King Philip's War & the Colonial Contact Period in Warren, RI

The native village moved with the seasons, but probably continuously occupied several areas along the Warren and Kickemuit Rivers. This photo simulation depicts, in an area that is now called Jacob's Point, what Sowams might have looked like along the Warren and Kickemuit Rivers.

 

 

A monument to Massasoit (Ousamequin), chief of the Wampanoag natives, sits at the end of Baker Street in downtown Warren, the site of one of the reputed native villages, according to Virginia Baker, school teacher and local historian who lived next to the site in the early 20th Century. The bronze plaque reads:  This tablet, placed beside the gushing water known for many generations as Massasoit's Spring, commemorates the great Indian sachem Massasoit, 'Friend of the White Man', ruler of this region when the Pilgrims of the Mayflower landed at Plymouth in the Year of Our Lord 1620. This site is the likely location of Edward Winslow's first visit to Massasoit's village in 1621.

Burr's Hill, is the site of an ancient Indian burial ground across from the town beach in South Warren, RI, where hundreds of native artifacts were unearthed and removed in 1913 by Charles Carr, Librarian of the George Hail Library (See photos, below).

Fabric Beads Wampum
King Philip's Seat (right) near the present site of the Haffenreffer Museum in Bristol and present-day reconstructions of  native wetus (below, right) similar to what may have made up the village or Sowams near the Massasoit Spring in present-day Warren, RI, here reconstructed at Plimoth Plantation. 

 

 

King's Rock (seen in the photo on the left) located on Market Street (Rte. 136) on the northern border of Warren was purportedly used by Natives to grind corn.

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