We have now our third hero to speak of, Roger Williams. He was not a captain like the others, but a preacher; but he was a brave man, and showed in his way as much courage as either of the captains.
The Pilgrims were quickly followed by other people, who settled at Boston and other places around Massachusetts Bay until there were a great many of them. These were called Puritans. They came across the seas for the same reason as the Pilgrims, to worship God in their own way.
But they were as hard to live with as the people at home, for they wanted to force everybody else into their way. Some Quakers who came to Boston were treated very badly because they had different ways from the Puritans. And one young minister named Roger Williams, who thought every man should have the right to worship as he pleased, and said that the Indians had not been treated justly, had to flee into the woods for safety.
It was winter time. The trees were bare of leaves and the ground was white with snow. Poor Roger had to wander through the cold woods, making a fire at night with his flint and steel, or sometimes creeping into a hollow tree to sleep.
Thus he went on, half frozen and half starved, for eighty long miles, to the house of Massasoit, an Indian chief who was his friend. The good chief treated him well, for he knew, like all the Indians, what Roger Williams had tried to do for them. When spring time came, Massasoit gave his guest a canoe and told him where to go. So Roger paddled away till he found a good place to stop. This place he called Providence. A large city now stands there, and is still called Providence.
Roger Williams had some friends with him, and others soon came, and after a few years he had quite a settlement of his own. It was called Rhode Island. Such a settlement as that at Plymouth, at Boston, and at Providence, was called "a colony."
He took care that the Indians should be treated well, and that no one should do them any harm, so they grew to love the good white man. And he said that every man in his colony should worship God in the way he liked best, and no one should suffer on account of his manner of worship.
It was a wonderful thing in those days, when there were wars going on in Europe about religion or the manner of worship, and everybody was punished who did not believe in the religion of the state.
Do you not think that Roger Williams was as brave a man as John Smith or Miles Standish, and as much of a hero? He did not kill any one. He was not that kind of a hero. But he did much to make men happy and good and to do justice to all men, and I think that is the best kind of a hero.