Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I, Part 7

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716

USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 7

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What promised to be a flourishing French Huguenot settlement at Frenchtown in East Greenwich failed because title to land was found to be defective, and settlers were dispos- sessed. In October, 1686, a number of French Huguenots purchased in London from the Atherton Company a tract of land in the Narragansett country, described as all of what is now the part of Rhode Island west of Narragansett Bay and south of the old town of War- wick. Forty-eight Huguenot families, then refugees in London, were to receive under the contract of purchase 100 acres of upland each, and a share of meadow land. They came originally from La Rochelle, Saint-Onge, Poitou, Guyenne, and Normandy. Prominent members of the group were Ezechiel Carré, their pastor; Pierre Ayrault, a physician, and Pierre Berthon de Marigu of Poitou. Arrived at Frenchtown, the settlers began building shelters against the coming winter. They worked rapidly, and before the cold weather set in had put up about twenty houses, and a few cellars or dugouts were completed. The dugouts, prepared by those who intended to put up durable houses in the following summer, were square pits, about seven feet deep, floored and walled with wood, and roofed with logs and layers of turf. There was nothing pretentious about these little temporary homes, but they were confortable and kept out the cold. While waiting for the spring farming season to open, the Huguenots busied themselves with clearing their acres of stones, cutting out trees and brush and otherwise preparing the fields for cultivation and planting. Fifty acres of land were set off for the maintenance of a school, and 150 acres were donated to pastor Carré for his support, and plans were made to build a church as soon as weather conditions would permit.

When the spring season opened the Huguenots went to work with zeal, and it was not long before what had been a wilderness was a veritable garden. Diligence was observed, the cellars or dugouts gave way to substantial buildings, and where the virgin forest had been, now were orchards and vineyards. About the homes were hedges, fences and attractive flower gardens, the seed for which had been brought from Europe by the women of the colony. Skilled in grape cultivation, some of the East Greenwich Huguenots raised a variety from which superior wine was made. Others turned their attention to the planting of mul- berry trees, intending to establish silk raising, spinning and weaving as a permanent industry. They believed that it would not be many years before large numbers of experienced silk spinners and weavers would come from the old country and set up at Frenchtown the centre of the silk business of the new country. It was a beautiful dream, the realization of which doubtless would have made that part of Rhode Island enormously wealthy. But the dream did not prove to be true. Within five years from the day of their arrival at Frenchtown only two Huguenot families remained. The Huguenots, innocently, had settled on land to which others held claims antedating that of the Atherton Company. One by one the Huguenots

*Chapter V.

BRIDGE AND MAIN STREETS, WICKFORD

OLD CHURCH BUILT IN 1707. WICKFORD

EARLY RHODE ISLAND SETTLERS

were dispossessed of lands which they had cleared and cultivated. In 1691 the settlement was abandoned. The story of Frenchtown awaits a poet who can weave into epic verse a tale of Acadian simplicity, reminiscent of Longfellow's "Evangeline."

Gabriel Bernon, another Huguenot, came to Newport in 1695, and later to Providence. He was largely instrumental in building Trinity Church in Newport; St. Paul's Church in Kingstown, and St. John's Church in Providence, the first three Episcopal churches in Rhode Island. He was buried in St. John Churchyard, Providence, in which a tablet preserves his memory. One of his daughters married Chief Justice Helme of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, 1767-68. The second wife* of Gabriel Bernon was Mary Harris, granddaughter of William Harris, that one of Roger Williams' loving companions who was engaged in law suits with Williams covering a long period of years.

Barrington, 1660, Bristol, 1680, and Little Compton, 1674, held by Massachusetts until 1742 in spite of the clear purport of the definition of boundaries in the King Charles Charter, were settled by Pilgrims from the Plymouth Colony. The names of early inhabitants of these towns include the family names of many who afterward were prominent in the history of Rhode Island. The peninsula at Bristol was sold by the Plymouth Colony to John Walley, Nathaniel Byfield, Nathaniel Oliver and Samuel Burton for £1100, the price indicating the value placed upon this location by the Pilgrims, who planned to make Bristol the seaport of Plymouth Colony. Benjamin Church, the same Captain Benjamin Church who won renown as a resourceful commander in wars with the Indians, was invited by John Almy to visit Lit- tle Compton in 1674, and purchased land there with the purpose of settlement. Almost imme- diately thereafter came the beginning of King Philip's War and work elsewhere for the Captain, which suggested postponement of the homebuilding project. Other early settlers at Little Compton included Elizabeth Alden Peabody, much better known as Betty Alden, and her husband, whom Roswell B. Burchard, who married a descendant of Captain Church and was later Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island, styled a man honored principally because of his wife. Elizabeth Alden Peabody was born Elizabeth Alden, child of John Alden and Priscilla Mullin, whose romantic love story Longfellow immortalized in the "Courtship of Myles Standish."

Of the Dutch who built trading posts for traffic with the Indians and who were also parties to a profitable trade with the people of Rhode Island during the period in which ill feeling with neighboring colonies prevailed, little trace remains save the fact that many place names were established by the maps published by the Dutch geographers, including possibly the name of the State of Rhode Island. Some of the Dutch traders remained in Rhode Island after the English had taken Manhattan and renamed New Amsterdam as New York, and intermarriages resulted. Many of the followers of Anne Hutchinson subsequently became Baptists, no doubt because of the teaching and preaching of John Clarke; and many others became Quakers, the name commonly given to members of the Society of Friends. Quakers were received cordially in Rhode Island, though dealt with summarily in Plymouth by whipping and banishment, and in Massachusetts by scourging, branding, torturing, cutting off of ears and hanging. Roger Williams had no sympathy with the doctrines of the Quakers, as witness his journey to Newport when over seventy years of age, paddling his own canoe through nearly thirty miles of open water, to debate with George Fox "fourteen points"t involving questions of dogma. Subsequently Roger Williams published the pamphlet entitled "George Fox Digged Out of His Burrowes."# But drastic as he was in condemning the doctrines of the Society of Friends, and caustic as was the language which he hurled at their leader, Roger Williams would not acquiesce in measures to exclude Quakers from Rhode Island or to interfere with them otherwise merely for entertaining their beliefs and for prac-

*His first wife, "The Star of La Rochelle," by Elizabeth Nichols White.

"Rhode Island anticipated Woodrow Wilson's "fourteen points."

1Fox's answer: "A New England Firebrand Quenched."

RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY

tising the rites of their religion .* The Society of Friends erected the first meeting house at Portsmouth, and the Quakers subsequently furnished a long line of distinguished Rhode Islanders, including several who became Governors.

Hebrews, who were tolerated in few Christian countries in the seventeenth century, began to settle in Rhode Island so early as 1655, coming some from New Amsterdam and from Curacoa, both Dutch, and others directly from Holland. Rhode Island's toleration was broad enough to embrace Hebrews as well as Christians of all denominations, and the Rhode Island Hebrews of the seventeenth century became the nucleus for an influential community. The liberality of Roger Williams appears in his proposition while in England in 1654, "whether it be not the duty of the magistrate to permit the Jews, whose conversion we look for, to live freely and peaceably amongst us," and his plea: "Oh, that it would please the Father of Spirits to affect the heart of the Parliament with such a merciful sense of the soul- bars and yokes which our fathers have placed upon the neck of this nation, and at last to proclaim a true and absolute soul-freedom to all the people of the land impartially, so that no person shall be forced to pray nor pay otherwise than as his soul believeth and consent- eth." As for England there was hope in the famous Declaration of Breda made by Charles Stuart, who was to be Charles II, in anticipation of his return to the throne of his father.

Governor Peleg Sandford of Rhode Island, writing from Newport, May 8, 1680, answer- ing a questionnaire sent out by the British Board of Trade, said: "Those people that go under the denomination of Baptists and Quakers are the most that publicly congregate together, but there are others of divers persuasions and principles all which together with them enjoy their liberties according to his majesty's gracious Charter to them granted, wherein all people in our colony are to enjoy their liberty of conscience provided their liberty extend not to licentiousness, but as for Papists, we know of none amongst us."

Truly the spirit of Roger Williams had entered into Rhode Island.

*Chapter V.

CHAPTER IV. RELATIONS WITH THE INDIANS.

ERRAZZANO, in his letter to King Francis, recorded the general friendliness of Indians along the Atlantic Coast south of Maine to white visitors, and particu- larly the cordial relations maintained with the Indians for the two weeks the Florentine navigator spent in Narragansett Bay. The relations between the set- tlers of Pennsylvania and the Indians, established under William Penn's treaty, indicate the possibilities for peace with aboriginal inhabitants. The Dutch were wise enough to purchase Manhattan Island from the Iroquois, and had little trouble with them thereafter. When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth they encountered no Indians, and learned subse- quently that Squanto was the only survivor of the Indians in that vicinity, called Patuxet by the Indians, the others having died in a pestilence. Squanto was friendly, as was Samoset, the Indian who came from the north to Plymouth in the spring of 1621. Squanto taught the Pilgrims the Indian method of planting corn and of using the fish called menhaden as fer- tilizer. Through Squanto friendly relations were established with Massasoit, Chief Sachem of the Wampanoags, and visits were exchanged with him, Pilgrims going to his headquarters at Mount Hope, which the Indians called Pokanoket. The Pilgrims nursed Massasoit through one serious illness and thus won his lifelong friendship. Massasoit was probably forty years of age in 1620; he lived for forty years thereafter, continuously at peace with the white settlers. There is a tradition that the Narragansett Indians sent to Plymouth shortly after the settlement a sheaf of arrows tied with a snakeskin. When Squanto interpreted this as a threat, the Pilgrims returned the snakeskin filled with powder and shot. There were no hostilities between Pilgrims and Narragansetts, nevertheless; the Plymouth colony reached the boundary of Narragansett dominion, but did not infringe upon it.

Roger Williams had established a friendship with Massasoit and the Wampanoags, and with Canonicus and Miantonomah, Chief Sachems of the Narragansetts, while he resided at Plymouth. The land first occupied by him in East Providence was purchased from Massa- soit ; when he settled at Providence he bought land from Canonicus and Miantonomah, and he made other purchases later. He also negotiated with the Indians the purchase of Aquid- neck on behalf of John Clarke and William Coddington. The details of the Aquidneck pur- chase furnish a key to the general policy of Roger Williams and the Rhode Island settlers, which explains the satisfactory relations between them and the Indians. Roger Williams advised not only generous payment to the Chief Sachems, but also compensation for Indians dispossessed and asked to remove from the island. In this recognition and distinction of sovereignty and of private ownership, Roger Williams anticipated a principle of interna- tional law, and of justice in dealing with the inhabitants of a territory which was as unusual in the seventeenth century as it was significant for continued peace.

THE INDIAN TRIBES-Westward in Connecticut early settlers in the Hartford colony encountered the Pequot Indians, who by 1636 were already divided into two rival tribes, the Pequots led by Sassacus, their hereditary Chief Sachem, and the Mohicans, consisting of followers of Uncas, who had been banished from the Pequots for rebellion against his chief. Uncas became the outstanding figure among the Indians in Connecticut, with the subjection of the Pequots in the Pequot War, which was the first in a series of Indian wars in southern New England, in none of which Rhode Island participated, but in all of which matters of interest to the colony and the people were involved. Viewing the situation as of 1630, there

R. I .- 3

RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY

were three principal tribes corresponding practically with the territories later assigned to three colonies.

As Cæsar might have described it, all of New England south of the forty-second parallel of north latitude, which corresponds to the northern boundaries of old Plymouth, Rhode Island and Connecticut, was divided into three parts, of which one part, Plymouth, was inhabited by the Wampanoags ; another part, Rhode Island, the Narragansetts occupied; and the third part, Connecticut, was the territory of the Pequots and Mohicans. Of these the Narragansetts were the most warlike, though by no means the most troublesome, the latter characterization being reserved for the Mohicans and Pequots. Prior to the coming of the Pilgrims the Narragansetts had reduced all the Indians of southeastern New England, including the weakling Massachusetts Indians to the north, to the position of tributaries. The Narragansetts could place 1000 warriors in the field; some writers estimate their effective military strength at 5000 warriors. An indication of the relations between Narragansetts and Wampanoags appears in the Aquidneck deed, in the words "by virtue of our general command of this bay and also the particular subjecting of the dead sachems of Aquidneck and Kitackamuckqutt, themselves and land unto us." An enduring hostility between Nar- ragansetts and Mohicans was fanned into a personal feud between the Sachems Mianto- nomah and Uncas, and occasioned much of the turmoil among the Indians in the half-century from the landing of the Pilgrims to King Philip's War. The relations between the Indian tribes was significant, as it tended to affect the policy of the sachems toward the white settlers. Had that policy been hostile in the first instance, while the Indian strength was intact, and while the settlers were still weak, the permanent settling of New England by the English might have been delayed for at least another century, if indeed New England meanwhile had not become part of New France. The Indian policy was peace. The peace policy was based upon the sagacity of the Indian Sachems, and the events of the period indicate the keenly practical diplomacy of three great chieftains-Massasoit, Canonicus and Uncas.

Massasoit was far from being in his dotage when he established a friendship with the Pilgrims which amounted to an alliance. He had merely grasped an opportunity, as he saw it, to rescue his tribe from the bondage imposed by the Narragansetts, and he took advantage of a favorable opportunity to renounce subjection, with the assurance of support by the Pil- grims. Had his policy been war, the issue might have been different; he was content with peace, once independence had been secured. He felt that the lesson of the sheaf of arrows had not been wasted upon the Pilgrims, and that they would join him in resisting an invasion by the Narragansetts. In this interpretation of his policy Massasoit rises to a stature com- mensurate with the rugged nobility of the Indian character as displayed in unswerving loyalty and devotion to those with whom he had made an alliance. Massasoit was not vindictive. His peace policy had achieved the success he had wished. Over in Connecticut the wily Uncas sought to increase his own strength by enlisting with the settlers against his kinsmen in the Pequot War, and thereafter through alliance with the white men to reestablish the glory of the tribe. The policy of Uncas was not peace, except so far as peace could be made advantageous in increasing his strength for the destruction of the Narragansetts, which he continually plotted. The policy of Canonicus was peaceful. Canonicus had not failed to recognize the possible and probable effects upon the Indians of the steady immigration of white settlers. He understood clearly and appreciated thoroughly the weakness, from the point of view of military strategy, of the Narragansetts, as they lay between the Wampanoags and the Pequots, each watching and waiting for an opportunity to strike. The Pequots were far more formidable than the Wampanoags. Canonicus welcomed an alliance with Massa- chusetts, which was negotiated by Roger Williams, as it promised maintenance of the status quo and comparative security for his people. Eventually the three Indian tribes were allied each with a distinctive body of settlers-Wampanoags with Plymouth, Narragansetts with

RELATIONS WITH THE INDIANS

Massachusetts, and Mohicans with the Connecticut settlers of the Hartford colony. Advan- tage lay with the colonists, inasmuch as there was no alliance binding the Indian tribes together, which might have produced an alignment of Indians as common friends against set- tlers as common enemies of the Indians. As it was, the Indian quarrels continued, tribe fight- ing tribe relentlessly, wasting life and strength while the colonists continued to become more and more formidable. The situation, though peaceable enough in its external appearances, as all the parties except Uncas favored peace, was tense with possibilities for war, and Uncas plotted unceasingly.

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THE PEQUOT WAR-The first war, called the Pequot War, was precipitated by the mur- der by Indians of an English trader, John Oldham, on Block Island in July, 1636, one month after Roger Williams had settled at Providence. Two boys, who had been with Oldham, were held as captives. Whether the murderers were Narragansetts or Pequots, some of whom had invaded Block Island, the outrage had been committed within the domain of the Narragansetts. Miantonomah, at the request of Roger Williams, sent an expedition to Block Island to avenge the murder, recover the property of the trader and secure the release of the two boys. The boys were sent to Boston, Canonicus received ambassadors from Mas- sachusetts kindly, and sent them home with assurances of friendship. Massachusetts then sent out a punitive expedition with instructions to go to Block Island, kill all the men, carry off the women and children, and take possession of the island. John Endicott, who led the expedition, could not find the hiding places of the Indians ; he burned the Indian villages and stove in their canoes. Proceeding from Block Island to the mouth of the Pequot River, later called the Thames, the Pequot town there on the site of New London was burned, fourteen Indians were killed and forty wounded. The Pequots went on the warpath immediately, harassing the defenceless Connecticut settlements through a winter of mingled dread and horror. Sassacus, the Pequot Sachem, was on Long Island at the time his town was burned. On his return he undertook to form a confederation of Indians, including Pequots, Mohicans and Narragansetts, against the white settlers, and sent emissaries to the Narragansetts to make peace with them and to endeavor to persuade Canonicus and Miantonomah to join the common enterprise. New England faced a crisis, and Massachusetts turned to the only white man in New England who could avert the tragedy-Roger Williams, against whom an edict of banishment was still in force in Massachusetts. At the risk of his life Roger Wil- liams made his way to the Indian council. As he described the event later :

Upon letters received from the Governor and Council at Boston, requesting me to use my utmost and speediest endeavors to break and hinder the league labored for by the Pequots and Mohicans against the English (excusing the not sending of company and supplies by the haste of the business), the Lord helped me immediately to put my life into my hand, and scarce acquainting my wife, to ship myself alone, in a poor canoe, and to cut through a stormy wind, with great seas, every minute in hazard of life, to the Sachem's house. Three days and nights my business forced me 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 throat also. God wondrously preserved me, and helped me to break to pieces the Pequots' negotiation and design; and to make and finish, by many travels and charges, the English league with the Narragansetts and Mohicans against the Pequots.

On October 21, 1636, Miantonomah, two sons of Canonicus, and other Narragansett Indians were received with military honors by Governor Harry Vane at Boston, and within two days concluded the making of a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, against the Pequots. Similar peace was made with Uncas, who was crafty enough not to join with his brethren, the Pequots, once it was certain that the Narragansetts would not become members of the proposed confederation. Sassacus could not be deterred from making a fight for the freedom he saw vanishing with the increasing strength of the colonies. Following winter

RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY

and spring attacks by Indians, the Connecticut settlers organized an expedition against the Pequots, which Uncas joined with a band of his Mohican warriors. After making a demon- stration in front of one of two fortified Pequot villages between the Mystic River and the Pequot River, the attacking force apparently retreated. Actually they sailed for Narragansett Bay, debarked near Wickford, and marched across country with the purpose of attacking the Pequots from the rear. Reinforcements from the Narragansetts joined the expedition. At daybreak on May 26, 1637, the colonists, who had been deserted by all but a few of their Indian allies, made an attack upon the Pequot village from two sides, meeting determined resistance from the Pequots, who were slow in arousing themselves from heavy slumber fol- lowing a prolonged celebration the night before of the supposed withdrawal of the attacking party. Captain John Mason, commanding, set the Indian village on fire, and his followers, including the Indians who had meanwhile returned, picked off the Pequots who escaped from the flames. Five to seven hundred Pequots, men, women and children, perished, most of them slowly roasting to death hemmed in by a circle of determined foes. Seven were taken prisoners, and not more than eight escaped. The English casualties were twenty-two, includ- ing two killed. Other Pequots, coming up as the slaughter ended, were repulsed, and the attackers retired in good order.

The power of the Pequots had been broken; the remnants of the tribe were systemati- cally hunted down and annihilated. One historian relates that Sassacus and seventy warriors made their way to the Mohawks; another that Sassacus and twenty warriors were mas- sacred by Mohicans with whom they had taken refuge. The Mohicans sent a scalp lock, alleged to be that of Sassacus, to Boston. In a last determined stand by the Pequots, west- ward near New Haven, 200 old men, women and children were surrendered, and eighty war- riors fought to the last man. Of the prisoners taken a division was made amongst Mohicans, Narragansetts and the colonists. The colonists' prisoners were kept as slaves in New Eng- land or sold as slaves in the West Indies. Roger Williams advised vainly against the ulti- mately harsh measures against the Pequots. Their destruction strengthened the power of Uncas with the Indians of Connecticut and increased his prestige with the colonists of Mas- sachusetts and Connecticut. At the same time it opened up the possibility of further coloni- zation, and new towns were planted along the shores of the Sound, including New Haven.

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Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I, Part 7

Author: Carroll, Charles, author Publication date: 1932 Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 716

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716