Curiosities of History: Boston, September Seventeenth, 1630-1880

by William W. Wheildon

VISIT TO BOSTON.

The Narragansett Indians were one of the largest, if not the very largest, tribe in New England, at the time of the arrival of the Puritans; and they were especially friendly to the settlers. They lived along the coast, from Stonington to Point Judith, on Narragansett Bay. “They consisted,” says Hutchinson, “of several lesser principalities, but all united under one general ruler, called the Chief Sachem, to whom all others owed some kind of fealty or subjection.” The Nianticks were considered as a branch of the Narragansetts, having very likely been conquered by them, and brought under their subjection.

A letter of Roger Williams, who was intimate with, and a strong friend of, the Narragansett Indians, says they were “the settlers’ fast friends, had been true in all the Pequot wars, were the means of the coming in of the Mohegans, never had shed English blood, and many settlers had had experience of the love and desire of peace which prevailed among them.”

In October, 1636, after the murder of Mr. Oldham, Gov. Vane invited their sachem, Miantonomo, to visit Boston, which he soon after did, bringing with him another sachem, two sons of Canonicus, and about twenty men. The governor sent twenty musketeers to Roxbury to meet them and escort them into town. The sachems and their council dined together in the same room with the governor and his ministers. After dinner a friendly treaty was made with Miantonomo, and signed by the parties; and, although at this time the English thought the Indians did not understand it, they kept it faithfully; but the English, who were afterwards instrumental in the death of Miantonomo, did not. The Indians were subsequently escorted out of town, “and dismissed with a volley of shot;” and the famous Roger Williams was appointed to explain the treaty to the Indians.

In this treaty, Canonicus, who was the chief sachem of the tribe, and is said to have been “a just man, and a friend of the English,” was represented by Miantonomo, his nephew, whom Canonicus, on account of his age, had caused to assume the government. The deputation that Gov. Vane sent to the Narragansetts in the matter of the murder of Mr. Oldham, speak of Canonicus “as a sachem of much state, great command over his men, and much wisdom in his answers and the carriage of the whole treaty; clearing himself and his neighbors of the murder, and offering assistance for revenge of it.” Johnson represents Miantonomo “as a sterne, severe man, of great stature and a cruel nature, causing all his nobility and such as were his attendants to tremble at his speech.”

INDIAN ART.—CURIOUS MARRIAGE.

The Narragansetts not only coined money (wampumpeag), but manufactured pendants and bracelets,—using shells, we presume, for these purposes. They also made tobacco-pipes, some blue and some white, out of stone, and furnished earthen vessels and pots for cookery and other domestic uses,—so that they had several approximations, in these respects, to civilization and art, not so distinctly manifested by other tribes. They had, in fact, commercial relations with other people and distant nations, and, it seems, were sometimes sneered at on account of their disinclination for war,—preferring other service.

There is evidence, also, that they considered themselves—in some respects, at least—superior to other Indians; and this is illustrated by a very curious piece of history, said to be “the only tradition of any sort from the ancestors of our first Indians.” It seems that the oldest Indians among the Narragansetts reported to the English, on their first arrival, “that they had in former times a sachem called Tashtassuck, who was incomparably greater than any in the whole land in power and state.” This great sachem—who, it would seem, had the power to elevate, and, in some respects, enlighten his race—had only two children, a son and daughter; and, not being able to match them according to their dignity, he joined them together in matrimony, and they had four sons, of whom Canonicus, who was chief sachem when the English arrived, was the eldest. There is no reason to doubt that the marriage was a happy one, agreeable to the parties, satisfactory to the parent, and certainly famous in its progeny.

INTERMARRIAGE AMONG THE EGYPTIANS.