“5. I desire, if it please God to be with me, to go through such a charge and trouble as will be to bring this to a settled way, and then suddenly to take me from hence, I desire that before another, my wife and children, if they desire it, may engage in my stead to these conditions.
“6. If the town please to consent, I desire that one of yourselves be nominated, to join with the clerk to draw up the writing.
R. W.”
It does not appear, whether the bridge was built, at this time, or not. In February, 1711–12, Mr. Daniel Abbot was sent as an agent to Massachusetts and Connecticut, to solicit aid in building “three great bridges, upon the road leading from Connecticut toward Boston, viz. one at Pawtuxet Falls, one at Weybosset in Providence,[[340]] and the other over Pawtucket river.”
Mr. Williams omitted no opportunity of serving the Indians. The following letter was written apparently, to the government of Massachusetts:
“Providence, 7th of May, 1668, (so called.)
“I humbly offer to consideration my long and constant experience, since it pleased God to bring me unto these parts, as to the Narraganset and Nipmuck people.
“First, that all the Nipmucks were, unquestionably, subject to the Narraganset sachems, and, in a special manner to Mexham, the son of Canonicus, and late husband to this old squaw sachem, now only surviving. I have abundant and daily proof of it, as plain and clear as that the inhabitants of Newbury or Ipswich, &c. are subject to the government of the Massachusetts colony.
“2. I was called by his Majesty’s Commissioners to testify in a like case between Philip and the Plymouth Indians, on the one party, and the Narragansets on the other, and it pleased the committee to declare, that the King had not given them any commission to alter the Indians’ laws and customs, which they observed amongst themselves: most of which, although they are, like themselves, barbarous, yet in the case of their mournings, they are more, humane, and it seems to be more inhumane in those that professed subjection to this the very last year, under some kind of feigned protection of the English, to be singing and dancing, drinking, &c. while the rest were lamenting their sachems’ deaths.
“I abhor most of their customs; I know they are barbarous. I respect not one party more than the other, but I desire to witness truth; and as I desire to witness against oppression, so, also, against the slighting of civil, yea, of barbarous order and government, as respecting every shadow of God’s gracious appointments.