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Updated: June 22, 2025
Cundincus, also, the Chief of the powerful and much dreaded Narragansetts, sent his son with a friendly greeting to the new settlers of Boston; and, in the following year, his nephew and co-ruler, Miantonomo, came on a visit to the Governor.
But the outcome of this impracticable treaty was a five years' struggle between the Mohegan chieftain, Uncas, actively allied with the colony of Connecticut, and Miantonomo, sachem of the Narragansetts, which involved Connecticut in a tortuous and often dishonorable policy of attempting to divide the Indians in order to rule them a policy which led to many embarrassing negotiations and bloody conflicts and ended in the murder of Miantonomo in 1643, by the Mohegans, at the instigation of the commissioners of the United Colonies.
This strange evidence was heard also by Miantonomo, whom Coubitant called to join the conference, as he, knew that he already hated the English; and he desired to strengthen that feeling to the utmost, for the furtherance of his own plans.
Uncas lived on for many years and was a very old man before he died; "old and wicked and wilful," one account describes him. He quarreled with his neighbors and gave much trouble to his friends, the English. The Narragansetts attacked him after the death of Miantonomo, to avenge the death of their chief, and they drove him into one of his forts on the Pequot River.
But he found the natural strength of the place so much greater than he expected, and also observed that it was so watchfully guarded by his enemies, that he resolved to pass on to the harbor in Narragansett Bay; and, after having strengthened his forces with the warriors promised by Miantonomo, to attack the Pequodees from thence.
The commissioners were afraid to take the responsibility of setting the Narragansett sachem free, because they had promised to protect Uncas and they felt that Uncas would not be safe while Miantonomo lived, yet they had no reason to put him to death.
Uncas then gave a whoop and his men returned to him." But Miantonomo sat silent. At last Uncas spoke to him and said, "If you had taken me I would have besought you for my life." Now it was against the Indian's code of honor to ask for mercy. An Indian brave must never complain, no matter how hard his fate.
Neither Sessaquem, Sassacus, Pumham, Uncas, nor Miantonomo had been able to quiet tribal jealousies and draw to his standard against the English others than his own immediate followers.
So widespread was the uprising that during the autumn, a desultory warfare was carried on as far north as Falmouth, Brunswick, and Casco Bay, where at least fifty Englishmen were slain by members of the Saco and Androscoggin tribes. As yet the Narragansetts, bravest of all the southern New England Indians, whose chief was Canonchet, son of the murdered Miantonomo, had taken no part in the war.
The English sent two of their own men with him to see that the sentence was duly executed. They went through the forests until they had passed the English boundaries and had come upon land that belonged to the Mohegans, and, therein the wilderness, the brother of Uncas, who walked behind Miantonomo, lifted his hatchet and silently drove it through the captive chieftain's head.
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