Under date of May 1, 1632, we find the following in the same journal: Winthrop and assistants in session at Boston: "While they were thus sitting together, an Indian brings a letter from Captain Standish, then at Sowams, to the effect that the Dutchmen (which lay for loading at Anygansett or Narragansett) had lately informed him that many Pequins who were professed enemies to the Anygansetts, had been there divers days and had advised us to be watchful, etc., giving other reasons, etc."
Thomas Dudley, Deputy, made complaint against Governor Winthrop as follows, in 1632; asking, "By what authority he lent twenty-eight pounds of powder to those of Plimouth, the Governor answered, it was of his own powder, and upon their urgent request, their own powder proving naught when they were to send to the rest of their men at Sowamsett."
The above references establish these facts: that Sowams was on or near Narragansett Bay; that it was the residence of Massassoit, the great chief of the Wampanoags; that there was a trading post at Sowams where the Dutch supplied the Indians with the commerce of the earlier times; that Governor Winthrop sent aid to Massassoit and that Standish also had visited Sowams with military aid to the Indians there against the Narragansetts. That the words Sowams and Pokanoket were sometimes used interchangeably is not strange, as at the period referred to from 1620 to 1640, the Indian names of places had not been definitely localized by the whites at Plymouth or Boston, as intercourse between them had been very limited. Belknap and Morton, however, or their editors, state that Massassoit resided at Sowams or Sowampsett, "at the confluence of two rivers in Rehoboth or Swansea," or on "a neck of land formed by the confluence of the Barrington and Palmer's Rivers." These authors locate Sowams on the Eastern peninsula of Barrington, known as New Meadow Neck, having Palmer's or Warren River on the East.
With the above historic references before us, we are now
