Authors Andrew Cameron Bailey and Connie Baxter Marlow visited five places in Sowams on September 1, 2021 before returning to their home in the Colorado Rockies from Massachusetts. Both had already attended the recent Pokanoket Heritage Day event at Burr’s Hill Park, the place from which they began a tour with Sowams Heritage Area Project Coordinator David Weed. Click here for a 5-minute video of the first part of their visit.

Andrew looks over one of the boulders inscribed with Indigenous symbols in a park in Warren, RI that sits next to the Massasoit Spring. Pokanoket Tribe Member Blue Shell offers Connie the opportunity to be smudged with smoke from a bundle of sage that is thought to cleanse one’s soul before she reads from the descriptive marker nearby.

The group stops by the marker for the well of colonist Hugh Cole who settled next to the Kickemuit River in 1677 having survived the King Philip War because of his friendship with Pokanoket Massasoit Metacomet. (Right) Providence teacher, peace walker and water “protector” Andrea Lynn Dastoli records some of the conversation at the marker.

Blue Shell points to King’s Rock across Market Street at the Warren-Swansea line where Indigenous women were known to have ground corn for the nations who gathered nearby at Sachem’s Knoll for celebrations.

Andrew, Connie and gather to read the marker at the Myles Garrison site in Swansea where the English militia gathered at the start of the King Philip War. (Right) Dave Weed, Andrew, Andrea, Blue Shell and Connie pose for a photo at the marker before Andrew and Connie left for Northern Massachusetts.