Mayflower

24, 1671, as long as a delegation from Massachusetts was also in attendance.
    But by the time Philip appeared in Plymouth, the officials from Massachusetts had changed their position. Plymouth was right, and the Pokanokets were wrong. The treaty he was subsequently forced to sign amounted to a total and mortifying capitulation. He must turn over all his weapons, and he must pay a fine of £100. Even worse, he was now a subject of Plymouth and must pay the colony an annual tribute of five wolves’ heads. Plymouth had given Philip no options: if he was to survive as sachem of the Pokanokets, he must now go to war.
    Â 
    Philip was disarmed but hardly defeated. He immediately began to make plans for obtaining more muskets—but to pay for the new weapons, he was going to need money—and lots of it.
    In August of 1672, Philip took out a mortgage on some land along the Taunton River to pay off a debt of £83; soon after, he sold a four-mile-square piece of land in the same vicinity for £143 (approximately $32,000 today)—the largest price ever paid for a piece of Indian real estate in Plymouth. Of interest are the Indians whom Philip chose to sign this particular deed, two of whom, Annawon and Nimrod, were his principal “captains” or warriors. Philip, it appears, had launched into a calculated strategy of selling land for weapons. That he was about to sell almost every parcel of land he owned was, in the end, irrelevant, since it was all to fund a war to win those lands back. By 1673, with the sale of a neck of land to the west of Mount Hope, Philip had succeeded in selling every scrap of land surrounding his territory.
    Playing into Philip’s stratagem was English greed. Rather than wonder how he and his people could possibly survive once they’d been confined to a reservation at Mount Hope, or speculate where all this money was going, the English went ahead and bought more land—even agreeing to pay for the rights to fish in the waters surrounding Mount Hope when it meant that the Pokanokets might no longer be able to feed themselves.
    Â 
    The Pokanokets represented just 5 percent of the total Indian population of New England. If Philip was to have any hope of surviving a conflict, he must convince a significant number of the other tribes to join him. He knew he could probably count on the Pocassets and the Nemaskets, which were both led by his near relations, but it was questionable whether the Indians on Cape Cod and the islands would follow him into war. The Indians in this region had looked increasingly to Christianity—a trend that had only accelerated since Philip’s voyage to Nantucket in 1665. Closer to home, the Massachusetts, who were so cozy with Winslow, would never join him. Uncas and the Mohegans, along with the remnants of the Pequots, also had strong ties to the English. The Nipmucks, on the other hand, were the Pokanokets’ ancient and trustworthy friends, a relationship strengthened by Massasoit’s final years with the Quabaugs.
    There were two important unknowns. To the south of Pocasset, on a rolling plain that swept down to the sea at a rocky point, were the Sakonnets led by the female sachem Awashonks. The Sakonnets’ loyalties were difficult to determine. Even more inscrutable were the Narragansetts, the Pokanokets’ traditional foes. Significant inroads had been made in establishing a common ground between the two tribes, but the Narragansetts were too large and diverse to speak with a single voice. Their young warriors were anxious to enlist, but the tribe’s older, more cautious sachems were reluctant to go to war. If subsequent English claims are to be believed, a tentative agreement was reached between the two tribes that come the spring of 1676, the fighting would begin.
    In cobbling together a pan-Indian force to oppose the English, Philip was attempting to accomplish what not even the great Narragansett sachem Miantonomi had been able to pull off in the 1640s. And while Miantonomi had been known for his bravery in battle, Philip had no such reputation. But if he lacked his predecessor’s physical courage, Philip appears to have had a different sort of charisma. His mounting desperation combined with a healthy dose of righteous indignation made him a lightning rod for Indians across the region, all of whom had experienced some version of the Pokanokets’ plight. If they did not band together now and stand up