Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 238 - King Phillip's War Part 1: That Isn't How Dead Bodies Work

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

The little known story of the most apocalyptic war in American History. Part 1/3 Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Lisa Brooks. Our Beloved Kin James Drake. King Philip’s War: Civil War in New England Kyle Zelner. Rabble in Arms, Massachusetts Towns and Militiamen During King Philip’s War

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now back to the show. Hello and welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I forgot what I was going to say because i'm a professional who's been doing this for almost five years i'm joe and with me is liam hello liam hey joe how's it going buddy it's going uh you didn't respond for like half a second and i was like ready ready with the 357 just like to put to put some rounds into this fucking macbook from corinne's like sophomore year of college there's i i want to give you a picture of how i'm recording right now joe so uh so joe to give you go a little inside baseball here i'm moving i move on thursday uh i today is tuesday the 29th i move on thursday december 1 so my desktop pc my many my very

expensive gaming desktop is is downstairs ready to be shipped to the ready to be taken to the new house i'm moving a few blocks away but so right now i'm on corinne's macbook with my normal road procaster and uh focusrite 212 2i2 audio interface but her it's like her the laptop she used when she was in a sorority so i've got like a sassy land the sassiest place on earth sticker uh there's a there's a uh a phi sigma sigma sticker i i feel like a sorority girl the the fact that you are sitting there recording on a laptop that says sassy land on it is outstanding yeah i thought you would i thought you would like that uh the keyboard makes me want to fucking kill myself uh it's bad something is

pink or rainbow color to do with that sticker too isn't it yeah it's uh it's actually like cinderella's castle from disney world but it's all like rainbow like electric colors perfect that is uh that is the lightest thing we are going to talk about today yeah yeah i uh i finally got a uh actual a desk chair uh because wow big boy moving up yeah i was recording at a kitchen chair since i moved uh because it's really hard to find like a decent desk chair here for some reason like it's either complete shit or way overpriced. I don't entirely know why. And I finally found one.

It's not a gamer chair, but it is... I have a gamer chair. Mine is not electric green and yellow colored and it doesn't have a cup holder for my white monster or whatever. Hey, whoa, whoa. What's with this denigration of white monster that's the tastiest one it just tastes like chemistry it tastes so good dude i could drink a truckload of those i could too back in the day now if i did i would just die of heartburn

i think yeah your organs would cook themselves yeah now this is going to be an interesting topic we're talking about king philip's war um and i do have to do a slight shout out to a podcast who's never heard of me before called last podcast on the left great podcast uh because a while ago they did a series on the salem witch trials and they talked briefly very briefly about king philip's war and i was uh like kind of i knew of it but i didn't know a lot about it uh before that that kind of like inspired me to start researching it i was fucking months ago uh but yeah shout out to them it's a great show go listen to it um and it's one of the inspirations of why I started writing this series. But this comes from your neck of the woods. So I imagine, when I told you, would you ask what you were doing?

And I told you, I have to go tell my dad. Which is not something anybody's ever said about this podcast before. So I guess this is your dad's thing. This is my dad's thing. Some dads grill some dad's work on their car your dad is into the most apocalyptic war in american history yeah yeah he knows how to pick up well he grew up in the area and this is like he's done as far as i know original research on it oh i'm gonna disappoint him then yeah it's's one of those things. It's like, and not that I think that this series is badly researched or anything, but like.

My dad is a lawyer, not a historian. Whenever you like, whenever we do Civil War episodes, there's always like a Civil War dad somewhere like you forgot this. We know. Piece of minutia. We have like an hour and five minutes to record these. Yeah. Like I can't make every series seven parts long guys or gotta though i sent joe a wiki article on an obscure war involving a country

called the united states of belgium it's the worst kind of united states you know i will say uh i think i've brought this up before recently Recently, I finally took vacation, which required me to fly through Europe because I live in Armenia and I can't fly through Turkey. So I have to fly all the way around, which happens to be this large-ass country, which makes air travel a nightmare. So I had to fly all the way around Turkey, which required me to fly through Belgium. And I have never in my life flown such a terrible national airline character after flying belgian air i no longer believe belgium has the right to exist just give it break it up and give it away no i i i like the only part of belgium worth preserving is bruges and even that's kind of debatable.

Personally, I like one of my... In Bruges is one of my favorite movies. It's just about a guy complaining about how bad Bruges is. Yeah, Belgium sucks, dude. Belgium fucking sucks. It's like, what if Detroit was a shitty country in Europe from what I've seen? Yeah, exactly. What if North Philly, but all of it? Okay. Europe from what I've seen. Yeah, exactly. What if North Philly, but all of it?

Okay. So, yeah. And if you know, if you're Belgian and you're listening, you know what we're saying is true. Just be French or something. I don't know. You're closer. Just keep on sliding down the list of European powers. You Wallonian fuck. Yeah.

Oh, in Flanders. Shut up shut up now liam this might shock you yep but america has a hell of a long history of war uh for a country that honestly hasn't been around that long yeah i always think that's kind of funny because like you get like even the religious wars of europe and you know the hundred years war the Thirty Years War, you're like, alright, these guys have been beefing since William the Conqueror. We showed up and we're just like, we're going to kick all your asses. Terms and conditions apply.

It's really weird when you go virtually anywhere in Europe, not Belgium, virtually anywhere in Europe, real countries, and you'll stumble upon like a park bench that's just older than america like oh yeah it's very weird there's a friend of a friend who's actually kind of famous on twitter but i refuse to give her the validation so uh she

studied at oxford and she like would talk about just seeing graffiti scrawled in like whatever biggest dickest was here like 1355 oh yeah yeah i mean we run into that all the time here as well like and it's like such uh like it's either in russian or really old armenian it's like oh it's that's been here since the 1600s like why has nobody cleaned this up like now it's history but back in the day it was still vandalism but whatever yeah i mean so the point the point behind that isn't like ho ho ho older is better but like america has not been around that long um and america is a country that's founded in a war and even before then its national character what would become its national character was also formed in wars.

Even before the 13 colonies got into a tax beef with the king, and before they would be known as Americans, they still fought wars under the British flag. Obviously, the French and Indian War comes to mind, which is, of course, something we'll talk about at some point. They were an organized, centralized British colony. They still fought wars as members of a pseudo-British colonial body known as the New England Confederation. There's a loose collection of far-flung Puritan colonies totally devoid of actual British military that would eventually unleash the most deadly war in recorded North American history when measured at a per capita basis against the native people of the Northeast of the 13 colonies or the New England Confederation. Now, I don't use this term loosely. This is an apocalyptic war that the United States simply does not want to talk about. Oh yeah this is a bad one i would say it is yeah i mean when measured at it like because there's not that many settlers there's not that many native americans anymore um by the time we'll of course we'll talk about why um uh when this war starts and when you measure it at a per capita basis, it's like if fucking World War II happened in Boston specifically.

And admittedly, maybe it's because I'm not from the Northeast. Hey, if you're from the Northeast, not you, Liam. We know you are. Right now, did you send us an email or a message like, did you learn about the King Phillips War? I certainly didn't. I'm from Michigan. So obviously, why would I? But I have to frame the why this exactly happened. The indigenous people of the Northeast were facing a new kind of colonialism in the region, that being a settler colonialism, which was new for them. Now, of course, that means the British would not be leaving. They would stay in the area and set up colonies where they intend on making it England. King Philip, also known as Metacomet, would lead a loose coalition of native tribes in what really, in reality, could have been the last real chance the indigenous people

of America had to expelling white settlers. It's a small chance, in reality the last chance that they ever had um and the last real chance to protect themselves from the everything that comes next you know gestures gestures wildly right yeah just gesturing towards american history as far as i know you may see his name also written as just metacom yeah i've seen it in three different ways uh the most the most consistent way is king philip which is the christian name he took his his the daughter of the the settlers that met his dad i want to say yeah we'll talk about that yeah so i'll again i'm going off dad knowledge yeah i'll i will refer to him as king phil Philip because it's the most consistent name that anybody ever wrote about him. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

Now, this last struggle for indigenous right to exist, I guess is a good way of putting it, would become known as King Philip's War, which is kind of unfair towards poor King Philip. But it would become the most brutal war ever fought in American history. Now, a few things before we get started. No, this is not an exhaustive history of British colonialism in the Northeast or the entirety of North America. It's going to cover the Pilgrim's establishment of the Plymouth Colony and the assistance of Native allies and how they fucked up something fierce, leading to America's first real organized genocide because history is fun we like to have fun here sorry yep that's what i like to do is have fun that's why i record with you at 10 o'clock p.m on tuesdays oh yeah thankfully it's a very normal part of the day for me so i have

nothing to complain about how about you go fuck yourself bud yeah how about i inject spider eggs into your eyeballs wow that that, that got dark real quick. Now, please make sure my payment is on time. Now, we did use quite a few sources for this one. The sources for this series are Our Beloved Kin by Lisa Brooks, Rabble and Arms, Massachusetts Town and Militiamen During King Philip's War by Kyle Zellner, and King Philip's War, Civil Warip's war by kyle zellner and king philip's war civil war in new england by james david drake um if i'm going to recommend any of those uh i would say uh our

beloved kin it's the most readable everything else is dry as fucking paper it was painful so with that let's talk about some goddamn Puritans. Grab your belt buckled shoes and hats and shit, which I know weren't really a thing. Let's go to the motherfucking Mayflower. He's the people that banned Christmas, man. Imagine being so stuck up that like 16th century fucking Christmas. Yeah. You banned the concept of colored clothing. Yeah.

I'm so uptight. The Church of England is like, no, thank you. Please go. Get on the boat. Get on the boat. Leave us alone. Puritans have the roots in the Church of England, which, like many religious bodies, was established so a fat old rich guy could bend the will of God so he could get a divorce. Yep.

he could get a divorce. Puritans popped up in the 16th century as a Calvinist movement with the aim of purging what they saw as Catholic teachings and influence from the Church of England. Alright. You fucking freaks. Did someone just speak Latin around this motherfucker? Kill him!

Are you sure you're a member of the elect? Now, this got so petty as arguments over vestments for the clergy kneelingeling to take communion, and making the sign of the cross during a baptism because the Puritans are fucking losers. Now, for a long time, Puritans were put up with, and they attempted to work within the Church of England to reform it to their liking, which I assume just makes it mean worse. Yeah, it means worse. And I'm sure this led to a lot of people just telling them to shut the fuck up and to get a hobby though i don't know if hobbies have been invented yet outside of just shitting blood and dying of the pox whatever that is eventually the

puritans left the church running their own congregations which is actually what they call themselves congregationists not puritans puritans is kind of a diss which is why i'm also going to puritans i think we should call them buckle bitches now um we love some good old-fashioned uh buckle-based multi-level church marketing or whatever right right however at the time attending church uh specifically the church of eng Parish Services within England, was a law. You had to go. You couldn't just start your own congregation independent of the Church of England. So they soon began getting prosecuted for their misdeeds of missing church, which is something that even happened to me when I was seven years old. So we're in the wrong century, homies.

Now, at some point point things got so bad they decided the best thing they could do was to get the fuck out of England something we always support on this show oh yeah you can just leave hit the bricks look look I don't care if you're English just don't do it around me this led to them moving to the Netherlands which is

marginally better the Netherlands is fine I hate the Dutch I know you do I've been very clear on this this is why I'm just going to slowly become like a Netherlands weeb

what would a Netherlands weeb be does he wear wooden shoes that's a guy who wears blackface a lot well I can't do that there are people who are WIP are like well you're American I'm just like yeah unfortunately I know thanks asshole i'm very aware of my country's racist horrible history that's why i'm on this podcast america has never done anything wrong the netherlands on the other hand you have so much to answer yeah hundreds of billions of things now uh they they got a patent

through the london company for settlement, which is how things worked back then. Like, you got a patent of land, and they would send you to some death trap that you'd never been to before. Like, here you go, idiot. Good luck. Make sure you set taxes. And this became Plymouth in 1620, after a very horrible several-month-long trip aboard some pretty famous boats you may have heard of do you ever go to plymouth rock as a kid i have never been to the east coast at all what yeah i just assume it doesn't much like like you're 34 years old i live in the caucuses

why am i gonna go to boston you were from detroit it's not that far. It's not that close either, to be fair. And then you were just like, oh, Fort Hood. That sounds good. Sign me up. All right. In my defense, I never chose to go to Fort Hood. Nobody's ever chosen to go to Fort Hood. Okay. So life in the new world was pretty goddamn bad. This might shock you. Yeah. Hacking a life out of like the brambles of the east coast like it's awful uh you know the the way to look at is everything sucked people died when they're like six years

old and they've already had three kids everybody is full of parasites nobody has any goddamn food or water or teeth or teeth yeah uh yeah you are you are selling someone into slavery to buy some butter it's just a thing you're doing at this point oh you have butter now look at you you fancy motherfucker that's right i'm over here just gnawing on some grass hoping that i'm eating grass with butter like how many buckles i have to string together so i can fucking hang myself like the the settlers quickly found out that like oh man we got fucked by this company there's nothing here uh and there's a pretty good chance they all would have just died uh if it wasn't for some quick and well thought out native american diplomacy

now shortly after arriving there the wabanaki leader sam musette walked right up to them and in clear nearly unaccented english said welcome englishmen uh it would have been a it would have been a lot better if he's like what's up honkies get the fuck out of here hey you guys know about muskets we sure do no this is because just because this is the first like you know sell a version of settler colonialism that they were going to experience trade i would think i mean yeah yeah this is not the first boatload of white people to wash up uh near them um and uh you know they had a reputation uh and despite this being the first british settlement new england it was definitely not the first time the tribes of northeast had had run-ins with white people samaset and several other of his men of the tribes had previously been

kidnapped by explorers uh where they were forced to be used as translators, which of course required them to be forced to be taught English. It's a very stupid system. And then once the expedition was over, they were released or they escaped. Nobody's entirely sure which. And this is along with normal trading, mostly with French fur traders and the like. There's British and Dutch as well, because Liam isn't mad enough. The Dutch are also there. We will trade you. We will give you fur, and we will teach you how to paint your face black.

And then we'll call it a harmless holiday tradition as we do in imperialism, culturally, militarily, you name it, we'll do it. I just hate the fucking Dutch, man. The Wabanaki are like, I do not understand these white people. Oh, their shoes are made of wood. That seems very uncomfortable. That's whatever. That's the Vikings. Yeah, same.

Now, the contact between these people and various tribes like the Wampanoag and a lot of other in the northeast had gone back at least 100 years. And this is despite the fact this is extractive colonialism as well. It was

not as destructive mostly because there wasn't that many of them. Now there already had been Jamestown in Virginia, which is about 600 miles away. And it's taken on Newfoundland for what that matters. Yeah, and they spent the last 20 years pretty much just starving to death

and shitting out their own insides. Eating their own butts, yes. However, 600 miles away, overland through the unbroken forest of the Northeast, man, Jamestown might as well be on a fuck on the fucking moon uh for the people of plymouth uh how it normally works was traders would set up small posts which they would take what they wanted which sometimes included slaves before getting back on their boats and leaving and then trade of course they would trade with locals as well but you know the sam was that wouldn't have known about Jamestown.

So for him, he's like, what the fuck are these people doing? Hippity hoppity, get off my property. Quite literally, because Plymouth was actually built on a native town called Pawtuxet. Northeast things are weird.

Good enough. Oh, you're saying Native American names are weird, Joe? Is that what you're saying? Indigenous names are weird to Good enough. Oh, you're saying Native American names are weird, Joe? Is that what you're saying? Indigenous names are weird to you? Fuck off. I'm not taking that bait, bitch. What is this, Tumblr? Go fuck yourself.

Let me tell you, I was pretty famous on Tumblr once. That is the most depressing thing you've ever said to me, ever. That was a joke. I was never famous on Tumblr. thing you've ever said to me ever that was a joke i was ever famous on tumblr no samuset knew uh that the the clearing that the pilgrims had landed in uh was not exactly good um because it had actually been previously been patuxet uh native town which had been wiped out by the plague um now let's talk about that plague fair enough yep uh this plague may have been the no shit actual black death uh amongst other collections of diseases which according to a historic ipswitch included smallpox chickenpox

cholera the common cold the flu diphtheria malaria measles scarlet fever sexually transmitted diseases typhoid typhusus, tuberculosis, yellow fever, and whooping cough, which good god damn. You just exploded into mist. Oh, he's turned into powder.

All of these could have been introduced on accident by Europeans to the native population in successive waves, starting sometime around 1615. Of course, some of these things would be introduced on purpose down the road, but at this point, there's no evidence that that happened

on purpose. What followed has become known as the Great Dying. A solid band name, if I'm to be honest. Actually, that sounds like a Grateful Dead cover band band i don't know it could it could be some some decent uh like mellow death or something yeah now this affected a lot but for the purpose of this series the native population of the northeast and the areas would become known

as new england it's thought that depending on the tribe, at least half, 50% of most populations were wiped out. And this is the best case scenario is 50%. There's also several versions of this plague story. It sometimes knows the virgin soil theory, which tries to explain away horrific acts of genocide perpetrated by settlers against native populations. And that is not what we're doing here. There were many events called the Great Dying, and virgin soil disease outbreaks are, in fact, the thing. There is no debating that.

However, the story hardly ends there. According to Mary Ellen Leopanaka, a native historian of the area, within a few generations of each one of these Great Dying, because again, there's a lot of them. I mean, listen to that list of diseases I just read off. It turns you into mulch. You catch turbo syphilis and die. After

a few generations of each of these great dyings, the population would bounce back. It would catch back up and even grow above where they had been before. This is actually true of all pandemics and epidemics across the world, just like the Black Death in Europe. Within a few generations, the population would bounce back. Now, within the context of the history of the natives within this area,

that was pretty easy for them to do for the most part. Most of the time, given a long enough timeline, they would do what humans do. They would fuck and eat, and then boom, their populations would be normal again. However, the timing of the great death of 1615, 1616-ish meant that by the time settlers had shown up in 1620, they had had not nearly enough time to recover their population numbers as they would normally would have been. This not only made the forces that probably would have been previously strong enough to kick the pilgrims the fuck off Plymouth Rock too weak to do so in the moment, but it also led to something a whole lot worse. It's theorized that by most people within the genocide studies field, that this additional stress of settlers broke the bounce back cycle and was known as shatter zones.

As settlers actively began what would end up being a hundreds year long campaign of genocide, both organized and unorganized, meaning Native American population numbers within a given region would never be given enough time, resources, or anything else to bounce back to anything close to what they previously would have been. So as settler numbers would almost constantly increase every year no matter what the indigenous population did the opposite would be the case for the indigenous population themselves so this is the this is the not never coming back moment is right literally when they show up that's fucking wild this immediate shift in power dynamics of the region wasn't an unknown for native people who survived the outbreak in New England and would lead to a fundamental change in tribal politics.

They try to survive the shitty new plot twist had been thrust upon their lives. And as an early sign of what to come, the Puritans and even the King of England saw this mass dying, the great dying, as a sign from God that it was clearly the divine right of white people to conquer these lands. And it was only a matter of time before they would replace the native population entirely. So, from the start, the intention was genocide.

Love my genocide with a side of theology. Yeah. I mean, like, the very founding tenet of plymouth colony was effectively genocide and james down for that matter so yay however both sides kind of hating one another but having a mutual need to work together meant that they kind of had to set the shit aside. The natives, despite everybody... For our non-American listeners, let's frame this in a way that we were taught when we were kids. Through the goodness and kindness of their hearts, the indigenous people of North America saved Plymouth Colony and the Puritans by teaching them how to survive.

Right. And that's why we had the first Thanksgiving. Exactly. And then we don't had the first Thanksgiving. Exactly. And then we don't talk about what happened next until you're in high school, depending on where you live. But that isn't what happened. This wasn't some kind of goodness,

kindness of the heart. Though Sam O'Sett, I'm sure he was a gregarious guy, whatever, but it was very practical. Sam O'Sett didn't like these people. practical. Samoset didn't like these people. The Puritans obviously didn't like these people. But look at where Samoset is coming from. Look where the Puritans are coming from. They literally have no choice to start working together in order to survive through trade

and diplomacy. And this began quite widespread. Of course, how well this worked depending on where you were, what tribe you were, what colony you were. Especially back then, nothing is a monolith. Every single colony was its own thing. And every single tribe dealt with every single colony differently. Now, as Drake points out, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Plymouth had ties to the Nipmucs, the Mohegans, the Nargansetts, the Pequots, the Wampanoags,

and the Wampanoags. But all of them, colonies and tribes, in turn had their own politics, creating a nearly impenetrable chaotic clusterfuck of constant infighting, even when there wasn't an actual war. So to say things are complicated is a bit of an understatement. Sure. This included colonial governors fucking one another over and colonial governors and tribes fucking over tribes while also simultaneously fucking over everybody else in between. Somewhat interestingly, both colonists and native people attempted, at least for a while, to work within one another's own systems for an advantage. This is because the colonists, the settlers, didn't have the power to simply break the native system yet.

They had to try to usurp it, while the natives certainly didn't have the power to break how the settlers worked. They were working within the system to bring change. That worked. Pragmatism. Yeah. Power dynamics

hadn't shifted irreversibly one way or another yet. So they had no choice. For example, Squanto, famously seen as one of the most important native people that taught the pilgrims how not to die, thought that if he didn't help these idiots survive, his own tribe, the Patuxet, would also die out. Because they didn't have enough people. They didn't have enough resources. And they figured, hey, if we help help these people they'll help us survive too like this this wasn't like i'm just a good person like fuck i am hungry like you know yeah and i i don't want to have missed disease yeah and more importantly the potoxit were being pressured by the wampanoags which are much more powerful.

And he figured, well, I'll have these guys on my side. They got guns. It's all politics. Everybody was using everybody else to survive a really bad situation because the world was bad. Everything sucked. Everything was worms and disease. Things have not gotten better. Don't worry.

Yeah. The Wampanoags themselves were looking for the colonists help as well. Uh, in 1621, a year after the pilgrims arrived, the Wampanoag leader submitted his own tribe to the authority of Plymouth colony in order to protect him from the Nargansetts. Uh,

like the, which is the, by far the largest and strongest tribe in the area. So within a year, people are like, ah, fuck, I have to go,

go bend the knee to these assholes. Now, the colonists weren't stupid. They were pretty quick to recognize this and built I guess what you'd call an anti-Narragansett block. The Narragansetts were known as the Mintmasters. They controlled the manufacture of something called

wampum, which is white and purple beads made from shells that both the native tribes and the colonists for a time used as currency. That gave them a massive amount of power over everybody else. They literally spit out money. Likewise, in 1631, a tribal leader

in the Connecticut Valley invited colonists to move into the region to stem off attacks on the Iroquois and the Pequots, who he just actually owed money to. Yeah. Sometimes you got to do weird shit to pay off your bead debt. It turned out the colonists liked Southern New England a lot more than Northern New England. I've never been there. Make your jokes here. And they began to flock there in huge numbers. This eventually led to the Pequot War in 1636, as virtually all of the tribes of the Northeast joined forces with the settlers to break the Pequot tribes' hold on

the fur trade, amongst other things. Now, this led to what's known as the Mystic Massacre of 1637, where settler militias burned down an entire Pequot town and shot anybody who escaped, men, women, or children, to the absolute horror of their native allies. This is the native allies' first introduction to European-style war, which stood in stark contrast of their own. Native war is generally a regional and tribal thing. Some tribes would absolutely fucking do this. Don't have these pie-in-the-sky ideas of peaceful indigenous people. People are all terrible. Yeah.

People are fucking vicious, man. But when it came to the Northeast tribes, they generally did not do this. They didn't really enslave people that often. They very rarely murdered women and children. very rarely murdered women and children. Their goal was, it was like they favored hit and run style tactics with the goal of capturing people alive and ransoming them,

not dresdening an entire village. Like it just, it was completely foreign to them. Right. And then they also generally didn't mutilate the dead. That wasn't, so they didn't scalp. That wasn't their thing.

So they were aghast as they watched the settlers begin hacking the limbs and ears off of dead Pequot in order to keep his trophies. Yeah, alright. Stick that one in the back of your mind for later. Now, when asked, the colonists told them that it was to scare

the surviving Pequots and their allies into thinking they should never fight us again. That will become important later. However, that revulsion didn't stop some native leaders from capitalizing on the whole thing. Specifically, a man known as Uncus, who used the chaos of the destruction of the Pequot to leverage power with the settlers and take over a bunch of smaller tribes for himself. He was, for a lack of a better term, a colonial proxy. He was like

the guy that they kept around. They weren't really friends because... Useful idiot. Yeah, exactly. And it would benefit him as long as he was useful. The settlers could use him to fight other tribes without getting themselves into direct fighting, though Uncas would act as their man on the inside as well. For example, when a Nargansett leader called for a unified

tribal movement to reject the British and drive them into the sea, Uncas assassinated them before the movement got legs under it. However, in order to do this, for example, Uncas isn't the only leader who did this, but Uncas ceded more and more of his land to settler authorities for political power and favors. He would take something and give it to the colony in turn. The colony would then lease the land back to him. It's a leaseback scheme. Yes. That's how all of the colonies were ran.

That's how everything was a leaseback scheme. So the colonists controlled all the land and the tribes were only leasing it. Another area is specifically the Connecticut- Hey, and now we have steam, but it's kind of the same thing. Oh no. I never thought of it that way. Gabe, why? Now, in other areas, specifically the Connecticut River Valley, tribal leaders had offered lands in exchange for British goods on credit with future payment being in fur. Now now this is one hell of a racket for the settlers as everybody was fighting over fur the fur trade was killing it then they because they'd

export them to europe for huge profits for all the fancy european lads who i assume had way too tight fur pants made that go with their ridiculous light-colored sunglasses uh i'm just trying to think of 16th century euro trash i'm drawing a blank oh the door they're still wearing blackface for some fucking reason uh they would now if they didn't pay their fur rent on time they'd have to pay or turn over their sweet land which was still theirs to settler authorities who would then of course lease it out to someone else for a while this was not a problem because that thirst for that sweet, sweet fur in Europe had no end. This eventually blew up in the face of the natives because of a change in what was considered

in fashion at the time. The desire for fur plummeted. This meant that the settlers wanted less of them, which would lead to the natives having no way to pay the rent on the land that they were leasing out from the settlers. Because it's not like, oh, let me just adjust this fur contract for fur inflation. It's like, this is the whole point. Finite resource, yes. This wasn't a problem for the settlers because they just take the land and chuck the natives out on their asses.

Yeah, of course. And they just lease it out to someone else, give them another shitty contract. A contract, mind you, that the indigenous people almost certainly couldn't read or know the details of because again that is the point however this eventually led to the sellers genocide by paperwork yeah that's that's always one like you know the the banality of evil etc etc right right right uh however this led to the settlers to believe that their business deals with the natives were simply not paying off and trading with them in order to lease land and all of these extra hurdles. They just couldn't meet their needs anymore.

But in reality, it just sounds like they kind of weren't fundamentally understanding how the economy in Europe worked. But whatever. They're all assholes. Who cares? So instead of doing backdoor colonialism, which sounds like the worst porn title on earth, through shitty trade jobs or fur tributes, they would simply start taking native land for themselves and not beat around the bush with this leasing bullshit. Because this land was now, with the collapse of the fur trade, worth far more than anything they could extract from native people anymore. are more than anything they could extract from native people anymore.

It goes without saying that this land grab stabilized the colonies while massively destabilizing native tribes, populations, and way of life. More importantly, for the purpose of this show, it broke any reason for continued cooperation and changed the foundational settler native relationship from one of mutual survival in a harsh environment to one that is clearly not that anymore. Now, again, I don't mean to say that everything worked this way. This is not a monolith. Many of the colonies had much different realities, and so did tribes. Some of these places were hundreds of miles away from one another. For example, in Maine, which is probably the worst fucking place to be as a settler at the time and also today uh the

colonial movement it is nice man no fuck me i like maine man you're from detroit michigan let's all calm down no fuck maine you know you know what you did maine it's nice the only thing maine is worthwhile as in mighty ducks 2 the goalie is from banger maine that's the only thing i got there's a good pizza joint there there's a couple good breweries up there uh yeah who can who can forget the fine pizza of banger maine that's a good pizza joint it's nice i like it fucking hard out italy i like it there you know you're from philadelphia everything seems better in comparison fuck off what that you're from detroit my guy yeah i don't live there anymore oh yeah the fucking yes yes the the advanced appellate moon economy of fucking our media all right bud that's right baby

anyway if you'll excuse me i'll simply walk around to my city or take the metro the country that lost internet because uh an old lady like dug through the pipes to steal the copper look big ups to that lady it takes it takes balls all right you gotta bury your cables a little further underground i like that the r media wiki page is just protected oh yeah i mean otherwise uh there's gonna be like a turk editor forever. L.O.L. or whatever. Yeah. Now, in Maine, the colonial movement caused a complete economic collapse. Settlers placed their trading posts near coastal areas, which were traditionally where the Wabanaki fished. They were mostly a fishing people.

And because the colonists all set up shop there they're all driven inland so being a normally fishing people meant they had no knowledge of hunting within maine's forests they never really had to and those are some forests yeah so they traded what little they had to settlers who sold them guns but would only sell them enough gun powder to go hunting a little at a time this made them wholly dependent on them in order to survive. And again, this will become important. Not to mention this also meant they could never have a surplus of food.

They could only hunt a little bit and they'd have to go trade to get more weapons, more guns, or more ammo, whatever. They would never... Punish you for killing too many buffalo. Yeah. There was also cultural colonialism. Shocking, I know.

And so there's attempted to convert natives to Christianity and sold them vast quantities of booze. Now, Native Americans had alcohol before. They've distilled their own. But it was nothing like actual produced spirits. It's a little different different like brewing some homemade wine out of grass and seeds or whatever and like drinking gin there's a big difference you know it's much stronger much more damaging and much more addicting um you know it's created a wave of uncontrolled substance abuse within many tribes that that they themselves didn't

quite understand because like we drink stuff all the time what is happening right yeah it's not like shit back then at a warning label they're probably going blind and shit i don't know right one day you buy some old shit from i don't know lord fuck ass's bathtub gym yes yeah lord fuck ass's bathtub gym next day you're blind and shaking and wondering where the fuck your wife went i don't know however the authorities in england kind of balked at this forceful taking of land for whatever reason uh this is like kind of like we talked about the paperwork of genocide they were adamant that this only happened legally and by legally they they meant legal by their definition of what

there was sure of course which was you know it's kelvin ball it makes no fucking sense they just make it up as they go along it helps when you can make up the rules as you go along yeah for example natives who lived under the protection uh for one reason or another of a colonial authority on land that was leased to them would find themselves being fined for the for random reasons at levels purposely set so high they could never pay those fines failure to pay those fines with their lands would be taken and given to a settler. Therefore, that problem is gone. They invented a genocidal homeowners association. So just a homeowners

association. So just a homeowners association, yeah. Also, the people in charge of fining the natives would occasionally make sure that fines would occur. For instance, they would just let livestock run through their crops, destroying them, which is interesting because they're also shooting themselves in the foot here this isn't a place where there's food surpluses for anybody like they literally living hand to mouth even the rich guy

in the in plymouth has more diseases than we can possibly dream of like he has this disease yeah yeah yeah and like they would purposely ruin their own crops just so they could find the native person that was growing them and then expel them for not tending to their fields which would be clear that is how i play magic the gathering magic the gathering homeowners association i'd rather kill myself and i like magic the gathering the smells so we're talking pre-zendikar that's zendikar one someone dm'd me to ask they've ruined the meta i've said this before and i'll say it again i'll have to take your word for it we we've we've gone too far into

the nerd weeds i can't keep up yeah yeah yeah it's fine now if all this didn't make things pretty goddamn bad because that sounds grim right We have a genocidal homeowners association. We have people melting their eyes out with Lord Fuck-Ass's bathtub wine. All this is compounded by New England's first baby boom, starting in the 1630s and would stretch all the way into the 1670s, because people finally had enough food where fucking didn't, I don't know, throw out their back and kill them. Didn't give you a missed disease, right? Yeah. Yeah.

This led to the colonies to steal more and more land, setting up more and more towns, trading posts, and expanding fields for new crops and more livestock in order to absorb this massive new population influx. Many of these new settlements are very, very far away from others. That was the point. Most were totally isolated outside of a small track of dirt. At most, that would act as a trail to the next settlement. Maybe a trading trail. Right, right, right. Yeah. Because it's the point. Nobody wants to start a city. The point is you pop up in the middle of nowhere, you have all the land you want because you're stealing it from someone, or you're far away from your neighbors that you don't have to deal with them other than to trade.

You're not hanging out with them. Some places were so remote, for example, Maine, the entirety of Maine had about 5,000 settlers, which is slightly less than it has today. had about 5,000 settlers, which is slightly less than it has today. And this is by the 1670s, while the entire colonial population of New England as a whole might be as high as 65,000. The vast majority was in Massachusetts. So we're not talking about a ton of people here. this is slightly larger than like a rural village here you know i mean like it's a small fucking town this is a good time to dive a little bit more in the fuckery of the colonies and how they were run because good god united they were not each colony by and large hated every other colony and was at best suspicious of them colonies would try

to steal each other's territory and undermine each other's trade deals pretty much all the time. Murders were not uncommon over trade beefs. People in Connecticut feared colonists in New York almost as much as they did a raid by native warriors. Administration in Boston attempted to centralize control somewhat, kind of declaring themselves the seat of the colonies, which was met with complete rejection by virtually everyone specifically in maine i assume because it took 10 years for them to hear that hear the news or something yeah you gotta pass it off through the trees i mean yeah and there's only 5 000 of them in the entire territory of maine so like you ran run into some random white

guy in the woods like oh look a fifth of the population oh hey guy oh look it's steve uh all this is on top of rampant paranoia regarding the french the dutch and various native tribes everyone was jumpy malnourished riddled with disease and armed to the fucking teeth yeah which is kind of like america today yes as you can imagine, this led to constant, let's call it friction, I'll use for this, problems. I'm doing the British term where you just

give something a very unserious name for what is just horrible violence. Like the troubles. Yeah. Oh no, Manchester's in low Earth orbit. To get ahead of the weather uh we will never be doing a troubles episode because i would have to break in uh and record it myself because joe won't do it because i'd be very obviously cheering from one side doing a bunch

of bad shit oh do i have some news for you later anyway raids were common uh small scale violence small sale violence was kind of the name of the day. There was only violence. At this point of the history between the colonists and the indigenous people, most interactions were violent. Native people were pushed further and further away from their traditional homes and ways of life, just like the Wabanaki and fishing, but everyone. traditional homes and ways of life, just like the Wabanaki and fishing, but everyone. And despite the claims of legality, a lot of those is done at the

end of the gun because, again, British colonial laws, Calvin Ball stealing up with a gun is fine. Whatever you want. This led to the establishment of a colonial militia system, which was based, as you can imagine, on the armies of Europe. The small problem with this is they're kind of just slapping together armed formations,

literally hundreds of companies of militia, based on what they thought an army should look like. Everyone in it was just a farmer. There's no British military there. Company commanders, these are school teachers, tailors, or just some random guy appointed the position because someone knew his family or money. Maybe he had the most beads. The colonial militias are part of what was called the United Colonies, which rather than an actual political body was at best a kind of a mutual aid defensive pact between the various different colonies. Don't think of them as a country or anything like that. Here's where things get kind of weird. In 1660, the leader of the Wampanoag, which were one of the people that were very, very integral to the survival of the first

British settlers, died. He left tribal leadership to his son, Wham Sutta. Wham Sutta adopted the Christian name Alexander, and his young brother, Metacomet, adopted the name Philip. Now, previously, the colonists had Alexander's father well under their thumb. And, you know, just because the way it is, he realized that, you know, I can't fight these people anymore. They've become too powerful. But Alexander rightfully didn't see any reason as to why he should have to follow the diktats of the Plymouth colony or follow what his dad did. He's like, fuck off. I'm in charge now. I'll do what I want. The colony had banned any commerce between the Wampanoags and the settlers. Clearly, this was to weaken the tribe and make future exploitative pushes much easier because they'd

be weak. And this also made them completely dependent on the colony for any trade there was no free trade you had to go through the colony itself individual people were not allowed to trade with them specifically uh this was to counter an oh okay this is a weird part of history and how outlaw band of settlers by or led by roger williams uh now roger williams hated Puritism hated state religion and pretty much hated the rest of colonies and everything they stood for so he and his outlaw group of Baptists a sentence I never thought I would say they founded Providence yeah they they founded the colony of Rhode Island and Providence plant plantations uh yeah Rhode Island just dropped the name of like a couple years ago 2020 yeah i look it up the official name for the state of rhode island uh was rhode island and providence plantations

until the year 2020 um but it's a different dumb story williams long story short i mean he was as bad as any other colonists generally but he would trade with anybody who showed up in direct confrontation to Plymouth. So after Plymouth learned about this, Major Josiah Winslow, the son of the governor, also named Josiah Winslow because white people only had about 10 different names back then, was sent out to arrest Alexander and his band in 1662. However, they arrested him. I mean, I use the term arrest, but it's more like, hey, we have a meeting in Plymouth, you must come. And he's like, yeah, all right, fine. Somehow between this arrest and his interrogation, Alexander got sick and died. Despite the fact when he left, he was known to be quite young and very healthy.

Now, Philip, his brother, believed the colonists had poisoned him. And this may have been true either on purpose or on accident, because according to the records of a Plymouth doctor, he had been seen and cared for. Alexander had seen that doctor. It's only a 17th century doctor. Yeah, exactly. He was poisoned in one way or another. You got to go see your blood. Let's drink some gin about it.

Yeah, I see you have a fever. Let me punch you in the liver with this knife to get the bad blood out. You have mist disease. You will have explosive testicles. This made Philip the new tribal leader, of course. Philip was around 24 years old,

though nobody's entirely sure. As soon as he took power, the colonists had it out for him. Within a few years, he was almost nearly killed when rumors began to swirl that he was working with the Dutch and the French to eventually plan a war against the British without any evidence. A few years after that, he was accused of the same thing again, but with the Narragansetts. The only evidence we have of the second one is that was known as the Tauntaun Agreement, where Philip admitted that he planned a war and then gave up 70 of his weapons as a fine. Though it's pretty fair to not accept this agreement as anything other than something that was forced on his throat because that's the way things work. If he refused it, I'm sure him and a lot of his people would be shot. refused it, I'm sure him and a lot of his people would be shot. Another part of the

agreement was that Philip was to deliver more guns to the colonists, meaning the colonists were going to facilitate indigenous civil war to get more guns. This is good for two ways for them. The indigenous people would kill one

another, and they would get guns from them, meaning that when it was their turn to kill them, they wouldn't have so many guns. History is fun, right? Of course, Philip didn't do this, which led to a different find. Historians kind of call this point of the coming conflict the Cold War.

Now, like we said, the colonists were paranoid, seeing native uprisings around every corner, which were real or imagined, mostly imagined, and they knew deep in their bones that Philip, that motherfucker, was going to do something. He was going to try something at some point. So they began to stockpile weapons. Philip and his people had very obviously been pushed around constantly for decades and assumed that the colonists were going to come back harder than they ever did before. So they too began to stockpile guns and other tribes are doing this as well. It was under this incredible amount of fear, paranoia, and

tension that someone went and murdered a man named John Sassamon. Now, John was known as a praying Indian. Really don't like saying that term, but it's what they call it. Yep. I know. Just get through it, buddy. Now, a praying Indian is a native person

who adopted Christianity and then attempted to live amongst the settlers under the understanding that since I converted, we were all null equals. And good God, were they wrong. They were all treated like shit. They were all used for menial labor. He had been the colonial side during the Pequot War, gone to Harvard, taught at a school for praying Indian families in Massachusetts. He had also been a counselor for Alexander and Philip. Consider that something of like a

advisor. Though Philip had fired John Sassamon, no longer trusting him due to how close he was with the colonists, which, you know what, probably a good call. There's also a land deal gone wrong where John had tried to rip Philip off for the favor of a settler family. And then afterwards

he moved to Assawampset, which I only put in there because i really like saying assawampset you do you know however uh he kept his contacts within philip's tribe and 1675 he ran into the governor josiah winslow and warned him that the wampanoags were planning a war a few days later someone killed him then hooked his body into a nearby pond funny how that works yeah now another native christian uh praying indian came forward to accuse three members of philip's inner circle a counselor the counselor's son and the third guy of all being involved in killing john all three of these people were of of course, part of Philip's tribe. However, we can consider this largely bullshit as the accused praying Indian who went by the name Patuxent owed a massive gambling debt to the counselor who he accused of murder.

Yeah. This resulted in a murder trial, which by all accounts is a complete and total shit show. And also something I'd really wish I could have seen. Now there was no evidence. The only thing they had was John's body, right? I would like, there's no CSI Plymouth colony here. Like again,

a show I would Netflix. Netflix, call me baby. There's no evidence to say that they killed John. And actually, also, they didn't really have the evidence that they didn't. How do you prove in a place where alibis aren't a thing

that you didn't kill a guy? Did you do it? No. Prove it. Well, I just didn't. But again, none of that matters. For example, the Puritan prosecutor said that when the men approached john's dead body it began bleeding as if it had just been killed of course this is impossible that isn't how dead bodies work um and of course the two of them ended up confessing it was under a massive amount of torture which is completely legal at the time

and in case you ever want to know just how insane any of this is, these are the same fucking people within a couple years would be doing the Salem witch trials. Witch trials, yep. So they're not the fucking brightest goddamn people on earth. Nope. And mind you that they found

the body, I think it was days or weeks after it was dead. So he's certainly not bleeding anymore maybe it's puss is coming out or something i don't fucking know but yeah like look look jebediah the body it is bleeding again they're like no it's not i mean yes yes it is they're witches now they put they put two of them into death by hanging and continued the interrogation of the third. He was a counselor's son who probably not seeing the harm now that his dad was already dead, just blamed his dad for everything and begged for them not to hang him.

And they didn't. They shot him instead. I guess they ran out of rope or something. They used the rest of the rope to hold up their giant potato bag pants or something. Now, this entire process is so fucked up that not only did Philip reject its outcome, so did several other colonies. A Quaker delegation led by John Easton, who has actually wrote a lot about this war, attempted to talk Philip down from what everybody was pretty sure was coming with some form of violent revenge. Nobody was quite sure how.

Philip wasn't planning on anything. We'll talk about them more in the next episode but like it's often framed that philip led this native wide resistance or something and he'd been playing this forever and he absolutely wasn't um now instead of biting and attempting to to engage this delegation philip instead listed off generations of grievances to easton from the colonists fucking over his dad's kindness to driving them from their land and you know murdering his brother and all the land theft now easton said that he was willing to act as a go-between for philip and plymouth uh but the the colonists also had no interest in hashing out the differences as their main hitching point at large was that they didn't agree with philip's right to exist i mean straight up that's all it was you've read that well do it

so with that on june 20th 1675 king philip's war would eventually begin with the raid on swansea massachusetts and that is where we'll pick up next time yeah Yeah, I know that it was a bit dense with colonial politics. It won't be from here on out, but it's all very important to figure out, understand where this is going. I would like to think.

I've been wrong before. We've all been wrong before. That is King Phillips War Part 1. we will continue next week uh everybody thank you so much for listening to the show uh if you if you like what we do here on the show consider donating to the patreon uh you get bonus stuff you get stuff like like episodes like this early get access to the discord and all sorts of other fun things. Or if you don't, that's fine. It's your money. I'm not going to tell you how to spend it.

Leave us a review on whatever your podcast platform is. It helps us more than you know. I mean, we just got nominated for a podcasting award based on those reviews, I assume. So continue leaving us reviews. Are we going to win the award? We have no idea. We'll find out in January.

We're not, dude. Unless we do. Look, if we don't win, I'm going to win the award? We have no idea. We'll find out in January. Unless we do. Look, if we don't win, I'm going to become an election truther, but only that election. Only for us. Only for a meaningless podcast award. Anyway, Liam, plug your show. Yeah, hi. Listen to Well, There's Your Problem

and listen to 10,000 Losses. Listen to the shows. And until next time, everybody wait with bated breath. Narragansett. Everybody wait with bated breath as this episode disappoints Liam's father. I have to disappoint at least one father

because mine is dead. I'm glad it can be yours. Thank you.