SOMETIMES DESCRIBED as "America's deadliest war", King Philip's War proved a critical turning point in the history of New England, leaving English colonists decisively in command of the region at the expense of native peoples. Although traditionally understood as an inevitable clash of cultures or as a classic example of Indian-white frontier conflict, in the view of James D. Drake it was neither. Instead, he argues, King Philip's War was a civil war, whose divisions cut across simple ethnic lines and tore apart a society composed of English colonizers and Native Americans alike.According to Drake, the interdependence that developed between English and Indian in the years leading up to the war helps explain its notorious brutality. The end result was nothing less than the decimation of New England's indigenous peoples and the consequent social, political, and cultural reorganization of the region.