This chapter details John Wompas's experience of returning home and finding an English family occupying his house, which was emblematic of the situation facing New England Indians in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, a situation dramatically accelerated by the recent war. Everywhere, the English had taken possession of Indian property, shutting Indians out with their fences, their livestock, and their laws. Not just barriers and deeds, but also colony-wide restrictions on Indian activity made what once had been Indian land off limits. This seems to have triggered a radical change in Wompas, turning him from a man who moved fluidly between Indian and English worlds in pursuit of his own interests to one who consistently represented himself as an Indian, championed Indian interests, and aspired to Indian leadership.
