“Our Own Free Motion”

What’s the story?

This fragile manuscript reveals one of colonial New England’s most fraught and consequential acts of political negotiation: on June 22, 1643, Pumham, Sachem of Shawomet, and Saconoco, Sachem of Pawtuxet, placed their marks at the bottom of this document, formally submitting themselves, their lands, and their posterity to the governance of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Look closely at the page: the Sachems’ signatory marks sit surrounded by the dense cursive of colonial record-keeping, a visually distinct form of inscription amid a document designed to absorb them into English legal culture. In 17th-century colonial practice, a “mark” designated those outside alphabetic literacy—but that framing is itself a colonial imposition. This submission, certified by Colonial Secretary Edward Rawson and witnessed by Governor John Winthrop, declares itself an act of free will: made “without any constraint or persuasion, but of our own free motion.” But the Sachems were not passive signatories. Pumham and Saconoco were breaking from the authority of the Narragansett Sachem Miantonomo, whose deed of Shawomet to the English settler Samuel Gorton had threatened their communities’ autonomy. Aligning with Massachusetts Bay was a calculated act of political resistance—one Indigenous leader turning colonial power against another threat.

But no document, however carefully negotiated, could hold against the tidal force of colonial expansion. Pumham spent the next three decades in escalating conflict with English settlers at Warwick, repeatedly petitioning colonial authorities who had once been his patrons. When King Philip’s War erupted in 1675, Pumham joined the resistance. By July 1676, his village burned and his young son sold into slavery, Pumham was dead. This document is one of many in the Rosenbach’s Americana collection—including the Eliot Indian Bible (1661–1663), the first complete Bible printed in the Western Hemisphere, translated into the Natick language of Massachusetts—that illuminate the many registers through which colonial power and Indigenous resilience shaped early New England. The questions this document raises—about land, consent, and the durability of promises made between governments and Indigenous peoples—remain unresolved. The marks Pumham and Saconoco pressed into this page have outlasted the colony that sought to contain them. The question this document puts to its readers in 2026 is not only historical: on what terms does the United States continue to negotiate with the Indigenous nations whose sovereignty predates it?

References
“Pomham and His Fort.” Rhode Island Historical Society, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 1918, pp. 31–36.

Pulsipher, Jenny Hale. Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

Vaughan, Alden T. New England Encounters: Indians and Euroamericans, ca. 1600–1850. Northeastern University Press, 1999.

This interpretation was written by Hayley Kay Bowen, as part of Rosenbach Museum & Library’s spring 2026 course, “The Curator’s Toolkit.”

More details

theme: Power of Place
subjects: Massachusetts, Government relations, Narragansett
contributing repository: Rosenbach Museum & Library
submitted by: Hayley Kay Bowen
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