Philip had been shot at the end of a bloody two-year conflict which began as a skirmish between the Wampanoag and the English on the frontier of Plymouth colony and ended with many of New England's settlements reduced to ashes. With as many as eight hundred deaths and countless homes destroyed, the English suffered terribly during the war. Nevertheless, the Native Americans suffered even greater losses in their pivotal struggle against the colonists. Devastated by disease and famine, the native peoples of southern New England were violently removed from their ancestral homelands, with thousands slain or sold into slavery.