There were many private wrongs of his people unavenged. The whites already had assumed a domineering manner, and his final resolution was both natural and patriotic. King Philip was a man of reason, and it is said he had no hope of success when he began the war. It was a war against such odds that it must have but one termination, and he had little if any faith in a successful issue. The Pokanokets had always rejected the Christian manners, and Massasoit had desired to insert in a treaty, what the Puritans never permitted, that the English should never attempt to convert the warriors of his tribe from their religion. Repeated sales of land narrowed their domains, and the English had artfully crowded them into the tongues of land, as "most suitable and convenient for them," where they would be more easily watched. The two chief seats of the Pokanokets were the peninsulas now called Bristol and Tiverton. As the English villages now grew nearer and nearer to them, their hunting-grounds were put under culture, their natural parks turned into pastures, their best fields for planting corn were gradually alienated, their fisheries impaired by more skilful methods, till they found themselves deprived of their broad acres, and by their own legal contracts driven, as it were, into the sea. Mutual distrusts and collisions were the inevitable consequence. There is no authentic evidence of a deliberate conspiracy on the part of all the tribes. Bancroft, who is, perhaps, the best authority on all colonial matters, says the commencement of the war was accidental, and that "many of the Indians were in a maze, not knowing what to do, and ready to stand for the English." There were many grievances among the Indians. The haughty chieftain, who had once before been compelled to surrender his "English arms," and pay an onerous tribute, was summoned to submit to an examination, and could not escape suspicion. The wrath of his tribe was roused, and the informer was murdered. In turn the murderers were identified, seized, tried by a jury of which one-half were Indians, and on conviction were hanged. The younger men of the tribe were eager for vengeance, and without delay eight or nine of the English were slain about Swansey, and the alarm of war spread through the colonies.