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would remain deterministic in nature. That is, if this movement was not actually perceived as being God’s plan, then at least it was securely rooted in the nature of things. Within a decade and a half of Philip’s ascendancy to the role of Pokanoket sachem, the future for Indians in New England would largely be settled. King Philip’s War marked the end of the American Indian as a political and military force in New England and almost led to the total demise of American Indian culture in the region. Some groups would survive, but just barely. After the 1670s, Euro-Americans occupied the dominant position along the eastern sea- board and could begin their drive to conquer the rest of the vast continent. PRELUDE TO WAR Philip’s New England By the mid-1670s, when war broke out between New England tribes and the Euro-Americans, the non-native population of the region stood at about 36,000 to 45,000, with approximately 17,000 in Massachusetts Bay Colony, with Boston as its principal town 5,000 in Plymouth Colony to the south 10,000 in Connecticut 3,000 to 4,000 in Rhode Island and some 5,000 to the north in Maine. The New Englanders were spread out in approximately 110 towns or vil- lages, most located near the coast or along rivers. Elsewhere, the land was heavily wooded and intersected by paths primarily known to the native population.2 At this time, Euro-Americans outnumbered Indians by two to one. In large part, this ratio emerged because of diseases that ravaged the region in the sev- enteenth century, reducing the Indian population from a high estimated at about 90,000 to perhaps 10,000 to 20,000 people by 1675.3 Although the native peoples belonged to a variety of tribes (including the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Niantic, Mohegan, Pequot, Massachusetts, Nipmuc, and Abenaki), they shared membership in the Algonquian language family and thus were able to communicate with and understand one another. Euro-Americans had been trading with the Indians, especially for furs, since the early sixteenth century. When the non-native population began increasing by the middle of the seventeenth century, the Indian possession most in demand increasingly became the land itself. Native peoples were at a distinct disadvantage in land deals, as they neither engaged in private ownership of the land nor shared the Euro-American view of permanent habitations and, therefore, had difficulty fully grasping those concepts. The new arrivals wanted to establish villages and farms that would be their permanent homes. The native peoples, by contrast, saw land occupancy as temporary, moving with the seasons and shifting village sites to accommodate their needs. When Euro-Americans spoke of “owning,” the native peoples were apt to register instead the principle of temporary use. The English were punctilious about following their moral principles, and those principles included buying rather than stealing. They generally paid for Philip 3