God, War, and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England

ISBN-13: 9781501180422

Media Type: Paperback(Reprint)

Publisher: Scribner

Publication Date: 06-18-2019

Pages: 304

Product Dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

James A. Warren is a historian and foreign policy analyst. A regular contributor to The Daily Beast, he is the author of God, War, and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England; American Spartans: The US Marines: A Combat History from Iwo Jima to Iraq; and The Lions of Iwo Jima: The Story of Combat Team 28 and the Bloodiest Battle in Marine Corps History (with Major General Fred Haynes, USMC-RET), among other books. For many years, Warren was an acquisitions editor at Columbia University Press, and more recently a visiting scholar in American Studies at Brown University. He lives in Saunderstown, Rhode Island.

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God, War, and Providence

The early seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Indian importunes the settlers to “come over and help us.” Civilizing and Christianizing the Indians was one of the major rationales for the Bay Colony, but many of the funds designated for Indian instruction were diverted to other projects.



By 1635, two colonies of English Puritans, Plymouth Plantation and Massachusetts Bay Colony, were firmly established along the coast of southern New England. A third colony, made up of perhaps a hundred recent émigrés from Massachusetts and a handful of Plymouth Colony traders, had begun to take shape on the banks of the Connecticut River near the modern city of Hartford, where the Dutch had earlier established a bustling trading post.

The Pilgrims of Plymouth had first arrived in November 1620 aboard the Mayflower. After an extremely hard first winter, during which almost half of the initial one hundred settlers had perished, the plantation—a common seventeenth-century synonym for colony—had grown slowly but steadily to self-sufficiency, thanks in large measure to the able assistance of local native inhabitants, especially Squanto, an English-speaking Indian from the deserted Patuxet village upon which Plymouth was settled, and Massasoit, chief sachem of the Wampanoag confederation. By 1635, Plymouth’s population stood at six hundred.

Squanto had been captured by English explorers around 1614 and taken to Spain to be sold as a slave. He somehow escaped to England and learned the language before being brought back to New England by the merchant Thomas Dermer. All his fellow Patuxets had either died in the epidemic of 1616–19 or fled in its wake. In 1621, Governor William Bradford signed an alliance with Massasoit, granting the tribe exclusive trading rights with the colony, and providing for mutual defense in the not unlikely event of attack from one of the many other Indian tribes in the region.

Massachusetts Bay colonists first settled in the town of Salem, sixty miles north of Plymouth, in 1628, but by the early 1630s, Boston, with its excellent natural harbor, had become the center of colony government and the most populous English town in New England. The contemporary English chronicler William Wood described Boston as “a peninsula hemmed in on the south side with the Bay of Roxbury, on the north side with the Charles River,” and “not troubled with the great annoyances of wolves, rattlesnakes, and mosquitoes.”1 Seven years after its founding, Massachusetts Bay Colony was home to six thousand English people, a good number in Boston itself, the rest dispersed in a handful of small towns ringing Boston proper.

Before the end of the decade, another five thousand English people would brave the Atlantic to settle in New England. Most settled in Massachusetts, which by 1640 had firmly established itself as the dominant and most dynamic of four New England Puritan colonies: Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and tiny New Haven, along the Quinnipiac River, destined to fold into Connecticut in 1662.

Like Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay had been settled on lands cleared and formerly inhabited by Indians—in this case, Massachusetts Indians under the sachem Cutshamakin, and the Pawtuckets under Sagamores John and James. By 1635, the Wampanoags numbered no more than five hundred; the Pawtucket and Massachusetts less than half that number. The great epidemic of 1616–19 had reduced the population of both tribes by as much as 90 percent, and then an outbreak of smallpox in 1633 further reduced their numbers. All these tribes welcomed the newcomers as trading partners, neighbors, and allies who could aid them in turning back raiding parties of the fierce Micmac tribe from northern New England.

The first English settlements of southern New England were surrounded by many other independent Indian bands and several confederations of bands—a grand total, it seems, of fifteen thousand to twenty thousand Indians. The natives spoke slightly different dialects of the same eastern Algonquian language and possessed similar cultures and patterns of subsistence and settlement.

To the west of the traditional lands of the Massachusetts and extending into contemporary northwest Rhode Island were the Nipmucks. Farther west, in the northern Connecticut River valley, dwelled about a thousand Pocumtucks. South of the Pocumtucks, in the Connecticut River valley, lived the Podunks, Sequins, Wangunks, and several other small but strategically significant bands, referred to collectively as River Indians by the English.

East of the River Indians, centered on the Thames and Mystic River valleys respectively, were some three thousand Mohegans and the Pequots. To the east of the Pequots lay the Narragansett confederation. Its territory extended over the entire mainland of contemporary Rhode Island except for its northwest corner; the East Bay, inhabited by Wampanoags; and the larger islands in Narragansett Bay. Their confederation was the largest and most prosperous Indian polity in the region, numbering between seventy-five hundred and ten thousand people.


Southern New England, showing locations of major tribes and colonial boundaries, circa 1660.

THE LUSH NARRAGANSETT WORLD

Evidence of habitation near the Bay goes back about thirty-seven hundred years, and the remains of a Narragansett village dating from AD 1100 to 1300 have been uncovered by archaeologists recently. Narragansett Bay and its environs were extraordinarily rich in natural resources at the time of the first English settlements in New England. The Indians who dwelled there were masters of all the skills needed to exploit them. Contemporary English observers describe the Narragansetts as peaceable, industrious, and well led by an older sachem of few words and considerable wisdom called Canonicus, and his nephew Miantonomi, who by 1635 had already established a reputation in the region as a discerning and intelligent diplomat.

The first European to encounter the Narragansetts and record his observations was the great Italian navigator-explorer Giovanni da Verrazano, who sailed the eastern seaboard of America on behalf of the king of France in a futile search for a Northwest Passage. Even in 1524, the Narragansett predilection for industry and trade was evident. Verrazano’s account of his encounter with the tribe is remarkably vivid in detail and bears repeating at length:

We . . . proceeded to another place, fifteen leagues distant from [Block Island], where we found an excellent harbor [Newport]. Before entering it, we saw about twenty small boats full of people, who came about our ship, uttering many cries of astonishment. . . . Stopping, they looked at the structure of our ship, our persons and dress, afterwards they all raised a loud shout, signifying that they were pleased. . . . Among them were two kings more beautiful in form and stature than can possibly be described; one was about forty years old, the other about twenty-four, and they were dressed in the following manner: The oldest had a deer’s skin around his body, artificially wrought in damask figures, his head was without covering, his hair was tied back in various knots; around his neck he wore a large chain ornamented with many stones of different colors. The young man was similar in appearance.

This is the finest looking tribe, and the handsomest in their costumes, we have found in our voyage. They exceed us in size, and they are of a very fair complexion; some of them incline more to a white and others to a tawny color; their faces are sharp; their hair long and black, upon the adorning of which they bestow great pains; their eyes are black and sharp, their expression mild and pleasant. . . .

They are very generous, giving away whatever they have. . . . We often went five or six leagues into the interior, and found country as pleasant as is possible to conceive, adapted to cultivation of every kind, whether of corn, wine, or oil; there are open plains twenty-five or thirty leagues in extent, entire free from trees or other hindrances. . . . The animals, which are in great numbers . . . are taken in snares, and by bows, the latter being their chief implement.2

The word Narragansett as used in this book has two distinct but closely related meanings. It refers in its narrower sense to a core group of some four thousand Indians dispersed in as many as twenty villages throughout the southern half of the Rhode Island mainland, and in a broader sense to a larger political entity known to the English of the seventeenth century as a great sachemdom—a loose confederation of Indian bands and tribes. The Narragansett confederation took in the Narragansetts themselves and a number of tributary tribes, including the Cowesett and Shawomet to the north, some Nipmuck bands to the northwest, and the Eastern Niantic to the south, in the areas we now know as Westerly and Charlestown, Rhode Island. Ties of kinship between the Narragansetts and the Eastern Niantics were especially strong.

All these tribes had close social and commercial ties to the Narragansetts, but each had its own sachem—often called a minor, or local, sachem by the English. He, or, in a handful of cases, she, was responsible for governing the internal affairs of the group. The independence of the local sachems in the Narragansett confederation had begun to diminish somewhat in the 1620s, as trade with the Dutch and the English became an increasingly important source of wealth for the Indians. By the mid-1630s, an emerging Indian-English-Dutch market economy, centered largely on the exchange of furs and foodstuffs for European goods, led to the concentration of political and commercial authority in the hands of Canonicus and Miantonomi.

Algonquian sachems, Narragansett and otherwise, almost always owed their positions to family descent. It fell to the great sachem to make all the critical decisions for his subjects, albeit with the advice of the minor sachems, a council of elders, and one or more powwows—men who presided over various rituals and tended to both the spiritual and bodily health of the people. Indians looked to their great sachem to dispense justice, mediate disputes between bands, allocate farming and hunting lands, conduct diplomacy with outsiders, and organize group activities, especially the seasonal migrations between the coast and the inland forests, and warfare. In exchange for protection and leadership, Miantonomi and Canonicus received allegiance and payments from their tributaries, as well as from their own local bands in the villages of southern Rhode Island.

Allegiance to the great sachem, however, was contingent on his ability to keep the local sachems and their subjects reasonably content through gift-giving and consensus building, and responsive leadership. Disaffected minor chiefs could alter the balance of power between the major Indian tribes by shifting their allegiance from one great sachem to another.

Political and social ties among the Algonquians were protean—which caused no small amount of confusion and frustration for Europeans. When individual Indians in Narragansett territory committed criminal acts or violated Indian-Puritan agreements, the English authorities would customarily go over the heads of the local sachems and seek satisfaction from Canonicus and Miantonomi directly. Much to the frustration of the English authorities, their ability to do so was often circumscribed by the power minor sachems enjoyed over members of their own bands, as well as by the ease with which unattached males, and even on occasion entire nuclear families, could migrate from one band to another.

The Narragansetts, like all southern New England Indians, were farmers and fishermen as well as hunters and gatherers. Each spring men and women worked together to clear new fields close to the coastline, cutting down trees, and breaking up the soil with clamshells and stone hoes. Women planted, nurtured, and harvested the staple crops of squash, beans, and corn, and they gathered fruit, nuts, and plants for both sustenance and medicinal purposes.

Puritans stereotyped Indian men as lazy, yet it’s clear that men took on the hard labor of clearing the fields when new farming plots were needed. Narragansett men were also skilled trappers and hunters of deer, rabbits, beaver, and otter. Deer was by far the most important source of meat for the tribe. In the winter, hunting parties of as many as several hundred men roamed the forest, driving deer in the direction of a large V-shaped, funneled trap leading to a corral, where they could be easily dispatched with bow and arrow. Before the hunt, carefully controlled fires were set to clear away underbrush. While the cleared ground made hunting quite a bit easier, it did no permanent harm to the maple, oak, cedar, and pine trees. In fact, by decreasing the competition for nutrients in the soil, it enhanced the growth of the larger trees.

Pigeons, waterfowl, and turkeys formed a regular part of the Narragansett Indian diet and were found in numbers that astonished the English. Men fished with weirs, nets, and harpoons, both in Narragansett Bay proper and in the many fresh- and saltwater ponds and rivers in their territory. Shellfish, quahogs, and mussels were collected along the shoreline, usually by women, throughout the year.

Seaworthy dugout canoes carved out of the trunks of large hardwood trees were used for open-water fishing and travel between the mainland of Narragansett country and the islands in the Bay. These craft could transport as many as thirty Indians across miles of open ocean, even in blustery seas. The canoes were among the most striking examples of an Indian technology that proved far superior to its English counterpart in the New World environment. Roger Williams reported that the Narragansetts even knew how to rig a sail made of English cloth on a small pole in their canoes to gain speed.

Despite the hunting prowess of Narragansett men, corn was the staple of the tribe’s diet. It was consumed in stews with beans, squash, fish, and meat. Cakes were also made from cornmeal, which was stored for winter consumption in great quantities in baskets buried in the ground.

Among the many groups of Algonquian Indians, the Narragansett distinguished themselves not only as traders, but as manufacturers. Narragansett baskets, woven by women, were highly prized throughout the region. Women prepared furs for both personal clothing and for trade. Men fashioned widely regarded pipes for tobacco they grew for their own consumption, as well as axes, chisels, hoes, and arrows made of stone and, later, European metals.

The coastline of Narragansett country was overrun with quahog and whelk, the raw material used for drilling and minting shell beads called wampum. Wampum had great symbolic and ceremonial value to all Algonquians long before Europeans arrived on the scene. It was given as tribute, to confirm agreements between native peoples, and worn as jewelry by individuals to designate authority and prestige. Shortly after the first English settlements in New England took root, wampum became the chief medium of exchange in the emerging European-Indian trade network. Vast stores of the stuff were traded by Narragansetts to the Indians in the hinterlands to the west and north in exchange for furs; the furs were exchanged with both the Dutch and the English for iron and steel knives, hoes and axes, brass pots, decorative beads and trinkets, cloth, firearms, and liquor. Almost all the metal objects used by Indians in New England in the seventeenth century “were of European origin,” writes scholar Patrick M. Malone, “and they were made of various metals, including cast iron, wrought iron, steel, brass, copper and lead, among others.”3

By entering into the market economy associated with the fur trade, the Narragansetts gained substantial purchasing power, which allowed them to obtain European versions of tools they had previously obtained only through their own labor-intensive manufacturing. Thus, the emerging market economy fostered growing dependency on the English and the Dutch, as well as a gradual decline in traditional subsistence patterns and skills, complicating relationships between Europeans and Indians, and between Indian tribes, in many unforeseen ways.

THE BAY AND ITS ENVIRONS

Geologists call Narragansett Bay an estuary, meaning a partially enclosed body of salty water into which freshwater rivers and streams drain, with a mouth on the open sea. The Bay is blessed with scores of coves, natural harbors, and shallow, smaller estuaries, with tidal pools and marshlands, and is gently rimmed by rocky coastlines and hardwood forests. Several navigable rivers drain into its waters from the hinterlands. In the seventeenth century a well-traveled network of trails amid the forests of New England permitted rapid movement on foot between various Indian bands and villages. The main artery of this trail network ran from the Pequot country in the southwest, straight through Narragansett country along the western coast of the Bay, and then all the way up to Massachusetts territory, near Boston, generally following the course of what is today Route 1, along the Old Post Road.

The Bay in the seventeenth century was easily accessible by overland and ocean travel, and well protected from the open ocean. Between its eastern and western shores lies an archipelago of some thirty islands. The largest of these—Aquidneck, Conanicut, and Prudence Islands—were usually inhabited by Narragansett bands in the spring and summer months. Dutch Island, between the mainland and Conanicut Island, served as a trading post before the arrival of permanent English settlers in the 1630s.

Unlike the English settlers in New England, observes historian William Cronon, the Indians “held their demands on the ecosystem to a minimum by moving their settlements from habitat to habitat. . . . By using species when they were most plentiful, Indians made sure no single species became overused. It was a way of life to match the patchwork of the landscape. . . . Just as a fox’s summer diet of fruit and insects shifts to rodents and birds during the winter, so too did the New England Indians seek to obtain their food wherever it was seasonally most concentrated.”4 Narragansett Indian territory contained a diversity of lush ecosystems. Each of these—forest, river, lake and pond, the deep salt waters of the Bay itself—provided a wealth of flora and fauna at different times of the year. Cod, striped bass, shellfish, and deer were especially plentiful. The Narragansetts used what they needed, no more, harvesting only when resources were plentiful. So their footprint on their environment was light.

The Narragansetts, like other Algonquians, lived within prescribed boundaries, but they moved their villages with the seasons to best exploit nature’s bounty. In the fall and winter months, for the most part, they inhabited inland villages, amid the forests, though some hunting parties established temporary living quarters far afield from the main villages and lived in those camps for several weeks at a time. In the spring, the Narragansetts broke down their dwellings, packed their gear and goods, including mats made of earth, thatch, and bark used to cover sapling-framed wigwams, and trekked back to the coast, where they laid out new villages and cleared fresh fields or replanted old ones.

Winter villages were often located in shallow valleys for protection from the weather, where firewood was plentiful. Winter dwellings were considerably larger than summer ones, which were typically only sixteen to eighteen feet in diameter and housed a single family. Many winter homes were not wigwams, but longhouses up to a hundred feet long, with three or four fireplaces and roof vents placed at intervals. They could house as many as fifty people.

The Narragansetts had a rich spiritual life, but no formal, organized religion. Spirits permeated everyday activities and events, lending them meaning and purpose. The presence of spirits and gods explained good fortune as well as bad, and natural phenomena such as the stars, the wind, the sea, birds, and other animals were all invested with spiritual power. A nightmare signaled the gods’ unhappiness; good fortune, their pleasure.

The Narragansetts had a panoply of spirit-gods but only one creator—Cautantowwit. According to Roger Williams, “Cautantowwit made one man and woman of a stone, which disliking, he broke them into pieces, and made another man and woman of a tree, which were the fountains of all mankind.”5 People who led good and useful lives returned to Cautantowwit’s home in the southwest after death; the unworthy were destined to wander forlornly in the cosmos. Narragansett dead were usually buried in the fetal position, with the head facing toward Cautantowwit’s home.

According to Williams, the Narragansett had a legend concerning the origin of corn and bean agriculture. A crow brought a single grain of corn in one ear and a single bean in another “from Cautantowwit, the great southwest god, to whose house all souls go, and from whom came their corn and beans.”6

Whenever the Indians came across something they found remarkable or admirable, they were inclined to speak in spiritual terms to explain it. As Williams wrote, “There is a general custom amongst them, at the apprehension of any excellence in men, women, birds, beasts, fish, etc. to cry out Manittoo, a God, and therefore when they talk amongst themselves of the English ships, and great buildings, of the plowing of the fields, and especially of books and letters, they will end thus: maniitowock, they are gods.”7

All the Algonquian of southern New England displayed remarkable loyalty and generosity toward family members and fellow band members. “These Indians,” writes the early English chronicler William Wood,

are of affable, courteous, and well-disposed natures, ready to communicate the best of their wealth to the mutual good of one another; and the less abundance they have to manifest their entire friendship, so much the more perspicuous is their love in that they are willing to part with their mite in poverty as treasure in plenty. . . . Such is their love to one another that they cannot endure to see their countrymen wronged, but will stand stiffly in their defense. 8

NARRAGANSETT-PURITAN DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS: THE EARLY YEARS

Situated between the Massachusetts Indians to the north, the Wampanoags to the east, and the Pequots and Mohegans to the west, the Narragansetts occupied a strategic location in regional power politics and commerce. From the very first contact between the Pilgrims of Plymouth and the tribe, there was a strong undercurrent of wariness over the other’s intentions, and in retrospect, it seems Miantonomi and Canonicus perceived earlier than most other sachems in the region the potential dangers posed by the newcomers, with their strange notions of land ownership, their firearms, and their books, which were objects of great awe, for they seemed to contain an immense fountain of both spiritual and temporal knowledge.

Unlike the vulnerable Wampanoags or the Massachusetts Indians, whose numbers had been drastically reduced by plague, the Narragansetts were not (initially, at least) disposed to see a formal alliance with the English as inherently beneficial. Because of the vitality of their confederation, their active trade with the Dutch, and their strategic locale, Miantonomi and Canonicus could afford to wait and see about establishing formal relationships with the nascent English colonies.

The sachems, however, were none too pleased about the Wampanoag-Plymouth alliance, for the Narragansetts had long squabbled over territory at the head of Narragansett Bay with the Wampanoags, and the advantages of the exclusive trading arrangement Massasoit had arranged with the English were many. Not only did that agreement appear to all but close the door on direct Narragansett-Plymouth trade; it strengthened the Wampanoags’ political influence and prestige in the region considerably, as Indian bands in the vicinity of Plymouth, as well as those on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket, now looked to conduct trade with the Pilgrims through Wampanoag intermediaries.

Not long after learning of the agreement, Canonicus sent a war party to support a raid on Massasoit’s home village of Sowams, near Warren, Rhode Island, undertaken by a disgruntled Wampanoag minor sachem named Corbitant. Corbitant’s force captured two of Massasoit’s chief liaisons with the Pilgrims. One of these men, Hobbamock, escaped his captors, fleeing to Plymouth for help. Governor Bradford quickly responded, sending Captain Myles Standish, the fiery Pilgrim military commander, to the rescue along with fourteen troops. After a desultory engagement, Corbitant and the Narragansetts withdrew, releasing the other Wampanoag captive. Plymouth and Massasoit had gotten the better of the Narragansetts—this time, anyway.

Canonicus soon thereafter signaled both his displeasure and resolve by sending a bundle of arrows in a snakeskin to Governor William Bradford of Plymouth. Canonicus stood ready to protect his own people and the Narragansett alliance system against Puritan-Wampanoag encroachment. Bradford recognized the gesture for what it was, promptly filled the snakeskin with powder and shot, and sent it back to Canonicus, who refused to accept it. Nothing was to come of this incident, but it seems an apt symbol for the vexed nature of Puritan-Narragansett relations in the years to follow. “Through their mutual act of rejection,” writes anthropologist Paul Robinson, “each party signified its refusal to submit to the other.”9

Southern New England in the early 1630s was in constant flux as the larger Indian tribes jostled to gain both control over smaller bands as well as favorable trade and defense alliances with European traders and colonies. Initially, at least, the Narragansetts seemed to get along much better with the colonists of Massachusetts Bay than they did with those of Plymouth. Due to its greater size and commercial dynamism, good relations with Massachusetts could more than offset whatever advantages accrued to the Wampanoag as a result of their arrangement with Governor Bradford. Miantonomi made the first of many visits to Boston in the summer of 1631. Arriving with his ally, the Massachusetts sachem Cutshamakin, as an intermediary, Miantonomi brought an animal skin for Governor John Winthrop, who requited the gift “with a fair pewter pot, which [Miantonomi] took very thankfully, and stayed all night.”10

From many sources, we know that the Narragansetts had developed a wide-ranging trading network with fur-hunting peoples to the west, including the Nipmucks, the Pocumtucks, and, even farther to the west, the fierce and powerful Mohawks. William Wood tells us that in the early 1630s the Narragansetts regularly brought beaver, otter, and muskrat pelts to Massachusetts Bay, “returning back loaded with English commodities, of which they made a double profit by selling them to more remote Indians who are ignorant at what cheap rates they obtain them.”11

The Massachusetts Bay trader John Oldham had established close trading ties with the Narragansett sachems by early 1634. Oldham was even permitted by the sachems to set up a trading post on Prudence Island in Narragansett Bay. Oldham was killed by Indians two years later, and the island was subsequently purchased jointly by Roger Williams and John Winthrop from the Narragansetts and used for the raising of cattle and swine.

THE PURITANS, GOD-FEARING AND AMBITIOUS

The first Puritans had come to America from England after a long stay in Holland. However, most Pilgrims came to the New World directly from England to escape both religious persecution at the hands of an English king and a church they saw as afflicted with corruption, and the social dislocation caused by that nation’s emerging market economy, with its calamitous price fluctuations and periodic depressions.

The Church of England was run by a hierarchy of bishops and priests more concerned with the worldly trappings of their offices than with what the Puritans understood to be the central business of life: preparation for redemption and salvation through Christ. Worship in the Church of England was decidedly short on good preaching and piety, both of which formed the bedrock of Puritan faith. The