Besides the struggle for a living, there were other matters which gave the founder of Providence great concern. We should like to record that his followers lived in peace and harmony, that there was never any discord, that they showed the Bay Colony they were well-behaved, ideal neighbors. This would not be true history, however. The colonists were only human. Besides, not all were able to understand the real meaning of the advanced principles for which their leader stood. They mistook liberty for license. Quarrels arose from time to time and disturbances were sometimes caused by troublesome persons who would be called “cranks” to-day. Still the colony was bound to outgrow these petty differences. No settlement in the New World had a better right to a successful future, for none was built upon a truer, surer foundation.
CHAPTER VI
THE PEQUOT WAR
Shortly after the founding of Providence, Roger Williams had an opportunity to show the people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony what he thought of them. It was in his power to seriously injure them; to “pay them back,” as it were, for all he had suffered at their hands. Instead, with his usual sweetness of disposition, he returned good for evil, “good measure, pressed down, and running over.” For injustice, he had nothing but forgiveness, for ill-treatment, only love and service. It required true nobility of character to act as he did.
Grave danger threatened all New England at this time—the possibility of a widespread Indian outbreak. In reality, it was more than a possibility—it was almost a certainty. Already there had been several indications that the savages meant to make trouble. Of all the neighboring tribes, the colonists had most to fear from the Pequots. These were a powerful and dreaded people who occupied territory at the west of the Narragansetts in what is now the eastern part of Connecticut. Some time before this, they had been suspected of having a hand in the murder of a number of white traders on the Connecticut River. Now, the same year that Roger Williams’ new settlement was begun, another English trader, John Oldham by name, was killed off Block Island under circumstances similar to those of the first outrage.
At this point Roger Williams comes into the story. He sent news of the tragedy to Governor Vane of Massachusetts Bay and thus hastened the preparations of that colony to protect itself. A force under the command of the doughty John Endicott was sent into the Pequot country to bring the natives to terms. The Massachusetts men inflicted losses by burning wigwams and destroying crops, but failed to punish with any degree of thoroughness. The expedition had but one effect—to madden the Pequots to further activity.
A feeling of alarm and insecurity spread throughout all the settlements. The Indians had signed treaties, it is true, but it was no longer safe to trust their word. There was reason to think that the enmity of the Pequots was only the first step toward a general massacre. To better carry out their purposes, the Indians tried to form an alliance with their near neighbors and former enemies, the Narragansetts.
What could be done? Who had influence enough to break up this proposed league—to turn the friendship of the Narragansetts from their red neighbors to their white neighbors? One man, and one only, possessed that power. He was the “dangerous” founder of Providence, who had been turned out of Massachusetts in disgrace.
In spite of this fact, the magistrates of the Bay Colony lost no time in appealing to Roger Williams to save them. He responded promptly, willingly. The story of his perilous mission among the Narragansetts reads more like a chapter from some exciting book of imaginary adventure than sober history:
“The Lord helped me immediately to put my life into my hand, and, scarce acquainting my wife, to ship myself, all alone in a poor canoe, and to cut through a stormy wind, with great seas, every minute in hazard of life, to the sachem’s house. Three days and nights my business forced me to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequot ambassadors, whose hands and arms, methought, reeked with the blood of my countrymen, murdered and massacred by them on Connecticut River, and from whom I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my own throat also. God wondrously preserved me, and helped me to break to pieces the Pequots’ negotiation and design, and to make, promote and finish, by many travels and charges, the English league with the Narragansetts and Mohegans against the Pequots.”
So successfully indeed did Roger Williams risk his life that in the autumn of that same year a party of Narragansetts, including Miantonomo, journeyed to Boston to form a treaty with the English. Among other things, it provided for a peace between the Narragansetts and the colonists and contained a promise that neither party should make peace with the Pequots without the other’s consent, or that, in case of war, due notice should be given. The old records say that after the treaty was concluded, the visiting Indians were given a dinner, then “conveyed out of town by some musketeers and dismissed with a volley of shot.”