To elicit the Indigenous point of view from unforgiving sources has represented a key goal of ethnohistorical scholarship for more than sixty years. Lisa Brooks’s inspiring new account of King Philip’s War marks a signal accomplishment of that objective. One might wonder what could be left to say about this much-studied conflict, but Brooks demonstrates that a return to overlooked primary documents, an emphasis on previously neglected personalities, and detailed reconstructions of events-as-lived, all informed by a deep understanding of Indigenous “strategies and logics” (187), can tell us much of value that is new.
Centering her narrative on the life stories of Wampanoag saunskwa (female hereditary leader) Weetamoo and the Nipmuc scholar James Printer, Brooks offers dramatic new insights into Native peoples’ complex motivations for resistance to settler intrusions in 1675, as well as the alliances they constructed to maintain their independence and minimize the impact of the war on...
