In another century, the colonists themselves rebelled against a government which they did not like.
CHAPTER V
THE SQUAW SACHEM OF POCa.s.sET (1675-1676)]
AND CANONCHET OF THE BIG HEART
When King Philip had planned his war, he well knew that he might depend upon Wetamoo, the squaw sachem of Poca.s.set.
After the death of the luckless Alexander, Wetamoo married a Poca.s.set Indian named Petananuit. He was called by the English "Peter Nunnuit."
This Peter Nunnuit appears to have been a poor sort of a husband, for he early deserted to the enemy, leaving his wife to fight alone.
Wetamoo was not old. She was in the prime of life, and as an Indian was beautiful. Not counting her faithless husband, only one of her Poca.s.sets had abandoned her. He was that same Alderman who betrayed and killed King Philip.
In the beginning Queen Wetamoo had mustered three hundred warriors.
She stuck close to King Philip, and fought in his ranks. She probably was in the fatal Narragansett fort when it was stormed and taken, on December 19, 1675. The English much desired to seize her, for her lands of Poca.s.set "would more than pay all the charge" of the war. She was considered as being "next unto Philip in respect to the mischief that hath been done."
But she was not taken in the fort among the Narragansetts. She fled with King Philip her brother-in-law, and warred that winter and spring, as he did, against the settlements in Ma.s.sachusetts.
Truly a warrior queen she was, and so she remained to the last, ever loyal to the losing cause of her grand sachem, and to the memory of Alexander.
With Philip she was driven southward, back toward her home of Poca.s.set, east of Mount Hope. By the first week in August of 1676, she had only twenty-six men left, out of her three hundred.
Then there came to the colonists at Taunton, which lay up the river Taunton from Poca.s.set, another deserter, with word that he could lead them to the little Wetamoo camp, not far southward.
Twenty armed English descended upon her, August 6, and easily overcame her camp. She alone escaped, in flight. She had no thought of surrendering herself into slavery.
In making her way to Poca.s.set, she "attempted," reads the tale, "to get over a river or arm of the sea near by, upon a raft, or some pieces of broken wood; but whether tired and spent with swimming, or starved with cold and hunger, she was found stark naked in Metapoiset [near present Swansea of southern Ma.s.sachusetts, at the Rhode Island line], not far from the water side, which made some think she was first half drowned; and so ended her wretched life."
No respect was paid to her. Her head was cut off and hoisted upon a pole in the town of Taunton, as revenge for the similar beheading of some English bodies, earlier in the war. When, in Taunton, the Poca.s.set captives saw the head--"They made a most horrid and diabolical lamentation, crying out that it was their queen"s head."
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.
The Narragansetts were a large and warlike people, and hard fighters.
Their country covered nearly all present Rhode Island; the city of Providence was founded in their midst, when the great preacher Roger Williams sought refuge among them. They conquered other tribes to the north and west. When King Philip rose in 1675 they numbered, of themselves, five thousand people, and could put into the field two thousand warriors.
In the beginning, under their n.o.ble sachem Can-on-i-cus, they were friendly to the English colonists. While Roger Williams lived among them they stayed friendly. They agreed to a peace with Sachem Ma.s.sasoit"s Pokanokets, who occupied the rest of Rhode Island, east across Narragansett Bay. They marched with the English and the Mohegans to wipe out the hostile Pequots.
Canonicus died, and Mi-an-to-no-mah, his nephew, who had helped him rule, became chief sachem. Miantonomah was famed in council and in war. The colonies suspected him, as they did Alexander, son of Ma.s.sasoit. They favored the Mohegans of the crafty sachem Uncas. When Miantonomah had been taken prisoner by Uncas, at the battle of Sachem"s Plain in Connecticut, 1643, the United Colonies of Connecticut, Ma.s.sachusetts and Plymouth directed that the Mohegans put him to death, as a treaty breaker.
Accordingly Uncas ordered him killed by the hatchet, and ate a piece of his shoulder.
Possibly Miantonomah deserved to die, but the hearts of the Narragansetts grew very sore.
It is scarcely to be wondered at that they favored the Pokanokets rather than the English, when King Philip, who also had suffered, called upon them to aid in cleaning the land of the white enemy.
"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.
Ca-non-chet, whose name in Indian was Qua-non-chet (p.r.o.nounced the same), and Nan-un-te-noo, was son of the celebrated Miantonomah. 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? He was of proud Narragansett blood, from the veins of a long line of great chiefs, and the English had given his father into the eager hands of the enemy.
Presently, he was asked to sign treaties that would make him false to the memory of Miantonomah and double-hearted toward the hopeful King Philip.
The papers engaged the Narragansetts not to harbor any of King Philip"s people, nor to help them in any way against the English, nor to enter a war without the permission of the English. He was to deliver the Philip and Wetamoo people, when they came to him.
Canonchet was not that kind of a man. He had no idea of betraying people who may have fled to him for shelter from a common enemy. A few of his men feared. It was suggested to him that he yield to the colonies, lest the Narragansetts be swallowed up by the English. He replied like a chief, and the son of Miantonomah.
"Deliver the Indians of Philip? Never! Not a Wampanoag will I ever give up! No! Not the paring of a Wampanoag"s nail!"
The venerable Roger Williams, his friend, the friend of his father and the friend of the long-dead Canonicus, had advised him to stay out of the war.
"Ma.s.sachusetts," said Roger Williams, "can raise thousands of men at this moment; and if you kill them, the king of England will supply their place as fast as they fall."
"It is well," replied Canonchet. "Let them come. We are ready for them. But as for you, Brother Williams, you are a good man; you have been kind to us many years. We shall burn the English in their houses, but not a hair of your head shall be touched."
The colonies did not wait for Canonchet to surrender the King Philip people. The treaty had been signed on October 28, and on November 2 an army from Connecticut, Ma.s.sachusetts and Plymouth was ordered out, to march against the Narragansetts, and seize King Philip and Queen Wetamoo, and punish Canonchet.
It was known that Queen Wetamoo was with Canonchet, but not certainly that King Philip had "kenneled" there. At any rate, down marched the English, their Mohegan and Pequot allies, all piloted by one Peter who might have been the husband of Wetamoo herself, but who probably was a Narragansett traitor.
Canonchet stood firm. To his notion, he was not obliged to surrender anybody, while the English held his brother and three other Narragansetts. Besides--"Deliver the Indians of Philip? No! Not the paring of a Wampanoag"s nail!"
On the afternoon of December 19, this year 1675, the bold English and their allies struck the great fortified village at Sunke-Squaw. Out from the heat and smudge of the blazing wigwams fled Philip and Wetamoo and Canonchet, with their shrieking people, into the wintry swamp where the snowy branches of the cedars and hemlocks were their only refuge.
Canonchet had lost a third of his nation; large numbers surrendered to the English; but, like his friend Philip, with his warriors who remained true he carried the war to the English themselves. And a terrible war it was.
In March Captain William Peirse was sent out with seventy stout men to march from Plymouth and head off the raging Narragansetts. Plymouth had heard that the haughty young sachem Canonchet was on his way to Plymouth, at the van of three hundred warriors.
Captain Peirse made his will and marched southward, to the Pawtucket River not far above Providence. Canonchet"s spies had marked him, and Canonchet was ready.
On March 26, which was a Sunday, Captain Peirse saw upon the other side of the river a party of Indians limping as if worn out and trying to get away. Therefore he crossed, near the Pawtucket Falls, in glad pursuit--and "no sooner was he upon the western side, than the warriors of Nanuntenoo, like an avalanche from a mountain, rushed down upon him; nor striving for coverts from which to fight, more than their foes, fought them face to face with the most determined bravery!"
There were Narragansetts still upon the east side of the river, also, to cut off retreat. The captain, fighting desperately, with his men ranged in two ranks back to back, sent a runner to Providence, only six or eight miles, for a.s.sistance; but so quickly was the work done, by Canonchet, that of all the English force, only one Englishman escaped, and not above a dozen of the scouts.
"Captain Peirse was slain, and forty and nine English with him, and eight (or more) Indians who did a.s.sist the English."
Canonchet lost one hundred and forty, but it was a great victory, well planned and well executed. Captain Peirse had been a leader in the storming of the Narragansett fort at Sunke-Squaw, the last winter; that is one reason why the Canonchet warriors fought so ravenously, to take revenge.
On the day after the dreadful battle, from Connecticut, southwest, there marched a larger force of English and friendly Indians, to close the red trail of the Sachem Canonchet. He was feared as much as King Philip was feared.
Canonchet did not proceed against Plymouth. With thirty volunteers he had set out south for the Mount Hope region itself, in order to gather seed corn. The abandoned fields of the English along the Connecticut River waited. They ought to be planted to Indian corn.
On his way back to the Connecticut River with his seed corn, near the close of the first week in April he made camp almost upon the very battle ground above Providence, where yet the soil was stained by the blood of March 26.
He did not know that now the enemy were upon his trail indeed; but at the moment a company of fifty English under Captain George Denison of Southerton, Connecticut, and eighty Indians--the Mohegans led by Chief Oneka, son of Uncas, the Pequots by Cas-sa-sin-na-mon, the Niantics (formerly allies of the Narragansetts) by Cat-a-pa-zet--were drawing near.
Three other companies were in the neighborhood.