It all started when Tisquantum's entire tribe was wiped out by a plague.
Tisquantum was a member of the Patuxet tribe of the Wampanoag Confederacy when English traders reached their land (now the state of Massachusetts) in 1614, under the command of John Smith.
Smith had previously had interactions with the Powhatan tribe near Jamestown, in what is now Virginia. Smith would later claim that, while exploring the land around Jamestown, he had been captured by Powhatan and would have been executed but for the intervention of the chief's teenaged daughter Pocahontas.