As a result of this, the tribe of Pequots was obliterated completely and a danger hanging over all the colonies was removed.
The Indian villages of southern New England were composed at times of as many as fifty houses or wigwams. Most of these wigwams were shaped like the half of an orange, with the flat or cut surface down. They were ten to twelve feet in diameter and could accommodate two families. Other houses were like the half of a stovepipe cut lengthwise, twenty to thirty feet long, and accommodated from two families in the summertime to fifty in the winter, when the people crowded together for the sake of warmth. The council-chamber was often as long as one hundred feet with a width of thirty feet. It was used only for councils. A fortified stockade in the center of the village was made of logs set into the ground. Such was the shelter afforded Williams when he fled from Salem, and such was the place when he met the Indian sachems in council seeking to avert the massacre of the whites. In these villages he preached the everlasting gospel of the Son of God. He had the constant confidence of Indian sachems because he applied to them the principle of soul-liberty which he sought to practise among the whites.
In the autumn of 1638, Roger Williams’ third child and first son was born and named “Providence.” He was the first white male child born in this colony. In the year 1639-1640 the town grew and felt the need of a system of town government. On July 23, 1640, an organization was decided upon in which they vested the care of the general interests of the town in five “disposers” or arbitrators. The people retained the right to appeal from the “disposers” to the general town meeting. They were careful to provide that as “formerly hath been the liberties of the town, so still to hold for the liberty of conscience.”
In 1638 a settlement had been made at Portsmouth on Rhode Island. John Clarke and Mrs. Ann Hutchinson were the leaders of this new band who were looking for a place where they might have religious freedom, which was denied them at Boston. They went first to New Hampshire, but, finding it too cold there, turned to the south. By the friendly assistance of Mr. Williams, they secured from Canonicus and Miantonomo, for a consideration of forty fathoms of white beads, Aquidneck and other islands in Narragansett Bay. The natives residing on the island itself were induced to remove for a consideration of ten coats and twenty hoes. The new settlers chose Mr. Coddington to be their judge and united in a covenant with each other and with their God. They made Mr. Coddington their governor in 1640.
Plan Showing
THE FIRST DIVISION OF
HOME LOTS
IN
Providence, R.I.
About this same time a number of Providence people settled in Pawtuxet, four miles south of Providence in territory ceded to Williams. Warwick and Shawomet were settled by Samuel Gorton and his friends. Gorton was a strange character who did not find things congenial for him at Boston, Plymouth, and Newport in turn. Roger Williams, however, gave him shelter in Providence. Finally he went to Pawtuxet and later to Shawomet, for which he paid four fathoms of wampum to the Indians. At once Boston Colony claimed that Shawomet was under their jurisdiction. Gorton and his associates refused to come to Boston at the bidding of the authorities. Forty soldiers came to Shawomet and seized Gorton and ten of his friends and imprisoned them in Boston. They were tried for their lives, escaping only by two votes. They were then imprisoned in the various towns. Each one was compelled to wear a chain fast bolted around his legs. If they spoke to any person, other than an officer of the Church or of the State, they were to be put to death. They were kept at labor that winter and then banished in the spring. Gorton escaped to England and secured an order from the Earl of Warwick and the Commissioners of the Colonies requiring Massachusetts not to molest the settlers at Shawomet. Thereafter Gorton and his friends occupied their lands in peace.
Gorton wrote his side of the question in “Simplicities Defence,” in which he referred to his persecutors as “That Servant so Imperious in his Master’s Absence Revived.” This is another indictment against the persecuting Puritans by one who found shelter in the Baptist colony of Rhode Island.
SIMPLICITIES DEFENCE
against
SEVEN-HEADED POLICY.
OR
Innocency Vindicated, being unjustly Accused,
and sorely Censured, by that
Seven-headed Church-Government
United in
NEW-ENGLAND:
OR
That Servant so Imperious in his Masters Absence
Revived, and now thus re-acting in New-England.
OR
The combate of the United Colonies, not onely against
some of the Natives and Subjects, but against the Authority also
of the Kingdme of England, with their execution of Laws, in the name and
Authority of the servant, (or of themselves) and not in the Name and
Authority of the Lord, or fountain of the Government.
Wherein is declared an Act of a great people and Country
of the Indians in those parts, both Princes and People (unanimously)
in their voluntary Submission and Subjection unto the Protection
and Government of Old England (from the Fame they hear thereof) together
with the true manner and forme of it, as it appears under their own
hands and seals, being stirred up, and provoked thereto, by
the Combate and courses above-said.
Throughout which Treatise is secretly intermingled, that
great Opposition, which is in the goings forth of those two grand
Spirits, that are and ever have been, extant in the World
(through the sons of men) from the beginning and
foundation thereof.
Imprimatur, Aug. 3ᵈ. 1646. Diligently perused, approved, and
Licensed to the Presse, according to Order by publike Authority.
LONDON,
Printed by John Macock, and are to be sold by Luke Favvne,
at his shop in Pauls Church-yard, at the sign of the Parrot. 1646.