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Updated: June 5, 2025
For the moment it seemed as if the English had brought upon themselves the united power of all the Indians of the country. The Pequots sent messengers to patch up peace with their enemies, the Narragansetts, and tried to induce them to take up arms against the English. They would have probably succeeded but for the influence of Roger Williams with the Narragansett chiefs.
The New Englanders numbered at this time some 80,000 individuals, with an adult and fighting population of perhaps 16,000; while the number of the Indians altogether may have reached as high as 12,000, with the Narragansetts, the strongest of all, mustering 4,000.
The Narragansetts were suffered to browse on the branches of the trees and shrubs that were thinly scattered over the summit of the hill, while the remains of their provisions were spread under the shade of a beech, that stretched its horizontal limbs like a canopy above them.
Writing in this spirit, the chroniclers of the time were completely callous in their accounts of suffering and ruin inflicted upon Indians, and, as has elsewhere been known to happen, those who did not risk their own persons were more truculent in tone than the professional fighters. While the overthrow of the Narragansetts changed the face of things, it was far from putting an end to the war.
The settlers of New Plymouth had entered upon an almost deserted land; those of Massachusetts had ensured to themselves safety by their superior strength; and those among the Narragansetts were protected from injury by the friendly feelings of the neighboring Indians.
In the above fashion perished, without a plea, "in the prime of his manhood," Canonchet of the Big Heart, last Grand Sachem of the Narragansetts. Presently only the name of his nation remained. Soon after the Mohawks broke the peace with the French and Algonkins in Canada, and in 1647 killed Piskaret the champion, they and the others of the Five Nations drove the Hurons and Algonkins into flight.
He had only a handful of Pokanokets and scarcely more Narragansetts with him. Although frequently attacking, he himself was never sighted. The English accused him of hiding in cowardly fashion, but he well knew that with his death or capture the war would be ended. Only the name King Philip supported it still.
Director Minuit returned an answer, remarkable for its courteous tone, but in which he firmly maintained the right of the Dutch to trade with the Narragansetts as they had done for years, adding "As the English claim authority under the king of England, so we derive ours from the States of Holland, and we shall defend it." Governor Bradford sent this correspondence to England.
It placed upon Connecticut the burden of supporting a treacherous and grasping Indian chief; it created a great deal of confusion in land titles in the eastern part of the colony because of indiscriminate Indian grants; it started the famous Mohegan controversy which agitated the colony and England also, and was not finally settled until 1773, one hundred and thirty years later; and it was, in part at least, a cause of King Philip's War, because of the colony's support of the Mohegans against their traditional enemies, the Narragansetts and Niantics.
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.
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