King Philip (or Metacomet) was the leader of the anti-colonial force in the 1675-1676 war that now bears his name. This image of Metacomet was first engraved by Paul Revere for the second edition of Benjamin Church’s Entertaining History of King Philip’s War (1772), and was reprinted many times in the next three centuries.
This particular copy is extra-illustrated with 27 tipped-in engravings, chosen by John Carter Brown; of those images, only two are of Indigenous men; the other image is of Ninigret, sachem of the Nehântick. Most depictions of Indigenous peoples in eighteenth and nineteenth-century printed materials are fictionalized, with very few persons specifically named.
The fact that Ninigret and Metacomet are named subjects of engravings, along with Brown’s inclusion of them in his specially-bound copy, speaks to elite Americans’ fascination with the two men as heroic figures.
Citation
Increase Mather, Samuel G. Drake (ed.), The Early History of New England. Boston, 1864.[Catalogue Entry][archive.org]