Metacom

Wampanoag grand sachem (r. 1662-1676)

• Born: c. 1638
• Birthplace: Pokanokep, probably present-day Massachusetts
• Died: August 12, 1676
• Place of death: Near present-day Bristol, Rhode Island

Famed for organizing the most devastating native resistance war in America’s history, Metacom of Pokanoket was the paramount sachem of the Wampanoag people from 1662 to 1676.

Early Life

Born when his father, Massasoit, was already around sixty years old, Metacom (meh-TAHK-uhm) was destined to lead his people at a young age. Native peoples of seventeenth century southern New England such as the Pokanoket formed autonomous bands, living congregated in villages consisting of a cluster of dwellings and a communal field. Their lives were determined by the seasons; they moved to fertile areas near water in preparation for planting season, more sheltered valley areas for winter, and waterways during early spring for the large numbers of migratory birds and fish. Bands of particular areas were associated by ties of kinship, and they acknowledged occasional paramount chiefs, called “sachems” or “sagamores,” who functioned in consensus with a spiritual leader and a people’s council. These loose aggregations were the so-called tribes with which European colonists had to deal in the seventeenth century; prominent among them were the Wampanoag and the Narragansett.

The Wampanoag peoples are perhaps best known in America for the part they played in keeping the colonists of Plymouth Plantation alive in their first years of settlement. During this period, Metacom’s father, Massasoit, was sachem, and the two cultures were mutually beneficial. During the first half century of settlement, in fact, there was no clear frontier line separating the cultures, native village and colonial town intermixing in much of southern New England, each culture influencing and benefiting the other. Native-settler trade flourished, first with corn and then with wampum.

Over time, purists in both cultures were troubled by this relationship. Puritan ministers claimed that colonists were “degenerating” into savage-like behavior. To native leaders, it seemed that native power was diminishing. There were growing numbers of “praying Indians,” who were expected to adopt Christianity and to forsake all traditional ways. Also unsettling were the stringent Puritan codes to which all native peoples were forced to adhere and a judicial system that was more and more racist. In addition, native lives increasingly revolved around the colonial trading post, with the people becoming more and more dependent on a system that was, by Metacom’s time, beginning to exclude them. With the price of wampum spiraling downward and the appearance of European coinage, it became clear that transatlantic trade would supplant internal.

The only tradable commodity left native peoples was land, a finite resource and one that the two cultures viewed differently. Because of their lack of a conception of private property, for Native Americans the “sale” of land did not involve the relinquishment or conferral of exclusive possession in perpetuity but rather signified the admission of a neighbor or kinsman to the right of participation in the use of the land. Settlers believed in private property. For them, the sale of land meant that the sellers were forever excluded from that land.

Life’s Work

In the seventeenth century (and for many historians today), Metacom symbolized Native American presence and resistance in southern New England, a political and cultural world that was attempting to exclude his people and to push them off their lands. Soon after Massasoit’s death in 1661, his oldest son, Wamsutta, now sachem, asked colonists for an English name, the taking of a new name at a new stage in life being an Algonquian tradition, a diplomatic move that earned for him the name Alexander Pokanoket and for his younger brother Metacom the name Philip of Pokanoket. After being sachem for less than a year, Wamsutta was force-marched by Plymouth officials to Duxbury to be questioned about growing rumors that he was plotting war. He died on the return; Metacom believed that he had been poisoned. Soon after Metacom’s ascension, he himself was called before colonial representatives. In fact, in the 1660’s and 1670’s, he was frequently called, the colonial officials usually inflicting a penalty of money, arms, and allegiance in return for the time and expense they had spent on questioning him.

According to colonial propaganda, the period between September, 1671, and summer of 1675 was too quiet: King Philip was planning his war and securing alliances. Clearly, by January, 1675, when John Sassamon, a Christianized native who had informed colonists that Metacom was planning an attack, was found dead, the sachem signified native resistance to the increasingly alarmed settlers. After the Sassamon trial, very probably an unfair one, Plymouth officials sent diplomatic correspondents to Metacom’s territory, and both Massachusetts and Rhode Island also planned diplomatic missions; the colonists wanted to pacify Metacom. The sachem accepted Rhode Island’s invitation, going to Providence in full regalia with forty of his warriors and counselors and insisting that his voice be heard.

After focusing on his concerns regarding Christian missionary work, Metacom recounted the history of native-colonist relations; he noted that when the settlers were as “a little child,” his own father had protected them from other native peoples and taught them how to survive, but that now the settlers had “a 100 times more land” than Metacom’s people. At one point, Metacom declared, “I am determined not to live until I have no country.” Pertaining to the judicial system, the sachem pointed out that the testimony of twenty native witnesses against the testimony of a colonist was discounted, while the testimony of one native against that of another native was sufficient if it suited colonial interests.

Metacom noted, too, that when he or other sachems sold land, the settlers said the acreage was more than what was agreed upon and that a piece of paper was proof against native word, that the settlers often first plied the native rulers with alcohol and then transacted business, and that straying cattle and horses (a long-standing problem) continued to ruin native crops. In response to Rhode Island’s warning that the settlers were too powerful for the native forces, Metacom countered that if that were the case, the settlers should treat the weaker native forces as Massasoit treated the colonists when they were the weaker.

Despite this diplomatic conference, by mid-June there were scattered attacks localized in the Plymouth Colony area. By June 30, colonial forces had swept into Metacom’s territory, destroying his village and stores of food. The sachem and his people had already moved into the trackless swamps of Pocasset territory, and the militia, saddled as it was with indecision and intercolonial conflict, failed to pursue. Once they did, Metacom’s superior knowledge of the terrain allowed him to go around and even through the hunting parties.

At this point, the sachem physically disappears from contemporary chronicles; the war, however, continued to spread in his name. Because they were afraid that King Philip’s diplomatic powers would incite a pan-Indian alliance, the colonial government decided to attack the then-neutral Narragansetts. The resulting Great Swamp Battle of December, 1675, marked the bloodiest moment of the war. Colonists killed six hundred of the swamp fort’s inhabitants (half of whom were women and children) and captured three hundred others. In retaliation, Canonchet, sachem of the Narragansetts, joined Metacom’s cause.

In January, 1676, Metacom seems to have headed Hfarther north into Mohawk territory on a diplomatic mission in search of more allies. The Mohawk, traditional rivals of the Wampanoag, not only refused but also launched a brutal attack that wiped out most of Metacom’s men. On the front, though, what began as a series of disconnected uprisings became a total war. In response, the colonial militia eventually changed its strategy, accepting the advice of men such as Benjamin Church, who recommended heavy reliance on native intelligence and warriors. With the May destruction of the supply base for the western division of the Algonquians, the western battle front closed. On the eastern front, Church was able to get the woman sachem Awashonks of the Sakonnet to promise that “before the corn is ripe” she would hand him the head of Metacom, who at that time was making his way back to Mount Hope in search of food for his people.

On August 1, the sachem’s wife and nine-year-old son were captured; they were eventually sold into slavery. At the same time, bands of starving native peoples began surrendering. According to tradition, when one of his own counselors suggested surrender, Metacom killed him. It was Alderman, the brother of that counselor, who led Church’s troop (a large proportion of whom were native) in an August 12 ambush, and it was he who fired the shot that killed Metacom. Church ordered the sachem beheaded and quartered (customary European punishment for treason). According to Church, the native warrior who performed the punishment said that the sachem had been “a very great man and had made many a man afraid of him.” Back in Plymouth, the quarters were hung in various trees, and Metacom’s head, which had carried a thirty-shilling reward, was displayed on a spike for decades. For his part, Alderman received one of the sachem’s hands, and with this trophy he enjoyed many free drinks in colonial taverns.

Significance

Metacom’s War was a devastating one. More than half of the colonial settlements were destroyed. Supporting both the war effort and the homeless, colonial treasuries were bankrupt. The British crown, claiming that the colonies could not govern themselves, took away their charters, a situation not to be reversed until the American Revolution in the next century. In proportion to population, this brief war stands as America’s most deadly. Of a total population estimated at eighty thousand, nearly nine thousand died during the war; one-third of those were settlers and two-thirds native peoples (more than half of New England’s native population). Thousands of native peoples were sold as slaves to the West Indies or were placed on reservations.

There was no written native language, and thus there are no contemporary native accounts of the war. Within eight years after “King Philip’s War,” however, the colonists had written about two dozen different accounts, and there are hundreds of other public and private relevant colonial manuscripts of the period. To contemporary Puritan chroniclers, the war represented a demonic uprising against God’s chosen but wavering people, and they personified that evil in the person of Metacom. Seventeenth century tourists flocked to Plymouth to see the great King Philip’s skull bleaching on a pole. Yet King Philip did not act alone, nor could any sachem. His manpower was in no way equal to that of other sachems.

Most historians feel that Metacom’s name was invoked in order to personify the deviltry the settlers felt was behind the war and to give the sense of a grand, pan-Indian alliance being orchestrated by one devilish man. Certainly, in the contemporary accounts, Metacom is ubiquitous, even supernatural; he was seen at attacks when it was known he was elsewhere—seen, too, on the battlefield, his skin impervious to the bullets flying his way. As one historian has noted, the colonial militia began chasing Metacom the man; they then chased his spirit. Native peoples clearly knew Metacom’s symbolic value, joining colonial forces (and significantly altering the outcome) in the pursuit of King Philip. For seventeenth century colonists and native peoples, Metacom signified native resistance.

Bibliography

Bourne, Russell. The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England, 1675-1678. New York: Atheneum, 1990. A very readable text with extensive native information and little scholarly citation. An exhaustive chronicle of the causes, events, and results of the war.

Drake, James David. King Philip’s War: Civil War in New England, 1675-1676. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. Unlike many authors, who maintain King Philip’s War was a battle between two different cultures—one Native American and the other British—Drake argues the conflict was a civil war within a more cohesive New England culture.

Josephy, Alvin M., Jr. “The Betrayal of King Philip.” In Patriot Chiefs: A Chronicle of American Indian Resistance. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. Josephy devotes a chapter of his book to Metacom’s relations with the British colonists.

Lepore, Jill. The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. A very readable text filled with interesting and pertinent anecdotes and little-known facts. Examines the cultural implications of the ways in which the settlers chronicled the war.

Schultz, Eric B., and Michael J. Tougias. King Philip’s War: The History and Legacy of America’s Forgotten Conflict. Woodstock, Vt.: Countryman Press, 1999. An in-depth history of the war as well as a guide to the sites of the raids, ambushes, and battles.

Slotkin, Richard, and James K. Folsom, eds. So Dreadfull a Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip’s War, 1676-77. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan, 1978. Contains many of the most important firsthand accounts of the war, including those of Captain Benjamin Church and the hostage Mary Rowlandson.