King Philip’s War killed a higher proportion of the population than any other war in American history. Not the Civil War, not World War I. This one. Around five percent of the English colonial population of New England died, and estimates for the Native population run as high as forty percent. But, almost no one has heard of it. This ten-minute video posted on September 7, 2026 by Book of Nations tells the story of King Philip’s War.

From an alliance that genuinely worked between two peoples who needed each other, to the slow collision of two completely different ideas about what owning land means, to a colonial trial that told the Native population they had no sovereignty at all.

(Above) Metacom, the man history calls King Philip, took the English name himself, in friendship, from people he trusted. But, in January, 1675, a Native man named John Sassamon was discovered under the ice in a frozen pond. Three Native men were accused of the murder and tried by the English, enraging Philip and his warriors who soon began raiding and burning English settlements.

The War raged for 14 months and ended when Philip was shot at his home at Mt. Hope. The tribes across New England were devastated and were either killed outright, enslaved, or driven out of New England. Native people are still here today, still on their land, and still arguing in federal court about who it belongs to — three hundred and fifty years later.