Moshup was right. The new people did come, bringing chaos, death, and destruction. At first they came to take our fish, trees, and people as slaves to trade back in Europe, until one day a ship, famously known as the Mayflower, brought people to stay.
At that time, Weetamoo, who would become a great Saunkskwa (female leader) to guide, defend, and unite our people, was a young girl and one of two daughters of Conbitant, the Wampanoag Sachem (male leader) of Pocasset (now known as Westport, Fall River, and the Taunton area).
Weetamoo and her sister, Wootonakahuske, grew up in the traditional ways of Wampanoag girls, spending time with the other girls and women cultivating and sustaining the fields along the river beds that supported the Three Sisters Gardens (corn, beans, and squash). They visited other tribes, gathered at pow wows, developed relationships with their extended kin, and were taught how to be good leaders by both of their parents. Both sisters would serve as Saunkskwas in their own right, as well as being partnered with Metacom and Wamsutta, the sons of the Massasoit Ousamequin, the Sachem of the Wampanoag. Wamsutta, Weetamoo's husband, would later take over as Great Sachem, while Wootonakahuske's husband, Metacom, was called King Philip by the colonists who would soon start a conflict known as King Philip's War.
In the time leading up to this war, Weetamoo was Saunkskwa of Pocasset, and was instrumental in building relationships and alliances among the Native people of the region; ensuring that the bounty from planting, hunting, and fishing was distributed fairly and equally among families in her homelands; and maintaining control of her people's land. For instance, she used tactics that included selling a piece of land to a man in her tribe. The land served as a boundary between the English colonists and her tribal lands, and she knew that the English would honor a deed that belonged to an individual man over land held by a woman or a tribe. Her decision stopped colonist encroachment on her tribal lands.

Though our people and the colonists had established an uneasy peace, one day Wamsutta was marched to the colony at gunpoint to have a meeting. Prior to the meeting he was in great shape and in good health. However, on his trip home he dropped dead. Many, including Weetamoo and Metacom believed he had been poisoned by the colonists.
This strained relations, and, when Wampanoag legal jurisdiction was violated by the colonists, the war was ignited. According to agreements established between our people and the colonists, Sachems were to have jurisdiction over their own people. If one of ours committed a crime, the Sachem would handle it, and vice versa for the colonists. However, one day the colonists captured and tried three Wampanoag men who they believed had murdered another Wampanoag man. When the colonists' court convicted and hung all three men, it began the bloodiest war ever fought on what is now American soil.
During the war, Weetamoo aided Metacom and her people, moving her whole village through a swamp and evading capture by the colonial military, and creating alliances with Narragansett and other tribal leaders to work together to fight the English colonists.
Ultimately however, Metacom was betrayed and killed. The colonists beheaded him and placed his head on a spike, displaying it for the next 40 years. At the end of the war, Weetamoo drowned trying to escape the colonists. She too was beheaded and her body chopped into pieces and displayed around the colonies to serve as a warning to other Indigenous peoples seeking to assert their sovereignty.
But things didn’t end there: this wasn’t just King Philip's War, it was a coordinated response by the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Massachusett, Patucket, and Wabanaki nations against the English, who, as historian Lisa Brooks stated, "had visions that Englishmen would replace indigenous bodies." Indigenous peoples of the Northeast united against colonial oppression and injustice. Even though the impact of the war on the Wampanoag nations was devastating, the English had to relent to the allied Indigenous peoples, even going so far as returning Wabanaki people they had sold into slavery. In the face of Weetamoo's courage, strength, and wisdom, the English didn’t win, and her actions were integral to our survival, as well as the Mashpee, Herring Pond, and other Wampanoag and Nipmuc people.

In the 1970s, the tribes in the Northeast sought federal recognition. At the time, for the Aquinnah Wampanoag, it was the best path to prevent our lands from being bought up by non-native people. A group of mostly Aquinnah women, along with some men, worked together to preserve a space for our future generations, as Moshup had done for us thousands of years ago, and Weetamoo 300 years ago. By suing the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for taking lands that were Indian Lands and incorporating them into a town in direct violation of the federal law known as the Nonintercourse Act, they followed in Weetamoo’s footsteps by using the colonizers' laws and systems to protect our people. During that time, many of the Northeast tribes used this strategy and reached settlement agreements. Though these agreements are based on what are probably some of the worst settlement terms in the country, they were the best that could be done at the time and were a key step in the journey that we continue today.