American Indian Culture and Research Journal

History is not simply something that happens to people, but something they make-within, of course, the very powerful constraints of the system within which they are operating. -Sherry B. Ortner For more than three hundred years, historians have pointed to the trial of three Indians for the alleged murder of the Indian John Sassamon as the proximate cause of King Philip’s War. These scholars have posited that the execution of the Indians for Sassamon’s murder triggered a total war among the region’s inhabitants in June 1675. At the same time, however, many researchers have demonstrated that Indians usually received unfair treatment in the colonial courts; if that is true, why did the Sassamon trial, in particular, after years of legal inequality, signify such a threat that Indians throughout the Northeast put their communities at risk in a full-scale war effort? To answer this question, one must understand exactly what the trial symbolized to various Indians, especially to Philip and the Pokanoket (Wampanoag). And to interpret the symbolism of the trial, one must comprehend the situation that various Indians believed they had created for themselves and the Northeast’s English inhabitants.