920 Deane Phillips 



the narragansett planters and their horses 

 Strictly speaking, the Narragansett country embraced all the lands 

 occupied by the Narraganset Indians at the coming of the English; 

 but in the parlance of the time the term came to be applied to a part of 

 this territory consisting of a strip of land about twenty miles long and 

 from two to four miles wide. This extended along the western shore 

 of Narragansett Bay, from Wiekford on the north to Point Judith on 

 the south, and thence westward along the coast to include the Champlain 

 tract in Charlestown. It was on this fertile, well-watered plain that 

 there was developed a region of large and pretentious estates — the 

 homes of the Narragansett planters, so called — and here was found a 

 type of agriculture and a social order unlike anything to be found else- 

 where in New England. 



Channing, who has had access to the local town records of the area 

 and to various manuscripts and family papers, describes these Nar- 

 ragansett planters as follows (151) : 



Unlike the other New England aristocrats of their time these people derived 

 their wealth from the soil and not from success in mercantile adventures. They 

 formed a landed aristocracy whicli had all the peculiarities of a landed aristocracy 

 to as great an extent as did that of the southern colonies. Nevertheless these 

 Narragansett magnates were not planters in the usual and commonly accepted 

 meaning of the word. It is true enough that they lived on large isolated farms 

 surrounded by all the pomp and apparent prosperity that a horde of slaves could 

 supply. But if one looks beneath the surface, he will find that the routine of 

 their daily lives was entirely unlike that of the Virginia planters. The Narragan- 

 sett's wealth was derived not so much from the cultivation of any great staple 

 like cotton or tobacco, as from the product of their dairies, their tlocks of sheep, 

 and their droves of splendid horses, the once famous Narragansett pacers. In fine 

 they were large • — large for the place and epoch — stock farmers and dairymen. 



This region was from the outset one of large-scale agricultural opera- 

 tions. Roger Williams had penetrated the area some time before 1650, 

 and in 1641 Richard Smith had bought a tract of 30,000 acres from 

 the Narraganset sachems and had erected a house (152) ; but the real 

 settlement of the area did not proceed at a rapid rate until after the 

 Pettiquamscut Purchase (153), made in 1657 by John Hull (of pine- 

 tree shilling fame) and a number of associates, and the Atherton Pur- 

 chase (154), made two years later by a company headed by Sir 

 Humphrey Atherton and John Winthrop, of Connecticut. Both these 

 groups of owners bent their efforts to obtaining settlers for their hold- 

 ings. Evidently, because of the many natural advantages of the sec- 



