preview

Essay on King Philip’s War

Better Essays

King Philip’s War

In 1675, the Algonquian Indians rose up in fury against the Puritan Colonists, sparking a violent conflict that engulfed all of Southern New England. From this conflict ensued the most merciless and blood stricken war in American history, tearing flesh from the Puritan doctrine, revealing deep down the bright and incisive fact that anger and violence brings man to a Godless level when faced with the threat of pain and total destruction. In the summer of 1676, as the violence dispersed and a clearing between the hatred and torment was visible, thousands were dead.(Lepore xxi) Indian and English men, women, and children, along with many of the young villages of New England were no more; casualties of a conflict that …show more content…

Concurrently, as the Puritans intended on maintaining their way of life within the New World, a key goal of theirs was to avoid bringing great harm to the natives they would encounter. The English had witnessed the abuse of natives during the Spanish conquests and the harsh religious demands placed among non-Catholics in the Spanish Inquisition. The torture and destruction of the native of life had been incredibly embarrassing upon the Spanish people, and in all obviousness, phenomenally painful and paralyzing to the natives themselves. These “Spanish Cruelties” were not only in great opposition to the Puritan beliefs, but as one knows, the last thing the Puritans wished to do would be to embarrass the great mother country of England.

The Indians had an identity all their own, and were in many ways reluctant to open up to the English settlers, fearing the effects of their highly controversial way of life. Regardless, despite the devastating bouts with foreign disease that accompanied the settlers, and issues regarding the land the colonists claimed in the name of the king, the Indians were still relatively accepting and hospitable to the setting Puritans. (Drake 3) They traded openly, worked together in establishing villages, and notoriously, the Indians aided the Puritans in teaching them the ways of the land, and in guiding them through the difficult New England winters. Over several years, the two cultures began to mesh, and the bits and pieces

Get Access