page_title: King Philip's War
section_title: Failure of diplomacy
hierarchical_section_title: King Philip's War / Historical context / Failure of diplomacy
caption_attribution_description: Picture of King Philip's seat in Bristol Rhode Island on Mount Hope.
context_page_description: King Philip's War was an armed conflict in 1675–1678 between indigenous inhabitants of New England and New England colonists and their indigenous allies. The war is named for Metacomet, the Wampanoag chief who adopted the name Philip because of the friendly relations between his father Massasoit and the Mayflower Pilgrims. The war continued in the most northern reaches of New England until the signing of the Treaty of Casco Bay in April 1678.
  Massasoit had maintained a long-standing alliance with the colonists. Metacom was his younger son, and he became tribal chief in 1662 after Massasoit's death. Metacom, however, forwent his father's alliance between the Wampanoags and the colonists after repeated violations by the colonists. The colonists insisted that the peace agreement in 1671 should include the surrender of Indian guns; then three Wampanoags were hanged in Plymouth Colony in 1675 for the murder of another Wampanoag, which increased the tensions. Indian raiding parties attacked homesteads and villages throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Maine over the next six months, and the Colonial militia retaliated.
context_section_description: Metacomet became sachem of the Pokanoket and Grand Sachem of the Wampanoag Confederacy in 1662 after the death of his older brother Grand Sachem Wamsutta (called "Alexander" by the colonists), who had succeeded their father Massasoit (d. 1661) as chief. Metacomet was well known to the colonists before his ascension as paramount chief to the Wampanoags, but he distrusted the colonists.
  The Plymouth colonists had passed laws making it illegal to have commerce with the Wampanoags. They learned that Wamsutta had sold a parcel of land to Roger Williams, so Governor Josiah Winslow had Wamsutta arrested, even though Wampanoags who lived outside of colonist jurisdiction were not accountable to Plymouth Colony laws. Metacomet began negotiating with the other Algonquian tribes against the Plymouth Colony soon after the death of his father and his brother.
caption: "King Philip's Seat," a meeting place on Mount Hope (Rhode Island)
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