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In 1675, King Philip's War – a war redolent of sin and flesh – broke out in New England between English settlers and Indians. All of the antagonists in this war saw each other as sinners: the Puritans blamed Quakers for drawing the wrath of God upon them in the form of angry Indians; the Quakers blamed Puritans for persecuting fellow Christians; the Indians felt the English had abused them in multiple ways; the English saw the Indians as Godless, and so as sinners as well. As for flesh, the physical costs of war were devastating: the Indians suffered massive losses of population, and 12 English towns were utterly destroyed. The major leaders when war erupted were King Philip of the Wampanoags, Canonchet of the Narragansetts, the Quaker Governor William Coddington of Rhode Island, Governors John Leverett of Massachusetts Bay, Josiah Winslow of Plymouth, and John Winthrop Jr. of Connecticut. Quakers dominated the Rhode Island government and sent Quaker John Easton to negotiate with Philip in a failed effort to forestall hostilities.

When Samoset (Abenaki) walked into Plymouth Colony in March of 1621, he announced an unexpected meeting between the Pilgrims and the local Algonquians who were led by the Massasoit Osamequin. The following day, he returned to Plymouth with five Natives in regalia, who ritually prepared the designated meeting ground by dancing, singing, and making corn and tobacco offerings. This gathering was intentionally scheduled to coincide with the vernal equinox, an important ceremonial time for agricultural Algonquians. For both parties, the parley was portentous for Native–European relations and for Plymouthean survival. At this meeting, the Pilgrims negotiated for the Patuxet land on which they were living; they made a non-aggression pact with the Wampanoags; and they agreed to have Tisquantum (Squanto) and Hobomok live with them inside the palisade.

This chapter recounts the period when John Wompas left Massachusetts at a time of personal trouble as well as a time of trouble for the colony. Massachusetts had been under a cloud of royal disapproval, since the king sent royal commissioners to investigate the colony's loyalty and adherence to English law in 1664. Within a year of John's departure from Massachusetts, a more immediate crisis struck the region: a devastating war broke out between the English colonists and their Indian neighbors, the Wampanoags and Narragansetts, as well as many of Wompas's Nipmuc kin. By the time he returned to Massachusetts in 1677, he would find a way to use both the war and the colony's political disgrace to his own advantage.

This chapter looks at the war between the colonists and many of the surrounding Native peoples in New England, which began in late June 1675. Initially, it involved only the English of Plymouth Colony and the Wampanoags under their sachem Philip Metacom—also known as King Philip—but the conflict quickly spread to Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and northern New England, drawing in English and Indian combatants from all of those locales, including the Nipmucs of the central Massachusetts highlands. Few groups suffered more during King Philip's War than the Christian Indians, caught as they were between the distrust of their Indian kin and the English to whom they had pledged their loyalty. Their treatment by the English during and after King Philip's War fueled John Wompas's growing anger against the Massachusetts government, which would explode on his return to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1677.