Over 120 people from all over New England came to the Joseph Case Junior High School in Swansea, MA on June 21, 2025, the 350th anniversary of King Philip’s War which broke out in that town. Pokanoket Tribal Historian Strong Turtle and historian and author Eric B. Schultz exchanged views on the War during a ninety-minute conversation that focused on both the causes of the conflict and how it has been perceived and remembered over the past three and a half centuries. Click here for an hour and 40-minute video recording of their conversation, and here for a 22-minute video of a two-hour guided bus tour of four of the places where the conflict first began.

(Above) Dr. David Weed, historian for the Sowams Heritage Area Project, welcomed the audience and turned the program over to the speakers who each introduced the other before going into detail about the events and conditions that led up to the War and how the War has been understood both from an Indigenous and a colonial perspective.

Members of the audience came from as far away as Maine to hear the two perspectives on the causes of the War, before posing questions for the presenters Strong Turtle and Schultz. The event was sponsored by the Sowams Heritage Area Project, the Swansea Free Public Library, the Swansea Cultural Council, the Bristol Historical and Preservation Society, the Old Colony History Museum, BayCoast Bank and Mechanics Cooperative Bank.

(Above, left) Pokanoket Sachem Dancing Star describes some of the artifacts that she brought to Deborah Omerand of the East Providence Historical Society. (Above, center) Plimoth Patuxet Museums Deputy Executive Director and Senior Historian Richard Pickering, in blue, prepares to board one of three buses that traveled to the site of the Bourne Garrison, the site of Job Winslow’s Farm on the Kickemuit River where the War began, the site of the Baptist Meeting House at Nockum Hill where the colonists gathered, and the site of Rev. John Myles Garrison House where English troops met to mount a response to the outbreak of hostilities. (Above, right) Archaeologist Eleanor Dobson led one of three tour groups to the Myles Garrison site in Swansea.