The English Entered A Indigenous World: Borderlands, Diplomacy, and Power in Early New England 

A Indigenous Landscape

For generations, the history of early New England has often been told as the story of English colonization. The arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620 is frequently portrayed as the beginning of a new political order, one in which European settlements steadily expanded while Indigenous peoples gradually disappeared from the historical narrative. Maps depicting neatly defined tribal territories give the impression that Indigenous nations occupied fixed, static, and unchanging boundaries until English colonists replaced them with colonial governments.[1] Yet, the documentary record tells a far more complex story.

When the English arrived in southern New England, they did not enter an empty wilderness, nor did they immediately establish political dominance over the region. They entered a sophisticated Indigenous world shaped by diplomacy, kinship, trade, warfare, and overlapping spheres of influence that had evolved over countless generations. Powerful Indigenous nations, including the Pokanokets, Narragansetts, Pequots, Mohegans, Nipmucs, and many others were already maintaining political relationships that extended far beyond the boundaries later drawn on colonial maps. In this sense, rivers served as highways, kinship networks crossed political frontiers, and territorial influence often shifted through diplomacy and military strength rather than fixed borders.[2] Yet, in the early 17th century this landscape would be irrevocably altered by outside forces beyond their control or comprehension. 

“The Great Dying” was the first epidemic that swept coastal New England between 1616 and 1619,  dramatically altered this landscape. The Pokanokets, whose principal seat lay at Sowams under the leadership of Massasoit Ousamequin, suffered unimaginable losses, with as many as 90% of their people succumbing to foreign pathogens introduced from across the Atlantic. Their longtime rivals, the Narragansetts, were affected far less severely, creating a significant shift in the regional balance of power.[3] Yet demographic catastrophe did not erase Indigenous political authority. Instead, it intensified diplomacy, competition, and strategic alliance-building as Indigenous leaders adapted to rapidly changing circumstances.[4] For it was still an Indigenous world, as tribes who were less afflicted by this strange new design took the opportunity to press their advantage against their rivals.

Within this context, the alliance forged between Ousamequin and Plymouth in 1621 should therefore be understood not as the beginning of English control, but as one Indigenous leader's pragmatic, and calculated response to a region experiencing extreme geopolitical turbulence. Therefore, the struggling English settlement of Plymouth became another participant in an existing Indigenous political system in the first half of the 17th century. For decades afterward, colonial governments continued to negotiate with Indigenous sachems, purchase lands from multiple Indigenous leaders, seek military alliances, and carefully monitor relationships among neighboring nations whose decisions often determined the success or failure of colonial settlements.[5]

 Perhaps nowhere is this continuing Indigenous agency more clearly preserved than in the competing claims surrounding Moshassuck (Providence) and Aquidneck Island. Rather than demonstrating simple or exclusive ownership by a single Indigenous tribe, the deeds, treaties, and diplomatic negotiations associated with these places reveal overlapping Indigenous jurisdictions and evolving spheres of influence. The very existence of multiple letters, deeds, or documents involving different sachems should not be mistaken as evidence of historical confusion, or error on part of those colonel witnesses. [6] In truth, these accounts provide a reflection of a political landscape in which Indigenous authority was continually negotiated between different parties.

This article argues that the early decades of colonial New England cannot be understood through the lens of fixed territorial tribal boundaries or inevitable English expansion. Instead, they are better understood as an era in which Indigenous nations continued to shape the political geography of southern New England through diplomacy, alliance-building, warfare, and negotiation. The Pokanokets and Narragansetts remained active rivals, each adapting to changing demographic and political realities while competing for influence across important borderlands such as Providence and Aquidneck Island. Rather than marking the end of Indigenous history, the arrival of the English introduced another participant into an already complex Indigenous world.[7] A world whose people have called what we know as New England today home for at least 12,000 years and would continue to do so in the years following 1620.

Before Plymouth: An Indigenous World

When European explorers first entered southern New England during the early 16th century, they encountered neither an empty wilderness nor a collection of isolated villages. Instead, they found a densely inhabited Indigenous homeland connected by rivers, coastal waterways, established trails, kinship networks, diplomacy, trade, and long-standing political relationships. Long before the arrival of permanent English settlements, Indigenous nations had developed sophisticated systems of governance, laws, and customs. Their numerous permanent and seasonal settlements densely lined the coasts, river valleys, and estuaries of southern New England, forming an interconnected cultural and political landscape.  Authority operated through multiple layers of governance that balanced local autonomy with regional cooperation. Individual sachems (chiefs) exercised considerable authority within their own sachemships (tribal territories), governing according to local customs and the needs of their communities. At the same time, these sachemships participated in broader political alliances and paramount chiefdoms that enabled neighboring peoples to coordinate diplomacy, defense, trade, and the management of shared resources [8] Interestingly in many respects, this system of layered authority between local and regional governments mirrored  to a degree, the later principles of federalism adopted by the United States centuries later. This layered political world was not theoretical, but lived and practiced across the many Indigenous nations of southern New England. 

Among the most influential of these Indigenous polities were the Pokanokets, Narragansetts, Pequots, Mohegans, Nipmucs, Massachusetts, and numerous other Indigenous communities whose relationships continually evolved through diplomacy, intermarriage, warfare, trade, and ceremony. Political authority rested not upon surveyed boundaries or permanent frontier lines but upon networks of kinship, reciprocal obligations, military influence, and recognized spheres of authority.[9] This misunderstanding occurs most sharply when contemporary audiences rely on their knowledge of modern maps to understand the past. This often encourages the mistaken impression that each Indigenous nation occupied a fixed territory with clearly defined borders resembling those of present-day nation states or municipalities. Such maps can be useful teaching tools, but they inevitably oversimplify a much more dynamic political landscape. Rivers, forests, and bays frequently served not as rigid boundaries but as shared, or contested spaces where neighboring peoples hunted, fished, traded, conducted diplomacy, and negotiated access according to longstanding customs and changing political circumstances.[10] 

This does not mean that territory lacked meaning. Indigenous nations clearly recognized homelands, defended important resources, and understood where one community's primary influence gave way to another's. Yet these transitions often resembled frontier zones or borderlands rather than sharply defined political borders. Authority could overlap, shift over time, or be exercised simultaneously by neighboring sachems depending upon kinship, seasonal use, military strength, or diplomatic agreement.[11] In this way, southern New England was particularly characterized by these overlapping relationships. The Narragansett Bay watershed linked rather than divided neighboring peoples. Mishoon (canoe) water routes connected Mount Hope (Montaup), Sowams, Moshassuck, Aquidneck Island, the Pawtuxet Valley, and Narragansett territory into an interconnected Indigenous world where diplomacy and mobility were constant features of daily life.[12] Political influence moved along these waterways just as readily as trade, families, and ideas.

 Borderlands: Moshassuck & Aquidneck

If the documentary record tells us anything about 17th century southern New England, it is that Indigenous political life did not end with the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620 or the alliance between Ousamequin and Plymouth in 1621. Too often, the early colonial period is presented as though Indigenous peoples simply faded into the background while English settlements gradually assumed control. The surviving deeds, treaties, and diplomatic correspondence tell a very different story.

Indigenous peoples were not a monolith. The Pokanokets, Narragansetts, Pequots, Mohegans, Nipmucs, and other neighboring nations remained distinct political communities, each pursuing its own interests, maintaining its own alliances, and responding differently to the profound changes brought by epidemic disease and European settlement. The Great Dying transformed the political landscape, but it did not erase Indigenous agency. Rather, Indigenous leaders continued adapting to changing circumstances through diplomacy, negotiation, alliance-building, and competition for regional influence.[13] This continued Indigenous agency is precisely what produced the borderlands preserved in the historical record. These borderlands emerged because neighboring Indigenous nations maintained overlapping political interests within the same landscapes. These were not empty spaces or undefined frontiers. They were places where influence was continually negotiated through kinship, diplomacy, trade, seasonal use, military strength, and political relationships. Cooperation and competition often existed simultaneously, making these regions among the most dynamic parts of the Indigenous world.

Indeed, the continued interaction between the Pokanokets and Narragansetts demonstrates that Indigenous politics remained active long after English settlement began. Ousamequin, Canonicus, Miantonomi, Wamsutta, and other sachems continued negotiating alliances, asserting influence, and responding to changing circumstances as they had long before the English arrived. Rather than replacing Indigenous politics, the arrival of the English introduced another political actor into an already existing Indigenous geopolitical landscape. Colonial settlements themselves became part of Indigenous diplomacy, serving at different times as allies, trading partners, military counterweights, and diplomatic instruments within ongoing Indigenous rivalries.[14] 

This continuing Indigenous agency is precisely what produced the borderlands preserved in the documentary record. Borderlands existed because neighboring Indigenous nations maintained overlapping political interests within the same landscapes. These were not empty spaces or undefined frontiers but places where authority was continually negotiated through kinship, diplomacy, trade, seasonal use, military strength, and political relationships. [15] Cooperation and competition frequently existed side by side, creating dynamic political landscapes rather than rigid territorial boundaries.

Few places illustrate this more clearly than Moshassuck (Providence) and Aquidneck Island. Rather than revealing simple transfers of land from one Indigenous nation to another, the documents surrounding both places preserve evidence of continuing Indigenous diplomacy decades after Plymouth's founding. They demonstrate that the English did not enter a political vacuum. They entered an Indigenous world in which neighboring Native nations continued asserting overlapping interests and negotiating their respective spheres of influence.[16]

Roger Williams's settlement at Moshassuck provides perhaps the clearest example. Williams negotiated with the Narragansett sachems Canonicus and Miantonomi when establishing Providence in 1636, yet the documentary record did not end with those transactions. The Providence Plantation Agreement of 1640 reveals an English community still organizing its own civil government and methods of distributing land while operating within an Indigenous political landscape whose authority predated English settlement.[17] The record becomes even more revealing a few decades later. In 1661, identified in the document as the sachem of Pokanket, Wamsutta (Alexander) the eldest son and successor of Ousamequin, signed a deed conveying or confirming English interests in lands associated with Providence at Moshassuck.[18] Read together with the earlier Narragansett deed, these documents do not establish exclusive ownership by either Indigenous nation. Instead, they demonstrate that the Providence proprietors themselves, including Roger Williams recognized the continuing political importance of both Pokanoket and Narragansett authority in this landscape, signing separate documents with both people accordingly. Had Indigenous political claims simply disappeared after 1621, no such additional negotiations would have been necessary.

Aquidneck Island presents an equally compelling example. When William Coddington and his associates sought to settle the island in 1638, the local sachem Wonnumetonomey referred them to Canonicus and Miantonomi as the appropriate authorities to negotiate with. Yet only months later, Ousamequin separately granted permission for the settlers to harvest grass and timber from the mainland opposite Aquidneck in exchange for wampum.[19] Rather than contradicting one another,again these documents reveal layered Indigenous political authority operating within a shared landscape. Just like the settlers of Providence, the English at Aquidneck could not secure lasting stability through a single purchase from a single Indigenous leader.  English settlement advanced not by unilaterally bypassing Indigenous spheres of influence but by navigating around it to secure their own needs.

The English Entered An Indigenous World

The surviving documentary record from 17th century southern New England challenges one of the most enduring assumptions of early American history, that Indigenous political life rapidly disappeared following the arrival of the Pilgrims. Instead, the evidence reveals something far more dynamic. The English entered an existing Indigenous geopolitical world whose leaders continued shaping diplomacy, settlement, trade, warfare, and territorial relationships for decades after Plymouth's founding. The Pokanokets, Narragansetts, and their neighboring nations did not simply witness the making of colonial New England but rather actively shaped it.

The competing deeds associated with Moshassuck and Aquidneck illustrate this reality particularly well. Read in isolation, each document appears to tell a different story. Read together however, they reveal a political mosaic in which multiple Indigenous tribes continued exercising authority over overlapping spheres of influence. The repeated negotiations involving Canonicus, Miantonomi, Ousamequin, Wamsutta, and English settlers demonstrate that Indigenous political relationships remained both meaningful and necessary for their colonies' survival. Had Indigenous authority simply vanished after the Great Dying or the 1621 Pokanoket alliance with Plymouth, such repeated negotiations would have served little purpose. Instead, English colonists themselves recognized that lasting settlement often required navigating existing Indigenous diplomacy rather than simply bypassing it.

This perspective also reminds us that Indigenous peoples should never be understood as a single, unified political body. The Pokanokets, Narragansetts, Pequots, Mohegans, Nipmucs, and many other Indigenous nations each pursued their own interests, forged their own alliances, and responded differently to the profound challenges of the 17th century. They cooperated at times, competed at others, and continually adapted to changing demographic, military, and political circumstances. Their rivalries and relationships did not disappear with the arrival of Europeans. Rather, they exemplified the resilience of the human spirit and adapted to the presence of English colonists in an already existing Indigenous political world.

Understanding early colonial New England through this lens fundamentally changes how we interpret its history in the present. Instead of viewing Providence and Aquidneck as isolated disputes over land rights, they become windows into a broader Indigenous political landscape where diplomacy, kinship, alliance, and negotiation shaped competing spheres of influence. The English did not create this world. Nor did they immediately replace it but rather learned to operate within political systems that Indigenous peoples had developed over countless generations.

Perhaps that holds the most important insight for us to ponder for this message. The first half of 17th century colonial New England was not simply a story of English settlement. It was equally a story of Indigenous resilience, diplomacy, and political adaptation. The Great Dying altered the balance of power but did not erase Indigenous agency. The documentary record repeatedly demonstrates that Indigenous leaders continued determining where colonists settled, with whom they negotiated, and what constituted legitimate political authority. In restoring these Indigenous voices and relationships to the center of the story, we gain a more complete understanding not only of Providence and Aquidneck, but of early New England itself. The English did not inherit an empty landscape after 1621. They entered an Indigenous world.

Endnotes

1. Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500–1643 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983).

2. Kathleen J. Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 1500–1650 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996); Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), esp. Introduction.

3. David J. Silverman, This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019), 32–48; Virginia Baker, Massasoit's Town: Sowams in the Seventeenth Century (Plymouth, MA: Plymouth 400, 2020).

4. Salisbury, Manitou and Providence, 89–117; Silverman, This Land Is Their Land, 40–58.

5. Mourt's Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, ed. Dwight B. Heath (Boston: Applewood Books, 1963); William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952); Edward Winslow, Good Newes from New England (London, 1624).

6. Glenn W. LaFantasie, ed., The Correspondence of Roger Williams, 2 vols. (Providence: Brown University Press, 1988); F. A. Arnold, ed., The Narragansett Historical Register, vols. 3–4 (Providence, RI: Narragansett Historical Publishing Company, 1884–1886), 238; Howard M. Chapin, Documentary History of Rhode Island, vol. 2 (Providence: Preston and Rounds Co., 1919).

7. Juliana Barr, "Geographies of Power: Mapping Indian Borders in the 'Borderlands' of the Early Southwest," William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 1 (2011): 5–46; Pekka Hämäläinen, Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America (New York: Liveright, 2022); Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin.

8. Kathleen J. Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 1500–1650 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 1–38; Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500–1643 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 1–24.

9. Salisbury, Manitou and Providence, 25–67; Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 1–25.

10. William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 53–81; Kathleen J. Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 91–122.

11. Juliana Barr, "Geographies of Power: Mapping Indian Borders in the 'Borderlands' of the Early Southwest," William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 1 (2011): 5–46; Pekka Hämäläinen, Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America (New York: Liveright, 2022), 3–20.

12. Virginia Baker, Massasoit's Town: Sowams in the Seventeenth Century (Plymouth, MA: Plymouth 400, 2020); Howard M. Chapin, Documentary History of Rhode Island, vol. 2 (Providence: Preston and Rounds Co., 1919), 35–42; William Wood, New England's Prospect (London, 1634).

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

14.  William Bradford and Edward Winslow, Mourt's Relation or Journal of the Plantation at Plymouth (Boston: J. K. Wiggin, 1865), 96–97; Virginia Baker, Massasoit's Town: Sowams in the Seventeenth Century (Plymouth, MA: Plymouth 400, 2020). 

15. Juliana Barr, "Geographies of Power: Mapping Indian Borders in the 'Borderlands' of the Early Southwest," William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 1 (2011): 5–46. 

16. Howard M. Chapin, Documentary History of Rhode Island, vol. 2, Being the History of the Towns of Portsmouth and Newport to 1647 and the Court Records of Aquidneck (Providence: Preston and Rounds, 1919), 24–31. 

17. Providence (R.I.) Record Commissioners, The Early Records of the Town of Providence, 21 vols. (Providence: Snow & Farnham, 1892–1915). 

18. F. A. Arnold, ed., The Narragansett Historical Register, vols. 3–4 (Providence, RI: Narragansett Historical Publishing Company, 1884–1886), 238. 

19. Howard M. Chapin, Documentary History of Rhode Island, vol. 2, 24–41.