Easton: discovery, the ferry conference and its failureJohn Easton · February 5, 1676
The 1675 prisoners: López Sambrano through Hackett's summaryDiego López Sambrano; account summarized by Charles Wilson Hackett · December 22, 1681
II · The Ferry January–June 1675
Plymouth court: Sassamon verdict, jurors and executionsPlymouth Colony court, as entered in the colony records · June 1675
Swansea: It was no matter, in Easton's reported accountJohn Easton, reporting an unnamed English lad · June 1675
III · Choosing Sides 1675–1676 · westward interlude, 1679–1680
An Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians in New EnglandDaniel Gookin · 1677
Rowlandson recalls Lancaster and the garrison houseMary Rowlandson · 1682, recalling 10 February 1675/76
Sarah dies on 18 FebruaryMary Rowlandson · 1682, recalling 18 February 1675/76
The Mohawk attack on Metacom’s winter refugeBenjamin Church, recorded and edited by Thomas Church · 1716
The Soveraignty & Goodness of God, Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises DisplayedMary Rowlandson · 1682
Weetamoo as described by her captiveMary Rowlandson · 1682, recalling spring 1676
The other mother’s child, and Rowlandson’s distanceMary Rowlandson · 1682, recalling spring 1676
Awashonks’s people negotiate survival and protection from transportationBenjamin Church, recorded and edited by Thomas Church · 1716
Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s WarBenjamin Church · 1716
King Philip’s War: destruction and disputed totalsOur historical synthesis; sources identified below
Easton reports the sale of surrendering Native peopleJohn Easton · February 1676, modern year
Cotton reports the intended sale of Metacom’s sonJohn Cotton Jr., to Increase Mather · March 20, 1677
The Declaration of the People (Bacon's Declaration in the Name of the People)Nathaniel Bacon · July 30, 1676
IV · Two Knots Left 1668–1681
The two Tesuque youths and the two knotsAntonio de Otermín’s administration; Nicolás Catua and Pedro Omtua through interpreter Agustín Griego; attested by Francisco Xavier · August 9, 1680
The cord’s reach, smoke signals and the excluded PiroJuan of Tesuque and Pedro Naranjo, separately examined by Spanish officials · December 18–19, 1681
Bernal’s report of the 1668 famineFray Juan Bernal, commissary of the Holy Office in New Mexico · April 1, 1669
Pueblo grievances and the cost of colonial ruleOur historical synthesis; sources identified below
Pedro Naranjo describes the cord and the accelerated risingPedro Naranjo of San Felipe, recorded by Spanish officials · December 19, 1681
Colonial reports of deaths and the forty-seven executionsOtermín’s administration; Santa Fe cabildo; royal fiscal Martín de Solís de Miranda · August 20–October 12, 1680
Juan’s two crosses in the formal siege recordAntonio de Otermín’s administration; attested by Francisco Xavier · August 13–20, 1680
The water is cut and the governor chooses a breakoutAntonio de Otermín’s administration; attested by Francisco Xavier · August 20–21, 1680
Otermín describes leaving Santa FeAntonio de Otermín · September 8, 1680
V · Opposite Endings 1676–1704
Josephe names the secretary who records his answerJosephe; recorded and attested by Francisco Xavier; English translation by Charmion Clair Shelby · December 19, 1681
Population comparisons: dates, boundaries, and missing peopleU.S. Bureau of the Census; Francisco de Ayeta; Charles Wilson Hackett; Canadian census officials · 1670–1681
Native alliances and the breakdown of the Narragansett peaceWilliam Hubbard; Benjamin and Thomas Church provide the companion accounts · 1677
Declaration of Pedro Naranjo of the Queres NationPedro Naranjo, recorded by Spanish officials · December 19, 1681
Vargas’s two returns and Juan de Ye’s Pecos allianceDiego de Vargas; edited and contextualized by John L. Kessell and J. Manuel Espinosa · 1692–1693
What changed after reconquest—and what did notJohn L. Kessell; Ramón A. Gutiérrez; Santa Cruz petitioners, 1696 · 1693–early eighteenth century
San Ildefonso asks for its land to be measured without injurySan Ildefonso Pueblo, through protector Alfonso Rael de Aguilar · September 28, 1704
VI · The Other Answers 1640s–1742
Kondiaronk’s last effort for the Montreal peaceOur historical synthesis; sources identified below
The Great Peace of MontrealGovernor Louis-Hector de Callière and delegates of about forty nations · August 4, 1701
Albany and Montreal: two diplomatic agreements in one summerFive Nations sachems and John Nanfan; delegates and Louis-Hector de Callière; our comparison · Summer 1701
Penn’s Treaty with the IndiansBenjamin West, commissioned by Thomas Penn · 1771–72
Deed of Confirmation from Monockyhickan, Lappawinzoe, Tisheekunk and Nutimus to John, Thomas and Richard PennLenape leaders Monockyhickan, Lappawinzoe, Tisheekunk (Tishcohan) and Nutimus · August 25, 1737
Why the alleged1686 deed is doubtfulOur historical synthesis; sources identified below
Joseph Knowles remembers the Lenape protest at the Walking PurchaseJoseph Knowles; printed by Charles Thomson · 1737 · recalled in 1757
The Walking Purchase: pace, preparation and the return boundaryCharles Thomson, using accounts by Thomas Furniss and Joseph Knowles; our comparison · 1737 events
The Treaty Held with the Indians of the Six Nations, at Philadelphia, in July, 1742Canasatego, Onondaga speaker; interpreter Conrad Weiser · July 12, 1742
VII · Still Here present day
Hemish People Remain Rooted: the 1980 Taos-to-Hopi runPueblo of Jemez, The Walatowan · 1980 · recalled by the Pueblo of Jemez
Wampanoag History: a living community’s accountWampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) · consulted 4 October 2026
Exam Room only
Deed from the Five Nations to the King of their Beaver Hunting GroundSachems of the Five Nations, to Lieutenant Governor John Nanfan · July 19, 1701
Minutes of Conferences, held with the Indians, at Easton (Teedyuscung, November 13, 1756)Teedyuscung, as recorded in the province’s minutes · November 13, 1756
Annawon offers Philip’s belt, in Church’s later recollectionAnnawon, as reported by Benjamin and Thomas Church · 1716
Easton asks for peace on honest termsJohn Easton · February 5, 1676
Rowlandson remembers her sleepless nightsMary Rowlandson · 1682
Juan de Ye offers to summon Pecos warriorsJohn L. Kessell, reporting Juan de Ye’s offer in his account of Vargas’s campaign · December 1693
Background
Histoire de l’Amérique septentrionale, vol. 4 (Kondiaronk’s speech and funeral), as told in the Dictionary of Canadian BiographyBacqueville de La Potherie; English by William N. Fenton · 1722
Metacom's livelihood reply, adapted from EastonJohn Easton; our adaptation of the council's reported words · June 1675
The Ferry: performed adaptations of Easton's reportJohn Easton; our adaptation of his reported exchange · June 1675
Taos, 1677: an imagined ordinary exteriorOur reconstruction; context from Pedro Naranjo's 1681 declaration · 1677
The shirt’s payment belongs to the captiveMary Rowlandson · 1682, recalling spring 1676
Weetamoo’s attempted crossing and the captives at TauntonWilliam Hubbard · 1677, reporting early August 1676
Otermín admits that the warning was not fully believedAntonio de Otermín · September 8, 1680
Pedro Hidalgo reports Fray Juan Pío’s appeal at TesuquePedro Hidalgo, recorded by Otermín’s administration · August 10, 1680
The Lorenzo brothers describe their brother’s refusalJuan Lorenzo and Francisco Lorenzo, recorded by Spanish officials · December 20, 1681
Otermín’s question, offer of pardon and ultimatumAntonio de Otermín, reporting his exchange with Juan · September 8, 1680
Juan demands his family and other captivesJuan el Tano, as reported by Antonio de Otermín · September 8, 1680
Four editions of Rowlandson’s narrative in its first yearKathryn Zabelle Derounian · 1988
Juan de Ye and a Plains Apache captain ask to return to plantingJohn L. Kessell, reporting the two leaders’ appeal to Diego de Vargas · May 1694
Aouenano mourns Kondiaronk: La Potherie’s reported speechAouenano, as reported in French by Bacqueville de La Potherie; our working English translation · Montreal · August 1701
Still Here: present-day painted reconstructionOur writers · Present day · authored 2026
Rowlandson describes the wound to herself and SarahMary Rowlandson · 1682, recalling 10 February 1675/76
I · 1675
1675
Eyewitness account, written afterward
Easton: discovery, the ferry conference and its failure
John Easton · February 5, 1676
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: I · 1675; II · The Ferry
[Original-spelling selections; ellipses mark omissions, bracketed headings are editorial.] [Discovery, pp. 1–3] In the Winter in the Year 1674, an Indian was found dead, and by a Coroner's Inquest of Plimouth Colony iudged murdered. He was found dead in a Hole thro Ice broken in a Pond with his Gun and sum Foulls by him. Sum English suposed him thrown in, sum Indians yt I iudged intelegabell and impartiall in ye Case did think he fell in and was so drouned … The dead Indian was caled Sansimun and a Christian yt could read and write. [Mutual fear, pp. 5–6] So the English wear afraid and Philip was afraid, and both incresed in Arems. [Meeting, p. 7] came himself unarmed, and about 40 of his Men armed. Then 5 of us went over, 3 wear Magistrates. We sate veri friendly together. [Arbitrators and arms, pp. 8–9] They said that all English agreed against them, and so by Arbitration they had had much Rong; mani Miles square of Land so taken from them, for English wold have English Arbitrators; and once they were persuaded to give in their Armes … the English having their Arms wold not deliver them as they had promised, untill they consented to pay a 100 L … thay wear as good be kiled as leave all ther Liueflyhode. [Proposal and answer, pp. 9–10] We said they might chuse a Indian King and the English might chuse the Governor of New Yorke … They said they had not heard of yt Way, and said we onestly spoke, so we wear perswaided if yt Way had bine tendered they would have acsepted. [Hearing, pp. 11–12] But Philip charged it to be disonestly in us to put of the Hering to iust Complaints, therefore we consented to hear them. Thay said thay had bine the first in doing Good to the English, and the English the first in doing Rong. [Testimony, p. 13] And another Greavance was, if 20 of there onest Indian testfieid that a Englishman had dun them Rong, it was as nothing; and if but one of their worst Indians testified against any Indian or ther King, when it pleased the English it was sufitiant. [Land, pp. 13–14] Another Grievance was, when their King sold Land, the English wold say, it was more than they agreed to, and a Writing must be prove against all them, and sum of their Kings had dun Rong to sell so much. He left his Peopell none, and sum being given to Drunknes the English made them drunk and then cheated them in Bargains. [Cattle, pp. 14–15] Another Grievance, the English Catell and Horses still incresed; that when thay removed 30 Mill from where English had ani thing to do, thay could not kepe ther Corn from being spoyled, thay never being iused to fence, and thoft when the English boft Land of them thay wold have kept their Catell upon ther owne Land. [Warning, departure and outcome, pp. 15–16] We indevered yt however thay should lay doune the War, for the English wear to strong for them; thay said, then the English should do to them as they did when thay wear to strong for the English. So we departed without ani Discurtiousness, and sudingly had Letter from Plimoth Governor thay intended in arms to conforem Philip … and in a Weke's Time after we had bine with the Indians the War thus begun. [Editorial note] Superscript manuscript contractions are represented inline as yt/ye. The transcription marks a correction after Indian in the testimony sentence. The numeral in the delegation has also been read as fifty: the image's five is a reconstruction, not a settled count. Easton's hanging story differs from the court record, which records two hangings and the third man's shooting. Easton does not record a shell-string transaction; the scene's wampum is expressly staged. His belief that an offered hearing might have been accepted is an inference, not an achieved arbitration.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A Rhode Island delegation met Metacom and his council shortly before war began in June 1675. Easton dated his later narrative 5:12 m:1675, or 5 February 1676 in the modern year.
Intended audience
Colonial readers and officials judging the origins and conduct of the war.
Purpose
To explain grievances, defend Rhode Island mediation and criticize the conduct of other English colonies.
Point of view
A Quaker deputy governor who attended this meeting, but wrote afterward. Most Wampanoag speech is collective indirect report in his English, not a transcript in the original language. His account of the Sassamon proceedings was not eyewitness trial testimony.
John Easton, A Relation of the Indyan Warr (dated 5 February 1676, modern year), original-spelling text in Easton's Relation of the Causes of King Philip's War (New York: Grafton Press, 1906), reprinting the Hough edition; pp. 1–17. Page numbers refer to this reprint, not Lincoln 1913.
[Editorial summary, not a quotation from the witness] Hackett describes forty-seven arrested religious leaders, three hangings and severe punishment of the others; he identifies Po'pay among the prisoners and says Tewa warriors effectively demanded their release. The excerpt above is Hackett’s sentence, not López Sambrano’s own wording. The fourth condemned man’s suicide is also supported by John L. Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown (National Park Service, 1979), chapter 5, Witchcraft Trials of 1675, citing H&S II:285–303, 305–318: https://www.npshistory.com/publications/kessell/kiva-cross-crown/chap5.htm . Treviño released prisoners after armed men came to demand it. The pictured release is reconstructed.
Sourcing
Historical situation
During Otermín's attempted reconquest, officials collected retrospective accounts of earlier tensions. López Sambrano's declaration recalls repression under Treviño and the demand for the prisoners' release in 1675.
Intended audience
Otermín and Spanish colonial authorities; later readers of Hackett's edition.
Purpose
To explain disturbances preceding the loss of New Mexico.
Point of view
A Spanish participant’s retrospective colonial testimony, not a Pueblo voice or contemporaneous arrest list. The excerpt is Hackett’s editorial sentence rather than a quotation from López Sambrano’s declaration.
Diego López Sambrano, declaration, Hacienda of Luis de Carbajal, 22 December 1681, in Hackett and Shelby, Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico (1942), vol. II, pp. 292–303, release discussion referenced at p. 301. Consulted text: vol. I, introduction, p. xxii and nn. 7–9, summarizing the episode and citing that declaration; parallel summary in Hackett, Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 15 (1911), pp. 98–99. This summary relies on those editorial accounts of the declaration.
Plymouth court: Sassamon verdict, jurors and executions
Plymouth Colony court, as entered in the colony records · June 1675
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: II · The Ferry
[Spelling modernized by the linked teaching transcription.] We, of the jury, one and all, both English and Indians, do jointly and with one consent agree upon a verdict: that Tobias, and his son Wampaquan, and Mattushunnamo, the Indians, who are the prisoners, are guilty of the blood of John Sassamon, and were the murderers of him, according to this bill of indictment. … was executed, the 8th of June, 1675, on the said Tobias and Mattashunannamo; but the said Wampapaquan, on some considerations, was reprieved until a month be expired from this present date; But afterwards shot to death within the said month. … some of the most indifferent, gravest, and sage Indians should be admitted to be with said jury, and to help to consult and advice with, of, and concerning the premises. … these fully concurred with the above written jury in their verdict. [Historical context] The third execution’s exact day is unspecified; the record does not establish that it preceded the ferry conference.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Trial of Tobias, Wampapaquan and Mattashunannamo for Sassamon's death. The indictment alleged a killing on 29 January 1674/75; that date is not itself the discovery date.
Intended audience
The colonial court and the officials maintaining its legal record.
Purpose
To record the indictment, verdict, sentence, execution and composition of the jury.
Point of view
The colonial government records its own prosecution and jurisdiction. Twelve English jurors were joined by six Native men admitted to consult and advise, who concurred. Their concurrence does not establish equal institutional power. The record contains no bleeding-body claim.
Nathaniel B. Shurtleff and David Pulsifer, eds., Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, vol. V, Court Orders 1668–1678, pp. 167–168; AMS Press reprint (1968), reproduced with a modernized transcription in the University of Arizona teaching edition.
Swansea: It was no matter, in Easton's reported account
John Easton, reporting an unnamed English lad · June 1675
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: II · The Ferry
[Original-spelling report.] It is reported yt sum Indians came to the Gareson, asked why they shot the Indian. Thay asked whether he was dead. The Indians said yea. A English Lad saied it was no Mater. The Men indevered to inform them it was but an idell Lad's Words, but the Indians in haste went away and did not hearken to them. The next Day, the Lad that shot the Indian, and his Father, and fief English Men wear killed so the War begun with Philip. [Our adaptation] It was no matter. [Limit] These are Easton's reports and counts, not the only account of the outbreak.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Easton places the exchange after an English shooting and before the killings with which he describes the beginning of war, about a week after the ferry meeting.
Intended audience
Readers judging the origins and conduct of the war.
Purpose
To explain how violence, careless speech and mistrust helped turn a quarrel into war.
Point of view
Easton explicitly says It is reported. We modernize and directly perform his indirect report. No named speaker or exact age survives. Easton does not identify the lad making the remark as the lad who fired the shot.
John Easton, A Relation of the Indyan Warr (dated 5 February 1676, modern year), original-spelling text in Easton's Relation of the Causes of King Philip's War (New York: Grafton Press, 1906), reprinting the Hough edition; pp. 1–17. Page numbers refer to this reprint, not Lincoln 1913. Swansea passage pp. 16–17. On p. 17, Easton reports the shooter, his father and five others killed, then “so the War begun with Philip.” The English lad saying “no matter” is not identified as the original shooter. This remains Easton’s reported explanation.
… Christian Indians confined to Deer Island, who were (a little before) increased to be about five hundred souls … they lived chiefly upon clams and shell-fish, that they digged out of the sand, at low water; the Island was bleak and cold, their wigwams poor and mean, their clothes few and thin
Sourcing
Historical situation
Written in 1677 by the Massachusetts official who oversaw ‘praying Indians’. Boston authorities had sent about 500 of them to Deer Island in the harbor in the fall of 1675.
Intended audience
Massachusetts magistrates and other colonists, who had accepted or ignored the removal.
Purpose
To defend the Christian Indians’ loyalty and record how much they suffered.
Point of view
Gookin was a friend of the mission and lost political standing for defending it. He describes the camp from what he saw and heard.
Daniel Gookin, An Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England (written 1677), Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1836), p. 485.
Captivity narrative · year omitted in spoken excerpt
Rowlandson recalls Lancaster and the garrison house
Mary Rowlandson · 1682, recalling 10 February 1675/76
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: III · Choosing Sides
ON the tenth of February 1675. Came the Indians with great numbers upon Lancaster. … Of thirty seven persons who were in this one House, none escaped either present death, or a bitter captivity, save only one.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Rowlandson was captured at Lancaster in February 1676 and published her account in 1682. The book uses the English Old Style year, which began on 25 March.
Intended audience
Her family, Puritan readers in New England and readers of the later London editions.
Purpose
To interpret survival and release as divine providence and a test of faith.
Point of view
A captive and bereaved mother, also a minister’s wife writing with hostility toward her captors. Her record cannot supply Weetamoo’s own thoughts.
Mary Rowlandson, The Soveraignty & Goodness of God, second Addition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Samuel Green, 1682), pp. 1, 4; Evans 332; Evans-TCP N00261.0001.001. February’s 1675 becomes 1676 under January-based year numbering; this changes the year label, not the Julian calendar day to a Gregorian date. The separate 37-person passage is unchanged.
Mary Rowlandson · 1682, recalling 18 February 1675/76
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: III · Choosing Sides
my sweet Babe, like a Lambe departed this life, on Feb. 18. 1675. It being about six yeares, and five months old.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Rowlandson was captured at Lancaster in February 1676 and published her account in 1682. The book uses the English Old Style year, which began on 25 March.
Intended audience
Her family, Puritan readers in New England and readers of the later London editions.
Purpose
To interpret survival and release as divine providence and a test of faith.
Point of view
A captive and bereaved mother, also a minister’s wife writing with hostility toward her captors. Her record cannot supply Weetamoo’s own thoughts.
Rowlandson, The Soveraignty & Goodness of God (Samuel Green, 1682), Third Remove, p. 11; Evans-TCP N00261.0001.001. Lambe/yeares and capitalization modernized. Her “nine dayes” counts the day of the attack: eight days elapsed between 10 and 18 February.
King Philip (as was before hinted) was fled to a place called Scattacook, between York and Albany, where the Moobags made a descent upon him & killed many of his men, which moved him from thence.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A military memoir published forty years after the war and reprinted in 1772.
Intended audience
New England readers and Church’s descendants.
Purpose
To recount and celebrate Church’s campaigns, including the importance of Native participation.
Point of view
A colonial officer’s retrospective account, edited by his son; geography, dates and reported motives require corroboration. The reprint glosses Moobags as Mohawks.
Benjamin and Thomas Church, The Entertaining History of King Philip’s War (Boston, 1716; Newport: Solomon Southwick, 1772), p. 32; Evans-TCP N09706.0001.001, digital transcription. Corroborating context for the narrator: Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican Tribe, King Philips War Statement—Battlefield Grant2015, p.2, describes Philip seeking Mohican recruits and supplies at Schaghticoke and Andros working with Mohawks against him: https://montague-ma.gov/files/Stockbridge_Tribal_Statement.pdf . This tribal historical statement supplies context, not a seventeenth-century verbatim quote or an exact attack date.
The Soveraignty & Goodness of God, Together with the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed
Mary Rowlandson · 1682
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: III · Choosing Sides
During my abode in this place, Philip spake to me to make a shirt for his boy, which I did, for which he gave me a shilling.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Published in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1682, six years after Rowlandson’s eleven weeks of captivity during King Philip’s War, in February–May 1676.
Intended audience
Puritan readers in New England, and later readers in London, who wanted a story of suffering and rescue.
Purpose
To give thanks to God for her rescue and to read her captivity as a test of faith.
Point of view
Rowlandson was a minister’s wife whose town of Lancaster had been burned. She wrote as a survivor and as a Puritan, and her account still records ordinary dealings with Metacom (Philip).
Mary Rowlandson, The Soveraignty & Goodness of God (Cambridge, MA: Samuel Green, 1682), p. 25.
A severe and proud Dame she was, bestowing every day in dressing her self neat as much time as any of the Gentry of the land.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Rowlandson was captured at Lancaster in February 1676 and published her account in 1682. The book uses the English Old Style year, which began on 25 March.
Intended audience
Her family, Puritan readers in New England and readers of the later London editions.
Purpose
To interpret survival and release as divine providence and a test of faith.
Point of view
A captive and bereaved mother, also a minister’s wife writing with hostility toward her captors. Her record cannot supply Weetamoo’s own thoughts.
Rowlandson, The Soveraignty & Goodness of God (Samuel Green, 1682), Nineteenth Remove, pp. 47–48; Evans-TCP N00261.0001.001. In the 1682 edition, “A severe and proud Dame she was” ends page 47; “bestowing” begins page 48. “Her self” joined and capitalization/punctuation modernized. We identify this as the captive’s judgment of Weetamoo, not an omniscient description or the only surviving source about her.
The other mother’s child, and Rowlandson’s distance
Mary Rowlandson · 1682, recalling spring 1676
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: III · Choosing Sides
my Mistrisses Papoos was sick, and it died that night, and there was one benefit in it, that there was more room. … [1720 reprint, Thirteenth Remove p. 45:] though I confess I could not much condole with them. … [1682, p. 47:] Another was Wettimore, with whom I had lived and served all this while.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Rowlandson was captured at Lancaster in February 1676 and published her account in 1682. The book uses the English Old Style year, which began on 25 March.
Intended audience
Her family, Puritan readers in New England and readers of the later London editions.
Purpose
To interpret survival and release as divine providence and a test of faith.
Point of view
A captive and bereaved mother, also a minister’s wife writing with hostility toward her captors. Her record cannot supply Weetamoo’s own thoughts.
Rowlandson, The Soveraignty & Goodness of God (Samuel Green, 1682), Thirteenth Remove p. 39 and Nineteenth Remove p. 47; Evans-TCP N00261.0001.001. No exact date is recoverable for this death.
Awashonks’s people negotiate survival and protection from transportation
Benjamin Church, recorded and edited by Thomas Church · 1716
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: III · Choosing Sides
if the Government of Plymouth would firmly engage to them, that they, and all of them, and their wives and children, should have their lives spared, and none of them transported out of the country, they would subject themselves to them, and serve them in what they were able.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Church’s memoir, first printed in 1716, recounts the final summer of the war in southern New England, forty years earlier.
Intended audience
New England readers and Church’s descendants.
Purpose
To celebrate and defend Church’s conduct and his reliance on Native soldiers and negotiated submissions.
Point of view
Church was a participant, but the text is an elderly officer’s recollection edited by his son Thomas. Native speech and motives reach us through their English account.
Benjamin and Thomas Church, The Entertaining History of King Philip’s War (1716; Newport: Solomon Southwick, 1772), pp. 40–42, terms on p. 41; Evans-TCP N09706.0001.001. The terms are narrated in indirect speech, not assigned as a fabricated Awashonks quotation. Church acknowledges that he himself lacks authority to conclude a peace; subsequent service does not prove every promise was kept.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: III · Choosing Sides
[A memoir by the Plymouth militia captain who led the English company that hunted Metacom (Philip) down. It credits the shot that killed Metacom on August 12, 1676 to a Native man in Church’s company named Alderman.]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Written by Church in old age and published in Boston in 1716, forty years after the war.
Intended audience
New England readers who wanted the story of the war’s last months.
Purpose
To defend and celebrate Church’s own campaign, which used Native scouts and prisoners against Metacom’s people.
Point of view
Church was the captain of the company and his son edited the book. He praises himself, and he names the man who shot Metacom.
Benjamin Church, Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War (Boston: B. Green, 1716); Henry Martyn Dexter, ed., The History of King Philip’s War (Boston, 1865).
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: III · Choosing Sides
[Historical synthesis, not a quotation: more than half of roughly ninety colonial towns were attacked and about twelve destroyed. A familiar estimate is around six hundred English deaths and three thousand Native deaths. Neither total is exact.]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Later study of seventeenth-century colonial conflict and diplomacy.
Intended audience
Students and readers of history.
Purpose
Explain scale and context while distinguishing estimates and reported evidence from exact accounting.
Point of view
Historical synthesis.
Town-count convention: Jill Lepore, The Name of War, cited here indirectly; corroborating account in James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me, chapter 4, university-hosted excerpt, https://archives.njit.edu/vhlib/ereserves/2008fall-xxx/Loewen-Chapter%204-2008.pdf. Mortality convention: PBS American Experience, The Pilgrims, program account carried by KPBS, 20 November 2015 (later updated), gives more than 600 colonists and at least 3,000 Native people. We round these figures and label them estimates. Totals differ across scholarship, definitions and geographic scope. No percentage comparison is made; an exact supporting page in Lepore is not supplied here.
Easton reports the sale of surrendering Native people
John Easton · February 1676, modern year
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: III · Choosing Sides
Philip being flead, about a 150 Indians came in to a Plimouth Garrison volentarley. Plimouth Authority sould all for Slafes (but about six of them) to be carried out of the Country.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Easton wrote during the war, recounting the sale abroad of Native people who had surrendered.
Intended audience
Colonial officials and readers weighing how the war was being conducted.
Purpose
Criticize colonial mistreatment and argue for peace on honest terms.
Point of view
A Rhode Island Quaker official critical of Plymouth. This reported episode does not supply a complete count of all captives.
John Easton, A Relation of the Indyan Warr, original-spelling transcription of Easton’s Relation of the Causes of King Philip’s War (Grafton Press,1906), pp. 21–22. University of Chicago primary transcription opened4 October 2026. Easton criticizes colonial conduct; his report supports enslavement abroad, not an exact total of all captives. No reenacted sale or invented victim’s words.
John Cotton Jr., to Increase Mather · March 20, 1677
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: III · Choosing Sides
Spoken: Philip's boy goes now to be sold. Only possessive punctuation and the terminal colon are modernized. The letter gives no age, destination, buyer or later life. It does not itself establish the sale of Metacom’s wife. The small shirt in the painting recalls Rowlandson’s account; it is not an authenticated artifact owned by Cotton. The separate sentence about Metacom’s displayed head rests on the already cited Church/Mather accounts, not this letter.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Metacom was dead; his son had been taken prisoner. Cotton added this sentence among routine local news in a letter to a fellow minister.
Intended audience
Increase Mather in Boston.
Purpose
To pass on news, including that the boy was now to be sold.
Point of view
A Plymouth minister close to colonial leaders; the matter-of-fact placement makes the planned sale chillingly ordinary.
John Cotton to Increase Mather, 19–20 March 1677, Mather Papers 1:52, Prince Library, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Boston Public Library; transcription in Colonial Society of Massachusetts, The Correspondence of John Cotton Jr., chapter 4, “To Increase Mather, 19 & 20 March 1677,” postscript dated March 20.
For having protected, favored, and emboldened the Indians against his Majesty's loyal subjects, never contriving, requiring, or appointing any due or proper means of satisfaction for their many invasions, robberies, and murders committed upon us.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Issued during Bacon's rebellion against Governor William Berkeley, after Bacon's raids on Native towns and the June standoff at Jamestown.
Intended audience
Virginia's colonists and the Crown.
Purpose
To justify rebellion by listing the governor's alleged crimes, including his Native policy and the power of his favorites.
Point of view
A frontier leader at war with the governor; the charges are accusations, not findings. We quote the first clause of one charge.
Nathaniel Bacon, "The Declaration of the People," 30 July 1676, in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 4th ser., vol. 9 (Boston, 1871), pp. 184–87; modern-spelling text as reproduced by History Matters (George Mason University), "Bacon's Rebellion: The Declaration (1676)."
Prisoners’ testimony in the governor’s record · English translation
The two Tesuque youths and the two knots
Antonio de Otermín’s administration; Nicolás Catua and Pedro Omtua through interpreter Agustín Griego; attested by Francisco Xavier · August 9, 1680
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: IV · Two Knots Left
English translation (1942 edition)
they giving them a deerskin thong with two knots in it, which signified the two days intervening before the execution of their treason.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Tano, San Marcos and La Ciénega leaders warned the governor; the two Tesuque youths were arrested and questioned.
Intended audience
The governor and the colonial officials reviewing his actions.
Purpose
Record a discovered conspiracy and justify the response.
Point of view
A Spanish judicial record of testimony under arrest, translated by Shelby. The same record names the night of August 13; two knots indicating two days on August 9 suggests August 11. We retain that discrepancy. No torture or execution of these youths is established by this passage.
Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), I:3–5, quotation p. 4.
He sent it through all the pueblos as far as that of La Isleta, there remaining in the whole kingdom only the nation of the Piros who did not receive it; and the order which the said Popé gave when he sent the said cord was under strict charge of secrecy, commanding that the war captains take it from pueblo to pueblo.
As a sign of agreement and notice of having concurred in the treason and perfidy they were to send up smoke signals to that effect in each one of the pueblos singly.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Two separate later declarations describe the coordination of the 1680 revolt.
Intended audience
Governor Otermín and Spanish officials.
Purpose
Reconstruct the conspiracy and its leadership.
Point of view
Juan admits on p. 235 that he learned about the cord after the Spaniards had left; he did not see it pass. Naranjo reports smoke as a sign of agreement and threats against refusers. The interaction’s August 8 frame is an explicitly schematic planning view, not a documented itinerary, exact town count, smoke location, or record of each community’s politics. The Piro’s exclusion from the cord is not proof of universal voluntary neutrality.
Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), II:234–235 (Juan of Tesuque) and 246 (Pedro Naranjo); compare I:3–7 and introduction I:xxvi–xxviii.
a great many Indians perished of hunger, lying dead along the roads, in the ravines, and in their huts.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Bernal describes crop failure and deaths during the previous year, 1668. This is an earlier report, not an observation made during the August 1680 revolt.
Intended audience
The Tribunal of the Inquisition in Mexico City.
Purpose
Explain why he could not send the prisoner Bernardo Gruber to Mexico City amid famine and warfare.
Point of view
A Franciscan inquisitor with reason to stress calamity. He is not reporting a famine newly observed in August 1680.
Fray Juan Bernal to the Tribunal of the Inquisition, Santo Domingo, April 1, 1669; Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Historical Documents Relating to New Mexico, Nueva Vizcaya, and Approaches Thereto, to 1773, III (Carnegie Institution, 1937), p. 272.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: IV · Two Knots Left; V · Opposite Endings
[Synthesis: drought and famine combined with demands for crops and labor, religious suppression and punishment. In Naranjo’s later testimony, Po’pay’s orders connect release from compulsory labor with renewed cultivation.]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Later study of seventeenth-century colonial conflict and diplomacy.
Intended audience
Students and readers of history.
Purpose
Explain scale and context while distinguishing estimates and reported evidence from exact accounting.
Point of view
Historical synthesis.
Fray Juan Bernal, 1 April 1669 letter, in Hackett, Historical Documents III (1937), p. 272; Pedro Naranjo declaration, 19 December 1681, in Hackett/Shelby, Revolt of the Pueblo Indians II (1942), pp. 245–249; López Sambrano’s 1681 recollection of the 1675 punishments, summarized in Hackett/Shelby I, introduction, p. xxii and nn. 7–9. These colonial written sources are mediated and partial. This synthesis does not provide Po’pay’s own testimony or imply that all Pueblo towns made the same decisions.
Pedro Naranjo describes the cord and the accelerated rising
Pedro Naranjo of San Felipe, recorded by Spanish officials · December 19, 1681
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: IV · Two Knots Left
English translation (1942 edition)
The said cord was taken from pueblo to pueblo by the swiftest youths under the penalty of death if they revealed the secret.
…two days before the time set for its execution, because his lordship had learned of it and had imprisoned two Indian accomplices from the pueblo of Tesuque, it was carried out prematurely that night, because it seemed to them that they were now discovered…
Sourcing
Historical situation
An elder of about eighty gives testimony during Otermín’s unsuccessful return, sixteen months after the rising.
Intended audience
Otermín and Spanish colonial authorities.
Purpose
Identify the organizers, means and motives of revolt.
Point of view
Captive testimony, recorded in a Spanish judicial process after absolution and later translated into English; not a recording of his voice. He knew Castilian, Keres and Tewa and signed his name. The source reports coercion as well as cooperation. Its sacred narratives are not reenacted.
Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), II:245–249, especially p. 246.
Colonial casualty reports · incomplete and not independent
Colonial reports of deaths and the forty-seven executions
Otermín’s administration; Santa Fe cabildo; royal fiscal Martín de Solís de Miranda · August 20–October 12, 1680
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: IV · Two Knots Left
English translation (1942 edition)
[Auto, I:15] forty-seven Indians were taken prisoners in the houses. The latter were executed, having first revealed the treason
[Fiscal, I:228] our people turned upon some houses where forty-seven Indians were fortified, whom they shot, after they had declared that the rebellion had been discussed for a long time at the instance of the Teguas Indians of the pueblo of Tesuque.
[Cabildo, I:198] twenty-one, besides more than three hundred and eighty persons, including Spanish women and children, and others who were servants
[Auto, I:15] with the loss of more than three hundred Indians
Sourcing
Historical situation
Officials fleeing New Mexico count their losses, justify withdrawal and seek support for reconquest.
Intended audience
Governor, viceroy, Crown and fiscal authorities.
Purpose
Demonstrate catastrophe, report military action and justify renewed colonial support.
Point of view
These are hostile colonial reports and estimates, not a full casualty census. The fiscal is summarizing the colonial file, not independently witnessing executions. The auto counts forty-seven prisoners executed; the fiscal expressly says they were shot after giving testimony. The more-than-300 Pueblo dead in the breakout may include the 47 executed prisoners, so these figures cannot be added as separate totals. The cabildo counts more than 380 colony people including servants, apart from 21 religious; Ayeta I:107 independently lists the 21 but is not the correct citation for the servants wording.
Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), I:15 (prisoners and breakout deaths); I:177–179, especially 178 (cabildo opinion, October 3); I:197–199, especially 198 (cabildo certification, October 12); I:226–231, especially 228 (fiscal’s January 7 reply).
Antonio de Otermín’s administration; attested by Francisco Xavier · August 13–20, 1680
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: IV · Two Knots Left
English translation (1942 edition)
They were bringing two crosses, one red and the other white, so that his lordship might choose. The red signified war and the white that the Spaniards would abandon the kingdom.
The formal record places Juan on horseback wearing a red taffeta sash recognized as coming from the Galisteo convent’s missal, armed with harquebus, sword, dagger and leather jacket (p. 13). This paragraph is a modern paraphrase, not quoted text.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The formal record describes the mounted former scout Juan confronting the governor during the siege.
Intended audience
The viceroy, Crown and colonial administration.
Purpose
Record rebellion and justify the governor’s defense of Santa Fe.
Point of view
Indirect speech written by the colonial administration. The auto says crosses; Otermín’s letter says banners. The auto’s narrative sequence points to August 15, while the letter explicitly says Tuesday August 13. We identify this uncertainty as August 13–15. The location of the mounted exchange in relation to the palace wall is reconstructed.
Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), I:13–16, terms p. 14; compare the September 8 letter, I:98–100.
…because we had been entirely cut off from water, of which we had none for two days and a night…
…since it would be a better and safer step to die fighting than of hunger and thirst, shut up within the casas reales.
The dated August 21 withdrawal and departure certification follow on pp. 16–19 (editorial explanation, not a quotation).
Sourcing
Historical situation
After the water supply is cut, the governor and experienced men agree to attack; the formal account is concluded August 20 and the next auto orders departure August 21.
Intended audience
Colonial administration, viceroy and Crown.
Purpose
Justify the breakout and abandoning Santa Fe.
Point of view
The actor speaks the record’s wording, with initial capitalization, as Otermín’s decision. Because the sentence records an agreed decision rather than transcribing his speech, the performance is labeled adapted. The water passage states two days and a night without water; no precise cutting date is inferred. The letter gives a different compressed daily chronology, so the formal dated acts anchor August 20 and 21.
Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), I:15–19; watercourse identified in Otermín’s September 8 letter, I:101.
I left without a crust of bread or a grain of wheat or maize
Sourcing
Historical situation
The governor recounts his southward withdrawal while seeking supplies.
Intended audience
Fray Francisco de Ayeta.
Purpose
Explain the desperate state of his people and obtain relief.
Point of view
Otermín emphasizes his hardship. The same paragraph acknowledges four hundred animals, two carts and some livestock for food. We retain carts and livestock and don't equate his phrase with literally having no food. The later muster of 1,946 people is not the headcount leaving Santa Fe on August 21. The closing twelve-year shorthand means 1680–1692 and does not erase the failed 1681 return.
Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), I:103–104; dated departure certification I:19; later border muster discussed I:231.
English translation by Charmion Clair Shelby (1942 edition)
Spoken adaptation: The people complained of the present secretary, Francisco Xavier, and others: that they beat them, and took away what they had. And made them work without pay.
“And others” preserves the passage’s additional named officials: Alonso García, Luis de Quintana and Diego López. The scene, gaze, gestures and pen placement are a reconstruction. Xavier attested the deposition on p. 242; 'wrote that down' is narrative shorthand for making the official record, not a paleographic identification of his handwriting. Po'pay was not captured or examined in these revolt investigations; he had previously been imprisoned in 1675. His role is known here through other people’s testimony.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Questioned during Otermín’s unsuccessful 1681 expedition, sixteen months after the uprising. Josephe was about twenty and had been a Spanish-speaking servant.
Intended audience
Otermín, colonial officers, and their superiors.
Purpose
Officials sought explanations and responsibility for the revolt; the witness reported grievances he had heard.
Point of view
This is an indirect official report, not a stenographic transcript. Josephe spoke Castilian; this account does not establish that an interpreter conveyed his answers. Xavier, one of the men accused, attested the record. Shelby translated the Spanish in 1942.
Declaration of Josephe, Río del Norte camp near Isleta, 19 December 1681, in Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (UNM Press, 1942), II:238–242, especially 239; Xavier’s attestation, 242.
Historical estimates and census · comparison notes
Population comparisons: dates, boundaries, and missing people
U.S. Bureau of the Census; Francisco de Ayeta; Charles Wilson Hackett; Canadian census officials · 1670–1681
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: V · Opposite Endings
New England: NH 1,805 / 2,047; Plymouth 5,333 / 6,400; Massachusetts including Maine 30,000 / 39,752; Rhode Island 2,155 / 3,017; Connecticut 12,603 / 17,246 (1670 / 1680). Sums 51,896 / 68,462; midpoint 60,179 rounded to 60,000 for c.1675. Includes white and Black colonial residents, excludes Native nations. One published secondary estimate places the Native population of southern New England in 1675 at nearly 12,000 (David V. Baker, 2007, p. 331, after James Axtell). This is a published secondary estimate, not a census; Baker cites Axtell without a page reference. The colonial figure covers all New England, a different boundary; no local ratio is calculated.
New Mexico: Hackett gives approximately 2,800 Spanish inhabitants and 16,000 Christianized Pueblo people; Scholes argued for 2,500 or fewer colonial inhabitants. Ayeta claimed more than sixteen thousand rebels, a partisan estimate, not a census. The current four-row chart keeps approximately 2,800 colonists visible and toggles Pueblo estimates of 15,000 and 17,000 on the same scale. These are approximate residents, not proven rebels. 2,800 / 16,000 = 0.175; inverse ≈5.7, spoken as roughly six Pueblo people per colonist. The broader 15,000–17,000 band is an uncertainty guide, not two censuses. Many Piro did not join the rising.
New France: 9,677 in the 1681 St. Lawrence census. Native allied nations were outside the count, Acadia separate, many men in the woods absent. The 1680 9,719 and 960 Native villagers are a different record, not interchangeable with this census. No colony-to-Native ratio is invented.
Epidemic context: coastal New England epidemics in 1616–19, then smallpox in 1633–34. Daniel Gookin, Historical Collections of the Indians in New England (written 1674), ch. II, and John Winthrop’s journal for 1633–34 are the contemporary-report basis; these are contemporary reports, not a uniform regional census. No unverified single mortality percentage or pathogen for 1616–19 is asserted. These losses and later migration changed the balance; they did not empty all Native homelands or eliminate Native agency.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The populations surrounding the two risings and the small French colony differed in size, boundaries, composition and how they were recorded.
Intended audience
Modern students comparing imperial power and Native choices.
Purpose
To compare demographic constraints without turning estimates into exact censuses or resident counts into troop strengths.
Point of view
Colonial enumerations omit or categorize Native people for their own purposes. Later estimates introduce further uncertainty. A missing Native count is not a zero.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, series Z 1–19 (1670 and 1680 colonial population estimates); Hackett and Shelby (1942), I:xx–xxi and Ayeta to the viceroy, 11 Sept. 1680, I:107; Census of Canada, 1870–71, IV, census of November 1681; Statistics Canada, Censuses of Canada 1665–1871, “Early French settlements.” Southern New England estimate: David V. Baker, “American Indian Executions in Historical Context,” Criminal Justice Studies 20(4), 2007, pp. 315–373, at p. 331, citing James Axtell, Beyond 1492 (1992); DOI 10.1080/14786010701758138. A secondary estimate, not a census; Baker cites Axtell without a page reference.
an hundred and fifty Mohegins, ready fixed to warr on the behalf of the English against the Narhagansets their mortal enemyes;
Sourcing
Historical situation
A history printed during the immediate aftermath of the southern New England war in 1677.
Intended audience
Colonial and English readers seeking an account of the conflict.
Purpose
To justify colonial conduct and explain the war as providential deliverance.
Point of view
Hubbard was an English minister, hostile to the Native forces opposing the colonies.
Hubbard, A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England (Boston: John Foster, 1677), pp. 5–6 (Uncas and earlier Mohegan–Narragansett conflict), 21–23 (July peace and demands concerning refugees), 47–57 (campaign and the 19 December assault), 50 (excerpt), 67 (Native soldiers alongside Denison). EEBO-TCP A86661.0001.001 digital transcription; long-s normalized. Read with Church, The Entertaining History (1716; Southwick 1772), p. 32 (Mohawk attack) and pp. 40–42 (Awashonks’s terms). The comparison of alliances paraphrases these sources. A peaceful agreement is not proof that all Narragansett people were uninvolved before December; the card specifies a fragile peace and distinguishes related communities that stayed out.
…an order came from the said Indian, Popé, in which he commanded all the Indians to break the lands and enlarge their cultivated fields, saying that now they were as they had been in ancient times, free from the labor they had performed for the religious and the Spaniards, who could not now be alive.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Taken in December 1681 near the Rio Grande at Otermín’s attempted reconquest, from a Queres man who had taken part in the revolt and was now a prisoner.
Intended audience
Governor Otermín and Spanish officials in New Mexico and Mexico City.
Purpose
To learn how the revolt was planned and who led it, and to find out whether the Pueblos would take Spain back.
Point of view
A captive answering Spanish officials in an official Spanish record, later translated into English by Shelby. The declaration says he spoke Castilian, Keres and Tewa and signed his own name. The labor passage reports an order attributed to Po’pay; it is neither Naranjo’s personal motto nor a transcript of Po’pay speaking.
Declaration of Pedro Naranjo, 19 December 1681, in Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (UNM Press, 1942), II:245–249, labor passage 246–247; languages and attestation 249.
Vargas’s two returns and Juan de Ye’s Pecos alliance
Diego de Vargas; edited and contextualized by John L. Kessell and J. Manuel Espinosa · 1692–1693
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: V · Opposite Endings
The campaign distinction and counts are paraphrased. Kessell reproduces Vargas’s orders to summon Pecos fighters; approximately 140 arrived on 29 December 1693. The 1693 deaths include seventy executions, distinct from battle deaths and suicides. Espinosa’s cited account calls the roughly four hundred survivors “both sexes” and specifies ten years of servitude: the narration therefore says captives including women and children, not only women and children, and does not present it as voluntary labor. The journal evidence is cited through Kessell’s history; the separate Kessell/Hendricks/Dodge journal edition was not independently checked for this account.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Vargas sought royal credit for repossession in 1692. Settlers returned in 1693 to find Santa Fe occupied by Pueblo residents who resisted displacement.
Intended audience
The viceroy and Crown in the original journals and reports; modern readers in these editions.
Purpose
To document and justify Vargas’s actions and identify allies, resistance and punishments.
Point of view
The victorious governor’s record praises loyal allies and criminalizes resistance.
John L. Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown (National Park Service, 1979), ch. 6, especially “The Bloodless Reconquest Complete,” “Juan de Ye Offers Services,” and “The Bloody Battle for Santa Fe,” notes 19–26, quoting Vargas’s journal; J. Manuel Espinosa, The Pueblo Indian Revolt of 1696 and the Franciscan Missions in New Mexico (1988), pp. 39, 42–44.
Historical comparison, with a quoted labor petition
What changed after reconquest—and what did not
John L. Kessell; Ramón A. Gutiérrez; Santa Cruz petitioners, 1696 · 1693–early eighteenth century
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: V · Opposite Endings
Kessell ch. 7 states that the encomienda did not survive 1680 and documents the protector general acting for Pueblo leaders by 1706. His account of religious coexistence does not make it complete or immediate. The 1696 Santa Cruz petition requested Pueblo workers during planting; see https://escholarship.org/content/qt4bp010cj/qt4bp010cj.pdf, the paragraph beginning “However, the system of repartimiento continued.” The petition is cited through its published reproduction; its manuscript was not independently verified here. Continuing drafts and coercion are asserted; no unsupported universal wage, abolition date or “all labor ended” is given. Religious persistence and more limited enforcement developed over time, with continuing pressure. The final spoken line is our inference from constraints, alliances and altered institutions.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Spanish return was violent and faced renewed revolt in 1696. The relationship that developed afterward differed from the pre-1680 order.
Intended audience
Modern readers assessing change and continuity.
Purpose
To distinguish the loss of the encomienda from the survival of coercion, and to explain the practical need for alliances and accommodation.
Point of view
A synthesis, not a single decree issued in 1693. It does not claim equal sovereignty, universal toleration, or permanent protection from encroachment.
Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown (1979), chs. 6–7; Gutiérrez, “The Pueblo Revolt and Its Aftermath,” p. 430; Santa Cruz settlers’ 1696 labor petition, quoted through Barrett (2012:29) in Danielle Marie Huerta, Glittering and Glassy: Late Rio Grande Glaze Ware Traditional Ecological Knowledge and the Effects of Spanish Colonial Mining, A.D. 1598–1700 (PhD diss., UC Santa Cruz, 2025), labor discussion, eScholarship item 4bp010cj. The 1704 San Ildefonso land petition provides a separate example of Pueblo claims in colonial courts.
The continuing passage locates a boundary beyond the place where they erected a room and torreón. We reconstruct living landholders beside those works, without pretending to know their individual names or a witnessed exchange. The lawsuit is dated 1704, not projected back into the December 1693 settlement. The pictured people and actions are reconstructed; the petition does not identify them as particular historical individuals.
Sourcing
Historical situation
San Ildefonso challenged Ignacio de Roybal’s 1704 grant as an encroachment. A room and torreón built west of the Rio Grande figured in the disputed boundary.
Intended audience
The colonial governor through a legal petition.
Purpose
To defend Pueblo land using recognized rights, measurements and the protector’s advocacy.
Point of view
Pueblo claimants speaking through an official advocate and an archival translation. The petition demonstrates an avenue of action; it does not prove the whole claim prevailed.
Spanish Archives of New Mexico, Series I, no. 1339, Lawsuit: San Ildefonso Pueblo vs. Ygnacio de Roibal (1704), WPA translation, pp. 12–13; reproduced in James L. Moore, ed., Prehistoric and Historic Occupation of Los Alamos and Guaje Canyons: Data Recovery at Three Sites near the Pueblo of San Ildefonso (Santa Fe: Office of Archaeological Studies, Archaeology Notes 244, 2001), “Spanish Adaptations to the New Mexican Frontier,” p. 163 (PDF p. 173).
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: VI · The Other Answers
[Historical synthesis: the Wendat diplomat, seriously ill, attended the 1 August 1701 council. A chair was brought for him; he spoke for nearly two hours. The broader gathering brought about 1,300 delegates from 39 Native nations.]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Later study of seventeenth-century colonial conflict and diplomacy.
Intended audience
Students and readers of history.
Purpose
Explain scale and context while distinguishing estimates and reported evidence from exact accounting.
Point of view
Historical synthesis.
William N. Fenton, “Kondiaronk,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography,volII, University of Toronto/Université Laval; account opened4 October 2026. Fenton draws on LaPotherie and contemporary correspondence. We dramatize the physical effort but don't reconstruct his lost speech. The1Augustspeech precedes the4 Augusttreaty; he died early2 August. France’s small St. Lawrence population and reliance on Native alliance/trade are contextual interpretation, not a claim that French settlement caused no dispossession. La Potherie, Histoire de l’Amérique septentrionale, IV, printed p. 223, describes the chair brought for his speech; p. 228 describes his later carriage to hospital. Arrival at the council by chair is reconstructed staging, not reported in these passages.
I therefore ratify today the peace … desiring that there be no more talk of all of the blows struck during the war, and I once again seize all your axes, and all your other instruments of war, which I place along with my own in a pit so deep that no one will be able to retrieve them to trouble the tranquility that I reestablish among my children … if it should happen that one of my children should strike another, the one who has been struck shall not take vengeance, neither himself nor anyone else for him, but he shall come find me so that I may reestablish justice for him
Sourcing
Historical situation
Made at Montreal on August 4, 1701, after weeks of council. Delegates of about forty nations came, among them Haudenosaunee, Wendat, Odawa, Anishinaabe and Abenaki leaders.
Intended audience
The delegates in the room, the French crown, and the neighboring English colonies.
Purpose
To end the long wars of the Beaver Wars era, and to bring future disputes to the French governor for judgment.
Point of view
The words are Governor Callière’s, in the French record. The pictogram marks at the foot of the surviving copy stand for the nations that signed. Read the words and the marks as two kinds of record.
Ratification of the Peace, Montreal, August 4, 1701, English translation on Wikisource (‘Translation:Great Peace of Montreal’). Image: Wikimedia Commons, ‘Grande Paix Montreal.jpg’, a copy of the treaty with the nations’ pictogram signatures.
Albany and Montreal: two diplomatic agreements in one summer
Five Nations sachems and John Nanfan; delegates and Louis-Hector de Callière; our comparison · Summer 1701
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: VI · The Other Answers
English translation
The Albany deed is dated 19 July 1701 Old Style, equivalent to 30 July New Style; Montreal’s ratification is 4 August New Style. After converting the Albany date, the two agreements are five days apart. The Nanfan deed reserves free hunting and seeks the English Crown’s protection while making a broad territorial cession claim in English legal language. The Montreal ratification makes a wider peace, provides French mediation, and records neutrality commitments. These are different instruments. The colonial claims overlapped other Native nations’ lands; we do not ratify those claims or treat all Haudenosaunee communities as one unchanging faction.
Sourcing
Historical situation
After prolonged warfare, overlapping Haudenosaunee diplomacy addressed both New York and New France during the summer of 1701.
Intended audience
The Native participants, colonial governors and the English and French imperial governments.
Purpose
To compare the options these different agreements could preserve, rather than cast one empire as the inevitable ally.
Point of view
Both documents use European recording and legal conventions. The teaching choices are modern paraphrases.
Nanfan deed, 19 July 1701 OS, in E. B. O’Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York, IV (1854), pp. 908–11; Ratification of the Peace, Montreal, 4 August 1701, translated at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Great_Peace_of_Montreal .
Benjamin West, commissioned by Thomas Penn · 1771–72
Image. An image of the source. The accompanying description is editorial.
On screen: VI · The Other Answers
[Painting: William Penn and Lenape leaders make a treaty. Benjamin West painted it in 1771–72 for Thomas Penn. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Painted in London in 1771–72 by the Pennsylvania-born artist Benjamin West for Thomas Penn, William Penn’s son and a proprietor of Pennsylvania. It shows a treaty said to have been made in 1682.
Intended audience
Thomas Penn, his family, and the British public who later saw prints of it.
Purpose
To picture Pennsylvania’s founding as a fair bargain made with the Lenape’s consent.
Point of view
An imagined scene painted about ninety years after the events it shows. Thomas Penn had gained from the Walking Purchase of 1737, and the picture serves his family’s good name.
Benjamin West, Penn’s Treaty with the Indians, 1771–72, oil on canvas, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia (Wikimedia Commons, ‘Treaty of Penn with Indians by Benjamin West.jpg’).
… doth extend itself back into the Woods as far as a Man can goe in one day and a half, and bounded on the Westerly Side with the Creek called Neshameny, or the most Westerly branch thereof … We Do Acknowledge Ourselves and every of Us, to be fully satisfyed that the above described Tract or Tracts of Land were truly Granted and Sold by the said Mayhkeerickkishsho, Sayhoppy, and Taughhaughsey, unto the said William Penn and his Heirs … We, the said Monockyhickan, Lappawinzoe, Tisheekunk, and Nutimus, Do, for ourselves and all other the Delaware Indians, fully, clearly, and Absolutely Remise, Release, and forever Quit claim unto the said John Penn, Thomas Penn, and Richard Penn
Sourcing
Historical situation
Signed at Philadelphia on August 25, 1737, more than two years after a treaty at Pennsbury. The Penn sons put a copy of an older deed before the Lenape and asked them to confirm it.
Intended audience
The Penn family, Pennsylvania’s officials, and the surveyors and courts who would later test the title.
Purpose
To have four Lenape leaders confirm the older deed in writing, so the Penns could measure and sell the land.
Point of view
An English deed, in English legal words, drawn up on the Penns’ side. Lenape leaders signed it; in 1756 Teedyuscung said the land had been taken by fraud. The Archives editor’s footnote calls it ‘usually called the “walking purchase.”’
Deed of confirmation, August 25, 1737, in Pennsylvania Archives, 1st series, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1852), pp. 541–42.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: VI · The Other Answers
[Historical assessment, not a quotation: the Penn proprietors used an alleged older deed to justify the1737claim. The Pennsylvania State Archives’ commentary notes the missing original and absence of the sale from provincial land records.]
Sourcing
Historical situation
Later study of seventeenth-century colonial conflict and diplomacy.
Intended audience
Students and readers of history.
Purpose
Explain scale and context while distinguishing estimates and reported evidence from exact accounting.
Point of view
Historical synthesis.
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Our Documentary Heritage, “The Walking Purchase—August 25, 1737,” archive commentary for RG26, Indian Deeds#35, opened4 October 2026. The alleged 1686 transaction is distinct from the surviving confirmation dated 25 August 1737. “Doubtful origin” is our cautious summary, not a verbatim contemporary clause or a declaration that every question about the document has been settled.
Joseph Knowles remembers the Lenape protest at the Walking Purchase
Joseph Knowles; printed by Charles Thomson · 1737 · recalled in 1757
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: VI · The Other Answers
“The Indians then began to look sullen, and murmured that the Men walked so fast, and several Times that Afternoon called out, and said to them, You run; that’s not fair, you was to walk.” Knowles states that he helped carry the chain and clear the road before the walk, then carried provisions, liquors and bedding during it. One anonymous painted observer speaks the collective reported protest; Knowles does not identify a particular speaker. Long s is normalized; line breaks and page break are joined; typographic apostrophe modernized.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Knowles gave this account on 30 June 1757, nearly twenty years after the Walking Purchase. He had assisted Sheriff Timothy Smith and the proprietors’ party.
Intended audience
Readers weighing the land grievances behind conflict in Pennsylvania; Thomson’s London readership.
Purpose
To describe preparations and conduct of the walk; Thomson used the testimony in an argument against the proprietors’ Indian policy.
Point of view
An English participant’s later memory of collective Lenape speech, selected by a critic of the Penn proprietors. It preserves an objection but not a stenographic or named Lenape deposition.
Charles Thomson, An Enquiry into the Causes of the Alienation of the Delaware and Shawanese Indians (London: J. Wilkie, 1759), Joseph Knowles’s account dated 30 June 1757, pp. 39–40; opened in Causes of the Alienation (Philadelphia: John Campbell, 1867), preserving that pagination, Internet Archive leaves 48–49.
Primary accounts with a modern schematic comparison
The Walking Purchase: pace, preparation and the return boundary
Charles Thomson, using accounts by Thomas Furniss and Joseph Knowles; our comparison · 1737 events
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: VI · The Other Answers
Our diagrams paraphrase the walk accounts and Thomson’s criticism of the boundary: “instead of drawing a Line by the nearest Course to the River Delaware, or parallel to that from which they set out, they run a North-East Course to near the Mouth of the Lechawachsein”. Long s and word breaks are normalized. The short resting-walker path is an explicitly illustrative contrast, not a measured historical alternative. No speed, mileage, acreage or literal thirty-six-hour elapsed schedule is asserted. The line illustrates the proprietors’ claim; the graphic does not confer rightful ownership or imply Lenape consent.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The contested 1737 walk and ensuing survey became central to land grievances revisited in the 1750s.
Intended audience
British readers and officials concerned with Pennsylvania and the causes of Native estrangement.
Purpose
Thomson sought to explain why the Lenape and Shawnee had turned against the British interest by documenting proprietary misconduct.
Point of view
An anti-proprietary account draws on witnesses after a long interval. A modern schematic makes its geographical argument legible without manufacturing quantitative certainty.
Charles Thomson, An Enquiry (London, 1759), pp. 35–43 for the walk accounts and p. 70 for the quoted criticism of the northeast return boundary; Campbell reprint (Philadelphia, 1867), same numbered text. Compare deed of confirmation, 25 August 1737, Pennsylvania Archives, 1st ser., I, pp. 541–42.
The Treaty Held with the Indians of the Six Nations, at Philadelphia, in July, 1742
Canasatego, Onondaga speaker; interpreter Conrad Weiser · July 12, 1742
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: VI · The Other Answers
And for all these Reasons we charge you to remove instantly; we don’t give you the Liberty to think about it. You are Women. Take the Advice of a wise Man, and remove immediately. Long s and line-break hyphenation are normalized. We omit “You are Women” between two spoken excerpts; the omission is identified here. The published record names Conrad Weiser’s English interpretation and Cornelius Spring’s Delaware interpretation. The language of conquest and gender asserts domination; it is Canasatego’s coercive claim, not our judgment of Lenape rights.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Canasatego, an Onondaga speaker for the Six Nations, answered Lenape leaders who had objected to Pennsylvania’s claim to land on the Delaware.
Intended audience
The Lenape delegates, and the Pennsylvania officials who had asked the Six Nations to settle the matter.
Purpose
To end the Lenape objection to the Penns’ title, to order the Lenape off the land, and to assert Six Nations power over them.
Point of view
Canasatego spoke Onondaga; the English is Conrad Weiser’s, and Franklin printed it. What ‘Women’ meant to the speaker and what it meant to English readers may differ. The speech helped Pennsylvania’s claim, and Pennsylvania published it.
The Treaty Held with the Indians of the Six Nations, at Philadelphia, in July, 1742 (Philadelphia: B. Franklin, 1743), pp. 21–22, quoted commands on p. 22; University of Michigan Evans TCP N04232.0001.001.
Hemish People Remain Rooted: the 1980 Taos-to-Hopi run
Pueblo of Jemez, The Walatowan · 1980 · recalled by the Pueblo of Jemez
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: VII · Still Here
In 1980, a Taos to Hopi run was held to commemorate this tricentennial event.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The Pueblo of Jemez’s August 2020 newsletter presents its community’s running history, including Jemez participation in the 1980 commemoration of the Pueblo Revolt.
Intended audience
The Jemez community and readers of its tribal newsletter.
Purpose
To connect present generations with the community’s running traditions and ongoing public-health work.
Point of view
A Pueblo community’s own account of continuity. Its text and photographs establish the run and Jemez participation. The paintings are modern symbolic reconstructions, not archival footage of the run or a documented ceremony.
Pueblo of Jemez, The Walatowan, August 2020, p. 6, ‘Hemish People Remain Rooted: Continuing Running Traditions for All Generations,’ PDF page 6. The run is also catalogued as the subject of Peter Nabokov’s eyewitness Indian Running (1981), South Dakota State University, Prairie Striders Library Collection, item 58.
Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) · consulted 4 October 2026
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: VII · Still Here
Mashpee and Aquinnah have maintained physical and cultural presence on their ancestral homelands.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The tribe describes its history, land, community and continuing government in its own public history.
Intended audience
Tribal members, neighbors and the wider public.
Purpose
To explain Wampanoag continuity and identity in the tribe’s own terms.
Point of view
The tribe’s institutional voice directly counters a narrative of disappearance. This source does not document our invented present-day shoreline encounter or assign the pictured adults to a particular enrolled community. No dated membership or land-area number is borrowed.
Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), ‘Wampanoag History,’ ‘Historical Background of the Wampanoag’ section, tribal website, consulted 4 October 2026.
… absolutely surrender, deliver up and for ever quit claime unto our great Lord and Master the King of England called by us Corachkoo and by the Christians William the third … all that vast Tract of land or Colony called Canagariarchio … conteining in length about eight hundred miles and in breath four hundred miles including the Country where Beavers and all sorts of wild game keeps … alwayes provided and it is hereby expected that wee are to have free hunting for us and the heires and descendants from us the Five nations for ever … expecting to be protected therein by the Crown of England
Sourcing
Historical situation
Dated July 19, 1701 (Old Style), a few days before the Great Peace of Montreal. The Five Nations gave a claim to a vast beaver-hunting territory to the English king, through Lieutenant Governor John Nanfan.
Intended audience
The English crown and its officials in New York, and the Five Nations’ own people.
Purpose
For England, a paper claim to a vast western territory. For the Five Nations, a way to place their hunting grounds under English protection while they made peace with France.
Point of view
An English legal deed, written in English officials’ words. It keeps the Five Nations’ right to hunt and asks for protection, so it can be read as a sale or as a request for a shield. The two sides need not have meant the same thing by it.
Deed from the Five Nations to the King of their Beaver Hunting Ground, July 19, 1701, in E. B. O’Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York, vol. 4 (Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1854), pp. 908–11.
This very Ground that is under me (striking it with his Foot) was my Land and Inheritance, and is taken from me by Fraud; when I say this Ground, I mean all the Land lying between Tohiccon Creek and Wioming, on the River Susquehannah. The parenthesis is the minute-taker’s description of his foot striking the ground. We separate the recorded gesture from the spoken sentence; its timing is reconstructed.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Teedyuscung was the leading Lenape spokesman at the conference.
Intended audience
Governor Denny, Pennsylvania officials, and the Lenape and Iroquois delegates present.
Purpose
To say why the Lenape were at war, and to demand that Pennsylvania look into how the Walking Purchase had taken their land.
Point of view
Teedyuscung spoke in Lenape. The words we have are the province’s English record, printed in 1757 by Franklin and Hall; the parenthesis ‘(striking it with his Foot)’ is the minute-taker’s stage direction. Pennsylvania’s proprietors disputed his account.
Minutes of Conferences, held with the Indians, at Easton, in the months of July and November, 1756 (Philadelphia: B. Franklin and D. Hall, 1757), conference of Saturday, 13 November 1756, printed p. 23, Internet Archive image n30. The printed page is 23, although the archive’s page index labels this leaf as 22.
Great Captain, you have killed Philip, and conquered his country; for I believe that I and my company are the last that war against the English, so suppose the war is ended by your means; and therefore these things belong unto you.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Church’s memoir, first printed in 1716, recounts the final summer of the war in southern New England, forty years earlier.
Intended audience
New England readers and Church’s descendants.
Purpose
To celebrate and defend Church’s conduct and his reliance on Native soldiers and negotiated submissions.
Point of view
Church was a participant, but the text is an elderly officer’s recollection edited by his son Thomas. Native speech and motives reach us through their English account.
Benjamin and Thomas Church, The Entertaining History of King Philip’s War (1716; Newport: Solomon Southwick, 1772), p. 84; Evans-TCP N09706.0001.001. The passage introduces speech “in plain English.” We make three excerpts, normalizing punctuation and omitting “so suppose the war is ended by your means.” The next sentence describes Philip’s broad black-and-white wampum belt.
We divide this one sentence at “terms / for each”; we omit no intervening words. Propriety means property. The shoreline performance is dramatized staging of Easton’s written words, not evidence of a second conference.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Easton tried to mediate at Mount Hope in June 1675 and wrote his relation during the war, dated February 1676 in modern year numbering.
Intended audience
Readers assessing the war’s causes and colonial conduct.
Purpose
To criticize failed arbitration and urge peace that respected property on both sides.
Point of view
A sympathetic Quaker mediator who was present at the conference but did not control Plymouth. His proposed peace was an argument, not a settlement already in force.
John Easton, A Relation of the Indian War, 1675, concluding appeal, in Charles H. Lincoln, ed., Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675–1699 (1913); modern-spelling extract, National Humanities Center, Wampanoag grievances, p. 2.
[1682 wording, p. 71] I can remember the time, when I used to sleep quietly without workings in my thoughts, whole nights together, but now it is other wayes with me.
[Later modernized wording] I can remember the time, when I used to sleep quietly without working in my thoughts, whole nights together; but now it is otherwise with me. … when others are sleeping mine eyes are weeping.
The later wording uses “working” and “otherwise” where the 1682 edition has “workings” and “other wayes.” Its final clause comes later in the narrative; the ellipsis marks that separation. This modernized selection is an adaptation, not a verbatim transcription of the 1682 printing.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Published six years after her captivity in the 1676 war. By the publication year she lived in Wethersfield, Connecticut.
Intended audience
New England and English readers.
Purpose
To present captivity and restoration within a providential interpretation while recording the enduring effects of her ordeal.
Point of view
A bereaved mother and English Puritan survivor. Fear, grief, ordinary Native kindness and a sharp religious distinction between Christians and enemies coexist in her narrative.
Mary Rowlandson, The Soveraignty & Goodness of God, second Addition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Samuel Green, 1682), Twentieth Remove, p. 71; Evans-TCP N00261.0001.001. Italics and line-break hyphenation are normalized in the 1682 excerpt. The later modernized selection follows A Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings, and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, chapter 20, at the linked Wikisource transcription, with W. W. Norton’s historical-document transcription as a parallel text. That selection is not verbatim to the 1682 edition.
Spoken adaptation: I will call the warriors of Pecos. This turns Kessell’s reported offer into the first person. It is not a verbatim quotation from Juan de Ye. Kessell’s online chapter supplies the report and corroborating campaign passages; the original journal edition was not independently verified for this adaptation. The report does not establish Juan’s private motives.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Juan de Ye warned Vargas in the camp outside Santa Fe and offered to call fighters from Pecos. The arrival of a Pecos force followed later that month.
Intended audience
Kessell’s modern readers; the underlying Spanish campaign record addressed colonial superiors.
Purpose
To reconstruct how Vargas obtained Pueblo allies for retaking Santa Fe.
Point of view
This is a historian’s report of an offer, within an account drawing on Vargas’s record. The Spanish governor casts allied leaders as loyal.
John L. Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown (National Park Service, 1979), ch. 6, December 1693 passage beginning “When finally they stood in the snow before Santa Fe,” before the 18 December petition; subsequent Vargas journal excerpts and arrival of the Pecos force in the same chapter, notes 25–26.
Histoire de l’Amérique septentrionale, vol. 4 (Kondiaronk’s speech and funeral), as told in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography
Bacqueville de La Potherie; English by William N. Fenton · 1722
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation by William N. Fenton (1982 edition)
… he spoke in a languid tone while the assembly listened intently for nearly two hours … “We could not help but be touched,” wrote La Potherie, “by the eloquence with which he expressed himself, and [could not fail] to recognize at the same time that he was a man of worth.” … He died at two a.m. … The Rat’s funeral was held the following day (3 Aug. 1701). … Pierre de Saint-Ours headed a military escort of 60 men, followed by 16 Huron warriors in ranks of 4 wearing beaver robes, faces blackened as a mark of their mourning, and guns reversed
Sourcing
Historical situation
La Potherie went to meet the delegates at Sault-Saint-Louis on July 21, 1701, and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography calls him the prime source on the proceedings. He printed his account in Paris in 1722; Fenton’s biography retells it in English.
Intended audience
French readers in 1722, and English-language readers of the Dictionary today.
Purpose
La Potherie set out to record the treaty and its leading figures for French readers. Fenton’s article uses it to tell Kondiaronk’s life.
Point of view
La Potherie wrote as a Frenchman who admired Kondiaronk, twenty-one years after the event. Kondiaronk’s two-hour speech is not preserved word for word; what survives is the French witness’s praise of it.
William N. Fenton, “Kondiaronk (Gaspar Soiaga, Souoias, Sastaretsi) (Le Rat),” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 2 (1969, rev. 1982), quoting Bacqueville de La Potherie, Histoire de l’Amérique septentrionale (Paris, 1722), vol. 4.
John Easton; our adaptation of the council's reported words · June 1675
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Original wording reported by Easton] thay wear as good be kiled as leave all ther Liueflyhode.
[Spoken adaptation] We might as well be killed as leave all our livelihood.
The consulted 1906 text prints Liueflyhode; other transcriptions differ in spelling. Easton reports a collective council complaint in the third person. We modernize it and give it to Metacom in the first person; this is not a verbatim transcript of his individual speech.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A Rhode Island delegation met Metacom and his council shortly before war began in June 1675. Easton dated his later narrative 5:12 m:1675, or 5 February 1676 in the modern year.
Intended audience
Colonial readers and officials judging the origins and conduct of the war.
Purpose
To explain grievances, defend Rhode Island mediation and criticize the conduct of other English colonies.
Point of view
Easton places this collective third-person statement within the seated conference, after complaints about arbitration and surrendered weapons. We give the first-person adaptation to Metacom in a reconstructed council scene. It is not a verbatim record of Metacom alone or a greeting as the boat arrives.
John Easton, A Relation of the Indyan Warr (dated 5 February 1676, modern year), original-spelling text in Easton's Relation of the Causes of King Philip's War (New York: Grafton Press, 1906), reprinting the Hough edition; pp. 1–17. Page numbers refer to this reprint, not Lincoln 1913. Livelihood passage pp. 8–9.
The Ferry: performed adaptations of Easton's report
John Easton; our adaptation of his reported exchange · June 1675
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Adaptation, not additional historical testimony] We modernize Easton’s reported council speech. We/our replace they/their in the Wampanoag replies; you replaces they when Easton addresses the council. His sentence about the letter is compressed to: Then Plymouth’s governor wrote that they intended in arms to conform Philip. The Plymouth-court choice is a hypothetical teaching proposal based on the arbitrator grievance, not a spoken quotation from Easton.
[Reported conversion grievance, pp. 10–11] Easton records a collective complaint about being forced Christian and no longer subject to their own kings. The spoken adaptation gives this complaint to one council elder; it is not that elder’s verbatim speech.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A Rhode Island delegation met Metacom and his council shortly before war began in June 1675. Easton dated his later narrative 5:12 m:1675, or 5 February 1676 in the modern year.
Intended audience
Colonial readers and officials judging the origins and conduct of the war.
Purpose
To explain grievances, defend Rhode Island mediation and criticize the conduct of other English colonies.
Point of view
Words are modernized, compressed and changed from indirect to direct speech. Two unnamed counselors and their divided stakes are dramatized. Collective grievances are allocated among them and Metacom; only the rebuke about postponing the hearing is explicitly attributed to Philip by Easton. First-person delivery, sequence, gestures, wampum, sunset and individual reactions are reconstructed. Easton's own report is also performed in modern spelling.
John Easton, A Relation of the Indyan Warr (dated 5 February 1676, modern year), original-spelling text in Easton's Relation of the Causes of King Philip's War (New York: Grafton Press, 1906), reprinting the Hough edition; pp. 1–17. Page numbers refer to this reprint, not Lincoln 1913. Adaptation anchors: mutual fear pp. 5–6; arms pp. 8–9; arbitration pp. 9–10; rebuke p. 11; first help p. 12; evidence p. 13; land/cattle pp. 13–15; warning/outcome pp. 15–16.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
[Performance adaptation] When Tobias, the suspected murderer, came near the dead body, it fell a bleeding on fresh as if it had been newly slain, albeit it was buried a considerable time before that. [Evidence limit] The source establishes what Mather wrote, not a supernatural occurrence or that this claim formed part of the jury evidence.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Mather's later narrative retells Sassamon's death. This is his 1677 Relation, not the corresponding passage of his 1676 Brief History.
Intended audience
New England and English readers of a Puritan account of the conflict.
Purpose
To explain the war through providence and justify the prosecution.
Point of view
Mather was a Boston minister, not an eyewitness to this alleged incident or the Plymouth trial. We depict him telling the story, never a corpse bleeding. The linked primary page transcription modernizes spelling; we also omit introductory Moreover and voice the parenthesis as ordinary words.
Increase Mather, A Relation of the Troubles Which Have Hapned in New-England, by Reason of the Indians There (Boston: John Foster, 1677), p. 75. Primary text reproduced and transcribed in University of Arizona, Murder Most Foul, Increase Mather, Account #2.
Our reconstruction; context from Pedro Naranjo's 1681 declaration · 1677
Dramatization. Dramatized, based on the record.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation (1942 edition)
This imagined scene is set at Taos in 1677. The household work has no claimed historical participant or documented date. It is not evidence that the 1680 countdown cord circulated in 1677. Naranjo was questioned in Spanish colonial custody sixteen months after the revolt; his testimony is not Po’pay’s own voice.
Sourcing
Historical situation
This scene is set between the 1675 repression and the 1680 revolt. Later testimony places Po’pay at Taos before the rising but does not date this ordinary household scene.
Intended audience
Students comparing two histories unfolding at different times.
Purpose
To help viewers compare events in New Mexico and New England. The household scene illustrates everyday life; it does not document a meeting, sacred rite, speech or circulating countdown cord.
Point of view
A modern exterior reconstruction, not an eyewitness image. Two anonymous Taos Tiwa adults secure a household load. No Po'pay dialogue, ceremony, sacred interior or claim about a 1677 plot appears.
Context: Declaration of Pedro Naranjo, 19 December 1681, in Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín's Attempted Reconquest, vol. II (1942), pp. 245–247, especially p. 246. Date/exterior staging is our reconstruction.
I offered the mony to my master, but he bade me keep it:
Sourcing
Historical situation
Rowlandson was captured at Lancaster in February 1676 and published her account in 1682. The book uses the English Old Style year, which began on 25 March.
Intended audience
Her family, Puritan readers in New England and readers of the later London editions.
Purpose
To interpret survival and release as divine providence and a test of faith.
Point of view
A captive and bereaved mother, also a minister’s wife writing with hostility toward her captors. Her record cannot supply Weetamoo’s own thoughts.
Rowlandson, The Soveraignty & Goodness of God (Samuel Green, 1682), Eighth Remove, p. 25; Evans-TCP N00261.0001.001. “Mony” modernized to “money”; colon becomes a full stop. The shirt-and-shilling sentence immediately precedes this passage on p. 25. The 1682 text reads “master,” not “mistress.”
Weetamoo’s attempted crossing and the captives at Taunton
William Hubbard · 1677, reporting early August 1676
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
Background: not shown on screen.
her head being cut off and set upon a Pole in Taunton, was known by some Indians then Prisoners, which set them into an horrid Lamentation;
Sourcing
Historical situation
A history printed during the immediate aftermath of the southern New England war in 1677.
Intended audience
Colonial and English readers seeking an account of the conflict.
Purpose
To justify colonial conduct and explain the war as providential deliverance.
Point of view
Hubbard was an English minister, hostile to the Native forces opposing the colonies.
William Hubbard, A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England (Boston: John Foster, 1677), pp. 102–103; EEBO-TCP A86661.0001.001, digital transcription. Long-s normalized. Hubbard describes attempted escape on a raft or broken wood, uncertainty about drowning, cold and hunger, then recognition by prisoners. His ordering places this before the death of Philip on Saturday 12 August. Hubbard dates the informant’s arrival to 6 August, but not a witnessed moment of death; we give early August and show no bodily remains.
Otermín admits that the warning was not fully believed
Antonio de Otermín · September 8, 1680
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation (1942 edition)
To this was added a certain degree of negligence by reason of the report of the uprising not having been given entire credence
Sourcing
Historical situation
The governor, retreating after losing Santa Fe, explains the crisis to the Franciscan supply organizer.
Intended audience
Fray Francisco de Ayeta.
Purpose
Explain the failure and secure relief.
Point of view
Retrospective self-defense. He also records immediate warning messages and arrest orders. The performed line compresses his passive construction; it does not mean he personally ignored every warning or did nothing.
Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), I:95–96; September 8 letter to Fray Francisco de Ayeta, translation reprinted from Hackett, Historical Documents III (1937), pp. 327–335.
Eyewitness’s reported speech · English translation
Pedro Hidalgo reports Fray Juan Pío’s appeal at Tesuque
Pedro Hidalgo, recorded by Otermín’s administration · August 10, 1680
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation (1942 edition)
What is this, children; are you mad? Do not disturb yourselves; I will help you and die a thousand deaths for you.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Hidalgo escaped from Tesuque and testified in Santa Fe the same day.
Intended audience
The governor and colonial judicial officials.
Purpose
Report the attack and the friar’s disappearance.
Point of view
Hidalgo reports hearing the appeal. He did not see Pío killed and judged him dead; we show no death, arrow or specific fatal act. The friar’s word “children” addresses the adults of his congregation, not an observed group of minors. This is a translated direct quotation within a witness’s report, not a transcript.
Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), I:5–7, direct reported speech p. 6; confirmation of the death in Otermín’s later letter, I:96.
Brothers’ testimony about a refusal · English translation
The Lorenzo brothers describe their brother’s refusal
Juan Lorenzo and Francisco Lorenzo, recorded by Spanish officials · December 20, 1681
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation (1942 edition)
Are you willing to help the Indians and be on their side in order to kill the religious and the Spaniards?
Sourcing
Historical situation
The brothers, approximately twenty and eighteen, describe the death of their elder brother Bartolomé Naranjo at San Felipe during the rising.
Intended audience
Otermín and colonial officials.
Purpose
Explain participation, refusal and grievances.
Point of view
Later captive testimony. Their brother’s answer is reported as “Are you crazy? What is it you are trying to do?” followed by his killing with wooden clubs. They also accuse Francisco Xavier, Luis de Quintana and Diego López of interference and burning estufas. We narrate the refusal, give Bartolomé no invented dialogue and show no violence. Sharing a surname does not establish a relationship to Pedro Naranjo.
Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), II:249–252, especially p. 250.
Antonio de Otermín, reporting his exchange with Juan · September 8, 1680
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation (1942 edition)
I asked him how it was that he had gone crazy too—being an Indian who spoke our language, was so intelligent, and had lived all his life in the villa among the Spaniards, where I had placed such confidence in him—and was now coming as a leader of the Indian rebels.
…if they would return to obedience to his Majesty they would be pardoned…
…unless they immediately desisted from sacking the houses and dispersed, I would send to drive them away from there.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Otermín recalls Juan’s approach, his own offer, the renewed demands and his decision to send soldiers.
Intended audience
Fray Francisco de Ayeta, who could organize supplies and represent the colony’s plight.
Purpose
Explain and justify his handling of the siege.
Point of view
A governor’s self-defense after defeat. The performed question, conditional pardon and ultimatum turn his indirect constructions into direct dialogue. This source dates the approach Tuesday August 13, unlike the sequence in the auto. His allegation that Juan wanted only family retrieval and delay is his interpretation; we don't adopt it. He offered pardon under obedience, not release or withdrawal.
Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), I:98–100; letter to Fray Francisco de Ayeta.
Juan el Tano, as reported by Antonio de Otermín · September 8, 1680
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation (1942 edition)
…his people asked that all classes of Indians who were in our power be given up to them, both those in the service of the Spaniards and those of the Mexican nation of that suburb of Analco. He demanded also that his wife and children be given up to him, and likewise that all the Apache men and women whom the Spaniards had captured in war be turned over to them…
Sourcing
Historical situation
Juan returns from his people with demands while his family is among those held in the villa.
Intended audience
Ayeta, through Otermín’s report.
Purpose
Otermín explains the negotiation and justifies his answer.
Point of view
Juan’s words survive here as the governor’s indirect report. Direct dialogue is adapted, not invented independent testimony. The preceding demand covers all Indigenous people in Spanish power, including servants and the Mexican residents of Analco. No names, ages, release or later fate of Juan’s family are supplied. We don't make a child’s reunion into a reward.
Charles Wilson Hackett, ed., Charmion Clair Shelby, trans., Revolt of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico and Otermín’s Attempted Reconquest, 1680–1682 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1942), I:99–100.
Four editions of Rowlandson’s narrative in its first year
Kathryn Zabelle Derounian · 1988
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
The claim about fear and English moral superiority is our interpretation of the narrative’s providential framing, supported by the text itself. It is not a quotation from Derounian or a claim that every reader reacted alike. Contemporary editions and the primary narrative are the evidence; the on-screen buyers are a reconstruction.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A bibliographical reconstruction from the surviving editions, fragments, imprints and publishing evidence.
Intended audience
Scholars and readers studying colonial print culture.
Purpose
To establish how the narrative reached readers in 1682 and afterward.
Point of view
An analysis of publication evidence, not a contemporary sales ledger. Four editions is firmer than an exact sales total; we assert no total copies sold.
Kathryn Zabelle Derounian, “The Publication, Promotion, and Distribution of Mary Rowlandson’s Indian Captivity Narrative in the Seventeenth Century,” Early American Literature 23, no. 3 (1988): 239–261; reproduced excerpt at eNotes.
Juan de Ye and a Plains Apache captain ask to return to planting
John L. Kessell, reporting the two leaders’ appeal to Diego de Vargas · May 1694
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Performed adaptation: It is time for us to rest, and to return to our land for planting. Kessell reports both leaders addressing Vargas and his staff. The original includes rest for their horses and planting milpas; we compress that content without adding a threat or a motive. We do not claim the request was granted immediately. This adaptation condenses a particular reported audience, not a recurring quotation. Juan died later in 1694 and is not placed in the final 1704 land scene.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The two men were working with the Spaniards in the campaigns of 1694. Spring planting imposed a competing need on them, their people and their horses.
Intended audience
Vargas and his staff in the reported audience; modern readers in Kessell’s history.
Purpose
To express the allies’ need to leave campaigning and return to their own land.
Point of view
A joint position reported through the colonial record and a modern historian. Assigning its performance to Juan is an explicit adaptation, not a claim of exact surviving speech or a new name for the unnamed captain.
John L. Kessell, Kiva, Cross, and Crown (National Park Service, 1979), ch. 6, “Juan de Ye and Plains Apaches,” paragraph beginning “Two days later at a formal audience,” following the 2 May 1694 audience and note 29; drawn from the Vargas campaign record.
Aouenano mourns Kondiaronk: La Potherie’s reported speech
Aouenano, as reported in French by Bacqueville de La Potherie; our working English translation · Montreal · August 1701
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation
French report: “Le Soleil est aujourd’hui éclipsé, c’est la mort de notre frere le Rat qui en est la cause.” English translation: “The Sun is eclipsed today; it is the death of our brother the Rat that is the cause of it.” This is La Potherie’s reported wording, in our translation, not a transcript in Aouenano’s language. “The Rat” names Kondiaronk. The metaphor is not a report of an astronomical eclipse. We extract the sentence into a secular speaking portrait rather than staging the condolence observance.
Sourcing
Historical situation
After Kondiaronk died in the night of 1–2 August 1701 and before the peace was ratified on 4 August, Aouenano spoke for four Haudenosaunee nations.
Intended audience
The assembled Wendat and other delegates; subsequently La Potherie’s French readers.
Purpose
To mourn Kondiaronk and urge his listeners to continue the reconciliation he had worked for.
Point of view
A Haudenosaunee orator reaches us through a French colonial author, then through translation. The French report is not Kondiaronk’s lost speech or unmediated Indigenous testimony.
Bacqueville de La Potherie, Histoire de l’Amérique septentrionale (Paris: Jean-Luc Nion and François Didot, early edition), tome IV, printed pp. 230–231. Smithsonian/Biodiversity Heritage Library copy, Internet Archive histoiredelameri41721bacq, leaves 240–241 (catalogued t.4, 1721). The complete eclipse sentence and Aouenano attribution are on p. 230. Corroborating reproduction: Emmanuel Bouchard, Édition critique, MQ26167.
Unnamed contemporary adults share a shore and pass a secular knotted cord. These painted scenes are symbolic reconstructions, not archival footage or a documented ceremony.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The coda moves from 1756 to present-day New England and New Mexico, ending on a living person rather than colonial disappearance.
Intended audience
Students watching the scene.
Purpose
To connect the two landscapes and make continuing Indigenous presence visible with ordinary modern clothing and actions.
Point of view
We invented the particular people, encounter and cord exchange. No named living person is impersonated, no sacred practice is reconstructed, and the modern cord is not asserted to duplicate a 1980 runner’s equipment. The six-word narration is interpretation, not anyone’s quoted testimony.
Modern symbolic reconstruction. Historical context: Pueblo of Jemez, The Walatowan (August 2020), p. 6; Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), ‘Wampanoag History.’ The source supports continuity, not the invented visual encounter.
Rowlandson describes the wound to herself and Sarah
Mary Rowlandson · 1682, recalling 10 February 1675/76
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
Background: not shown on screen.
The Bullets flying thick, one went through my side, and the same (as would seem) through the bowels and hand of my dear Child in my arms.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Rowlandson was captured at Lancaster in February 1676 and published her account in 1682. The book uses the English Old Style year, which began on 25 March.
Intended audience
Her family, Puritan readers in New England and readers of the later London editions.
Purpose
To interpret survival and release as divine providence and a test of faith.
Point of view
A captive and bereaved mother, also a minister’s wife writing with hostility toward her captors. Her record cannot supply Weetamoo’s own thoughts.
Mary Rowlandson, The Soveraignty & Goodness of God (Cambridge: Samuel Green, 1682), opening attack narrative, immediately before the page break numbered 4; Evans-TCP N00261.0001.001. The transcription lacks the preceding printed-page label, so this passage is located by the following page break. Spelling, capitalization and punctuation modernized. “As would seem” retains the mother’s uncertainty. The injury is told, never depicted. Sarah’s death follows in the adjacent Third Remove excerpt, printed page 11, eight days later.
Advanced Placement