Awashonks and the Sakonnet Surrender

One of two female sachems who played significant roles during King Philip’s War, the Sakonnet sachem Awashonks was the cousin of Metacom. Throughout the course of the war, she and the Sakonnet often remained separate from the other Wampanoag, both physically and ideologically. Seemingly holding a neutral standing - which is often debated in sources - Awashonks and her people met with Captain Benjamin Church on several occasions.

On one of these occasions, on June 30, 1676, Church was said to have encouraged the Sakonnet to surrender to the English. Awashonks and an estimated ninety Sakonnet travelled to nearby Pocasset (an area containing modern Tiverton, RI, and Fall River and Dartmouth, MA) and surrendered to William Bradford, who subsequently ordered them removed from their homelands to the town of Sandwich, Massachusetts. (1)

1. Many sources - both contemporary and modern - have described Awashonks and the Sakonnet as “neutral” or conservative. According to author Linford D. Fisher, Awashonks had pledged support to the English on two conditions: “that people from her community would have their lives spared (men, women, and children) and, importantly, that they would not be sent out of the country as slaves.” Fisher, Linford D. “‘Why shall wee have peace to bee made slaves?’ Indian Surrenderers During and After King Philip’s War.” Ethnohistory, Vol. 64, no. 1 (January 2017): 91-114, 94; Lee Blake, “Awashonks.” Lighting the Way: Historic Women of the Southcoast. n.d.; Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War.