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• 1 ../awikhigan/../media/images/easton-letter-weetamoo-crop.DOC.QR3.jpg 2017-05-29T18:41:12+00:00 The Queen’s Right and the Quaker’s Relation, Pocasset and Pokanoket, Spring 1675 34 image_header 3429 2019-06-03T16:51:27+00:00 The phrase "The Queen's Right" comes from John Easton's letter to Plymouth governor Josiah Winslow, in which he conveyed an urgent message from Weetamoo about Pocasset lands. A Quaker and the Deputy Governor of Rhode Island colony, Easton wrote one of the earliest narratives about King Philip's War. His Relacion of the Indian War accurately conveys the most pressing Wampanoag concerns on the eve of war, namely the increasingly severe encroachment of Plymouth settlers onto Wampanoag homelands and subsistence, including forceful assertions of colonial jurisdiction. Although Easton's Relation is fairly well known, this letter is nearly unknown. It is one of the most vital statements regarding the "great fear of oppression from the English" that Wampanoag leaders like Weetamoo and Metacom (Philip) faced. Easton composed the missive on May 26, 1675, one month before the outbreak of King Philip's War. 

  Frind Josiah Winslow Governor of Plimoth Colony
  
  Weetomuw the quene of Pocaset and hir husband, showd mee a leter Constant Southworth and others names to it dated aprell 30: 75 - by which thay have great feare of opretion from the English, that thay could not tell how to trust mee, but that I wold to pleas English ioyne to do them rong therfore did not shew mee the leter untill the 24: of may alltho I had informed theme that I take my selef as much ingadged that thay should not be ronged as if thay wer my Cuntry men, and I of ther nation and ingadged on of ther counsell to his ruler or landlord and I so understood that I did not take that to be good to my selef or English which was by hurte to any and thay had purchased of mee so to promise them, - when I herd what thay informed me of ther Case I saied if it were true ther Case was good but I could no otherwise be absolute without I had heard both partys thay and Plimoth men wold defer them selefs as you thoft [thought] was for yourselefs and that later told ... iudgmentes allredy I saied in such Cases I thoft [thought] you wold be willing to have it... and here what Indians could say and so do as for what was ... and for that to take place - I earnestly desier you may so deall with them for acording to right I wold have them in submition to you the Case why thay so much stand upone for what thay wold now have ther bounds north and south is to maintaine a river at each end by which thay have gret dependanc for fish, but ar free to acomodat thee or home they shall admit with thee of fouer mile square of land at least at the hed of dartmoth bounds and of the lotes on the other side of the fales river  and dout not but by having ther other bounds confirmed in your records thay shall agree to what more they will give them thay prefer so faier and as it apereth to mee desier only of you what is ther resonabell dew that I have larg hope you will not deny it and to have the diferanc desided as to them it may apere not to be by such as determen in ther own Case I am perswaided both mai be so satesfied , I am largly ingadged in my selef to manefest to them that I am not falce, but to indever thay may have right acording to English Law and hope it will not be in ani oposition to your desires or to your ruell in your Colony I know about 60 have confirmrd to the quens right to be to a far greter tract of land beside what now shee and thay would be contented with - if you will proseed to try the Case at your Court I having a gret desier that thay may not be scared to do rong, alltho I desier as much as any thay mai fear for having dun rong. I will be hir bayle if you will order it so as I may have a opertunity and if I can atend to maneg hir Case or send an aturny if thou canst be an instrument for ther peasabell setellment and by a way of peace thay promis not to be ungratfiill so I am thy true frind as it mai not be hurt to ani willing to serve thee.
                                                                                                                                                                                                           John Easton
  26: 3m: 1675

  Through this letter, Weetamoo conveyed to Easton and Winslow her intent to set and "record" the "bounds" of Pocasset, an act prompted by her "fear of oppression" from Plymouth men, including Constant Southworth, who threatened the sovereignty and subsistence of Wampanoag people. Indeed, "the Queen's right" faced encroachment on all sides, toward Assonet from Taunton and Swansea, toward Watuppa from Dartmouth, and toward Pocasset from Middleboro (Nemasket) and Sakonnet. She sought to use colonial tools of recording to retain a wide homeland for subsistence and to determine the bounds herself, rather than allowing Plymouth to set the bounds for her or to contain Pocasset people within a limited "reserve" or "Indian town." By this time, as Easton's Relation conveys, Plymouth had encroached so much upon Pokanoket territory that Metacom and his kin faced a bottleneck at Kickemuit, with new houses built right at the narrow neck of the peninsula at Montaup, land that Winslow sought.
  
  In the letter, Easton also demonstrated his sense of responsibility to Indigenous leaders, like Weetamoo, in whose homelands he lived. Rhode Island settlers' diplomatic agreements with Narragansett and Wampanoag leaders formed the foundation of their legal occupancy. Easton assured Weetamoo and her husband, when they expressed their distrust, that he saw himself as a counselor to a "landlord," recognizing not only their rightful sovereignty, but their role as hosts (reflecting an earlier meaning of the term) and his responsibility to advocate their concerns to neighboring colonial leaders. To Winslow, Easton asserted that he knew "about 60" men who had "confirmed" that "the Queen's Right" exceeded the bounds Weetamoo now sought to set, conveying Weetamoo's willingness to compromise, as both diplomat and host, to "accommodate" those settlers,  whom she was willing to "admit," in particular places. He advised Winslow that should he not likewise accommodate Weetamoo's request, the result would be further conflict, fueled by Wampanoag's legitimate fear of oppression. Easton's Relation records a council, shortly thereafter, in which Metacom and his counselors addressed these grievances in full, as well as Easton's hope for a diplomatic resolution.
  
  Although Josiah Winslow did not respond directly to Easton's letter or to Weetamoo's request, he did send a letter to Weetamoo and her husband days before the war erupted, requesting their neutrality. This rare document conveys crucial information about Plymouth's intentions and communications, as well as Weetamoo's critical role, but has rarely been considered in histories of King Philip's War, or analysis of its origins. 

  Letter to Weetamoo, and Ben her husband, Sachems of Pocasset. June 15, 1675. Marshfield. 
  Friends and Neighbors
  I am informed that Phillip the Sachem of Mount Hope Contrary to his many promises and ingagements; and that upon no ground  [crossed out] provocation nor unt__ness in the least from us, but mostly from his owne base groundless feare is Creating new troubles to himself and us; And hath endeavored to ingage you and your people with him, by intimations of notorious falsehoods as if we were secretly designing mischief to him, and you, such unmanly treacherous practices as we abhor to think of, and yet he hath also [?]…[torn] against you if you shall deny to help him; I am [torn]…prevayled very little [unto?] you, except where some few of your giddy inconsiderate young men; if it be fact, as I am willing to believe it may; you shall find us always ready to acknowledge and incourage your faithfulness, and protect you also so farr as in us lyeth from his pride and tyranny; And if you continue faithfull, you shall assuredly reape  that fruit of it to your Comfort, when he by his pride and treachery have wrought his owne ruin. As a testimony of your continued friendship I desire you will give us what intelligence you may have, or shall gather up, that is of con__ment, and you shall not find me ungrateful, who am and desire to continue
  Your reall friend,
  Josiah Winslow

  What would Weetamoo have done with this letter, once she received it? With the implied threat to her kin, including the husband of her sister (brother to her former husband), as well as their children, would she be likely to carry the letter across the bay, to show them the evidence of Plymouth's intent? Did this letter further instigate the conflict that soon erupted? Did it allow Weetamoo's relations time to prepare?
• 1 2017-05-29T18:40:40+00:00 Another Queen’s Right: Quaiapin & the Atherton Company 24 plain 2017-11-29T20:17:34+00:00 Another saunkskwa, the Narragansett leader Quaiapin, confronted a similar “deed game” across the Bay. At her town of Woossowenbiskw (in present day Exeter, Rhode Island) Quaiapin had been building up her strength. Having lost her husband, the Narragansett sachem Mixanno, she buttressed her own place among the Narragansetts as her sons, Scuttup and Quequegunewant, took on her husband’s leadership role, alongside her brother, Ninigret, the longstanding sachem of nearby Niantic. “The Old Queen,” as she was known among the settlers, was fortifying her town on a hill across the bay from Weetamoo’s territory, where she could see clearly what was happening in her midst. There, with the other Narragansett women, she planted. With stones, and with rock women and men, she re-built the fortress that would protect the fields. 

  The Atherton Company

  Even as Quaiapin attempted to reassert jurisdiction within and beyond her territory, a company of colonial leaders and land speculators had discerned a weakness in the foundation of Narragansett leadership. They had gotten hold of Cononjonant, cousin to her late husband, and “seduced” him into signing a deed for some “six thousand acres of the best Narragansett land.” According to the 1659 deed, Cononjonant gave the land as a gift “in consideration” of his English “friends’” “great love and affection,” although it was later revealed he only signed it after “being made drunk and kept so for days.” These “friends” included Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut, the trader John Tinker of Nashaway, Boston traders Amos Richardson and William Hudson, and Major Henry Atherton. For this “gift,” Cononjonant was covertly awarded “the sume of 75 pounds in Wampampeague with several other things as gratuity for certain lands given ye said Major Aderton and his friends.” The deed included a “tract of land…called Wyapumseatt; Mascacowage, Cocumcosuck,” which included Quaiapin’s lands.[1]
   
  The group of men who secured this deed came to be called the Atherton Company. The shareholders were primarily from the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut, seeking potentially lucrative investments in prime lands and an ideal shipping port in the Narragansett country, as well as a competing claim against Rhode Island, extending and bolstering their colonial jurisdiction. The mortgage was illegal under a recently passed Rhode Island law, which required the approval of the General Court for all purchases of Indian land. Thus, the Atherton Company sought to circumvent Rhode Island entirely, by asserting the jurisdiction of the United Colonies, a quasi-legal political body led by representatives from the colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Haven and Plymouth. Atherton had offered a cut to Roger Williams in return for serving as translator and helping to broker the deal, but he refused, discerning the ruse. Local Wickford trader Richard Smith and his son were, however, included among the original “friends” and shareholders, their trading post within the territory encompassed by the claim. Edward Hutchinson joined them shortly thereafter, becoming a primary broker for the deeds. By 1661, Plymouth men, including Josiah Winslow, John Brown, and Thomas Willet, acquired shares, as well.
   
  After they secured this deed from Cononjonant, Atherton and his partners devised a strategy to compel consent (and more land) from Quaiapin’s more judicious relations, including her brother, her sons, and their uncle, the sachem Quissucquansh. They took advantage of the comparatively fluid nature of Narragansett leadership to manipulate the role of sachems within the colonial legal system.  During that same summer of 1659, some rogue Narragansett warriors had led a raid against the Mohegans to the south. During this expedition, “the general Court of Connecticut” alleged, “some Indians did, in the dead time of night, shoot eight bullets into an English house, and fired the same; wherein five Englishmen were asleep.” The Narragansett sachems dismissed colonial attempts to hold them responsible for these individual actions, which they said, “they did neither consent to nor allow.” However, a year later, in September 1660, for this shooting and “sundry other crimes,” Governor John Winthrop, Jr. and the United Colonies, ordered that the Narragansett sachems deliver up “at least four” of the men responsible, to be “sent to Barbadoes” and sold as slaves, or to pay a fine of 595 fathom of wampum.[2] 
   
  To “force satisfaction,” Connecticut “sent an armed force to collect” the fine. The last time Major Atherton had arrived with such a force, he had burst into Quissucquansh’s town with twenty men “well armed” to collect a wampum “payment,” boorishly disturbing them in their mourning of Ninigret and Quaiapin’s nephew. Ignoring the ceremonies that he interrupted, Atherton had threatened to kidnap their children if they did not immediately pay a fine “owed” to the United Colonies. Thus, the Narragansett sachems were fairly familiar with this tactic of armed surprise. When “the force sent by Connecticut” arrived at Narragansett in September 1660, according to antiquarian Samuel Drake, they “could not collect the wampum, nor secure the offenders; but for the payment condescended to take a mortgage of all the Narragansett country, with the provision that it should be void, if it were paid in four months.” Quaiapin’s relatives, the sachems Quissucquansh, Ninigret and Scuttup, were forced to sign a bond that required them to pay the fee. In October, Henry Atherton called again, offering to pay the fine to the United Colonies and requiring a “mortgage” for collateral. They had six months to pay the original amount, plus interest, to Atherton. At that time, he promised, “this writing” would “be void and of none effect.”[3]
  
  The “Atherton Company,” which kindly provided the mortgage, was composed of the same group of men who acquired the initial deed from Cononjuquant. The company included several members of the United Colonies council, which asserted political authority to enforce it. The corruption of the scheme, although convoluted, is evident in the Company’s paper trail. For example, it was Edward Hutchinson, a member of the Company, who delivered the fee for the Narragansett sachems, which was paid by Atherton, to the United Colonies, represented by Governor John Winthrop, who was also a member of the Company. When the Narragansetts later provided the wampum, over 600 fathom, the Atherton Company refused to accept it. All along, as historian Francis Jennings discerned, they had been after the land, “some four hundred square miles” that encompassed, according to the sachems who signed the bond, “all the lands in our Country, commonly known and called by the names of Narragansett country and Cowesett country, excepting those lands formerly granted” to other English men. Indeed the Atherton men had begun making plans for the division, development and sale of the Narragansett country before Hutchinson, their agent, delivered the fine to the commissioners. [4]
   
  Roger Williams was among those Rhode Island settlers who critiqued the Atherton men for their scheming. At Atherton’s “first going up to ye Nahiggonsick [Narragansett] about this Business,” Williams recalled, “I refused all their proffers of Land and refused to interpret for them to ye Sachems.” He later condemned the entire Atherton Company business as “an unneighborly and unchristian Intrusion upon us” which was “Contrary to your Laws as well as ours.” Writing to Major John Mason of Connecticut, he proclaimed that the scheme arose from “a depraved appetite after the great vanities, dreams and shadows of this vanishing life, great portions of land, land in this wilderness, as if men were in as great necessity and danger for want of great portions of land, as poor, hungry, thirsty seamen have, after a sick and stormy, a long and starving passage.” Circumventing the question of illegality, Mason’s neighbor John Winthrop subsequently traveled to London to try to ensure that Connecticut’s new royal charter would contain the lands claimed by Rhode Island, including those covered by the Atherton Mortgage.[5]
   
  Rhode Island sent its own emissary to defend their titles against the claims of Connecticut and the United Colonies. Williams and the Rhode Island leaders desired a charter that would uphold their original agreements with the Narragansetts and expand their boundaries to include the lands to the north and east claimed by Plymouth, including Weetamoo’s territory of Pocasset. The Providence men made separate confirmation deeds for the same land with Cononjonant, and also with Quissucquansh and Ninigret, who validated “the lands according to their joint agreements, which our brother Meantonomeah (Miantonomo) possessed them with.” All of these documents were designed to provide evidence for Rhode Island’s own case in London. To make matters even more convoluted, another group produced documents challenging the Atherton Company’s claim. The Pettaquamscut Proprietors, composed largely of Rhode Island settlers, had produced a competing deed for the same lands, signed by the same Narragansett sachems, which they had also sent to England.  Rhode Island magistrates sought to resolve the matter through renewing their relationship with the Narragansetts and “treat[ing]” with the Atherton Company men “upon all the differences depending about their coming into, or possessing lands from the Indians within this collonie’s bounds.” [6]  
   
  These confirmation councils between Rhode Island leaders and the Narragansett sachems functioned as renewals of the original treaty between the Narragansett leaders Canonicus and Miantanomi and Roger Williams, the foundation of the colony of Rhode Island. Quaiapin’s sons availed themselves of the opportunity to fulfill their own responsibilities as sachems, requiring their old “friends and allies” to behave respectfully toward the Narragansett families who continued to live in their midst. While Rhode Island had passed a law that authorized Providence to “buy out and cleare off Indians” within its “bowndes” and “to purchass a little more…seeing they are straytened,” Scuttup and Quequegunent reversed it, requiring the Providence men, including Richard Smith and his son, to agree that “it shall not be lawfull for the men abovesaid to remove the Indians, that are up in the country from their fields, without the Indians’ consent and content, nor shall it be lawfull for any of those Indians to sell any of the lands of abovesaid to any, only it shall be lawfull for them, to take of the men of Providence and the men of Pawtuxcette, according to their joynt agreement, satisfaction for their removing.” With this statement, the sachems reminded the Providence and Pawtuxet men that they were still in Narragansett territory and that their alliance required a relationship of mutual respect. With this statement, Quaiapin’s relations also began to assert some agency in the deed game, re-affirming sovereignty in their country. [7]

  The "Queen's Fort" and Nipsachuck

  Quaiapin provided crucial protection to both Narragansetts and Wampanoags during the war, even as her brother, the Niantic sachem Ninigret, offered to assist the United Colonies in preventing neighboring nations from joining with Philip. The "Queen's Fort," a network of stone structures and underground chambers, protected people when troops came through her territory just before the Great Swamp massacre. Even today, the Queen’s Fort remains part of the landscape of local memory. Quaiapin's village of Nipsachuck, at the intersection of Native territories, was the site of an early "battle," when Weetamoo and Metacom sought shelter there with their relations in August 1675. It was also among the subsistence/planting places that were targeted by colonial troops in the summer of 1676, as both the collaborative Nipsachuck Battlefield Project and ​Our Beloved Kin have documented, in separate research projects.
  
  This map is drawn from Sidney S. Rider's "Map of the Colony of Rhode Island giving the Indian Names of Locations and the Location of Great Events in Indian History with Present Political Divisions Indicated" (Providence Rhode Island, 1903). Although there may be some differentiation between traditional Narragansett place names and those recorded by Rider, this map references Nipsachuck and Pettaquamscut, at the northern and southern reaches of the Narragansett country, and the Queen's Fort.​

  ---

  [1] Colonial Records of Rhode Island, 2: 464. Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 279. Howard Chapin, Sachems of the Narragansetts, (Providence, RI: Rhode Island Historical Society, 1931), 68. Samuel Gardner Drake, The Book of the Indians (Boston: Josiah Drake, 1833), 2: 58. John Fredrick Martin, Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 62-73. James N. Arnold, The Records of the Proprietors of the Narragansett, or FONES RECORD (Providence: Narragansett Historical Publishing Co., 1894), 1:1.
  [2] John Russell Barlett, Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (Providence: A. Crawford Greene and Brother, 1856-65), 1:465. Arnold, Fones Record, 1:5-16. Chapin, Sachems, 70-4. Drake, Book of the Indians, 2:81. Richard Dunn, “John Winthrop, Jr. and the Narragansett Country,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 13:1 (Jan. 1956): 68-74, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1923390. Jennings, Invasion, 276, 279. Martin, Profits, 68-9. Paul Robinson, “The Struggle Within: The Indian Debate in Seventeenth-Century Narragansett Country” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Binghamton, 1990), 161-2, 179-80.
  [3] Jennings, Invasion, 276. Chapin, Sachems, 71. Drake, Book of the Indians, 2:81. Robinson, “The Struggle Within,” 161-2, 179-80.
  [4] Jennings, Invasion, 279. Dunn, “Winthrop,” 68-74. Martin, Profits, 68-9. Arnold, FONES RECORD, 1:5-16.
  [5] Society of Colonial Wars, The Narragansett Mortgage: the Documents Concerning the Alien Purchases in Southern Rhode Island (Providence, RI: E. R. Freeman Company, 1926), 35. Jennings, Invasion, 278-86. Dunn, “Winthrop,” 70-1, 74. On Mason-Winthrop rivalry, see David W. Conroy, "The Defense of Indian Land Rights: William Bolan and the Mohegan Case in 1743." Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 103 (1993), 403.
  [6] Rhode Island Records, 1: 36-8, 435. Jennings, Invasion, 278-86. Drake, Book of the Indians, 2: 58. Dunn, “Winthrop,” 74. 
  [7] RI Records, 1:418, 1:38.