Author: Rhode Island Historical Society
Publisher: General Books
Published: 2012-02-01
Total Pages: 262
ISBN-13: 9781458965707
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: of wampum, and other things of Oldham's which should be reserved for us;?that three of those who were drowned, were Sachems.?So we wrote back, that we held Ca- nonicus and Meantinomy innocent, but the six under Sachems, guilty. VV. J. ] 1636. Meantinomy, Sachem ofNarragansett, sent a messenger to us with a letter from Mr. Williams, to signify to us that they had taken one of the Indians who had escaped, and had him safe for us: the other he had sent away, not knowing he had been our prisoner. But we conceived it was rather in love to him, for he had been his servant, formerly. August, 1636. The English of Massachusetts fitted out an expedition against Block Island and the Pequots. J Endicott and four Captains under him, with twenty men apiece, set sail and arrived at Block Island the last of the month. There were about forty Indians on the shore ready to meet them. As soon as one jumped on shore, they all fled. The Island is about ten miles long, and four broad; full of small hills, and all overgrown with small brushwood of oak, no good timber in it; so that we could not march but in one file in the narrow path .There were two plantations, three miles asunder, and about sixty wigwams; some very large and fair; about 200 acres of corn, some gathered andlaid in heaps, and the rest standing. Not finding the Indians, they burned the huts, the mats and corn, and departed.. W. J.] Wampum was the Indian medium of exchange. It was of two sorts; black, made of the Poquauhock on quahaug; the white, made of periwinkles. It was made by the Indians on the sea shore, and the inland Indians afterwards learned to manufacture it. The English learned the trade in it from the Dutch. See ft. Williams's Key, 126. P. C. 249. .M. M. 133. Hubbard'sN. E. 100.] It seems the Indians got...