Soon after the departure of the Fortune, in the depth of winter, painful rumors came that the powerful Narragansets, under their redoubtable Chief, Canonicus, were assuming a threatening attitude. The English had now about fifty men capable of bearing arms, and not a large supply of ammunition. The Narragansets could bring against them five thousand warriors. They occupied the region extending from the western shores of Narraganset Bay to Pawcatuck River, and the tribe was estimated to number about thirty thousand. The Pilgrims, all counted, men, women and children, were less than one hundred in number. This was a fearful cloud of war with which they thus found themselves menaced. While such was the position of affairs, one day a strange Indian entered the settlement. It soon appeared that he was a Narraganset. He seemed not a little embarrassed, and enquired for Squantum, the interpreter. It seemed some relief to him to learn that he was absent. He then left for him a bundle of arrows, wrapped up in the skin of a rattlesnake, and was hastily departing, when Governor Bradford, wishing to know the significance of this strange conduct, ordered Captain Standish to detain him. He was arrested and entrusted to the safe keeping of Mr. Winslow and Mr. Hopkins. Captain Standish gave orders that he should be treated with the utmost kindness, supplied with everything he needed, and while assured that he should not be harmed, Mr. Winslow and Mr. Hopkins should endeavor to obtain from him a full and minute account of the object of his strange mission. At first he was so terrified that he could scarcely speak a word. But gradually regaining composure, he stated that the messenger who had been sent to the Pilgrims in the summer with terms of peace, had brought back such tidings of the weakness of the colony that Canonicus was encouraged to seek its destruction; that he was angry in consequence of the alliance of the colonists with his enemies, the Wampanoags; that he professed to despise the meanness of the presents sent to him by the Governor, and scorned to receive them; and that the arrows and the rattlesnake skin were to be understood as his declaration of war. It is worthy of notice that this savage chieftain should have had such a sense of honor as to send this warning to his foes, instead of treacherously falling upon them when unprepared. And it is also remarkable that this challenge should have been so similar to that which, in ancient days, the Scythian prince sent to Darius, which consisted of five arrows.