Testimony of Wait Winthrop and James Avery
We whose names are underwritten, attending our commission, sent three messengers to Ninigret to acquaint him we desired to speak with him at Mr. Stanton’s house or on the east side of Pawcatuck River. His return you have in another paper, inviting us to run to him. Wherefore, on Monday morning1 we were making ready to go to him, when a paper was sent to us, the original you have. The bearer, William Moore, threatened us he should see us anon and declared he should see Ninigret before us and that if we came with a thousand men, we could not come to speak with him and asked why we carried arms in a fearing way. Upon some acknowledgment of his error, we sent him away with a brief answer to those that sent him. When he came to his employers, he told them we were going twenty men armed to take Ninigret and two Indians were sent by Crandall Post to Ninigret before us to inform him as two Indian messengers told us before Ninigret. We went thirteen persons to Ninigret. You have an account of what we did with him in our return. A company of fellows stood in the common road of which the above named William Moore was one and the tinker another with a club in his hand. They stood their ground till we came up in the path close to them. And one of them, to wit, Stephen Wilcox with his constable called to us that he had order to examine us upon what account we rode armed through the King’s Province and that they heard we went to fetch Ninigret. It was answered, we will give no account, and Captain Winthrop2 commanded to follow their leader, and we rode on our way.
In the name of the rest being present,
Farther, an Indian called Cuscatame did declare before us that an Indian called Pung was come from Crandall on the Sabbath day before.3 We went to Ninigret and, before him and many Indians, delivered this message from Crandall that the men on the west of the Pawcatuck River would come tomorrow and fetch him away and advised him to go into the swamp and not to be carried away but by force and if any came to lay hold of him to thrust him away and shove him from one Indian to another for what had they to do to come into the province, but to be sure they did not strike. Ninigret replied he would stay where he was for he had sent for them to come to him.
Joseph Stanton, Interpreter
Cataloguing: 20, 24