Quaiapen, - 1676

Born into a prominent Eastern Niantic family, Quaiapen was sister of sachems Ninigret and Wepitanock.  Around 1630, she married Mixan and had two sons, Scuttup and Quequakanewett, and a daughter Quinimiquet.  A possible union with the Eastern Pequot leader Mamoho may have produced another daughter, Oskoosooduck.  After the death of Mixan in 1657, Quaiapen established leadership over Niantic villages within four miles west of Smith’s trading post in Cocumscossoc, where she lived in a fort made partly of stone.  Following the death of her sons, she became one of the chief Narragansett sachems and gained control over an additional fifteen-mile portion of the Narragansett Country.  In 1667, Quaiapen and Ninigret began a campaign against Metacom’s attempts to forge a Wampanoag-Nipmuck alliance, sending her men to attack the Nipmuck at Quantisset.  But by 1671, she had become persuaded by the Wampanoag’s anti-English argument. In December 1675 soldiers under Josiah Winslow attacked her village, burning 150 wigwams, killing seven and taking nine prisoners.  After the assault, Quaiapen and her people sought refuge in the swamplands to the south. She was killed in the summer of 1676 at Nipsachuk Swamp by Major John Talcott’s forces.  Campbell and LaFanastie, Sachems and Sanups, 17-20.  LaFantasie, The Correspondence of Roger Williams, 578.  Fisher and Silverman, Ninigret, 19, 102, 114, 119.