Page:Massasoit's town Sowams in Pokanoket, its history, legends and traditions (IA massasoitstownso00bake).pdf/12

6 This tribe, properly speaking, was a confederation of clans each clan having its own headman who was, however, subservient to a chief sachem. The Wampanoags, or Pokanokets as they were also called, were originally a populous and powerful people and it is said that, at one period, their chief was able to rally around him no less than 3,000 warriors. The father of Massasoit, according to the testimony of his illustrious son, waged war successfully against the Narragansetts; and Annawon, King Philip's great captain, boasted to his captor, Church, of the "mighty success he had formerly in wars against many nations of Indians, when he served Asuhmequin, Philip's father." About three years before the settlement of Plymouth, however, a terrible plague devastated the country of the Wampanoags and greatly diminished their numbers. Governor Bradford, alluding to this pestilence, states that "thousands of them dyed, they not being able to burie one another," and that "their sculs and bones were found in many places lying still above ground, where their houses and dwellings had been; a very sad specktacle to behould." The Narragansetts who were so fortunate as to escape the plague, took advantage of the weakness of their ancient foes, wrested from them one of the fairest portions of their domain the island of Aquidneck, (Rhode Island) and compelled Massasoit to subject "himself and his lands," to their great sachem Canonicus. In 1620, the Pokanoket chieftain could summon to his aid only about 300 fighting men, sixty of whom were his immediate followers. Yet Massasoit, despite his weakness, contrived to maintain his supremacy over the petty sachems of the various clans of the Wampanoag confederacy. The sagamores of the Islands of Nantucket and Nope or Capawack (Martha's Vineyard), of Pocasset, (Tiverton), Saconet