The Mayflower

by Rebecca Fraser

  After the war even Plymouth no longer acceded to what has been called ‘the Indians’ persistent expectations of equality and reciprocity’. Instead the English dictated. Miantonomo would later say, ‘Did friends ever deal so with friends?’

  By the Treaty of Hartford in 1638 most of the Pequot territories went to the Connecticut river towns. Owing to the alliance between Uncas and Mason, the Mohegans received much of the Pequot territory east of the Connecticut River. The Narragansetts got nothing and were forbidden to go anywhere near the old Pequot area. The favourable treatment of the Mohegans was one more insult to Miantonomo. He regarded the Mohegans ‘but as a twig’ in comparison to the Narragansetts: ‘we are as a great tree,’ he said.

  Hartford was isolated and had tremendous anxieties about its security. It remained distrustful of the Narragansetts. The fact that the Narragansetts had been in conference with the Pequots the whole winter of 1636–7 contrasted poorly with Uncas’s protestations of devotion. The famous diagram of the war to accompany John Underhill’s 1638 book Newes from America shows the fort surrounded by two rings of soldiers, the inner ring being English, the outer being the enthustiastic Mohegans. The Narragansetts were thought to have held back.

  Miantonomo was now not permitted to wage war against Uncas without the permission of Massachusetts (which was an attack on the Narragansetts’ cultural traditions and way of life), while his tributary system was already threatened by Plymouth’s protection of the Wampanoags and the loss of the Block Islanders. It enhanced his sense of the shrinking population of the Narragansetts. Uncas, meanwhile, continued to profit from being the official frontier scout against the Narragansetts.

  * * *

  Letters to John Winthrop show that during the war Edward came to feel bound in what had become perceived as a Christian crusade. John Robinson had hoped for a native church. But Edward became increasingly orthodox under John Winthrop’s influence. It seems he began to adopt the learned Boston clergy’s hostile views, to believe that the testing of the ‘Saints for Christ’ in the wilderness was to be by the Indians.

  The Pequots were the ‘accursed seeds of Canaan’, said one of Boston’s most celebrated new ministers, Richard Mather. Edward began to reinterpret relations with the Indians. After a winter of horror he commiserated with Winthrop for Massachusetts’ nightmare. He hoped God would ‘sanctify His hand and fit us for such trials as He hath appointed’. He signed his letter passionately. He was ‘yours till death’.

  In the past Edward had been happy to engage in religious argument with the Indians. He had called their leaders ‘discreet, courteous, and humane in their carriages’, ‘scorning theft, lying and the like base dealings, and stand as much upon their reputation as any man’. He had reported back to England on correspondences between Christian worship and the Indians’ religion, and had been at some pains to describe their moral sense. Now a passion for typology (looking for events in the Old Testament which foretold events in the New, or indeed by extension in the present day), combined with sermons and very real danger, radicalised Edward, whose own certainties altered. There was an impatience which had not been there ten years before.

  Even though Plymouth saw the war as entirely created by Massachusetts, and even though Hobbamock continued to live at Duxbury with Myles Standish, the trust between Plymouth and the Indians began to trickle away. For all their bluff spirit even Plymouth could not dismiss the memory of Indian attacks during the recent war and current prickling anxieties about their survival thousands of miles from England.

  Only Roger Williams resisted. In this context it is mournful to read some of his testimony about Plymouth in the past. According to Williams, Massasoit himself often professed ‘that he was pleased that I should here be his neighbour, and that rather because he and I had been great friends at Plymouth, and also because that his and my friends at Plymouth advised him to be at peace and friendship with me and he hoped that our children after us’.

  The person now more in touch with Indian communities was Jonathan Brewster. But he was under the spell of Uncas, the aggressive new actor upon the stage, whose rise to prominence was regarded at first with amazement then indignation by the rulers of the better-established tribes.

  Perhaps Edward became alarmed by the very customs he had once found enchanting or perhaps the growing hostility on the part of other Indians began to prey on him. Perhaps he regarded his former attitude to the Indians as not zealous enough, indicating sinfulness. His roaming life meant he was uniquely well informed because of his networks amongst Indians and their English scout and trapper friends who lived deep in the woods. He had detected a level of hatred and defiance that could not be denied. Describing Pequot preparations to defend themselves, he wrote to Winthrop on 22 May 1637: ‘They profess there you shall find them, and as they were there born and bred, there their bones shall be buried and rot in despite of the English.’

  Edward was spending an increasing amount of his time in Boston, where the strenuous sense of mission affected him. An autodidact who was thirsty for knowledge, and slightly in awe of the more sophisticated colonists, Edward was increasingly drawn to Winthrop. In the same letter to Winthrop, Edward wrote that the older man’s ‘many and undeserved kindnesses … especially at my being last with you, tie me if possible yet nearer in heart and affection towards you and yours’. Perhaps Winthrop made him think he had had a naïve view of the Indians. Winthrop was quite categorical in his warning to Plymouth: they must look at ‘the Pequots and all other Indians, as a common enemy’ whose intention was ‘the rooting out of the whole nation’.

  Edward was a man of strong and independent views, but he was also easily influenced. He was forever being seized by enthusiasm – first in London, then in Holland, then in Plymouth, and now in Massachusetts.

  Massasoit himself became more subservient to the English in this new atmosphere. He had lost much of his confidence. On 21 April 1638, in an uncharacteristically late winter when snow was still masking the trees, Massasoit made his way from Sowams to Boston on snowshoes. Behind him on a sledge was the tribute of eighteen beaver skins from himself and various sachems under his rule. He had heard that the Bay was angry with him, because he had sold land at Aquidneck, Rhode Island, to what were evidently their enemies – Anne Hutchinson and some of her supporters. He came to make sure Boston realised he wanted peace. He also asked for Winthrop’s help with the Connecticut magistrates. A letter was duly given.

  In 1640 Massasoit repeated the submission to Plymouth he had made so solemnly when they first met in 1621, lest Plymouth should doubt his loyalty. Was it because he was alarmed by a new coldness between himself and Edward that when three Englishmen were arrested and tried for the murder of an Indian boy, Massasoit wanted one of the men to be let off? He ‘must not die for he was Mr Winslow’s man: and also that the man was by birth a Nipmuck man and so not worthy that any other man should die for him’. John Winthrop noted in his diary that Indian witnesses were required, but such was the effect of the war that they were terrified of coming forward ‘for they still feared that the English were conspired to kill all the Indians’. The government of Plymouth insisted justice be done, otherwise it would start another war. William Bradford reported with satisfaction the trial and hanging of English ne’er-do-wells for murdering a tragic Indian boy for his wampum and three coats of cloth. Yet quite a number of the English at Plymouth agreed with Massasoit that it was very severe to hang three men for one Indian.

  * * *

  A careful study by the leading expert on land deeds, Jeremy Bangs, has concluded that ‘the barbarous cruelty of the English retaliation’ was not forgotten. Bangs demonstrates that in the years that followed the war, Indians in Plymouth Colony sold off ‘tract after tract of land, even when there was no apparent immediate pressure to sell, leaving themselves in the end, almost nothing to call their own’. Plymouth’s old scrupulousness about land ebbed away, encouraged by Massasoit himself, who was eager to sell to remain in favour. He
clung on to good relations with Plymouth even though as the years passed the treatment of the Wampanoags by the English became increasingly oppressive. Over the next decade Massasoit and his family and tributary sachems disposed of colossal amounts of their ancestral lands. This was the background against which Massasoit’s sons Wamsutta and Metacom grew up.

  There is something inexorable about the march of English towns across the Indian countryside and the records of what they paid for Indian land. In 1637, moving south and west, William Bradford and partners bought the acreage which became the town of Sandwich for £16 19s in commodities. The next year Yarmouth, formerly the Wampanoag area called Mattacheese, was settled. It was acquired for ‘six coats, six pair of small breeches, ten hoes, ten hatchets, two brass kettles … and one iron kettle’. In 1643 Edward and John Brown bought the westerly part of Rehoboth for ten fathoms of beads. Plymouth’s settlements were creeping perilously close to Mount Hope, Massasoit’s ancient home.

  In his classic account The Pequot War, Alfred A. Cave summed up its effect in one sentence: ‘Although the Pequot War was a small-scale conflict of short duration, it cast a long shadow.’ Many historians concur with his view, that the image of ‘brutal and untrustworthy savages plotting the extermination of those who would do the work of God in the wilderness became a vital part of the mythology of the American frontier’. After the Pequot War the English emerged not only as victors but more powerful than the Indians. As the celebrated historian Alden T. Vaughan has written, ‘The destruction of the Pequots cleared away the only major obstacle to Puritan expansion. And the thoroughness of that destruction made a deep impression on the other tribes.’

  The Narrangansett leadership came to the conclusion that the Pequots had been right when they had told them the English wanted to drive them out of their ancestral homes. Many contemporary descriptions, including Edward’s, make a point of Miantonomo’s ambition. Whereas Canonicus had decided not to engage in any struggle with the English, his nephew was made of different stuff. The English did not like Miantonomo. He was a man ‘who could not be trusted’, according to William Bradford. Edward Johnson called him ‘of great stature, of a cruel nature, causing all his … attendants to tremble at his speech’.

  Edward criticised him for being a ‘great aspiring sachem’ and ‘very proud’. Edward had formed a high opinion of the Indians’ natural nobility and leadership qualities when he arrived in America. When push came to shove, though, in reality he preferred an Indian king like Massasoit who was under his control.

  The aftermath of the Pequot War set off a slow but unstoppable reaction. It would not make itself properly felt for thirty years, but when it emerged it was an uncontainable and furious tsunami, the rebellion of Massasoit’s son Metacom, or ‘Philip’ as he was by then also known. It is no exaggeration to say that in 1675, King Philip’s War was the direct descendant of the Pequot War.

  The only Englishman of influence who represented the Indians’ point of view was Roger Williams. He would continue strenuously to fight their corner.

  CHAPTER XI

  The Pan-Indian Conspiracy

  As the Indian population dwindled, that of the English expanded. Their hogs spoilt the Indian hunting lands and their fences stopped the running of the deer. The country rang with the sound of loud confident English voices as they hammered and chopped and split rails in what had been silent places which knew only Indian hunters. They set to work building more small churches. With some relief their wives and daughters could spread out bedding to air. Around 200 houses went up on the Connecticut’s banks amongst its graceful trees.

  Uncas, meanwhile, constantly suggested to his English neighbours in Connecticut that Miantonomo was really on the Pequots’ side and would one day attack them. He was right.

  On 29 April 1640 Bradford sent a secret message to John Winthrop. He had heard there was to be an uprising by the Narragansetts with help from the Mohawks. No threat could have been more alarming. The Narragansetts had ‘sent a great present, both of white and black beads to the Mohawks to entreat their help against you, and your friends, if they see cause. And the Mohawks have received their present and promised them aid, bidding them begin when they will, and they will be ready for them, and do encourage them, with hope of success.’ Bradford could not reveal his source, or it would cost him his life. He feared that laziness about allowing the Indians guns meant ‘they are too well furnished with pieces by too much remissness’.

  * * *

  The Mohawks or Maquas, reportedly flesh-eaters, lay to the Narragansetts’ west and were the most feared of the Iroquois confederacy, the Five Nation federation of the Indians of western New York which also consisted of the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca peoples. The Mohawks were known as the Keepers of the Eastern Door and historically they were the habitual enemies of the Algonquian Indians, who included the Narragansetts and the Wampanoags. Although they were based in the Hudson Valley to the west of Connecticut, the fearsome Mohawks ranged widely, collecting tribute from as far east as the interior of Maine and what is now New Hampshire and Vermont up to the Great Lakes. One of the reasons the Connecticut River Indians had encouraged Plymouth to have a trading house near them was so that their guns would stave off the Mohawks.

  Now there was a chance the Indian tribes might unite against the settlers. All over the Narragansett country below the circling flights of the great blue heron, Miantonomo’s most trusted officials were speeding up the production of wampum. This honing of the shells generally took place over the long cold winters. Picking it from the black rocks in the sparkling waters of Narragansett Bay was the Narragansetts’ pursuit all the long summer days, as it had been since time immemorial. Now it had to be swifter.

  But despite the whispers there was no proof. In 1640 the Narragansetts did not, in fact, revolt. Yet the rumour mill did not stop, fed ceaselessly by Uncas. Miantonomo was summoned to Boston to answer questions. He vehemently denied he was planning anything. He was not pleased to be told that he could not bring Roger Williams to translate for him because Williams was banned from Boston. The Indian prince never moved without a train of attendants and warriors for security and as a sign of his status. Roger Williams described the great pride and splendour of Miantonomo, who kept his ‘barbarous court’ at his house with fifty warriors in attendance. But when the Indian king was met at Roxbury, Governor Thomas Dudley did not treat him with the courtesy he was expecting. When the English insisted on a Pequot interpreter, who was also a woman, it further infuriated Miantonomo. He thought it an insult to provide a woman and also feared the Pequots would deliberately misinterpret what was said. Dudley thought it a ‘dishonour to us’ to give way so much to them. At this Miantonomo stormed out, ‘departing in a rude manner, without showing any respect or sign of thankfulness to the governor for his entertainment’, as John Winthrop noted in his journal. But the Indian king had not departed before the former articles of peace between the two peoples had been read to him, and once more agreed.

  In 1639 after the Pequot War, Lion Gardiner, along with some of the other Saybrook soldiers, had bought what is still called Gardiner’s Island in East Hampton. He became friendly with the Montauk Indians. The Long Island chieftain Waiandance had long been warning Gardiner that Miantonomo planned to leave the English alone only till they had got rid of Uncas, then they ‘with the Mohawks and Maquas and the Indians beyond the Dutch, and all the Northern and Eastern Indians, would easily destroy us, every man and mother’s son’. Gardiner passed this information on to Boston and the leaders of the river towns. In the spring of 1641 Waiandance told Gardiner there was a specific plan to attack along the Connecticut River. The Montauk sachems had been told to watch for ‘three fires that will be made forty days hence, in a clear night’. The following day with the aid of a party of 300 Narragansetts, the Montauk Indians must fall on ‘men, women, and children’. They were not to touch the cows ‘for they will serve to eat till our deer be increased again’.

  Althou
gh it is plain that many minor sachems such as Waiandance were reporting on Miantonomo in order to further their own interests, it is equally clear that the charismatic Miantonomo was stirring up the Indians to make a last stand, visiting Indian camps and having secret meetings all over southern New England. He warned his Indian allies that if they failed to unite as the English colonies had done ‘we shall all be gone shortly’. The Narragansetts in the past had received presents, in their progresses; now Miantonomo gave the gifts, ‘calling them brethren and friends, for so are we all Indians as the English are, and say brother to one another’.

  In a speech that was a lament for the passing of Indian supremacy, Miantonomo warned that while their fathers had plenty of game to live on, now the English had got their land ‘their cows and horses eat the grass, and their hogs spoil our clam banks, and we shall all be starved; therefore it is best for you to do as we, for we are all the Sachems from east to west, both Moquakues and Mohawks joining with us, and we are all resolved to fall upon them all, at one appointed day’.

  On 22 June 1642 Winthrop reported to his diary with some alarm that there had been an assassination attempt on his new trusty friend. Edward had been attacked at Plymouth’s trading house in Maine. It appeared ‘the Indians at Kennebec, hearing of the general conspiracy against the English, determined to begin there’. One of them, knowing that Edward liked to walk outside the trading house, ‘within the palisades, prepared his piece to shoot him, but as he was about it, Mr Winslow not seeing him, nor suspecting anything, but thinking he had walked enough, went suddenly into the house’. God had preserved him. Edward himself must have relayed this failed attempt with its frightening implications when he returned to Plymouth via Boston, having taken a boat down the coast. Meanwhile, information was coming in thick and fast about a rising from ‘testimonies of the Indians many hundred miles asunder from each other’.