Southern New England – 1638-45, image 14 of 19
Signatures of Miantonomo and Canonicus
“All these went forth with the God-speeds and good wishers of the brethren of Massachusetts; but not so with the founders of Rhode Island. Roger Williams fled out into the night and the winter’s storm, with the order of the General Court behind him, the officers of the law in hot pursuit, and a ship waiting in the offing to bear him into perpetual banishment across the sea. The shelter which puritan intolerance denied him he sought and found among savage friends. As he, the next spring, with only five companions, paddled his canoe along the shore of Providence Bay, their thoughts were less of hierarchies and of commonwealths, than where the sunniest slope could be found for a field of maize, the most sheltered and convenient nook for huts.”
“Mooshausick, as the place was called where Williams hope to find rest at last – and which he named Providence, because, he said, ‘of God’s merciful providence unto me in my distress’ – he desired, also, ‘might be for a shelter for those distressed in conscience.’ It was not long ere such asylums were needed. Whether the exercise then and there of the right of fee thought and free speech was wise or foolish, whether it was harmless or baneful either to church or state, the attempt to suppress that right was altogether futile.”
“Roger Williams had not long to wait for companionship. Within two years from the time of his landing upon Slate Rock such accessions were made to his colony that ‘the lands on the two fresh rivers, Wowasquatuckett and Mooshausick,’ granted to him by Canonicus and Miantonomo, he conveyed to twelve associates for thirty pounds. These incorporated themselves and all that should be subsequently admitted, into a township, promising to render ‘an active or passive obedience to all such orders or agreements as shall be made for public good, by the consent of the majority. But the submissions was to be ‘only in civil things.’ ”