William Apess Eulogy On King Philip's War

Reflecting on history always leads a historian to reflect on past experiences in a particular way. When William Apess gave his speech “Eulogy on King Philip” in 1836, the Pequot Indian presented a group of New Englanders with evidence of the group’s own betrayal of the Indian people at a time when, elsewhere in the country, Andrew Jackson and his government brutally expelled thousands of Cherokees and other tribes from their homelands. Apess needed to remind these white Americans of their ancestors’ own participation in the Indians’ downfall. His account of King Philip’s War, meant to serve as this reminder, differs slightly from modern historian Yasuhide Kawashima’s account of the war and the events leading up to it. The differences from Kawashima in Apess’s account of King Philip …show more content…
Apess praised Philip’s willingness to sell land for very low prices despite the sachem’s responsibility to deal with the increasing English threat. “Philip did not wish to make war with them but compromised with them” when the Pilgrims demanded more land of the Wampanoag, according to Apess. Kawashima also believes Philip wished to appease the English up to a point in order to avoid violent conflict. When Josiah Winslow became Plymouth’s governor, Philip hoped relations could be repaired instead of viewing the change as a chance to attack. Yet Apess’s focus on the sachem’s desire for peace strengthens the Pequot activist’s point that the English were less Christian than the Indian tribes. The Pilgrims, not the Wampanoag, Philip’s tribe, “courted war instead of peace.” Apess enforces Philip’s hesitancy to prove the Indians did not have violent inclinations unless necessary. Only once Philip realizes the Pilgrims’ threats are too strong to ignore does the leader turn to violence—the death of John