Ignorance

So the Providence Journal provides a forum for more ignorance about wargames as some Native American leaders are quoted criticizing the upcoming King Phillip's War wargame. From the context it's quite evident that none of them have a clue what a historical wargame might be and apparently imagine it must be something like a King Phillip's War Monopoly or CandyLand, which would indeed be trivializing. Nearly all of their criticisms would basically mean you couldn't to a wargame on any topic at all -- or at least none involving history or any tie to existing groups. Interestingly, some of the criticism seems to assume that the Indians are destined to lose. One ignoramus says that it's apparently still OK to kill Indians -- obviously ignorant that the carnage goes both ways. Indeed, one assumes that the premise of the game is that the Indians might very well have won. It was, as a matter of fact, probably the only occasion when the Indians might have driven off the English through force of arms. As valiant and understandable their later resistance might have been, all later the later Indian wars were, essentially futile. During King Phillip's War. on the other hand, the English colonists did not have an overwhelming advantage in numbers nor in technology. There's a legitimate what-if involved in this campaign and it appears to be an excellent and long-overlooked topic for a wargame.