The water near the landing is part of an estuary, which means that salt water moving in from Buzzard’s Bay meets fresh water washing down the river. It’s a unique and beautiful natural space.
\nAt the time of King Philip’s War, in the late 1670s, the west branch of the Westport River (then called the Acoaxet River) was inhabited by a branch of the Sakonnet people led by Mamanuah, whose stepmother was Awashonks, sachem of the Sakonnets who inhabited the west side of Little Compton. The English at that time considered the entire area to be part of Plymouth Colony, whose leaders refused to acknowledge the dual leadership of the Sakonnet people. They preferred to deal solely with Mamanuah, whose land holdings were more extensive than Awashonks’. To reward Mamanuah and his people for their assistance in fighting King Philip, the English granted them deeds to some of their ancestral lands on the Acoaxet River including the area around Adamsville Landing.
\nThese deeds became a source of power for the native inhabitants, who sold their land in piecemeal to the English settlers in ways that were “troublesome and costly” to the purchasers. With this land as leverage, Mamanuah’s people were more able to resist the indentured servitude and displacement experienced by Awashonks’ people. However, in the sixty years that followed King Philp’s War, the Adamsville area gradually became English property as a result of systemic colonization, coercion, and indebtedness. An 1861 census report of native peoples in Massachusetts indicated that the west side of the Westport River remained the “most numerous settlement” of the descendants of the Sakonnets, although they no longer held deeds to the land.
\nOfficial documents can’t tell the whole story of the land. Information included in historical timelines—and in historical tours—is limited, carefully worded and selected, and never neutral. We should always be asking more questions. How did ideas of land ownership differ between the English and the Sakonnets? What role did the threat of violence play in the dealings between these cultures?
\nToday, Adamsville Landing is a common destination for kayakers and canoers on scenic day trips. Maybe, today, as you take this tour, that’s what you’re doing. What does it mean to be paddling here? Who does this land belong to, and what does it mean to own a river? A salt marsh? A forest? Who else has paddled here, and when, and why? How can you engage more deeply and critically with the many, many histories of the land around you?
","sponsor":"The Westport Historical Society, Tomaquag Museum, and Little Compton Historical Society.","accessinfo":"","lede":"At Adamsville Landing, the water is calm and the river is shallow. Salt marshes and forested areas line the river’s banks. Wild deer, turkeys, coyotes, and foxes make homes in the woods, and blue herons, terns, ospreys, and gulls swoop through the sky.
","website":"","related_resources":["Phillips, Arthur Sherman. The Phillips History of Fall River: The aborigines; explorations and early settlements; the freemen's and Pocasset purchases; boundary disputes. Dover Press, 1944.
","Senier, Siobhan. Dawnland Voices : an Anthology of Indigenous Writing From New England. Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 2014.
","Westport Historical Society: Westport Historical Timeline. Available online at http://wpthistory.org/timeline/.
","O’Toole, Marjory. Searching for the Sakonnets. May 5, 2015.
"],"factoids":["Roaring Brook
\nMy memories here abound:
If I close my eyes
I remember my cousin Shawn around;
He fished night and day,
He took me along
Even though I scared the fish away;
Grandfather, Chief Roaring Bull,
Always kept the brook clean,
Every spring the brook’s water was glistening and full
Roaring from Arcadia, over falls and rocks;
We swam all summer in the pool
We thought it was deep
Our memories fun-filled and cool
Next best place to the beach;
We explored tunnels through and through
Had a blast young and old
Caught fish and crayfish, too
Neverending places to explore for the generations of old
As well as the 7 generations more
So long as we heed nature’s call:
Care for Mother Earth and her creatures
So that Roaring Brook can be enjoyed by all.
By Loren M. Spears, Executive Director, Tomaquag Museum
\nFrom Dawnland Voices : An Anthology of Indigenous Writing From New England
\nFor more information about Native history and culture in southern New England, visit the Tomaquag Museum."],"files":{"https://rhodetour.org/files/fullsize/f8ea3f200b672d5646b0230c2f0eccd1.jpg":{"id":1057,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Westport River at Adamsville Landing","description":"Most pictures in mainstream New England historical archives focus on markers of colonial settlement: houses and shops and streets. There aren’t a lot of images that remind us of the Native presence around spaces like Adamsville Landing. In this picture from the 1930s, we see both the river itself and a colonial-style home.
| http://littlecompton.pastperfectonline.com/photo/E97594EC-4BC4-41D6-BD6D-224826812560 | A. Manchester","thumbnail":"https://rhodetour.org/files/square_thumbnails/f8ea3f200b672d5646b0230c2f0eccd1.jpg"},"https://rhodetour.org/files/fullsize/13c331d9507b13dd46bbd51390555a9b.jpg":{"id":1052,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Air View, Acoaxet","description":"Today, Acoaxet is the name of a small community on the West Branch of the Westport River, but the name Acoaxet is much older than that settlement. It’s the Narragansett name for the river itself. The changing of traditional names is just one small symbol of the violent colonization that happened in this area when white settlers took over Indigenous land.
| http://www.pbase.com/clamflats/image/150433818","thumbnail":"https://rhodetour.org/files/square_thumbnails/13c331d9507b13dd46bbd51390555a9b.jpg"},"https://rhodetour.org/files/fullsize/bb976e6951e88ce0a6c20659f685aaf3.jpg":{"id":982,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Land Deed, Acoaxet, 1798","description":"In the timeline of Westport History compiled by the Westport Historical Society, references to Native peoples mostly focus on land sales. These are moments in the late 1600s and early 1700s when land was “purchased” from Indigenous people by whites. What do property deeds like the one pictured above tell us about interactions between colonists and Native peoples? What nuances and perspectives do they leave out? Who decides what’s included in an archive?
| http://westhist.pastperfectonline.com/archive/78EF16D6-E3FC-466A-A881-385741471170 | 1798","thumbnail":"https://rhodetour.org/files/square_thumbnails/bb976e6951e88ce0a6c20659f685aaf3.jpg"}}}