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Updated: June 5, 2025
Except in the destruction of the Pequots, the native tribes of New England had as yet undergone no very material diminution. The Pokanokets or Wampanoags, though somewhat curtailed in their limits, still occupied the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay. The Narragansetts still possessed the western shore.
To be sure 't is but a year since the Narragansetts helped the English destroy the Pequot stronghold, and the few Pequots who were neither killed nor sold they still hold in subjection. Whatever their idea, it bodes no good either to Zeb or to us, for their enmity never sleeps."
Here let us close the melancholy story of the warrior queen Wetamoo, who as the companion-in-arms of her sachem sought to avenge her husband's death, as well as to save her country from the foreigner. However, Wetamoo and Philip together dragged the once mighty Narragansetts down. This brings to the surface the tale of Canonchet, the big-hearted.
A party of three hundred Indians were overtaken and attacked in a swamp near New Haven, and many were captured or put to death. Sassacus, the Pequot chief, of whom the Narragansetts had such a dread as to say of him, "Sassacus is all one God; no man can kill him," contrived to reach the Mohawks, but they cut off his head and sent it as a present to the English.
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.
Knowing their fondness for blue-fish and clams, the Narragansetts asked the Nipmucks to dine with them on one occasion, and this courtesy was eagerly accepted, the up-country people distinguishing themselves by valiant trencher deeds; but, alas, that it should be so! they disgraced themselves when, soon after, they invited the Narragansetts to a feast of venison at Killingly, and quarrelled with their guests over the dressing of the food.
A score of gay young fellows upon whom life sat so lightly that they cared not how they periled it, was no doubt a valuable acquisition to the fighting force of the colony, and almost upon the day of their arrival the Captain enrolled, divided, and began to train them, forming four companies of twelve men each, for some of the larger boys of the Mayflower were now enlisted, and this force of fifty men was at least once in every week led over to the Training Green across the brook, and there inspected, manoeuvred, marched and counter-marched, disciplined in prompt obedience and rapid movement; until the birds of the air who watched from the neighboring forest should have carried a warning to their co-aborigines, the Narragansetts, the Neponsets, the Namaskets, and the Manomets, not yet convinced, spite of the late warning, that the white man was their Fate against which it was but bitter defeat to struggle.
"Brothers, we must be as one, as the English are, or we shall soon all be destroyed," had said Miantonomah, in a speech to a distant tribe; and that looked to be so. He was now chief sachem of the Narragansetts, and the friend of King Philip. He was a tall, strongly built man, and accused by the English of being haughty and insolent. Why not?
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.
A whole tribe was exterminated, and thereby, and still more by the heroic action of Williams in preventing, by his personal intercession, an alliance between the Pequots and the Narragansetts, the white colonies were preserved. But beyond this, the affair has no bearing upon the development of the American idea.
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