Page:What cheer, or, Roger Williams in banishment (1896).pdf/209

 STANZA LXIV.

For they were gone to Potowomet's fires.

The words Note or Yote signified fire; Potowash, to make fire; Wame signified all, and Et is a termination denoting place. If this be so, it would seem that Potowamet, signified the place of all the fires, or places where all the tribes assembled and kindled their council or festal fires. The shell-fish, in which the shores of Potowomet abound, and the numerous remains of Indian feasts found on the upland, offer additional proof of the correctness of this inference. CANTO FOURTH. STANZA II. There bristled darts—there glittered lances sheen.

Lances were arms which distinguished their sachems and other leaders. At this early period the Indians had scarcely become familiarized to the use of fire-arms. The French and Dutch had indeed begun to supply them with these strange implements of death; but the English colonists had taken every precaution to prevent their being furnished with them. There were, however, no restraints on the trade of knives, hatchets, lances, &c.

STANZA XX.

On settles raised around the mounting blaze Sit gray Wauontom, Keenomp, Sagamore. Wauontom, a counsellor; Keenomp, a captain; Sagamore, a chief or sachem. Is sage Canonicus.

Williams considered Canonicus, at the time he wrote his Key to the Indian Languages, about fourscore years old.