From Pokanoket, Massasoit’s reign—
Under the general name of Narraganset, was included Narraganset proper and Coweset. Narraganset proper extended south from what is now Warwick to the ocean; Coweset, from Narraganset northerly to the Nipmuck country, which now forms Oxford, Mass., and some other adjoining towns. The western boundaries of Narraganset and Coweset cannot be definitely ascertained. Gookins says, the Narraganset jurisdiction extended thirty or forty miles from Seekonk river and Narraganset bay, including the islands, southwesterly to a place called Wekapage, four or five miles to the eastward of Pawcatuck river—that it included part of Long Island, Block Island, Coweset and Niantick, and received tribute from some of the Nipmucks. After some research, I am induced to believe that the Nianticks occupied the territory now called Westerly; if so, then the jurisdiction of the Narragansets extended to the Pawcatuck, and perhaps beyond it. The tribe next westward was that which dwelt “in the twist of Pequot river,” now called the Thames; and was under the control of the fierce and warlike Uncas, a chief who had rebelled against Sassacus, the Pequot sachem, and detached from its allegiance a considerable portion of his nation, of which he had formed a distinct tribe.
Awanux gave him strength, and, with strange fear,
Did M’antonomi at the big guns start.
“We cannot conceive,” says Mourt in his journal, “but that he [Massasoit] is willing to have peace with us: for they have seen our people sometimes alone, two or three in the woods at work and fowling, whereas they offered them no harm: and especially, because he hath a potent adversary, the Narrohigansets, that are at war with him, against whom he thinks we may be of some strength to him; for our pieces are terrible unto them.”
At length his vision opened on a space,
Level and broad, and stretching without bound
Southward afar—nor rose, o’er all its face,