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In the mean time, a terrible fate overtook the friend and ally of Gorton, Miantonomoh, at the hands of his neighbors in the west, the Mohegans, whose chief, Uncas, attacked one of Miantonomoh's subordinate chiefs; Miantonomoh accepted the war, was defeated, and captured by Uncas.
There was really no Indian combination in 1643 against the colonists, but the rivalry between the Narragansetts and the Mohegans gave grounds for uneasiness. After the death of Miantonomoh, under the circumstances already related, the fear of an Indian attack was temporarily removed.
Canochet, the chief sachem, said to have been a son of Miantonomoh, but probably his nephew, had ventured to his old haunts to procure seed corn with which to plant the rich intervals on the Connecticut, abandoned by the colonists. Taken prisoner, he conducted himself with all that haughty firmness esteemed by the Indians as the height of magnanimity.
The forces of Connecticut and Rhode Island received instruction on the "Miantonomoh" and the "Atlanta" respectively, and New York's battalion spent a week on board the "New York" and the "San Francisco" in Gardiner's Bay, Long Island. A part of the Pennsylvania force had target-practice at sea on board the "New York," and the North Carolina battalion received instruction on the "Montgomery."
About the middle of the forenoon the swift, heavily armed gunboat Scorpion entered the harbor flying the commodore's pennant, and was received with a salute of eleven guns from the monitor Miantonomoh.
In this crisis the friendship of Governor Vane for the banished champion of religious liberty was used to good effect. To gratify the governor and his council at Boston, Williams, at the risk of his life, sought the wigwams of Canonicus and Miantonomoh, and "broke to pieces the Pequot negotiations and design."
Then the Miantonomoh hung out another string of colored lanterns, the uproar ceased, and the pallid, ghostly canvas of the Flying Dutchman suddenly vanished as the search-lights left it and resumed their slow, sweeping exploration of the harbor, the channel, and the open sea.
Accordingly, Miantonomoh was slaughtered by his enemy, who cut out a warm slice from his shoulder and declared it the sweetest morsel he had ever tasted and that it gave strength to his heart. Thus fell Miantonomoh, the circumstances of whose death were "not at all creditable to the federal commissioners and their clerical advisers."
After having spent a week at the hotel, I decided to go on board the Red Cross steamer State of Texas, which was lying off the government wharf, nearly opposite the custom-house, and within one hundred yards of the two big monitors Puritan and Miantonomoh.
The island of Aquidneck, to which Mrs. Hutchinson retired, was secured from Canonicus and Miantonomoh, the sachems of the Narragansetts, through the good offices of Roger Williams, by John Clarke, William Coddington, and other leaders of her faction, a short time preceding her banishment, after a winter spent in Maine, where the climate proved too cold for them.
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