February 1, 1676
With tensions high and Thomas Eames in Boston, Netus’s party approached the Eames homestead in search of the missing corn. Perhaps, for Netus, this was the last straw. Despite decades of adherence to English rules and conventions, he was repeatedly denied his means of survival.
It cannot be known exactly what happened when the men arrived, but it is likely that Mary Eames and her older children recognized some of them. Perhaps the men asked after the corn and Mary refused to help them. Perhaps one of the parties involved was immediately hostile. No matter how things began, violence was the result.
It is known that both sides participated in the fight. Mary Eames, who was making soap at the time of Netus’s arrival, poured boiling lye solution on the men before using kitchen implements as weapons against them. The men, who were undoubtedly armed, killed Mary and four of the Eames children: Elizabeth (adult), Thomas (13), Sarah (6), and Lydia (4); kidnapped others, and burned the whole homestead to the ground. All participants were driven by high emotions. For the Native men, it was desperation and a sense of betrayal, for Mary Eames, a heightened sense of danger and the active othering of the Praying Indians.
These are the dangerous circumstances under which a meeting of neighbors turned deadly.
After the incident, Eames recorded an inventory of his losses. It included 30 loads of hay, 10 bushels of wheat, 40 bushels of rye, and 210 bushels of indian corn.
