Memory Lands: King Philip's 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

“This book moves back and forth across time and place in order to weave together a dense and wide-ranging reconstruction of [King Philip’s War] and its many continuing consequences.”—Annette Kolodny, Native American and Indigenous Studies

“Sure to fascinate readers interested in the long reach of colonial memory and how the past is remembered.”—Publishers Weekly

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.