USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations at the end of the century : a history, Volume 1 > Part 2
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pleasant hills, and many streams of clear water, which flow down to the sca. In the midst of the entrance, there is a rock of freestone, formed by nature, and suitable for the construction of any kind of machine or bulwark for the defense of the harbour."1
The above description, as we can clearly sce, applies to Newport Harbor and Narragansett Bay. The triangular island which he first saw and named Luisa in honor of the mother of Francis I, was Block Island, which appears under this name in the maps of many subse- quent voyagers. Its interior is hilly, and at that time was covered with thick woods, which have long ago disappeared on account of the necessity for fuel. The bay itself is fairly well described by one who saw it for the first time and who penned his whole narration from memory. The latitude as given is practically correct, which, coupled with the fact that the bay looked toward the south, insures the iden- tification of the position. The rock at the entrance of the harbor is evidently meant for Goat Island, long since put to the use which Verrazano had so prophetically suggested. His description of the manners and habits of the Indians is consistent throughout, and tallies to a remarkable degrce, as we shall later perceive, with the writings of colonial observers. Their "tawny" complexion, the taking of wild animals in snares, the hollowing of logs for canoes, their circular dwellings, their migratory habits according to season, and the method of curing disease by the fire's heat-all are peculiarities of the Narra- gansetts which we find mentioned in like manner by Roger Williams over a century later. Finally, we should remember what some detract- ors of Verrazano2 have failed to recognize-that the account was writ- ten at Dieppe on his return from the voyage.
Although we have no record that any other early voyager touched at Rhode Island as did Verrazano, yet Narragansett Bay, with its wide mouth and beautiful harbor, appears on many of the first maps of the New England coast. In nearly all of them, from 1527 to the close of the century, it is called the "Bay of St. Juan Baptist", although
1N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll. 2d ser., i, 46-49.
"The narrative was generally credited until about twenty-five years ago, when Buckingham Smith and H. C. Murphy, in their desire to refute every- thing that detracted from the claims of Spanish voyagers, attacked its authenticity. Its genuineness was quickly asserted by several prominent scholars, the researches of B. F. De Costa and his bringing to light the Verra- zano map doing much to re-establish general credence in the voyage. Subse- quent writers, with scarcely an exception of note, have not questioned the narrative. The Verrazano map, hitherto unknown in complete form, was first published in Mag. Amer. Hist. ix, 449. It is also in De Costa's Verra- zano, together with a bibliography and comments on the letter and voyage.
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EARLY VOYAGES AND THE INDIANS.
Verranzo and one other cartologist term it the "Bay of Refuge".1 The Narragansett region was known by these names until the advent of the Dutch into the field of American exploration. In 1614, five years after Hudson had discovered the river that bears his name, Adriaen Block built a little vessel of sixteen tons and proceeded to explore the coast to the eastward as far as Cape Cod.2 Passing through Long Island Sound and leaving Montauk Point, he next visited the little three cornered island which Verrazano had seen and named. This he called "Block Eylandt", which, although the legal name is New Shoreham, survives in common use to this day. Follow- ing the path of Verrazano, the Dutch captain entered Narragansett Bay, which from its noble proportions he called "Nassau Bay". The western entrance was named "Sloop Bay", and the eastern "Anchor Bay". The inhabitants Block described as being "strong of limb and of moderate size, but somewhat shy, since they are not accustomed to trade with strangers". In the lower part of the bay dwelt the Wape- nocks, while on the west side were the Nahicans, with their chiefs, Nathattow and Cachaquant. The Dutch captain went carefully into an account of distances and soundings. Nassau Bay was full nine miles in width and extended east-northeast about twenty-four miles. "Towards the northwest side there is a sandy point with a small island, bearing east and west, and bending so as to form a handsome bay with a sandy bottom. On the right of the sandy point there is more than two fathoms of water, and farther on three and three and a half fathoms, with a sharp bottom, where lies a small island of red- dish appearance.3 From the westerly passage into this bay of Nassau to the most southerly entrance of Anchor Bay, the distance is twenty-one miles."
The Dutch names in Rhode Island influenced all the map-makers, and are found on the charts until the end of the century, when they were supplanted by those of English origin.4 The names originally
1See B. F. De Costa's article on "Cabo de Arenas" in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. xxxix, 147.
2Block's voyage is described in De Laet, Nieuwe Wereldt, English trans- lations being found in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll. 2d ser., i, 293. A map prepared probably from Block's data and known as the "Figurative Map" was made in 1614, fac-similes being given in Doc. rel. to Col. Hist. of N. Y. i, 13, and in O'Callaghan's Hist. of New Netherland.
$This little island ("een rodtlich Eylandken") was propbably Hope Island, the only island lying near the extremity of a sandy point jutting from the western side. At any rate, the description applied originally to a small island situated in the western part of the bay, and not to Aquedneck, as has been generally supposed.
4This subject of the early cartology of Narragansett Bay has never been mentioned by any historian of the State, either in connected works or in
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STATE OF RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.
applied to localities by the Indians were seldom recognized by the carly settlers, who preferred the more easily pronounceable ones of their own tongue.
Unlike the colonists at Massachusetts Bay, the early settlers of Rhode Island planted themselves in a region which was not depop- ulated of its former inhabitants by pestilence and war, but which contained a tribe that were accounted "the most potent princes and people of all the country". The Narragansetts1 belonged to the family of Algonquins, a great race whose territory extended all the way from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Savannah. A difference in dialect forms the basis of dividing the New England tribes into those of Maine and those of southern New England. Around the Narragansetts dwelt the Massachusetts on the northeast, the Wam- panoags in the Plymouth and Mount Hope region, and the Pequots and Mohegans in Connecticut. The language of all these neighboring tribes differed but little, and there was considerable affinity in speech throughout the whole Algonquin group.2 It is useless to attempt here any mention of the various guesses as to the origin of these tribes- whether they descended from the Jews or the Greeks or the Norse. Little more is known to-day than when Roger Williams wrote, "From Adam and Noah that they spring is granted on all hands." A sub- ject more profitable to us and decidedly more vital to our ancestors was the question as to their numbers. The fortunes of war and other circumstances had rendered the Narragansetts the most numerous and powerful of the New England tribes. General Gookin, writing in 1674, said that "the Narragansetts were reckoned, in former times, able to arm for war more than five thousand men", and a safe estimate
monographs, and is yet to be adequately treated. Much information regard- ing the Dutch nomenclature can be found in Asher's Bibliographical Essay on New Netherland. The many early navigators, like the Zenos, Gomez, Rut, and Champlain, who may have coasted along the New England shores, but are not known to have visited Narragansett Bay, are not referred to in this chapter. A connected account of the early cartography of Massachusetts Bay by Justin Winsor, is in Memorial Hist. of Boston, i, 37.
1Our chief knowledge of the Narragansetts and their mode of life is derived from Williams's Key to the Indian Language, 1643; reprinted as v. i of the R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll. and again as v. i. of the Narragansett Club edition of Williams's writings. In addition to the books mentioned in the bibliography at the end of this work, the following references are of value: Arnold, Hist. of R. I., i, 72; Palfrey, Hist. of N. E., i, 19; Bull's Memoir of R. I., in R. I. Hist. Mag., v. 6; and Pilling's Bibliography of the Algonquin languages, p. 371.
2Our chief authorities for the dialects in New England are Roger Wil- iams's Indian Key, John Eliot's Indian Grammar, and Josiah Cotton's Indian Vocabulary.
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EARLY VOYAGES AND THE INDIANS.
would place the number at fully two thousand at the beginning of the English settlement here. All the lesser tribes in Rhode Island were subsidiary to or formed a portion of the Narragansetts-the Aqued- necks1 on the island of that name, the Nyantics2 in the eastern half of the present Washington county, the Cowesetts of Greenwich and Shawmuts of Warwick, and the wandering Nipmucs in the northwest- ern part of the State. The Massachusetts and Wampanoags3 paid them tribute, as did also the Montauk Indians of Long Island. Such was this great tribe at the time of the arrival of the English. By the aid of the newcomers, the tributary tribes, with the Wampanoags in the van, started to throw off the yoke, and the gradual decay of this once proud nation began.
The Narragansett tribe, like all other New England aborigines, stood low in the scale of civilization. Their mode of living was of the rudest kind. Their houses, or wigwams, were round cone-shaped structures, formed of poles set in a circle and drawn nearly together at the top, leaving a hole to serve for both window and chimney. They were covered without and lined within with mats and skins, and were furnished with little besides the rudest utensils of earthenware. Everything was put together with the idea of being easily taken down, as they removed their habitation at nearly every change of season, the whole process of removal and rebuilding frequently taking but a few hours. Their dress was as simple as that of an African savage, merely a girdle around the loins, and occasionally a mantle of skin for winter use.
For food the Indians had fish and game, nuts, roots and wild berries. They raised a few uncultivated vegetables, such as squashes, beans and corn, the last of which, when pulverized and boiled, formed their staple article of food. Nearly all the natives took tobacco, some- times as a medicine and again as a luxury. The chief occupation of the men was hunting and fishing, in which they were very proficient. Fish were taken on lines with hooks of sharpened bone, or else in nets. Although the natives were very accurate in their use of the bow and arrow, they took many of the wild animals in cleverly laid traps, and
'Aquedneck formerly belonged to the Wampanoags, and passed under the Narragansetts probably at the time of the subjection of Massasoit. Tradition still points out the place where the contest for supremacy occurred, and also the residence of the Aquedneck sachem, Wonnumetonomy. See Bull's Memoir in R. I. Hist. Mag. vi, 252.
2For historical notes on this tribe, see Parsons's "Indian Relics" in Hist. Mag. vii, 41.
8See W. J. Miller, Notes concerning the Wampanoag tribe of Indians.
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STATE OF RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.
even captured fowl by stealing them from their nests on the rocks during the night. Having no salt, they preserved their meat by a process of tanning, which doubtless did much to bring forth from Roger Williams the appellation of "filthy, smoakie holes" to their wigwams.
Their inventive skill and knowledge of the arts was of the lowest
INDIAN WAMPUM AND STONE IMPLEMENTS FOUND IN RHODE ISLAND, From the collection of the Rhode Island Historical Society.
grade, all of their tools being of stone until after the arrival of the English. Axes, ehisels, gouges, arrow and spear heads, were brought to a sharp edge by constant frietion upon hard stone. They also fashioned pestles, mortars, and ornamental pipes. They showed the most construetive skill, outside of the weaving of cordage, baskets and
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EARLY VOYAGES AND THE INDIANS.
mats, in the hollowing of logs into eanoes. This was done by an alternate system of eharring and gouging, and it is said that a single Indian could finish a long boat of this kind in three weeks time from the felling of the tree. To the English the most useful Indian art was the manufacture of wampum-peage, or Indian money, of which the Narragansetts were the principal coiners. It consisted of cylin- drieal pieees of black and white shell, drilled through the eenter to be strung upon threads like beads. For a long period after the first set- tlement this was the eurreney of the colonists themselves, the white being accepted at six pieees to the penny, and the blaek at three pieces. By the Indians wampum was also used as an ornament, serving as neeklaees, bracelets and girdles.
The natives were described by Roger Williams as of two sorts-the most of them sober and grave, yet cheerful, a few rude and elownish. Hc aeeords to them the greatest affection in their households, even to unwise indulgenee. Although no fixed custom forbade polygamy, the Indian generally had but one wife. While she remained in his eabin, she was his drudge and his slave, doing all the household work and planting, tending and harvesting the corn. Every English traveller noted especially the rude hospitality of the savages. They invited strangers freely, gave np their own comforts for the sake of their guests, and never forgot a serviee rendered. The proportion of deaths at infaney was larger than among the English, owing to their igno- rance of medicine. Their chief treatment for disease was a sweat batlı, followed by a plunge into eold water. If death ensued from siekness, the neighbors indulged in loud lamentations, and often smeared their faces thiek with soot. The burial serviee was equally accompanied by free indulgenee in grief. The eorpse, wrapped in mats and aecom- panied by personal effects, was placed in the grave, and often some artiele of elothing was hung upon a nearby tree, there to decay from the influence of time and weather. If any man bore the name of the dead, he immediately changed his name; and so far was this idea ear. ried, that if one tribe named a warrior after the departed saehem of another tribe, it was held as a just eause of war.
The religion of the Narragansetts was one of the earlier forms of nature worship. They imagined that every natural object, phenome- non of nature, and loeality, contained a god. Roger Williams connted thirty-seven of these deities, all of whom in their aets of worship they invoeated. All unnatural eireumstanees in their life-siekness, drought, war, famine-they aseribed to the anger of certain gods. Gathered together in great assemblies they strove, with loud bewailing
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STATE OF RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.
and ontery to make atonement, and implored health, peace and pros- perity. Their doctrine of immortality was similar to that of other barbarian nations. They believed that the souls of the good went to the southwest, the abode of their great god, Cautantouwit, whereas the souls of murderers, thieves and liars wandered restlessly abroad.
Not belonging to an advanced scale of eivilization, the Narragan- setts did not require intricate political institutions. There is no evi- dence to show that they ever possessed any eode of laws or any set of customs having the force of legal obligation. Their government was monarchical, the supreme leadership being vested in the sachem. Un- der him were several lower sachems, who paid him tribute and voiced the action of their particular followings. We do not know how the chief sachem was chosen; heredity was certainly a qualification for office, although unpopularity or incompetence would have outweighed this. Not being vested with the aecompaniments of power, the saehem' was dependent for the carrying out of his will upon the aequieseenee of the people, and accordingly seldom took action upon important matters until he had heard the opinion of the people expressed through the great council. There was that same confusion of judicial and executive powers eommon to barbarian nations, which enacted that the sachem should punish most crimes with his own hand. Assassination, however, was sometimes tried, where a public execution might provoke a mutiny.
The social side of life appealed very little to the savage's unemo- tional and irresponsive mind. Gambling with dice and occasional games of football were about the only sports to which he was addicted. He had none of the comforts or luxuries of life, and even after he had acquired knowledge of them, he rejected everything that involved a change in his manner of living. Continually dwelling in the midst of evils which he had no desire to alleviate, the Indian cultivated a sullen fortitude under suffering which is often called stoicism. This brave endurance of torture, however stolid and scenic it may be, is one of the brighter parts of his character. His vices far outnumn- bered his virtues. Whether through association with the English, who schemed to displace them and get possession of their land, or through natural degradation, the Narragansetts inspired in the breast of their friend Roger Williams great distrust as he began to know them better. Begging, ghittony and drunkenness were undoubtedly acquired through contact with the settlers, but craftiness and falsehood seen always to have been present in their charaeter. In the latter part of his life, after he had received personal experience of their duplicity,
15
THE PURITANS AND ROGER WILLIAMS.
he says, "All Indians are extremely treacherous". While recognizing the better qualities of the more worthy, he describes the lower Indians as wallowing in idleness, stealing, lying, treachery and blasphemy. The methods employed so often by the English to incite them to tribal warfare and to get possession of their lands cannot be too severely condemned; yet that so degraded a nation should live side by side with a people favored with all the comforts and advantages of a modern civilization is as undesirable as it is impossible. The fittest must sur- vive.
CHAPTER II.
THE PURITANS AND ROGER WILLIAMS.
When Roger Williams arrived at Massachusetts Bay in the ship Lyon in 1631, he found New England in the beginnings of settlement. The whole territory, now so populous, was then little more than a primeval wilderness, whose silence was broken only by the voice of the savage, and the cry of the wild beast. Eleven years before, a little band of non-conformists, exiled from England into Holland, had resolved to emigrate to America, and, securing a grant from the Virginia Company, had embarked from Plymouth, England, on one vessel, the Mayflower. In December, 1620, they arrived off Cape Cod and began a settlement at Plymouth. Basing their form of govern- ment on a political compact formed in the cabin of the Mayflower, and entering into a communal system of sharing work and supplies, they began their infant settlement. During the first few years the little colony barely survived the hardships of famine and the attacks of the Indians, but by the time of Roger Williams's arrival had increased its number to over three hundred people.
To the north of the Plymouth Colony was the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This was the outcome of a small fishing settlement begun by John White, a rector from Dorchester, at Cape Ann, and removed to Salem in 1626. Two years later it was augmented by a party of emigrants under John Endicott, who had obtained a patent from the Council of New England granting them all land between lines three miles to the north of the Merrimac and three miles to the south of the Charles. These men formed the nucleus of a colony to which, in 1629,
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STATE OF RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.
Charles I granted a royal charter, styling the proprictors "the Gov- ernor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England". In 1630 the government of the company was moved to America, and over a thousand new emigrants, under Winthrop, Dudley, Higginson and Skelton, came over and founded Charlestown, Cambridge, Roxbury, Watertown and Boston. Beyond a few fishing villages scattered along the coast to the northward, there were no other settlements in New England at the time of Roger Williams's arrival.
In order to understand the motives that brought about the trouble with Roger Williams, it is necessary to have a clear idea of the relig- ious policy of the Puritan commonwealth-of the procession of events that brought about this great theocracy. It should be observed that the Pilgrims who had left England for Holland and had emigrated thence to found the Plymouth Colony were Separatists, or those who objected to the "idolatrous rites" of the established church and ended in founding congregations of their own. One of their principles was that the state had no right to punish for ecclesiastical censures, as they were spiritual, and also had no authority to inflict temporal punish- ment for such censures. For this reason the "Old Colony", as it was called, throughout its whole history treated theological disturbers with comparative mildness, and often, indeed, served as an asylum for those whom the Bay Colony had found it expedient to do without. The colonists who settled the towns around Massachusetts Bay, however, had never separated themselves from the established church, but were merely unwilling to conform to the ceremonies of the church. They were called non-conformists, although some of them conformed to the particular ceremonies under protest rather than endure the appointed penalties. Their first concern, upon coming to the new country, was the formation of their churches. In 1629 one was organized at Salem, in which Skelton and Higginson were the ministers-the former as pastor, the latter as teacher. Immediately after its organization it was formally and fraternally recognized by the church of the Ply- mouth colonists, who, now that they had come so far from the scene of their former controversy, did not find themselves so much at vari- ance with their Puritan brethren. In 1630 another church was formed at Charlestown by Governor Winthrop and others, of which John Wilson was elected teacher. But these churches did not restrict themselves to the control of ecclesiastical matters. As early as 1631 it was enacted that none should be admitted to the exercise of political privileges except members of churches. This measure, adopted with the idea that the enfranchised should consist only of Christian men,
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THE PURITANS AND ROGER WILLIAMS.
formed what was practically a theocracy, being the Calvinistic idea of a commonwealth designed to protect and uphold the framework of the church. This made each local church the center of political authority and threw all the power into the hands of the clergy. A man could not become a freeman unless he was a church member, and he could not attain to that standing unless he was approved by the minister in charge. By this means the clergy administered the temporal power, using the state as an instrument to carry out their will. They soon showed that they would, if the occasion required, avail themselves of the civil executive power to severely punish those who had committed no crime against the civil authority, but merely differed concerning ecclesiastical affairs.
Into such an oppressive and austere theocracy came Roger Will- iams in February, 1631, at a time when the Puritan clergy were just beginning to put to test their chosen principles. This man, destined to become the founder of a state and the first exponent of a now world- wide principle, was a restless and bold young Englishman, then about twenty-seven years of age.1 Immediately after his arrival he was invited to become teacher of the church at Boston, in place of John Wilson, who was about to return to England. This invitation gave Williams, extreme Separatist that lie was, an opportunity to promul- gate his chosen doctrines. He refused the office, as he "durst not
1The researches of the last few years have brought to light so much new material that now it is impossible to say with the historian of twenty years ago, "Little is known of the early life of Roger Williams". The researches of Mr. Henry F. Waters, published in N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, xliii, 295, have disclosed the fact that he was the son of James Williams, a merchant tailor of London, and Alice (Pemberton) Williams. The date of his birth has been placed by Waters in about 1601, by Hodges (N. E. Register, liii, 60) in 1604, and by Straus in 1607. In a recently printed letter, however, dated Feb. 7, 1678, Williams refers to himself as "aged about 75 years," which would seem to fix the date as 1603 (see R. I. H. S. Publ. viii, 156). In 1620 we find Roger Williams taking notes in shorthand of the speeches made in the Star Chamber, where he attracted the attention of his future patron, Sir Edward Coke. By him he was placed in the Charter House School in 1621. He left there to enter Pembroke College, Cambridge, from which he took his degree in 1626. We next find him, in 1629, as a chaplain to Sir William Masham of Otes, County of Essex, declaring his love for the niece of Lady Barrington and recording the fact that from conscientious scruples he has declined ecclesiastical preferment. "Pursued out of the land" by his oppo- nents in the established church, he embarked from Bristol with his wife, Mary, in the ship Lyon, December 1, 1630, and arrived in Massachusetts Bay, February 5, 1631. The name of his wife, generally supposed to have been Warnard, has been found within the last year, from the original letter of William Harris, to have been Barnard. (See R. I. H. S. Publ. viii, 67.) His arrival was recorded by Winthrop as the coming of a "godly minister". For a list of articles on Roger Williams, see the bibliography at the conclusion of the present work.
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