Courses
Courses for Kids
Free study material
Offline Centres
More
Store Icon
Store
seo-qna
SearchIcon
banner

What were some of the causes of King Philip’s War?

Answer
VerifiedVerified
512.7k+ views
Hint: Metacom's War, also known as Metacomet's War, Metacom's Rebellion, or Metacom's Rebellion, was the first Indian war fought by King Philip. The King Philip's War refers to a 1675–1678 military struggle in New England between indigenous peoples and New England colonists and their indigenous allies.

Complete answer:
In British American colonial history, King Philip's War, also known as the Great Narragansett War, was a war that pitted Native Americans against English settlers and their Indian allies, and was one of the bloodiest conflicts in the country's history.

Philip, a Wampanoag sachem, was the son of Massasoit, who had welcomed the first colonists to New England in 1621 at Plymouth. Some historians refer to the conflict as the Great Narragansett War because of the Narragansetts' central position in the conflict, as they were the largest Native American group in southern New England at the time.

The fighting began in June 1675, when three of Philip's warriors were executed by the Plymouth Colony. They had been found guilty of the murder of John Sassamon, a Harvard-educated “praying Indian” convert to Puritanism who had served as a translator and advisor to Philip but had been accused of spying for the colonists by Philip. His assassination sparked a 55-year simmering conflict between Indians and whites over conflicting land claims, interracial insensitivity, and English cultural encroachment on Native America. Also with a very entangled Native American–English economy and some Indian conversion to Christianity, this was the case.

Hence, the colonists' greed for land and the indignation caused by their execution of King Phillip's men were the primary causes of the battle.

Note: The Native Americans' last-ditch attempt to resist acknowledging English authority and prevent English settlement on their native lands was King Philip's war. The fourteen-month bloody revolt was led by Wampanoag chief Metacom, who later became known as Philip or King Philip. The war was fought between 1675-1678.