Once Upon a Time in Connecticut by Caroline Clifford Newton
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page 20 of 125 (16%)
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any Pequots, but after two days he admitted the fact and promised
to do whatever the council demanded. Half an hour later he came to the governor and made the following speech. Laying his hand on his breast, he said:-- "This heart is not mine, but yours; I have no men, they are all yours; command me any difficult thing, I will do it; I will not believe any Indian's word against the English. If any man shall kill an Englishman I will put him to death were he never so dear to me." The governor in response "gave him a fair red coat, and defrayed his and his men's diet, and gave them corn to relieve them homeward, and a letter of protection to all men, and he departed very joyful." Uncas had now become a dangerous rival of Miantonomo, and the jealousy between them soon grew so great that it threatened to break out in open war. In 1638 they were both called to Hartford by the Connecticut authorities to settle the differences between them. Miantonomo obeyed this summons at once and set out with a great company, "a guard of upwards of one hundred and fifty men and many sachems and his wife and children," and traveled through the forests that lay between the villages of the Narragansetts in Rhode Island and the English settlements in the Connecticut valley. On the way he heard that the Mohegans had planned to attack him, that they had laid an ambush for him, and had threatened to "boil him in a kettle." Some Indians of a friendly |
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