Memory Lands ─ King Philip War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast

A powerful study of King Philip’s War and its enduring effects on histories, memories, and places in Native New England from 1675 to the present

Noted historian Christine DeLucia offers a major reconsideration of the violent seventeenth-century conflict in northeastern America known as “King Philip’s War,” providing an alternative to “Pilgrim-centric” narratives that have conventionally dominated the histories of colonial New England. DeLucia grounds her study of one of the most devastating conflicts between Native Americans and European settlers in early America in five specific places that were directly affected by the crisis, spanning the Northeast as well as the Atlantic World. She examines the war’s effects on the everyday lives and collective mentalities of the region’s diverse Native and Euro-American communities over the course of several centuries, focusing on persistent struggles over land and water, sovereignty, resistance, cultural memory, and intercultural interactions. An enlightening work that draws from oral traditions, archival traces, material and visual culture, archaeology, literature, and environmental studies, this study reassesses the nature and enduring legacies of a watershed historical event.

Christine M. DeLucia is assistant professor of history at Mount Holyoke College. She grew up in Amoskeag/Manchester, New Hampshire, and presently lives in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in the heart of the Kwinitekw/Connecticut River Valley.