Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1Boutwell, George S. (George Sewall)
History
Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1
Boutwell, George S. (George Sewall)
Boutwell, George S. (George Sewall), 1818-1905; United States -- Politics and government
He was of course charged with being in alliance with Philip. A force
of a thousand men with such Indian allies as could be mustered, was
marched immediately into his country. This was the force engaged on
the 19th of December in the famous Swamp Fight, the most sanguinary
battle of Philip's War. Six hundred warriors were slain, six hundred
wigwams were burned, and an unknown number of women, children and old
men perished in the flames. The English loss exceeded two hundred,
among whom were several brave officers. From this moment the fortunes
of Canonchet were identified with Philip's, and he is supposed to have
commanded in many of the attacks upon the frontier towns. About the
last of March, 1676, he visited the Connecticut River to urge, if not
to superintend the planting of corn. Finding his people destitute of
seed, he returned to obtain a supply, but was arrested at Seekonk and
executed at Stonington. His death was a sad blow to Philip, and the
occasion of a great joy in the colonies. When told that he must die,
he said:
"It is well. I shall die before my heart is soft. I will speak
nothing which Canonchet should be ashamed to speak. It is well."
Thus fell Canonchet, the last great chief of the Narragansets. A man
so noble and chivalric in his spirit that his life and death commanded
the admiration of his worst enemies. They vainly imagined that some
disembodied spirit of Greece or Rome had revisited the earth in the
vast physical and mental proportions of Canonchet.
Forty years before, the friendship of his father, Miantonomo, and the
qualified hostility he assumed towards Sassacus and the Pequots had
saved the infant colonies from destruction. Sassacus, the Pequot
chief, had proposed to Canonicus an alliance against the English, but
in consequence of the advice of Roger Williams, Miantonomo visited
Governor Winthrop at Boston, was received and entertained with great
ceremony, and finally concluded with the colonies a treaty of peace
and alliance. Its main provisions were these:
1st. Peace with Massachusetts and the other English plantations.
2nd. Neither party to make peace with the Pequots without the consent
of the other.
3rd. Neither party to harbor Pequots.
4th. Murderers escaping from either party to be put to death or
delivered up to the other.
5th. Fugitive servants to be returned.
This treaty rendered the cause of the Pequots hopeless, and secured the
safety of the English.
It was in the main observed by the Narragansets. They allowed the
colonial army to pass through their territories, and furnished five
hundred men for the war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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