Address from the Massachusetts Governor and Council to the Narragansett Indians

These for our friends and neighbors, the Indian sachems of Narragansett County, and especially unto Pessicus, Ninigret, and the Old Squa Sachem, wife to Mixan, deceased, the Governor and Council of Massachusetts sendeth greeting:

Whereas Captain William Hudson and John Viall of Boston in the name of themselves and others, proprietors of lands and farms in the Narragansett Country,1 have complained unto us of several insolences and injuries offered unto them and their people by several Indians belonging to you, or some of you, who have at sundry times of late offered wrongs unto their people, as burning their hay, killing sundry horses, and in special, about one month since, forced some of their people from their labors in mowing grass upon their own lands and assaulted others in the highway as they rode about their occasions by throwing many stones at them and their horses and beating their horses as they rode upon them with clubs and staves, using many threating speeches to their persons, which actions are not only contrary to humanity but to the covenants made with us in the years 1645,2 wherein you stand obliged not to offer any injury unto us or any of our people, but that if any wrong were offered by the English unto you or your people, you are to complain to the English magistrates or Commissioners of the United Colony.  The consideration of these things and for preventing discord between us and you, which these actions tend unto, we have thought expedient to send these persons with this writing (i.e., Sergeant Richard Waite, Captain William Wright, and Captain Samuel Moseley) to be communicated and interpreted unto you, expecting that you do personally appear at Boston [at the?] General Court on the 22nd of October next, or send some persons as your deputies on your behalf fully empowered, and then and there answer [the?] reason for those violent affronts and injuries [to?] our people and to make satisfaction, promising and assuring [ hole ] [we?] shall have an open ear ready to hear any just complaint of yours against any of our people and endeavor to do you right, and also we promise that yourselves or messengers shall come  and return without any interruption given by us, so desiring your answer by our messengers and your appearance as above, unless in the interim, yourselves do make agreement with Captain Hudson and his company to satisfaction, then we do not desire or expect your appearance.  

Your loving friends and neighbors,

• 1. In July of 1668, the Atherton Company surrendered their lands to the jurisdiction of Connecticut.
• 2. Because of Pessicus’ attack on the Mohegans in the spring of 1645, the United Colonies ordered an attack against the Narragansetts in July of that same year. One month later, On August 28, 1645, the Commissioners of the United Colonies skillfully crafted a peace treaty with the Narragansett leaders, in which several of the provisions of the Treaty of Hartford (1638) were renewed. The 1645 agreement provided, in part, that the Narragansetts make reparations to both the English and the Mohegans, cede land, pay tribute, surrender community members as hostages, and not engage in any hostilities without notifying the English of the cause. Howard Wiford Bell, National Documents: State Papers So Arranged as to Illustrate the Growth of Our Country from 1606 to the Present Day (New York: The Trow Press, 1904),28-33. Adelos Gorton, The Life and Times of Samuel Gorton, (Philadelphia, PA: George S. Ferguson 1907),66-68. Alan Gallay, ed., Colonial Wars of North America, 1512-1763: An Encyclopedia (Abingdon, Oxon.:Routledge, 1996), 469.