home of Pocasset,
east of Mount Hope. By the first week in August of 1676, she had only
twenty-six men left, out of her three hundred.

Then there came to the colonists at Taunton, which lay up the river
Taunton from Pocasset, another deserter, with word that he could lead
them to the little Wetamoo camp, not far southward.

Twenty armed English descended upon her, August 6, and easily overcame
her camp. She alone escaped, in flight. She had no thought of
surrendering herself into slavery.

In making her way to Pocasset, she "attempted," reads the tale, "to get
over a river or arm of the sea near by, upon a raft, or some pieces of
broken wood; but whether tired and spent with swimming, or starved with
cold and hunger, she was found stark naked in Metapoiset [near present
Swansea of southern Massachusetts, at the Rhode Island line], not far
from the water side, which made some think she was first half drowned;
and so ended her wretched life."

No respect was paid to her. Her head was cut off and hoisted upon a
pole in the town of Taunton, as revenge for the similar beheading of
some English bodies, earlier in the war. When, in Taunton, the
Pocasset captives saw the head--"They made a most horrid and diabolical
lamentation, crying out that it was their queen's head."

Here let us close the melancholy story of the warrior queen Wetamoo,
who as the companion-in-arms of her sachem sought to avenge her
husband's death, as well as to save her country from the foreigner.
However, Wetamoo and Philip together dragged the once mighty
Narragansetts down. This brings to the surface the tale of Canonchet,
the big-hearted.

The Narragansetts were a large and warlike people, and hard fighters.
Their country covered nearly all present Rhode Island; the city of
Providence was founded in their midst, when the great preacher Roger
Williams sought refuge among them. They conquered other tribes to the
north and west. When King Philip rose in 1675 they numbered, of
themselves, five thousand people, and could put into the field two
thousand warriors.

In the beginning, under their noble sachem Can-on-i-cus, they were
friendly to the English colonists. While Roger Williams lived among
them they stayed friendly. They agreed to a peace with Sachem
Massasoit's Pokanokets, who occupied the rest of Rhode Island, east
across Narragansett Bay. They marched with the English and the
Mohegans to wipe out the hostile Pequots.

Canoni