Analysis Of King Phillip's War By Virginia Dejohn Anderson

King Phillip’s War as described by the historian Virginia DeJohn Anderson, was “in proportion to the populations involved, the most destructive war in American history.” If this is indeed the case, understanding the origins of the conflicts that settlers had with colonists can shed some light onto the actual nature of early interactions between Native Americans and English settlers on the coast. According to Anderson’s paper, the primary source of the friction between Natives and Englishmen was related to disputes over livestock. Her argument exposes the injustices that were forced on Native people, the minimal attempts that colonists made to reduce tensions, and the motives that the English had for continually aggravating their neighbors.

She argues that the settlers imposed unfair laws on the natives regarding what they can and cannot do with their livestock. For example, under the guise of reducing the theft of the colonists’ animals, the courts ruled that all English livestock must have their ears marked. At the same time the courts also forbid the Indians from marking the ears of their animals. This created a compound problem, because when the Indians wanted to sell meat in the coastal towns (particularly Boston), they needed to provide the unmarked ears of the animal before the meat could be legally sold. Yet, if they wanted to purchase an animal from the settlers it would already have marked ears and bring unfair suspicion onto the Indian. According to Anderson, “Colonists did not prohibit Indian ownership of swine, but they denied Indians the acknowledged symbols of legitimate possession.” Thus, the Natives were at an inherent disadvantage in the animal husbandry sector when compared to their English

In fact, she notes that cattle trespassing and damaging crops contributed to tensions far more than cultural differences did at the time. The issues stemmed from continued English growth as the Indian claims to land gradually shrunk as a result of declining population and unclear borders with newly settled English towns. The courts did very little to actually tackle the problem, in many cases deferring arbitration to the local selectmen of the nearby towns, in some cases these were the men who own the offending