A Puritan Fireplace.
On reaching New England he went to Salem, and was there appointed a minister of the church. After a very short time he left Salem, and went with his family to Plymouth. Remaining there for two years, he became deeply interested in the Indians, and began the difficult task of learning their language. He wrote afterward, "God was pleased to give me a painful, patient spirit to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes to gain their tongue."
In this way he acquired a good knowledge of the Indians, whom he learned to love and who learned to love him. Little did he realize that this warm friendship would in after years save not only his own life but also the lives of many other Puritans.
While winning the friendship of the Indians, Roger Williams incensed the Puritans by saying in strong language that they had no just claim to the lands they were living on. He said that the King had no right to grant to any company these lands, because they had never belonged to him. The Indians, and only the Indians, owned them. It is needless to say that such arguments made many bitter enemies for the youthful preacher.
Of course he could not continue in this severe criticism of matters so important to the Puritan heart without losing many of his friends. The wrath of the Puritans at length became so great that they tried him in court and banished him from Massachusetts. As he became ill about this time, however, he was told that he might remain in the colony through the winter if he would not preach. But as soon as he grew better his friends, who were very fond of him, began to spend much time in talking with him at his home in Salem, where he now lived. The Puritans, fearing his influence, determined to send him at once to England.
The Rhode Island Settlement.
When the heroic young minister heard of this, he hastily said good-by to his wife and two children—one of whom was a little girl two years old and the other a baby—and looked for safety in the home of his old friend Massasoit, living near Mount Hope, seventy or eighty miles away.
The outlook was dreary enough. It was midwinter (January, 1636), and the snow was lying deep upon the ground. As there was no road cut through the forest, Roger Williams had to depend upon his compass for a guide. To keep himself from freezing, he carried with him a hatchet to chop kindling wood, and a flint and steel to kindle it into flame. Thus fitted out, he started, though still weak from his recent illness, with a staff in his hand and a pack on his back, to look for his dusky friend, Massasoit. This long journey in the bitter weather of a New England winter was indeed a trying experience to the lonely traveller. He wrote long afterward, "Steering my course, in winter snow, I was sorely tossed for one fourteen weeks in a bitter winter season, not knowing what bed or bread did mean." Having found Massasoit, he spent much of the winter in the wigwam kindly furnished him by the Indian chief.
In the spring he began to erect buildings at Seekonk on land given him by the Indians. But his friend, Governor Winthrop, having secretly sent him word that Seekonk was in the territory belonging to the Massachusetts colony, he decided to go elsewhere.