The Frontier Partisans Podcast

In 1910, Porfirio Diaz turned 80 years old. He had ruled Mexico for three decades, and had modernized his country and centralized political power. But “progress” had come ate the expense of massive social discontent — and a storm was brewing that would sweep the Porfiriato away.

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Music: Blue Frontier by Jim Cornelius

Graphics by Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative

Wrapping up the Frontier Partisans Podcast Series on King Philip’s War, it is apparent that the war was a catastrophe for Puritan New England — and an apocalypse for the native peoples of southern New England.

Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War is highly readable and worthy. Flintlock & Tomahawk by Douglas Leach remains a key history.

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Music: Blue Frontier by Jim Cornelius

Graphics by Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative

In the summer of 1676, Metacomet fled south from central Massachusetts, back to his homeland in Rhode Island’s Mount Hope Peninsula. Captain Benjamin Church, sidelined by wounds, got back into the fight, leading a contingent of native warriors and English soldiers in a strategic manhunt that would end King Philip’s War.

Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War is highly readable and worthy, and Osprey’s King Philip’s War, 1675-76: America’s Deadliest Colonial Conflict is useful. Flintlock & Tomahawk by Douglas Leach remains a key history.

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Music: Blue Frontier by Jim Cornelius

Graphics by Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative

As the spring 1676 campaign season gets underway, the Puritan settlements of New England are reeling — but the fundamental weaknesses of the native insurgency are starting to show.

Source material: Flintlock & Tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War, by Douglas Edward Leach. Despite a clear bias toward the Puritan settlers’ POV, and the use of archaic and pejorative language that jars modern sensibilities, Leach’s work remains a foundational narrative history of the war.

Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War is highly readable and worthy, and Osprey’s King Philip’s War, 1675-76: America’s Deadliest Colonial Conflict is useful. The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England, 1675-78 by Russell Bourne offers worthwhile interpretations of events. James D. Drake’s King Philip’s War: Civil War in New England 1675-1676 offers a strong and nuanced counterpoint to Leach’s view that the war was an inevitable clash of cultures.

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Music: Blue Frontier by Jim Cornelius

Graphics by Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative

The United Colonies attack a fortified Narragansett camp deep in a frozen swamp in Rhode Island, in a preemptive wintertime 1675 strike. 

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Music: Blue Frontier by Jim Cornelius

Graphics by Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative

The Nipmuc jump into the fray and lash the Massachusetts Bay Colony furiously. Ambush tactics play hell with the colonial militias through the summer and fall of 1675, and settlements up and down the Connecticut River are attacked, abandoned and destroyed.

 

For further reading: “Flintlock & Tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War, 1675-78,” by Douglas Edward Leach

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Music: Blue Frontier by Jim Cornelius

Graphics by Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative

The primed musket of conflict finally goes off, with devastating impact on the Plymouth Colony community of Swansea. This episode lays out the strategic and tactical advantages and disadvantages held by the Wampanoag and Puritan settler combatants, and describes the way a conflict that might have been contained escaped that containment and became a widening and extremely destructive war across New England.

“The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England, 1675-1678,” by Russell Bourne

“Entertaining Passages Relating to King Philip’s War, which began in the Year 1675, With the Proceedings of Benj Church, Esq.”

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Music: Blue Frontier by Jim Cornelius

Graphics by Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative

When the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth in 1620, they found allies and partners in the Wampanoag people. For a generation that alliance was beneficial to both peoples. But by 1675, the partnership had broken down and the Wampanoag and the Plymouth settlers found themselves on teh brink of war.

Works cited:

So Dreadfull a Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip’s War, 1676–1677; Richard Slotkin, James K. Folsom, editors

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War —
By Nathaniel Philbrick

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Music: Blue Frontier by Jim Cornelius

Graphics by Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative

Tiburcio Vasquez was a rock star. He had everything that a bandit needs to become a folk hero. He was handsome and charismatic, a swashbuckler who carried an air of daring and danger — but he could plausibly claim that he’d never taken a life. He could — and did — claim to be a rebel fighting for the oppressed. The image doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny, but since when has that mattered? People wanted to believe it. Still do, in fact.

The main source for this podcast episode is John Boessenecker’s magnificent biography “Bandido: The Life and Times of Tiburcio Vasquez.” Highest possible recommendation.

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Music: Blue Frontier by Jim Cornelius

Graphics by Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative

The ambush slaying of Sheriff James R. Barton and three of his deputies in January of 1857 was the worst act of violence against law enforcement in Los Angeles history until the Newhall Incident of 1970, when four highway patrolmen were gunned down during a traffic stop north of the city. The Barton killing led to a massive manhunt and an orgy of savage vigilante violence. Here’s how it went down...

 

Support The Frontier Partisans Blog and Podcast through Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/frontierpartisans

Music: Blue Frontier by Jim Cornelius

Graphics by Lynn Woodward, Woodward Creative