Our Beloved Kin

"This book won the Bancroft Prize so, clearly, I’m not the only person who recognizes how amazing it is. It looks at an event that you might know well if you’ve taken an American history class, King Philip’s War. And you will probably have heard about some of the Native actors associated with that conflict, namely, the person denoted ‘King Philip’ by the English. Brooks looks at two figures who are found in the primary source documents from that conflict, but somehow have been ignored in other historical treatments. One of them is a Native woman who led her people at the time of the conflict. The other is a man who lived a little bit later, a Native man who was part of what’s called a Puritan praying town. He got involved in printing and the creation of stories about New England’s history, including captivity narratives. Brooks makes these formerly overlooked Native characters central to her story. By doing that, she’s able to highlight what it meant to experience King Philip’s War as a Native person in these different circumstances. She asks what we can learn about that conflict from their points of view. It was a 17th-century conflict between English colonists and a variety of Native nations. Before this war, the English had a sense of being in the “New World,” colonizing the place, but somehow in a benevolent way. They pushed Native people to the margins, but considered that process to be generally peaceful. They didn’t want to be like the Spanish. They had this notion, sometimes called the “black legend,” about Spanish colonial tactics and were determined not to do it the same way. In King Philip’s War, the English moved towards devastating and exterminating forms of violence against Native people. It was an important turning point away from negotiation and less dramatic uses of force to an overwhelming and exclusive use of force."