Sometimes described as "America's deadliest war," King Philip's War proved a critical turning point in the history of New England, leaving English colonists decisively in command of the region at the expense of native peoples. Although traditionally understood as an inevitable clash of cultures or as a classic example of conflict on the frontier between Indians and whites, in the view of James D. Drake it was neither. Instead, he argues, King Philip's War was a civil war, whose divisions cut across ethnic lines and tore apart a society composed of English colonizers and Native Americans alike. According to Drake, the interdependence that developed between English and Indian in the years leading up to the war helps explain its notorious brutality. Believing they were dealing with an internal rebellion and therefore with an act of treason, the colonists and their native allies often meted out harsh punishments. The end result was nothing less than the decimation of New England's indigenous peoples and the consequent social, political, and cultural reorganization of the region. In short, by waging war among themselves, the English and Indians of New England destroyed the world they had constructed together. In its place a new society emerged, one in which native peoples were marginalized and the culture of the New England Way receded into the past.

Benjamin Church liked Indians and was liked by them. He studied them, admired them, jollied them, dealt fairly with them. He saw in them splendid fighters. They saw in him a splendid captain. He knew all about the Indian's "savagery," but he is untouched by the hatred and hysteria which fills the conventional history. This is eye-witness history of the first great Indian War in North America, by the most successful guerrilla captain on the English side. Behind his homespun stories of the Pease Field Fight, the Swamp Fight, the parleys with Queen Awashonks and the pursuit of King Philip lies a collision of cultures which set a pattern for almost all future relations between white men and red men in English America. If he could have foreseen the disappearance of the Indian from every swamp and beach in New England, he would have felt saddened. This is the story of a warfare of extermination which nobody had planned; a description of sorties, ambushes, providential escapes and breath-taking victories which is written with all the immediacy and simplicity of folk art. Church's Diary of King Philip's War is one of the earliest and most graphic of American primitives.

King Philip's War--one of America's first and costliest wars--began in 1675 as an Indian raid on several farms in Plymouth Colony, but quickly escalated into a full-scale war engulfing all of southern New England. At once an in-depth history of this pivotal war and a guide to the historical sites where the ambushes, raids, and battles took place, King Philip's War expands our understanding of American history and provides insight into the nature of colonial and ethnic wars in general. Through a careful reconstruction of events, first-person accounts, period illustrations, and maps, and by providing information on the exact locations of more than fifty battles, King Philip's War is useful as well as informative. Students of history, colonial war buffs, those interested in Native American history, and anyone who is curious about how this war affected a particular New England town, will find important insights into one of the most seminal events to shape the American mind and continent.

While it lasted only sixteen months, King Philip’s War (1675-1676) was arguably one of the most significant of the colonial wars that wracked early America. As the first major military crisis to directly strike one of the Empire’s most important possessions: the Massachusetts Bay Colony, King Philip’s War marked the first time that Massachusetts had to mobilize mass numbers of ordinary, local men to fight. In this exhaustive social history and community study of Essex County, Massachusetts’s militia, Kyle F. Zelner boldly challenges traditional interpretations of who was called to serve during this period. Drawing on muster and pay lists as well as countless historical records, Zelner demonstrates that Essex County’s more upstanding citizens were often spared from impressments, while the “rabble” — criminals, drunkards, the poor— were forced to join active fighting units, with town militia committees selecting soldiers who would be least missed should they die in action. Enhanced by illustrations and maps, A Rabble in Arms shows that, despite heroic illusions of a universal military obligation, town fathers, to damaging effects, often placed local and personal interests above colonial military concerns.