A Brief History of the Warr with the Indians in New-England, Boston, 1676

In his seminal work Increase Mather documented the good and the bad about his society and its native opponents in the war to alter the ecology and sociology of what he called New-England and the New Isrаel. The book has been reprinted by a white nationalist publisher who placed the following blurb on the back cover:

“This gripping narrative account provides not only an insight into the defensive war which the United Colonies (Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut) waged against a treacherous enemy who attacked and murdered their settlements without provocation but also of the religious fanaticism which drove the early European pioneers in North America.”

Having now read this account three times, in three layers, as it was written, I find the above statement to be grotesquely distorted and untrue, but make no claim that this is intentional. Rather, such a crude reading of this layered and nuanced text, written by a man so passionate about the purity of the truth that he included truths which grossly contradicted his own sacred cause, is to be expected by a modern reader.

I am not a modern reader and have done most of my reading from among ancient sources, which predate the mid 20th century corruption of the written word into a tool of persuasion and obfuscation instead of one of information.

The revolution in advertising writing and of propaganda circa 1930, has resulted in two general types of nonfiction writing: advertising, which includes propaganda, most prominent of which are three-tiered news pieces, and the thesis, including opinion and most books. Both of these types of writing rely on a crude text and a supportive or obliterated subtext intended to support the text. Whereas an honest chronicle such as Mather’s provides its own contradictory subtext, the modern reader is conditioned only to read the gross text. Hence, the blurb above is exactly the message that Increase was trying to send down through the ages. But his honest reporting of the facts on the ground sent a concurrent and contradictory echo along with it.

Lastly, the reason for the blurb on this back cover is tied in with postmodern white resistance to the current massive influx of immigrants holding different values and speaking a different language. In profiling "King Phillip" or Metacomet, I will present the case that Increase Mather’s book does present an example of an unprovoked attack on natives, but rather than the unsuccessful attack he intended to describe, present a much broader and ultimately successful attack on native peoples supplied by his own subtext.

From approximately 1500 through 1620 Basque, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian and English fisherman, whalers and explorers raided the New England coast for sex slaves and also traded with the stronger coastal tribes, resulting in a 90% die-off of natives via introduced disease, which emptied the coast for English, Swedish and Dutch settlement.

Once settled on the coast, and possessing useful tools, the English of the 1620s were peacefully engaged by the inland natives of the piedmont or hilly regions.

By the late 1630s, increased immigration, disease, habitat destruction and drug addiction introduced by the English and Dutch drove a resistance movement by the natives which was crushed with firearms and by alliances with the Mountain tribes such as the cannibal Mohawks.

By the 1660s, the natives were suffering from all the above ills, and were now sharing their land with a booming English population fed by massive immigration. The English were now also natives, and regarded the resulting conquest of the tribes as the ancient peaceful order of things. The weak English plantation governments did give firearms to allied and compliant subject tribes and banned firearm ownership among tribes that resented the destruction of their ecology. In the English case, it must be said that the government, such as it was, did decree against alcohol sale to young Indians and even stipulated that English livestock must be fenced in to prevent trampling of native habitat.

However, tanneries ruined fishing waters, English pirates kidnapped Indian women and children, Dutch traders addicted young Indian men to rum, English merchants cheated Indian women in trade and many escaped English white slaves joined the Indians and told them of the English long term plan, which was to convert to Christianity or eliminate native peoples.

All of these things were alluded to or plainly stated by Mather, and he did decree that the Indians had been wronged by the English, making his only case for defense the fact that “the government was innocent.” In other words, the government was only ultimately responsible for protecting whites from Indians and not doing direct harm to Indians, but not protecting Indians [who they barred from armament] from whites.

In supplements to the narrative Increase Mather exposes the treaty fraud perpetrated upon Metacomet and his handful of allies. Below is a quote from a treaty that Metacomet was made to sign in 1671, when it was ruled that his non-compliance with English wishes would result in him paying punitive fines:

“Whereas my Father, my Brother and my self have formerly submitted our selves and our people unto the Kings Majesty of England, and to this Colony of New-Plymouth, by solemn Covenant under our hand; but I having of late through my indiscretion, and the naughtiness of my heart violated and broken this my Covenant with my friends by taking up Armes [1], with evil intent…”

Is there any doubt in the reader's mind that Metacomet did not compose the above admission of guilt?

The publisher of this book did not read the declaration of “submission” by the Indians to an international order as a war condition and then goes along with Increase’s contention that the Indians were not conquered people but willing wards of the State, despite his own voluminous testament to the contrary.

The greatest omission by the modern publisher is that the account is made to look like an Indian versus English war of offense, when it was an Indian versus English and Indian uprising by a conquered people, who were utterly doomed and had zero prospect of victory.

The following is taken from the account of Increase Mather, and supplemented by a reading of T. H. Breen’s Puritans and Adventurers.

The rebel tribes under Metacomet fielded a force of about 1,000 fighting men, and lost a total of about 2,000 killed, resulting in absolute genocide, leaving less than 1,000 noncombatants and POWs to be sold into slavery or executed. To put this in perspective, the population of Boston had as many white and black servants as the entire allied Indian population.

Metacomet’s warriors were drawn from the following tribes, and included a handful of escaped white servants, one of which was publicly executed after capture:

1. Wompanoag [or Mount Hope Indians], Metacomet’s tribe

2. Pocasset, led by a female chief

3. Narragansets

4. Nipmuck

5. River Indians

The English-Indian Alliance:

1. Soldiers of Plymouth [hundreds]

2. Soldiers of Massachusetts [hundreds]

3. Soldiers of Connecticut [hundreds]

4. Praying Indians [hundreds, from all three colonies]

5. Volunteers from Rhode island [less than a hundred]

6. Pequod Indians [less than a hundred]

7. Mohawk Indians [300-plus]

8. Cape Indians [less than a hundred]

9. Nattick Indians [less than a hundred]

10. Pirates! [less than a hundred]

11. Monehegins [hundreds]

12. Armed black servants [under a hundred]

13. Armed white servants [hundreds]

Metacomet was surrounded on all sides, had nowhere to run, was arrayed against a superiorly equipped, fortified foe which outnumbered his warriors at least three to one and included the most effective fighting men, being:

1. English Pirates who would also conduct mop-up operations against the white/black slave uprising in Virginia in the later part of 1676, after Bacon's [3] death in October. This New England war was fought from Sumer 1675-Autumn 1676, with the crushing of Simon's [a Metacomet imitator] resistance, with the Cavalier Governor of Virginia wishing the Indians well against the Puritans.

2. Captain Church’s mixed Indian/Indian hunter recon force

3. The Mohawks, who were a match for Metacomet’s forces on their own, and who exterminated most of the Wompanoag women and children and elders.

When Metacomet failed to trick the Mohawk enemy into an alliance against the whites he was doomed, but fought on in any case, with Increase Mather wondering out loud at the pain the chief must have felt at the loss of his people and his only child, for the English out-bred the Indians by a 5-1 rate and routinely beat their children, finding it quite odd that, “…the Indians are marvellous fond and affectionate toward their Children…”

Metacomet found himself in the following position:

1. The chiefs of his father’s generation invited strangers to come and share their land.

2. The strangers bore far more children than the natives.

3. The majority of the inhabitants—both native and stranger—agreed that his people should give more to the common good than the newcomers.

4. The traditional right of a warrior to go about armed was taken away by common agreement, giving the far more numerous newcomers a great advantage.

5. Men of a criminal sort from among the newcomers began molesting the women and children of the people.

6. Everywhere he turned the face of the land was being altered to accommodate dwellings for newcomers.

7. Natives who defended themselves against newcomers were punished by the government but newcomers who harmed natives were not so punished.

8. The religion and codes of behavior that had once held sway and under which he had been raised, were now objects of ridicule and derision, while the new values of those people protected by the government were port fourth as the basis for social intercourse.

9. Agreements were made in a language that was only clearly understood by the officials of the government which was partial to the newcomers.

10. The newcomers were of various races and spoke multiple languages yet held to a common international ethos.

11. The government seemed to favor the rude people who crowded together in the great towns and everywhere a free man looked, he was surrounded by enemies, either by traitors, traditional foes or newcomers hostile to his way of life.

What was such a beleaguered man to do other than fight or go quietly into the night?

Now, decide for yourself, who more shared the plight of modern palefaces in regards to the government and their neighbors, the Puritans and their Indian subjects, Indian allies, black servants, white servants and military contractors, or Metacomet and his Indian allies?

1. In 1671 Metacomet was found guilty of procuring guns for his warriors, either for defense against the gun-armed Mohawk enemy [cannibal allies of the English] or for the cause of throwing off the yoke of English conquest, not of actually attacking English settlements or persons.

2. Metacomet was slain by one of Church’s Indian scouts.

3. Bacon was the white rebel leader of the mixed white/black slave force that bested the mixed white/Indian/back/pirate slave master army in Virginia but then died of dysentery soon after burning Jamestown to the ground.