Rhode Island's Founders: From Settlement to Statehood

reader.

PART I

The Pioneers

Pre-1700

GIOVANNI DA VERRAZZANO

Giovanni da Verrazzano (1485–1528) was an Italian explorer and navigator who sailed in the service of France. Although the exact place and date of his birth have not been positively established, he was probably a native of the Chianti region of Tuscany, well born and well educated. As a young man, he took up residence in Dieppe on France’s Normandy coast, from which he made many voyages to the eastern Mediterranean. Having earned a reputation as an excellent sea captain, he entered the service of King Francis I to undertake a voyage to the New World in hope of finding a sea route through the Americas to the Pacific and the Orient. It was the first such expedition to North America under the auspices of the French crown. Accompanied by his younger brother Girolamo, a mapmaker, and a crew of fifty men, Verrazzano crossed the Atlantic in the caravel La Dauphine and made landfall at or near Cape Fear, North Carolina, in 1524. After a short voyage southward, he turned toward the north and explored the North American coast, probably as far as Newfoundland, anchoring briefly in the Narrows of New York Harbor and in Narrangansett Bay, where bridges now recall his visit. Although this voyage failed in its primary objective of discovering a passage to China, Verrazzano’s report of this expedition, written for Francis I immediately after returning to France, does provide the first geographical description of a large section of the North American coast based on a known exploration. The land discovered in this voyage was named Francesca in honor of the French king. Verrazzano’s narrative also contains important data concerning the physical appearance, customs and way of life of the Indian tribes observed during the voyage

Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian navigator sailing in the employ of France, was the first European explorer to record his visit to Rhode Island. This is a modern copy of a posthumous sixteenth-century portrait that was painted by Edward R. Hines and donated to the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame by Robert Hines.

Of the early explorers in North America, Verrazzano was the first to name newly found places in honor of prominent personalities or important spots in Europe. With the notable exception of Rhode Island, however, few of these place names have survived. Verrazzano called Block Island Luisa in honor of the queen mother of France and likened the well-peopled island to the Mediterranean Isle of Rhodes. After anchoring in present-day Newport Harbor, he spent fifteen days exploring the entire Narragansett Bay region as far north as Pawtucket Falls. Displaying a sense of humor, Verrazzano allegedly named the Dumpling Rocks off Jamestown Petra Viva for Marie Catherine de Pierre-Vive, the voluptuous wife of a banker who had helped fund his expedition. He called the bay Refugio.

Verrazzano reported to his royal sponsor that he had observed fertile open fields, forests of oak and cypress, many kinds of fruit, an enormous number of animals—stags, deer, lynx, and other species—and friendly natives. The Italian described the Indians (probably Wampanoags) glowingly:

There people are the most beautiful and have the most civil customs that we have found on this voyage. They are taller than we are; they are a bronze color, some tending more toward whiteness, others to a tawny color; the face is clear-cut; the hair is long and black, and they take great pains to decorate it; the eyes are black and alert, and their manner is sweet and gentle.

Verrazzano’s detailed report of his 1524 voyage was read (in translation) by one or more of Rhode Island’s first settlers, who misinterpreted it. In 1614, Dutch navigator Adrien Block renamed Luisa for himself, contributing to the mix-up whereby the Rhodes allusion was affixed to the island of Aquidneck. A 1637 letter from Williams was signed at Aquednetick [Aquidneck] now called by us Rhode Island. The royal charter of 1663 decreed that the new colony, consisting of two island settlements (Portsmouth and Newport) and the mainland plantations of Providence and Warwick, be named Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Thus, by indirection and misinterpretation, Verrazzano gave the state its name. In a subsequent expedition in 1527, sponsored in part by French admiral Philippe de Chabot, Verrazzano reached the Brazilian coast, from which he brought back a valuable cargo of logwood to France. Verrazzano’s third voyage, which got underway in the spring of 1528, ended in tragedy for the captain. The great navigator attempted on that occasion to find a passage to Asia south of the area that he had explored in the first voyage. Apparently, he followed the chain of the Lesser Antilles and stopped at one of the islands, possibly Guadeloupe, where hostile Caribs seized, killed and then ate him. His 1524 experience with the hospitable Wampanoags perhaps influenced him to become easy prey.

CHIEF SACHEM MASSASOIT (OUSAMEQUIN)

The Wampanoags historically were a tribe of horticulturists, farmers, fishermen and woodland hunters who inhabited eastern Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. Their name means People of the East or People of the Dawn. Their tribal organization was in the nature of a confederacy of small bands. These varied sub-tribes, with their approximate areas of settlement, included: the Aquinnah (Martha’s Vineyard); the Mashpee, Nauset and Manomet (Cape Cod); the Seakonke (the Blackstone Valley from East Providence to Cumberland); the Pawtuxet (the area of present-day Plymouth); the Troy (Fall River); the Assonet (the town of Assonet northward to Taunton); the Herring Pond (near Wareham); the Nemasket (Middleboro and environs); the Pocasset (Tiverton and Portsmouth); the Sakonnet or Sogkonate (Little Compton); and the Pokanoket (present-day Bristol County, Rhode Island).

In 1616–17, the Wampanoags were victimized by a severe smallpox epidemic (a disease introduced by Europeans for which the natives had no built-in immunity). The Pawtuxet, in particular, were devastated, leaving their area around Plymouth open to settlement by the Pilgrims and weakening the power of Massasoit, a Pokanoket and the reigning chief sachem of the Wampanoag confederation.

Massasoit, also known as Ousamequin (ca. 1581–1661), was born in present-day Rhode Island, probably in Bristol, but little is known of his parents or his early life. As chief sachem of the Wampanoag nation, which stretched from Narragansett Bay through Cape Cod and its islands and as far north as Middleboro and Plymouth, he befriended the Pilgrims, taught them farming methods and joined with them in a legendary thanksgiving feast in 1621. Massasoit attended that three-day celebration in late autumn with approximately ninety Wampanoags and supplied the gathering with five deer and other food.

Massasoit was aided in his relations with Plymouth by Squanto and Samoset, two natives who had learned the English language as a result of their abduction by traders who plied the New England coast in the early seventeenth century. The chief sachem was described in 1621 as a very lusty man with an able body, grave of countenance and spare of speech. He was not only a cordial host to the original Pilgrim settlers, but he also sheltered Roger Williams during that outcast’s winter exile in 1636. Although he allowed Protestant missionaries to work among his people, he steadfastly resisted conversion to Christianity.

Chief Sachem Massasoit (Ousameuin), of the Pokanoket band, was the leader of the Wampanoag nation when New England’s earliest settlements were established. In 1621, he celebrated a feast with the Pilgrims of Plymouth that has become the prototype of the modern American Thanksgiving. This representation is a model of Massasoit’s statue atop Cole’s Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts, sculpted by Cyrus Dallin.

Massasoit, who led the Wampanoags for about a half century, is best remembered for his indispensable aid to the Pilgrims during their first year of settlement, for his great diplomatic skill and for his successful policy of peaceful coexistence with the English settlers during the forty years he dealt with them. The cornerstone of this policy was an agreement signed at Plymouth on March 21, 1621, between Massasoit and Governor Edward Winslow whereby each leader promised that he and his people would not harm the other, that they would give the other warning of danger, that they would assist if the other were attacked and that they would work to maintain order and peace between the two peoples. This league of peace, welcomed by the weakened Wampanoags, alarmed their rivals, the Narragansetts, but according to one leading scholar, It established expectations that would have a profound impact on relations between Indians and English throughout the remainder of the century. This first treaty between these differing cultures addressed Massasoit as a friend and ally of King James, a signal to the Wampanoags that (at least at first) their relationship with the English was one of equality. Unfortunately, the English gradually developed the position that all Indians stood beneath them in the colonial hierarchy of power and property rights.

Although Massasoit is usually associated with the Plymouth Plantation, the Mount Hope lands in Bristol (Montaup) and the Indian village of Sowams in present-day Barrington were his places of residence because of his leadership of the Pokanoket band, the dominant sub-tribe of the Wampanoag confederation.

Upon his death in 1661 near his eightieth year, Massasoit was succeeded by his oldest son, Wamsutta, whom the English called Alexander (after Alexander the Great). When Alexander died suddenly in 1662, Massasoit’s second son, Metacomet (called King Philip after Philip of Macedonia), became the grand sachem of the Wampanoag nation.

CHIEF SACHEMS CANONICUS AND MIANTONOMI

Canonicus (d. 1647) and his nephew Miantonomi (d. 1643) were the chief sachems of the powerful Narragansett tribe at the time when Roger Williams and other English colonists settled Rhode Island. The heart of the Narragansetts’ strength during their golden age under Canonicus and Miantonomi was the tribe’s close association with such smaller bands as the Pawtuxets, the Shawomets and the Cowessets on the west side of the bay that now bears the Narragansett tribal name. After avoiding a severe epidemic in 1616–17 that diminished the ranks of several tribes (especially the Wampanoags), the Narragansetts, under their two sachems, became noted among coastal Indians for the intensity of their religious rituals.

Under the uniquely arranged leadership of the two sachems, the Narragansetts rose from their home west of the bay to dominate the alliance among the Pawtuxets, Shawomets and Cowessets and to push the depopulated and weakened Pokanoket and Seakonke bands from the mouth of the Seekonk River. From there, the Narragansetts extended their influence up the Blackstone and Moshassuck Rivers to the domain of the eastern Nipmucks, from whom they obtained furs. They also controlled the flow of pelts and trade goods between Massachusetts Bay and the interior. Finally, they oversaw Indian-Dutch trade relations for the small Niantic tribe living in modern Charlestown, as well as for the natives of Aquidneck and Block Island. Because of their size and location, as well as the respect they enjoyed among other Indians as shrewd traders, devoted worshipers and committed pacifists, the Narragansetts, under Canonicus and Miantonomi, obtained their dominance through persuasion rather than violence.

Chief Sachems Canonicus and Miantonomi—uncle and nephew, respectively—were the leaders of the Narragansett tribe when Roger Williams settled Providence. The original deed to Williams from Canonicus (who represented himself with a bow) and Miantonomi (who signed with an arrow) was executed on March 24, 1638.

In the winter of 1635–36 the Wampanoag chief Massasoit sheltered the exile Roger Williams, and in the spring the Narragansett sachems greeted him on the west bank of the Seekonk and allowed him to establish a settlement (Providence) on lands recently occupied as a result of the plague that had depopulated the Wampanoags.

The original deed to Williams from Canonicus (who signed himself with a bow) and Miantonomi (who signed with an arrow) was executed on March 24, 1638. It confirmed earlier verbal grants. Not a penny was demanded by either, wrote Williams. It was not price or money that could have purchased Rhode Island. Rhode Island was purchased by love. The first town boundaries established by this document (called the town evidence) extended from a point just above Pawtucket Falls on the north, southwesterly to Neutaconkanut Hill and thence southeasterly to the mouth of the Pawtuxet River. The Blackstone, Seekonk and Providence Rivers served as the eastern boundary. In 1638, the sachems sold Aquidneck and Conanicut Islands to William Coddington, and in 1642 Miantonomi gave Samuel Gorton permission to settle on Shawomet lands in present-day Warwick.

Unfortunately for Canonicus and Miantonomi, intertribal jealousies and colonial greed would topple their empire. In 1643, Miantonomi (also called Miantonomoh) journeyed west to the Connecticut Valley at the head of a punitive expedition to chastise the rival Mohegan tribe for threatening a small remnant band of Pequots who were allied with the Narragansetts. The Mohegans repulsed the Narragansetts and captured Miantonomi, who was slowed in his retreat by his suit of armor. The Mohegan chief, Uncas, charged Miantonomi with the murder of an Indian and sent Miantonomi’s case to the English authorities for disposition. The English commissioners (representing the settlements of Connecticut, New Haven, Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay) were covetous of Narragansett tribal lands, and this desire no doubt influenced their decision to return Miantonomi to Uncas in Norwich, where he was executed by Wawequa, the brother of Uncas. The fact that Miantonomi had recently been urging natives in southern New England and Long Island to bury their differences and unite in order to recover their autonomy and strength also sealed his fate with the English confederation.

When Miantonomi was executed by blows from a tomahawk in 1643, the hope of Native American unification and successful Indian resistance to English Puritan hegemony was lost. The aging and infirm Canonicus mourned the loss of his statesmanlike nephew until his own death from natural causes in 1647. Prior to his demise, he joined with his nephew Pessacus, the brother