THE NARRAGANSETTS. All the burdens of Rhode Island, while her people were few and poor, were light, when compared with those she endured from the Narragansetts. Danger was ever present. Indian disquiets intruded themselves everywhere, and often superseded all other topics. They were at the Town Meeting, and the Town Mill, at the wedding feast and the Militia training, and were especially alarming to the household, when the head of the family was away from home. If the topics of Williams's letters bore any proportion to the ordinary employment of his thoughts, we may believe that nearly half of his lifetime wore away, not in the promotion of intellectual or moral good, but in giving a safe direction to Indian politics. These had but one advantage. They were better than the sectarian quarrels which they did so much to prevent or to exclude. The annoying and demoralising presence of the Indians was ever near. generation passed away, with no abatement of the evil, but only with the prospect of its ending in a bloody collision, in the not distant future. A That we may rightly estimate the Narragansetts, and the feelings of the settlers towards them, let us endeavour to sec them as the founders saw them-not as antiquaries or as linguists, but in the cold light of every-day life. Our settlers were not, like the founders of Boston, occupiers of a territory whose former inhabitants had been wasted away by pestilence, until their force was nearly gone. The planters of Mooshassuc were from the first, confronted with a tribe whose strength was unbroken, and whose numbers were many fold superior to their own. The situation proposed only the question how, in the midst of poverty and isolation, to devise measures of public safety and peace. But one of the founders of Rhode Island felt any interest in the origin and history of the Narragansetts. The Indians wondered that any one cared for what was of so little interest to themselves, and should be so curious about them. 66 They say themselves, that they have sprung and growne up in that very place, like the very trees of the wildernesse." But in spite of the trivial aid which he received from any quarter, Williams persevered until he had mastered "the barbarous rockie speech" of the Narragansetts. We are supplied with ample materials for our judgment of them, from the writings of Williams alone. He saw and carefully studied them before they had become corrupted by the trade and the "strong waters" of the English, or had added anything to their own native virtues or vices. He came among the Narragansetts, not as an explorer or an archeologist, but as a missionary of more than ordinary hopefulness and enthusiasm, believing that many of them were ready to welcome Christianity and civilisation.2 He therefore sought eagerly for all their better traits of character, which he has noted in his "Key" to their language. By this book, they have been estimated in subsequent generations. The letters of Williams, written during many earlier and later years, exhibit his judgment as modified by experience and by disappointment. It becomes far less favourable as years go on, and by it we are enabled to appreciate the early difficulties and dangers of his Plantation. Topics more grave and urgent than Indian antiquities engrossed the attention of Williams. He either made few enquiries respecting them, or learned little which he deemed (1) Roger Williams's "Key into the language of America," p. 19. The references to Williams's “Key," are to the edition of 1827, published by the R. I. Historical Society, Vol. I of its Collections. (2) Key, pp. 18, 21, 22, 24, 40. (3) Key, p. 161. The Indians disliked the mention of their dead, or any enquiries about them. Williams doubtless respected their prejudices, and hence their traditions and history have been lost. worthy of preservation. He has sketched from his own view, a vigorous outline of the last generation of the Narragansetts, which had a national life. Little more is needed in a view of their relations with the race which has supplanted them. The Biblical studies of the founders of New England awakened a lively interest in the origin of the strange people with whom they had formed an unwilling acquaintance. Some in Europe and America were reluctant to admit that a race whose barbaric manners were at every point in contrast with their own, could have a common ancestry with themselves. In the seven teenth century, the opinion was widely diffused that the American Indians were by natural descent and generation, children of the devil. Some of the theologians who were unaware of the existence of the Straits of Behring, and who imagined that the shortest route from Asia was by the way of Cape Horn, found it difficult to explain to their own satisfaction, how, without such a parentage, thousands of barbarians could have found their way across the Pacific, and have been diffused over the American Continent. The earliest historian of Massachusetts, Hubbard, adopted a more moderate hypothesis.' Referring with approval to the learned Joseph Mede, he was of opinion that at some remote and undiscoverable period, the devil finding the old world no longer suited to his operations, "seduced a company of silly wretches" for his own abominable and "diabolical service," into a wilderness where they practice their diabolic rites without hindrance or obstruction. This opinion "carries the greatest probability of truth with it." (1) Hubbard, "General history of New England," chap. 6. (2) In an equally enlightened spirit, Hubbard, chap. 7, thought that the religion and manners of the Indians were mere diabolism, and unworthy of Christian enquiry. To the like effect see Johnson's "Wonder-working Providence," 2d series, Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., VIII. 28-29. So, Winslow, 2d series, IX. 94. "The pnieses are men of great courage and wisdom, and to these also the devil appeareth more familiarly than to others, and as we conceive maketh covenant with them to preserve them from death," etc. See Upham's "Salem Witchcraft," I. 396, et subs. for other citations. (3) 2d series, Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., V. 26. |