King Philip’s War occurred 350 years ago and was a tragic moment between people who had been friends, neighbors and confederates for 50 years. When it was over, the First Nations of Southern New England had been either subdued, subsumed, extirpated or annihilated while the English New England colonies were free to expand unchecked. Historian Stan Svec has visited most of the important sites, including both Deer Island and the Great Swamp. In an 11-minute video posted on December 25, 2025, Svec takes a further look at two places of tremendous power, for those with memory, and reverence for things past and Landgeist, German for “earth spirit” or “spirit of the land”!

Historian Stan Svec states, “when I go out to the battle sites or the sites where history was made, one of the things that’s always struck me is there seems to be a magic. . . a sort of a vibration in the site. There is something to be said for a spirit that lingers on in a place where great things have occurred and sorrowful things and awful things.

Deer Island is a spooky place to visit, and there’s layer upon layer of history there after the confinement of the Nipmuc praying Indians there and the loss of so many of them to neglect and terrible weather. You can’t really put your finger on it, but it certainly is a special place.

So, like Deer Island, Great Swamp is a place that has a special feeling about it. It certainly is a place where tremendous violence occurred, a unjust war was waged, a massacre happened. But it’s also a special place for the memory of a lost people today and how they’re attempting to reclaim who they were before the disastrous King Phillip’s War took everything that they had.”