I’ve spent the weekend reading “Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War” by Nathaniel Philbrick, and just finished it tonight. What an interesting history!

While it does follow the Pilgrims from Leiden to Plymouth Rock, the most interesting part of the book to me is its history of King Philip’s War (1675-1676), a war I had never studied in high school or college. Like Philbrick states in his epilogue is common, my view of American history jumps from the 1620s to the mid-1700s unaware of this conflict and its profound effect on the future of Native Americans’ way of life and English-Native relations.

Philip was the Christian name of a Native sachem, or chief, of the Pokanoket tribe. He earned the title of “king” (derisively) among the English when he claimed to be equal to King Charles (since he was the supreme ruler of his people and the Pilgrims were subjects of their king). The war started after repeated injury and disrespect to the Natives drove Philip to try and organize a pan-Indian war with the settlers.

The exploits of the daring Benjamin Church were almost beyond belief, sounding more like a screenplay for a movie than a historical narrative. For example, once when chasing Totoson, “the sachem who had attacked Dartmouth and the Clark garrison,” through a swamp, imagine what this scene must have looked like:

While the Sakonnets [Natives who fought with the English] guarded the others [prisoners], Church chased Totoson. It looked as if the sachem might escape, so Church stopped to fire his musket. Unfortunately it was a damp morning, and Church’s musket refused to go off. Seeing his opportunity, Totoson spun around and aimed his musket, but it, too, failed to fire. Once again, the chase was on.

Church momentarily lost him in the undergrowth but was soon back on the trail. They were running through some particularly dense bushes when the Indian tripped on a grapevine and fell flat on his face. Before he could get back up, church raised the barrel of his musket and killed him with a single blow to the head. But as church soon discovered, this was not Totoson. The sachem had somehow eluded Church, and filled with rage, Totoson was now coming up from behind and “flying at him like a dragon.” Just in the nick of time, the Sakonnets opened fire. The bullets came very close to killing the person they were intended to save (Church claimed “he felt the wind of them”), but they had the desired effect. Totoson abandoned his attempt to kill the English captain and escaped into the swamp.

Wow! There’s a lot of action like that related in this book, making it a fast read. I was also surprised to learn that the English didn’t yet use forks in the early 17th century, so the first Thanksgiving was eaten with the aid of only their fingers and their knives (my children would have fit right in). But the weightier matter of the book is how it only took a single generation after the establishment of peace and mutual respect between the Pilgrims and the Natives for it all to fall apart. In the end, it truly is a tragic story.

If you’re looking for a good book to add to your reading list, I would highly recommend this one.