by Jill Lepore
3On the Cherokee syllabary see Willard Walker and James Sarbaugh, “The Early History of the Cherokee Syllabary,” Ethnohistory 40 (1993): 70-94.
4Willard Walker, personal communication, December 4, 1994.
5Cotton Mather, The Life and Death of the Renown’d Mr. John Eliot (London, 1691), 73. The history of the rock is best detailed in Edmund Delabarre, “Early Interest in Dighton Rock,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 18 (1916): 235-99.
6H. R. Schoolcraft, Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge: Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the U.S. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grang, & Company, 1854), 4:108-20.
7Willard Walker, personal communication, December 4, 1994; Ann McMullen, personal communication, July 22, 1992.
8Delabarre, “Inscribed Rocks,” 22-24.
9Eugene Vetromile claimed in 1866 that the Abenakis (also known as Penobscots) had their own hieroglyphic writing system, which they used to make carvings in rocks and on tree bark. Vetromile was clearly among those antiquarians obsessed with the search for Indian writing, and his claims are thus deeply suspect, but it is possible that they are based at least in part on fact and that there is some precedent in Penobscot culture for carving inscriptions on rocks (Vetromile, The Abenakis and their History [New York: J. B. Kirkner, 1866], 40-43).
10Barry O’Connell, ed., On Our Own Ground: The Writings of William Apess, A Pequot (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), 177, 205. I would like to thank Ann Fabian for first suggesting that William Apess and the Mashpee Wampanoags might have been involved in carving the Mount Hope Rock inscription.
11Delabarre, “Inscribed Rocks,” 21-22.
12William J. Miller, Notes concerning the Wampanoag Tribe of Indians (Providence: Signey S. Rider, 1880), 123.
13Ebenezer W. Peirce, Indian History, Biography, and Genealogy: Pertaining to the Good Sachem Massasoit of the Wampanoag Tribe, and His Descendants (North Abington, Mass.: Zerviah Gould Mitchell, 1878), iii.
14Josiah Winslow to Increase Mather, May 1, 1676, in Mather, Brief History, 2-3.
15Peirce, Indian History, iii.
16Ibid., 210-19.
17On the anniversary see Robert A. Trennert, “The Indian Role in the 1876 Centennial Celebration,” AICRJ 1 (1976): 7-13.
18“King Philip’s Day,” RIHSP 6 (1875-76): 61, 62. Finally a member of the Committee of Arrangements read aloud a passage from a speech given by Lucis Barber in Simsbury, just a few months before, commemorating the bicentennial anniversary of the destruction of that town. Of Philip, Barber insisted, “We can afford to be just to his memory.” See Lucis Barber, The Burning of Simsbury: A Bi-Centennial Address (Hartford, 1876). Other bicentennial addresses include Henry Morris, Early History of Springfield. An Address delivered October 16, 1875, on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Burning of the Town by the Indians (Springfield, Mass.: F. W. Morris, 1876).
19“King Philip’s Day,” 54.
20Paul R. Campbell and Glenn W. LaFantasie, “Scattered to the Winds of Heaven—Narragansett Indians 1676-1880,” Rhode Island History 37 (1978): 67-83. See also Paul A. Robinson, “A Narragansett History from 1000 B.P. to the Present,” in Enduring Tradition, 79-89.
21Quoted in Robinson, “A Narragansett History,” 87.
22Narragansett Dawn 1 (September 1935): 109-11. Narragansett Dawn also printed Justice Joseph Story’s Salem vanished-Indians speech “there is something in their hearts which passes speech”) almost word for word but retitled it “Fate of the Narragansetts” and claimed as its author “Eagle Eye” (Ernest Hazard). Narragansett Dawn 1 (September 1935): 107-8.
23Everett Weeden (Tall Oak), personal communication, February 23, 1995. Weeden is a grandson of Red Wing. See also Narragansett Dawn 1 (September 1935): 109-11.
24Ann McMullen, personal communication, August 17, 1992.
25Ann McMullen, “What’s Wrong with This Picture? Context, Conversion, Survival, and the Development of Regional Native Cultures and Pan-Indianism in Southeastern New England,” in Enduring Traditions: The Native Peoples of New England, ed. Laurie Weinstein (Westport, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey, 1994), 138-44. On a Nipmuck community’s efforts to maintain traditions see Diane Fisk Bray, “Change and Continuity of Spiritual Practice among the Chaubunagungamaug Nipmuck Indians of Webster, Massachusetts,” in Algonkians in New England, 114-20. An intriguing consideration of an indigenous peoples’ interest in documenting their past can be found in Joanne Rappaport, The Politics of Memory: Native Historical Interpretation in the Colombian Andes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
26Colman McCarthy, “The Narragansetts’ Trail of Tears,” Washington Post, September 15, 1985; Judith Gaines, “New England’s Indians Strive to Rebuild Tribes; Goal Is to Reclaim Identity, Pride, Power,” Boston Globe, April 16, 1989.
27Nanepashemet, personal communication, February 20, 1995.
28The SCW’s mission was “to perpetuate the names, memory or deeds of those brave and courageous men, who, in military, naval or civil service, by their acts or counsel assisted in the establishment and continuance of the American colonies,” but King Philip’s War had always been the chief interest of the New England chapters of the society, and since about the turn of the century they had celebrated two holidays, commemorating the colonists’ two greatest victories: August 12, Philip’s death, and December 30, the Great Swamp fight. See The Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, The First Record Book of the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1897-1902 (Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1902); The Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, The Second Record Book of the Society of Colonial Wars of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1902-1914 (Providence: Standard Printing Co., 1914); The Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, The Third Record Book of the Society (Providence: E. L. Freeman Company, 1925). A sister organization, the Society of the Daughters of Colonial Wars in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, was incorporated in 1921 (Year Book and History. Society of the Daughters of Colonial Wars in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Inc., Publication 5 [1932]).
29The best surveys of King Philip’s War historical sites can be found in a multi-issue series in Traveler’s Record 38 (1902-1903), nos. 8-14, and 39 (1903), nos. 1-6; and in Eric Schultz, Discovering King Philip’s War: A Traveler’s Guide to the War that Shook New England, unpublished manuscript.
30David Arnold, “Native Americans Ponder Past, Future; Deer Island Deaths Marked in Ceremony,” Boston Globe, October 31, 1991. See also Scott Allen, “Search for Indian Graves to Proceed on Deer Island,” Boston Globe, October 1, 1993; Keith Regan, “Harbor Project Opposed; Indian Group Says Deer Island Sacred,” Boston Globe, February 22, 1993; Michael Kenney, “An Island of Sad Memory for Indians,” Boston Globe, February 19, 1993; “Indian Group Retraces March,” Boston Globe, August 31, 1992; Peter J. Howe, “MWRA Disturbing Graves, Say Indians,” Boston Globe, June 17, 1992; Alan Lupo, “Deer Island Left to Its Ghosts,” Boston Globe, January 1, 1992. As a result of the protests, the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority, which refuses to cancel construction, plans to build a public memorial site on the island (Len Cawley, Massachusetts Water Resource Authority, personal communication, February 21, 1995).
31The Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, A Record of the Ceremony and Oration on the Occasion of the Unveiling of the Monument Commemorating the Great Swamp Fight, December 19, 1675, in the Narragansett Country, Rhode Island (Boston: Societies of Colonial Wars, 1906). The ceremonies resumed later in the day, under the cover of nearby Memorial Hall, where several additional speeches and addresses were delivered.
32Delabarre, “Inscribed Rocks,” 2.
33John Christian Hopkins, “Tracing the Narragansett Legacy,” Norwich Bulletin, October 7, 1993.
Acknowledgments
It m
ust be said that I have spent long hours babbling about King Philip’s War to more than a few weary listeners. Friends have listened patiently, colleagues have offered advice, and librarians have handed me wonderful, dusty books. To all I am deeply grateful.
I would like to thank, first of all, the friends whose care has sustained me: Benjamin Filene, Jane Levey, Rachel Seidman, and Wendy Weitzner. I have thanked them before, and surely I will thank them again. They have helped me to see sense where it is to be seen and to know nonsense for what it is. I’d have been blind without them. I thank them for each and every insight, right down to the last, furtive E-mail message, and for regularly luring me out of my study for road trips, gingersnaps, bad movies, and woods-walking with dogs. And, for wisdom and friendship and much, much more, I thank also Adrianna Alty, Heidi Ardizzone, Lee Busch, Andrea Clark, Elizabeth DeSombre, Charlotte Gill, Jennifer Hall, Jane Kamensky, Mary Renda, Nancy Rome, Kelly West Schlosser, Erik Seeman, and Rebecca Tannenbaum.
For teaching me the craft of history I thank John Demos, whose keen advice and kind words have contributed to this work beyond measure. I could have asked for no better mentor. Others, friends and colleagues alike, have read parts of this manuscript, in this and earlier forms, and their criticism has helped me immensely. For poring over these pages and telling it to me straight I thank Jean-Christophe Agnew, Jon Butler, Andrew Cayton, Duane Champagne, Nancy Cott, William Cronon, Michael Denning, John Farragher, Richard Fox, Karen Kupperman, Ken Lockridge, Daniel Mandell, E. Anthony Rotundo, Neal Salisbury, Bruce Schulman, Erik Seeman, Harry Stout, Fredrika Teute, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and Richard White, as well as the anonymous readers and seminar participants and brown-baggers who commented on parts of this work on earlier occasions, and the Americanist writing group at Harvard: Elizabeth Abrams, Steven Biel, James Cullen, Hildegard Hoeller, Kristin Hoganson, Allison Pingree, and Laura Saltz. Ann Fabian, Jane Levey, and James Merrell each gave the entire manuscript an especially close and perceptive reading. Colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, especially Michael Meranze and Rachel Klein, helped me to think about this project in the context of early American cultural history. And Jane Garrett at Knopf encouraged me to push on.
Several people have graciously shared their ideas with me regarding topics close to my own, including Hugh Amory, Rosemarie K. Bank, Cathy Corman, Philip Deloria, James Drake, Edward Gray, B. Donald Grose, J. Edward Hood, Jeffrey Mason, Ann McMullen, Jennifer Pulsipher, Eric Schultz, David Waldstreicher, and Willard Walker. In addition, I am extremely grateful to the late Nanepashemet at Plimouth Plantation, and to Everett Weeden (Tall Oak) and John Brown of Charlestown, Rhode Island, for beginning to educate me about contemporary views of King Philip’s War within the New England Native American community.
I completed much of the work of this project during a year-long fellowship at the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University, where I learned a great deal from fellow fellows David Blight, Kathleen Dalton, Kristin Hoganson, Bruce Schulman, and Nina Silber. I thank them for all the wonderful talks over coffee and lunch and for putting up with my intrepid dog, Cooper, who poked around the halls. During those final months of writing, Cooper trudged into Harvard with me nearly every day, and, as a fixture in my office, served as my muse in her own irrepressible, tail-wagging way.
I am extremely grateful both to the Warren Center for the fellowship, and to my dean and department at Boston University for allowing me to accept it. I would never have been able to write this book without the generous support not only of the Warren Center but also of several archives, institutions, and foundations who funded my research at earlier stages: the American Antiquarian Society, the John Carter Brown Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Nor would the research have been as pleasurable without the wonderful staffs at the archives and libraries where I conducted research, including those at both Yale and Harvard.
I also thank my parents, Marjorie and Frank Lepore, to whom this book is dedicated. My father taught me to love words, my mother to love pictures. Together they have taught me to look wide at the world, and I only wish I could thank them better. Finally, I thank Timothy Robert Leek, for all those things that matter most.
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, APRIL 1999
Copyright © 1998 by Jill Lepore
Map copyright © 1998 by Claudia Carlson
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Vintage Books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Portions of Chapter I are reprinted from “Dead Men Tell No Tales:
John Sassamon and the Fatal Consequences of Literacy” (American Quarterly 46, December 1994), by permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Lepore, Jill, [date]
The name of war : King Philip’s War and the origins of
American identity / by Jill Lepore. — Ist ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-48857-2
1. King Philip’s War, 1675–1676. 2. Indians of
North America—Wars—1600–1750. 3. Great Britain—Colonies—
America. 4. United States—Politics and government—To 1775.
I. Title.
E87.876.L46 1998
973.2′4—dc21 97-2820
CIP
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