When Roger Williams was banished he set out alone into a blizzard in a harsh New England winter. He would survive to separate church and state in a brand new settlement that would become Rhode Island.
Roger Williams wrote little that has survived about his 14 week winter stay in the wilderness of New England. The resulting absence of fact has led to a plethora of theories. There are many alternatives to the one in the novel Rekindled.
What we do know is illustrated in a hymn, attached as it was sung in Providence at the First Baptist Church in America on Founder’s Day 2015, quoting what Roger Williams wrote a decade after his survival adventure.
Key clues in these words include:
- His persistent memory is of being alone, as opposed to with other men. In contrast, some oral histories have him with other people. Most speculate both are both correct and friend joined him mid-journey.
- His house was a “hollow tree”. This could be directly true. Over the years time has been speculation about whether he traveled by land or by sea, with most leaning to land as the bay would surely have been frozen. The words Roger Williams “steered a course” and “sorely tossed” could be literal or metaphorical. What is known is that his preferred method of transport both early in his stay (Plymouth) and late in life (when traveling so meet with the Quakers) was canoe or sailing vessel. Canoes then were hollowed out trees, of a size that could resemble a sled.He could have obtained transport mid-journey, or traveled with it. We know something else. A hollowed out tree can be good temporary protection from a cold wind. However, it is not much of a home. Likely he had another way to make “a home” that he could reliably create in multiple locations.
- He was helped by the indigenous people. John Barry says, “probably the Wampanoag”.
Roger Williams certainly was connected to Massasoit of the Wampanoag in his early days. The tribe was low on resources and having trouble with surrounding tribes, and thus motivated to seek English allies to augment their strength.
Examining Roger Williams’s letters, what stands out to me is his mention of the Nipmuc in his letters soon after his banishment. Additionally he obtains his new land from the Narragansett. Banishment and survival was a major life event, reforming and refining Roger Williams’s physical being, his worldview, and his relationships. When we look to see what relationship changed most, a clue is which indigenous people show up as characters in his letters.
The Nipmuc are recorded in Winthrop’s letters as feeding other lost near frozen souls reduced to wandering in circles. Some have been wandering for weeks when they are fed and pointed back to an English village. It makes sense that the politically neutral Nipmuc, generous to those who have little in Algonquian traditional fashion, would be his first contact in the wilderness.
A current view is that Roger eventually set up in a cave, watched over by Wampanoag medicine woman Margaret. David Hazard Wordell, President of the Roger Williams Family Association, showed this poster including photographs from the 1950’s of the cave to Karen DeGregory, another Williams descendent from Virginia, in 2015. The structure exists, though it is hard to prove who stayed in it in which winter.
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