War and Peace and Early Colonial Newark

Newark was a nervous little town in the early 1670’s. The recent Puritan settlement was on the edge of a vast wilderness populated by Native Americans. While relations with the local tribes had previously been good, it was during this era that the town’s residents heard a thunder in the distance, to the north. At first it was only in the form of rumors and whispers. Visitors spoke of it. Then the news accelerated and eventually overshadowed all of the town’s activities, even religious ones. There was a tribe in New England. It had a bold leader the English called “King Philip.” Philip (or Metacom) wasn’t like the timid Indian peacemakers and land-sellers who had come before. Philip, his Wampanoag tribal army and their numerous allies had had enough. They were tired of the constant economic and cultural pressure from the English colonizers. Philip and his supporters, the news went, were going to push the English out of New England, and perhaps, North America altogether. Finally. Systematically. Forever.

This was an age of slow moving news. In the early 1670’s England’s colonies in America were still new; some were not yet even established (Georgia wouldn’t come along until the early 1700’s). The colonies rarely coordinated with each other, as they were constantly squabbling over boundaries, fishing rights and religious doctrine. English Puritans were killing English Quakers in Massachusetts. Almost all long-distant trade and communication went through distant London.

The town of Newark itself was barely scratching an existence out of the woods of Northern New Jersey. Zealously Puritan, the residents constantly obsessed over whether or not they were one of “God’s Elect,” and just where in the Jersey woods Satan and his disciples where scheming for the End of Days. As much as we may cherish our so-called “Noble Puritan forbearers” every Thanksgiving, it would be more accurate to see these people as a paranoid religious sect, intolerant and inward looking. “Paranoia is something that Americans try to avoid these days, or at least, are embarrassed by,” I tell my Arts High students. “But history tells us that on very limited occasions, unfortunately, it’s entirely justified.” In the early 1670s, Newark’s already paranoid Puritans had every reason to embrace their inner anxiety, because the Northeastern colonies were on the verge of the costliest, most blatantly genocidal war in American history. “It was,” I inform my students, “the most important American war that you’ve never heard of…until now.”

Unlike Indian battles later in American history, King Philip’s War was just that, a war. It was a close thing, because Philip and his allies almost won. Had he not committed several strategic errors, and experienced more diplomatic success, the English might have been obliterated on the North American Continent in the 1670’s.

Newark’s Puritans were English, but most of them had previously lived in Connecticut and Southeastern Massachusetts. For them, this was personal, a conflict involving family and friends. And it was there, in southern New England, that the war raged from the early 1670’s until Philip’s death in battle in 1676.

By the mid 1670’s Newark knew that this conflict was a huge one, and it was growing in scope. As city’s residents haphazardly built fortifications near what is now Broad and Market Streets, the town government had ordered all able-bodied men to carry firearms. As the bad news continued to pour in, a rotating portion of the male population stood as armed sentries on a 24-hour basis.

How bad was the news? In 1674 and 1675, Philip and his allied forces (he was more of a commander of consolidated forces than an actual “king”) had attacked and destroyed town after town in New England. Philip’s armies had nearly driven the English out of western Massachusetts and parts of Connecticut altogether. Both sides fought with absolute ferocity with little care for civilian life. Prisoners of war, women and children were routinely killed. Towns were burned to the ground. When the English captured Philip’s family after one battle, they immediately sold his wife and son into horrific Caribbean slavery. At one point, Philip’s forces were approaching and attacking at the outskirts of Boston and Plymouth, Massachusetts – the core of Puritan America.

Observing from a not-so-comfortable distance, Newark’s Puritans could only wait and hope that the local Native tribes – especially the Hackensack – would not side with Philip. They never did, though had Philip convinced the Mohawks in nearby New York to join him, the situation might have turned out differently.

Several prominent town residents and leaders were personally involved in the conflict. Robert Treat, who was one of Newark’s founders and its first urban planner, fought Philip’s forces at the Battle of Bloody Brook. Some sources recall that at one point, a bullet pierced his hat, narrowly missing his valuable head.

The English cause foundered until 1676. With new reinforcements, and the formidable New York Mohawks joining the English side, Philip’s tribal allies deserted him as his troops starved. In August, in Rhode Island, English troops tracked and then ambushed him and some defenders. Philip was then shot to death, not by an English solider or a Puritan townsman, but by a fellow Native American allied with England. To celebrate their triumph over the Indian leader, the civilized English promptly hacked up Philip’s body and sent his head to Plymouth. There, near the town’s central square, his intact, rotting skull was placed on a pike. For the next 25 years, it would remain as a grisly warning for all visiting Native American leaders.

With Philip’s defeat and death, his alliance and forces disintegrated. Some scholarly sources claim that over 4,000 were killed in the war, which proportionally was as large or larger, percentage-wise, of the American population killed in the Civil War.

Never again would an Indian War threaten English, and later, American civilization in the New World. Newark’s Puritans breathed a sigh of relief as well, grateful that their town was not one of those decimated. The city would now expand outward and westward, and “purchase” Indian land, without incident. But more importantly, Philip’s downfall sent a message to Native American tribes up and down the eastern seaboard. It was clear: if the English want your land (and they do), sell it to them, before you find your children sold into slavery and certain death, and your personal remains looking over a Puritan town.