(_Rhode Island, 1630_)
The good ship _Lyon_ had been sixty-seven days outward bound from the
port of Bristol, in England, when she dropped anchor early in February,
1630, at Nantasket, near the entrance of Boston Harbor, in New England.
The ship had met with many winter storms, and passengers and crew were
glad to see the shores of Massachusetts. On the ninth of February the
_Lyon_ slipped through a field of drifting ice and came to anchor before
the little settlement of Boston. On board the ship was a young man who
was to play an exciting part in the story of the New World.
Yet this young man, Roger Williams by name, seemed simple and quiet
enough, as he and his wife came ashore and were welcomed by Governor
John Winthrop. He was a young preacher, filled with a desire to carry
his teaching to the new lands across the Atlantic Ocean, and he had been
asked to be the minister of the First Church in Boston. As it turned
out, however, his ideas were not the ideas of the people of Boston, and
he soon found that the First Church was not the place for him.
So after a short stay in Boston Roger Williams and his wife went to
Plymouth, which was then a colony separate from Massachusetts Bay.
William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth, and his neighbors made the
young preacher welcome, and there Roger Williams stayed for two years,
teaching and exhorting and prophesying, as ministers were said to do in
those days. There his daughter Mary was born. Roger Williams, however,
was given to argument and could be very obstinate at times, and
presently he fell out with his neighbors at Plymouth, and moved again,
this time to Salem. There he was given charge of the church, and there
he, like many other free-thinking men, fell under the displeasure of the
governor of Massachusetts Bay. For some things he taught he was summoned
before the General Court of the Bay, and the Court ordered him to leave
the colony. He did not go at once, and Governor Winthrop let him stay
until the following January, when rumors came to Boston that Roger
Williams was planning to lead twenty men of his own way of thinking to
the country about Narragansett Bay, and there establish a colony of his
own. John Winthrop objected seriously to any such performance.
The governor sent Captain John Underhill in a sailboat to Salem, with
orders to seize Roger Williams and put him on board a ship that was
lying at Nantasket Roads, ready to sail for England. But when Captain
Underhill and his men marched up to the house of Williams they found
that the man they wanted had fled three days before. There was no
knowing which way he had gone, the wilderness stretched far and wide to
west and south, and so they gave up the search for him and reported to
Governor Winthrop that Roger Williams had disappeared.
Five friends of Williams, knowing that he had been commanded to leave
Massachusetts Bay, had gone into the wilderness and built a camp for him
on the banks of a river which was called by the three names of the
Blackstone, for the first settler there, the Seekonk, and the Pawtucket.
There Williams joined them, and there they stayed during the winter and
planted their crops in the spring. Then a messenger from the governor of
Plymouth came, saying that their plantation was within the borders of
the Plymouth Colony, and asking in a friendly way that Roger Williams
and his friends should move to the other side of the river.
The settlers did not like to lose the harvest of their new crops, but
neither did they want to make enemies at Plymouth, and so they launched
their canoe and paddled down the river in search of a new site. As they
went down the stream tradition says that a group of Indians, standing on
a great rock near the river's bank, recognized Roger Williams as a man
who had once befriended them. They cried their greetings to the white
men, and the latter landed and went up the rock and talked with the
Indians. Then, taking their canoe again, the white men went on down the
river to its mouth, rounded a promontory, and came into an estuary of
Narragansett Bay. Here they paddled north a short distance, until they
reached the point where the Woonasquatucket and the Moshassuck Rivers
joined, and there they landed, near a spring of sweet water. Here they
pitched their camp, founding what was to be known in time as the
Providence Plantations.
The little colony of six men was soon joined by others, and presently a
government was formed, somewhat like those of Massachusetts Bay and
Plymouth. There were many Indians along the shores of Narragansett Bay,
and Roger Williams made it his concern to be on friendly terms with all
of them. When he had lived at Plymouth and at Salem he had met many
Indians and had been liked by them. Canonicus and his nephew
Miantonomoh, chiefs of the Narragansetts, ruled over all this new
region. When the six settlers reached their new plantation these chiefs
were at odds with a chief to the north named Ausamaquin. Williams set to
work to reconcile the hostile Indians, and while he did so he made such
friends of the Narragansett chiefs that they gave him a large tract of
land, stretching from the Pawtucket to the Pawtuxet Rivers. In his turn
Roger Williams sold the land to his company for thirty pounds.
Here, as the little colony of Providence Plantations grew, Roger
Williams tended to the government of it and preached constantly to his
people. All was not smooth sailing, however, even here in the
wilderness. Men disagreed with the preacher, and he found it hard to
keep them from continually fighting with each other. When there was no
danger of trouble with the Indians, the settlers stirred up trouble for
themselves, and Roger Williams had his hands full trying to keep first
the white, and then the red, men in order.
Every little while there would be some dispute, usually ending in
bloodshed, between Indians and white men. Two white traders, venturing
into the country between the two rivers now known as the Pawcatuck and
the Thames, were killed by chiefs of the Pequods, who were the strongest
tribe in all New England. News of this came to Plymouth, and was sent
from there by messenger to the governor of Massachusetts Bay. Not long
afterward a settler named John Oldham was killed by a party of Indians
as he was sailing his own boat off Block Island. The white men, putting
this and that together, decided that the Pequods were planning to kill
all the settlers that came into their country, and thought it likely
they were trying to get the Narragansett chiefs to join them in this. If
these two tribes joined forces it would go hard with the white men, and
so the people of Massachusetts Bay sent a message to Roger Williams,
urging him to see his friends the Narragansetts, and try to keep them
from joining with the Pequods.
Williams was brave, and he had need to be when he made his visit to the
wigwam of the chief, Canonicus. He found men of the Pequods there,
trying to induce Canonicus and the other Narragansett sachems to join
them in war on the whites. He came as a friend, he showed no fear, and
he stayed for several days, sleeping among them at night, as if he had
no suspicion that the Pequods might want to kill him, alone and unarmed
among so many of them. And the Pequods did not touch him. He had learned
something of the Indian tongue while he lived at Plymouth and Salem, and
he talked with them and the Narragansetts, urging them to be friends
with the white men who had come to live among them.
His visit to Canonicus was successful. The Narragansett chiefs renewed
their promises of friendship for Roger Williams' men and sent the Pequod
envoys away. The disappointed Pequods, however, told the Narragansetts
that the English were treacherous folk and warned them that they would
not always find these new settlers as friendly as Roger Williams had
said. And in part the Pequods were right, for there were white men who
were fully as treacherous as any Indians.
Not long afterward four young men set out from Massachusetts Bay to go
to the Dutch settlement on Manhattan Island. Somewhere between Boston
and the Providence Plantations they sat down to rest and smoke. A
Narragansett Indian came in sight, and they called to him to stop and
smoke a pipe with them. The Indian accepted their invitation. The white
men saw that he was a trader and had a large stock of wampum, and also
cloth and beads with him, and so, as he sat with them, they suddenly
attacked him, and, robbing him, left him for dead. The Narragansett,
though very badly wounded, was able after a while to drag himself back
to the wigwams of his tribe. There he told his story before he died.
Some of the chiefs set out on the trail at once, and capturing three of
the whites, took them to the settlers at Aquidneck. They were tried for
the robbery and murder, found guilty, and executed, though some settlers
murmured against Englishmen being condemned for doing harm to Indians.
But wise men such as Governor Bradford and Roger Williams knew that they
must use the same justice toward Indians as toward white men if they
were ever to live in peace with their neighbors.
So the Narragansetts kept peace with the newcomers who were building
their homes on the shores of the great bay that bore the name of the
Indian tribe, and Roger Williams turned his attention to the needs of
his people. He wanted a charter from the king of England for his new
colony, and to get it he had to go back to England. Instead of going to
Boston or Plymouth to take ship he traveled south to the Dutch seaport
of New Amsterdam. The Dutch were also having trouble with their Indian
neighbors, and Roger Williams was urged to try to pacify the red men.
Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay kept record of most of the
important things that were taking place in the English colonies, and
this is what he wrote:
"1643. Mo. 4, 20.--There fell out hot wars between the Dutch and the
Indians thereabout. The occasion was this. An Indian being drunk had
slain an old Dutchman.... The Indians also of Long Island took part with
their neighbors upon the main, and as the Dutch took away their corn, so
they fell to burning the Dutch houses. But these, by the mediation of
Mr. Williams, who was there to go in a Dutch ship for England, were
pacified and peace reëstablished between the Dutch and them."
Roger Williams sailed from New Amsterdam in June or July, 1643, and on
the voyage he spent much time in writing a remarkable book, "A Key into
the Languages of America," as he called it. He reached England at a most
exciting time. Parliament had rebelled against King Charles the First,
the king had fled from London, the battle of Edge Hill had been fought
between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads, and the country was an armed
camp. Williams tried to get his charter from the Parliament, but matters
were so upset that such business took a long time. The people of London
were suffering for fuel, and he busied himself in plans to provide coal
and wood for them, and he went on with his writings, most of which were
religious arguments, such as many men of that period, among them
William Penn, were fond of writing.
At last he was able to get his charter from Parliament, and set out on
his return journey. He had not sailed from Boston on his outward voyage
because of the order of exile from the colony of Massachusetts Bay that
still stood against him. But he asked permission of that colony to let
him return by way of Boston, and this was granted. He landed at the same
place where he had made his first landing in America; journeyed,
probably on foot, to the Blackstone River, and paddled his canoe to
Narragansett Bay. As he approached the Bay he was met by a fleet of
canoes manned by the chief settlers of his colony, who gave him a royal
welcome. In return for his services in obtaining the charter for the new
Providence Plantations the three settlements of Newport, Portsmouth and
Providence agreed to pay him one hundred pounds.
Roger Williams' wife had joined him at the Providence Plantations, and
they now had a family of six children. He did not approve of a minister
being paid for his services, and so he, like many other preachers of the
Puritans, found other means to supply his family with bread and meat. He
had traded with the Indians for furs while he was at Salem, and since
then he had built a trading house on the west shore of Narragansett Bay,
at a place called Cawcawmsquissick by the Indians, about fifteen miles
south of Providence, and near where the town of Wickford now stands.
Ninigret, one of his powerful Indian friends, lived near by, and saw to
it that the best furs went to Roger Williams' house. It was a convenient
place for the hunters to bring their stores, and it was not far across
the bay to Newport, which was becoming the main shipping port of the
colony. To Newport he took his furs to sell them in the market or send
them by trading-vessel to England, and there he bought the stock of
cloth and beads, sugar and other supplies that he paid to the Indians.
He made at his trading-house at least one hundred pounds a year, the
equal of five hundred dollars in American money, and with a much greater
purchasing power in those days than now.
Meantime the Narragansetts and the Mohegans had been at war with each
other, and the former tribe winning, had made an alliance with the
Mohegans, and threatened a joint attack on the English colonies.
Williams and two or three others went out to the Indian chiefs and again
made a treaty of peace with them, for there was no white man in New
England for whom all the Indians had such affection as they had for
Roger Williams. Time and again he saved his own colony, and the
neighboring ones of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth and Connecticut from
Indian attacks. His knowledge of the Indian tongues was of great
assistance to him, and his desire to be perfectly fair and frank with
them was even more valuable.
Once more he went to England, for a Mr. Coddington of Newport had
obtained from Parliament a commission as governor for life of the
settlements at Aquidneck, which interfered with the charter already
granted to the Providence Plantations. There he succeeded in having the
claims of his colony adjusted, there he wrote more religious pamphlets
and preached and lectured, and there he met Oliver Cromwell, the Lord
Protector of England, and John Milton the poet, and told them about the
Indians of New England, their language and their customs and the
missionary work the colonists were doing among them.
After he went back to Providence George Fox, the famous Quaker leader,
came to New England and preached to the people there. Roger Williams did
not agree with Fox in many of his teachings, and took the opposite side
at many public meetings. Whenever there was debate or argument over
religious matters Roger Williams wanted to have his share in it. He held
the same views as leader of the Providence Plantations that he had
voiced when he first came as minister to the First Church at Boston.
In many ways Roger Williams was something like William Penn. He founded
a colony that was in time to become one of the original Thirteen States
of the American Union. He was a religious leader, and he was always fair
in his dealings with the Indians. Probably he was greatest as a friend
of the Indians, for his little colony was spared the frequent attacks
and massacres that made life so hard for many of the small English
settlements along the Atlantic coast. He came to the New World seeking
liberty and justice between all men, and these he taught to the settlers
who followed and built their homes around his log house on the shores of
the great bay named for the Narragansetts.