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with settlers, attacking settlements in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
The Narragansett tribe originally wanted to remain neutral, but wouldn’t give up Wampanoag, who had taken refuge in their encampment, or turn away women, children and the elderly or infirm from that tribe who came to them seeking shelter from the conflict. As a result, the Puritans attacked the Narragansett stronghold, killing up to 600 Natives and about 150 settlers in the bloody battle and its aftermath.
The conflict further devastated Native populations
What was later known as King Philip’s War ensued, so named after Metacomet’s English moniker. The subsequent conflicts deeply impacted both the Native tribes and the colonies. Wampanoag abducted settlers and held them ransom, while settlers pillaged and destroyed Native villages. Much of the colonies were burned and looted, taking decades to fully recover.
An article in The Historical Journal of Massachusetts says the war could have claimed as many as 30% of the English population and half of the Native Americans then living in what's now New England. The war officially ended when Metacomet was killed, beheaded and dismembered, according to It Happened in Rhode Island. His remaining allies were executed or sold into slavery in the West Indies. The colonists impaled "King Phillip's" head on a spike and displayed it in Plymouth for 25 years, as a macabre effigy to the strife.
Native people never really recovered
Of course, King Phillip's War wasn’t the last, — or only — conflict between
1661 and his son Wamsutta took over, tensions began to simmer. In the years between 1630–1642 alone, about 25,000 European colonizers arrived, while a devastating plague decimated the Native population by more than half. Wamsutta himself died mysteriously in 1662 while visiting the Puritans to talk over gathering unrest between the two groups, Atlas Obscura reports. His successor, Metacomet, only fanned the flames.
Violating a treaty led to bloodshed
In 1675, three Natives were executed after killing a man who had served as a translator to the settlers, which only further engendered distrust between the two groups. Metacomet feared the Natives would lose more land to the new arrivals, and built a coalition of various Native tribes to protect themselves and their resources. By the autumn of 1675, the coalition members began to clash
"The Narragansett tribe originally wanted to remain neutral, but wouldn’t give up Wampanoag, who had taken refuge in their encampment, or turn away women, children, and ...."