The Wordy Shipmates

Vowell takes up Williams’s account of his time spent with the Narragansetts, especially when he was first in exile in the winter of 1636. Though Williams used words like “barbarian” to describe his Native rescuers (152), he also genuinely complimented their kindness, hospitality, and trustworthiness. In his 1643 book, A Key into the Language of America, Williams recorded Algonquian phrases that he had evidently learned from his Narragansett friends: “Come hither, friend” and “Welcome, sleep here” (153). Other Englishmen also commented on Narragansett generosity in their writings.

Williams disapproved of the Native religion he observed. Because the Narragansett were polytheists who were rather uninterested in conversion, Williams assumed their faith was based on devil worship. Williams’s translated phrases record conversations in which Native people challenged Williams’s explanations of monotheism and beliefs like the resurrection of Christ (161). Still, to Vowell, “the New England Indians seem strangely similar to the New England Puritans” (161) because religion dictated so much about each culture’s way of life.

Indigenous and English also shared a great affinity for fur products from semiaquatic rodents like beavers. Williams recorded fur-trade-related phrases in his Key because he made “his living […] by operating a trading post” (165). Vowell introduces the subject of the next section, the

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