What Is the Name of the Bloody 1675–1678 War Between New England Colonists and an Alliance of Native American Tribes Led by the Wampanoag: King Philip's War Explained

The war is called King Philip's War. It ran from June 1675 to August 1676 in most of New England, though fighting continued in Maine and along the northern frontier into 1678, which is why sources date it 1675–1678. The name comes from Metacom, the Wampanoag sachem whom the English called King Philip. He was the second son of Massasoit, the leader who had kept peace with Plymouth for four decades.

The conflict was the deadliest war per capita in American history. Plymouth Colony lost about 8 percent of its male population; across New England, roughly 1 in 10 soldiers died. Native losses were far higher, and thousands were enslaved or displaced.

Why the War Bears Metacom's English Name, King Philip

The naming is an accident of colonial record-keeping. English writers had called Metacom "Philip" since the 1660s, and after his death they fixed the entire conflict to his name. Wampanoag descendants and modern historians often prefer "Metacom's War" or "the Great Narragansett War," since the fighting involved dozens of nations, not one leader.

Metacom became sachem in 1662 after his brother Wamsutta died suddenly while in Plymouth custody, a death the Wampanoag suspected was poisoning. That suspicion hardened into a grievance that ran through the next thirteen years. Metacom also resented English courts forcing the Wampanoag to submit land disputes to colonial jurisdiction.

Plymouth's 1671 demand that the Wampanoag surrender their firearms deepened the breach. The colony suspected Metacom was organizing a coalition; he signed a submission but kept negotiating with the Narragansett and Nipmuc. Neither side trusted the other's guarantees.

The label "King Philip's War" stuck because the English needed a single villain for a war that spread across every colony from Connecticut to Maine. Naming the war after one man obscured its real breadth: at least a dozen Native nations fought, and some, like the Mohegan and the Christian "Praying Indians" of Massachusetts, fought alongside the English.

The Trigger: John Sassamon's Death and the June 1675 Executions

The spark came in January 1675 when John Sassamon, a Christianized Native interpreter and Harvard-educated go-between, was found dead in a frozen pond near Plymouth. Sassamon had warned Plymouth's governor that Metacom was preparing for war. Three Wampanoag men were tried for his murder.

A Plymouth jury convicted the three in June 1675 largely on the testimony of a single Native witness, and all three were hanged, with one shot. Metacom regarded the trial as a direct assault on Wampanoag sovereignty, since the accused were his people and Plymouth had no jurisdiction over them.

Within weeks, Wampanoag warriors attacked the town of Swansea, and the war began. The speed of escalation is the key fact: less than six months separated Sassamon's death from open war, and the execution of the three men made negotiation nearly impossible.

The trial's reliance on one witness and a mixed jury of English and Native men became a propaganda point on both sides. Plymouth saw the executions as justice; the Wampanoag saw a kangaroo court. Neither read the other's intent correctly, which is a pattern that repeats through the war.

How the Native Alliance Was Assembled Across Southern New England

Metacom's coalition was not a single command structure. It was a set of alliances and grievances that pulled in the Nipmuc, the Narragansett, parts of the Pocumtuc, and Abenaki bands in Maine. Each nation had its own reasons: land loss, English legal interference, and anger over settler livestock destroying cornfields.

The Narragansett joined decisively after the English attacked them in the Great Swamp Fight of December 1675, a preemptive strike against a nation that had stayed formally neutral. That attack killed hundreds of Narragansett, including noncombatants, and turned a wary neighbor into a committed enemy.

English strategy assumed a centralized enemy, and that assumption produced failure after failure. There was no single Wampanoag capital to capture, and attacking one nation pushed others toward Metacom. The Great Swamp Fight is the clearest example: a military victory that expanded the war.

Native war bands operated in small, fast-moving groups that struck settlements and vanished. English militias, tied to town defense and cumbersome to mobilize, could not force a decisive battle for most of 1675. That asymmetry defined the war's first year.

New England's Bloodiest Year: The 1676 Attacks on Settlements

The war's worst phase came in spring 1676, when Native forces attacked more than a dozen Massachusetts towns in a coordinated wave. Providence, Warwick, and much of the Rhode Island mainland were burned. Settlers fled to Boston, which swelled with refugees.

The scale of destruction surpassed anything else in colonial New England. A famous estimate attributed to Benjamin Church's later account held that of roughly ninety English towns, about half were attacked and twelve were destroyed. Treat that figure as a period estimate; historians still debate the exact count of damaged towns.

The war's economics were brutal. New England's population was about 50,000 to 60,000, and the colonies lost perhaps 2,500 to 3,000 settlers, most by 1676. A corresponding Native death toll in the thousands dwarfed that figure and hollowed out entire nations.

What a War-Ravaged Settlement Actually Looked Like

Walk through the records of a burned frontier town and you get a concrete picture: empty house lots, dead livestock scattered in the fields, and fields of corn left unharvested because the workers were gone. Meetinghouse bells rang for militia musters, then fell silent as towns were abandoned. Survivors often returned to find charred hearths and stolen tools.

The Turning Point: How English Victory Finally Came at Mount Hope

The war turned in summer 1676 for reasons that had little to do with battlefield genius. Food ran short. Native forces could not plant their fields while campaigning, and English patrols attacked food stores. Starvation and disease killed more Native fighters than musket balls in the last year.

English forces also drew on Native allies. Mohegan, Niantics, and Massachusetts Praying Indians served as scouts and fighters; their knowledge of country and tactics did what militia alone could not. Historians credit these allies with much of the campaign's success.

Metacom was killed in August 1676 at his home village of Mount Hope by an English force under Benjamin Church, guided by a Native ally named Alderman. Church had pushed the strategy of using Native allies and offering mercy to surrenderers, which split the alliance from within.

Metacom's death ended the war in southern New England but not the fighting. Abenaki bands in Maine continued raids into 1678, and the northern frontier remained contested long after the main armies dissolved.

Casualty Figures and the 3-to-1 Death Toll Compared With Later American Wars

King Philip's War remains the deadliest American war per capita. My own calculation from standard figures: if Plymouth lost about 8 percent of its men in a single war, that death rate is more than triple the U.S. military death rate as a share of the male population in the Revolutionary War.

The Native death rate was catastrophic in a way the settler numbers hide. Thousands died from combat, disease, and starvation, and thousands more were enslaved and shipped to the Caribbean or sold into households in New England and the Atlantic colonies. The population of southern New England's Native nations fell by a large fraction in under two years.

Use the table as an order-of-magnitude comparison, not precision. The settler figures rest on colonial records that undercount women and children; the Native figures are even rougher because the records were mostly written by the English. Even the low end of the range supports the per-capita ranking.

What King Philip's War Changed: Native Power, the Algonquian Nations, and the Frontier

The war broke Native military power in southern New England. Metacom's Wampanoag, the Narragansett, and the Nipmuc lost their capacity to resist English expansion. Survivors were scattered, captured, or forced into servitude, and their lands were seized.

Colonists drew two lessons: Native nations were an existential threat, and Native allies were indispensable. That second lesson shaped later New England policy, which leaned on allied nations like the Mohegan and on ranger tactics that copied Native warfare.

The war accelerated the spread of the "Praying Indian" system and hardened religious divisions. It also deepened racial categories in law: Native people were increasingly treated as a subordinate class, and enslavement of Native captives expanded in New England households.

For Native nations, the war did not end resistance. It changed its form. Abenaki and Wabanaki communities in Maine kept fighting, and later wars in 1689 and 1702 drew on the memory of 1675. The Algonquian language family across the region lost speakers and land but produced a long memory of King Philip's War that endures in Wampanoag communities today.

Why the 1675–1678 Date Range Is Correct and the 1676 Mistake Persists

Most modern references date the war 1675–1676, and the decisive southern campaign ended in August 1676. The 1675–1678 range reflects the continuation of hostilities on the northern frontier, including Abenaki actions in Maine that went on after Metacom died.

If you need one date, June 1675 to August 1676 is the main war. If you need the full span, use 1675–1678 and say so. Both are defensible, and the difference is which theater you count: the southern New England war ended before the northern frontier did.

Library of Congress and National Park Service materials generally use "1675–1676" for the main conflict and note the Maine fighting separately. Encyclopedias vary. When a source says 1678, check whether it's counting the Maine frontier, because that is almost always the reason.

The naming and dating confusion travels together. "King Philip's War" can mean the southern war or the whole frontier conflict; the date range tells you which. This piece uses 1675–1678, matching the keyword, but the main fighting is 1675–1676.

Common Misconceptions About King Philip's War: Cause and Effect

Misconception one: the war was a sudden eruption. It was not. Tensions over land, jurisdiction, and firearms built for thirteen years after Metacom became sachem, and Sassamon's death was the trigger, not the cause.

Misconception two: Metacom commanded a unified army. No such organization existed. The coalition was a loose set of alliances, and English attacks on nominally neutral nations pushed some toward Metacom rather than the reverse.

Misconception three: the English won by superior arms. Firearms were widely used on both sides, and many Native fighters had English muskets and powder. The decisive factors were food supply, Native allies, and the collapse of the coalition after Metacom's death.

Misconception four: the war's name is neutral. It isn't; it's the English label for a conflict named after a man the English considered a rebel. Historians increasingly use "Metacom's War" or the "Great Narragansett War," and the choice of name is itself a small historical argument.

How Historians Today Interpret King Philip's War: Memory and the Name

The mainstream view treats the war as a turning point in Native-English relations: the moment when coexistence in New England became subjugation. Historians like Jill Lepore, in her book "The Name of War," argue that the naming and the war itself were contests over language and identity.

Modern Wampanoag accounts emphasize survival and continuity. The Wampanoag Nation still exists, and its historical memory frames the war as a defensive struggle against dispossession. That framing sits alongside the colonial records rather than replacing them.

Public history sites now interpret the war differently than a century ago, with less emphasis on "heroic settler defense" and more on the costs to all parties. If you visit a site linked to the war, expect a presentation that names Native losses directly.

The name you use depends on what you're doing. In a historical citation, "King Philip's War (1675–1678)" is standard. In Wampanoag contexts, "Metacom's War" is often preferred. Neither is wrong; the choice is part of the statement.

FAQ

What was King Philip's War called by the Native peoples involved?

There was no single name. Different nations had their own terms, and modern Wampanoag usage often says "Metacom's War." The English name reflects their leader-centric view and stuck in historical literature.

Did any Native nations fight on the English side?

Yes. The Mohegan, Niantics, and Massachusetts Praying Indians served as scouts and fighters, and Benjamin Church's campaign relied on them. Their participation is one reason the war was not a simple Native-versus-English conflict.

How many people died in King Philip's War?

Estimates run 2,500–3,000 settler deaths and several thousand Native deaths, with thousands more enslaved or displaced. Exact counts don't exist because colonial records were incomplete and Native losses were poorly recorded.

Was Metacom actually called King Philip by his own people?

No. "King Philip" was an English name given to Metacom; he was a sachem, not a king in the English sense. The title reflected English assumptions about Native leadership more than Wampanoag political structure.

Did the war really end in 1678?

The main southern war ended in August 1676 when Metacom was killed. Fighting on the Maine frontier continued into 1678, which is why many sources give 1675–1678 as the full span.

Why did the Narragansett join the war?

They were attacked by English forces in the Great Swamp Fight of December 1675 while formally neutral. That preemptive strike drove them into Metacom's alliance.

Was the war about religion?

Partly. English suspicion of Native religion, and of Praying Indians' loyalty, shaped policy and violence. Land and sovereignty were the main drivers.