"At the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving in 1621, chief among the honored guests was Massasoit, the sachem of the Wampanoag. Half a century later, in 1676, colonial soldiers walked through Plymouth with their horrible spoils of war: the severed head of Massasoit's son, King Philip, on a stake.

Philip had been shot at the end of a bloody two-year conflict which began as a skirmish between the Wampanoag and the English on the frontier of Plymouth colony and ended with many of New England's settlements reduced to ashes. With as many as eight hundred deaths and countless homes destroyed, the English suffered terribly during the war. Nevertheless, the Native Americans suffered even greater losses in their pivotal struggle against the colonists. Devastated by disease and famine, the native peoples of southern New England were violently removed from their ancestral homelands, with thousands slain or sold into slavery.

Three hundred years later, their fight for justice is all but erased from the history books."--BOOK JACKET. "King Philip's War details the history and the lasting legacy of a brutal war that marked a crucial turning point in the battle for control of land in the New World. Both an in-depth history and a guide to the sites where the great ambushes, raids, and full-scale battles took place, it provides insight into a dark and formative period of America's past."--BOOK JACKET.