SUFFERINGS OF ROGER WILLIAMS IN THE WILDERNESS.--FOUNDS A
SETTLEMENT ON THE SEEKONK RIVER.--IS ADVISED TO DEPART.--SEEKS
OUT A NEW PLACE, WHICH HE CALLS PROVIDENCE.
When the sentence of banishment was first pronounced against the
future founder of Rhode Island, his health was so feeble that it was
resolved to suspend the execution of it till spring. This, however,
was soon found to be impracticable, for the affection and confidence
which he had inspired presently found open expression, and friends
began to gather around him in his own house to listen to his teaching.
Lack of energy was not a defect of the government of the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay, and learning that rumors of a new colony to be
founded on Narragansett Bay were already afloat, it resolved to send
the supposed leader of the unwelcome enterprise back to England. A
warrant, therefore, was given to Captain Underhill, a man of doubtful
character in the employment of the Colony, with orders to proceed
directly to Salem, put the offender on board his pinnace, and convey
him to a ship that lay in Boston harbor ready to sail for England with
the first fair wind. When the pinnace reached Salem, he found only
the wife and infant children of the banished man, and a people deeply
grieved for the loss of their pastor. Williams was gone, and whither no
one could say.
And whither, indeed, could he go? The thin and scattered settlements
of the northern colonies were bounded seaward by a tempestuous ocean,
and inland by a thick belt of primeval forest, whose depths civilized
man had never penetrated. If he escaped the wild beasts that prowled in
their recesses, could he hope to escape the wilder savage, who claimed
the forest for his hunting grounds? "I was sorely tossed," Williams
writes in after years, "for fourteen weeks in a bitter winter-season,
not knowing what bread or bed did mean." The brave man's earnest mind
bore up the frail and suffering body.
And now he began to reap the fruit of his kind treatment of the
natives, and the pains which he had taken to learn their language.
"These ravens fed me in the wilderness," he wrote, with a touching
application of Scripture narrative. They gave him the shelter of their
squalid wigwams, and shared with him their winter store. The great
chief Massasoit opened his door to him, and, when spring came, gave him
a tract of land on the Seekonk River, where he "pitched and began to
build and plant." Here he was soon joined by some friends from Salem,
who had resolved to cast in their lot with his. But the seed which they
planted had already begun to send up its early shoots, when a letter
from his "ancient friend, the Governor of Plymouth," came, to "lovingly
advise him" that he was "fallen into the edge of their bounds;" that
they were "loth to displease the Bay," and that if he would "remove
but to the other side of the water," he would have "the country
before [him] and might be as free as themselves," and they "should be
loving neighbors together." Williams accepted the friendly counsel,
and, taking five companions with him, set out in a canoe to follow
the downward course of the Seekonk and find a spot whereon he might
plant and build in safety. As the little boat came under the shade
of the western bank of the pleasant stream, a small party of Indians
was seen watching them from a large flat rock that rose a few feet
above the water's edge. "Wha-cheer, netop?--Wha-cheer?--how are you,
friend?" they cried; and Williams accepting the friendly salutation as
a favorable omen, turned the prow of his canoe to the shore. Tradition
calls the spot where he landed, Slate Rock, and the name of Wha-cheer
square has been given in advance to the land around it. What was said
or done at that first interview has not been recorded, but the parting
was as friendly as the meeting, and Williams resuming his course, soon
found himself at the junction of the Seekonk and Mooshausick. Two
points mark the intermingling of the two streams, and in those days the
waters must have spread their broad bosom like a lake, and gleamed and
danced within their fringe of primeval forest. Williams, following,
perhaps, the counsel of the Indians, turned northward and held his way
between the narrowing banks of the Mooshausick, till he espied, at the
foot of a hill which rose shaggy with trees and precipitate from its
eastern shore, the flash and sparkling of a spring. Here he landed,
and, recalling his trials and the mighty hand that had sustained him
through them all, called the place Providence.