of the United Colonies met in Boston and the case of Miantonomo
came before them. The commissioners were afraid to take the
responsibility of setting the Narragansett sachem free, because
they had promised to protect Uncas and they felt that Uncas would
not be safe while Miantonomo lived, yet they had no reason to put
him to death. At last, after long deliberation, they decided that
he should be given back to Uncas and that Uncas, if he chose,
might put him to death; but he must do it in his own land, not
in the English settlements, and there must be no torture.

[Illustration: MIANTONOMO'S MONUMENT
Courtesy of the Cranston Co., Norwich, Conn.]

So Uncas came to Hartford "with some considerable number of his
best and trustiest men," and having received his prisoner, he set
out with him on the fatal journey. The English sent two of their
own men with him to see that the sentence was duly executed. They
went through the forests until they had passed the English
boundaries and had come upon land that belonged to the Mohegans,
and, therein the wilderness, the brother of Uncas, who walked
behind Miantonomo, lifted his hatchet and silently drove it
through the captive chieftain's head.

On Sachem's Plain a great heap of stones soon marked the spot
where Miantonomo had been overtaken, for each Mohegan warrior who
passed the place cast a stone on the pile with a shout of
triumph, and each Narragansett added to it with cries of sorrow
and lamentation for the loss of a noble leader. In after years
the stones disappeared, and a monument was erected on the spot in
1841, in honor of the Narragansett sachem. It is a large, square