Mayflower

proposed a truly visionary strategy of pan-Indian cooperation. By laying aside their ancient differences, which the English had exploited so effectively during the Pequot War, the Indians might retake New England. Miantonomi’s speech to the Montauks included an insightful account of the ecological endgame that had come to New England: “You know our fathers had plenty of deer and skins, our plains were full of deer, as also our woods, and of turkeys, and our coves full of fish and fowl. But these English having gotten our land, they with scythes cut down the grass, and with axes fell the trees; their cows and horses eat the grass, and their hogs spoil our clam banks, and we shall all be starved.” Miantonomi knew from experience that to pick a fight with the Puritans was to fight to the death. He proposed that they employ guerrilla tactics to “kill men, women, and children, but no cows,” since the Indians would need the English livestock for food until the deer had increased to precontact levels.
    In the end, Miantonomi was unable to follow his own advice. Instead of attacking the English, he attacked Uncas and the Mohegans. Like Massasoit before him, Uncas had parlayed his allegiance to the English into a sudden and, from the Narragansetts’ perspective, most annoying increase in power and influence. Uncas also did his best to undermine rival tribes, and the rumors he spread of Narragansett intrigue did much to worsen the tribe’s relations with the English.
    By 1643, Miantonomi had had enough of the Mohegans and their upstart sachem. After an assassination plot against Uncas failed, Miantonomi and a thousand of his warriors launched an assault on the Mohegans. Prior to the attack, Miantonomi donned a protective iron corselet. But instead of saving his life, the English armor proved his death sentence. When the fighting turned against the Narragansetts and the sachem was forced to flee, he staggered under the weight of the metal breastplate and was easily taken by the enemy. Uncas might have executed Miantonomi on the spot. But the crafty sachem, who was destined to outlive all of the Native leaders of his generation, recognized an opportunity to ingratiate himself even further with the English.
    By 1643, it had become apparent to several prominent New Englanders that Indian-English relations throughout the region needed to be managed in a more coordinated manner. With the rise of Native leaders such as Miantonomi and especially Uncas, who had learned to exploit the needs and fears of both the English and the Indians with Machiavellian sophistication, it was important that the English colonies attempt to act as a unified body. Since the boundaries of the colonies had been in dispute from the beginning, cooperation did not necessarily come naturally to the English. But in 1643, with the troubles between the Mohegans and Narragansetts threatening to spread across the region, the United Colonies of New England came into being. The union included Plymouth, Massachusetts-Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven, which would later be absorbed by Connecticut. Each colony sent its own delegation of commissioners to act on its behalf, but only with approval of the individual colonies’ General Courts. Noticeably missing from the confederation was Roger Williams’s Rhode Island—the only non-Puritan colony in New England.
    Edward Winslow appears to have had an important role in creating the United Colonies, a combination for which it is difficult to find an English precedent. In Holland, however, there had been a similar confederation of independent states since 1579, and the Pilgrims may have introduced the concept to their Puritan counterparts from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven. According to John Quincy Adams, the United Colonies of 1643 was “the model and prototype of the North American Confederacy of 1774,” which, in turn, became the basis of the United States. More than a hundred years before the colonies’ growing tensions with England provided the impetus to create a confederation, the United Colonies of New England demonstrated the importance of looking beyond local concerns and prejudices. If Miantonomi had succeeded in accomplishing the same kind of combination for the Native Americans of the region, the history of New England might have been very different.

    Miantonomi was still in Uncas’s custody when the commissioners of the United Colonies met for