Page:Massasoit's town Sowams in Pokanoket, its history, legends and traditions (IA massasoitstownso00bake).pdf/25

Rh sought refuge with Massasoit, Rhode Island's great educational institution (Rhode Island College, now Brown University), began its career within a few rods of the site of the royal wigwam which, presumably, sheltered the Salem exile.

On September 25, 1639, Massasoit and his eldest son, then known as Mooanam, "appeared at Court and renewed the ancient league with the Plymouth government," Massasoit "acknowledging himself a subject of the King of England." Thirteen years later, as we find by the records of the colony, an English plantation, "rated" at the value of £01:10:00, existed at Sowams. This settlement was located on the banks of the Kickemuit River in the north-easterty part of the present town of Warren. It was completely destroyed by the Indians during King Philip's war; but, as late as Revolutionary times, the remains of its cellars and hearth stones were still visible. Its northern limit extended to what now constitutes the boundary line separating Warren from North Swansea. Its southern limits approached within less than a mile of the Indian village of the same name. At just what date the first log cabin of a white settler was erected at Sowams we have no means of ascertaining; but it is not unreasonable to suppose that the little hamlet grew up, slowly, around the old trading house.

The Kickemuit River is a picturesque stream which, rising in Swansea, winds along the shores of Warren and Bristol and empties into Mount Hope Bay at a point called by the Indians "Weypoiset," by the English the "Narrows." On the west bank of the river, near the site of the old boundary line of Warren and Bristol, is a living spring still known as Kicke-