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Updated: June 22, 2025
Miantonomo was buried there on the scene of his defeat, which has ever since been known as the Sachem's Plain. This was in September, 1643, and for years afterward, in that month, parties of Narragansetts used to visit the spot and with frantic gestures and hideous yells lament their fallen leader.
Miantonomo was a tall, fine-looking chief with serious and stately manners, and he made a favorable impression in Boston on the magistrates who were not very well disposed toward him. "When he came in, the court was assembled and he was set down at the lower end of the table over against the governor." A Pequot interpreter was given him.
The governor in response "gave him a fair red coat, and defrayed his and his men's diet, and gave them corn to relieve them homeward, and a letter of protection to all men, and he departed very joyful." Uncas had now become a dangerous rival of Miantonomo, and the jealousy between them soon grew so great that it threatened to break out in open war.
The Narragansetts lived near them, just over the Rhode Island border. They were a larger tribe than the Pequots and more peaceful and civilized, and their chief, Miantonomo, was friendly to the English settlers and had been generous in his dealings with them.
They vainly imagined that some disembodied spirit of Greece or Rome had revisited the earth in the vast physical and mental proportions of Canonchet. Forty years before, the friendship of his father, Miantonomo, and the qualified hostility he assumed towards Sassacus and the Pequots had saved the infant colonies from destruction.
The immediate rule over this land belonged to two inferior chiefs, who ratified the sale at the time, but six months afterward disavowed the ratification, on the ground that it had been given under duress from their overlord Miantonomo. Here was a state of things which might easily bring on an Indian war.
Miantonomo was strong and a swift runner, but that day he wore for protection a coat of mail which an Englishman had given him and the heavy garment impeded his flight. The Mohegans recognized him by it and followed him eagerly. He kept his distance until he had nearly reached the river, but there, "the foremost of Uncas's men got ahead of him."
First an embassy was sent to Canonicus and his nephew Miantonomo, chief sachems of the Narragansetts, who hastened to disclaim all responsibility for the murder, and to throw the blame entirely upon the Indians of the island. Vane then sent out three vessels under command of Endicott, who ravaged Block Island, burning wigwams, sinking canoes, and slaying dogs, for the men had taken to the woods.
Gorton and his men were now peremptorily summoned to Boston to show cause why they should not surrender their land at Shawomet and to answer the charges against them. Meanwhile the unfortunate Miantonomo had rushed upon his doom. The annihilation of the Pequots had left the Mohegans and Narragansetts contending for the foremost place among the native tribes.
The Indian reinforcements continued to increase. Miantonomo brought two hundred warriors, and other allied tribes joined them on their march, until the number of native auxiliaries amounted to five hundred. In these Mason placed little confidence, and would gladly have awaited the arrival of the forty men from Plymouth, who were already at Providence on their way to join him.
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