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As William Apess tells it in his autobiography, A Son
of the Forest (1829), his grandfather was a white man
who married the granddaughter of King Philip, or Metacom,
the loser of the 1678 "King Philip's War." As a
small boy, Apess was abused by his alcoholic grandparents
and then sold as an indentured laborer. The boy's master allowed
him to attend school and introduced him to Christianity, the
most important influence in Apess's life. As an adult, he
became a preacher, and in 1833 he moved to Mashpee, the last
Indian town in Massachusetts, to preach. Apess saw Christianity
and racial prejudice as completely incompatible, and this
became one of the central themes of his writings and sermons.
In his famous "Eulogy on King Philip", delivered in
1836 in Boston, he insisted that Indians wanted only what
the descendants of the Pilgrims wanted: justice and Christian
fellowship.
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