Reimaging King Philip's War on Its 350th Anniversary

Please check out the Old Colony Museum's blog on Medium for my newest piece on King Philip's War. Much excellent history has been published since Mike Tougias and I wrote our book in 1999. The image of Metacom has continued to evolve. The 350th commemoration of the War is a good time to "sum up" what's happened in the last generation.

And please be sure to join Pokanoket Tribal Historian Strong Turtle and me "in conversation" at the Old Colony Museum on 8/25 at 6 p.m.

The Beaver Pond: A Poem About King Philip's War

I was surprised and delighted to receive a note from Benjamin Rozonoyer saying that he had been inspired by King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict to write a poem about the war--"Ponder Assawompset"--in his new collection, The Beaver Pond.

Ben grew up in Boston in a family of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. He received a master's in computational linguistics from Brandeis University and is pursuing a PhD in computer science and machine learning at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He lives with his wife and daughter in Colorado, cultivating poems and taking in local landscapes. 

You can purchase a copy of The Beaver Pond from Darkly Bright Press here. 

You may recall that Assawompsett Pond in modern-day Lakeville is where John Sassamon was allegedly murdered in the winter of 1674/5. The trial, a kind of kangaroo court held in Plymouth, was an event that sparked King Philip's War.

Just south of Assawompsett Pond is the Royal Wampanoag Cemetery, a small, beautiful cemetery that is the final resting place for some of Massasoit's descendants.