Uncas had the right, according to Indian custom, to put his prisoner to death at once, but he had agreed to consult the English in all important matters, so he carried him to Hartford. This was late in the summer of 1643. In September the commissioners of the United Colonies met in Boston and the case of Miantonomo came before them. The commissioners were afraid to take the responsibility of setting the Narragansett sachem free, because they had promised to protect Uncas and they felt that Uncas would not be safe while Miantonomo lived, yet they had no reason to put him to death. At last, after long deliberation, they decided that he should be given back to Uncas and that Uncas, if he chose, might put him to death; but he must do it in his own land, not in the English settlements, and there must be no torture.
So Uncas came to Hartford “with some considerable number of his best and trustiest men,” and having received his prisoner, he set out with him on the fatal journey. The English sent two of their own men with him to see that the sentence was duly executed. They went through the forests until they had passed the English boundaries and had come upon land that belonged to the Mohegans, and, therein the wilderness, the brother of Uncas, who walked behind Miantonomo, lifted his hatchet and silently drove it through the captive chieftain’s head.
On Sachem’s Plain a great heap of stones soon marked the spot where Miantonomo had been overtaken, for each Mohegan warrior who passed the place cast a stone on the pile with a shout of triumph, and each Narragansett added to it with cries of sorrow and lamentation for the loss of a noble leader. In after years the stones disappeared, and a monument was erected on the spot in 1841, in honor of the Narragansett sachem. It is a large, square block of granite with the name and the date carved upon it, “Miantonomo, 1643.” It can be seen to-day in Greeneville, two miles from Norwich.
Uncas lived on for many years and was a very old man before he died; “old and wicked and wilful,” one account describes him. He quarreled with his neighbors and gave much trouble to his friends, the English. The Narragansetts attacked him after the death of Miantonomo, to avenge the death of their chief, and they drove him into one of his forts on the Pequot River. The colonists had helped him to build this fort on a point of land running out into the water, and it was too strong for the Indians to take it by assault. They took possession of the Mohegan’s canoes, however, and they sat down patiently before the fort, on the land side, to starve out Uncas and his warriors.
But the story says that one night Uncas sent out a swift runner, who got safely past his enemies and carried the news to the English. Thomas Leffingwell, one of the settlers at Saybrook, “an enterprizing, bold man, loaded a canoe with beef, corn, and peas, and under cover of night paddled from Saybrook” around into the mouth of the Thames, or Pequot, River and succeeded in getting the provisions into the fort without the knowledge of the Narragansetts. The next morning there was great rejoicing among the Mohegans and they lifted a large piece of beef on a pole to show the besiegers that they had plenty to eat. The Narragansetts, finding that the English had once more come to the rescue of Uncas, gave up the siege in despair and melted away into the forest.
There is an old legend which says that each night while he was waiting for relief, Uncas himself secretly left the fort and crept along through the shadows on the river-bank until he came to a ledge of rocks from which he could look down the stream; that he sat there stern and motionless until morning watching and hoping for help from the strange, new owners of the lands which had belonged to his fathers. These rocks afterward went by the name of “Uncas’s Chair.”
Uncas was buried in the royal burying-ground of the Mohegans near the falls of the Yantic River. His monument is there now in the heart of the city of Norwich.
References
- DeForest, John W. History of the Indians of Connecticut. J. W. Hammersley. Hartford, 1853.
- Drake, Samuel G. Book of the Indians. Boston, 1845.
- Caulkins, Frances M. History of Norwich. Hartford, 1874.
- Sylvester, Herbert Milton. Indian Wars of New England. W. B. Clarke Co. Boston, 1910.
- Winthrop, John. History of New England. Edited by James Savage. Boston, 1825.