Colonists in New England were often captured by Canadians and their Indian allies. This was because New France and New England had competition at the time. (This happened to the Canadians as well). The number of captives taken from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries are unclear, however. Some think that about 1,641 New Englanders were taken hostage during King Phillip's War (1675). When the whites and Indians had conflicts in the mid-nineteenth century, hundreds of women and children were captured.