The Post Road from Charlestown to Westerly sweeps first in a southwesterly direction then curves to the northwest in a great twelve-mile arc in the southwestern corner of Rhode Island, in order to avoid the ponds and swamps to the north that are the source of the Pawcatuck River, the boundary between Rhode Island and Connecticut. Today I head to the border and tomorrow I will be in Connecticut. Another phase of the journey will be complete as a second state will be behind me and two states will be left to reach New York City. Westerly is like a star beckoning to me from the west, drawing me toward it as the Magi were drawn to Bethlehem or as prospectors or settlers headed west in search of fame and fortune, heeding the advice of Horace Greeley to “Go west young man, and grow up with the country.”  There is a magnetic pull to the west in America, a need for us to head out into the wilderness, to explore the boundless expanses of mountains, prairies, farms, and forests, as well as the towns and cities that make up this vast nation. I have tried to reproduce the sense of adventure that travelers in an earlier period would have felt traveling what today is the safe and anodyne trip from Boston to New York. This trip would have engendered some of the same emotion that the myth of the west evoked in later generations of travelers. It is only when I turn to the west though that I truly have the sensation that I am heading into the unknown, that new adventures await on the journey ahead. West is more than a direction, it is a state of mind.

*****

        On my right on Post Road near Cross Mills is a small graveyard containing the remains of some of the Narragansett Indians who once occupied most of Rhode Island. A few yards ahead on my left is a stone marker indicating that the site of Fort Ninigret is located down the road of the same name.  The site is purported to be either an early Dutch trading post or an Indian settlement. A group of Indians called the Niantic, who were closely related to and allied with the Narragansett Indians, lived in this part of Rhode Island. The remnant Narragansett families who survived King Philip’s War, made their way here and effectively merged with the Niantic, so much so that the group became known as the Narragansett Indians and the Niantic appellation was lost. Most of the current town of Charlestown was originally set aside as a reservation for the Narragansett/Niantic, but the land was slowly sold off to pay debts and the population living here was so small and had intermarried to such a degree that the State of Rhode Island declared the Narragansett Indians extinct in the 1880s. This decision did not sit well with the remaining people who considered themselves to be Narragansett and over the course of a century the families never gave up their fight to regain their status, until in 1983 the Narragansett were once again recognized as a tribe by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The remaining Narragansett land today is to the north of this area, with US1 as the southern boundary, route 112 as the eastern boundary, route 91 as the northern boundary and Burlingame State park as the western boundary. The population of the Narragansett tribe is estimated today at about 2500 people, with only a few dozen living on the tribal land.

        Ninigret was the name of an early sachem of the Niantic and in addition to the fort, his name has also been given to the National Wildlife Refuge that includes most of the land south of US1 for the next couple of miles. The beach here is spectacular and empty and this is one of the premier birdwatching sites in New England. I would love to head down the East Beach Road and into the refuge but I must keep moving.

        King Tom Drive near the Fort and the Refuge also refers to Tom Ninigret. Near this spot the sachems of the Narragansett/ Niantic in the eighteenth century made their home here in a European-style mansion. These sachems seemed to be a source of great interest to our eighteenth-century travelers Alexander Hamilton and James Birket. Hamilton visited the house of “King George” as he called him, and “he treated us with a good glass of wine” (Hamilton, July 14, 1744) He describes George as “a very complaisant and mannerly man,” living “after the English mode,” and notes that “his subjects have lost their own government policy and laws and are servants or vassals to the English here.”  Six years later Birket noted that “we also went to see the Pallace of the King of the Narragansett Indians but he being a minor and with his grandmother about 9 or 10 miles up the Country at another town, we were deprived a sight of his Majesty.” (Birket, October 4, 1750). Presumably George had died in the interim and this “King” was either his son or grandson.(see note below) Birket described the “Pallace” as “but an indifferent house built of stones two story high, the glass very much broke, and otherwise to appearance very much out of repair.” The Reverend Jacob Bailey traveled in the area four years later and describes Charlestown as “five miles from the place where the great Narragansett battle was fought.”  He too describes the “King” who “is now a young man of eighteen, at school at Newport.”  Bailey also described the King’s house by the side of the road as “of late miserably fallen to ruin.” (1) Reading these diaries in succession and seeing the decline of the house over time one is tempted to think of it as a metaphor for the Narragansett Indians and their land.

*****

        I spend the next hour meandering back and forth onto US1, across US1 to Old Post Road, back onto US1, sometimes called Post Road, and then back over US1 again. After about three miles I hit in succession, an old tavern called the Wilcox Tavern, which originally was the home of General Joseph Stanton, who became the first Senator from Rhode Island. A little further on is a monument to General Stanton of the phallic variety, and a little beyond that is a lovely eighteenth century house on a small bluff above the road. This charming place turns out to be Dave’s Coffee, an excellent little cafe with an attached clothing boutique. The landscape around the house is extremely eclectic, with a large truck parked in the yard surrounded by flowers, a small waterfall, many tables and chairs for relaxing and drinking coffee. The inside is also inviting. There is a nice cozy room with tables and while I wait for my order I notice that behind a cooler is a fantastic old fireplace. There are also thick wooden beams in the ceiling and the building clearly is quite ancient. I ask the barista about  the house and the young lad tells me that he thinks “some General or somebody lived here in the old days.”  I proffer the name of General Stanton and he says “yeah that’s him I think.” I probably would not bet the house on the veracity of that statement but it is pretty clear that this house has been here a very long time.

    *****

       

       

  

     Another half hour brings me to the border of the town of Westerly, the last town in Rhode Island, the westernmost town, hence Westerly. Settled by transplants from Newport, the town of Westerly has played an outsized role in the history of Rhode Island. In fact one book about Westerly is somewhat grandiloquently entitled “Westerly: The Town that Saved A State.” (2) Initially the town is just as quiet and low key as Charlestown, but after a mile or so I start to see signs of “civilization.” At the junction of US1 and 1A, in the village of Haversham the commercial strips I have become accustomed to on this trip begin to reappear. Route 1A heads southwest to the resort community of Watch Hill and its beaches lined with nineteenth century hotels and modern condominium complexes. Along with the resort beaches and houses comes shops and gas stations and malls. US1 now becomes effectively a very wide, very open seven-lane highway; three lanes of traffic each way and a turning lane in the center. All traces of any of the old post road are completely gone.  The appearance of the golden arches of McDonald’s and Walmart Number 2 on the Post Road confirm that I have left the wilderness and reentered the consumer community. At least a sidewalk finally appears, the first one in over two days of walking.

        A short distance beyond the Walmart Old Post Road veers off the main road for what proves to be the last time in Rhode Island. This last stretch of a mile or so is a windy road lined with residences in a woody setting. There is nothing particularly interesting about this stretch but it is quieter than US1 (Post Road). Hamilton felt the same in 1744: “I had a dull, solitary ride to Thomson’s.” Reverend Bailey thought Westerly “a miserable, poor, unpopulated place,” and Birket mentioned the town of Westerly not at all. Soon I am back on Post Road and I pass the Westerly Airport, before hitting a long stretch of strip malls. Thomson’s Tavern, visited by Hamilton, was located three miles from Pawcatuck Bridge, so it must have been somewhere around here. The remains are probably under that Ocean State Job Lot building there or the Dunkin Donuts on the left. There is absolutely no indication that this was ever an old road. Even the street name changes to Franklin Street for a couple of miles. What amazes me still even though this is an old story on this trip is that there can be literally three or four miles of non-stop commercial development for a town of a mere 27,000 inhabitants. I assume that the people of Charlestown and some of the other surrounding towns use these services as well but even so, there surely cannot be a market of more than 50,000 people utilizing this vast stretch of corporate America. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like when Main Street was where people shopped. How did they fit everything into those little buildings? A kestrel zigzags overhead, presumably trying to catch a sparrow napping. The sun is directly in my face now as evening approaches and it is very bright, but I march on toward its light.

        About a half mile from the center of Westerly trees finally appear, the street changes name again, this time to Granite Street. It is quite hilly a here and as I climb I can see that there will soon be a big drop. I pass the Babcock Smith House, from 1734, which once served as a post office and a general store. I pass the Westerly High School and the road curves to the left and steeply downhill. In the near distance I see hills rising up from the valley and realize that those hills are in Connecticut.  Suddenly, the houses become quite elegant, there is a lovely park on my right called Wilcox Park, I start to see red-brick nineteenth-century commercial buildings and granite bank buildings, an ornate theater, a beautiful Second Empire library, and a charming High Street. I am in the town center of Westerly. And just then I turn the corner and there is the Pawcatuck River and the bridge that will lead me into Connecticut.

*****

        Westerly has had some bad press. The Providence Journal opined in 1800 that Westerly was “the hardest town in our blessed state.” (3) Bailey was probably not off target in his assessment of the town as unpopulated because even in 1800 there were but eighteen houses along the river. But there is a grain of truth in the title of the book on Westerly referenced above. The Connecticut Colony, which I shall discuss in the very near future, defeated the Pequots in a brutal war in the 1630s and seized their territory. The Narragansett and Pequot had previously fought battles which temporarily resulted in the incursion of the Pequot ten miles over the Pawcatuck River into Narragansett territory. The Puritan settlers of Connecticut, who were not enamored of the free-thinking colony of Rhode Island to begin with, interpreted the Pequot statements that their territory extended as far as the Narragansett River (by which they meant the Pawcatuck) to mean Narragansett Bay and laid claim to all of what is now southern Rhode Island. The Rhode Island Colony grew alarmed and in 1669 purchased from the Narragansett the land east of the Pawcatuck River, which became Westerly, Charlestown and other towns, and sent some families to settle it in order to establish a claim to the territory themselves. The dispute between the two was not resolved until 1728, with the Rhode Islanders winning the day, mostly because possession is nine-tenths of the law as the old saw goes, and they were already there at Westerly. As Mary Agnes Best argues “shorn of this town, the remaining scrap of the colony would have gone into the maw of hungry foes.” (4)

        Both Sarah Kemble Knight and John Winthrop, Jr. experienced some difficulty in crossing the Pawcatuck River. For Knight, on October 4, 1704, the river, which was “about two hundred paces over and now very high” caused her to fear for her safety if she rode through it, so she let the post rider and the French Doctor with whom she was traveling head over without her and she waited at a house by the river for the water level to diminish. She too was unimpressed by what she saw in Westerly (although she was pretty unimpressed with most places she visited): “This little Hutt was one of the wretchedest I ever saw a habitation for human creatures... all and every part being the picture of poverty...I blest myself that I was not one of this misserable crew.” She goes on to describe the visit of an Indian to the house in what can only be described as appallingly racist terms, and then proceeds to tell us that he was “as I understood, going over the River, as ugly as he was, I was glad to ask him to show me the way to Saxton’s at Stoningtown.”

        Winthrop had difficulty crossing on November 27, 1645, because the river was frozen but not enough to walk on safely, “but by Providence of God, there was an Indian on the other side and he pointed out for us a place about a half mile below where we crossed on the ice safely.” Winthrop stayed two nights here at the house of an Indian named George, a friend or relative of Winthrop’s guide the Indian Cutshamekin, and “slept in comfort.”  Cutshamekin, who those of you who have been reading from the start may remember was the brother of Chickatawbut, sachem of the Massachusetts. Cutshamekin is the person who is surmised to have lived at  Jamaica Pond and for whom some have suggested Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, my home, is named.

        A bridge was built by 1712 and rebuilt the usual number of times (which is to say frequently), so that by the time of Hamilton and Birket, the river crossing was not worth mentioning.  For me, the crossing of the Pawcatuck River is a milestone (so to speak). After 101.7 miles I have walked the Post Road in Rhode Island in all its permutations, down the shores of Narragansett Bay, and across southern Rhode Island. I have learned about the roots of religious toleration in America, about the history of the most populous tribe in New England at the time of the arrival of European settlers, about the history of Providence and Newport, two of the most important towns in early American history, and (Newport) one of the four largest in the colonies, and I have learned that state borders were fungible. I have had coffee milk, weenies, cabinets, and Rhode Island “clear” clam chowder.  I have had a Narragansett beer in the tavern where Alexander Hamilton drank, just as I have walked in the footsteps of Hamilton, Birket, Knight, and Winthrop as well as countless others who passed through the untamed lands of the Narragansett, first as an Indian trail, later as “Queen Anne’s Highway,” still later as Old Post Road and as US Route 1, on their way to points east and west.(5) I hope I have shown that even the tiniest state in the union can hold many treasures worthy of detailed investigation and if that is true, imagine what surprises walking in larger states might hold.

        But as I cross the Pawcatuck bridge I must leave all that behind for there is a whole rich history that awaits me in Connecticut. After 170 miles of walking I have reached almost exactly the halfway point. There are approximately 170 miles left to go to reach lower Manhattan. So enough daydreaming as I watch two great blue herons tangle with each other in an aerial display of machismo over the river. Time to walk.