Advertise in this article

Image via Wikipedia

ROGER WILLIAMS

Born 1599—Died 1683

. . . Indian-haunted Narragansett saw

The way-worn travelers round their camp fire draw,

Or heard the plashing of their weary oars.

And every place whereon they rested grew

Happier for pure and gracious womanhood,

And men whose names for stainless honor stood,

Founders of States and rulers wise and true.

—   WHITTIER'S "Banished from Massachusetts."

—

Six years after Governor Winthrop laid the foundation of Boston, the present state of Rhode Island had its beginning in the little settlement of Providence. In the history of America the name of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, will always be honored.

Williams was born in London of poor parents, and early showed such cleverness that a famous English lawyer paid for the boy's education. After his college days were over, he became a clergyman in the Church of England, and when Winthrop and his friends had been in Boston a year Roger Williams came to America.

The Puritans gave him a hearty welcome, for they found him an eloquent preacher, an excellent scholar, a generous friend and neighbor. He became pastor of the church at Plymouth and later he preached at Salem.

At both places Williams endeared himself to the Indians. He learned their language in order that he might the better help them. "God was pleased," said he, "to give me a patient spirit to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes to gain their tongue."

So well did he succeed in winning the respect and affection of the natives that even Canonicus, who had wished to fight Governor Bradford and Miles Standish, said of Williams: "I love him as my own son." The time came when the Indians' friendship saved the minister's life.

The laws of the Puritans were very severe. A woman who scolded was compelled to stand in a public place with a split stick on the end of her tongue. Men who did wrong were publicly whipped, or were punished for slight offenses by being placed in the stocks or pillory.

At other times offenders were forced to stand on a stool in church during service, with the name of the wrong they had committed written on paper or embroidered on a bit of cloth and pinned to their clothing. Often these punishments were for failure to attend church or to aid in its support.

Great was the surprise of the Puritans when young Roger Williams stoutly declared that these practices were wrong. "Every man," said he, "should be free to choose for himself whether or not he wishes to attend church or to give money to it; and every man should be entitled to vote at the town meeting whether he is a church member or not." And the young pastor was bold enough to say further that the Puritans were not justified in taking land from the Indians without paying them for it. "The king of England does not own this land," declared Williams, "and therefore he has no right to give it away."

These new ideas seriously disturbed the Puritan leaders. They began to fear that, if Roger Williams continued to argue in this manner, people might in time share his belief. Not only were they afraid of having trouble with their own colonists, but they dreaded the king's anger. "If the king hears that the New England settlers believe he had no right to give us the land," said they, "he will take it from us."

So the Puritans decided that it was dangerous to allow Roger Williams to remain in Massachusetts, and that their only safety lay in sending him back to England. They told him, however, that he might stay until spring, provided he would stop preaching.

It happened that in both Salem and Plymouth this bright young pastor had made many friends who were much disappointed at not being allowed to hear him in the pulpit.

They therefore went the more often to see him at his house. When the Puritans found that he still influenced the people, they decided to send him home at once. A sloop was dispatched from Boston to Salem with orders to arrest Williams and put him on a ship bound for England.

By some happy chance Roger Williams learned of the plan before the boat reached Salem. He was a man of great courage and strength of will, and he did not at all relish the thought of being sent back to the mother country. He therefore determined to risk his life in a further attempt to preach his liberal views.

Accordingly, he bade a hasty farewell to his wife and baby, and fled one stormy winter night into the wilderness. For fourteen weeks he traveled through the trackless woods of New England, "sorely tost in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean." He carried a hatchet, a compass, and a flint and steel with which to light a fire. When darkness came he built a shelter of pine boughs. The cry of the wolves was the only sound he heard through the long hour of the night, and for food he had only the dried corn he carried with him, and the acorns picked up in the woods.

At last, when nearly exhausted, he found his way to the wigwam of Massasoit, at the head of Narragansett Bay. The Indians, remembering the minister's great kindness to them, gave him a hearty welcome, and gladly extended such poor shelter as they had.

In the spring the chief presented his young white friend with a tract of land in what is now the state of Rhode Island, which he might send for his friends in the Puritan colonies, and establish a settlement for himself. Aside from this land, Williams and his companions would not use a single acre for which they did not pay.

One day while he was paddling his canoe down the Seekonk River an Indian shouted, "What cheer, friend?" Williams steered his little boat for the rock on which the Indian stood and had a friendly talk with him about that section of the country. The red man pointed out a spot where a spring of clear cold water gushed from the ground; and here the Englishmen afterward decided to begin their settlement.

The rock has ever since been called What Cheer Rock; and, because Williams believed that God's good providence had guarded his life during those perilous weeks in the forest, he in gratitude named the new settlement Providence. Such was the beginning of the city of Providence, today the second largest city in New England.

News of this new colony, where so much freedom was allowed, spread rapidly, and many people from the older colonies and from England soon joined it. As it grew, it became a refuge for all people whom the Massachusetts Puritans would not tolerate.

The Boston and Salem colonists would not permit the Quakers to remain among them, but treated them harshly and cruelly, so they took up their abode in Rhode Island. Another sect was led by Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, a clever Boston woman, who did not like the strict customs of the Puritan ministers and dared to say so. The General Court met in Boston to discuss her case, and decided that she was "as bad as Roger Williams, or worse," and she and her family and friends were turned out of the colony. They found a welcome in Rhode Island, where they purchased land from the Indians and founded Newport and Portsmouth.

After a time Williams went to England and procured a liberal charter for his colony. He later visited England twice, and formed friendships with many distinguished men. In America he was loved by his colonists and by the Indians, and his influence over the latter was very great. This influence, and the fact that Roger Williams was too noble to harbor ill feeling, later saved the lives of the Massachusetts Puritans.

While the colonies were still young and weak, the Pequot Indians induced the neighboring tribe of Narragansett to join in plotting a wholesale massacre of all the whites in New England. As soon as Williams heard this news, he set out in his canoe one stormy night for the village of the Narragansett.

The Indians as usual welcomed him heartily, and listened with patience to his able pleading for the lives of the white settlers. At last the old chief refused to allow his tribe to join the Pequot, and the colonists were able to defend themselves against the smaller number. Although the Puritans had turned Williams out of their community, his advice was often sought by Governor Winthrop and his colonists.

To Roger Williams’ splendid strength of character was added robust physical health. When he was seventy-three years old, he rowed a boat from Providence to Newport, a distance of thirty miles, and three years later he organized and drilled a. company of militia, when it was feared that there would be an Indian war. He died at the age of eighty-four in the city that he had founded.

He was the first to establish a colony in America where religious liberty might be enjoyed by all men of all nations and beliefs. The great principle of entire freedom of worship, for which Roger Williams suffered exile, grew steadily, until more than a hundred years later it became a part of the Constitution of the United States. Today this liberty is enjoyed by the people from all lands who make the United States their home.

The year 1636, in which the first settlement in Rhode Island was planted, saw the beginnings of Connecticut. Three years before, the Dutch, who had begun to explore and settle in America, built a fort near the site of the present city of Hartford.

About the same time Pilgrims from Plymouth sailed up the Connecticut River and built a trading-post. Later the Pilgrims built a fort at the mouth of the river to keep the Dutch out of the Connecticut valley, and thus secure the valuable fur trade for themselves. In 1636 a large body of English colonists founded Hartford and Windsor. Two years later the colony of New Haven was founded.

In 1643 four of the New England colonies — Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven —united; but the Puritans would not allow Rhode Island to join them, although she desired to do so. This confederation was known as The United Colonies of New England, and it was the first step toward the United States of America. It was formed for better protection against Indian attacks, and also for protection against possible invasion by the Dutch.

Roger Williams
Download the worksheets and text for this unit here. Must be logged in to download.
10-24-2010  183.63 KB 58