A coalition of English colonists. There was no miscegenation of white and Indian alliances. Also, properties as well as people were fair game, another aspect of the war that heightens the divided nature of cultural attitudes between both peoples. The Indians attacked English farms and towns from Narragansett Bay to the Connecticut River Valley, reflecting, according to Lepore, the different groups' views on house, property, livestock and the overall environment. The Indians favored communal ownership of property, and general use of the land, while the English retained European attitudes that stressed private land ownership and private control of livestock and titles to land tracts and farms. Although these privacy concerns had been at issue before, never had the two sides been so schematically divided. Simmering tensions came to the forefront, and the fighting only ended after Philip was shot, quartered, and beheaded in ritual and retributive fashion in August 1676. The depth of both groups' animosity towards one another may also have been rooted, ironically, in the increasing closeness between the two groups, as well as their contrasts. Many of the English settlers had adopted Native American customs and out of necessity, Native cuisine. Some had even stopped attending their European churches of choice and had married Indians. Some Indians, as a result of trading with Europeans, for wore Western clothes, lived in houses to better shield themselves against harsh winters, incorporated European crops into their own diets and lifestyles, and took an interest in the Christian religion, even going so far as to read the Bible.

With identities thus confused, each side waged a war in terms of the language of 'savages' -- the Indians regarded...

Lepore places such a strong emphasis on words, because she argues that the words used to define the conflict between these increasingly alike peoples, ultimately, when the two groups came into conflict, resulted in a strengthening and a hardening of acrimonious sentiments, ultimately resulting in the new sense of division enmity between Indians and Anglos.
The repercussions of King Phillip's War were long lasting. In fact, in the last chapter of her book, Lepore notes that shows well into nineteenth century the memories of the savageness of this war were instrumental in justifying Indian removals, or the removal of 'savages.' And even in our own century, language has had a critical role in defining a distinct Indian identity. Before the war, Indians could read the Bible and pick and chose what they liked about English Christianity, incorporating certain elements into their own faith structures. In the 20th century, mission schools attempted to eradicate native faiths and native culture in the Indian children, now that Anglos had the power of governance on their side. Thus, Indian attempts to preserve the name of their own identity and redefine it as fiercely as the early settlers once struggled to preserve their Englishness, when they perceived it as becoming attacked from without. The varying guises and names of war and the names of the peoples involved all fueled the hatred of King Phillip's War, according to Lepore -- and fuels wars to this day, in different lands amongst different peoples.

Works Cited

Lepore, Jill. The Name of War. New York: Knopf, 1998.