Note 12 — Chapter 2 OF THEIR BEING MENACED BY THE NARRAGANSETTS, AND THEIR SECOND VOYAGE TO THE MASSACHUSETTS.

The Narragansetts were a numerous and powerful tribe that occupied nearly the whole of the present territory of the State of Rhode Island, including the islands in Narragansett Bay. They had escaped the pestilence which had depopulated other parts of New England, and their population at this time was estimated at thirty thousand, of whom five thousand were warriors. Roger Williams says they were so populous that a traveller would meet with a dozen Indian towns in twenty miles. They were a martial and formidable race, and were frequently at war with the Pokanokets on the east, the Pequots on the west, and the Massachusetts on the north. See Gookin in Mass. Hist. Coll. i. 147; Callender in R. I. Hist. Coll. iv. 123; Potter’s Early History of Narragansett, ibid. iii. 1, and Hutchinson’s Mass. i. 457.