This book. I'm so grateful that scholars like Lisa Brooks exist.

Brooks revisits a set of conflicts that are central to how we talk about early English colonization. Even growing up in Utah I heard some of these stories -- I was even assigned Mary Rowlandson's narrative about being "captured by Indians" in an American literature class. The old stories, even when they romanticize Native warriors, are part of a Manifest Destiny narrative. The replacement of indigenous people by the English is treated as inevitable. Indigenous cultures are only spoken of in the past tense.

But Brooks comes to this story with a much wider lens, considering indigenous cultures, looking through their perspective, reading between the lines, grounding it all in the land. She breaks everything wide open. Eventually, she reframes the war to show the value of resistance to colonization, from the 1600s through today.

This isn't a quick or easy book to read. It's dense history, closely following primary texts, catered to those who are already familiar with the standard narratives about the King Philip's War. People like me will have to do supplementary reading and remind ourselves who different characters are. But I really encourage others to stick with it. Reread the paragraphs until you get what they're saying, turn back to the maps, take it slow.

The only problem with the book is that the index isn't at all comprehensive, and although there are extensive notes at the back, there isn't a bibliography to help you find the works she's referencing.

Two things that struck me:

1) The compassion and understanding that Brooks brings to Native people who worked as scouts and helpers to the English. She uncovers the full complexity behind why some people made that decision -- often making a desperate bargain to protect their families.

2) Reading about the English settlers, I was interested in how there were more cruel and more humane individuals among them. They had strong differences of opinion about how the Wampanoag and other tribal members should be treated. Some even really stuck their neck out to protect individual people. But all of them were aligned in the colonialist project. They all wanted to replace the indigenous people, they just had different ideas about how it should be done. It made me think of how often we can be caught up in heated debate over the big political questions, without noticing that we're all implicitly agreeing to a horrific foundational premise.

Some of the most intense parts of the book for me were when we spend time with Weetamoo, a powerful Wampanoag chief who worked to protect her people throughout the conflict. Toward the end, Brooks writes about going to the Quequechand River, where Weetamoo died. The English, who mutilated her body after her death, wrote that she drowned while trying to get away, that it was an act of God. But Brooks explores the odd silence in the narratives. She writes:

"At Quequechand, the river, like the truth of Weetamoo's death, is but a trickle, buried under thick layers of pavement, concrete, highway, and degenerating mill works. Yet that stream has a sense of will and determination, breaking free from the cement that has restrained it for so long. The water, springing through cracks, actively seeks the old riverbed among the pebbles and plants below. Walking through Fall River today, Quequechand is nearly impossible to find. Yet that water has a memory of falling, an overpowering resonance. Today, you can find the river only by the sound of its name. This story, too, is just a trickle, lying beneath hundreds of years of print. Yet water has its own mind, its own course to take. Despite all efforts to dam and control it, it cannot be contained."

Thank you Lisa Brooks for listening and searching and following out these uncontainable stories -- and for sharing them with us.