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 24
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On the defeat at Hatfield (Connecticut) Philip's forces dis- persed, and as winter was now approaching, the greater part re- treated to Narragansett where they were warmly received by Canonchet and his tribe. The United Colonies, dreading that the Narragansetts would join Philip in the spring, summoned them to surrender Philip's men and the women and children he had put under their protection. To this Canonchet gave the spirited and famous reply: " Not a Wampanoag nor the paring of a Wampanoag's nail shall be given up." No word of notice was given to the Rhode Island colony. and the entire proceed- ing of Massachusetts, this demand and the hostilities which fol- lowed, were in direct disregard and contravention of the char- ter of Rhode Island, in which it was explicitly declared "not lawInl for the rest of the colonies to invade or molest the native Indians without the knowledge and consent of the Governor and Company of the Providence Plantations."
The three colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts and Connecti- out raised eleven hundred and thirty-five men, including one hundred and fifty Mohegans and Pequots, and marched under the command of General Winslow, the governor of the P'ly- mouth colony, upon the winter fortress of the Narragansetts, about fifteen miles distant from Wickford in the present town of South Kingstown, R. I., hardly a stone's throw from the line of the Stonington railroad, " but then the center of an impassable
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swamp upon some rising ground containing about four acres of land. It was securely hid by tall junipers which, with the cedar and pine, formed the intricacies of the place, and was fortified with great ingennity and strength. " * Upon the approach of winter the tribe had removed to this fortress all their women and children and had rendered it as impregnable as their knowledge of defensive warfare could possibly make it. They had erected about five hundred wigwams of a superior construction, in which their provisions were stored, and had piled the tubs and baskets of grain around inside of the walls. making their dwellings still more impervious to the bullets of their enemies. The tubs were made of hollow trees ent or sawed into suitable lengths, with a wooden bottom. More than three thousand persons had taken refuge within these huts. The passage over the ditch that surrounded the fort was by a single tree which had been felled, on which all must pass to gain the opposite side. * * Besides the high palisades the Indians were protected by a breastwork of fallen trees about a rod in thickness, which extended entirely around the fortress, their tops foremost."
This was the scene of the celebrated swamp fight of the 19th of December, 1675, the most hardly contested and bloody con- test in the early history of the colonies. The English lost about eighty killed and one hundred and fifty wounded; the Indians three hundred to three hundred and fifty slain and as many more captured. Church, in his narrative, says that he was informed at the time that " near a third of the Indians be- longing to all the Narragansett country were killed by the En- glish and by the cold of that night:" and adds that "sixty or seventy were from Pumham's town of Shawomet who never be- fore then fired a gun against the English." Nor in fact do the histories of the colonies contain mention of one single act of hostility by the Narragansetts upon any of the colonies until this invasion of their home and territory.
It is not probable that Philip was in this fight. If he were, Church, who acted as aid to General Winslow, would certainly have known it and his son, who wrote the history of Philip's war, would have made mention of it. It seems hardly possible, as he was in force enough in January to plunder Warwick and desolate the neighborhood on his way up to the Nipmuck coun- try, but it is certain that Canonchet commanded his tribe in the
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last grand struggle, and that he was with Philip in the ensuing winter.
The Narragansetts sued for peace but the Massachusetts col- ony refused the overture and marched reinforcements into the territory. Canonchet accompanied Philip in his invasion of the Massachusetts colony. He is supposed to have commanded at the bloody attacks upon Lancaster and Medfield, and in the raid upon Weymonth within fifteen miles of Boston in Febru- ary, and it is certain that he led the party which surrounded and destroyed in March the party of Captain Pierce, whom he surprised on his way to attack him at Pawtuxet. Such was the terror in Providence, which the Indians nearly destroyed, that the records preserve the names of but " thirty that stayed and went not away." Among these was Roger Williams, of whom the tradition is preserved that he went ont alone to meet the approaching savages and was kindly received. As Canon- chet commanded at Pawtucket falls on the 26th of March and the burning of Providence was on the 29th, there is little doubt that it was Canonchet who thus remembered the ancient friend- ship of Canoniens and Miantonomi for the venerable founder of the Providence Plantations.
The whole colony was now in terror; gunboats patrolled the island. But the alarm was now widespread and from every quarter troops marched to the center of hostilities. In April Colonel George Denison led a force of English and Mohegans from New London along the old Indian trail, across the Pawca- tuek ford, through Westerly and the heart of the Narragansett territory, and came upon Canonchet near the Pawtucket river, close to the spot where nine days before he had destroyed Cap- tain Pierce and his party. Canonchet was surprised in his tent. Flying in haste, he missed his footing in the ford of the river and wet his gun. He was overtaken and captured "withont resistance, though a man of great strength," by one of the Pequots. A young Englishman coming up to him asked him some questions but was answered, " Yon too much child! No understand matters of war! Captain come; him I will answer." He was offered his life on condition of the submission of his tribe. He would not listen to the proposal, wished " to hear no more about it."
Drake, in his notes to Church's narrative, says "he was afterward shot at Stonington." Arnold says that "he was sent
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in charge of Captain Denison to Stonington where a council of war condemned him to be shot." But Mr. C. HI. Denison, from whom free quotations have already been made above, says: "The army continued its march (homeward) until it reached and crossed the Pawcatuck river at the ford where the present bridge is situated, and after advancing about two miles came to a halt on a small plain. A council of war was now held by the captains, assisted by the Rev. James Noyes, whose residence was at hand, and it was decided that the prisoner must be shot. While they were deliberating, a mat was spread for him to sit upon, and while resting upon it one of the soldiers sat down by him and looking him in his face insultingly while he was speaking, he took it in such indigna- tion that although his arms were pinioned. he gave the man such a violent thrust or blow that the fellow went sprawling along the ground. The plain which was destined to be the spot where the noble chief should be executed is abont two miles from Westerly, R. I., toward Mystic, and is now known as Anquilla. When told that he must die and that his last hour had arrived the chief said, 'I like it well; I shall die be fore my heart is soft or I have said anything unworthy of my- self .* Two Indians were appointed to fulfill the order of the court. The whole army stood to their arms, a quick, sharp word of command was given and a report of two muskets echoed among the surrounding hills. Down, like a tall pine stricken by a thunder bolt, fell the stately form of the Narragansett chief. With a loud, exultant whoop, the Niantics, Mohegans and Pequots, traitors to their race, rushed upon the fallen foe and the work of death was finished. He was quartered, be- headed and his body burned by the Indians, who carried his head to Hartford and. presented it to the governor."
Arnold gives some other interesting details. He says, "To insure the fidelity of the friendly tribes by committing them to a deed that would forever deter the Narragansetts from seeking their alliance, it was arranged that each of them should take part in the execution. Accordingly the Peqnots shot him, the Mohegans cut off his head and quartered him and the Niantics who, under Ninegret, joined the English, burned his body and sent his head as 'a token of love' and loyalty to the commissioners at Hartford." In the story of these barbarities there is little difference between the English and the savages.
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The English, however, do not seem to have tortured their cap- tives but to have reserved this mode of punishment for their religions enemies or antagonists of their own race.
PUNHAM was a Narragansett Indian; the local sachem of that tribe of the nation which inhabited the country about Warwick neck in Kent county. His own residence was on the neck. This land was sold by Miantonomi, sachem of the Narragansetts, on the 12th day of January, 1642, for four hundred and fifty- four fathom of wampumpeage. Totanomans joins in the con- veyance, though his name does not appear in the body of the instrument; Pumham and Jano being witnesses to the deed. The purchasers were Holden and eleven others, among whom was Samuel Gorton, whose eccentric career is stated elsewhere. The land conveyed is described as "lying upon the West side of that part of the Sea called Sowhames Bay from Copassnatuet, over against a little Island in the said Bay being the North bounds and the outmost point of that neck of land called Shawomet; being the South bound from the Sea Shore from each boundary upon a straight line westward twenty miles." It may be observed here that as in all the deeds or titles granted to the whites, this deed is made by the chief sachem or prince of the nation, the local sachem simply witnessing the transfer. Arnold, in his History of Rhode Island, estimates the consid- eration as the equivalent of seventy-two pounds sterling, if black peage is meant, or half that sum if white. It was prob- ably the black peage, the ordinary currency.
With this sale Pumham, the sachem of Shawomet, was dis- contented. He seems to have been attached to his lands and to have striven to maintain his own residence and that of his tribe upon them. The weakness of the young colonies on the Narra- gansett territory and their inability to aid their allies. Cauonions and Miantonomi, in any effective way, were apparent. In his discontent Pumham followed the example set by Ousamequin (Massasoit), chief of the Wampanoags, and together with the sachem of Pawtuxet, submitted himself and his lands to the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. Ile at the time denied having consented to the sale of Shawomet or having received any part of the purchase money. Thirteen years later, in 1656, he pleaded having been drawn into the covenant by the awe of his superior sachems, to which Roger Williams made answer that "it was the law and tenor of the natives in all New England
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and America, viz: that the inferior sachems and subjects shall plant and remove at the pleasure of the highest and supreme sachems." And again, in 1665, Pumham and his tribe are described by the same authority as "a melancholy people and judge themselves by their former sachem [Miantonomi] and these English oppressed and wronged."
The submission to Massachusetts brought protection to Pum- ham, but little peace or enjoyment of his lands. The charter of 1643 distinctly placing this territory within the Providence Plantations, the only hope of Massachusetts to secure a footing on Narragansett bay was through the usurped jurisdiction over the tribe of Shawomet. In 1645 the general conrt of Massa- chusetts granted ten thousand acres of the lands of Pumham to thirty-two persons, and Benedict Arnold was appointed to negotiate with the sachem for the right in any improved ground. The houses in the Holden-Gorton settlement granted by Mian- tonomi were included in this new grant on snch payment, if any, as the general court should order. Plymonth also claimed the land as within her jurisdiction and surely with as much right as Massachusetts, if the original title of the supreme prince were to be disregarded.
The return of Gorton from exile, the determination of Rhode . Island to maintain her rights under the charter, and the direct submission of Canonicus and Pessicus and the Narragansett kingdom to the English crown, were of perilous omen to Pum- ham, and his fear of the anger of his inferior sachems in view of the threatened renewal of war with the Mohegans, so alarmed him that he applied to Massachusetts for a guard, in response to which an officer and ten men were sent to build a fort and hold it for his protection until danger was over.
In 1649 the general court for Rhode Island and Providence Plantations meeting at Warwick, summoned "Pnmham and the other sachem (Sacconoco) and ordered letters to be sent to Bene- dict Arnold and the rest of Patuxet" about their subjecting to the colony of Rhode Island. Pumham does not appear to have paid much regard to their summons, and Warwick neck seems to have become a thorn in the side of the colony. In 1655 Roger Williams, at that time president of Providence Planta- tions, complained to the general court of Massachusetts of the insolence and injuries done to themselves and their cattle by the Warwick and Pawtuxet Indians under shelter of the authority
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of Massachusetts. "These Indians," he says, "live as bar- barously, if not more than any in the country;" and he adds, to show the general condition of affairs at that period, "The barbarians all the land over are filled with artillery and ammu- nition from the Dutch openly and horridly, and from all the English over the country by stealth."
The next year, 1656, on the complaints of the Warwick set- tlers of oppression by Indians, a committee, including Roger Williams, Benedict Arnold and Gorton, was named to treat with "Pumham and his company." Williams went to Boston and wrote to the court a month or two later that his negotiations with the sachem were progressing favorably. That the accord was not of long duration appears by the order of the general conrt in 1658 for any that see cause to arrest Pumham, "who dwells on Mishowamett Neck," or any other Indians upon Warwick lands. His men had been again busy killing cattle and making forci- ble entry on the settlers' lands. And the next year the sheriffs had warrants to arrest Pumham himself and any other Indians concerned in an insurrection at Warwick, and the resene of an Indian there as well as a robbery at Pawtuxet.
In 1664, on the receipt of their new charter from Charles the Second, and the sufficient assurance that its terms would be en- forced, the general court of Rhode Island, on the petition of the Warwick inhabitants, gave notice to Pumham by letter from the governor and deputy governor that "he was within the jurisdiction of the Rhode Island colony, and that he must take some speedy course to remove the difference betwixt the men of Warwick and himself concerning lands, or else he may expect that upon a legal trial the Courts of the Colony are re- solved to do justice in the premises." But the determined old sachem still refused to leave Shawomet neck, the home of his fathers ; and it was not until the king's commissioners came into the province to settle the outstanding disputes between the colonists themselves and with the Indians, that he was finally induced to remove. These commissioners, according to their instructions, entered upon the Narragansett territory and named it the King's Province. In their report they state that "the Matachusetts did maintain Pumham (a petty sachem in the province) twenty years against this (R. Island) Colony." The commissioners in April ordered that Pumham and his In- dians should that year plant their corn on the neck, but before
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the next planting remove to some other place out of the King's Province provided for them by such as they have subjected themselves unto (a reference to Massachusetts) or to some other place within the King's Province appointed for them by Pessicus, their rightful prince. On his removal the courts of Warwick to pay him twenty pounds at eight a penny, and if he and his tribe subject themselves to Pessicus, then the town of Warwick to give ten pounds at eight a penny as a present. And it seems that Cheesechamut, eldest son of Pumham, hav- ing received thirty pounds in peage, at eight a penny, from the gentlemen of Warwick, and the promise of ten pounds more in like pay, engaged to depart from and quit the tract of land known as Warwick neck, as also that province now called the King's Province, formerly the Narragansett country, imme- diately on the receipt of the said ten pounds, and not at any time thereafter to return to inhabit in the aforesaid place or places. This acquittance and agreement, signed at " Mr. Smith's trading house," at Narragansett, was signed by Cheese- ehamut, Nauswahcomet and Assowaet, in the presence of a number of witnesses, of which Robert Carr, the king's commis- sioner, was one. December 28th, 1665, the additional ten pounds was paid by Robert Carr himself to help along the ne- gotiation, and on his advice the final sum was paid by Gorton and his Warwick associates.
Pumham would not or at least did not join in this agreement, although he is said to have taken the ten pounds from the Warwick people, and did not leave the neck, although formally ordered in a requisition addressed by Sir Robert Carr, "To Pumham, pretended Sachem on Warwick Neck and his adher- ents." Pumham had endeavored to interest his Massachusetts friends, and John Eliot himself had written to Carr interceding for him, saying, " Pumham and his people have suffered much hard and ill dealings by some English ; and there hath been both force and fraud used toward them to drive them or deceive them out of their lands." Eliot adds that they are in no wise willing to part with that little which they still holl, and be- seeches Carr, as the king's commissioner, to deal honorably by them ; to which Carr replied that, at their hearing of the case, he had heard nothing of hard and ill dealings to Pumham and his people, nor did he understand whom it was intended to ac- cuse, and raps Eliot severely over the knuckles for his interfer-
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ence. And Roger Williams also, in the March succeeding the order to remove, notifies Sir Robert Carr of his "having heard of a late confederacy amongst great numbers of these barbarians to assist Pumham."
There is nothing more curious in the whole of this curious history of Indian disputes as to sovereignty and English dis- putes as to jurisdiction, than this letter of Roger Williams. It is printed in the Rhode Island Colonial Records, II, 135. In it he calls Shawomet Pomham's "Lordship," and insists on a satis- factory consideration for it; a matter of some hundreds of pounds. He states that in his negotiations with Pumham " he would not part with that necke on any terms." He intimates that the Narragansett chiefs, Ninecraft and Pessicus, were bar- barians who would join against the English if it came to blood, but adds that if " King Philip keep his promise they will be too great a party against those Sachems;" the first intimation had of Philip's power. One clause is especially significant in Roger Williams' notice: " Your honor will never effect by force a safe and lasting conclusion until you have first reduced the Massachu- setts to the obedience of his Majestie and these their appendants (towed at their stern) will easily (and not before) wind about also."
A year after the hearing and supposed settlement at Warwick, Sir Robert Carr informed Lord Arlington of his attempted ar- rangement with Pumham and the unwillingness of that chief to submit to Pessieus, but stated that the matter had been finally arranged by Roger Williams, "an ancient man" who was " very much instrumental in forwarding Pumham's removal, who with his company are removed " to general satisfaction. Arnold, in suunming up this part of Pumham's career, styles Pumham " a renegade " and " the abject slave of the Puritans" of the Massa- chusetts colony, but this the records scarcely show; and it is questionable whether, as in the case of Ninegret, had the Nar- ragansett princes not disposed of their territory, they would have proven false to their tribal duties as subordinate sachems. That he was not the "abject slave" of the English is shown by the readiness with which he joined the confederate chiefs who flocked to Philip's side in the spring of 1675.
When the Massachusetts commissioners marched into the Narragansett territory they found the "villages in Pumham's district " deserted, from which it is to be supposed that he had
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been provided with lands somewhere in the King's Province. That he had been reconciled with the Narragansett chiefs ap- pears from the fact that he was one of the six sachems who " treated with the Narragansetts sword in hand" in July, and subscribed the treaty of peace, which they broke without hesitation the moment the overawing force was withdrawn. He had composed his difficulties with Warwick or else returned to that neighborhood in the progress of the war, as Church states in his narrative that General Winslow, on his march against the Narragansetts in the winter campaign, marched around that township by night instead of crossing the bay to Smith's gar- rison house at the ferry (Wickford) in the hope of surprising Pumham and his town, but found them gone. His village was destroyed at this time, a few days before the swamp fight. It is not known whether Pumham was engaged in this last great stand of the Narragansets, when Canonchet, the son of Mianto- nomi, led his nation. Pumham was killed at the head of his warriors on the 25th of July, 1676, in a fight near Dedham, Massachusetts. Trumbull says that his grandson, who was esteemed the best soldier and the most warlike of the Narra- gansett chiefs, had before this been taken by Captain Denison. Thus says Arnold: "Pumham effaced the stain of a servile life by a manly death." We heartily agree in the conclusion of this sentence.
NINEGRET, who first appears in history as at the Niantic fort when Lieutenant Mason passed by it on the "Old Indian path," on his way from Narragansett (Wickford) through the woods to surprise the Pequot stronghold, is said in the writings of the times to have been a renegade from that tribe which, like the Bulgarians of the Lower Empire, seem to have been ready for. any service. Roger Williams mentions him as one of the chief sachems, a "chiefe soldier," a "notable instrument." He is occasionally called Yanemo or Juanemo. His early fighting reputation was gained in his feud with the Montanks, whom, with their sachem Wyandance, he defeated with great slaughter, after which he attacked their unprepared headquarters at Metoac, devastated their villages and returned with a store of booty, wampum and shells.
Ninegret was the chief sachem of the Niantic Indians, who were tributary to the Narragansett nation; their chief ruling un- der the authority of the Narragansett princes in a semi-feudal
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manner. The Niantics, according to Indian tradition, held pos- session of the coast from the Pawcatuck to the Connectiont river, the territory on the east of the former and the west of the latter and from the coast line northward thirty to forty miles into the forests, and by the Europeans were divided geo- graphically into the Eastern and Western Niantics : the eastern having their stronghold near Weccapang, now Charlestown, R. I., and the western at Lyme, Conn. They were said to have been a peaceful tribe and to have fallen an easy prey to the fierce Pequots who swept down upon them from northeastern New York, established their headquarters at the month of the l'eqnot (Thames) river where they built two strongholds, and pushed their conquests to the mouth of the Pawcatuck. Here they were met by the Nianties and the Narragansetts called to their aid, but defeating them in battle extended their con- (mnests ten miles east of Pawcatuck in 1632. The land occupied by the eastern Niantics, of whom Ninegret was then sachem, embraced the southwestern part of Rhode Island and was known by the name of Misquamicut (in the Indian language meaning Salmon) after the neck of the land on the east side of the Paw- catuck river. This seems to have been included in the Pequot contest, but the intruders were in their turn driven from the territory in 1635 by Socho (Sassawwa), a renegade Pequot, who had become one of the most trusted of Miantonomi's Narragan- sett captains, a service for which he was rewarded by Mianto- nomi with a gift of the tract of Misquamicut. Roger Williams says of Socho in 1637, in a letter to Governor John Winthrop. that he became Miantonomi's " special darling" and a kind of general of his forces. This tract Socho sold in 1660 and gave a deed for it to William Vanghan and others, "all of Newport in Rhode Island." The grant of Miantonomi was confirmed in 1661 by Pessieus, the brother and successor of Miantonomi and after the death of Canonicus, chief sachem. Against this sale and transfer of the old territory of the Nianties Ninegret pro- tested, claiming the tract as the property of his people -- and here may be found perhaps the key to Ninegret's subsequent desertion of the Narragansett cause.
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