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• 1 media/Death_of_Father_Sebastian_Rale_of_the_Society_of_Jesus.jpg media/Plymouth 1679.jpg 2016-06-27T13:29:55+00:00 Settler Colonialism 120 image_header 2023-07-25T21:32:22+00:00

  This week's big question

  Why did a major war break out between settlers and Indigenous peoples of colonial New England?

  Video introduction
  
  

  NOTE: In an earlier version of the course, students read Daniel Mandell's interpretation of King Philip's War in a book subtitled Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty (2010). Since making this video a few years ago, we have updated the lesson by replacing Mandell's interpretation with a newer one by Lisa Brooks. With the exception of this change, all parts of the video introduction still apply.

  
  Learning outcomes

  At the end of this week you should:
  • understand some of the basic dimensions of political and social development in colonial North America;
  • know the fundamental contested issues between Indigenous peoples and British settlers in colonial New England;
  • know something of the bases for King Philip’s War and its major outcomes;
  • be able to explain how different forces – notably, religious, military, and economic power – affected the development of colonial North America.

  Questions to consider, and learning activity

  King Phillip's war was one of the worst wars in American history, with heavy losses on both sides. Its particular story is important. But it also helps us to think about the general issue of on-going relations between the Indigenous peoples of America and the increasingly large number of Europeans who were settling in, and thus occupying, what had been Indigenous lands.
  Here are some particular issues and questions that help you break down the big question into smaller parts:
  • Discuss the colonists view of Indigenous peoples. How did they explain war with Indigenous people? Where did they find legitimacy for their views?
  • What does the 1676 map tell us about these colonial societies? There's also a modern map on page 63 of the Mandell text.  Compare the 1676 map with the modern map. What's different?
  • Rowlandson's book was exceptionally popular in its day, and has been republished many times since. You only have a small excerpt, but why do you think it was so important?
  • What changed in 1675? What factors pushed people to take up arms in defence of their views?
  • Read the Wikipedia excerpt on King Philip's War after you've listened to the Lisa Brooks podcast. Look for differences in the ways she tells the story, who she emphassies, and what assumptions she brings to the table. 
  • Villebon's account is later (1690) and further north (in what is today New Brunswick). But it's all related. Can you see how? [The map of the Wabanaki Confederacy can help.]

  Background

  In 1675 a major war broke out in southern New England between English colonists in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and two Indigenous nations, the Wampanoag and Narragansett. King Philip’s War, named for a leader of the Wampanoag people, was the biggest war in colonial history. At a time when the population of the entire region was around 80,000 people almost 9,000 died, two thirds of them Indigenous. This was a period of transition in the North American colonies. Virginia and Massachusetts, in particular, had grown significantly in the past 60 years but were not yet the mature colonies that would rebel one hundred years later; the Wampanoag had lost their dominant place in the region, but were not yet a politically or militarily marginalized people. The colonies were experiencing powerful internal tensions and external pressures. Internally, growth had brought about wealth and expansion. That same growth was adding pressure to surrounding indigenous peoples, many of whom determined to push back more forcefully. The result was one of the bloodiest wars ever fought.
  Not all of New England’s Indigenous peoples rebelled. Many had converted to Christianity and a few of these “praying Indians” joined the attack (although in several instances that distinction was lost on colonial militias who often killed “Indians” on sight); others had long-standing poor relations with the Wampanoag and saw no reason to change that relationship. Indeed, in the later stages of the war, many Indigenous men fought with the colonists. Though the war was undoubtedly a war between colonisers and colonised, the lines were often blurred.
  
  The causes of King Philip's war continue to be debated. Early accounts portrayed the war as civilised Christians in a struggle against primitive pagans. Though sometimes showing some sympathy for the Wampanoag, the main thrust of the story usually portrayed the settlers as defending themselves from hostile "warlike" peoples. Most of the story, too, centres on the Wampanoag leader Metacom (KIng Philip), typically portraying him as having turned his back on the peaceful relationship his father had struck with the settlers, and thus having betrayed an informal treaty. Others focus on the murder of Sassamon, a Wampanoag man who had converted to Christianity, and thus portraying the story as a savage response to Christianity overtaking their culture. More recent studies have offered a more contextual explanation focusing less on the immediate events that resulted in the outbreak of war and more on the longer-term deterioration of relations. The New Englanders, their populations expanding through high birth-rates and continued immigration, had pushed much more deeply and aggressively into Indigenous territory. 
  
  What marks almost all these accounts, whether sympathetic to the settler or Indigenous perspectives, is that they assume Metacom was the leader of the Wampanoag, and it was his leadership defining the war. That he played a major part, no one disputes. But one recent book by historian Lisa Brooks has uncovered new research that casts wholly new light not only on another leader, but also on a leader who was female. Weetamoo was Metacom's aunt, but more importantly she was a respected leader among a broad group of kin-related Wampanoag peoples. Brooks's examination is grounded in rigorously detailed archival research, and urges us not only to reexamine our assumptions of settlers versus Indigenous cultures, but also to question our assumptions about leadership when the documents so often focus on men. As we've seen in a number of cases already, it's very difficult to see the history of preliterate peoples. Brooks offers us a first glimpse of what it might mean to more effectively assume an Indigenous perspective on settler-colonial stories - a perspective where settler assumptions might actually block us from seeing what really happened. 
  
  Most of King Philip’s War was fought within 50 miles of , but it also spilled over onto northern and western frontiers. This brought in other Indigenous peoples, most of whom were allied with the French in Canada and Acadia. New France has a smaller population than the British colonies, but dominated trade (and therefore military alliances) with many Indigenous peoples in what is now the US northeast and mid-west (Maine, Vermont, western New York, Michigan, and Ohio). Though not direct players in the early phases of King Philip’s War, the field of battle moved into northern New England in 1677 and 1678, and it began to draw in French allies such as the Abenaki and Mi’kmaq (in what is today Nova Scotia and northern New England). The result was a decades-long frontier battle between French and English colonists and Iroquoian and Algonquian nations. Those continued tension - often small-scale wars - was very much part of the build up to the Seven Years War.
  
  The endless cycle of attack and counterattack is evident in some of our French readings this week. French colonization strategies were quite different than the English. Where the English brought in many settlers to “plant” colonies in the New World, the French strategy was based on trade much more than settlement. Thus, while the English strategy invariably put pressure on Indigenous communities, this was much less so the case with the French.  One major result of these different strategies was that by the late 1600s the English greatly outnumbered the French. Nevertheless, both groups pushed against the frontier, and both were compelled to negotiate, or resist, the complex politics of Indigenous peoples in the interior. The general result was one of tension between the colonies of the two major European powers and among and between their Indigenous allies in America.  While our readings focus on only one region in the late 17th century, those differences and their resulting conflicts, nevertheless, mirror much of the larger story of North American colonization. The defeat of the Wampanoag and their allies would come at a high cost for New England, both in terms of lives lost and the impact on their society and politics. It improved the colonists' security, establishing a base for the colonies' expansion through the 18th century (which we will examine in the next term). It would also, however, bring them into greater conflict with most northern and western Indigenous peoples such as the Abenaki and Mi'kmaq, and eventually with the Iroquois (Haudensaunee) - the dominant Indigenous nation of central North America. In northern New England, the Wabanaki Confederacy - an alliance of Mi'kmaq, Abenaki, Penobscot, and Maliseet peoples, with occasional French support - fought four wars with the Anglo-American settlers of what is now northern Maine and the southern Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Over the next seventy years a series of smaller wars would be fought along the northern and western frontiers of New England. Of course, the Indigenous peoples of these regions didn't see this territory as English, but as their own. Further to the north, in the French colonies of Canada and Acadia, French colonial forces allied with these Indigenous peoples both for trading purposes and to weaken English efforts to push further inland. These protracted conflicts would culminate in an even larger war, the Seven Years War (1756-83), which would fundamentally reshape colonial and Indigenous North America.
  
  In the historical memory of New England, the war shaped how generations of settlers would understand "the savages" who surrounded them. If some would convert to Christianity and show signs of accommodating to the colonists' ways, others seemed all the more intent to resist and the drive the invaders back into the sea upon which they arrived.  There were several Anglo-Indigenous wars in the 17th and 18th centuries, though none were bigger, and none loomed larger in subsequent generations for what it taught them about Indigenous peoples. In the colonists' histories, Indigenous people were savages that needed to be contained, or crushed. Few stories caught this spirit more powerfully than the captivity narrative of Mary Rowlandson. Her story, published as a book shortly after the war and republished several times since, illustrated exactly what New England settlers thought about their Indian foes, and about themselves. The Indigenous captors were cruel and primitive; they ate barbarous foods; they engaged in horrendous practices. Mary Rowlandson, on the other hand, was a model of Christian womanhood: an innocent who lost her husband and child in an attack, suffering at the hands of cruel Indians, but kept strong by her Christian faith and noble demeanour. The story, as we'll see, also shows indications of Indigenous kindness, and New England barbarism, but the main elements of the story highlight a just fight against a cruel opponent. The narrative never considers the plight of the Wampanoag, that their people were dying of Europeans diseases, that their land was being taken away, and that New England officials continued to push back after every concession.  For generations afterward, this message for the colonists remained powerful, a clear story of the justice of their actions.
  
  We can see it very differently today, but we should also strive to understand that worldview - to understand what allowed people to believe so firmly in the correctness of their ways. But the war surely does contain in miniature a view of the larger state of settler-Indigenous stories. Not all were so violent, not all so clearly captured the naked ambition of New England colonization, not all were so powerfully and effectively narrated. But no story illuminates more effectively the broader pattern of warfare in securing European holds on the so-called New World.

  Toolbox

  This week you will practice analyzing the causes of a major set of conflicts. The details will matter here, but the general objective of thinking about causes and consequences in research applies to almost every historical question. Spend a few minutes reading about the general principles of thinking about this aspect of historical thinking by clicking here. The linked page from The Historical Thinking Project is not long, but it is helpful.
  

  Secondary sources

  Lisa Brooks, "A New History of King Philip's War", episode 191 of Ben Franklin's World podcast. (2018).
  
  King Philip's War, Wikipedia.
  
  You may wish to peruse Lisa Brooks's book, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2018).

  Primary sources

  Read at least three or four of these primary documents. Note the final text is from French territory in what is now northern New England, but it offers a reminder that the war didn't simply end in 1678 and that in many ways it continued further north. 
  
  Pay attention to when each document was written! They can all tell us things about how to understand King Philip's War, but from different contexts. 
  • Increase Mather, A Brief History of Warr with the Indians of New-England (1676), pp. 9-15. (Note: Read up until the last full paragraph in the middle of p. 15).
  • Boston trader Sarah Knight on her travels in Connecticut, 1704
  • John Easton, “A Relation of the Indian War” (1676).
  • Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings, and Removes of Mrs Mary Rowlandson (Boston, 1791 [orig. 1685], 14-18.
  • Report of Governor Joseph Robineau de Villebon, 1691-2 in John Clarence Webster, ed., Acadia at the End of the 17th Century: Letters, Journals, and Memoirs of Joseph Robineau de Viillebon, Commandant in Acadia, 1690-1700 (Saint John, NB, New Brunswick Museum, 1979 [1934]), 57–66 [account of an attack against an English settlement, 1694] and 89–94 [account of an English attack on Fort Nashwaak – near modern-day Fredericton New Brunswick in October 1696].

  If you're doing the Captivity Narratives assignment, you'll recognise Rowlandson as one of your two titles. You should also note that Robineau's report was written while he was organising an attack with the Malecite Indigenous peoples from Nashwaak (near modern-day Fredericton) on Pentagoet (just north of modern-day Portland Maine). John Gyles, the author of your other title, was being held captive by the Malecite at that time. It's part of how King Philip's War extended north and east into Canada and Acadia/Nova Scotia. That this is twenty years later is a good indication that in some ways the war had never ended.

   

• 1 media/Historical Thinking Logo.png 2017-02-04T12:15:37+00:00 NEW: Toolbox Overview 30 Updated: Jan. 2019 image_header 2019-01-23T15:00:34+00:00

  This page collects the Toolbox entries from the individual course lessons in one spot for easier review.

  From "Introductory Week"

  This course teaches you not only about the history of certain times and places, but also about the practice of history. To practice a trade, you need tools. Under this heading we will provide you with tools or exercises that will help you improve your reading, writing, inquiring and thinking in this course -- and we hope also in your life beyond the course.
  
  This week (the Introductory Week) we will get you to acquire an overview of the principles of thinking historically. Historical thinking is a variation on critical thinking. To start learning about it, you should read the following introductions from The Historical Thinking Project (click on the links):

  • The general introduction to the 6 components of historical thinking;
  • The introductions to the concepts of perspective and evidence in historical thinking.

  One of the purposes of the Forum exercise this week is to get you to think about your perspective as an interpreter of evidence about and from the past.

  Module 1

  From "Rulers and Subjects (1)"

  Probably the most basic and important skill all historians practice is the analysis of primary source evidence. Therefore, if you've ever taken a history course in university before, you've probably already had some good practice with this skill.
  
  This week you should think some more about use of sources and about the overall goal of a history education when you watch the following web video. Click here to start the video in a new window.
  
  The webcast is by Sam Wineburg, an excellent educational psychologist in the United States. Wineburg is the author of a book with the intriguing title Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts. In order to move beyond naive readings of source materials, Wineburg and many other educators recommend that you pay careful attention to the following additional skills when reading primary sources:

  • close reading,
  • contextualization,
  • corroboration, and
  • sourcing.

  The webcast introduces these skills and explains their relevance to the process of historical interpretation. Watch the webcast before you post in the Forum this week, and make sure to take notes. When you read sources for this week's Lesson -- and for all remaining Lessons -- make sure that you pay attention to these dimensions of source analysis.

  Note that a student at the beginning of the webcast refers to AP History, which is an American "advanced placement" exam that many high school students take.

  From "Rulers and Subjects (2)"

  In last week’s Toolbox you learned about the skills of primary source analysis. The resources provided by the web tutorial “Why Historical Thinking Matters” broke down these skills into 4 main parts:
  • close reading,
  • contextualization,
  • corroboration, and
  • sourcing.

  In this week’s Toolbox, you will learn a little about a related skill that is important for primary source analysis, as well as most other aspects of historical research and thinking. That skill is chronological thinking.
  
  Historians usually think chronologically (usually in stories or narratives). In fact, organizing evidence chronologically is crucial for effective contextualization, corroboration, and sourcing. A current example of the importance of chronology is found is the controversy in the American election campaign about when presidential candidate Donald Trump started opposing the War in Iraq in the early 2000s. What happened when? This seems like a straightforward question, right? Answering it in some cases can become complicated and even politically charged. That’s why it’s good to pay attention to and become good at clear, basic chronological thinking.
  
  Most cases of historical chronology are not so controversial today, but they can be important nonetheless. For example, in this week’s Lesson we are comparing and practicing close reading of three sources from 1649. What order do you think the documents were written? The question matters, because writers in the English Civil War were responding to events and ideas that were changing quickly, and they were often responding to one another, sometimes in anger, and sometimes with charges that could lead to imprisonment or even death (Charles I!!!).
  
  Be aware that the answer to the “simple” question of what order these three sources was written is not so simple. You can look for dates in the documents. That can help, for sure. The problem is that each of these documents had complex histories. This means that each was written in stages.
  
  One main challenge for the Lesson is to find clues in the sources. The best clues will be passages in the sources. Dates in the text are potentially valuable, but they are not the only clues. Passages from the texts that discuss ideas or events that provide clues are also REALLY VALUABLE. Think like a detective. Ask questions about your evidence. When you do so, you are also thinking like a historian!

  From "Agricultural Revolutions"

  The main skill to practice this Lesson is the analysis of secondary sources. In effect, you'll be learning an important of source analysis that is related to historical thinking. We could call this "historiographical thinking". The section above provide you with more details about historiography.
  
  A historical thinking skill that is related closely to historiographical thinking is the recognition and analysis of perspective. Not only can we analyze differing perspectives in primary sources from the past, but we can also recognize how people's perspectives (including our own) are complex and varied "today". This is of course also true of the writings of historians who try to make sense of the past. In this course (and in all your other history courses -- or courses on other subjects) practice comparing perspectives in all the sources you examine.
  
  One further aspect of historical thinking that is worth reviewing for this Lesson is the skill of identifying continuity and change. After all, it is the issue of change that Kerridge and Overton discuss in their related but importantly different interpretations of British agricultural history. Note that continuities and changes can take place in the short, medium, or long term. In other words, our view of change depends on the perspective that we take. This is one of many examples of how the elements of historical thinking are interrelated with one another.
  
  Follow the links in the two paragraphs above to read more about perspective, and continuity and change.
  
  You can use the chart below as a rough guide to aspects of European and Atlantic World history. These chronological categories can help you think in general terms about continuity and change. Please be aware that the periods outlined on the chart are not "facts" but rather generally agreed upon headings for periods. In a way, they are short-hand for interpretations of lots and lots of sources.
  

  Module 2

  From "Tranfcribing (!) Early Modern Sources"

  • There was no Toolbox entry for this week.

  From "Europe's Empires Expand"

  Before you read this Lesson's sources, make sure you review the Toolbox entries from the three Lesson's of Module 1. In the First Module you practiced the effective analysis of primary and secondary sources, and you also learned about the importance of paying attention to the different perspectives historians take when they analyze sources. Don't forget what you've learned in these Lessons. Your goal should be to build on your skills throughout the course.
  
  In your Forum entries for this week's Lesson, you will continue to practice the analysis of primary sources. Pay particular attention to the perspectives in each document. In a way similar to historians having different interpretations of the same questions, so too did people in the past have different interpretations of their worlds. You can consider questions such as:

  • Who was the author and what economic or social or religious or political interests did that person have?
  • When did he or she create the source?
  • What is the source about and what did the author think about that subject?

  You can probably think of other general questions that will help you to think about the perspective in any source. These are questions that are related to the skills of "sourcing" that you learned about in Module 1. To find our more about the general kinds of questions you should always have in mind when you consider a source's perspective, see the two Historical Thinking worksheets available through the link. The particular questions to think about for this week (in the Lesson above) will also help. Together, these general and particular questions will guide you as you look for differences (and similarities) in the perspectives of each primary source.

  From "Early Modern Africa"

  Because our focus for this Lesson is what, if anything, we can learn about early modern Africa from European sources, it is appropriate that we revisit the historical thinking skills that we practiced last week: the analysis of primary source evidence, and the careful attention to people's perspectives in the past. Another reason for revisiting these skills is that the links from the Historical Thinking Project website are working again. Please pay special attention to those links. Note that the text below is largely the same as last week's. Review is always important, and these skills are crucial for you to master.
  
  In your Forum entries for this week's Lesson, you will continue to practice the analysis of primary sources. Pay particular attention to the perspectives in each document. Just as historians have different interpretations of the same questions, so too did people in the past have different interpretations of their worlds. You can consider questions such as:
  • Who was the author and what economic or social or religious or political interests did that person have?
  • When did he or she create the source?
  • What is the source about and what did the author think about that subject?

  You can probably think of other general questions that will help you to think about the perspective in any source. These are questions that are related to the skills of "sourcing" that you learned about in Module 1. To find our more about the general kinds of questions you should always have in mind when you consider a source's perspective, see the two Historical Thinking worksheets available through the link.

  From "The Slave Trade"

  In past weeks we have introduced you to several of the concepts of historical thinking, and in particular, you have focused on the skills of working with sources. In addition to these tools for historical thinking, you should also understand the challenges of thinking about the ethical dimensions of historical analysis. The authors of the introduction to ethical thinking in history highlight what they call a "difficult paradox": historians try to understand the past lives of people in terms that are fair to those people, but at the same time the accounts of the past that historians create do make moral judgements about past people's actions and beliefs.

  Read the short introduction to ethical dimensions of historical analysis. While you should not forget about "the depths to which humanity can sometimes fall" (as we acknowledge in our introduction above), your challenge for your writing and learning this week is to practice understanding slave owners and traders in their own terms. In other words, you have to try to avoid imposing today's values and beliefs on them, even though we cannot agree with what they did or believed.

  From "The Columbian Exchange"

  • There was no Toolbox entry for this week.

  Module 3

  From Workshop Introducing Voyant Tools

  • There was no Toolbox entry for this week.

  From "Indigenous Cultures," "Missionaries," and "Colonial Societies"

  • The Toolbox entries for these weeks required you to review previous Toolboxes from Modules 1 and 2.

  From "Settler Societies and Commercial Expansion"

  This week's Toolbox entry introduces you to an important skill related to thinking historically: drawing inferences. 
  
  Inferences are the best guesses that we can make, based on the available evidence. They are necessary, because we NEVER have complete and perfect knowledge of the past. In fact, most of our knowledge of the past is based on very fragmentary evidence. Like detectives, historians have to collect whatever evidence they can in the search for answers to questions that interest them, and once they collect the evidence they have to piece its meaning together like judges or storytellers.
  
  How do you make strong inferences as opposed to plain and flimsy guesses? You use the skills of source analysis that we learned about earlier in the course ("Rulers and Subjects [1]"): close reading, corroboration, sourcing, and contextualization.
  
  Before you post to the Forum this week, make sure you review these skills, and when you post you should try to practice making strong inferences. We're including them below for your convenience:

  Probably the most basic and important skill all historians practice is the analysis of primary source evidence. Therefore, if you've ever taken a history course in university before, you've probably already had some good practice with this skill.

  This week you should think some more about use of sources and about the overall goal of a history education when you watch the following web video.

  Click here to start the video in a new window.

  The webcast is by Sam Wineburg, an excellent educational psychologist in the United States. Wineburg is the author of a book with the intriguing title Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts. In order to move beyond naive readings of source materials, Wineburg and many other educators recommend that you pay careful attention to the following additional skills when reading primary sources:

  • close reading,
  • contextualization,
  • corroboration, and
  • sourcing.

  The webcast introduces these skills and explains their relevance to the process of historical interpretation. Watch the webcast before you post in the Forum this week, and make sure to take notes. When you read sources for this week's Lesson -- and for all remaining Lessons -- make sure that you pay attention to these dimensions of source analysis.

  Note that a student at the beginning of the webcast refers to AP History, which is an American "advanced placement" exam that many high school students take.

  From "The Seven Years War"

  Like last week, this week's Toolbox is about drawing inferences. The skills of inference drawing are really important, and each of you can improve your work in this area.