I
No one can say that Roger Williams was not a good Christian, a better one than those who drove him from his home, for he soon risked his own life to save them from danger.
The fierce and warlike Indians of the Pequot tribe had made an attack on the settlers, and were trying to get the large and powerful tribe of the Narragansetts to join them. They wished to kill all the white people of the Plymouth Colony, and drive the pale faces from the country.
The people of Plymouth and of Boston, too, were in a great fright when they heard of this. They knew that Roger Williams was the only white man in that region who had any influence with the Indians, and they sent to him, begging him to go to the Narragansett camp and ask the Narragansetts not to join the Pequots.
Many men would have refused to go into a horde of raging savages, to procure the safety of their enemies. But Roger Williams was too noble to refuse; though he knew that his life would be in the utmost danger, for some of the bloodthirsty Pequots were then with the Narragansetts.
He promptly went to the Indian camp, and spent three days in the wigwams of the Sachems, though he expected every night to have the treacherous Pequots “put their bloody knives to his throat.”
But the Narragansetts were strong friends of the honest pastor. They listened to his counsel. And in the end, they and another tribe, the Mohicans, joined the English against the Pequots.
Thus it was chiefly due to Roger Williams, that the Colonists were saved from the scalping knives of the Indians.