Dr. David Weed, Coordinator of the Sowams Heritage Area Project, spoke to members of the Pawtuxet Valley Preservation and Historical Society at their Reference and Research Center on Main Street in West Warwick, RI about the history of Sowams on November 23, 2024. Click here for a 42-minute video of Dr. Weed’s presentation.

(Above) Charles Vacca, President of the Historical Society, welcomed an audience that filled the room for Dr. Weed’s presentation. Weed began by acknowledging that they were on Narragansett land.

Weed described the territory known as Sowams in East Bay Rhode Island and nearby Massachusetts, the homeland of the Massasoit Ousamequin and the Pokanoket people. Ousamequin met the Pilgrims in 1621 following a devastating plague that killed thousands of Indigenous people along the Atlantic coast. When the Massasoit became ill in 1623, Pilgrim Edward Winslow nursed him back to health.

Weed went on to describe the founding of Providence by Roger Williams and the factors that led to the outbreak of the King Philip’s War in 1675-76 and drove nearly all of the Pokanokets out of Sowams.