man, two women, six children, with a seventh child able to escape. After scalping their ten victims, the three New English captives fed south via canoe on the Merrimack River, eventually receiving a bounty of 50 pounds for the scalps.40 While ofcially the Nine Years War in Europe, or King William’s War in North America, came to an end with the Treaty of Ryswick in the fall of 1697, limited small-scale Wabanaki raids continued for a while longer. In 1698, for instance, Wabanaki raiders targeted Andover and Hatfeld in Massachusetts. Causing little damage, these assaults were indication that Wabanaki resistance was running out of steam after ten years of intense confrontation with the New English. Exact numbers are hard to determine, but the French and English, especially Massachusetts, sufered signifcant casualties during the war. That said, the Native American nations in the Northeast, especially the Wabanakis and Haudenosaunee, experienced much more dramatic losses, especially as a percentage of their overall populations. Because of their superiority in utilizing raiding tactics, the French and their Native American allies carried a decisive victory against the English. Thus, in North America, as in Europe, the Nine Years War had not gone well for the English. But the French-Indigenous victory was not experienced by everyone equally. In 1699, the Wabanaki peoples in Maine, who had been frustrated with the French lack of support to deal with New English attacks throughout the confict, and who had themselves, on numerous occasions, successfully attacked colonial targets, had to submit to the unfavorable conditions of the 1693 treaty.41

Captive Taking, Scalping, and Ranging Warfare in Queen Anne’s War The peace in Europe and in the Northeast did not last long. The Nine Years War failed to resolve any of the issues that were complicating the dynamics on either side of the Atlantic. In Europe, the death of Charles II in 1700, the last Habsburg ruler of Spain, was the spark that led to renewed confict. With Charles’ death, Philip, the grandson of the French king Louis XIV, and a grandnephew of Charles, ascended the throne of Spain. This development raised the ire of the Habsburg family in Austria. They believed that Charles’ nephew also named Charles, and the younger son of the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, was the legitimate heir to the throne. Concerned about the growing infuence of France in continental Europe, the Dutch, the English, and several smaller central European states backed the Austrians, while France was supported by some smaller European principalities. The extremely bloody War of Spanish Succession had begun in Europe where it lasted from 1701 to 1714. A parallel war also occurred

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in North America, and some smaller military engagements happened in South Asia, the Caribbean, and western Africa. In North America, the War of Spanish Succession came to be known as Queen Anne’s War and took place from 1702 to 1713. It involved campaigns in the Carolinas and Florida between the English and Spanish colonies, and in the Northeast between New France and the northernmost English colonies. Various Indigenous nations from all over eastern North America also participated in this war. As in King William’s War, long-distance raiding campaigns against their enemies by Native American, French-Indigenous, and New English forces were a central part of warfare in the Northeast. The Indigenous-French raiding parties came to strike and weaken their English opponents, while Native Americans also came in search of captives. As we mentioned, Indigenous raiders increasingly sold these captives to the French. Meanwhile, the New English were interested in weakening the position of Indigenous communities in northern New England, intended to interrupt enemy raiding parties, but they were also motivated by taking the scalps of Native Americans they had killed to collect lucrative bounties. The French and their Indigenous allies, as well as individual Wabanaki parties, made efective use of long-distance raiding warfare against the English colonies. All in all, French-Indigenous forces launched about 30 sizeable missions, and there were also several smaller Wabanaki attacks, against communities in New England and New York. In 1703, New France and several Native American nations struck at several targets in Maine and in the Connecticut River Valley. In 1704, for instance, a French-Indigenous force attacked the settlement of Deerfeld in Massachusetts Bay Colony. Arguably one of the most efective raids, French and Native American forces killed 50 or so colonists and soldiers in the attack, and took over 100 captives, while only 11 attackers lost their lives.42 But not all raids were such clear successes. In 1708, for instance, a pre-dawn attack on Haverhill initially seemed to go the French and Native American raiders’ way. They had the element of surprise on their side and put some houses and the fort on fre. Yet the New English defenders stayed in the buildings, even the burning ones, and fred at the attackers. This alerted neighboring communities, and Haverhill was soon reinforced by soldiers from surrounding settlements who pursued the retreating French and Native American parties. As a local militia force caught up, the northern attackers stood their ground and eventually forced the New English to retreat. While English casualties outnumbered those of the raiding party at least 3 to 1, the French-Indigenous force gained little else. In fact, many participants in the expedition had been forced to leave their packs behind as they quickly abandoned their attack.43 What happened at Haverhill was a sign of a growing trend. New English forces displayed an increased presence and efectiveness. Provincial soldiers were a growing sight at forts, garrison houses, and settlements. Moreover, the number of ranging and scouting expeditions by provincial soldiers also increased during the eighteenth century, and so did their ability to reach further into the New England

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interior. While far from a perfect system, as the Haverhill example given earlier reveals, this increased military presence made it, nonetheless, more difcult and dangerous for attacking Native American and French parties. The English colonies focused their major eforts on several maritime campaigns. In 1707, Massachusetts forces staged a failed campaign against Port Royal, which had been returned to France after King William’s War. New English forces, this time with the help of the British Navy and troops, were able to take the town and fort in 1710. In 1711, a joint New English and British naval force set out to attack Quebec City. On August 22, however, the feet hit windy and extremely foggy conditions. Eight ships sank, and between 800 and 900 soldiers drowned. This disaster led the commanding English ofcer, Admiral Hovenden Walker, to abandon the mission.44 As in King William’s War, New English ranging during Queen Anne’s War took the war to Indigenous territory in northern Dawnland. The New English campaigns in this Third Anglo-Wabanaki War forced numerous Native Americans to move north. This migration put some distance between them and the New English colonists. The increase of scouting missions also forced French and Native Americans to launch smaller long-distance raiding parties as these were harder to detect. It was during the Third Anglo-Wabanaki War that the New English became better at supplying scouting and ranging forces, which meant that they would not run out of supplies as quickly as they had in prior conficts. The introduction of snowshoes in warfare also allowed the New English to introduce winter marches toward enemy territory. This adoption of a Native American technology enabled the New English to undermine more efectively the Wabanakis’ winter hunting subsistence.45 Many of the earlier discussed tensions that caused the prior Anglo-Wabanaki conficts, continued, and an attack by New English raiders in March 1703, added fuel to the fre and led to the breakout of the Third Anglo-Wabanaki War. Arriving at the mouth of the Penobscot River, New English raiders shot an infuential trader among the Penobscot, raped his Native American wife, abused an older Penobscot woman, and plundered the settlement. This incident angered the Wabanakis and led to retaliatory acts, tensions, and renewed confict with the English.46 Ofcial policies led to the staging of multiple New English ranging expeditions into northern New England, too many to discuss all of them here. Given the number and complexity of these missions, they had varied outcomes. In the summer of 1703, for instance, John March’s ranging force of over 350 men never achieved its goal of reaching the settlement Pequawket, a center of Wabanaki resistance. March conveniently blamed this failure on the mission’s Indigenous scouts. All in all, the expedition killed 6 Native Americans and destroyed some corn felds. In the fall and winter of 1703 and 1704, Massachusetts’ Governor Joseph Dudley ordered the deployment of four ranging expeditions, consisting of

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around 600 troops. One of these expeditions was led by Winthrop Hilton, who had campaigned with Benjamin Church. This force used snowshoes through tough terrain and, led by 20 or so Native American soldiers, reached the abandoned Pequawket settlement and scorched it. This campaign proved that New English forces could carry out long-distance raids against enemy targets in the winter. After this mission, Hilton would lead northerly raids every winter until his death in 1710. The most successful among these raids happened in 1707, when his forces killed over 20 Native Americans near present-day Black Pointe, Maine. Moreover, for three months in the summer of 1704, supported by a small navy of 14 ships and 30-some whaleboats, Benjamin Church, and a force of over 500 men, targeted the coast from the Penobscot River to the Bay of Fundy. Church claimed that his forces killed a sizeable number of Native Americans and French, devastating settlements, farm felds, and food storages, and taking whatever booty they could fnd. While Church likely exaggerated his mission’s impact, it was indicative of a trend that continued through Queen Anne’s War. Throughout the confict, Massachusetts and New Hampshire increased the use of patrols and provincial soldiers involved in raiding, scouting, and ranging campaigns against Indigenous communities in northern Dawnland. By the time Queen Anne’s War came to an end in 1713, the New English had carried several ranging campaigns into Wabanaki territory in northern Dawnland. Governor Dudley reiterated the purpose of these missions. “This whole War I have kept” the Wabanakis “from all their Ancient Seats and planting grounds, and driven them to Inaccessible places and parts, where no Corn will grow for their support.”47 The campaigns against the Wabanakis were also driven by lucrative scalp bounties. Scalp bounties not only legalized the killing of Native Americans, but they also rewarded and encouraged murder. Scalp bounties spurred the creation of freebooting New English ranging parties to join the war against Native American communities. This unofcial subcontracting of warfare, while dangerous, had the potential for high earnings for those who participated in such campaigns. That scalp bounties were also ofered for the heads of women and children clearly indicated that non-combatants were seen as legitimate targets. From the perspective of the New English, the ability of Indigenous societies to demographically grow and regenerate had to be undermined. Applying a contemporary lens, under the 1948 Genocide Convention, the colonial scalping bounty proclamations are evidence of “intent to destroy” and thus provide proof of an implementation of a genocidal policy. While some historians have debated the strategic impact that raiding warfare had, arguing that these campaigns were not an efcient use of resources, in Queen Anne’s, King William’s, as well as during the Anglo-Wabanaki War of the 1720s discussed in the following section, ranging was the most efective way to ofensively target one’s enemies. The few large maritime invasion eforts staged during these wars had only a limited impact, or were failures. Ranging warfare

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created casualties and spread panic and fear among the opponents. Moreover, in regard to Indigenous peoples, ranging warfare weakened their grip on their homelands and helped to gradually undermine their ability to resist Anglo American colonization.

New English Campaigns and the War with the Wabanakis in the 1720s The Anglo-Wabanaki conflicts of the 1720s further complicate the New English argument that Native American foes were manipulated by the French to participate in the Franco-British wars in the Northeast. Even more so than in earlier conflicts, Native Americans were engaged in combat independent from the Anglo-French imperial rivalry. From an Indigenous perspective, the Fourth Anglo-Wabanaki War known by English colonists’ as “Dummer’s War,” named after the governor serving in Massachusetts at the time, was not that different from earlier conflicts. In many ways, these struggles were just another flashpoint in the long history of conflicts between Wabanakis and New English. Despite renewed confict between New English colonists and the Wabanakis in the 1720s, the period from the mid-1710s to the 1740s was unusual, as this was a confict-free period between France and Britain. Thus, Dummer’s War saw no direct fghting between the British and the French. Instead, the confict emerged out of the same tensions that had already fueled the prior Anglo-Wabanaki conficts. These tensions reemerged with the resettlement of coastal northern Dawnland by Anglo American colonists. Many of the New English who had abandoned the colonial settlements of coastal Maine during King William’s and then again during Queen Anne’s War came back. Furthermore, the region attracted new European American settlers who sought to establish themselves in the area. The construction of military posts, which were built to protect English colonists, was seen as a growing threat by Native Americans. Colonial settlements and development soon again undermined Native American access to fshing grounds and other resources. Tensions also reemerged over land and trade in the aftermath of Queen Anne’s War.48 Throughout the eighteenth century, several Wabanaki factions and groups also became increasingly frustrated with New France. The French often cut or were unreliable in delivering promised supplies. Instead, French ofcials encouraged Wabanakis living in northern New England to relocate to New France. The declining French support for Native Americans in northern New England weakened the position of Indigenous communities and promoted the migration of some. Moreover, among the Wabanaki nations, such as the Penobscot, a gradually growing faction of people emerged, who favored closer relations with the New English.49

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Thus, the Anglo-Wabanaki confict of the 1720s was an episode in a long ongoing struggle between colonists and Native Americans over land, resources, and political control, but it was also spun by the New English as a war with a “threatening” and “savage” foe, as clerics, ofcials, and intellectuals saw the fght in religious terms. It was a war of Protestants against Catholics—a struggle depicted in the New English propaganda as a battle between good and evil. For many New Englanders, the French Jesuit missionary, Father Sebastian Rale, and the Wabanaki community of Norridgewock, in which he served, came to epitomize these negative views. This is why Dummer’s War is also at times called Father Rale’s War.50 New English ofcials frequently complained about Norridgewock as well as the presence of Father Rale and other Frenchmen, who they believed incited this community and others to violent resistance. As the situation grew increasingly tense in the early 1720s, colonial authorities depicted all Wabanakis as in “rebellion.” They called for Father Rale, all other Jesuit missionaries, Frenchmen living in Indigenous communities, and “rebel” Wabanakis to be handed over to them. In December 1721, a force of provincial soldiers set out to arrest Father Rale at Norridgewock, but he had gone into hiding. The expedition retrieved the missionary’s papers, which colonial ofcials claimed proved seditious activity. The New English force also took several Native American hostages.51 That the Wabanakis saw themselves as independent, sovereign communities and not part of the New English colony of Massachusetts was a thought that ofcials, at least publicly, did not acknowledge. While English ofcials, and later white settler historians, blamed the Wabanaki peoples for the outbreak of the confict, because they seized several families around Merrymeeting Bay, this expedition was a reaction to what happened at Norridgewock. The Wabanakis quickly released most prisoners but made clear that they continued to keep a few in custody, as Massachusetts held four Norridgewock Wabanaki as hostages. The Wabanakis believed that they needed to be returned to their community. As the tensions and negotiations between Massachusetts ofcials and Wabanakis persisted to stall and failed to resolve the issues, violence continued. For much of the period between 1722 and 1725, raids and attacks by Wabanaki soldiers against New English targets in the coastal Northeast continued. These included overland attacks as well as maritime assaults.52 Wabanaki communities in the western portions of New England were also engaged in a confict with the New English. Some historians argue that this confict was the western theater of “Dummer’s War,” while others refer to it as “Grey Lock’s War,” to underscore that these confrontations were distinct from the resistance of the Eastern Wabanakis. The western Indigenous resistance was allegedly led by a man whom the New English called “Grey Lock.” The western Wabanaki alliance conducted a few small-scale assaults on New English settlers and on provincial soldiers in the Connecticut River Valley region during the 1720s but generally not killing or capturing more than a few individuals.53

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New English ranging warfare against Native Americans played a central role in the Anglo-Wabanaki conficts of the 1720s, and a colonial force dealt a signifcant blow in August of 1724 at Norridgewock. A New English unit of about 200 staged a surprise attack on the settlement at night. They killed Father Rale and dozens of Wabanakis. It is hard to determine the exact number of casualties. An often-cited number, based on William Williamson’s writing, claims that 80 Native Americans were killed during the attack and that many of their dead bodies swam down the Kennebec River. It is equally possible, however, that the New English records exaggerated the Native American deaths at Norridgewock, just as they likely did during other engagements with Native Americans. The expedition returned with 28 Norridgewock Wabanaki scalps. These scalps provide a glimpse into the brutality of ranging warfare, and how, given the opportunity, New English raiders targeted non-combatants. Only 6 of the recovered scalps had belonged to male adults. The remaining 22 belonged to women and children.54 The career of John Lovewell, whose fnal engagement with the Wabanakis was immortalized in the writing of several New England intellectuals, provides a glimpse into the New English ranging and scouting missions of the Fourth Anglo-Wabanaki War. During Dummer’s War, Lovewell led three separate privateer parties of scalp bounty hunters on missions into the borderlands of northern New England. Lovewell’s frst expedition produced the scalp of one murdered Native American man and one Indigenous child prisoner, for which Lovewell’s party received a 200 pounds pay-out in Boston. Lovewell’s second expedition attracted about 80 men. The force spent some time ranging with little results, but eventually they came across a party of Wabanakis and killed ten of them. While, as we discussed earlier, New English colonists went at length to criticize Native Americans for desecrating dead bodies, Lovewell and his party, like many other New English ranging forces, did exactly the same thing. During their two missions, they publicly displayed the vandalized Indigenous corpses to strike fear into other Native Americans who would stumble onto the dead bodies. Both Native Americans and New English used such public displays of mutilated bodies as a way to terrorize their enemies but also to humiliate and desecrate their opponents. It was a strategy in implementing psychological and spiritual warfare. Lovewell’s luck ran out on his third mission—frequently referred to as “Lovewell’s Fight” in the literature and writings of eighteenth- and nineteenthcenturies New Englanders. Accompanied by only 47 men, several of them with little backcountry combat experience, Lovewell and his party walked into an ambush. Wabanaki soldiers killed Lovewell and the majority of his force. Only 20 of the men who had set out on the mission returned home. Lovewell’s three missions provide a glimpse into the complexity, efectiveness, inefectiveness, boredom, unpredictability, and mortal danger that the pursuit of raiding and ranging warfare meant for both European Americans and Native American soldiers. In the violent world of the New England backcountry, lives and careers could be upended quickly. In Lovewell’s case though, his demise became the backdrop of

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legends and myths. A  self-reliant heroic backwoodsman going down shooting with his back against a tree—an imagined heroic demise that preserved Lovewell as a part of New England’s literary canon by such authors as Nathanael Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Henry David Thoreau.55 While not matching the prominence of the previously discussed campaigns, there were other New English ranging missions that engaged with Wabankai targets throughout the war. These campaigns helped to grind down and push the Wabanaki to seek peace. They sought to “Kill, Take, and Destroy,” as one provincial ofcer was ordered. He was to engage, “to the utmost of your power, all the Enemy Indians you can meet in your March, and Search for their Corn, destroying all you can fnd.” Thus, as in prior conficts, the ranging missions in Dummer’s War sought to disrupt Wabanaki subsistence, target their settlements, and interrupt Native American attempts to attack the English colonies.56 Despite the Wabanakis’ ability to often match, and at times surpass Anglo American military eforts, Indigenous communities in the borderlands in closer vicinity to the New English colonies sufered tremendously in the 1720s. The attacks and campaigns by New English ranging patrols against Native American communities in northern Dawnland spurred an Algonquian diaspora out of New England. While there was certainly a return migration when the confict was over, the Wabanakis’ outward movement, nonetheless, had a depopulating impact on the region’s Indigenous populace. New English ranging campaigns against Native Americans contributed to this development. So did the demographic realities of a rapidly growing Anglo American population in northern New England, which began to precipitously outnumber Indigenous peoples. Following an established pattern for the Wabanaki peoples, the negotiations that ended Dummer’s War did not resolve the issues caused by New English colonization. Thus, IndigenousNew English tensions continued for decades to come.

Concluding on Shifting Dynamics: From King George’s Through the Seven Years War By King George’s, and, especially, the Seven Years War, New England had not only become a less central war theater, but it was the traditional European modes of warfare that came to play a more decisive role in these conficts. That said, and as a strategy to punish and target Indigenous as well as European communities, ranging warfare continued to be used and be impactful. It was an efective tool to strike terror into the opponents. In the long run, it aided in grinding down the enemy’s ability to resist. The War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748) in Europe, which Anglo American colonists called King George’s War, led to a resumption of confict in North America. France, Prussia, and a few other states used the succession of Maria Theresa on the Habsburg throne in 1740 as an opportunity to undermine the declining position of the Holy Roman Empire. The Habsburg controlled not

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only Austria but also signifcant areas of Central and Eastern Europe, including regions coveted by France and Prussia. Britain, the Netherlands, and several smaller states backed the Habsburgs against the French in this confict, and these entanglements eventually led France to declare war on Britain in March of 1744. Word of renewed confict reached New France faster than the British colonies, and the French acted quickly. French-Indigenous forces took Canseau in Nova Scotia. French eforts to take Annapolis Royal, however, failed twice. Throughout the war, French-Indigenous forces staged various raids against the British colonies in New England and New York. Eight larger French-Indigenous parties targeted the northern English colonies in 1745 and 1746, one of which burned Saratoga in New York late in November 1745. At least some 30–35 smaller Indigenous raiding parties were provisioned by the French to attack targets in the English colonies throughout the war. This reality required the northern English colonies to muster signifcant portions of their militia for defensive purposes and to send out defensive-ranging parties. While historians often underscore the inefectiveness of these New English forces, recall our earlier discussion about the Haudenosaunee attacks against French settlements in King William’s War and how the French too had difculties with such attacks. The fnal successful French-Indigenous raid happened in February 1747 at Grand Pré in Nova Scotia during a blizzard. The English had not posted guards, and their force was quickly overpowered.57 The military historians who emphasize the role that European modes of warfare have played in deciding war in colonial North America consider the battle for Louisbourg, on Cape Breton Island, as evidence to support their position. It is a campaign that scholars have widely and extensively written about. The June 1745 siege, staged by the British Navy and New English militia, was indeed a successful long-distance maritime attack, which led to the capture of the fortress from the French. While Louisbourg once had the reputation of being a tough fortress to take, and as New English intelligence indicated, it had fallen into disrepair, was poorly supplied, and understafed during King George’s War.58 It is also important to note that a successful long-distance maritime attack of this kind was difcult to carry out, and, in fact, the Anglo American capture of Louisbourg remained the only successful campaign of this kind during King George’s War. While other maritime missions were contemplated, they either did not materialize or ended in failure. The idea of a joined British-New English attack against Quebec City, was, for example, abandoned. A French attempt to take back Louisbourg was also derailed by a combination of storms and disease. The outbreak of an epidemic especially devastated the French force and led to an abandonment of the mission. Moreover, the French provided clothing from deceased sailors to their Native American allies. Thus, an epidemic that had hit French forces hard had a devastating impact on New France’s Native American allies in the Canadian Maritimes. Some historians estimate that it wiped out a third of their population. Moreover, a second attempt by France to send a large

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feet to take back Louisbourg and to support its military interests against the English in the North American theater was intercepted by the British Navy.59 Louisbourg was only returned to France after the war, in exchange for Chennai, a colonial foothold that the British had lost during the fghting in India. This decision frustrated many colonists in New England. Thus, King George’s War followed many of the established patterns of military engagement of prior wars in the Early American Northeast. Raiding warfare prevailed as the chosen French-Indigenous strategy. The New English, as mentioned previously, deployed ranging units to act defensively in New England. New English ranging forces were also deployed in Nova Scotia and Acadia to strike against French and Indigenous communities there. In a pattern established in the campaigns of prior wars, Anglo American ranging forces killed enemy combatants and non-combatants when given the chance, destroyed settlements, and food storages. These campaigns continued even after the Treaty of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) concluded the War of Austrian Succession in the fall of 1748, as the British aimed to strengthen their position in the Canadian Maritimes. This continuing confict is often called the Anglo-Micmac War.60 Raiding, scouting, and ranging warfare dynamics continued during the Seven Years War in the 1750s as well, but it was the larger battles, reminiscent of the wars in Europe, toward the end of the hostilities, which led to a decisive outcome in the confict. Those victories ended the long Anglo-French rivalry in North America, which had gone back all the way to the early seventeenth century, when the two aspiring imperial powers disputed, and, at times attacked, each other’s colonial footholds on the northeastern Atlantic seaboard. The name “Seven Years War,” just as the designation “French Indian War,” which is also often given to this fnal Anglo, French, and Indigenous confict, is a misnomer. As we have discussed, the insinuation that it was the French and Native Americans who fought on one side against the Anglo American colonists and the British on the other was not a historic reality. Both French and British colonies relied on Indigenous allies. The tensions between Anglo American and French colonists also preceded the ofcial outbreak of the war. There had been fghting in North America between English and French colonists and forces, which also involved various Indigenous groups starting in 1754, even though the ofcial beginning of the Seven Years War only occurred in May of 1756 with Britain declaring war on the French. Besides the European and North American theater, British and French forces and navies also engaged in South Asia, Africa, and of the Chinese coast. This geographic extension of the war makes the Seven Years War, arguably, the frst globally spanning confict. This is why some historians have called it the “frst world war.”61 The situation in northern New England, especially for the Penobscot in Maine, continued to become ever more challenging by the 1750s. Land investors sought more ways to obtain Penobscot lands. While the Penobscot had not been ofcially at war, several parties of New English vigilantes went out to kill

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Penobscot and take their scalps. One of the leaders of such a group, James Cargill, was put on trial for the killings of a dozen Penobscot, which included women and children. Underscoring the difcult dynamics for the Penobscot on the Maine frontier, the jury declared Cargill innocent and made sure that authorities compensated him for the scalp bounty money. For the Penobscot the situation went from bad to worse. As their communities were reluctant to join the war efort against other Wabanaki peoples, Massachusetts ofcials declared war on the Penobscot on November 1, 1755. Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Spencer Phips directed the following proclamation against the Penobscot. For every Male Penobscot Indian above the Age of Twelve Years, that shall be taken . . . and brought to Boston, Fifty Pounds. For every Scalp of a Male Penobscot Indian above the Age of aforesaid, brought in as Evidence of their being killed as aforesaid, Forty Pounds. For every Female Penobscot Indian taken and brought in as aforesaid, and for every Male Indian Prisoner under the Age of Twelve Years, taken and brought in as aforesaid, Twenty-fve Pounds For every Scalp of such Female Indian or Male Indian under the Age of Twelve Years, that shall be killed and brought in as Evidence of their being killed as aforesaid, Twenty Pounds.62 Such an order, which targeted not only enemy combatants but also civilians, including women and children, constitutes by today’s standard a “genocidal” policy. This declaration is one of many scalp bounty proclamations during the conficts in the Early American Northeast. Today several New England towns are named after scalp hunters. Spencer and Tyngsborough in Massachusetts, or Westbrook in Maine, are just a few such examples. Following an old established pattern, New English ranging parties in search of scalps sought to track down Penobscot and other Wabanaki peoples when they could. But they also sought to disrupt their patterns of subsistence by undermining their eforts to grow and procure food. As in prior wars, the Penobscot and other Wabanakis sufered from hunger and disease as scalp raiders disrupted their communities and way of life. When the confict came to an end, Massachusetts authorities built a fort on the homeland of the Penobscot in 1759, symbolizing to the New English at least, that the political independence and military sovereignty of this Indigenous nation had come to an end.63 Yet, northern New England was a minor theater in the Seven Years War, as by the early 1750s the Ohio Valley and the eastern Great Lakes region had become the major area of contest among Indigenous, French, and Anglo American populations. In the buildup to the war, New France had continued to strengthen its hold over the region by building more forts, and Anglo American colonists sought to

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challenge their position. The beginning of the so-called French and Indian War occurred in 1754, when George Washington, then a Lieutenant Colonel in the Virginia provincial forces, set out with several hundred militiamen, some British regulars, and Native American allies to challenge For Duquesne, located where the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers meet to form the Ohio River (today the city of Pittsburgh, PA). Waiting for reinforcements, before planning to attack the French stronghold, Washington and his force built a small fort in what is today Farmington in southwestern Pennsylvania. On July 3, a French-Indigenous force attacked the fort, forcing Washington to surrender and to withdraw. The next Anglo American mission to target Fort Duquesne happened in 1755. The expedition of over 2,000 regulars and militiamen, led by Major-General Edward Braddock, ended in a complete disaster. A  much smaller Indigenous-French force, consisting of a little over 600 Native American allies and around 250 French provincial and regular forces, challenged the advancing force. Sufering several hundred deaths and wounded, including the mortally wounded Braddock, the Anglo American forces retreated humiliated. Other major British campaigns, such as the abandoned attack against Fort Louisburg in 1757, yielded little success. Meanwhile, from 1755 through 1757, the French and their allied Native American forces had several successful campaigns against military and civilian targets in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Nova Scotia. These campaigns were conducted with much violence as Anglo American colonists and later white settler historians often observed. Though, as we have seen, such violence against combatants and non-combatants alike was not unique to only French and Indigenous forces. For Native Americans from the Ohio River Valley, the Great Lakes, and southwestern Canada, these strikes sought to avenge the loss of their land and kin, but they also saw these attacks as a strategy to keep Anglo American settlers out of their homelands. While the French and their Native American allies seemed in ascendancy late in 1757, the French imperial interests in North America, nonetheless, faced some systemic challenges. Recall that the French population during the Seven Years War was barely over an estimated 50,000, whereas the Anglo American inhabitants in North America came to maybe as many as 1.5 million. The maritime infrastructure of the French Empire was also less developed than that of the British, which weakened the French’s ability to get reinforcements and supplies to their colonies in North America and around the world. The French colonial settlements on the Saint Lawrence River also sufered from a series of extremely poor harvests, which caused the French colonists and forces in North America to face serious food shortages. Native Americans in the region also faced bad harvests and food shortages, though Indigenous peoples had some advantages in this area. They knew much better about how to take advantage of the natural environment and to fnd food items through gathering, and when possible, hunting and fshing. Yet, these ways of subsistence were challenging in the best of times and did not become easier

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during times of war. Moreover, because of their long exposure to European ways and trade goods, many Native Americans had not been practicing such ways of subsistence. The skills of foraging, which could ameliorate bad harvests or other challenges to subsistence, increasingly declined throughout the colonial period. For Native Americans and French colonists alike, the combination of food shortages, the demands of war, and traveling troops (both Indigenous and European) who could bring and spread disease, all had a growing demographic impact. The stresses of war and malnutrition had dire consequences on North American societies, and Native American populations were even more vulnerable to such developments. Trans-Atlantic supply lines not only made it harder to get reinforcements and food supplies but also led to shortages in military hardware and materials. The shortages of powder and hardware were a much larger problem for the French than the usually better-supplied British. Moreover, and as the French colonial population was signifcantly smaller than those in the British colonies, the lower rate of regular forces making it to North America to reinforce French ranks there further reinforced the structural military weaknesses of France’s imperial holdings in North America. The lack of military supplies, alongside that of trade goods, also had a signifcant impact on Indigenous-French relations, an alliance system that depended on the provision of gifts in trade goods, supplies, powder, and weaponry. Native Americans, resulting from the established Indigenous systems of diplomatic decorum that were based on beliefs in reciprocity, expected an ally to supply these items. As we discussed earlier, there had been an issue in these supply lines in the decades before the Seven Years War, but the confict certainly amplifed these problems further. Hence, already before the Seven Years War, the lack of military supplies and trade goods led to a trickling number of Native American communities leaving, or at least openly questioning, the French alliance system. This trend began to only increase as the French supply lines became more unreliable in the midst of the Severn Years War. The strong showing of the French and their Native American allies in the early years of the confict was a result of their superior striking power and excellent adaptation to the warfare in the borderlands, but their strategic comparative advantage began to erode as the Seven Years War continued. The British and their Native American allies also launched successful raiding campaigns. More importantly, and as we shall see later, large battles came to play a decisive role in the fnal years of the war. These developments were accompanied by the British metropolitan administration dramatically increasing its military funding and spending in North America, which led to the sending of more British regular forces and the increased presence of the British Navy. Starting in 1758, the French and their Indigenous allies began to sufer some decisive losses at the hand of Anglo American, British, and their allied Indigenous forces. During that year, in what is today the Canadian province of New

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Brunswick, Mi’kmaq and Acadians soldiers were routed by Anglo American forces. The British took the strategically important Fort Louisbourg in July. Moreover, a peace settlement emerged between Ohio Indians and Pennsylvania, providing the colony some breathing space. British, Anglo American, and Indigenous forces also captured Fort Frontenac in August 1758 and moved into Fort Duquesne in November. This fort had been abandoned by the French. In the summer of 1759, British, Anglo American, and Indigenous forces took Fort Niagara and the abandoned posts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point. In September, the arguably most decisive victory happened when British and Anglo American forces took Quebec. A more symbolic blow was the attack by Rogers’ Rangers, a scouting and ranging force consisting of mostly New English and some Native Americans, who attacked the mission town of St. Francis in October. The British capture of Montreal in September of 1760 was the last decisive blow to the French and led to their surrender. Thus, the war in North America was decided more than two years before the Treaty of Paris was signed on February 10, 1763, which provided the British with ofcial control over Canada.64 The ranging warfare against Indigenous peoples did not decide the Seven Years War between the British and French colonies. Nevertheless, these strategies still had a decisive impact on the Native American communities of northern New England. It is important to underscore that it was also only by the Seven Years War that large-scale battles led to a decisive outcome in the Anglo-French rivalry in continental North America. For much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it had been raiding and ranging warfare that had dominated the wars in the Early American Northeast. It was the French and their Indigenous allies who had enjoyed a comparative advantage executing this type of warfare for much of this period. The purpose of small-scale ranging warfare was not to get a decisive and defeating blow at one’s enemy. Instead, it aimed to strike terror and weaken the opponent and grind down their ability to resist. The New English writer Samuel Penhallow wrote in the aftermath of Dummer’s War in the mid-1720s that, while “the Number” of Wabanaki killed “seems inconsiderable,” the chaos and destruction carried to Indigenous communities led to “Cold, Hunger, and Sickness.” He underscored that “at least a third of them was wasted since the War begun.”65 New English ranging warfare against the Native American populations of northern New England had a long-term destructive impact. It shaped the history of Anglo-Wabanaki relations, had a decisive role during the wars of the Early American Northeast in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and aided in the colonization of northern New England.

Notes 1 For an exploration of this topic in a global context, see Linda Colley, Captives: The story of Britain’s Pursuit of Empire and How Its Soldiers and Civilians Were Held Captive by the Dream of Global Supremacy, 1600–1850 (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002).

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2 Thomas M. Wickman, Snowshoe Country: An Environmental and Cultural History of Winter in the Early American Northeast (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 10–11. 3 For an excellent introduction, see W. J. Eccles, The French in North America, 1500– 1783 (Markham, Ontario: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1998). 4 John Wills, 1688: A Global History (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002). 5 On the impact of China on Leibniz and other Europeans, see Christoph Strobel, The Global Atlantic: 1400 to 1900 (New York: Routledge, 2015), 145–147. On the issue more generally see D. E. Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–1800 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefeld, 2009); and Joanna Walley-Cohen, The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History (New York: Norton, 1999). 6 On Locke see James Tully, “Rediscovering America: The Two Treaties and Aboriginal Rights,” in Locke’s Philosophy: Content and Context, ed. G. A. J. Rogers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 165–196. 7 For a colonial context, see Howard H. Peckham, The Colonial Wars 1689–1762 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 25–26. For the Native American context in New England, see Christoph Strobel Native Americans of New England (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2020), 107–113. 8 For the most eloquent expression of this school of thought and the most infuential use of these organizing principles and frameworks, see the nineteenth-century author Franics Parkmam. See especially Francis Parkman, France & England in North America, 2 vols. (New York: The Library of America, 1983). For a recent recycling of the Parkman stereotypes, see Jay Atkinson, Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston’s Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America (Lanham, MD: Lyons Press, 2015). For a more conventional use of these organizing principles, see Peckham; and Michael Dekker French and Indian Wars in Maine (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2015). 9 Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 109–110. 10 See Daniel R. Mandell, Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth Century Eastern Massachusetts (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996) 128–129, 187–187, 189–190. On southern New England Native American military service, see also Brian D. Carroll, “ ‘Savages’ in the Services of Empire: Native American Soldiers in Gorham’s Rangers, 1744–1762,” The New England Quarterly 85 (September 2012): 383–429. 11 See Armstrong Starkey, European and Native American Warfare, 1675–1815 (New York: Routledge, 1998), 90–92. For New France specifcally, see Louise Dechêne, Le Peuple, L'État Et La Guerre Au Canada Sous Le Régime Français (Montreal: Boreal, 2008); and Rene Chartrand, Raiders from New France: North American Forest Warfare Tactics, 17th– 18th Centuries (Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2019). 12 For the English adoption of Indigenous ways of fghting in New England during this period, see Steven C. Eames, Rustic Warriors: Warfare and the Provincial Soldier on the New England Frontier, 1689–1748 (New York: New York University Press, 2011). For the earlier period, see Patrick M. Malone, The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics among the New England Indians (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 2000); John K. Mahon, “Anglo-American Methods of Indian Warfare, 1676–1794,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45 (1958): 254. 13 For the argument that French soldiers in colonial North America performed better than English provincial soldiers, see for instance W. J. Eccles The Canadian Frontier, 1534–1760 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1974), 11, 139. 14 Eames, 72–73. 15 John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 16 Starkey; Guy Chet, Conquering the American Wilderness: The Triumph of European Warfare in the Colonial Northeast (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003); Ian Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). See

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also Robert E. Cray, Lovewell’s Fight: War Death, and Memory in Borderland New England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), 48. Michael G. Laramie, King William’s War: The First Contest for North America 1689–1697 (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2017), 164–166, 227. Eames, 89. Eames, 79. See for example Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973) 154–165. Eames, 190. Benjamin Church, The History of the Great Indian War of 1675 and 1676, Commonly Called Philip's War; also the Old French and Indian Wars, from 1689 to 1704 (Hartford, CT: Silas, Andrus & Son, 1845), 244. Church, 265. See, for instance, Church; Cotton Mather, Souldiers Counselled and Comforted: A Discourse Delivered unto Some part of the Forces Engaged in the Just War of New-England Against the Northern & Eastern Indians (Boston: Samuel Green, 1689); Cotton Mather, Frontiers Well Defended (Boston: T. Green, 1707); Parkman, France & England in North America; Samuel Penhallow, The History of the Wars of New England with the Eastern Indians (Boston: T. Fleet, 1726); Jeremy Belknap, The History of New Hampshire (Philadelphia: Robert Aitken, 1792). John Grenier, The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 38–39. Laramie 97–100. For a more detailed discussion of these processes, see David J. Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2016), chapter 1; Laramie, chapter 1. For a more detailed discussion on Denonville’s attack and the Haudenosaunee response, see Laramie, chapter 6; Chartrand, 18–20. Chartrand 22–23. Laramie, 111–112, 115. Chartand, 34–36. Chartrand, 36–38. This section on Anglo-Wabanaki tensions before King William’s War draws from Dekker, 34–37; and Steele, 139. Church, 55. My discussion of the early New English raids against the Wabanakis draws from Laramie, 105–106, 110–111, 159–160, 175–6, 204–5; Dekker, 37–43. Laramie, 217–218, 245–246; Peckham 47–8; Chartrand, 38–40. Peckham, 50; Dekker, 43; Laramie, 247–251, 279. For more elaborate discussions of the 1690 French campaign against New York and Maine, see Laramie, 120–127. For a more detailed discussion of the English maritime and overland campaigns, see, for instance, Chartrand, 27–33; Peckham 33–36. Laramie 109, 187, 189–190, 204, 214–216; Peckham, 42–3, 47; Dekker, 39–40. Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 170–171. Peckham, 52–53; Laramie 280–281; Dekker, 43–45. Evan Haefi and Kevin Sweeney, Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfeld (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003). Chartrand, 42–44. Gerald Graham, ed., The Walker Expedition to Quebec, 1711 (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1953). Eames, 76, 82–84; Dekker, 51–3; Wickman, 216–218.

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46 Matthew R. Bahar, Storm of the Sea: Indians and Empires in the Atlantic Age of Sail (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 144–151. 47 Quoted in Dekker, 53. 48 Dekker, 55–60. 49 Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 109–110. On these dynamics among the Penobscot, see Pauleena MacDougall, The Penobscot Dance of Resistance: Tradition in the History of a People (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2004), chapters 4, 6–7. 50 See, for instance, Samuel Sewall, Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas, 2 vols. (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1973), 2: 1021. See also Oliver Peabody, An Essay to Revive and Encourage Military Exercises, Skill and Valour among the Sons of God's People in New England: A Sermon Preached before the Honourable ArtilleryCompany in Boston June 5th, 1732 (Boston: T. Fleet, 1732). 51 See, for example, Dekker, 61–62. 52 Dekker, 62–69; Bahar, 177, 183–184. 53 Colin G. Calloway, The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600–1800: War, Migration, and the Survival of an Indian People (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), chapter 6. 54 William D. Williamson, The History of the State of Maine, 2 vols. (Hallowell, ME: Glazer, Masters & Company, 1832), II: 148; Dekker, 69–70; Eames, 199–200. 55 Cray, 1–25; Grenier, The First Way of War, 37–38; Eames, 21, 86. 56 Eames, 73. 57 Chartrand, 47–48. 58 See, for instance, Chet, 103–105; Steele, 170–173; Peckham, 99–106; Dekker, 83–90. 59 Peckham, 109–111; Williamson, 248. 60 Grenier, The First Way of War, chapter 2; See also John Grenier, The Far Reaches of Empire: War in Nova Scotia, 1710–1760 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008). 61 For the global dynamics of the Seven Years War, see Daniel A. Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 1754–1763: Britain and France in a Great Power Contest (New York: Routledge, 2011). For the North American dynamics, see especially Fred Anderson, The Crucible of War: The Seven Year’s War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000). 62 “Spencer Phips Proclamation” [November 3, 1755], in Dawnland Encounters: Indians and Europeans in Northern New England, ed. Colin Calloway (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1991), 167–169. 63 Dekker, 112–131. 64 Steele, 207–219; Peckham, 166–172, 175–185, 185–193; John Ross, War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America’s First Frontier (New York: Bantam Books, 2009); Stephen Brumwell, White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery, and Vengeance in Colonial America (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2005). 65 Penhallow, 9.

EPILOGUE War and its Legacies

In the second half of the eighteenth and through the nineteenth century, Anglo Americans continued to use similar patterns of warfare, which they had learned to deploy in the Early American Northeast, to colonize Indigenous peoples in other parts of North America. The use of ranging warfare against Indigenous peoples, scalp bounties, the burning of Native American settlements and farms felds, as well as the destruction, and the undermining of access to food and other resources, continued to be part of the playbook of Anglo American territorial expansion. Moreover, and similar to New England, throughout what would become the United States, Indigenous peoples often evaded and efectively resisted Anglo American expansion and conducted their own attacks against the colonizers. However, in the long run, and varying through time and place, warfare and other aggressive policies had a destructive impact on Indigenous societies and undermined their independence. It is important to emphasize though that despite the destructive impact of war and dispossession, and just as in other parts of North America, Indigenous survival continued in the Northeast. In New England, the end of King Philip’s War or the Anglo-Wabanaki wars did not mean the end of an Indigenous presence. Indigenous communities persisted, despite often challenging circumstances. It was the memory of colonization and war, which, at times, spurred the Indigenous struggle for survival and recognition in New England.

War, Revolution, U.S. Empire, and Territorial Expansion While targeted violent Anglo American campaigns against Indigenous peoples ceased in New England after the Seven Years War, they continued to play a signifcant role in other parts of North America through the nineteenth century.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003272113-5

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After the American Revolution, colonization and war continued west of the Appalachians, and, starting in the mid-nineteenth century, the trans-Mississippian West. This territorial expansion was spurred by the dramatic growth of the U.S. population, which in turn stimulated the expansive tendencies of the United States. The desire by U.S. settler and business interests for ever more land and resources spurred violent military confict and the forced relocation and marginalization of Indigenous peoples. Moreover, the expansion of the United States did not cease with the military defeat of sovereign Native American nations by the late nineteenth century. By then the United States focused on the acquisition of overseas colonies and territories, invasions often enabled through the use of force. To this day, the U.S. military maintains a multitude of military bases throughout the world.1 Many wars and conficts occurred between Anglo Americans and Indigenous peoples east of the Mississippi River from the 1760s through the 1830s. During military engagements throughout this period and all across the Eastern Woodlands, Anglo American forces frequently targeted Native American non-combatants, settlements, farm felds, and food. Anglo Americans also committed a number of vicious massacres against friendly Indigenous communities. In Lancaster County in Pennsylvania late in 1763, for instance, a group of white vigilantes, called the Paxton Boys, attacked the Native American settlement of Conestoga twice, killing and scalping all the inhabitants who had long been peaceful allies of the colony. In 1782, during the Revolutionary War, American militiamen targeted an Indigenous mission community afliated with the Moravian Church. They brutally killed 96 Native Americans and burned their bodies in their church. As in the Early American Northeast, Native Americans staged efective and often bloody attacks against Anglo American settlements during this period. In the Ohio Country, an alliance of Native Americans won two substantial battles against American forces in 1790 and 1791, but they were defeated by the Americans at the Battle of Fallen Timber in 1794. The War of 1812 again involved various Indigenous peoples east of the Mississippi River, and Native American non-combatants also found themselves targets during this confict. Moreover, renewed confict between U.S. forces and Native Americans occurred again during the First Seminole War (1817–1818) in Florida and Black Hawk’s War in Illinois and Wisconsin in the spring and summer of 1832.2 Violence erupted again in the 1830s, when the U.S. government administered and supported the mass expulsion and dispossession of numerous Indigenous nations who lived on reservations and tribal homelands east of the Mississippi River. Many Indigenous communities in the region were prosperous and had no incentive to move to undeveloped and unfamiliar lands out west. These lands were away from the burial sites of their ancestors and were claimed by other Native American tribes. Native Americans also understood the potential danger of “Indian removal.” The forced relocation and dispossession cost the lives of thousands of Native Americans who died as a result of disease, malnutrition,

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exposure to the elements, and violence. The Jackson administration and their allies throughout several states pushed ahead with forced removal, despite resistance, and at a tremendous expense to the U.S. tax payers. The U.S. military and state militia were often the enforcers of expulsion using violence and threats of violence as a means to remove communities.3 A signifcant portion of the Seminoles in Florida resisted militarily against the U.S. eforts at forcefully removing them. The difcult terrain of their homelands was expertly exploited by the Seminoles. Ambush warfare dominated their defensive struggle, and they were supplied with weapons from the Spanish via Cuba. In their eforts to defeat the Seminoles and their allies, the United States deployed 30,000 militiamen and 10,000 regulars over the course of the confict, an incredibly large army at the time. U.S. forces sufered high casualties, infections, disease, and battle wounds. But they also destroyed dozens of Seminole settlements and their means of subsistence. U.S. invaders killed thousands of cattle as well as hundreds of ponies and horses. Those Seminoles and their allies lucky enough to survive the war without being killed or captured faced dire circumstances in their homelands ravaged by war. In sum, the confict cost the lives of four to fve thousand American soldiers, while the United States killed and captured approximately 2,400 Seminoles. Thus, by the time the confict had ceased, one out of fve Seminoles had been killed, and 25% of the population had been captured and forcefully removed west by U.S. forces.4 Colonization and violent warfare were also part of Anglo American colonization west of the Mississippi River. U.S.-Indigenous conficts there were also accompanied by massacres, violence against non-combatants, and scalping of civilians boosted by bounties. US forces and settlers destroyed Indigenous means of subsistence, by exterminating, for instance, bufalo and wild horses, on which the Native Americans of the Great Plains had come to depend to sustain their lifeways. Such strategies became part of a tactic to undermine Native American resistance, sovereignty, and independence. Alongside brutal warfare, these approaches aided in the U.S. colonization of North America.5 Moreover, the use of military power as a tool of colonization went global by the late nineteenth century. U.S. forces in the Philippines, the Spanish Caribbean, and other parts of the world used violent interventions in their eforts to create colonies or to extend the American sphere of infuence. These endeavors became the frst steps by the United States in its pursuit of global empire. Through the twentieth and into the twenty-frst century, military interventions were and continue to be part of the U.S. foreign policy.6

Narratives of Disappearance, Indigenous Presence, and Memory of War in New England Even though popular perception often assumes that Native Americans disappeared in New England, the conclusion of the “Indian wars” did not mean an end

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of an Indigenous presence in the region. Native Americans continued to make their homes in the Northeast after King Philip’s War or the Anglo-Wabanaki wars, despite often challenging circumstances. The memory of wars and colonization, at least in part, shaped New English mainstream society’s narratives of Native American disappearance but also plays a part in the story of Indigenous survival. Thus, Native Americans continued to have a presence in New England after the conclusion of Anglo-Indigenous wars in the second half of the eighteenth century. Slavery and indentured servitude were part of the life of many Indigenous New Englanders in this period. Many individuals were enslaved, indentured, or had family members who worked as bonded laborers well into the nineteenth century. Just as during the wars in the Early American Northeast, Native American men from New England continued to play an active role in military service during many wars from the late eighteenth into the twenty-frst century. Indigenous New Englanders also worked in factories, whaling, agriculture, construction, logging, river driving, tourism trades, canoe making, and as domestic labor. Moreover, Indigenous people worked as folk healers, performers, and “peddlers” who sold brooms, baskets, and other goods.7 Despite the Indigenous presence, mainstream New English society increasingly embraced a myth that Native Americans had “vanished” or “disappeared.” This was, for instance, the reason why the designer of the Massachusetts state fag in the late nineteenth century, discussed in the introduction, chose the face of an Indigenous model from the western United States and not from New England. Dominant New English society either forgot about the existence of Indigenous communities, imagined that they had “disappeared,” or believed that through intermarriage with African American and white outsiders Native Americans in the region had ceased to be “Indians.” Moreover, as Jean O’Brien demonstrates, writers of local histories in New England in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries deliberately wrote, “Native Americans out of existence.” These archetypal accounts infuenced how people in New England and beyond perceived the region’s history and reinforced the belief in the “disappearance” of Indigenous people. Instead, Indigenous people were “hiding in plain sight” of those in New English society who refused to see them. Yet, and despite the narratives of disappearance in dominant society as well as more than 400 years of New English colonization—shaped by epidemics, genocide, slavery, dispossession, poverty, and racism—Native Americans continued to make their homes all over the northeastern United States.8 As mainstream New Englanders believed that Native Americans had disappeared, so did their recollections of the wars that had shaped the region’s history. In popular histories throughout the centuries, Native Americans emerged as little more than caricatures of Anglo American propaganda. They played the roles of “brutal savages,” allies of the devil, or “pawns of the French,” who sought to kill, scalp, and abduct innocent New English settlers. The New English, on the other

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hand, were merely the victims of irrational Indigenous violence.9 Of course, such narratives, as this book demonstrates, are not based on any historical realities. In addition, the myth of the “vanishing Indian” helped to shape public policy in New England states toward Indigenous peoples. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the region’s Indigenous population experienced a steady decline. This demographic development resulted in the increasing abandonment of Indigenous hamlets and smaller settlements all over New England. A growing number of Indigenous peoples in southern New England, for instance, moved to bigger cities like Providence in Rhode Island or to Boston, MA, as well as to the larger remaining reserves. Moreover, given that many Indigenous men in southern New England served in the military, worked as whalers, and in many other dangerous industries, the mortality rate of males was higher than that of females. The shortage of men, led a growing number of Indigenous women to look for life partners outside their communities. Many women found partners among African American and white men. While many of these couples continued to live and raise their children on reserves and in Indigenous communities, where their children maintained an Indigenous identity, the political elites of New England were critical of such developments. They argued, based on nineteenth-century racist assumptions about “blood quantity,” that, as a result of their intermixing with other groups, Native American communities had ceased to be “Indians.” As a result, between 1860 and 1880, southern New England states moved to terminate most Native American reserves. Indigenous people unsuccessfully resisted these policies, which meant the loss of tribal status among nations like the Narragansett people, the Mohegan tribe, and several others.10 The loss of “legal” tribal status did not mean that Indigenous people disappeared. Several of New England’s larger Indigenous nations attempted to stay on their former reserves to the best of their abilities and continued to make them their homelands. There, Indigenous people worked hard to maintain their communities, institutions, cultures, and traditions as best as they could.11 New England’s Indigenous peoples also remained visible to mainstream American society in other ways. In 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the Penobscot were part of the exhibition. Penobscot athletes like the baseball player Louis Francis Sockalexis in the late 1890s and early 1900s, or the Narragansett marathon runner Ellison Brown, who won the Boston marathon twice and competed in the Olympics in the 1930s, were also in the national limelight. In 1928, the Indigenous communities at Mashpee on Cape Cod, at Gay Head (Aquinnah) on Martha’s Vineyard, and at Herring Pond in southeastern Massachusetts formed the Wampanoag confederation. The Wampanoag also organized their frst modern powwow at Mashpee at that time. The event included speeches, ceremonials, dances, sport events, as well as a large commemoration of Metacom’s death. In their cultural persistence, the modern Wampanoag clearly remembered the destructive impact that King Philip’s War had on their

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communities. They underscored the importance of remembering such events and atrocities.12 In the post-World War II years, the Native American fght for Indigenous rights continued in the Northeast. Communities throughout New England struggled to revitalize their economies and cultures. Moreover, Native Americans fought and continue to fght for state and federal recognition. This time-, labor-, and cost-intensive process has been successful for several Native communities all over New England, who gained recognition from the 1970s on. Yet, for others, the goal of federal and state recognition remains elusive. Their communities’ applications have been rejected, or the process itself is too daunting and costly to pursue. The memory of war, colonization, and violence in the Northeast also serves as a source of Indigenous activism and a rallying cry in the struggle for Native American sovereignty and the recognition of the past. In Massachusetts, Indigenous activists and allies regularly protested the colonial and violent legacies embodied in the state’s seal. Indigenous activism seems to pay of, as the seal looks to be changed in the future. In the past, Indigenous activists and allies also fought against a law that prohibited Native Americans from entering Boston, a remnant of King Philip’s War in the 1670s. This law was fnally overturned in 2005. Moreover, since 1970, the United American Indians of New England have staged a yearly commemoration on Thanksgiving Day in Plymouth, Massachusetts. They call the event the Day of Mourning. After years of protest, the town of Plymouth fnally agreed to install a plaque on Cole’s Hill, which overlooks Plymouth Rock. The text of the plaque, created by the United American Indians of New England, provides an important reminder to the public. It prompts us to remember “the genocide of millions” of Native Americans, “the theft of their lands, and the relentless assault on their culture.” This inscription reminds us of the continuing legacies of the history of war and colonization in the Northeast and the United States.13

Notes 1 Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019). 2 For more detail on war and genocide during this period, see Jefrey Ostler, Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019); Robert M. Owens, “Indian Wars” and the Struggle for Eastern North America, 1763–1842 (New York: Routledge, 2021). 3 On the forced relocation of Native Americans in the 1830s, see especially Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (New York: Norton, 2020). 4 Saunt, chapt. 11. 5 Carrol P. Kakel III, A Post-Exceptionalist Perspective on Early American History: American Wests, Global Wests, and Indian Wars (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Pivot, 2019),

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6 7

8

9 10 11 12 13

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chapter 4; Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017). John Grenier, The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 221–225; Kakel, 69–73. Daniel R. Mandell, Tribe, Race, History: Native Americans in southern New England, 1780–1880 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), chapter 1. Christoph Strobel, Native Americans of New England (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2020), 125–133. Thomas Doughton, “Unseen Neighbors: Native Americans of Central Massachusetts, a People Who had ‘Vanished’,” in After King Philp’s War: Presence and Persistence in Indian New England, ed. Colin Calloway (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997), 207–230; Jean O’Brien, Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), XII–XIII; Christoph Strobel, “Hiding in Plain Sight: Legacies of Colonization in New England and the 400th Anniversary of the Mayfower,” American Studies Blog, November 18, 2020. http://blog.asjournal.org/draft-hiding-in-plain-sight-legacies-of-colonization-innew-england-and-the-400th-anniversary-of-the/. Accessed on April 4, 2022. For the most infuential archetype of the white American settler narrative, see the works of Francis Parkman. See, for example, Francis Parkman, France  & England in North America, 2 vols. (New York: The Library of North America, 1983). Mandell, Tribe, Race, History, chapters 4 and 6; Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 137–140, 142–144. Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 144–151. Strobel, Native Americans of New England, 144–151. On 1928 Wampanoag powwow, see also Peter Iverson, “We Are Still Here:” American Indians in the Twentieth Century (Wheeling, IL: Harland Davidson, 1998), 63. Strobel, Native Americans of New England, chapter 6.

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INDEX

Abenaki 16 Agrarian states 21 Agriculture 23–27 Albany 104 Amherst, Jefrey 32–33 Amoskeag 22 Andros, Edmund 75, 94, 96, 100–101 Anglo Powhatan Wars 52–53 Annapolis Royal 105, 109, 115. See also Port Royal Bacon’s Rebellion 52 Beaver Wars 54 Beheadings 2, 34 Belknap, Benjamin 93 Biological Imperialism 67 Block Island 51, 61 blood quantity 128 Bloody Brook 74 Bodily decorations 28 Boston 51, 55, 74, 101, 103, 105, 113, 117, 128, 129 Bow and arrow technology 19, 26, 28, 31 Braddock, Edward 118 Bradford, William 55, 61, 62 Brookfeld 73 Canary Islands 38 Canoes 29–30 Captivity 85, 106–107 Cargill, James 117

Cartier, Jacques 44 Casco (today Falmouth ME) 92, 101, 102, 104 Champlain, de, Samuel 45, 95 Chesapeake Bay 52 Church, Benjamin 53, 70, 92, 93, 101, 110 Colonization: international law 39; limits of European power 39; notion of cultural superiority 20, 24, 38, 78; sugar production 37–38; resource extraction 40 Columbian Exchange 67 Compagnies franches 90, 106. See also French regulars Concord 74 Conestoga 125 Connecticut River Valley 60, 61, 65, 73–74, 76, 77, 108 Contoocook River 107 Dawnland, defnition 16 Day of Mourning 129 Deerfeld 73–74, 108 Deer Island 74, 76 Denonville, de, Marquis 96–97, 100 Disease 3, 10, 15, 18, 20, 37, 42–43, 44, 49, 50, 54, 59, 66, 74, 97, 105, 115, 117, 119, 125, 126 Dominion of New England 94 Dudley, Joseph 109–110

142

Index

Dummer’s War 111–114. See also Fourth Anglo-Wabanaki War; Father Rale’s War Duston, Hannah 106–107 Dutch 38, 40, 51, 57, 60 Eastern Woodlands, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 33, 34, 25, 38, 44 Endicott, John 61 “Evil savage” stereotype 18. See also “ignoble savage” ch1 Famine 4, 9, 70 Federal recognition 129 Fences 67 Fire: use in warfare 25, 71, 75, 98, 108 First Anglo-Wabanaki War 77–78 Fishing: Indigenous subsistence 26–27 Forced relocation 125–126. See also “Indian removal” Fort Duquesne 118, 120 Fort Frontenac 96, 97, 120 Fort Niagara 97, 120 French Haudenosaunee War 95–99. See also King William’s War Frontenac, de, Comte 95–96, 97, 98 Gathering 26, 118–119 Genocide 4–5, 110, 127, 129 Glooscap 15–16 “Glorious Revolution” 87, 94 Gomez, Estevao 42 Great Lakes 33, 56, 96, 117, 118 “Great Migration” 66 Great Swamp massacre 75 “Grey Lock’s War” 112 Grotius, Hugo 39, 88 Guanches 38 Habsburg 107, 114–115 Hatfeld 73, 107 Haudenosaunee 55–58, 95–99. See also Iroquois Haverhill 106, 108–109 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 106, 114 Hilton, Winthrop 110 Hobbes, Thomas 17–18, 87 Hopewell Swamp 73–74 Hubbard, William 69 Hudson River Valley 57, 98 Human trophy taking 34–35 Hunting 27–29

Indigenous prisoners of war 36, 62–63, 93, 98, 103 Inter-Indigenous confict 53–58 intermixing 128 Ipswich 55 Ireland 52 James II, King 87 Jamestown 52–53 Jesuit missionaries 55, 89, 112 Kancamagus 102 King George’s War 114–116. See also War of Austrian Succession King Philip’s War 68–79 King William’s War 93–107. See also Second Anglo-Wabanaki War; Nine Years War; War of the League of Augsburg; War of the Grand Alliance Lachine 97 Lake Erie 97 Lake Ontario 96, 97, 98 Lancaster, MA 75 La Prairie 105–106 Law and colonial courts 68 Livestock 67–68, 100 Locke, John 87, 88 Long distance exchange networks 40–41, 53, 60 Long Island 44, 64, 65 Louis XIV 87, 96, 98, 107 Louisbourg 115–116, 120 “Lovewell’s Fight” 113–114 Maliseet 16 Manissean tribe 61 March, John 102, 109 Martha’s Vineyard 16, 42. See also Noepe Mather, Cotton 33, 78, 93, 106 Mayfower 2, 10, 58–59 Merrimack River 57, 74, 107 Metacom 2, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77. See also King Philip Miantonomi 64–65 Middleborough 73 Mi’kmaq 16, 65, 77, 120 Mission towns 67 Mississippi River 21, 56, 96 Mohawk 35, 45, 55, 57, 58, 62, 75, 95, 97, 98

Index

Mohegan 30, 51, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 75, 76, 102, 128 Montreal 97, 98, 104, 105, 106, 120 Moshup 16 Mount Hope 71, 72 Mount Wachusett 75 Mourning War 35, 56, 95 Mystic massacre 61 Narragansett nation 30, 51, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 72–75, 76, 128 Nashoba 74 Natick 74 Niantic 64, 65, 76 Ninigret 64, 65 Nipmuc 73 “Noble savage” stereotype 17–28 Nokehick 24 Norridgewock 112, 113 Ohio River 24, 33, 96, 117, 118 Oneida 98 Onondaga 98 Ousamequin 59, 66, 71. See also Massasoit Oyster Bay (Durham, NH) 106 Parkman, Francis 6, 88, 93 Passamaquoddy 16, 24 Patuxet 15, 23, 43, 59 Pawtucket Falls 22 Paxton Boys 125 Pemaquid (today Bristol, ME) 102, 103 Penhallow, Samuel 93, 120 Pennacook 57, 74, 78, 102 Penobscot 16, 100, 102, 103, 109, 111, 116–117, 128 Pentagouet (today Castin, ME) 100 Pequot War 10, 61–63 Peskeompskut massacre 76–77 Petite guerre, defnition 7 Phips, William 105 Poacasset 72 Pocumtuc 57, 73 Pokanoket 72 Pontiac’s War 33 “Praying towns” 67, 74 Prisoners of war 36, 45, 62–63, 78, 93, 98, 103 Providence 24, 75, 76, 128 Provincial soldiers 91, 94, 99, 103, 108, 110, 112 Puritans 2, 62, 78

143

Quebec 44, 45, 105, 109, 115, 120 Queen Anne’s War 107–111. See also Third Anglo-Wabanaki War and War of Spanish Succession Quinnipiac 57 Rale, Sebastian 112, 113 Ranging warfare 52–53, 84, 93, 99, 110, 113, 114, 116, 120, 134 Refugee diaspora 4, 85 Revolutionary War 125 Richelieu River 106 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 17, 87 Salem 51 Salmon Falls (today Berwick, ME) 104 Saratoga 115 Sassacus 60, 61–62 Sassamon, John 72 Saybrook 61 Scalping 21, 34–35, 102, 110, 125, 126 Scalp bounties 5, 93, 110, 124 Schagticoke 75 Schenectady 104, 108 Second Anglo-Wabanaki War 94–99 Seminole Wars 125 Seneca 96–97, 100 Seven Years War 116–120. See also French and Indian War Slavery, 3, 9, 10, 18, 42, 46, 63, 69, 76, 78, 79, 127 Smith, James 33 Smith, John 53 Snowshoes 8, 84, 85 Sockalexis, Louis Francis 128 Sokoki 57, 77 Spain 39, 42, 51, 84, 107 Spencer Phips Proclamation 117 Standish, Miles 2, 58, 59 State recognition 129 St Castin, Baron de 100, 110 St Francis 89, 93, 120 St Lawrence River 44, 89, 96, 118 Stone, John 60, 61 St Xavier 89 Sunksquaw 2 Taunton 2, 71, 77 Termination 128 Thoreau, Henry David 106, 114 Treaty of Aachen (1748) 116

144

Index

Treaty of Casco Bay (1678) 100 Treaty of Ryswick (1697) 107 Uncas 64, 65 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 5 United Colonies 5, 65, 73, 74 Vattel, de, Emerich 39, 88 Verrazono, Giovanni 41–42 Vikings 37, 41 Virginia 46, 52, 79, 118

Waldron, Richard 102 Wamesit 74 Wampanoag 2, 16, 59, 71–72, 74, 76, 77, 128 Washington, George 118 Wells 106 Wetamoo 2, 77 Whittier, John Greenleaf 106 William and Mary 87 Williams, Roger 24, 29, 30, 64 Wôbanakik 16, 99 Wood, William 25, 28, 32, 34, 55, 57