I read, in my 20s and 30s, two different account of King-Phillip’s War, both military histories. My two sentiments were:
-1. How come this was never taught in school, as it is more formative to the fabric of this nation than the Revolution a hundred years later, in which the fabric simply tore and folded over on itself.
-2. Was there really ever a chance that the Indians under Phillip could have won, any possibility at all?
These two questions vexed writers of the early 1800s, such as Hawthorne, Melville and Cooper who lived in the time of Tecumseh the great rebel of his era, a warrior after whom one of America’s greatest generals was named, that is William Tecumseh Sherman. The question of the half breed looms over these persons; the fact that Phillip was thought to be part European and Tecumseh was well-known to have passed for “a distressed white boy” in his youth and that he and his brother Chiksiska communicated in written English as well as any American statesman of the Virginian gentry.
These two questions nagged at me until I was driven to write Of the Sunset World, a 1,300 page novel, which became the Sunset Saga, a science-fiction project about an attempt to use intervention with Native Americans to change human history. That is how I got into the story of European Slavery in English North America. This fiction series, which I am one book from fishing as its historical offshoot has taken precedence, is now equaled in length to the fiction project that it spawned.
Sunset Saga
-1. Big Water Blood Song
-2. Ghosts of the Sunset World
-3. Beyond the Ember Star
-4. The World is Our Widow
-5. Comes the Six-Winter-Night
-6. Thunder-Boy
-7. Behind the Sunset Veil
-8. Den of the Ender
-9. God’s Picture Maker
-10. Out of Time [a prequel]
That is 10 volumes. The 11th one, WhiteSkyCanoe, I hope to finish this winter.
Plantation America, has changed forms and trajectory numerous times due to the massive amount of primary sources I have been directed to by readers. Here it stands:
-1. Stillbirth of a Nation
-2. America in Chains
-3. Into Wicked Company
-4. A Bright Shining Lie at Dusk
-5. So His Master May Have Him Again
-6. So Her Master May Have Her Again
-7. The Lies that Bind Us
-8. Crackerboy: Co-Authored with Lynn lockhart
-9. The Greatest Lie Ever Sold
-10. Sold [unpublished, a historical novel, available serialized on Patreon]
-11. Advent America [an unpublished history]
-12. Search for an American Spartacus [85% complete]
-13. Ye Scum of the Country [being coauthored with an amateur Virginian historian]
-14. The 13th Tribe [40% complete]
-15. Bound, the sequel to Sold, [only written in my mind]
-16. A History Denied: the capstone volume, an index, with corrections
The volume on European Indians has been scrapped, as it would have no audience and make me even more of a pariah—especially among my mostly red readers. That material is threaded through the other books, as the native population was intricately involved with the formation of American culture and politics.
I have surely already pissed off some readers by using Native American as a term, when anyone born in this nation is a an actual native. I do this on good authority, as in 1677, the author, Hubbard of the most detailed history of King-Phillip’s War so-named the tribes, as "native," not his society of alien invaders that had colonized the tribes and pushed relentlessly for war as soon as they achieved a higher population.
Since March of 2020, and extending into March of 2021, Lynn has scheduled 4-6 patreon posts per month concerning our most misunderstood event in American history. King-Phillip’s War, properly understood as Metacomet’s Rebellion is documented on the patreon site and will appear in Search for an American Spartacus, includes the following annotated versions of accounts from people who lived through the savage war of 1675-76 in New England:
-1. Journal of Mary Rawlinson, a puritan lady who was the wife of a “garrison” commander who was captured by the rebels,
-2. 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 chiefly of the late troubles in the last two years, 1675, and 1676.: to which s added a discourse about the warre with the Pequods in 1637 by William Hubbard, minister of Ipswich, march 29, 1677
-3. Increase Mather’s A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE WARR With the INDIANS in NEW-ENGLAND.
(From June 24, 1675. when the first English-man was murdered by the Indians, to August 12. 1676. when Philip, aliis Metacomet, the principal Author and Beginner of the Warr, was slain.)
These accounts, from three very different perspectives [0], are honest, cruelly opinionated and partisan, and corroborate one another. These are, however, totally and utterly misinterpreted by those Americans who have looked at these wars as a portal into our current turmoils. Only the military historians fail to twist the events fully out of context.
One item of interest, is that “Praying” Indians [having colonized minds, colonized at the hands of the most militant NGO of the age, the English Congregationalist, of which postmodern Social Justice ideology is the most direct descendent] had their names changed to Christian names, such as Peter, Paul and John, and that half-breed Heathen chiefs were named with a dual English moniker, in ancient Greek, such as Phillip and Alexander. The English were very adverse to using Indian names, versed as they were in the power of the word and dedicated to the colonization of the “native [1]” mind.
Minister Mather names the event a war, and also a rebellion, revolt and uprising of a conquered people. [2]
Minister Hubbard declines to name the event a war based on the small number of combatants compared to European military actions and also, because the issue was never in doubt, being a bug-hunt of the Indians from the beginning. He calls the event troubles, slips and calls it “war” a few times and constantly names it an uprising, a revolt and a rebellion of a conquered people.
Mary’s account is a personal struggle of her experiences.
Crucial to the mischaracterization of this event is the failure of the modern mind to understand conquest, as excluding all projection of force except slaughter as conquest. The ministers explain in great detail how the English conquered the Wompanoag’s by threat of slaughter, forced treaties for which the Indians had to give up hostages, and executions of select tribesmen, usually chiefs, and their trump card, Christianized Indians serving as spies and assassins. The English means of controlling the Indians was just as ruthless and complex as the way the Islamic Sultans of Istanbul colonized and terrorized the Balkan Christian nations under their rule, in the exact same time period. Interestingly, various English-American colonizers, such as Captain John Smith and William Oglethorpe, had fought as soldiers of fortune against the Turks before serving in America.
So, if you would like to follow my detailed annotation of the early American social situation that most closely resembles our current Red-Blue-NGO-Social Justice-Gun Control situation in 2020 than did any event in Plantation America, go to the patreon site at the link below.
Patreon:
link › patreon.com/jameslafond
Notes
-0. Mather and Hubbard, both ministers, showed one the Plymouth perspective as the primary view, and the other the Boston perspective as the primary view, agreeing on the same actions and complimenting one the other’s work.
-1. Hubbard’s term for the Indians
-2. Both ministers agree that the war was primarily a religious struggle, with Mather and Hubbard stressing Heathen versus Christian and downplaying race as an element in favor of religion. None of the three authors named any obvious racial distinctions between the combatants, including cultural artifice such as clothing and weaponry which were almost identical, such as coats, swords and guns. The two main differences was the Indian use of the hatchet and peag belt and the English use of the horse and cannon, which seem to have been their only exclusive examples of equipage, both fighting from forts, for instance, when on the defensive.
The train OG laying it down. Have a lot of reading head.
Thanks, Teddy B!
"One item of interest, is that “Praying” Indians [having colonized minds, colonized at the hands of the most militant NGO of the age, the English Congregationalist, of which postmodern Social Justice ideology is the most direct descendent] had their names changed to Christian names, such as Peter, Paul and John, and that half-breed Heathen chiefs were named with a dual English moniker, in ancient Greek, such as Phillip and Alexander. The English were very adverse to using Indian names, versed as they were in the power of the word and dedicated to the colonization of the “native [1]” mind."
What's in a name? The European Protestants placed huge importance on it, as did the heathens.
churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/book-common-prayer/catechism
Question: What is your Name?
Answer.N. or M.
Question.Who gave you this Name?
Answer.My Godfathers and Godmothers in my Baptism; wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.
Question.What did your Godfathers and Godmothers then for you?
Answer.They did promise and vow three things in my name. First, that I should renounce the devil and all his works, the pomps and vanity of this wicked world, and all the sinful lusts of the flesh. Secondly, that I should believe all the articles of the Christian faith. And thirdly, that I should keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of my life.
Bear in mind that the 1500s and 1600s were a time of great unrest in Europe and much of that spilled over to the New World. The 30 Years' War was one of the bloodiest in human history.
Thanks, Bryce.
My next book review on this period is a novel of the Thirty Years War—the most redacted history we have for a reason.
I recommend C. V. Wedgewood, she also wrote a 3-part series on King Charles, ending with A Coffin for King Charles. Her work is a very readable history.