While these events were passing an important change took place in the commercial medium of the country. When the colonists first began to trade with the natives, they found them already advanced in their buyings and sellings from the primitive barter of product for product to the use of a fixed medium of exchange. This medium, indeed, was of a purely conventional character. There were neither mines of gold, nor mines of silver, nor mines of copper to perform the office of money. But the waters of their rivers and bays yielded an abundant supply of shells, and these they wrought with much ingenuity into beads; the periwinkle furnishing the material for the lower values, six of its white shells being held at an English penny, while the dark eye of the quahog or round clam, smoothed by grinding, and polished and drilled, was rated at twice the value of the white shell. Both were known as wampum or peage. As money belts of wampum were counted by the fathom, three hundred and sixty of the white passing for five shillings sterling, and a fathom of the black being worth twice as much as a fathom of the white. Like the metallic medium of other countries they served also for personal decoration, supplying the Indian belles and beaux with their necklaces and bracelets, and princes with the most valued ornaments of their regalia. When used for this purpose they were wrought into girdles, or worn as a scarf about the shoulders, great pains being taken and not a little skill displayed in arranging the colors in various figures. The mints in which this primitive money was coined were on the sea-shore, where shells were found in great abundance, and so well was this simple article adapted to the wants and the tastes of the aborigines that it passed current six hundred miles from the coast, and was used by the colonists in all their bargains with the natives. But shells like metals and paper are subject to the same inexorable laws of trade. When beaver skins became plenty in the colonial market and wampum was made in larger quantities, it fell from ten shillings a fathom to five, and the Indian hunter thought it hard that an equal number of furs should bring him but half as much wampum as before. Like all money, also, wampum was liable to be counterfeited, and even in that rude commerce there were men who preferred the ill-gotten gain of the counterfeiter to the fruit of honest industry. Fortunately for the native he was quick in detecting the fraud, and never failed to exact full compensation. But wampum, like the race for whom it was made, was unable to hold its ground against the advancing civilization. We have seen it reduced to half its original value by overissues and the increasing supply of furs in the colonial market. Gradually it began to disappear. Rhode Island continued to use it long after it had ceased to be current in colonies where the intercourse with Europe was more direct. Massachusetts had begun to coin silver in 1652, but Rhode Island continued to accept wampum as a legal tender for ten years longer, when it reached its lowest point, and, like the Continental money of a century later, was abolished by statute. Thenceforth all taxes and costs of court were exacted in “current pay” in sterling that is, or in New England coin of thirty shillings New England to twenty-two shillings sixpence sterling.
Nothing has been said thus far of the measures taken by the young Colony for the establishment of schools. Newport, though only in the second year of her settlement, took the lead in 1640, by “calling Mr. Robert Lenthall to keep a school for the learning of youth, and for his encouragement there was granted to him and his heirs one hundred acres of land, and four more for a house lot.” In the same meeting it was voted: “That one hundred acres should be laid forth and appropriated for a school, for the encouragement of the poorer sort, to train up their youth in learning, and Mr. Robert Lenthall, while he continues to keep school, is to have the benefit thereof.” The wise example was followed by Providence in 1663, and at May town meeting a hundred acres of upland and six acres of meadow were reserved for the support of a school.
But in nothing perhaps does the character of the Colony appear to more advantage than in the law of oaths. “Forasmuch,” reads the statute, “as the consciences of sundry men, truly conscionable, may scruple the giving or the taking of an oath, and it would be no wise suitable to the nature and constitution of our place, who profess ourselves to be men of different consciences, and not one willing to force another, to debar such as cannot do so, either from bearing office among us, or from giving in testimony in a case depending; be it enacted by the authority of this present Assembly, that a solemn profession or testimony in a court of record, or before a judge of record, shall be accounted throughout the whole colony, of as full force as an oath.” So strong was the hold which the principle of soul liberty had taken of the public mind.
CHAPTER IX.
TERRITORY OF RHODE ISLAND IS INCREASED BY THE ADDITION OF BLOCK ISLAND.—DISPUTES BETWEEN BLOCK ISLAND AND THE OTHER COLONIES SETTLED BY ROYAL COMMAND.—STATE OF AFFAIRS IN THE COLONY IN 1667.
The charter came at a fortunate moment, for petition and remonstrance had reached their utmost, and it is difficult to see how the little Colony could have preserved the integrity of its territory much longer against two such powerful neighbors but for the intervention of an authority that was recognized by all. The services of John Clarke must be estimated by the imminence of the danger, and his skill by the difficulty of the negotiation. Meanwhile the territories of Rhode Island were enlarged in another direction.
Block Island has already been mentioned in connection with the Pequot war. In 1658 it was granted by Massachusetts, in whose hands the war had left it, to Governor John Endicott and three others, as a reward for their public services. Endicott and his associates sold it to Simon Ray and eight associates, who, in 1661, entered upon their work of colonization by liquidating the Indian title with a reservation in favor of the natives, and setting apart one-sixteenth of the lands for the support of a minister forever. The new settlement had not yet reached its third year when it passed under the jurisdiction of Rhode Island, and, in the May session of the General Assembly for 1663, was summoned to appear at the bar of the house and be regularly received into the Colony. At the appointed time three messengers presented themselves, bringing the submission of the inhabitants to “his Majesty’s will,” and a petition of householders for the freedom of the island. Three select men were chosen to govern it with power to “call town meetings,” hear causes under forty shillings, and where a greater amount was involved, grant appeals to the General Court of Trials, and “issue warrants in criminal cases.” Their representation in the Assembly was fixed at two, and their attention was called to the clause in the charter declaring freedom of conscience. The question of a harbor for the encouragement of the fisheries soon attracted the attention of the Assembly, and, as early as 1665, we find John Clarke with the Governor and Deputy-Governor examining this important subject on the spot. But it was no work for a feeble Colony, and it was not till two hundred years later and under a rich and powerful national government that it was begun. Meanwhile the population grew and throve under colonial protection. Nine years after its first civil organization Block Island was incorporated under the name of New Shoreham, “as sign,” say the petitioners, “of our unity and likeness to many parts of our native country.”
The conflict of patents did not end with the promulgation of the second charter. Massachusetts and Connecticut still persisted in their claims, and Rhode Island in her resistance. Fortunately for her the final decision lay with the Crown, and, although both of the intruding colonies made repeated attempts to set up governments of their own within the limits of the disputed territory, they were restrained from persistent violence by the knowledge that Rhode Island claimed and was prepared to exercise the right of appeal. An opportunity soon offered of making an important step towards decision. Four Commissioners—Colonel Richard Nichols, Sir Robert Carr, George Cartwright and Samuel Maverick—were ordered to proceed to America, reduce the Dutch provinces, and decide all questions of appeal, jurisdiction and boundary between the colonies. On their arrival in New York harbor, where they made the British fleet their headquarters, Rhode Island sent a deputation of three, with John Clarke at their head, to welcome the Royal Commissioners in the name of the Colony.