Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

A good read for sure but the title is a little misleading. This book is centered around two specific events and the transition between the two is rather rough. The first 150 pages are about the Mayflower voyage, the first Puritan settlement in Plymouth, Massachusetts and their symbiotic relationship with the Pokanoket tribe. The focus of the second half of the book is the Puritan vs. Indian conflict known as King Philip’s War. This involves all of New England and happened about 65 years after the Plymouth settlement is established. Frankly, I was a little lost during the transition and it was a hard to follow for a few pages. I think that a more appropriate title would have helped. Something like the “Mayflower and King Phillip’s War” or “The Puritans in the New World 1610-1676” would have been more accurate. The settlement in Plymouth would not have survived the first year if it were not for their relationship with the Pokanoket Indians. The New England tribes were decimated by European diseases which they had no resistance to. Historians surmise that it was the plague that struck them in the first decade of the 17th century. The plague killed up to 90% of the Indians that had inhabited New England. The area where the pilgrims would eventually establish the first settlement of Plymouth had contained thousands of Indians just a few years prior to Mayflower's arrival. When the Pilgrims arrived it was unoccupied. The Pokanoket tribe was hit especially hard by the plague and they were weakened more so than several of the neighboring tribes. These tribes, such as the Narrangasetts, took advantage of their weakened neighbors. The Pokanoket chief, Massasoit, leveraged his relationship with the Pilgrims to survive against the Narrangasetts. The two groups more than co-existed. The two groups had a symbiotic relationship. Unfortunatly, the Pilgrim’s ancestors had forgotten how critical the Pokanokets were to the survival of their forefathers. Subsequent generations of Puritans took advantage of the Indians. This led to a war with the Pokanokets that on a per capita basis was the bloodiest war in the history of North America. The lessons gleaned form the pages of this book have been repeated over and over again throughout history. Bad policy started King Phillip’s war. It could have been easy to avoid. Revenge was taken by the frustrated Puritans who could not catch the warring factions so they conveniently took revenge against praying and neutral tribes. On the other side, allies of Pokanoket sachem King Phillip killed the relatives of Plymouth descendants of whom King Phillip considered friends. The conflict spiraled out of control. The war was not going well for the Puritans until Mayflower descendant Benjamin Church recruited a strike force of Puritans and Indians from friendly tribes. He was able to convince warring Indians to change sides and join Church’s party. Church granted them amnesty and these Indians in-turn taught Church their tactics. They taught the Puritans how to move without being detected and how to avoid ambushes and how to set them. Church and his combined strike force used these tactics to hunt down King Phillip and to end the war. The book gives Benjamin Church his due as one of the first great early American Indian fighters that you never heard of. Like the pilgrims, Church would not have been successful without his reliance on friendly Native Americans. Enjoy the book.