cover image King Philip's War -Na

King Philip's War -Na

James D. Drake. University of Massachusetts Press, $24.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-1-55849-224-0

In 1675, the Native American leader Metacom--whom the English called King Philip--led the Wampanoags and other Indians against New England's more than 50,000 colonists It was an especially violent and brutal war: thousands died (the Indian population in particular was decimated), the English won and Metacom's head was impaled on a stake and planted at Plymouth. Historians have often described the war as a clash between civilized English and barbaric Indians--both the clash itself and the outcome are considered as inevitable. In this new study, Drake suggests otherwise, offering a capacious, compelling and convincing alternate interpretation. To imagine that 17th-century New England consisted of two societies-one English, one Indian--is simplistic, he says; Drake, influenced by Richard White's concept of ""the middle ground,"" argues that colonists and Indians had forged a unique hybrid society. Drake illustrates with a delightful analogy from the chemical world: ""Like the atoms in a covalent chemical bond, wherein distinct atoms bond together by sharing electrons, the Indians and the English became one society by virtue of their shared social space and economy, as well as by their overlapping legal and political systems."" The war, then, is best understood as a civil war, one that destroyed these interdependent cultures forever--political power was shifted toward the colonists after the war, and there was increased infighting among various English factions, once stabilized by the presence of a sizable Indian population. Drake offers a more original and convincing interpretation of King Philip's War than Jill Lepore did in her 1998 study The Name of War. If readers are going to rely on only one study, it should be this one. 4 illus. (Jan.)