by Sarah Vowell
One of the main points of Calvinism is to be absolutely uncomfortable and itchy and sickened in one’s skin. Williams might be a little jealous when he marvels that “Adam’s sons and daughters” in America “should neither have nor desire clothing for their naked souls or bodies.”
The Indians’ clothing-optional lifestyle affords Williams the opportunity to get in one of his jabs at European hypocrisy:
The best clad Englishman,
Not clothed in Christ, more naked is:
Than naked Indian.
Williams makes his living in Providence and its environs as he did, off and on, in Plymouth and Salem, by operating a trading post. Lucky for him, the Europeans are gaga for American fur. In the chapter called “Of Their Trading,” he teaches the Algonquian word for “beaver,” calling it a “beast of wonder.” This part of A Key was surely invaluable to his readers engaged in the ever more lucrative fur trade. The reader learns how to ask, “What price?” It must have been so handy for a seventeenth-century English trapper out on the frontier of Connecticut to reach into his knapsack, pull out A Key, and confidently inform the Mohegan he’s talking to, “I will give you an otter.”
Williams seems especially amused by the fad among the European smart set for gloves and hats fashioned out of American animal pelts handled by “foul hands in smoky houses . . . which are after worn upon the hands of queens and the heads of princes.”
In fact, the fur of semiaquatic North American rodents is so desirable it’s literally to die for. Power struggles among the English, the Dutch, the Pequot, the Mohegan, and the Narragansett over access to and control of trade in Connecticut provokes a war.
Of all the phrases Williams translates in A Key, the one with the most troubling, loaded back story is this one: “The Pequots are slain.”
The Pequot War is a pure war. And by pure I don’t mean good. I mean it is war straight up, a war set off by murder and vengeance and fueled by misunderstanding, jealousy, hatred, stupidity, racism, lust for power, lust for land, and, most of all, greed, all of it headed toward a climax of slaughter. The English are diabolical. The Narragansett and the Mohegan are willing accomplices. The Pequot commit distasteful acts of violence and are clueless as to just how vindictive the English can be when provoked. Which is to say that there’s no one to root for. Well, one could root for Pequot babies not to be burned alive, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
As for geography, circa 1630, the Narragansett live in what would become the state of Rhode Island, hence their association with Roger Williams. The Narragansett are ruled by Canonicus and his nephew, Miantonomi. Untangling the Pequot and Mohegan is trickier as the two tribes are blood relatives with a long history of intermarriage and infighting. They control lands in Connecticut—the Mohegan on the Pequot River (now called the Thames), and the Pequot on the Connecticut River, the largest river in New England. The Mohegan have long paid tribute to the more powerful Pequot. The Mohegan sachem, Uncas, is married to the daughter of the assassinated Pequot principal sachem, Tatobem. In fact, after Tatobem’s death, Uncas had thrown his hat in the ring to become Tatobem’s successor but lost to Sassacus, his brother-in-law. This accounts for Uncas’s animosity toward his kin the Pequot—animosity being a polite way of saying Uncas hates the Pequot’s guts. Not that he has much affection for the Narragansett, either. In fact, Uncas will eventually order his brother to assassinate Miantonomi. But for now, the Mohegan and the Narragansett are allies of the English.
Why would the Mohegan and Narragansett gang up on their fellow natives the Pequot? Well, why would France, a monarchy, aid the upstart antimonarchical American colonists against its fellow monarchy England in the Revolutionary War? Simple answer: France hates England. The Pequot, the Narragansett, and the Mohegan are sovereign nations with a long history of resentment that predates European contact. And so the Mohegan and the Narragansett temporarily united in a traditional enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend scenario.
After European contact, each New England tribe’s power partially derives from trading with the Dutch in New Netherland and the English of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. Uncas, a brilliant, forward-thinking opportunist, gambles his small, relatively powerless tribe’s fortunes and throws in with the English. Boy does this pay off. For this reason, Uncas is probably the most controversial historical figure in seventeenth-century New England. His brutality toward his brother Pequot comes off as morally sickening. And yet his tiny, dwindling tribe, under the Pequot thumb and decimated by the smallpox epidemic of 1633, is on the verge of extinction. As sachem, his responsibility is to save his people any way he knows how, and becoming an English ally is the most logical course of action. If the sachem’s name is ringing a bell, that’s because James Fenimore Cooper snagged it as the name of a character in The Last of the Mohi cans, his novel romanticizing the natives’ disappearing way of life. Real-life Uncas is taking drastic steps to stave off such oblivion, and he more or less succeeds.
By the time the Winthrop fleet arrived in Massachusetts in 1630, the Dutch of New Netherland had already ushered in what Neal Salisbury, author of Manitou and Providence, calls “the wampum revolution.” Wampum, strings of white and purple beads made out of clam and conch shells found primarily on Long Island but also in Narragansett Bay, was a form of Indian currency that had originally been more of a sacred object than mere money.
Salisbury writes that “the critical point in the rise of the Narragansett and the Pequot” came about in 1622, when a Dutch trader kidnapped a Pequot sachem “and threatened to behead him if he did not receive ‘a heavy ransom.’ ” The Dutchman received 140 strings of wampum right away and, “as a result . . . the Dutch West India Company discovered both the value to the Indians of wampum and the power and prestige of the Pequot.” Furthermore, Salisbury says, the resulting wampum craze “reinforced the dominant position of the Narragansett and particularly the Pequot, both of whom already had access to the prized shells.” (The two tribes’ power is also a testament to strength in numbers, both groups lucking out and being spared by the smallpox epidemic of 1619 that exterminated so many Indians in Massachusetts, though the epidemic of 1633 would affect them severely.)
The coastal Indians’ wampum could be traded for animal pelts trapped by Indians living in the continent’s interior, which would in turn be exported to Europe. The perfect symbol of this exchange is depicted in the official seal of New Netherland, which depicts a beaver surrounded by a string of wampum.
Put the rather frank Dutch seal next to Massachusetts Bay’s overly optimistic seal with that Indian pleading, “Come Over and Help Us”—and it’s easy to figure out the main concerns of white settlers in the Northeast: trade, God, and “fixing” the Indians.
On October 2, 1633, Winthrop writes in his journal about the return of his personal trading boat, The Blessing of the Bay, which he had sent south to Long Island and New Amsterdam. In the latter city, the Massachusetts men presented the Dutch governor with a letter explaining that Connecticut belonged to the king of England. They returned home with a “very courteous and respectful” letter for Winthrop in which the Dutchman countered that he believed Connecticut belonged to the Dutch West India Company but perhaps the company and the king should work it out themselves back in Europe.
That’s a reminder just how new European settlement in the New World still is. In 1633, Connecticut is the frontier.
In the same entry, Winthrop reports that even though the Dutch had already erected a trading post on the Connecticut River—on the site of present-day Hartford—Plymouth built its own spiteful post a mile upriver of the Dutch, thus cutting off much of the Dutch supply of furs. Such territorial spats did not sour Winthrop on Connecticut, though. He reports, erroneously, that the river runs so far north it “comes within a day’s journey of . . . the ‘Great Lake,’ ” presumably Lake Champlain. His lust for it is palpable when he writes, “From this lake, and the hideous swamps about it, come most of the beaver which is traded between Virginia and Can
ada.” Needless to say, that’s a lot of beaver.
The Dutch in Connecticut, meanwhile, have been trading with the Pequot, but with other Indians, too. How do the Pequot feel about this? They murder a handful of Indians, probably Narragansett, on their way home from trading with the Dutch.
To show the Pequot who’s boss, the Dutch kidnap Tatobem, the principal sachem of the Pequot, and demand a ransom of wampum for his return. After receiving the wampum, the Dutch do send Tatobem back to the Pequot—his dead body.
Start keeping score.
Surprise, surprise, the Pequot retaliate. Which makes a certain amount of eye-for-an-eye sense. Except that in the dumbest of all possible moves, the Pequot take revenge on the Dutch by killing a white boat captain on the Connecticut River who turns out to be an Englishman. They all look alike, right?
On the bright side, the Pequot have murdered Captain John Stone, a pirate of such loose morals he has been banished from Massachusetts Bay. And not for high-minded, theological differences of opinion, either. According to Winthrop’s journal, Stone got the boot in 1633 because he was found “in the drink” and in bed “with one Bancroft’s wife.” Stone was tried before the court and fined one hundred pounds—quite a sum in seventeenth-century Boston—and “ordered upon pain of death to come here no more.”
If a Pequot were going to murder a colonist from Massachusetts, picking one who faced the death sentence if he ever set foot in Massachusetts again would be a lucky one to kill. And at first, that’s true. When he hears about Stone’s death, Winthrop says in his journal that he plans to write the governor of Virginia about a reprisal since “Stone was of that colony.” Stone was no longer “of” Massachusetts, so he’s someone else’s problem. That’s in January of 1634. By November, however, the English demand that the Pequot turn over Stone’s murderers. Winthrop doesn’t explain the gradual change of heart but my guess is that a turf war over Connecticut becomes increasingly inevitable and the English are ready to pick a fight.
The buildup to the Pequot War reminds me of what skateboarders call the frustration that makes them occasionally break their own skateboards in half—“focusing your board.” The Pequot War is just that—a destructive tantrum brought on by an accumulation of aggravation.
In September 1634, the esteemed minister of the church at New Town, Thomas Hooker (the Puritan dissident who sailed on the same boat as John Cotton), petitions the General Court on behalf of his congregation. Hooker informs the court that they want to leave the Boston area and settle in Connecticut. One of their reasons for going, according to Winthrop’s journal, is “the fruitfulness and commodious-ness of Connecticut, and the danger of having it possessed by others, Dutch or English.” (And by English they mean the Plymouth folk.) Of course, Winthrop, who really does believe the things he said in “Christian Charity” about how the colonists should be knit together as members of the same body, is loathe to lose any of the godly. He is especially despondent about Hooker’s possible defection, writing that the minister’s exit would be a great loss as “the removing of a candlestick is a great judgment, which is to be avoided.” The candlestick, in Puritan lingo, is one of Christ’s lights, an important, beloved object of admiration that draws in other worshippers as moths to flame. Winthrop fails to notice that Hooker is in the same position Winthrop himself was in leaving England—being accused of abandoning his countrymen in their time of need. Remember, Winthrop had helped write that pro-emigration tract back in England that claimed “The departing of good people from a country does not cause a judgment, but warns of it.”
The murder of Stone in Connecticut and the threat of losing Hooker’s congregation to Connecticut is happening right around the time that Salem cuts the king’s cross out of the flag, Roger Williams is still in his prebanishment, mouthing-off period, and Bishop Laud demands the Charter be sent back to England. Winthrop is hardly paranoid to worry that the colony is on the verge of falling apart.
The magistrates temporarily talk Hooker and his flock into tabling their move, especially since it “would expose them to evident peril, both from the Dutch . . . and from the Indians.” But within two years, Hooker would lead his people to Connecticut to found Hartford, just in time for the full-blown Pequot War.
In November 1634, the Pequot send two ambassadors to Boston to meet with Winthrop and the other assistants, who tell the pair that Boston’s friendship is conditional upon the Pequot turning over the murderers of Captain Stone. They reply that all but two of the perpetrators have since died of smallpox. (A devastating epidemic has recently wreaked havoc amongst the Pequot, Mohegan, and Narragansett.) Winthrop notes of the Pequot testimony, “This was related with such confidence and gravity, as, having no means to contradict it, we inclined to believe it.”
So far so good. Winthrop also notes that the Pequot were desperate for allies: “ The reason why they desired so much our friendship was because they were now in war with the Narragansett.” As a result, “they could not trade safely anywhere.”
The Pequot representatives agree to a treaty. Per Winthrop, they are to “deliver us the two men who were guilty of Capt. Stone’s death,” as well as “give us four hundred fathom of wampum, and forty beaver, and thirty otter skins.” Oh, and also: “to yield up Connecticut.” If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is. But Winthrop says the Pequot request that the English “settle a plantation there.” They want the English there to trade with them, and for protection.
The next morning, Winthrop says, some Narragansett are rumored to be lurking nearby in order to ambush the Pequot ambassadors. The English talk the Narragansett into leaving, promising them that if they make peace with the Pequot, the English will give them a portion of the tribute wampum.
The following year, that being 1635, Winthrop reports that on the same ship Henry Vane sailed in on, his son, John Winthrop, Jr., returns from a trip abroad with a commission in hand from a group of English nobles to “begin a plantation at Connecticut and be governor there.” The settlement and its strategically important fort, where the Connecticut River meets Long Island Sound, will be named Saybrook, in honor of two of the nobles: Viscount Say and Sele, and Lord Brook.
Then, in May of 1636, Winthrop writes that the twenty-four-year-old Henry Vane is elected to be governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and “Mr. Hooker . . . and most of his congregation went to Connecticut.” Though his journal is of course mum, Winthrop must be worried about the state of things—a youngster is running the colony, there’s this Connecticut brain drain to worry about, and he’s still reeling from Roger Williams’s banishment in January.
But it turns out that banishing Roger Williams was the smartest thing the Massachusetts Bay Colony ever did, in terms of cinching its status as the New England superpower. And not just because his rebellious opinions were undermining the Bay’s monolithic conformity. As Williams would so bluntly describe his own history with New England Indians, “God was pleased to give me a painful, patient spirit to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes (even while I lived at Plymouth and Salem) to gain their tongue.” So he was already proficient in the Algonquian language and well known as a friend to natives by the time the Narragansett took him in. Within a year of Massachusetts kicking him out, Massachusetts was using Williams as its Indian ambassador, negotiator, and spy.
Oddly enough, he was happy to help. “I am not yet turned Indian,” Williams writes Winthrop. But he had turned Indian enough to meddle on Boston’s behalf.
In a letter Williams wrote later (1670), he recalled, “When the next year after my banishment, the Lord drew the bow of the Pequot War against the [English] . . . I had my share of service to the whole land in that Pequot business, inferior to very few that acted.”
Williams goes on to say that after receiving letters from the Boston government requesting that he “use my utmost and speediest endeavors to break and hinder the league labored for by the Pequots against . . . the English,” he set off toward Pequot headquarters in his canoe i
n a storm. Once he got there, he for several days was forced “to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequot ambassadors, whose hands and arms (me thought) wreaked with the blood of my countrymen murdered and massacred by them on the Connecticut River.” He was so scared of them, “I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my own throat also.”
Williams’s geographical location in Providence situated him much closer to the Connecticut River Valley than faraway Boston. That, coupled with his language skills and Indian alliances, made him a crucial participant. In that same 1670 letter, he claims he was so helpful that John Winthrop lobbied to have his banishment rescinded. Williams writes that Winthrop “and some of other council motioned, and it was debated, whether or no I had merited not only to be recalled from banishment, but also to be honored with some remark of favor.” Of course the banishment remained in place. Williams writes cryptically that he was thwarted by one “who never favored the liberty of other men’s consciences.” In other words, he blames John Cotton.
Winthrop’s journal entry for July 20, 1636, remarks that a trader named John Gallop who was on his way to Long Island was forced by a windstorm to put in at Block Island (currently part of the state of Rhode Island). Gallop spotted a boat he recognized as belonging to his fellow Bay Colony resident John Oldham, “a member of the Watertown congregation.” Gallop shouted hello to Oldham “but had no answer.” Plus, the deck of Oldham’s boat was “full of Indians (fourteen in all).” Gallop suspected foul play, as the Indians were “armed with guns, pikes, and swords.” Gallop steered his boat to bash into Oldham’s and scared the Indians. Ten of them jumped into the water and drowned. Gallop and the two boys who were with him came aboard Oldham’s boat, tied up two Indians on deck, but, “being well acquainted with their skill to untie themselves . . . he threw them bound into the sea.”
