COTTON MATHER ON THE RECENT HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND (1692)
In June 1675, the Wampanoags, led by their chief Metacom whom the English called “King Philip,” joined with Nipmucks, Pocumtucks, and Narragansetts in an attempt to drive out the English settlers and resist any further encroachments upon their land. Stoking Indian resentment as well were efforts by the colonists to force them to rec- ognize English sovereignty. Not all Indians followed Metacom’s lead, however, and some actually backed the English, including Nausets, Mohegans, and Pequots. Still, Metacom and his warriors terrorized a string of Massachusetts towns for over a year. In early 1676, however, the tide began to turn when white settlers forged a new alliance with a group of Mohawk allies, who soon ambushed Metacom and beheaded him. Without Metacom, the fragile coalition of the different tribes collapsed and the white settlers were quickly able to crush the uprising. In the aftermath, some survivors fled to Canada. Colonists seized many of those who surrendered and sold them into slavery in the West Indies. The tribes who had originally led the uprising were left greatly weakened as military powers and would never again be able to mount such a major assault against the English settlers.
The conflicts between natives and settlers were crucially affected by earlier exchanges of technology between the English and the tribes. In particular, Indians made effective use of a relatively new European weapon that they had acquired from the English: the flintlock rifle. It replaced the earlier staple of colonial musketry, the matchlock rifle, which proved too heavy, cumbersome, and inaccurate to be effective. The matchlock had to be steadied on a fixed object and ignited with a match before firing. The flintlock could be held up without support and fired without a match.
Despite rules forbidding colonists to instruct natives on how to use and repair the weapons, the natives learned to handle the rifles, and even to repair them very effectively on their own. In King Philip’s War, the very high casualties on both sides were partly a result of the use of these more advanced rifles.
The violence of the war and settlers’ insatiable appetite for land and uneven respect for Indian culture affected their understanding of recent history. Indeed, leaders increas- ingly portrayed Indians as “heathens” and barbarians. Religious officials in particular came to consider local tribes as a threat to their hopes of creating a godly community in the New World. (See “Consider the Source: Cotton Mather on the Recent History of New England.”)
In as much as the devil is come down in great wrath, we had need labor, with all the care and speed we can, to divert the great wrath of Heaven from coming at the same time upon us. The God of Heaven has with long and loud admonitions been calling us to a reformation of our provoking evils as the only way to avoid that wrath of his which does not only threaten but consume us. It is because we have been deaf to those calls that we are now by a provoked God laid open to the wrath of the Devil himself.