Mayflower

was the home of Awashonks, the female sachem whom Church had known before the war. He was certain that if given the opportunity, Awashonks would have aligned herself with the English. Instead, she’d taken her people across the bay to the then neutral Narragansetts. After the Great Swamp Fight, the Sakonnets had been forced north along with the Narragansetts and eventually made their way to Wachusett Mountain.
    As Church and his two Indian guides approached the jagged rocks and pebble beach of Sakonnet, he saw some of the sachem’s Indians fishing in the surf. The Sakonnets, Church realized, had returned home. Perhaps he could convince them to abandon Philip and serve under him.
    The Indians began to shout and make signs that Church should come ashore. But when the canoe approached, they retreated and hid amid the clefts of the rocks. Fearful that the Sakonnets might be luring him into a trap, Church ordered the Cape Indians to back away from shore. Over the next few minutes, as the canoe rose up and down with the rhythmic heave of the ocean swell, the Sakonnets and Cape Indians struck up a conversation in their Native language, but it was difficult for them to hear each other above the crashing surf. Church used hand signals to indicate that he was willing to meet with just two of them at the end of a nearby point of sand.
    After pulling the canoe up on shore, Church realized that one of the Indians was an old friend named Honest George. George, who spoke English well, said that Church’s suspicions were correct; Awashonks “had left Philip and did not intend to return to him any more.” Church asked George to deliver a message to his sachem: in two days he would meet her and just two others at a well-known rock near the western shore of Sakonnet.
    The next day, Church went to Newport to inform the authorities of his proposed meeting with Awashonks. Since the Sakonnets were regarded as the enemy, he needed official sanction. But the Rhode Island officials refused to grant him a permit, claiming Church “was mad” and would most certainly be killed if he dared meet with the Sakonnets. Church, however, resolved to go ahead with the meeting—with or without the authorities’ blessing.

    Treaty Rock, circa 1900, where the Sakonnet sachem Awashonks agreed to join forces with Benjamin Church
    He purchased a bottle of rum and a roll of tobacco to assist with the negotiations, and on the morning of the next day, he and the two Cape Indians prepared to paddle to Sakonnet. But Alice refused to let them go. The Rhode Islanders were right; it was too dangerous. Church did his best to convince “his tender and now brokenhearted wife” that he must go. He assured her that this was nothing compared to the dangers he had already survived; if God looked favorably on his meeting with Awashonks, it might be of “great service” to the colony. Finally, Alice relented. “[C]ommitting her, his babes and himself to heaven’s protection,” Church set out for Sakonnet.
    It was just a three-mile paddle from the Almy house on the east shore of Aquidneck Island to the meeting place. As Church had hoped, he could see some Indians waiting on the bank. One of them was Honest George, who said that Awashonks was nearby and willing to meet with him. When Church asked if she had come with just two others, George did not have time to reply before Awashonks came down to the shore with her son Peter and her principal warrior, Nompash. The sachem shook Church’s hand and gestured for him to follow her inland to where a large rock stood at the edge of a meadow of waist-high grass.
    Almost as soon as the four of them had assembled around the rock, “a great body” of Indians, all of them armed and with their faces covered in war paint, rose up out of the grass. After a brief pause, Church said that George had indicated Awashonks might be willing to consider peace. She agreed that such was indeed the case. “It is customary,” Church replied, “when people meet to treat of peace to lay aside their arms and not to appear in such hostile form as your people do.” Only after the warriors had gathered their muskets in a large pile did Church begin the negotiations.
    But first they must share in a drink of rum. He had poured the liquor into a calabash made from a large gourd, and after drinking to the sachem’s health, he offered the rum to Awashonks. Church could