USA > Rhode Island > Newport County > History of Newport County, Rhode Island. From the year 1638 to the year 1887, including the settlement of its towns, and their subsequent progress > Part 19
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In the Pokanoket country, on the mainland north and east of Narragansett bay, lived the tribe of Wampanoags whose sway covered the tract now known as Bristol and reached southerly to Seconnet. They were second only in power to the Narra- gansetts, to whom their subjection was recent. The chief sachem of this tribe was Massasoit, whose favorite residence was on the commanding hill of Pokanoket, to which the colon- ists later gave the name of Mount Hope. This steep eminence is at the lower end of the peninsula and overlooks the island of Aquidneck and the western shore of Seconnet.
Massasoit or Ousamequin, as he is usually named in Narra- gansett doenments, received the Pilgrims on their arrival not only withont enmity but with real kindness and was of great service to them in many straights. Often at Plymouth, he be- came early familiar with the superior power and arts of the white men, and seeing how useful they might be to his people he sought their friendship. In the spring after their landing he made with them a formal treaty which freed him from his de- pendence on the formidable Narragansetts. This friendly spirit to the English Massasoit maintained to the end of his life, while Canoniens is said to have been " most shy of the English to his latest breath." As far as can be judged from the records of the times and the writings of the sages, Canonicus was of a higher order of character and a more princely dignity. Viewing them as types of their tribes, the domination of the Narragan- setts seems the natural outcome of race superiority.
Roger Williams, in a deposition made in 1652 as to his par-
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chase of lands, says that "coming into the Narragansett country he found a great contest between three sachems, two (to wit, Canoniens and Miantonomi) were against Ousamaquin on Plymouth side," and that he was forced to travel between them there to pacify, to satisfy all their and their dependents' spirits of his honest intentions to live peacably by them. His- torians have inferred from this passage that these chiefs were "at fend." That Canonions looked with jealous eye at the alliance of his old tributary with the Plymouth government is probable, but sixteen years had healed this bitterness, and there is no proof of other difference between the chiefs than as to allowing the whites to settle npon land within or bordering upon the free territory of Narragansett.
Before concluding his treaty with Canonicus, Williams had al- ready obtained a grant of land from Massasoit on the Seekonk river, which was within the limits over which the new Plymouth colony claimed jurisdiction ; a jurisdiction which the sachem, though he did not dispute, did not admit. Indeed. here as else- where among the Indians, and notably in the case of the Mo- hawks, their chiefs claimed a sovereignty equal to and inde- pendent of that of the English crown, and never willingly sur- rendered jurisdiction over their own people. The right and jus- tice of this claim Williams always maintained, of which there is witness in his letter to the general court of Massachusetts in 1654, wherein he questions " whether any Indians in this coun- try remaining barbarous and pagan may with truth or honor be called English subjects. Their own consent and conversion to Christianity he considered to be conditions precedent. Massa- soit was no doubt aware that the first and chief of the offences cited in the sentence of Williams' banishment from the Massa- chusetts Bay colony was his teaching " that we have not our land from the king but that the natives are the true owners of it and that we ought to repent of receiving it by patent."
The territory of the Wampanoags lying within the limits of the Plymonth patent, the grant of land by Massasoit was of it- self a protest against the jurisdiction of the colony. Williams abandoned his plantation on the Seekonk and crossed the water to the Narragansett territory because of the warning to him of Governor Winslow of the new Plymouth colony that his people were "loath to displease the bay," otherwise the Massachusetts government, by harboring one banished by their edict.
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What consideration in current wampum or commodities Mas. sasoit received for his land on the Seekonk, if any, does not ap- pear. Probably both and if neither, then the grant was made only for reasons of gratitude for favors past and to come, and of a personal friendship for Williams which was of long standing; for in his treaty with the English he had parted with something of his birthright. Not so the sage Canonicus. Prond as he was politic, he would not condescend to sell his lands. Gifts in return were received, no doubt expected, but Canonions would not have them mentioned in the bond. Williams, in a manuscript, says " the Indians were very shy and jealous of selling the lands to any, and chose rather to make a grant of them to such as they affected, but at the same time expected such gratuities and rewards as made an Indian gift a very dear bargain." According to Callender, in the case of the Narragan- setts, the natives inhabiting any spot the English sat down upon or improved were all to be bought off to their content and oftentimes to be paid for over and over again. It may be here observed that the Indians recognized no individual title to land. To them it was free as air and water. An instance of this may be found in the recent constitution of the Cherokee tribe. The Indian system was communal. Bandelier, in his account of Mexican civilization, assigns to them a similar system, and it is supposed they brought it with them from the northern coun- try from which they migrated southward.
The memorandum deed of 1637. of purchase made "two years previons " of " the lands about the fresh river called Mooshaasie and Wanasqutneket" (Providence) signed by marks of Canoniens and Miantonomi, makes no mention of any purchase price, but a second paragraph. "in consideration of his (Williams' ) many kindnesses and services" done them at Massachusetts, Connecticut and Plymouth, extends the bounds of the grant to the Pawtucket river. Roger Williams express- ly says : "I declare to posterity that were it not for the favor that God gave me with Canonieus none of these parts, no not Rhode Island, had been purchased or obtained for I never got anything ont of Canoniens but by gift." In this document. in- teresting and instructive in many points of view, Williams shows the nature of the services he rendered in return for the protection and generosity of the sachem. " I never denied him nor Miantonomy whatever they desired of me as to goods or
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gifts or use of my boats or pinnace and the travels of my own person day and night which, though man know not nor care to know, yet the All Seeing eye hath seen it and his all powerful hand hath helped me."
In the course of his several treaties, in 1634 and 1635, with the Narragansett sachems, Williams had, he says, " frequent prom- ise of Miantonomi," his kind friend, that he should not want for land about the bonnds where he had settled provided he satisfied the Indians then inhabiting, he "having made coven- ants of peaceable neighborhood with all the sachems and natives round about." In fact the records show no passage of purchase money for land from Roger Williams to Canoniens. The same legal fiction of a sale appears in the case of Chibachowesa, now known as Prudence island, which is referred to in the deed of Aquidneck. This island became the property of Williams and Governor Winthrop in the spring of 1636. Canonicus and Mi- antonomi, visiting the Massachusetts governor, carried the offer by Williams of a half interest to Winthrop in which he naively adds, "I think that if I goe over { shall obtain the whole," a hope speedily realized. And so again in the case of Hope island, the deed of gift of which from Miantonomi, was produced before the general assembly in 1658, upon the presenting of a petition to have the Indians removed.
It seems from the foregoing that Williams received his lands as a princely grant for his wise counsel and his services as an ambassador and peace maker with the encroaching governments of Massachusetts Bay and the Plymouth colony, services for which his knowledge of the Indian language, his character and temper qualified him beyond any man in New England. This acquaintance with Indian character Williams says he got by "lodging with them in their filthy holes even while I lived at Plymouth and Salem to gain their tongue ; my soul's desire was to do the natives good." He was well compensated for all his pains by his Indian friends. The records show one case in which Canonicus took consideration in the form of white beads. This was in the purchase of Aquidneck by Coddington and his friends. Later, in 1642, Miantonomi took wampumpeage in pay for Shawomet. now Warwick.
No such considerations of policy or friendly scruples weighed with Massasoit, the first and earliest of Williams' friends. The records recite one case where the Wampanoag sachem,
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seeking to withdraw from an agreement to barter certain lands near Pawtucket for sundry commodities and fathoms of wam- pum, was held to his bargain on the testimony of Williams. After " going to slepe " over the trade the Indian demanded to purchase shot and required four coats more in addition to the four engaged to him, which Williams and his associates indig- nantly refused; not willing, as they testify, " to wrong our country in granting his desire of four coats and so unreasonably to raise the price of such parcels of land in this barbarous wilderness."
This was in 1646, when the conditions of the contracting par- ties were greatly changed. The white man was the lord of the soil, the sachem but a poor Indian. Neither Canonicus nor the princely Miantonomi ever thus fell from their high estate. Comparing these several deeds one with another, it seems, how- ever, that these grants of land were, on the part of the sachems, waivers of eminent domain or permissions to settle on condition of satisfying the dwellers thereon. The Narragansetts were largely a farming people. Williams mentions the clearance of the coast line from woods, and it is said that for eight or ten miles distant from the sea shore the lands were cultivated with corn which grew in great abundance. It is natural therefore to suppose that though there may have been no individual owner- ship of the soil, occupancy, betterment and cultivation con- ferred a right which the sachem did not, perhaps could not, disturb.
That such was the usage is shown by the statement of Wil- liams that in the case of the first grant by Canonicus of land which had belonged to Massasoit before his submission to the Narragansetts, he had thought it prudent to propitiate the Wampanoag chief by gifts and still more plainly in the con- dition of the deed of Aquidneck, " that by giving by Mianto- nomi of ten coats and twenty hoes to the present inhabitants they shall remove themselves from off the island before next winter."
Hardly were the colonists established on the island before they began to place restrictions on the Indians in matters of trade. The first regulation was an order in general meeting at Portsmouth on the 16th of the 9th month, 1638, naming four ·
of their number for the venison trade, directing that not more than three half-penee a pound be given the Indians in the way
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of trade, and the truck masters to sell the same for two pence a pound; a farthing for each pound to go to the treasury, the rest to themselves for their attendance. The next order on the records is of the freemen of the same town granting leave, August 29th, 1644, to Onsamequin with ten men to kill ten deer within the liberty of Portsmouth with the proviso that the deer be brought to the town to be viewed and " neither Onsameqnin nor any of his men shall carry any deer or skins off from the island but at the town of Portsmouth to depart from off the island within five days." And the same day all the Indians in the town were ordered to depart with their effects to live in the woods and not to return under certain forfeit.
The freemen of Newport, feeling perhaps more secure in their position, which was directly under the wing of Canonicus, agreed on the 2d of the 7th month, 1639, that the trade with the Indians should be free to all men and appear to have put no restriction on their coming or going or their stoppage in the town. In the course of the next year, however, July 7th, 1640, certain propositions were made interchangeably between Gov- ernor Coddington and his assistants on the one side and Mian- tonomi with his sachems on the other side, and the same were solemnly ratified on the 16th of August following. These pro- vided that only temporary fires should be kindled on any of the settlers' lands, and all damages arising from such kindling should be adjudged and the Indian offender to be tried by the law of the town; that any Indian killing a " Boore " (a hog), pay ten fathom of beads at the next harvest; that no trap be set for deer or cattle on the island; that unruly Indians be car- ried before the magistrate for punishment in matters of com- mon or small crime according to law, but for matters of greater weight, exceeding the value of ten fathom of beads, then Mian- tonomi to be sent for who is to come and see the trial. But if the offender be a sachem Miantonomi to be sent for to see the trial whether the matter be large or small. No Indian to take any canoe from the English and the like not tobe done by them. They are not to revoke their bargains or remove their goods by force after trade; nor shall they idle about the houses of the settlers.
The colonists seem to have been uneasy this year, for at their last session in October the governor was ordered to invite the counsel of the governor of Massachusetts Bay concerning their
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agitations with the Indians. The Indians seem to have been careless in their handling of fire, for in April of the next year (1641) the house of Mr. Nicholas Easton, the first built in the town of Newport, was burned, the flames taking from a fire lighted by the Indians in the woods near by. There was great alarm, and an armed boat patrolled the shore to prevent the In- dians from landing. In a skirmish two English were wounded and one Indian killed. Garrison houses were appointed for refnge in case of alarm. The misunderstanding was explained and quiet was restored. In September, 1641, the general court ordered that no Indian should fell or peel any trees upon the island; a restriction which struck at the manufacture of canoes.
The very last legislation taken by the general court at New- port before the freemen of Aquidneck reorganized under charter from the crown and changed the name of the island to the Isle of Rhodes, granted a full commission to Roger Wil- liams to consult and agree with Miantonomi for the destruction of the wolves, with the condition that this enterprise effected, the Indians must not require more the "like curtesie of hunt- ing." The deer must not be injured. Stringent orders had but a short time before been issued against the sale or gift of powder, shot, gun, pistol, sword or other weapon to " the In- dians that are or may prove offensive," and forfeitures attached of forty shillings for the first and five pounds for the second offense. For the history of further legislation the records of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations must be searched. Meanwhile mention must be made of the sale by Miantonomi to a company of settlers, of Shawomet, on Sowhomes bay, which soon after received the name of Warwick, in honor of the king's newly appointed governor of his islands and other plantations in America. This deed was signed by Miantonomi, as sachem of Shawhomett and witnessed by Pumhomm (Pum- ham) sub-sachem of the tribe; an act apparently unimportant in itself, yet portentions in its consequences to the noble prince and his nation.
THE PEQUOT WAR. - The Pequots. of all the tribes of the coast, seem to have been the most jealous of English rule and to have had the clearest insight into the danger it threatened to Indian independence. Hereditary enemies of the Naragansetts. they had taken advantage of the weakening of the power of
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Canonicus in the defection of the Wampanoags and the Nip- Inneks from their tribal dependence. By successive inroads they had wrenched from the Narragansett prince the sover- eignty of the Long Island Indians of Montauk and of Block Island, and pushed their border on the mainland ten miles east of the Pawtucket river into the very domain of their enemy. Emboldened by this success they turned their arms upon their English neighbors of the Connectiont and, without the formal declaration of war which usually precedes or opens Indian hostilities, began a series of massacres of isolated boats' crews on the sound and in the river. Among these was the surprise and murder, in 1636, at Block Island, of John Oldham, an Eng- lish trader, well known along the whole New England coast, and in such favor with the Narragansetts that Canonicus, shy though he was of the English, had invited him to settle in the bay on the island of Chibachuwesa (that Prudence island which later became the property of Roger Williams and Governor Winthrop) and establish a fishing station there. Returning from a trade voyage to the Connecticut and tonching at Block Island with his little vessel, with two English boys and two Narragansett Indians for his crew, he was set upon and mur- dered, his companions being carried off. The news of this ontrage reaching Miantonomi, he at once sent out an expedition which recovered the Indians and the boys, who were returned to their homes.
The people of Boston, greatly alarmed for their coast trade, dispatched an embassy, accompanied by the sachem of the Massachusetts tribe as intepreter, to Canonicus; they returned satisfied with the success of their negotiation and full of praise for the "state, great command over his men and marvellous wisdom in his answer and the carriage of the whole treaty " by the prince. It was found that some of the Narragansett sachems were concerned in the plot, but Canonicus and Mian- tonomi were not, and offered "assistance for revenge of it, yet upon very safe and wary conditions." An expedition was fitted out at Boston in three pinnaces, which landed on Block Island, destroyed the Indian wigwams and canoes, and push- ing on to the month of the Pequot river, in September burned the villages on the two sides of the stream in the absence of Sassacus, chief sachem of the tribe, on Long Island, after which they returned safely to Boston without the loss of a man.
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They killed fourteen and wounded forty of the Indians. The Pequots were greatly excited, but looking beyond immediate retaliation which is a part of Indian creed, they conceived the idea of a more thorough revenge by a league of all the savage tribes, which should extirpate to the last man the English settlers, whom they instinctively felt to be the common enemy of their race. They sought the aid of the Mohegans, a fierce tribe whose home was in the region between the Connecticut and Hudson rivers, and whose sachem was Uncas, a revolter from the Pequot tribe. Here they were repulsed. They also sent ambassadors to their hereditary foes, the Narragansetts, proposing to close the ancient feud, bury the hatchet and form with them a league against the English. The success of the Boston mission to Canonieus was no doubt compromised by this summary proceeding of the Massachusetts colony. It was not in accord with Indian methods. Even the Plymouth gov- ernor disapproved and remonstrated with his neighbor of the Bay for his ruthless provocation to war.
The Connecticut colony, weak, almost defenseless, were in- dignant at a proceeding which brought the torch to their dwel - lings without notice. Great was the alarm in Massachusetts when rumors reached them of the proposed league. In their distress the governor and council of the Bay appealed to Roger Williams to interpose his influence with the sachems. The en- voys of Sassaens were already at the island of Conanicut, where the Narragansett sachems were gathered in couneil abont their sage chief, when Williams, "alone in a poor canoe, paddled his way down the bay through a stormy wind with great seas" to the home of Canoniens. "For three days and nights " he says his business forced him to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequot ambassadors whose " hands and arms methought reeked with the blood of my countrymen murdered and massacred by them on Connecticut river, and from whom I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my own throat also; God wondrously preserved me and helped me to break to pieces the Pequot negotiations and design; and to make and finish by many travels and charges the English Jeague with the Narra- gansetts and Mohegans against the Pequots." Tradition has it that Canonions " desired to have preserved peace " and only finally yielded to the persuasion of Williams. The ambitions Pequots were " hoist with their own petard;" the league they
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had devised with the Narragansetts and Mohegans being turned against themselves. At the request of Governor Vane, Mianto- tonomi, with two sons of Canoniens, visited Boston, where he was received with military honor. He there agreed upon and concluded a treaty of amity and alliance offensive and defensive against the Peqnots, the interpretation of some clanses of which, not understood by him, he left to the interpretation of Williams.
In the spring the Pequots wreaked their vengeance on the Connectient settlers. Massacre followed massacre. The colony ordered war; their troops were at once joined by the Mohegans. The Pequots fell back to their two fortified villages on the Mystic river and the sea. The Connectient troops sailed for Narragansett bay and landed at what is now Wickford, where they were joined by a strong force of Narragansett warriors. Marching across the country they struck the rear of the Pequot village at night; assaulting at daybreak and plying the torch as well as the musket, in an hour's sharp work they destroyed the entire village of seven hundred Pequots, only fourteen of whom survived, seven escaping and seven taken prisoners. The English lost two killed and twenty wounded. The second village, defended by three hundred Peqnots, was not attacked. A month later Massachusetts dispatched a detachment to de- stroy the remnant of the tribe. Their hiding places were broken up, and by July not over sixty of the tribe remained. Eight hundred had been slain and two hundred captives were distributed among the Narragansetts and the Mohegans as slaves, under the pledge that they should never be called Pequots nor allowed to see their native country. The Con- necticut assembly obliterated the name by act: Pequot river was called the Thames and the site of their village New London. Sassacus, their sachem, gave himself up to the Mohegans and was by them murdered. The story reads like a chapter of Cæsar's campaign against the Gauls.
The supremacy of the Narragansetts over the Montauk tribe was now revived. Their western border was freed from alarm. Between them and the Mohegans, their allies, there was no hostile tribe. Thus closed the first great crisis in the New England settlement. The two years of the Pequot war were no less eventful in Indian history. But for the coming of Roger Williams into the Narragansett country there is little
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doubt that in the temper of the nation in 1636 they would have joined and led the Indian league with their whole power. The blotting out of the Pequot power in 1637 was the first act in the internecine struggle which was to end in the rain of the Narra- gansetts. The second was an inevitable consequence of the first: a struggle at first peaceful, afterward by war, to control the Indian tribes who inhabited the zone between the Pawca- tuck and the Connectient rivers, the respective bounds of Nar- ragansett and Mohegan power. Some of the Connectiont river tribes, dreading the eneroachments of the fierce Uneas, had sought and obtained the alliance of the just and generous Miantonomi, now, in the advancing years of Canonicus, the master spirit of his nation. Uncas, fearful doubtless of the interference of the English. sought by intrigue to break the confidence of the Massachusetts authorities in the good faith of Miantonomi by secret rumors. Summoned by the general court the loyal sachem promptly appeared, satisfied them of his innocence and directly charged Uncas with the calumny. This was in Angust and September, 1642.
NEW ENGLAND CONFEDERATION. lu May of the next year an act of policy was consummated by the authorities of the sev- eral settlements, which had a determining influence in this as in later Indian struggles. This was the confederation of Massa- chusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven under the style of the United Colonies of New England. The plan was first broached at the close of the Pequot war which had shown the advantage of concert, but various jealousies had hitherto stood in the way. The general restlessness about this time amongst the natives, who were now well supplied with arms and accomplished in their use, brought harmony at last and the league for defense was completed. It may here be mentioned that the English settlements on Narragansett bay were not in- vited to join this confederation, although the most exposed from their position in the heart of the most numerous and pow- erful of the Indian nations. In July, 1643. the Mohegans de- clared war npon Sequasson, a sachem of the Connectient and an ally of the Narragansetts. Both parties sought the aid of the English, who announced their intention of remaining nentral. Miantonomi. before marching to the aid of his ally, faithful to the engagement he had made at the time of the Pequot war, notified the governor of the Massachusetts bay, and received
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