Not many people today have heard of King Philip’s War. Though a small-scale event by modern standards, it devastated colonial America. As Plymouth Colony expanded in the years following the Mayflower’s arrival, the famous positive relations between Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians started to break down. Plymouth’s second-generation leaders began to violate treaties negotiated by their fathers and encroached upon tribal lands.
The Wampanoag chief Metacom—the son of Massasoit, who had ensured the colony’s survival during its difficult first year—started holding a series of councils with the colonists to express indigenous grievances. They respected Metacom and gave him the name “King Philip” as a title of honor. He expressed a desire to continue the friendship between their peoples that his father and former Plymouth governors like William Bradford had maintained, and he negotiated an agreement that he would sell the settlers no more land for a period of seven years. Land sales continued, however. In 1671, half a century after the first Thanksgiving, Metacom made a series of concessions and agreed to be subject to English law. Over the next four years, diplomatic relations continued to deteriorate until war broke out.
