USA > Rhode Island > A short history of Rhode Island > Part 6
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And here comes into view one of the boldest leaders of the colonists in their wars with the
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natives, Benjamin Church, of Plymouth, a man skilled in all the arts of Indian warfare, and in whose ardent nature a sound judgment and self- control were combined with intrepidity and enter- prise. He pressed close upon the track of the enemy, crossed the bay to Aquidneck, and after a six hours' fight with a superior force was com- pelled to take refuge on board a sloop just as his ammunition began to fail.
The war was fairly begun, and for over a twelve- month raged with various fortunes but unabated fury. Plymouth and Massachusetts suffered most, but it left bloody traces in Rhode Island also.
For unfortunately for Rhode Island, Philip's favorite seat was that beautiful range of hills, some twelve miles long, which separates the Taunton River and Mount Hope Bay from Narra- gansett Bay, thus bringing him within the limits of the present Town of Bristol. Tradition still points to a rock on the southernmost hill where the "noble savage" loved to sit and gaze on the waters as they held their way to the Atlantic, revolving, perhaps, in his embittered mind, a bloody vengeance upon his arrogant foe. It was from Mount Hope that he set forth to strike his first blow, and thither that he returned to fall by the hand of a traitor. "But a small part of the domain of my ancestors is left," he said to his friend, John Borden. "I am determined not to live till I have no country."
Part only of the bloody record as I have
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already said belongs to Rhode Island. In the modern Town of Tiverton, known in those earlier colonial days as Pocasset, there was a swamp- seven miles in length-one of those difficult spots wherein Indian warriors love to concentrate their forces in the hour of danger. Here, amidst intri- cate paths and trembling morasses Philip first awaited the assault of the enemy. The colonists came up bravely to the charge, but were bravely repulsed with the loss of sixteen men. Then they resolved to take possession of the avenues to the swamp and starve the Indians into surren- der. But the wily Philip after standing a siege of thirteen days made good his escape by night and took refuge on the Connecticut River, where he was joined by the Nipmucks, a Massachusetts tribe which he had won over to his fortunes. Surprises, pursuits, gallant stands, fearful mas- sacres follow .. At Brookfield it is an ambush
followed by a siege. At Deerfield there was a battle in which the Indians were worsted, then a second trial of strength in which the town was burnt. At Hadley the enemy came. while the inhabitants were in the meeting-house engaged in their devotions. For a while the men, who had brought their arms with them and were well trained to the use of them, thus held their ground firmly. But the surprise had shaken their nerves, and they were beginning to cast anxious glances around them, when suddenly in their midst ap- peared a venerable man clad in the habiliments
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of another age and with a sword in his hand. With a clear, firm voice he roused the flagging courage of the villagers, reformed their ranks and led them to the charge. A Roman would have taken him for one of the Dioscuri-a Spaniard for St. Jago. What wonder that the Hadleyites thought him a divine messenger, and if with such a proof of God's favor to inspirit them, they sprang forward with dauntless hearts and drove their enemy before them. When the victory was won, the same clear voice bade them bow their heads in prayer, and when they raised them again the mysterious speaker was gone. None but the vil- lage preacher knew that it was Goffe, the regicide.
A surprise and massacre have left their name to Bloody Brook. Springfield was burned. But at Hatfield Philip received a check, and having laid waste the western frontier of Massachusetts, turned his steps toward the land of the Narra- gansetts. For the success of the war depended mainly upon the decision of that still powerful tribe. In the beginning a doubtful treaty had been patched up between them and the English. But their hearts were with their own race, and when Philip came they resolved to cast in their fortunes with his. The colonists prepared them- selves sternly for the contest. Fifteen hundred men were enlisted in Massachusetts, Plymouth and Connecticut; a body of friendly Indians joined them, and though it was mid-winter, think- ing only of the necessity of striking a decisive
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blow they began their march. Volunteers from Rhode Island joined them on the way, but Rhode Island as a colony was not consulted.
The Narragansetts were on their own ground and had chosen the strongest point for their win- ter quarters. It was an island of between three and four acres in the midst of a vast swamp in the southwestern part of the State, three or four miles from the present village of Kingston. To the trees and other natural defences the Indian chief had added palisades and such appliances as his rude engineering suggested. Here he had built his wigwams and stored his provisions, and prepared to pass the winter.
Towards this fated spot at the dawn of a De- cember Sabbath the little army of Puritans took their way. The snow was falling fast and the wind dashed it in their faces, but bated not their speed. By one they were in front of the stronghold, and though weary with the long march and faint with hunger they pressed eagerly forward. The only entrance was over the trunk of a tree. The Indian guns and arrows covered every foot of the way. The colonists undaunted rushed on-officers in the van. First to feel the murderous Indian aim was Captain Johnson, of Roxbury. Captain Davenport, of Boston, fell next, but before he fell penetrated the enclosure. More than two hours the battle raged with una- bated fury. At one time the English made their way into the fort, but the Indians rallied and
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forced them back again. But over-confident in the natural strength of their fortress they had neg- lected to secure with palisades a strip which they had thought sufficiently guarded by a sheet of water. The English discovered it, and crossing took the astonished natives in the rear. At the same time some one shouted, "Fire their wig- wams." The fatal flame caught eagerly the light boughs and branches of which the frail tenements. were made, and in a few moments the fort was all ablaze. Imagination shrinks appalled from the scene that followed. Night was coming on. The snow storm had set in with fresh violence. A thousand Indian warriors lay dead or wounded within the fort. Five hundred wigwams were burning within the same narrow compass-con- suming alike the bodies of the wounded and the dead. The women and children, like their pro- tectors, perished in the flames. Eighty of the English, too, were killed-a hundred and fifty were wounded. Had the wigwams been spared there would have been food and shelter for the victors. But victors and vanquisher were driven. out into the bleak night, weary and spent with long marching and fasting-the Indian to crouch in an open cedar swamp not far from the fort- the English to return to the spot from whence they had set out in the morning for this dreadful victory-Smith's plantation, near the present vil- lage of Wickford. Several of the wounded died. by the way.
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Even after this blow Philip succeeded in arous- ing the Maine and New Hampshire tribes to his support, and the war still raged for a while through the New England settlements. Rhode Island suffered severely. Warwick was burned, and the cattle driven off. Tradition says that when the enemy approached Providence, Roger Williams, now a very old man, went out to meet them. "Massachusetts," he said, "can raise thousands of men at this moment, and if you kill them, the King of England will supply their places as fast as they fall." "Let them come," was the reply, "we are ready for them. But as for you, brother Williams, you are a good man ; you have been kind to us many years ; not a hair of your head shall be touched." Fifty-four houses in the northern part of the town were burned, but the fearless old man was not harmed.
Many of the colonists took refuge on Aquid- neck, where the inhabitants of Newport and Portsmouth received them with great kindness. To protect the island a little flotilla of four boats, manned each by five or six men, was kept sailing around it day and night. There was no rest for old or young. April opened a brighter prospect. Canonchet, chief of the Narragansetts was taken prisoner. A young Englishman attempted to examine him. "You much child ; no understand matters of war. Let your brother or your chief come. Him I will answer," was his haughty reply. He was offered his life if his tribe would
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submit, but refused it. The offer was renewed and he calmly said, "Let me hear no more about it." He was sent to Stonington, where a council of war condemned him to death. "I like it well," said he; "I shall die before my heart is soft, or I have said anything unworthy of myself." That as many as possible of his own race should take part in his execution Pequots were em- ployed to shoot him, Mohegans to cut off his head and quarter him, and the Niantics to burn his body. When all this had been done, his head was sent to the Commissioners at Hartford as "a taken of love and loyalty."
Throughout the spring and early summer the war still raged with unabated violence. The Rhode Island Assembly was so hard pushed that it was compelled to repeal the law exempting Quakers from military service. A few days be- fore the capture of Canonchet he had surprised a party of Plymouth men near Pawtuxet. A bat- tle was fought in an open cedar swamp in War- wick. But at last fortune seemed to turn towards the English. Philip's allies began to fall from him. His wife and children were taken prisoners. Captain Church with a chosen band was on his trail. Hunted from lair to lair he sought refuge at Mount Hope. A few followers still clung to his fortunes. His mind was harassed by unpro- pitious dreams, and in his weariness his pursuers came upon him unawares. As he rose to flee he was shot down by a renegade Indian. The vic-
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tors drew his body out of the swamp, cut off his head, and dividing the trunk and limbs into four parts hung them upon four trees. The head was sent to Plymouth where it was hung upon a gib- bet. One hand was sent to Boston where it was welcomed as a trophy, and the other was given to the renegade who shot him, by whom it was exhibited for money. His son was sold into West India servitude.
With the death of Philip the war ended, al- though there were occasional collisions and blood- shed. For two members of the New England con- federacy it had been a war of desolation. Con- necticut, the third, escaped unharmed. Rhode Island, which had never been a member of it and had never been consulted concerning the war, although some of its leading incidents occurred within her borders, suffered most. Her second town was burned, her plantations laid waste and the inhabitants of her main-land driven for shelter to the island.
With the vanquished it went hard. Many were killed in battle, some were shot in cold blood by the sentence of an English court-martial. Many were sold into slavery-with this distinc- tion in favor of Rhode Island, that while the other colonies sold their prisoners into unquali- fied servitude, she established for hers a system of apprenticeship by which the prospect of ulti- mate freedom was opened to all.
CHAPTER XI.
INDIANS STILL TROUBLESOME .- CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE .- TROUBLES CONCERNING THE BOUNDARY LINES.
WAR was followed by pestilence, which moves so fatally in her train. Of this pestilence we only know that it ran its deadly course in two or three days, and left its traces in almost every family. Meanwhile the legislature was sedu- lously repairing the breaches of the war. Laws passed in order to meet an urgent want were repealed, and chief among them as most repug- nant to the tolerant spirit of the Colony the law of military service. The farmers returned to their desolate fields-citizens to the ruins of their hamlets. "Give us peace," they may have said, "and we will efface the traces of these ruins."
But it was long before real peace returned. The Indians though subdued were still turbulent. Active measures were required to prevent them from passing on and off the Island at will, and building their wigwams and mat-sheds on the commons and even on private lands. Rumsellers were found ready to sell them rum, and at Providence parties were sent out to scour the woods and guard against surprises. As an en- couragement to the men engaged in these duties their wounded were nursed at public expense.
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There was more serious danger from another quarter. Connecticut had not renounced her designs against Rhode Island territory, nor was she slow in declaring her intentions. The first step was an order of the Council at Hartford for- bidding every one, whether white man or Indian, to occupy any lands in Narragansett without its consent. The Assembly met this order by a counter prohibition. No jurisdiction was to be exercised there but that of Rhode Island.
This declaration of claims was promptly fol- lowed by action. Three planters who had re- turned to their plantations in Warwick were siezed by the Connecticut authorities and sent to Hartford. They appealed to their own Governor, Governor Clarke for protection. One of the most important measures of the Rhode Island govern- ment was the reestablishment of King's Province. Full power of protection was conferred upon a court of justices to be held in Narragansett. No one was allowed to enter the Province without permission from the Assembly. Ten thousand acres of land were set apart for new settlers at the rate of a hundred acres to each man-the new settlers to be approved by the Assembly. Rhode Island threatened to appeal to the King. Connecticut declared that she was ready to meet the appeal. Attempts at compromise were made by both parties. Connecticut proposed to fix the line at Coweset, the modern East Greenwich. Rhode Island offered to allow Connecticut to dis-
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pose of half the unpurchased lands in the Prov- ince if the settlers would accept the jurisdiction of Rhode Island. The loss of King's Province would have imperilled the future independence of Rhode Island, and therewith the great princi- ple on which it was founded. Connecticut could not renounce her last hope of securing a part of Narragansett Bay. Neither offer was accepted, and it soon became evident that no decision could be reached except by appeal to the King. Peleg Sandford and Richard Bailey were chosen agents, and two hundred and fifty pounds voted for their expenses. The money was to be raised by the sale of ten thousand acres of lands in Narragan- sett at the rate of a shilling an acre.
Meanwhile the Assembly was very active. A party change took place at the election of 1677- Governor Arnold was chosen in place of Gover- nor Clarke. This was equivalent to a triumph of the war party. The militia law was again re- vised, care still being taken to protect the rights of conscience. How jealously these were guarded appears also in the unwillingness to multiply oaths of office. Five years before an act had been passed requiring deputies to take an engage- ment on entering upon the duties of their office. This law met with great opposition at its original passage, and its repeal was hailed with general satisfaction. Every freeman, it was said, made an engagement of allegiance on receiving the rights of citizenship. An oath is too solemn a
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thing to be lightly taken-why should we use it? So reasoned those concientious men. By an- other act, also, they showed how fast they held to this fundamental principle.
Another sect, the Sabbatarians or Seventh-Day Baptists, had taken root and begun to flourish in the free air of Rhode Island. In 1667 they were sufficiently numerous to justify them in asking that market day might be changed from Satur- day, their Sabbath, to some other day. With- out breaking in upon an old custom by changing the day, the Assembly added Thursday as an- other market day and thus quieted the scruples of honest and useful citizens.
We have seen how promptly and firmly the Assembly met the encroachments of Connecticut. Their remonstrances were followed up by spir- ited and judicious action. The surest way to strengthen their hold upon the disputed terri- tory was by peopling it. Among the coves and inlets which give such quiet beauty to Narragan- sett Bay there is none more beautiful than that broad sheet of navigable water which still retains in part its original name of Coweset. Here it was resolved to plant a colony and build a town. Five hundred acres were set apart in lots on the bay for house lots-four thousand five hundred in farms of ninety acres, which were distributed among fifty men on condition of building within a year and opening roads from the bay into the country. To guard against rash speculation no colonist was to sell his land within twenty-one 6
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years unless with the consent of the Assembly. Thus on the verdant hill-side at whose foot a rip- ple from the Atlantic mingles with the inland murmur of Mascachugh was built the pleasant hamlet of East Greenwich.
Another bitter controversy arose concerning the limits and extent of the original Providence and Pawtuxet purchase - a question of great local interest, and which lost none of its heat from having for opposite leaders Roger Williams and William Harris. Several difficult questions were mixed up with it, greatly disturbing the harmony of the northern section of the Colony. Williams had shown himself to be an inaccurate conveyancer in the drafting of the original deed. This was purely a question of title. A still more difficult one arose when Warwick was colonized. Agents were sent to England to ask for the appointment of commissioners to decide the con- troversies which the local tribunals were unable to decide effectually. John Greene and Randall Holden were the agents for Warwick; William Harris for Pawtuxet. This William Harris, as we have already seen, was a bold thinker and an energetic actor. He made several voyages to England in defence of his party, and followed up with great energy every advantage that he gained before the tribunals at home. On his last voyage he fell into the hands of Barbary corsairs, and though ransomed after a year of captivity died soon after his redemption. The controversy did not cease with his death. Other voyages were
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made to England and other decisions obtained. But it was not till many years later that the un- wise contest was settled. Then, in 1696, the line between Providence and Warwick was settled by the Assembly, with the Pawtuxet River for boundary. That between Providence and Paw- tuxet was continued till 1712 and then settled by compromise.
CHAPTER XII.
DEATH OF SEVERAL OF THE MOST PROMINENT MEN .- CHANGES IN LEGISLATION.
THE woes of Rhode Island begin anew. Scarcely had the war ceased when Connecticut as we have already seen renewed her claim to Narragansett. Massachusetts soon followed in the name of the Atherton company. And presently Plymouth joined herself to the roll of Rhode Island's ene- mies by advancing a claim to Aquidneck itself. Connecticut sought to strengthen her pretensions by asserting that the disputed territory was now hers by right of conquest. Thus far the sturdy little colony had held its ground and grown and prospered in the midst of enemies. Would she continue to hold it? Humanity itself was con- cerned in the answer, for of all the powers and kingdoms of the earth she alone was founded upon the principle of perfect toleration. The contest was a long and a weary one, too long for the purpose of this volume, for it is a history of seventy years of discussion and aggression, of bitter attack and firm resistance, terminating at last in the triumph of the weak and single-handed. Rhode Island not only preserved her original ter- ritory but added to it from that of two of her
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enemies. I shall select a few incidents to illus- trate the progress of the contest.
It was to be waged for the most part by a new generation. The great men of the foundation were passing away. John Clarke, who had thrown the mild lustre of his purity over the first half of the life of the Colony, died in 1676, leav- ing a deep longing, or rather a sore need of his civil virtues and diplomatic skill. Samuel Gor- ton, whose tenacious convictions made him stern and intolerant in public life though gentle and attractive in private intercourse, and whose vigor- ous and subtle intellect led him to rejoice in the bitterness of controversy as the swift horse re- joices in the dust of the race-course, died the year after. Roger Williams was spared a few years longer-bold, ardent, disputatious, resolute, sin- cere and earnest to the last. But the young of his middle age were growing old, and the com- panions of his active years were falling around him. His colony had thriven and flourished. The five men who followed him from Salem had become "a thousand or twelve hundred men able to bear arms." In spite of the threatening of the political horizon his strong faith told him that the being in whom he had put his trust thus far would stand by him still. And thus he laid his head upon his last pillow, a satisfied and happy man.
Another man of bold, original type-William Harris-had run his active career, and died with
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his hands and heart still full of unfinished work. We have seen to what length he carried his doctrine of individual right to free action. We have seen him wage a bitter controversy with Roger Williams. Time after time he crossed the Atlantic as agent of the great boundary questions which fill so large a space in the Rhode Island history of this period; the last time, and from which he was never to return, as agent for Con- necticut. A deep presentiment of disaster seems to have filled his mind as he was preparing him- self for this voyage, and not satisfied with mak- ing his will he presented it for probate with his own hands. The presentiment was well founded. On the outward passage he was taken by a Barbary corsair and sold into slavery. By the exertion of friends he was ransomed after a year's captivity and made his way through Spain and France to England. But the year of slavery had told hard upon him, and three days after his arrival he died. It has been remarked by a profound thinker that while Williams's more comprehen- sive mind could embrace both the practical and ideal in their mutual relations, the moment that Harris touched the ideal he became a radical. It does not seem to have struck his cotemporaries as it does us to see him accepting the agency of Connecticut in her controversy with Rhode Island. But he has a definite place in Rhode Island his- tory and did her good service through his long and somewhat turbulent career.
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William Coddington, who had been an eminent man in Massachusetts before he became a very eminent man in Rhode Island, lived to take an active part in the controversy, and died in 1678, while holding for the time the office of Governor. His temporary usurpation had been forgiven and forgotten, and men remembered only that he had sincerely renounced his hostile designs and be- come a loyal and useful citizen.
Such were some of the men who bore the largest part in moulding the original character of Rhode Island. Talent and character like theirs was re- quired to guide the little Colony through the dangers that surrounded it. But before we return to the external history of these days we will gather from the acts of the Assembly a few records of the moral and intellectual life of the Colony and its progress to a higher civilization.
The publicity of the laws is a question of deep interest in every stage of society, but particularly interesting in small communities. In the early days of Rhode Island they were published by beat of drum under the seal of the Colony. The violation of a law found no excuse in the plea of ignorance.
The sessions of the Assembly were held in a tavern or sometimes in a private house, always beginning, as the Roman assemblies did, at a very early hour. We have already seen that early attempts were made to allure the members to their duty by payment. It was still some time
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before this became a fixed law. In 1679 a resolu- tion was passed for paying the board and lodg- ing of the members of the Assembly and of the Court of Trials. In the May session of 1680 a definite sum was fixed upon-seven shillings a week. The true nature of the reciprocal obliga- tion of the citizen and the State was not yet fully understood.
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