Aquidneck Island, Ousamequin, and the Problem of Indigenous Borderlands

The 1638 Narragansett deed to Aquidneck Island should be understood not as proof of an ancient, fixed, and uncontested Indigenous boundary, but rather as a documented Indigenous borderland. One that captured a shifting political moment in the aftermath of an unprecedented regional demographic catastrophe. Like many 17th centry land transactions in southern New England, the 1638 Aquidneck deed reflected changing power relations between Indigenous nations rather than timeless territorial ownership. To read the deed as evidence that Aquidneck had always and exclusively belonged to the Narragansetts is to mistake a moment of political advantage for permanence.

The history of Aquidneck Island is better understood through the lens of Indigenous borderlands. Prior to European epidemics, Narragansett Bay was not divided by rigid frontiers but rather by overlapping spheres of influence, kinship ties, seasonal use, diplomacy, and rivalry. Aquidneck, situated between Mount Hope Bay and the western Narragansett mainland, occupied precisely the kind of liminal space that frequently became contested between powerful neighboring Indigenous polities.

The earliest European observations support this interpretation. In 1524, the Florentine navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano entered Narragansett Bay, recording his latitude at approximately 41°40 degrees north, placing him near modern Aquidneck Island and Mount Hope Bay. His descriptions portray a densely inhabited, agriculturally rich landscape occupied by politically organized Indigenous communities. Verrazzano observed large multigenerational family dwellings, cultivated fields, and prosperous settlements, describing the region as thickly peopled and economically abundant. Such observations are difficult to reconcile with the diminished Indigenous world encountered by the English nearly a century later after epidemic devastation. Instead, they correspond more closely with what later became known as the Pokanoket sphere centered at Sowams and Mount Hope, one of the more politically influential Indigenous centers in southern New England before the Great Dying.¹

The geography of the Pokanoket homeland further strengthens this interpretation. Long before European arrival, the East Bay region of modern Rhode Island's Mount Hope and Sowams was one of the most environmentally rich landscapes in southern New England. Archaeologist Virginia Baker describes Pokanoket country as a naturally wealthy region defined by estuaries, sheltered coastal waters, rivers, fertile planting grounds, freshwater ponds, oak and chestnut forests, shellfish beds, and abundant meadows suitable for agriculture and settlement.² This ecological abundance made the East Bay especially attractive for dense Indigenous habitation and explains why Sowams emerged as one of the principal Indigenous population centers in the region.

Environmental historian William Cronon similarly argues that southern New England’s coastal estuaries and managed landscapes supported unusually large populations because Indigenous communities actively shaped their environments through seasonal mobility, horticulture, fishing, and controlled burning.³ The East Bay was not wilderness but a carefully maintained homeland, rich in food resources and transportation networks. Narragansett Bay itself functioned as a major Indigenous corridor, linking communities through diplomacy, kinship, trade, and seasonal movement.

Virginia Baker further notes that Sowams the seat of Ousamequin’s authority, occupied a particularly strategic location between Narragansett Bay, Mount Hope Bay, and inland river systems, making it politically influential and economically prosperous. Before the Great Dying, the Pokanokets were powerful enough to muster 3,000 warriors, suggesting a large supporting population and extensive kinship networks across southern New England.⁴ Such demographic and political strength did not emerge by accident. It grew from centuries of habitation in one of the most geographically favorable environments in the Northeast.

Yet this political landscape changed dramatically around 1616–1619, when a foreign epidemic disease devastated coastal southern New England in what many scholars now call the Great Dying. No Indigenous nation in the region of Narragansetts Bay appears to have suffered more severely than the Pokanokets. Both Edward Winslow and William Bradford describe a people profoundly weakened in the years immediately preceding Plymouth’s arrival. Winslow repeatedly noted that Massasoit Ousamequin entered alliance with Plymouth from a position of vulnerability, facing powerful Narragansetts rivals to the west who had been comparatively spared from the earliest epidemic outbreaks. Bradford similarly emphasized that the Pokanokets had once been numerous and powerful but had been devastated by disease shortly before English settlement, leaving their lands sparsely populated and their political position precarious.⁵

Winslow’s accounts are especially revealing. In Mourt’s Relation and later Good Newes from New England, he records that Ousamequin and his people were being hard pressed by the Narragansetts after the plague. At one point, alarming reports reached Plymouth that Ousamequin had been “driven from his country” by Narragansett pressure and that rival Indigenous leaders sought to weaken his authority among tributary communities.⁶ While the English may not have fully understood the complexities of Indigenous politics, these accounts nonetheless portray a regional power struggle in which Pokanoket authority had weakened considerably after epidemic collapse.

Modern historians similarly understand Pokanoket–Narragansett relations not as a static territorial divide, but as a long-standing regional rivalry shaped by shifting power, diplomacy, kinship, and demographic change. Historian Neal Salisbury argues that the Great Dying fundamentally altered southern New England’s balance of power, weakening the Pokanokets while leaving the Narragansetts comparatively strong and able to exert greater influence across Narragansett Bay.⁷ David J. Silverman likewise interprets Ousamequin’s alliance with Plymouth as a strategic response to mounting Narragansett pressure after epidemic devastation, suggesting that the Pokanokets sought English alliance not from weakness alone, but as a calculated effort to preserve sovereignty amid rivalry with a powerful neighboring Indigenous polity.⁷ Read within this broader historiography, the Narragansett claim to Aquidneck in 1638 may reflect not timeless possession, but a changing regional balance of power in the aftermath of the Great Dying. 

Importantly, neither Winslow nor Bradford explicitly states that Ousamequin “lost” Aquidneck Island to the Narragansetts. Yet their writings clearly describe a broader historical process in which the Pokanokets, devastated by disease, faced mounting pressure and appear to have conceded influence in portions of Narragansett Bay to their western rivals. In this light, the Narragansett claim to Aquidneck in 1638 may best be understood not as evidence of timeless possession, but as part of a post-epidemic political realignment in which Indigenous power shifted alongside demographic catastrophe. 

Surviving Pokanoket oral history itself attests that Aquidneck Island once fell within the sphere of Pokanoket influence before the Great Dying altered the balance of power in Narragansett Bay. To many historians, Indigenous oral traditions have not always stood on equal footing with European documentation, particularly when colonial records appear more concrete or immediate. Yet we must remember what European documents actually are, snapshots in time. They capture a moment within an Indigenous political landscape that was already ancient when Europeans first arrived. Furthermore, Colonial records were created primarily to serve European legal, political, and economic needs rather than preserve a complete account of Indigenous history. 

This does not mean oral traditions should be accepted uncritically, nor does it mean European documents should be treated as infallible. Rather, good historical practice asks us to place them in conversation with one another. Oral histories gain strength when corroborated by geography, archaeology, linguistics, and surviving written evidence. Likewise, colonial records gain deeper meaning when understood within Indigenous systems of diplomacy, kinship, and territorial fluidity. If Pokanoket oral tradition remembers Aquidneck as once falling under Pokanoket influence, and if geography, Verrazzano’s account, the demographic realities of the Great Dying, Winslow and Bradford’s descriptions of Narragansett pressure, modern scholarship on regional rivalry, and Ousamequin’s later contestation all point in the same direction, then such traditions deserve serious consideration rather than dismissal. 

The geography of Narragansett Bay itself further supports the interpretation of Aquidneck as a contested Indigenous borderland. Aquidneck lies immediately adjacent to Mount Hope Bay and only a short distance from Sowams, the principal seat of Pokanoket authority. The island sits geographically closer to the Pokanoket heartland than to the principal Narragansett centers west of the bay. Arthur Sherman Phillips observed that the Pokanokets historically exercised influence throughout the eastern side of Narragansett Bay, including lands later associated with Tiverton, Pocasset, and neighboring island territories. He argued that shifting authority over these regions reflected changing political circumstances rather than rigid ownership boundaries recognizable to Europeans.⁸ 

Primary documentary evidence from the 1638 Aquidneck transaction is especially revealing. In the deed issued to William Coddington and the Portsmouth settlers, Narragansett sachems Canonicus and Miantonomi justified their authority to sell Aquidneck by asserting their “generall Command of this Bay” and the “subjecting” of local sachems on the island. Importantly, this language suggests political dominance rather than unquestioned ancestral ownership. The sachem of Aquidneck identified in colonial sources appears to have been Wonnumetonomey (or a close spelling variation), a local leader who may have navigated the fluid realities of Indigenous diplomacy by acknowledging whichever regional power held greater influence at a given time.⁹ 

Such relationships were not rigidly fixed in the European sense of sovereignty. Indigenous political life in southern New England was often relational and adaptive. A sachem might acknowledge one neighboring power during one generation and another later, depending on warfare, marriage alliances, kinship obligations, or economic necessity. If the Pokanokets were dominant before the Great Dying, Aquidneck sachems may well have acknowledged Pokanoket influence. After epidemic devastation weakened the Pokanokets and strengthened Narragansett leverage, those same relationships may have shifted westward. This would not have been unusual but rather, the normal political rhythms of Indigenous borderlands. 

Equally revealing is what happened after the Narragansett sale. Howard Chapin records that in 1638, shortly after the deed, William Coddington also secured the consent of Ousamequin, providing him with five fathoms of wampum as a “gratuity” concerning Aquidneck Island.¹⁰ If Ousamequin possessed no remembered authority, historical relationship, or lingering claim regarding Aquidneck, there would have been little reason for Coddington to seek his approval at all. English colonists were practical. They generally sought agreement from any Indigenous leader whose influence could later complicate settlement. 

A useful historical analogy may help modern readers understand the problem. Interpreting the 1638 Narragansett deed as proof of timeless ownership is somewhat like examining a map of Europe in 1337 and assuming those medieval wartime borders represented ancient and permanent realities. Political boundaries during moments of upheaval often reflect temporary conditions of military and demographic power rather than enduring historical norms. The Narragansett claim to Aquidneck in 1638 appears best understood in precisely this way, a snapshot of a post-epidemic political order rather than a permanent pre-contact Indigenous geography. 

The 1638 deed captured one moment in time. The deeper task of history is to ask what came before it, what forces shaped it, and what older Indigenous realities may still be faintly visible beneath the surface. Rather than treating the deed or European accounts as an endpoint, we should see them as the beginning of a larger historical inquiry, one that seeks to reconstruct an Indigenous world far older and more complex than colonial records alone can reveal. 

Endnotes

1. Giovanni da Verrazzano, The Voyage of Giovanni da Verrazzano, 1524, in Lawrence C. Wroth, ed., The Voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano, 1524–1528 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 133–45.

2. Virginia Baker, “Massasoit’s Town: Sowams in Pokanoket Country,” in Archaeological Investigations in Rhode Island and Southern New England, ed. Jordan E. Kerber (Westport, MA: Copps Hill Publications, 1985), 83–118.

3. Changes in the Land (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 33–53.

4. Baker, “Massasoit’s Town,” 90–94.

5. Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York: Knopf, 1952), 74–80; Mourt’s Relation, ed. Dwight B. Heath (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1963), 57–65.

6. Good Newes from New England (London, 1624), 26–32; Mourt’s Relation, 95–101.

7. Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500–1643 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 95–108; David J. Silverman, This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 28–45.

8. Arthur Sherman Phillips, The Phillips History of Fall River, Fascicle I: The Aborigines, Explorations and Early Settlements, The Freemen’s and Pocasset Purchases, Boundary Disputes (Fall River, MA, 1941), 10–22.

9. Howard M. Chapin, Documentary History of Rhode Island, vol. 2, The History of the Towns of Portsmouth and Newport to 1647 and the Court Records of Aquidneck (Providence: Preston and Rounds Co., 1919), 36–40.

10. Howard M. Chapin, Documentary History of Rhode Island, vol. 2 (Providence: Preston and Rounds Co., 1919), 40.

11. For broader interpretations of Pokanoket–Narragansett rivalry and post-epidemic shifts in regional Indigenous power, see Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500–1643 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 95–108; David J. Silverman, This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 28–45.