In the extreme west of the Narragansett district, and near the entrance of Long Island Sound, dwelt a powerful division of the Pequodees; of that race of red warriors whose pride and ambition caused them to be both feared and hated by the other tribes in the vicinity.  They could bring upwards of seven hundred warriors into the field, and their Chief, Sassacus, had, in common with almost all the great Indian Sagamores, a number of subordinate chiefs, who yielded to him a certain degree of obedience.  The Narragansetts were the only tribe that could at all compete in strength with the fierce and haughty Pequodees; and their young Chieftain, Miantonomo, was already regarded by Sassacus as a dangerous rival.

Such was the feeling that existed among the tribes near the settlements of Connecticut, when an event occurred that disturbed the peace of the whole community.  Two merchants of Virginia, who had long dwelt in Massachusetts, and who were engaged in trafficking with the Connecticut settlers, were suddenly and treacherously attacked by a party of Pequodees, and, with their attendants, barbarously murdered.  And shortly afterwards another trader, named Oldham, met the same fate, being assassinated while he was quietly sleeping in his boat, by some Indians who had, but an hour before, been conversing with him in a friendly manner.  This latter murder did not take place actually among the Pequodees, but on a small island belonging to the Narragansetts, called Block Island.  But the inhabitants denied all knowledge of its perpetration, and the murderers fled to the Pequodees, by whom they were received and sheltered.  A strong suspicion, therefore, lay on them as being guilty of the latter crime, as well as the former.

The government of Massachusetts immediately resolved on punishing the offenders, and a troop of eighty or ninety men were sent off to Block Island, to seek for the murderers.  The natives endeavored to oppose their landing; but, after a short contest, they fled, and hid themselves in the woods.  For two days the Boston soldiers remained on the island, burning and devastating the villages and fields, end firing at random into the thickets, but without seeing a single being.  They then broke up the canoes that lay on the beach, and sailed away to the country of the Pequodees to insist on the guilty individuals being delivered to them and, on this condition, to offer peace.  But neither the murderers nor their protectors were to be found.  All had fled to the forests and the marshes, whither the English could not follow them, and they merely succeeded in killing and wounding a few stragglers, and burning the huts that came in their way.