All the war's scars have disappeared from the landscape of southern New England, where, more than three centuries ago, the great Wampanoag Indian sachem, or chieftain, King Philip waged a fierce and bitter struggle against the white settlers of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The old fortresses of the colonists–sturdy blockhouses of wood and stone–have all vanished. So too have the signs of Indian villages in what used to be the fertile lands of the great Wampanoag, Narragansett and Mohegan tribes. But near Bristol, Rhode Island, beneath a gray bluff of rocks called Old Mount Hope, where the Sakonnet River flows gently into Narragansett Bay, one can still find a place called King Philip's Seat, a rough pile of boulders that legend says is the spot where the Indian sachem planned the ferocious war of 1675-1676, and where, when all was lost, he returned in great sadness to die.

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It is in the shadowy places like King Philip's Seat and other obscure landmarks that one may feel the ghostly presence of Philip, the Wampanoag warrior sachem who nearly succeeded in driving the English out of New England in a war that inflicted greater casualties in proportion to the population than any other war in American history. Down through the centuries, though, King Philip has not been well remembered. The Puritans scorned him in life and denigrated his memo-ry after his death. In the 18th century, Paul Revere, the famous Revolutionary and self-taught artist, engraved a portrait of Philip that made him look hideous, even comical. Historians of New England have written reams about King Philip's War, but in their descriptions of burning villages, booming muskets and brutal massacres, King Philip the man has been lost.

Lost, too, is the meaning of Philip's unsuccessful attempt to win a lasting victory against his white enemies. What King Philip experienced in his defeat was a pattern that would repeat itself over and over, down through the subsequent centuries, as whites spread their settlements into Indian territory. The pattern itself was insidious. As a first step, whites would invade Indian lands and establish permanent settlements. Later, after a period of trade and friendly exchanges, the Indians came to realize that they were being swindled, usually out of their valuable lands, by the whites. When they resisted, the Indians almost always faced an enemy that outnumbered them and possessed superior weapons and technology. In the end, as the pattern repeated itself, the Indians ultimately faced two untenable choices: extermination or acculturation. In the case of King Philip, he chose to gamble on war–giving his life in the end–rather than acknowledge his white enemy as his master.

Little in his background foretold Philip's later greatness. His life began around 1638 in the Indian village of Sowams, near modern Warren, R.I., and his fellow Wampanoags knew him as Metacom. He was the second son of Massasoit, the principal sachem of the Wampanoags and the same man who had befriended the Pilgrims when they settled at Plymouth in 1620. During the early years of English settlement, Massasoit had worked diligently to maintain the peace with both the Plymouth Separatists and the Massachusetts Bay Puritans.

Keeping the peace between Indians and whites in 17th-century New England was no easy task. The white colonists were hungry for land, and their settlements began to spread quickly throughout the lands of the Wampanoags and other local tribes. Roger Williams, who founded the town of Providence in 1636 after being banished from Massachusetts for arguing, among other things, that Indians should be paid for their land, said that the English suffered from a disease called 'God land–something he likened to God gold among the Spanish. As the years went by, the Wampanoags felt more and more pressure to give up their tribal territory, and Massasoit, wanting to accommodate his white neighbors and reap the trade goods that the settlers often used to pay for lands, sold off increasing amounts of the Indian country. Undoubtedly he understood the awful consequences if he did not comply with English demands for Indian land.

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