King Philip's War : The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

by Eric B. Schultz (Author), Michael J. Tougias (Author), Michael Tougias (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Now largely forgotten, the massacres of 1675 to 1676, known as King Philip's War, ended the harmonious relations that had existed between native Americans and the colonists since their arrival at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Tensions had been rising as the number of settlers grew, and the pillaging of an outlying farm by affronted young braves escalated into open hostilities. Pitched battles were fought from Rhode Island to Maine. Hundreds of English died as farmers fled and cowered behind stockades or in the few port towns. Thousands of natives were slaughtered and the rest dispersed or sold into slavery in the West Indies. The savagery resulted in the clearing of the native populations from southern New England and the unopposed expansion of the New England colonies. It also became the brutal model on which the United States came to deal with its native peoples. King Philip's War tells the story with such close attention to detail that each ambush, each burned-out farm, becomes a vivid image. The authors make abundant use of maps and photographs of old sites to enable the reader to follow the course of the war: the book forms an exhaustive guide for the armchair historian or anyone wishing to visit the monuments and battlefields today. The terror and bitterness of the period live again in the book's illustrations of old woodcuts and lithographs and in quotations from contemporary narratives. That King Philip, whose head was paraded around the streets of Plymouth in a barbarous show of triumph, was the son of the Wampanoag chief who celebrated the first Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims in 1621 adds to the irony and tragedy of the events, whose memory this well-researched book deservedly keeps alive. --John Stevenson

From Library Journal
This work about the brutal 18th-century war between Indian tribes (led by a daring and skilled chief known as King Philip) is divided into three quite different parts. The first part provides a relatively concise chronological retelling of the war. The second part, organized geographically and the heart of the volume, takes readers through New England to various sites associated with the conflict. Frequent references to present-day localities make it possible to use these pages as a sort of historical guidebook. The third part offers three contemporary narratives reflecting the significance of the war on the people of the era. Useful maps assist the reader throughout. Although King Philip's War is little known today, the conflict has not been as ignored as the authors claim hereAwitness, for example, Jill Lepore's acclaimed The Name of War (LJ 3/1/98). However, this book does much to reestablish the conflict's importance for popular historical study of the area, making it especially useful for public libraries.ACharles K. Piehl, Mankato State Univ., MN
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Countryman Press; 1st edition (September 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881504343
• ISBN-13: 978-0881504347
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #525,882 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Detailed Portrayal of Early America, January 11, 2001

By	L. Sabin (Hudson Valley NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I had high hopes for this book, and some were fulfilled.

It has some very interesting historical background of King Philip's War and good first hand accounts.

The detailed descriptions of the locales, however, were very long, sometimes overly so. And as someone who is not from New England, these passages grew tedious at times, and even nit-picky about some war-related minutiae.

However, the subject matter in general was interesting to me, and the writing was done well.

The book is really more designed for the professional archaeologist/historian than the casual history reader. But it does have a wealth of information on obscure 17th century New England. If you think you can slog through the denser parts, then I would recommend this book for those interested in American colonial history.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Resource, September 24, 2003

By	John J. Xenakis, author of Generational Dynamics (Framingham, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict (Paperback)

I found this book to be an excellent resource because it goes beyond providing battle details to providing the historical context of the war.

Few people have even heard of this war, and yet the causes of our Revolutionary War can be traced directly back to the outcome of King Philip's war, making this war very important to American history.

This war played a pivotal role in American history, though few people know about it.

When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, they immediately developed a friendly relationship with the Wampanoag Indians, who traded skins and furs for European manufactured goods.

Problems arose in the 1660s. There was a generational change, signaled by the death of the chief of the Wampanoag, who was replaced by his son, nicknamed King Philip by the colonists. And there was a financial crisis, caused by changes in style among European women, who no longer wanted to purchase skins and furs. One thing led to another, and an extremely violent and brutal war broke out in 1675.

The outcome of this war was that the colonists, who formerly were completely independent of the English Crown, now had to pay taxes to the Crown in return for the Crown's protection against future Indian attacks. The colonists accepted this arrangement because they thought they had to to survive, but by the 1760s they were no longer interested, leading to the Revolutionary War.

This book provides many of the context details that help the reader understand the importance of this war to the entire panorama of American history.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great History, Great Travelogue, February 5, 2001

By A Customer

I read the book. Then I read Mr. O'Keefe from Denver's review. The only thing I can think is that Mr. O'Keefe's edition was missing the first 80 pages. Those pages contain the best, most concise and "logical" history of the war available. After that the book becomes a travelogue (Mr. O'Keefe: a "collage") structured geographically that the Boston Globe raved about. All of the "detail" Mr. O'Keefe complained about allowed me to visit a half dozen of the sites that I would never have been able to find otherwise. If you want an unstructured collage beyond most amateur historians, read Lepore's book. If you want to understand King Philip's War, I would recommend this book (Schultz/Tougias) highly.