King Philip’s War 3: The Fire Spreads

It is July 1675 in New England. On June 23, fighting men of the Wampanoag nation and of Plymouth Colony had begun killing each other and enemy civilians in earnest. The question was whether this still small conflict would remain a local and short dust-up within Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoag lands encompassed by the colony’s borders as defined by the New Englanders, or would it spread more widely? That question was very quickly answered – the wildfire of King Philip’s War would spread to encompass virtually all of New England east of the Connecticut River and up the coast of Maine. This episode explains how it happened.

The image for this episode on the website is a drawing of King Philip – Metacom – by Paul Revere, who 250 years ago today (April 8, 1775), was riding to Concord to warn the locals, not yet on the famous Midnight Ride but on a false alarm that turned out to be an unplanned dress rehearsal.

Maps of New England during King Philip’s War

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Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the episode notes on our website)

Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War

Matthew J. Tuininga, The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America’s First People

Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War