Thus matters remained for a year or two, when, in July, 1636, the crew of a small bark, returning from Connecticut, saw close to Block Island a pinnace at anchor, and full of Indians. This pinnace was recognized as belonging to Oldham, the Indian trader, the old settler at Nantasket, and explorer of the Connecticut. Conjecturing that something must be wrong, the bark approached the pinnace and hailed, whereupon the Indians on board slipped the cable and made sail. The bark gave chase, and soon overtook the pinnace; some of the Indians jumped overboard in their fright, and were drowned; several were killed, and one was made prisoner. The dead body of Oldham was found on board, covered with an old seine. This murder, as appeared from the testimony of the prisoner, who was presently sentenced by the Massachusetts magistrates to be a slave for life, was committed at the instigation of some Narraganset chiefs, upon whom Block Island was dependent, in revenge for the trade which Oldham had commenced under the late treaty with the Pequots, their enemies. Indeed, all the Narraganset chiefs, except the head sachem, Canonicus, and his nephew and colleague, Miantonimoh, were believed to have had a hand in this matter, especially the chieftain of the Niantics, a branch of the Narragansets, inhabiting the continent opposite Block Island. Canonicus, in great alarm, sent to his friend and neighbor, Roger Williams, by whose aid he wrote a letter to the Massachusetts magistrates, expressing his grief at what had happened, and stating that Miantonimoh had sailed already with seventeen canoes and two hundred warriors to punish the Block Islanders. With this letter were sent two Indians, late sailors on board Oldham’s pinnace, and presently after two English boys, the remainder of his crew. In the recapture of Oldham’s pinnace eleven Indians had been killed, several of them chiefs; and that, with the restoration of the crew, seems to have been esteemed by Canonicus a sufficient atonement for Oldham’s death. But the magistrates and ministers of Massachusetts, assembled to take this matter into consideration, thought otherwise. Volunteers were called for in August, 1636; and four companies, ninety men in all, commanded by Endicott, whose submissiveness in Williams’ affair had restored him to favor, were embarked in three pinnaces, with orders to put to death all the men of Block Island, and to make the women and children prisoners. The old affair of the death of Stone was now also called to mind, though the murder of Oldham had no connection with it, except in some distant similarity of circumstances. Endicott was instructed, on his return from Block Island, to go to the Pequots, and to demand of them the murderers of Stone, and a thousand fathoms of wampum for damages--equivalent to from three to five thousand dollars--also, some of their children as hostages; and, if they refused, to employ force.