Page:Massasoit's town Sowams in Pokanoket, its history, legends and traditions (IA massasoitstownso00bake).pdf/23

Rh compelled to constantly cross and recross in their traffic with the Indians. Moreover, as early as 1652, an English settlement had been planted in what now constitutes the north-easterly porlion of Warren on the banks of the Kickemuit River, and it seems only reasonable to suppose that the colonists placed their homes in close proximity to the trading house, which, probably, was also a fort.

Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts states in his "Journal," under the date, April 12, 1632; "The Governor received letters from Plymouth signifying that there had been a broil between their men at Sowamset and the Narragansett Indians who set upon the English house there to have taken Owsamequin the Sagamore of Packanocott, who fled thither, with all the people, for refuge; and that Captain Standish being gone thither, to relieve the three English which were in the house, sent home in all haste for more men and other provisions, upon intelligence that Canonicus, with a great army, was coming against them; on that they wrote to our Governor for some powder, to be sent with all possible speed; for it seemed they were unfurnished. Upon this, the Governor presently despatched away the messenger with so much powder as he could carry, viz., 27 pounds. The messenger returned and brought a letter from the Governor (Bradford) signifying that the Indians were retired from Sowamsett to fight the Pequots."

The Narragansetts feared and disliked the white men. The Old Indian Chronicle states that they were jealous of Massasoit "because he had, from the first, been in high favor with the English." Naturally they would have viewed the establishment of an English trading post at Sowams with displeasure. Whether their hostility to the whites led to the "broil" at Sowams, or whether, as has been suggested,